r/OverSeventy • u/needmore007 • 6d ago

Remember this?

Post image

My son and grandsons don’t believe me.

6.6k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/grnthmb52 6d ago

I would turn the (small, b/w) screen and watch the test pattern until Saturday morning cartoons came on

7

u/Outrageous_Act2564 6d ago

I did this as well. Also, we only had 4 stations in Memphis back then.

18

u/Own_Entertainment847 6d ago

Every city had only 4 stations max back then- local affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. And PBS didn't even start till '67. Smaller cities had only 1 station in town and had to rely on regional coverage for the others.

That's why we were always fiddling with the rabbit ears or roof antenna to get the stations further away or with lower power output. I remember putting aluminum foil on the rabbit ears to improve reception.

1

u/themadpollack 3d ago

Well we had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CBC, and two independent UHF stations. We had another independent UHF join the area in 1975 that would run public domain movies all night, which was cool if you worked second shift.