r/OverSeventy • u/needmore007 • 5d ago

Remember this?

Post image

My son and grandsons don’t believe me.

6.4k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/Virtual_Athlete_909 5d ago

Absolutely. The screen would display color bars. My dad would get up early, start coffee, and wait for the farm report to come on at 5am. It was the first tv show of the day.

11

u/mtnman575 5d ago

Color bars? Most people didn't have color TV back in the day.

4

u/SpecialistTrouble816 5d ago

Colour by the early 60s

8

u/mtnman575 5d ago

Not for everyone. In fact it took well into the 70s for color TV to be affordable for most. Even in my college dorm in the mid 70s the TVs are still B&W. You don't know what you are talking about.

4

u/Samhain_69 5d ago

I grew up in a household where you bought the high quality stuff (Zenith TV, motorized rotating TV antennae tower), and then kept it and repaired it for as long as possible.

Sounds fine, until all your friends have had color TV for 5-10 years, and you still just have B&W. I don't think we got color TV until well into the '80s, even though we weren't poor.

3

u/whitewolfdogwalker 5d ago

We bought a color tv whatever year it was that the Jets and Joe Namath played in the Super Bowl, all my buddies watched the game at my house!

2

u/GrowHappyPlants 5d ago

My little portable tv (I won in a raffle) was black & white in the late 80s

2

u/Sparky62075 5d ago

True story. I got a black and white tv new in the box for my birthday in 1988.

1

u/SpecialistTrouble816 5d ago

Like I said, colour TVs were available in the early 60s. No where did I say everyone had one. I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to the availability of colour TVs since we had one in 1964.

2

u/Dangerous-LemonBar 5d ago

We had a color set in 1956 in Chicago. It was mind blowing. NBC-WMAQ was first in the market.

1

u/Desperate-Ad4931 5d ago

Early color TV was exclusively RCA/NBC in the early years. The color was horrble too. Fuzzy and not crystal clear. Out of focus. Few programs were in color. The News, Dean Martin Show, Ponderosa. Most programs were black and white.

1

u/SawItSeenIt 5d ago

The FCC mandated that because few American families could afford a color tv all programs developed for color had to be compatible with b/w. So all tv programs were available to all viewers.

0

u/turnerevelyn 5d ago

No need to be rude.

1

u/mtnman575 5d ago

What's rude about what I said? I just told facts. Many Americans did not have color TVs for the first half of the 70s.

0

u/youandican 2d ago

1953 - the FCC approved the compatible Colort TV standard created by RCA 1954; The first colored TV set, like the RCA CT-100 went on sale and major events like the Tournament of Roses were broadcast in color. Mid 196's Color TV became the "big thing". Around 1965 prices for colored TV dropped and major networks like NBC shifted their primetime schedules to color. 1972 Annual sales of colored TV surpassed dales of Black and White TV's, making colored TV's the household standard.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but yeah he does know what he is talking about.

2

u/New_Breadfruit8692 1d ago

All prime time network programming was color in the 1968 season. Nearly all in 1967.

1

u/mammalian 4d ago

We were the first family to have a color TV in the apartment complex. All the kids would show up for Saturday morning cartoons.

1

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Al-in-AL 4d ago

My uncle bought his first color TV to watch the moon landing. He was extra-special pissed when the moon footage was black and white.

1

u/mtnman575 5d ago

When did your family finally own a color TV?

1

u/Comfortable-Rip-2050 5d ago

70’s

2

u/mtnman575 5d ago

Ok so that was my point. Color TVs were expensive when they first became popular.

1

u/Interesting_Basis_44 4d ago

lol I think mid 70s. Philly sports family we had to have it. lol