Kevin If y’all have been around here at least a second, you’ll probably see how I like to talk about offbeat and obscure holidays and observances. Today’s is one of em, and it’s Color TV Day 2024. In fact, I was today years old when I learned this was even a thing. I actually found out about it while I was at the bus station to transfer to another route for my summer job, listening to the radio.
I got to thinking, what better time to talk about color TV than now? I feel like it was definitely an omen of some kind.
So, show of hands. Who here’s ever seen anything on a black and white TV before? I have, but I don’t expect anyone to believe me on that one.
According to this website, the genesis for what would eventually become color TV got its start in the late 19th century as experiments, much the same as AM radio was largely experimental in the 1900s. The first prototype came along in the 1920s, and after that, broadcasting came onto the scene.
Since many didn’t have access to something like that, they’d get their info and entertainment from movies and newsreels shown in the theaters.
TVs were once luxuries that only those at a certain point in the socioeconomic hierarchy could afford and have access to. It didn’t take long for technology to catch up, in order to make TVs more affordable. The standard was black and white, but there were the occasional color programs in the 1950s.
I wonder if this is part of why there were TV shows that specifically mentioned being broadcast in color as a selling point.
Soon, TVs w/ color capabilities came onto the market, but just like the black and white TVs once were, they were expensive AF, and few could afford em. Case in point? I came across a listing in an early 1970s Sears catalog for a color TV priced at $329.95, if you got the remote that went w/ it. If you didn’t get the remote, it was “only” $289.95.
In 2024, getting that TV w/ the remote would be $2,479.12, and w/o the remote would be $2.178.57. Bruh. Seriously? Idk of any TV on the market nowadays that would cost that much.
Then again, I haven’t been in the market for a new TV since Obama was in office, so I wouldn’t know, haha. Readers, you’re more than welcome to set the record straight for me, btw!
Anyways, in this same issue of the Sears catalog, there was a 12-inch black and white TV priced at $77.95, and advertised as being “portable.” If it’s anything like the one my mom had when I was little, that thing was like carrying around a damn cinder block, and every bit as awkward.
Today, that black and white TV would cost $585.69. This is close to what one of those Roku TVs cost over at Wally World, and this Sears catalog came out before color TV became the standard, and black and white TV basically became obsolete.
By the late 1970s, color TV basically had the market cornered, which makes sense. Black and white TVs were getting harder to come by, and eventually, the manufacturers phased them outta their product lineups altogether.
The old black and white TV sets made their way to the thrift stores/charity shops/secondhand stores, and soon, these places saw fewer and fewer of them as they’d break down and bite the dust.
On a more personal note, despite me being in my 30s, I can say I have firsthand experience w/ black and white TVs. My mom had one when I was a kid. I have no idea how she came into ownership of it, so I’m guessing it was one of 3 ways:
A. It was either already in the apartment she lived in when I was born, and whoever lived there before her didn’t want it anymore.
B. Someone gave it to her for whatever reason
C. Or, she got it on mega-clearance until something better came along.
However she got it, she had it long before I ever came onto the scene, haha. I also remember seeing a color TV w/ its’ own stand, but it didn’t have a place to connect a video game system or a VCR. We found that out the hard way when I was little, but that’s a whole other story for another time. Idk if I shared it, but anyways, I remember watching that black and white TV as a kid.
Sometimes the picture wouldn’t come in worth shyt, and sometimes it did. Sometimes the sound was great, but the picture didn’t come in. Other times, it was the opposite.
I remember that TV being in the dining room sometimes, and I’d watch episodes of Full House once in a while. I remember seeing Highway to Heaven, and Little House on the Prairie sometimes also. On the weekends, there’d be afternoon movies, and I’m pretty sure one of em was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Maybe Mary Poppins, but I do remember a flying bed, and wondering how it would be if that was a thing.
I wasn’t yet school-age, so I’d hear the TV playing in the living room, while I played in the sink in the kitchen. The sink and the pantry were sort of off to the side in their own section, away from the stove and the fridge. I’d look out the window into the backyard, where there was a giant hole where a well once stood.
I was always terrified of falling into that hole, even though my mom put up a cheapie garden fence around it, and always told me to stay away from it.
I’d also catch episodes of Sesame Street in the mornings, and in late kindergarten, the occasional episode of In Living Color in the evenings.
That TV made it through multiple moves, but it finally bit the dust once and for all by the time I got to high school. I remember seeing the sticker on the back, dated December 1977, so if that TV was on the market that recently in the scheme of things, I’m betting dollars to donuts it was on mega-clearance, and they couldn’t sell it to my mom fast enough.
By middle school and another move, my mom had dibs on the early 1980s color TV w/ its’ own TV stand on wheels, so I decided I’d get the black and white TV. The one w/ the built-in VCR was in the living room, and that’s where it would stay.
I found the black and white TV, and dragged it into my room. I set it on the wooden TV tray adorned w/ Pokemon stickers, which I now use for my mom’s old sewing machine.
I plugged that old TV in, and turned it on. The burst of static that came through the speaker caught me off guard, and I turned the volume down.
There was sound, but no picture. Not even static. Yeah, this thing’s a goner. I took it back to the closet in the living room, where it sat for the several years we lived there, until we moved again. Looking back, I wonder how it would’ve been to have a black and white TV in my room that actually worked in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
That old black and white TV is now long gone, and so is that bare-bones color TV w/ its’ own stand.
Now, I got my beloved clear-case TV in an old kids’ armoire someone dumped on the curb years ago. Whoever had it cut a hole in it for technology cords, and I’m using it for my TV. It’s holding up like a boss, and it’s turned out to be the best 40 bucks I’ve spent on eBay, haha.
It took a little legwork to find the remote that goes w/ it, since it wasn’t exactly made for the consumer market, but I found it, and it’s been history ever since.
This may be a color TV, but sometimes some of the network TV channels will broadcast black and white TV shows and movies. The commercial breaks totally interfere w/ the ambiance of late night black and white TV, and it’s a vibe, imo. Going from black and white to color during the commercial breaks is a jarring experience, especially when those commercials are hawking janky insurance or super sus boner pills.
Guess we know what kind of demographic some of these network channels are targeting, eh?
As a kid, I wasn’t a huge fan of the black and white TV, and I always wanted the color TV instead. Color TV had me so spoiled, haha. I guess if this had been like 40 years earlier, I’d have felt differently about black and white TV. I’m gonna celebrate Color TV Day by But anyways, over to you, readers. Have you ever watched anything on a black and white TV before? Know of someone who has? Do you have a black and white TV, whether or not it’s in working order? Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways, so drop it all like it’s hawt, and let’s talk.
