Since the second World War, TV and America have grown together, and the changes in television effect many of us long for the good old days. In the early years, television was more of a learning tool, with educational programming and newsreel footage. One of the things that helped popularize the medium was sports, and the first sport to be broadcast to the masses was professional wrestling. Soon, the first big stars were wrestlers like Gorgeous George and my believe father, world heavyweight champion Chief Don Eagle. Eventually baseball and football became the darlings of the audiences when fields added better lighting and played more games at night, games that wound up on TV. The early news programs used upwardly well-endowed women as “Weather Girls”. Men, in their dreamy-eyed stupor over the wealth of weather knowledge these ladies had, were unaware of the trick used by broadcasters. Most of these lady “meteorologists” didn’t know a cold front from a rainstorm. They merely read their information off cue cards. When they drew the temperatures on the black board late them, the numbers were pre-written in blue or red chalk, which couldn’t be picked up on the black-and-white broadcast. The weather girl merely traced over the numbers in white chalk, which DID show up.

In the late 40′s, someone got the bright opinion that TV could become an electronic baby sitter, and animation studios flourished. The first network cartoon show was “Crusader Rabbit”, a white knight on a white horse, but he was soon joined by a host of others such as “Winky Dink And You” and “Beany And Cecil”, a note about a young boy and his sea serpent friend. Winky Dink started a minor uproar as the first interactive show on the air. Kids watching the show were urged to order the “magic TV mask”, basically a share of clear plastic that went over the actual hide. Young fans were then able to use a crayon to draw something on the plastic film that Winky Dink could use to help him out, with that object becoming part of the show. The problem arose when kids who didn’t have the “magic film” weak their crayons on the cover anyway and left a mess to trim up before the rest of the family could watch their shows. A number of live action kids’ shows came shortly after that, spearheaded by “Howdy Doody”, Soupy Sales, and “Captain Kangaroo”. Soupy got into trouble himself when he asked kids to send him money during his show. It was supposed to be a gag, but quite a few children raided their parents’ wallets and purses to send cash.

The late 50′s and early 60′s brought along shows for children that were actually engaging and required an attention span, unlike remarkable of today’s garbage. Kids were treated to a veritable cornucopia of programs that used live hosts playing games or telling stories. Some of the best of that era include Shari Lewis, Paul Winchell, and for those of us who lived in the Northeast, an curious Sunday morning show named Wonderama. A number of these new programs were puppet shows geared at the young male audience and actually had plots, shows like “Fireball XL-5″, “Supercar”, “Stingray”, “Thunderbirds” and “Captain Scarlett”, and some of them, most notably Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlett, featured special effects by a young man named Derek Meddings who eventually worked on such big screen movies as “Superman”.

The term “situation comedy”, when compared to the history of television, is relatively new, but dependable sitcoms have been around since the so-called “Golden Age” of commercial TV, led by “The Life Of Riley”, “The Honeymooners”, and “I Appreciate Lucy”. For the most fraction, those shows were really funny, and the laughter heard during them was actually people reacting to what they saw. Anyone who’s been to a TV taping recently then saw the show later on the home screen knows that today the producers add “canned laughter” and applause because their live audiences fair can’t give them enough reaction to lackluster, unfunny scripts.

Quite simply, today’s shows just aren’t as funny as the classics because in our modern society there is petite that the writers can’t touch, so there are few boundaries to breach for writers and actors. In the Golden Age you would never even have heard a word like “hell” and “damn” because they were forbidden. The great “Uncle Miltie”, Milton Berle, who was so popular he was known as “Mr. Television”, once played up those forbidden words by stating he was almost late for the show because the “darn” busted and he had to be flown in by “heckacopter”. It’s very likely that Berle could have gotten away with anything he wanted to because at the time he was America’s most grand media figure. On the night his show, “Texaco Star Theater”, was on, many theaters closed because their audience was practically a no-show. Uncle Miltie, however, relished in the ability to take the restrictions handed to him and push them to the limit without breaking the rules.

