Notes From My Journal
Television's Pioneering Moments Through Personal Memory
* We got our first TV when I was about six, in 1956. It was a little box, with a dial that had 13 channels, only some of which worked. And it had a “rabbit-ears” antenna that had to be constantly adjusted in order to get a clear picture.
* We saw Being the Ricardos last week. It was good. Not great. I Love Lucy aired from 1951 to 1957. What I liked about Being the Ricardos was that it showed how innovative the show was and how much of that innovation came from Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. It was the first TV show to feature a pregnant woman, to be filmed in front of a live audience, and to use multiple, simultaneously filming cameras. Ball and Arnaz also invented the very lucrative concept of the “rerun.”
* The first televised sports event was the 1936 Summer Olympics, broadcast from Berlin, but just locally. In 1939, the first sports game was broadcast in the US, a baseball game between Princeton and Columbia universities.
* The first presidential debate – Nixon vs. Kennedy – was televised on Sept. 26, 1960. I was 10 years old at the time, and I remember watching it.
* The first reality TV show was An American Family, broadcast in 1973. It was supposed to chronicle seven months in the privileged lives of the Louds, a suburban California family. Instead, viewers watched the family fall apart. During its run, the father (Bill) faced a financial crisis, the son (Lance) came out as gay, and Bill and Patricia divorced