CHANNELING IN ON TELEVISION

I am overwhelmed by television today. In an attempt to be a bit of a minimalist with regard to TV, I try to restrict myself to shows like CBS Sunday Morning, Chronicle, Face the Nation, a possible documentary or interesting movie, and basically any baseball game I can find. I’m not particularly interested in streaming, see little need in having a Fire TV, and have zero interest in a television that takes up most of my living room wall. I am not technically against getting off the couch to change the channel although those days appear to be well behind us, and the only true skill I can claim to have successfully mastered on my remote control is operating the power button. I tend to watch the same nine stations that I can access with the back arrow button on my remote, all familiar channels but definitely enough to keep me entertained.

Television was once a simpler, more predictable undertaking. Like many consumer items today, TV sets are almost disposable in comparison. Purchasing a television was once like buying a refrigerator, the model you chose was most likely going to be in your home for decades. A TV was like a piece of furniture, and for families that owned a 25-inch floor model television it actually was a piece of furniture with the TV set often serving as the focal point of the room it was in. There was normally one main television in each home. The Gillespie family never had anything larger than a 19-inch television set, which was plenty large enough back then as opposed to the TV sets today that sometimes rival movie theater screens. Early in the 1970s, our family also had an old black and white floor model television as a spare. This TV needed to warm up for roughly 30 minutes before a picture actually appeared making it difficult to use without extensive planning.

Watching television years ago was a more communal activity than it is today which often required compromise. If you entered the TV room and somebody was already watching a program, it was generally understood that you were going to be watching the show already in progress. Families gathered in the TV room like it was an extension of the dinner table. There were a limited number of channels available with only three primary networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Each of the networks featured shows that aired only once each week. If you dared to leave the TV room to go to the kitchen in search of potato chips or some other snack when a commercial break came on, it was the job of those left in the room to loudly inform you that the show was back on when the commercials were over. Leaving the room was always a bit of a risk regardless of how hungry you were. The television season ran from September to June. If you missed a show that was on during the week there was no way to see it immediately after the fact. In most cases, you would have to wait until it aired as a repeat, sometimes more than a year later. The possibility of binge-watching an entire season of any program was out of the question. American society was, instead, left in suspense at the end of a show or the end of a season leaving viewers waiting to find out who shot J.R. or if The Fonz was able to survive a motorcycle jump.

The arrival of cable did a great deal to change the standards of television. My cousins in Stoneham, Massachusetts, were the first household I knew of with access to cable TV during the 1970s. To us at the time, this meant that they would be able to watch movies like Jaws in their living room without having to wait the requisite number of years for such a film to achieve special feature movie of the week status on one of the three major networks. Along with cable came an increase in programming including movie channels like HBO and Cinemax, stations committed to providing only news like CNN, sports networks like ESPN, and eventually a channel dedicated to playing a rotation of music videos known as MTV. Video cassette recorders were available by the early 1980s adding to an expanding amount of media choices. At the time, there were two types of video machines: VHS and Betamax. Betamax tapes were slightly smaller requiring less space to store either on top of your television or in the shelves surrounding your TV, but it was the more economical VHS tapes that managed to survive. During the 1980s you were more likely to see a video store on a street corner than a Dunkin’ Donuts or a gas station. Even supermarkets offered video rentals. As home entertainment began to adopt digital technology, LP-sized video discs were intended to take the place of video tapes but never quite caught on until they were downsized to what would become DVDs years later. DVRs eventually made DVDs obsolete by the mid-2000s offering viewers the ability to schedule and record existing television programs using digital technology. There were even physical changes to the television itself during this period with the development of the flat-screen TV. While working at a busy Boston hotel during the 1990s, I was shown what was enthusiastically described to me at the time as the prototype for the flat-screen television by an exhibitor who had come in to demonstrate the new invention. Clearly excited about his product, the man walked into the hotel saying that people everywhere would soon be mounting their televisions on walls like framed paintings. Televisions as we know them are about to become a thing of the past, I remember him proclaiming as he made his way through the lobby.

