3/9/12

1966 Magnavoxes - What's on tonight?

Behold the 1966 Magnavoxes - console TV's positioning the screen six inches off the floor. Why? Because people were only two feet tall. You could pick one up for about $600. The average American income was $6900 per year. So, the price of a good Magnavox was 11% of the average income. In 2010, the average American made $46000. Imagine paying five thousand dollars for your TV. A lot of Magnavox customers woke up lying on the floor, after getting the bill for their new TV. So, it's nice that the screen was close to eye level for the newly-conscious owner.

So, what were we watching while we decided which child to sell? Well, there were only four and a half channels, back in '66. That was good, because you probably had to get up to change the channel. Good thing that A) the programming was so riveting and B) there wasn't a lot to choose from.

The Skating Lesson was far ahead of it's time. Decades before affordable video cameras made every loose stool a parental cinematic opportunity, you could watch a mother teach her daughter how to skate. Just want to see her in the middle school ice capades? You inhuman monster, you're supposed to watch footage of her buying the skates, unwrapping them, trying them on, exchanging them for the right size, learning to skate, arguing with her mother about the costume, showing up late to rehearsal for three weeks, and skating in the actual show. The footage of her sexual misadventures and ultimate divorce is already on FaceTube, so your '66 Magnavox can take a breather.

Before there was an ESPN channel for any activity participated in my more than two people, as well as a pre-and post-show with three men talking about those two guys playing catch, there was Johnny Skate. He was a wandering goalie for hire who roamed the ice rink solving crimes and making that shaved ice stuff go up in the air when he stopped. Who played Johnny Skate? It's hard to make out. We'll have to zoom in a bit. Enhance!
Well, it's clearly William Shatner. He was on everything in '66. Trouble is, he wore a red shirt in Johnny Skate, which explains why he died in every episode.

What's with all the skating in 1966? It must have been the tail end of an ice age. Also, some kind of lame pun about the cold war.
Up Your Guards was a very early BBC import show about the Buckingham Palace security team. It rose to number three in the Nielsons and held the spot for two years before anyone realized it was just a photograph. Good one, Britain! Cheeky devils. Learning nothing from the experience, Americans went on to make The Paper Chase a national hit. Good one, America!

Big = click.



10 comments:

Anonymous said...

They were low to the ground because they weighed three tons and were the size love seats. No one made furniture sturdy and large enough to hold them. And it gave us the opportunity to roll around on the shag carpeting while watching all four channels.

Come to think of it, you never heard about televisions falling on children and killing them back then...

Fil said...

I wonder why they went with 2 ice skating-related images, then a shot of a royal guard? I understand needing another 'red' subject, but Santa would have been a more obvious choice. Or perhaps the woodchipper scene from 'Fargo'.

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Or something from one of the Hellraisers.

Thanks for reading, folks!

[-Mgmt.]

Anonymous said...

Thanks P.A.G.! for bringing back a fond childhood memory- We used to love laying on the dog's rug in front of our old 13" Magnavox console watching "Up Your Guards"! We would laugh and try talk in bad English accents, while "Mummy" made us Earl Grey and delightful buttered scones, right after Timmy went missing.....wait a minute.....

Anonymous 2

Steve Miller said...

Note the masks on the the three sets -- the lead image is more rectangular. The others are round picture tubes. Those were the days when a 21" TV WAS a 21" TV -- it was the diameter of the tube. This was about the time when I was building TVs from junkyard parts -- in a few years, I would be working on the line at the plant... marking the first of several instances I was working in the television industry. Not always in a manufacturing capacity, mind you.

Several years later, the jobs from that plant had headed south to Mexico. And after that, the whole damn company was sold to our new Chinese overlords.

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Nice story, Steve! I did notice the masks on the tubes, and I have often wondered if the ones with extra large bezels were actually round. Thanks for the privileged info!

Jim Dillon said...

I never believed that "Up Your Guards" was just a still photo until my local public tv station ran "Even Further Still Up Your Guards: the 25-Year Reunion" during a fundraiser. By then most of my other fond childhood memories had been shown to be the fake shams they really were, but for some reason losing "Up Your Guards" left a bitter taste that I can't wash out. Gin helps mask it, though.

BrainThought said...

Our PBS used to show "Up Your Guards", every Saturday night, right before "Inspector Spacetime"...

Anonymous said...

Yes Jim, even after the one-season spin-off "Up Your Other Guards" was revealed to be just a photo of the Guard next to him, I too found myself unable to entirely rinse the taste of anger, disbelief & scones from my mouth with gin either.

Perhaps I should have drank something other than "Beefeater"

Anonymous 2

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Thanks to you all for making the comments section on this post such a gala event!

[-Mgmt.]

Post a Comment