TV shows that have shaped you over the years

As a Baby Boomer, TV came into its own during our generation.  It was a rather crude looking beast, by today’s standards, that entered the privacy of our living rooms and brought the outside world in with it.

You had to wait for about 30 seconds for the thing to “warm up” before it actually came on, but the anticipation was well worth it.  Sometimes you had to coax it into submission by turning the dials and adjusting the antenna (yes, an outside metal antenna!) just so.  Then, once the signal came in halfway clear, like a mad chemist at work in his lab, it was all further "knob-tweaked" manually, usually by the dad… no remote control to help him along. 

Maybe the best thing about TV was that you had the ultimate control over it.  Unlike the pesky neighbors or the uninvited friends who overstays their welcome, you could just “boot them out the door” by turning the knob to “off.”  No hard feelings.  Goodbye and good night!

Influential shows for us kids were:

-Mighty Mouse (my childhood hero)

-Captain Kangaroo

-Pinky Lee

-Howdy Doody

-Mickey Mouse Club (I soooo wanted to be Annette)

-Captain Penny (but I believe he was just in Ohio)

But the years passed and our tastes changed.  We started growing up while TV was growing up with us.  “Family values” themes were very successful, with shows like:

-Father Knows Best

-The Donna Reed Show

-Leave It to Beaver

-Ozzie and Harriet

-The Dick van Dyke Show

Though no longer politically correct in today’s not-so-nuclear and/or extended families, these family shows tried to show us how we should live as a family unit, providing us with healthy role models, as they dealt with those simple problems that cropped up in everyday life.

Later on, the plight of single parenting showed up in shows like:

-The Andy Griffith Show

-Bonanza

-My Three Sons

-The Rifleman

Sci-fi was big on the agenda in our house:

-Superman

-The Twilight Zone

-The Outer Limits

“There is nothing wrong with your television set.  Do not attempt to adjust the picture.  We are controlling the transmission.  We will control the horizontal.  We will control the vertical.  We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.  For the next hour we will control all that you see and hear.  You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.”

And at the end:

“We now return control of your television set to you, until next week at this same time when the control voice will take you to… The Outer Limits.”

Our first color TV was about somewhere in 1968-69, I’m thinking.  That was a real thrill.  New shows like:

-Mission Impossible

-Star Trek

-The Carol Burnett Show

-Laugh-In

During the next period of my life is somewhat of a blur to me.  I remember liking:

-Mary Tyler Moore

-Seinfeld

-Cheers

-Frasier

-The Tonight Show

Well, I’m wondering how many of these shows, if any of the old ones, you remember.  What are some of the shows that have shaped you and your generation?

Thanks for posting and recommending. Until next time, I now turn control over to you.

(by Primordial "baby boomer" Soup)


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