I was able to dig into television’s past by reviewing an old TV Guide magazine covering the week of June 2-8, 1979. I was curious to look back at what we were watching on TV while at the same time attempting to measure the potential effect that increased technology has had on our viewing habits during the past 46 years. Mornings on television in 1979 were not much unlike the morning shows on TV today, although the shows back then were hosted by David Hartman on Good Morning America and the team of Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley on NBC’s Today Show. Captain Kangaroo provided a noticeable option for viewers on an alternate channel. Game shows like The Price is Right and repeat programming such as Gilligan’s Island and I Love Lucy filled out the morning schedule. Soap operas on all three major networks populated mid-day programming along with talk shows hosted by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, and Phil Donahue. Afternoons featured popular game shows like Match Game hosted by Gene Rayburn and Family Feud with Richard Dawson. Local UHF channels aired cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, and Bullwinkle. Prime-time nightly schedules offered the most popular programming. 60 Minutes, the Muppet Show, Alice, and All in the Family were part of the Sunday night lineup. Monday night choices included The White Shadow, Little House on the Prairie, M*A*S*H, WKRP in Cincinnati, and Lou Grant. Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Three’s Company, and Taxi aired on Tuesday nights. The Wednesday lineup included Eight is Enough, Real People, The Jeffersons, Charlie’s Angels and Vegas starring Robert Urich. Mork & Mindy was the popular Thursday choice in 1979 along with network standards Barney Miller, the Waltons, and Quincy with Jack Klugman. Diff’rent Strokes, Welcome Back Kotter, the short-lived Hello Larry with McLean Stevenson, and then either The Rockford Files or The Dukes of Hazzard were the lineup on Friday nights. Saturday afternoons were highlighted by ABC’s Wide World of Sports and Saturday nights included CHiPs, BJ and the Bear, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island with Saturday Night Live on much later. Special showings during the week of June 1979 included Monday Night Baseball on ABC with Howard Cosell and Keith Jackson, a CBS special report detailing Eisenhower’s return to Normandy twenty years after D-Day, and the Kent Chronicles mini-series created from the Bicentennial book collection written by John Jakes. On this particular week in 1979, the three major networks battled against each other in Olympic style competition on Battle of the Network Stars featuring athletic attempts by Dick Van Patten, Kristi McNichol, Dan Haggerty, Gabe Kaplan, and Joyce DeWitt. Following the local network news at 11:30, Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show every weeknight providing a symbolic end to the day for many Americans.

There was no America’s Top Model in 1979, no bachelors or bachelorettes with the possible exception of The Dating Game, there were no Real Housewives anywhere, and I am hopefully assuming that Americans were more entertained by Lenny and Squiggy then they will ever be by any episode of the long-running show Cops.

Comparatively speaking, television was probably more innocent in 1979 but maybe we were, as well. I look back at the time spent collectively in our TV room as quality family time, even though it usually meant having to watch a program that someone else was already in the process of watching. They would usually claim you would like the show if you would just give it a chance and, in most cases, they were right. There was no iPhone to stare at in bored defiance and the television in our den was the only TV in our house at that point. As of June 1979 there was no cable, no VCR, and attempting to present an option to whatever was on television would also require giving up your spot on the couch or a coveted chair in order to check the other channels manually because there was also no television remote. Like a book that might be slow at the beginning, you gracefully became immersed in what you were watching regardless of what it was and, in most cases, the few selections that were available in 1979 were not only entertaining but in many respects better than most of what is currently on television.

Perhaps we were better served as a society with the simplicity that television once offered. The attention scattered American public is now bombarded with choices that seem to be aimed more at quantity rather than quality. It should be of little wonder that people today and kids specifically have so much trouble with focus and attention. We have become a culture acclimated to watching small snippets of multiple programs with on-demand expectations, none of which fosters the ability to pay attention.

“I just like TV,” said John Lennon in the recently released documentary, One to One: John & Yoko. “Whatever it is,” said Lennon, “that’s the image of ourselves that we’re portraying.”

As always, Lennon’s observation provides food for thought, and hopefully leads us to carefully think not just about what we are watching, but the way that we are currently experiencing the activity of watching television.

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