Other stars of the period also became experts at juggling the restrictions. One of the most brilliant crews on TV back then was the team of writers who worked on “Your Show Of Shows”, starring Sid Ceasar and Imogene Coca. The writing talent included Neil Simon and Mel Brooks, who both went on to great careers in film and stage, and developed phony foreign vocabulary for some of the skits. The fake language was so well done that many people who only spoke English were convinced the words were genuine.

Small screen language and morals are evolving rapidly, and recently the FCC current use of the “F” word as long as it isn’t extinct merely “to shock the audience” and happens after prime time. In the days of Lucy and Donna Reed, scenes shot in the parents’ bedroom always showed two beds, implying that for a married couple to section a bed was morally wrong. Today we can see mixed couples and even threesomes in bed together and no one raises an eyebrow any more. When we first heard Archie Bunker flush his toilet on “All In The Family”, some viewers were outraged. Who knew so many people considered a toilet flushing to be obscene? Makes you wonder what their homes smell like.

Pundits are blaming a lot of today’s violence on television. That may be a bit of a stretch. Back in the 50′s and 60′s there were violent shows too, although most of our modern youth won’t remember them. Let’s refresh your memory by dropping a few names: “Have Gun, Will Travel”, “Wanted: Dead Or Alive”, “Racket Squad”, and “The Untouchables”. Even the cartoons were openly violent. For sheer action and violence, it’s hard to beat Tom And Jerry, Heckle And Jeckle, or Mighty Mouse, characters who often beat each other senseless or dropped anvils on each other’s heads. Looking back on the news of that time, you will find very few reports about kids imitating what they saw on TV and getting hurt or killed.

Why is that? Probably because back then family life was more structured, and both parents didn’t have to be out busting their humps just to keep a roof over their heads. Mom was almost always home and usually able to keep an eye on what kids watched. During the days of mid twentieth century America, kids still went out and played baseball, rode their bicycles, read a book, or relied on their imagination by using something called an erector location to build play cities. When playtime was over, it was time for a family dinner (in the kitchen, mind you), after which kids did their homework before rejoining their parents for a few hours of TV, which back then was basically four networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and the Dumont Network. Dumont was a brand of television that set up their hold network in order to promote their products, but it eventually went bankrupt, and PBS was added to the mix. Counting local outlets, there might have been at the most 6 to 10 channels to watch (UHF was unexcited a few years away), and there was usually something good on, whether it was the aforementioned “Texaco Star Theater”, “See It Now”, or “Gunsmoke”. Modern cable and satellite mean we have hundreds of channels but very little worth watching.

There was a time when a “reality expose” was something like “The Millionaire” or “Candid Camera”. Compare that with our current crop of absurd reality shows where strangers choose who gets married and people eat earthworms and bull testicles on television. Reality show? When’s the last time you ate earthworms?

Certainly, there is still some quality TV out there on PBS, Discovery, Animal Planet, The Learning Channel, and the National Geographic Channel, among others. Occasionally, the networks actually put on a decent demonstrate, but many times it’s merely a rehash of an earlier hit show. Even the number one program in our country, American Idol, is nothing more than a copycat version of Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts” show from over 50 years ago. When we have people who let reality shows rule their lives there is something definitely wrong with America. The best (or worst) example that comes to mind is the woman who called off her wedding in Texas because her husband to be couldn’t afford a wedding like the one ABC broadcast as a sequel to “The Bachelorette” a couple of years ago.

No one can predict the exact future of television, but it’s still changing on a yearly basis, if not quicker. A person from the 1950′s who would be transported to 2007 would no doubt be overwhelmed by the way TV has changed. Within the last sixty years we have seen color TV, portable sets, wide hide, projection systems, stereo sound, SAP audio, and high definition. Some day in the future we’ll peek three-dimensional TV, instantaneous broadcasts from other planets, and maybe even teleportation based on broadcast signals. Even then, there will undoubtedly be someone complaining that there are thousands of planets to teleport to but none worth visiting.


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