Great posts guys.

I also wanted to check how many people actually owned a TV set in 1950, and according to wikipedia 1950 is the year when the number of homes in the US that owned a TV set reached the 1 Million mark.

So then I checked the US population in 1950 and it says 151 millions.

That means that in the year 1950, there were less than 1 percent of americans who owned a TV set. That's practically nothing! or not? I mean 1 million houses with TV sets and 150 million houses without it. Did you have to be rich in order to own one?

Now I'll have to check the prices of TV sets back in 1950

I don't ever remember having 120 channels when I was a kid. At first we had two, CBS & NBC. They'd go on the air about 6:00 a.m. and off at maybe midnight. Later, and I'm not sure how much later they added ABC. Other than turning the dial and trying to adjust the "fuzz" of another channel simply because it looked like something was on, that's all I remember.

I remember the family watching "I Love Lucy", "The Honeymooners", Gunsmoke. Saturday night was the night my dad would watch the fights (Boxing).

Although they were out before then, my family didn't get a color tv til 1970. I remember it well, because that was the year I married and left the house and same with my sister. We'd tease my dad that he waited til we left to finally get a color tv.

TIS

I had posted this story before, but it's worth repeating. My parents had one of the first television sets in the neighborhood. And it wasn't just any ordinary set. It was a BIG screen set, made especially for a bar by my father. (He was in the pinball/jukebox rackets that supplied bars with all that stuff). He made a set especially for a bar owner who ended up not being able to pay for it. Voila, Mom and Dad C then had a tv, and a big one. My parents (and brother and sister) told me that neighbors would line up outside the living room window and watch the shows through the window. I think this was in 1949 (before I was born).

A few years later when tv became a little more popular, the stations expanded their broadcasting. A lot of it consisted of movies (they were long enough to take up time and they didn't cost anything to produce shows). My mom used to love to tell the story that one night (must have been 1952 or 1953) she was doing her clothes ironing and she liked to watch tv while doing it. There was nothing on so she actually phoned the station to complain and within a few minutes they aired a movie (she thinks it was some Claude Rains movie but she couldn't remember for sure in her later years).

Could you imagine that happening today?

NOBODY did.... that was the total number of tv stations in the entire U.S. at the time. As I said, we in NYC had only six stations. I suspect you may have been getting reception from Detroit then, and they MAY have had tow or three stations.

Remember, TIS, I'm talking 1950 and before.

Great story SC!! I can imagine your household was the "Cool" house. No, there is no way that would happen today.


TIS

Oh the total in the U.S. I get it now. I misunderstood.

For some reason ABC (channel 13 in my city) was always the one that had the worse reception.

TIS

Probably where their antenna was located.

Here in NYC, almost all the stations had antennas on top of the Empire State Bldg. In the 1970s most of those antennas were re-located to the World Trade Center Towers. On September 11th I was only able to view Channel 2 (CBS) because they left their antenna on the Empire State Bldg. The other channels rushed to find alternate places from which to broadcast (and many didn't want to go to the Empire State in case it would be another target in the immediate future).

Now, with cable, that's all moot.