First TV show you saw in color
Obviously this topic is for people who are old enough to remember when color TVs were new and only in a few homes. What was your first memory of a color TV show? Was it at your own house or a friend’s?
14 Responses to “First TV show you saw in color”
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April 22nd, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I was about six or seven when I saw my first TV show in color–and I remember that it was a really big deal. My parents took us to their friends the Osbornes’ house to see their color TV. We watched “Wonderful World of Disney” and it was one of their nature programs that had bears in it. Strangely enough, I can’t remember when we actually got our own color TV for the first time.
I wonder if, 40 years from now, people will be talking about remembering their first high definition TV show?
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
We had neighbours that had a colour TV but I don’t remember which shows we watched on it. My family didn’t get a colour TV until I was a senior in high school.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I remember watching the Wonderful World of Color, but before that I remember watching “The Wizard of Oz” on my friend Adrienne’s color tv. Adri lived a block away from us, and her family was literally the “first on the block” to get a color tv. I remember how excited we were walking over to finally see how the movie changes to color from black and white when Dorothy lands in Oz. The color on the set was actually not very good (it was not good on any sets in those early days) and I remember Adri’s dad fiddling around with it excessively, which was distracting. But even with everything in shades of green, it was a magical experience. I also remember how great it was on a family vacation to rent a room at a motel that boasted “FREE Color TV in every room!”. Wow, I am old.
May 13th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I’m way younger than you guys, obviously, because I can’t remember a time when TV wasn’t in color. I can’t imagine watching black and white TV. But I do have a “first HD” experience. I was in a doctor’s office and they had a big-screen TV that was showing a golf tournament. Wow! The picture was so amazing. It was just like that commercial of people all over the world watching a golf tournament in HD and seeing where the lost ball went. Okay, maybe the next thing will be first TV show hologram!
May 13th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
katie laurel, I guess there would be no point in asking you if you remember the first time you ever listened to a cd? I even remember the first time I ever heard someone talking about this great new technology that would never scratch or skip, had no crackles and would last forever. It was a commentator on a radio show, and I was so excited to hear about this magical new invention that was going to be the next big advance in audio. Now I am nostalgic for the old days, and was very happy today to learn that my daughter has ordered a turntable for me for Mother’s Day that will record my old record albums onto my computer! It’s all part of the circle of life, I guess. (I don’t miss the old black and white tvs, however.)
May 13th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
I certainly remember the first talk of DVDs and Tivo. It was hard to believe people were willing to put so much stock in such a small, flimsy device. With VHS tapes you could be sure something substantial was going into the machine. When it came to D-V-Ds (as my mother so poignantly pronounced it) it was like you were putting a slightly thicker piece of paper into a slightly thinner VCR. And Tivo? Forget about it! The concept was so simple and yet…brilliant! You cut out the middle man when it came to planning on recording your favorite shows. No more attempts at programming your VCR or having to dash to the supermarket for more tapes. With Tivo you simply picked the channel and let the box handle all of your storage. I can’t imagine life today without either of this technological wonders. We have digital picture frames now. What’s next?! I don’t know!
May 27th, 2007 at 12:10 am
I remember our first color TV - it was one of those huge console style ones! my parents bought it probably in 1968? I don’t recall the exact year.
I recall how vivid the colors were - how amazing it was after B/W. The first time I saw “I Dream Of Jeannie” in color was a revelation!! her dancing girl outfit, and the colors inside her “genie bottle”! and the first “Man From UNCLE” episodes in color. Wow.
One vivid memory, though, is that Denise, a neighbor kid a year younger than me, came over to see it the next day. Her family didn’t have one yet, and she was so fascinated that she plopped down on the couch and would NOT leave…..! just kept getting up to change channels (before remote controls!)
my parents must have been out, because I recall my older brother telling her to go home, and Denise sticking her tongue out at him and refusing, walking into our kitchen and helping herself to some food, and returning to the couch! And how furious my brother was, but he didn’t know how to get rid of her. (I think he finally called her mom.)
May 31st, 2007 at 9:56 pm
My dad figured that if you could see the people and hear the lines, color was a luxury. Consequently, the first color show i saw was at a friends house and it was Gilligan’s Island. The only reason this stands out in my mind is because I was completely dumbfounded that the Skipper’s shirt was Blue and Gilligan’s shirt was red! I had never even thought that they might be wearing different colors.
Years later, when the movie Pleasantville came out, I was reminded of that moment when the characters in the movie started turning colors.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:51 pm
We got our RCA color TV from the Imperial Hardware store in Riverside, CA., so we could see The Wizard of Oz in color while we decorated the Christmas Tree. The next night we watched Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, followed by Bonanza, both in color.
I remember that my brother and I woke up early that next morning to be able to see cartoons in color. The first one was Crusader Rabbit. It wasn’t our favorite, but it was in color. We played it so loud that it woke mom and dad up…when they came in and changed the channel to the Today Show. We all oood and ahhhhddd for weeks.
June 5th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Before my family could afford a real color TV, my parents bought a plastic sheet that had different colors in it and taped it over the screen of our black and white TV. This plastic sheet was made just for this purpose (and I think I may even have a photo of it somewhere). Sometime around ‘67 I believe, we did get our first color TV, a big console. The first show I remember watching is Batman. We thought it was the coolest thing ever, and the bright colors of that show just seemed to jump off the screen.
June 6th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
cathyann, I would LOVE to see a picture of that plastic sheet if you can find it. I never heard of that before, but it sounds so 1960s! How on earth did it work?
June 12th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I think the first time I saw a color TV show was at a friend’s house. As someone already mentioned seeing it was showing The Wizard of Oz and the movie was in black and white until Dorothy stepped out of her house in Oz. That was really fantastic to see. My family did not get a color TV for a long time…years after almost everyone I knew. My dad would complain because Howard Cosell would announce boxing matches and refer to the boxers by the color of their shorts. My dad would say to the room “Not everyone has a color TV, you idiot announcer” or words to that effect.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I am a retired electronics technician and as a free lance tv repair man I have fixed many tv’s of all kinds black and white and color.
One day I was working on an rca color tv and I had jusr finished it when I looked at the front of the set there was Walter Kronkite announcing that President Jack Kenedy had been shot and was dead, boy was that a shock to me, it also was my son Paul’s birthday so I have two reasons to remember that day.
At another time I had just finished repairing a color tv for a lady and her daughter told me to check the ink wells becasue the moving man told her that he tipped the set and that some of the ink might have spilled out, it took me a time to convince her that the moving man was pulling her leg.
Another experience I had was when it was summer time and I had been doing some strenous yard work when a woman called that her tv needed to be fixed, well I didn’t smell too good and she was in a hurry as her little daughter was demanding that it be repaired so I put on some right gaurd a popular deoderant at that time and went there and fixed the set, after I got it working the little girl (about 4or5) leaned over to me and said “gee mister you smell just like a skunk” wow was I ever embarrast, from that day on I took a shower before I went on any tv repair jobs.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Oh, that is too funny! Although I can identify with that woman who believed that her color TV had ink in it, because I never understand new technology until someone explains it to me really clearly. And OUCH about the “smelling like a skunk” comment! Kids are so blunt and just say exactly what they’re thinking. When I was a teenager I struggled with a slight weight problem and was really self-conscious about it. One day a little boy came over to me at a party, looked up at me, and said, “Do you have a double chin?” I could have died!