Television evolution

Baby boomer’s timeline looks at how technology, programming, historic events turned TV into cultural behemoth

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Television evolution Illustration
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Television evolution Illustration

"I feel like such a dinosaur when I try to watch TV these days," the email said. "Thank goodness for Andy Griffith reruns on TV Land."

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The horror of Sept. 11, 2001, played out on TV when terrorists brought down the World Trade Center.

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Milton Berle was TV’s first superstar and responsible for selling millions of TV sets in the early 1950s.

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The Andy Griffith Show, starring Ron Howard (left) and Andy Griffith, ran from 1960 to 1968.

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America mourned the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 during four straight days of TV coverage. Shown at his funeral Mass on Nov. 25, 1963, are (from left) Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr.

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The world watched with fascination and wonder as Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.

I feel her pain. It's the frustration of many baby boomers (she's 70) who grew up simply with only three TV channels and find today's dizzying array of choices -- in programming and platforms -- overwhelming.

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Full disclosure: At 68, I'm also in that initial wave of TV-raised boomer kids who were just starting elementary school when that first ungainly TV set arrived and made us the envy of the neighborhood.

Baby boomers are generally counted as those born between 1946 and 1964. By the mid-'60s, there were 76.4 million of us and we made up almost 40 percent of the population.

We were eyewitnesses to the postwar optimism that following generations (Gen X, millennials, Gen Z) can't even imagine.

The current generation (you'll know them by their virtual reality goggles) began in the mid-1990s and never knew a time without the internet. They weren't yet teens when Facebook launched in 2004. Trying to describe the joy of that day when two burly deliverymen lugged that first TV set into the living room is one reason grandparents feel like dinosaurs.

I won't even bother trying to explain "I Like Ike" and the rooftop antennas.

I say it's high time for boomers to celebrate our accomplishment. Our parents may have been the "Greatest Generation," but we are the Greatest TV Generation.

Let us revel in our pioneer spirit as we adapted to the changing technology of remote controls, color TV and Betamax vs. VHS. Let us learn to embrace the future as digital change has been thrust upon us all -- Luddites included.

Let us stand and proclaim, "Yes, I may be a dinosaur, but I was a proud member of Howdy Doody's Peanut Gallery and Miss Frances' Ding Dong School. Yes, I owned a Davy Crockett coonskin cap. And, yes, I believed in fairies and clapped to save Tinkerbell!"

Here's a look back at our remarkable journey alongside TV.

1947: NBC became the first permanent TV network. By 1951, NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont stretched coast to coast. DuMont went belly-up in 1956 and there were only three networks for 30 years. Fox launched in 1986. The WB and UPN formed in 1995 and merged into The CW in 2006.

1948: Milton Berle became TV's first big star and 2 million sets were sold by 1949.

1950: A half million sets were being sold each month. By the end of the '50s, there were 559 TV stations and 90 percent of American households had a TV.

1953: On Jan. 19, Lucille Ball gave birth to Desi Arnaz Jr. on the same day the fictional Little Ricky was born on I Love Lucy. Forty-four million watched at home. (Baby boomer Desi Jr. is 64 these days.)

TV comes to Little Rock: KATV signed on the air Dec. 19, 1953; KARK arrived April 15, 1954; and KTHV launched Nov. 27, 1955.

1954: The Storey family became the proud owners of a 21-inch, plastic (mahogany color) Admiral tabletop TV that squatted on a wrought iron swivel stand, had rounded corners on the screen and cost a fortune -- $279.95

1955: The Mickey Mouse Club debuted on Oct. 3. I wanted to be Cubby. Sing along with me, boomers: "Hey there, hi there, ho there, you're as welcome as can be. M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!"

1955: Gunsmoke debuted on CBS Sept. 10 and ran for 20 years. Wait. What? Miss Kitty was a madam? Dad, what's a madam?

1956: On Sept. 9, Elvis Presley made his first of three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. He was paid the princely sum of $50,000.

1957: Leave It to Beaver arrived Oct. 4 on CBS (then moved to ABC for Season 2) and taught us how to be the ideal American family. Jerry Mathers (the Beaver) and I are almost exactly the same age, so I readily identified.

1959: NBC's Bonanza (in living color) first aired Sept. 12 and ran for 14 seasons. There were 26 (!) prime-time Westerns on TV in 1959.

1960: On Sept. 26, 70 million watched Vice President Richard Nixon sweat it out in a presidential debate with Sen. John F. Kennedy. The telecast pre-empted The Andy Griffith Show. Nixon lost, but would make it to the White House in 1969.

By 1960, 13 percent of U.S. households had more than one TV. Our first set had been relegated to the basement where Dad and I watched the Gillette Friday Night Fights on NBC. Our new living room TV was a massive hunk of console furniture from Zenith that seemed to take up an entire wall.

1961: On May 9, Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton N. Minow referred to commercial television as a "vast wasteland." He's 91 now and still right.

1962: Johnny Carson became host of NBC's Tonight Show and would be a fixture on TV for the next 30 years. By 1962, there were almost 800 cable systems serving 850,000 subscribers.

1963: The earliest boomers were now in high school and junior high and well remember where they were on Nov. 22 when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. TV covers nothing else for four days.

1964: The Beatles make their debut on Ed Sullivan Feb. 9 while 73 million watched -- 40 percent of the American population.

1966: All three networks were airing color prime-time schedules by the 1966--67 season. We had bought a 25-inch Zenith early American console with fancy new wireless remote control and doors that hid the screen. Boomers recall when the TV repairman made house calls.

1966: Star Trek debuted Sept. 8. By midyear, Vietnam had become the first "television war." The earliest baby boomers found themselves in the jungle. Some of us headed off to college instead.

In Arkansas in 1966, KETS, Channel 2, began broadcasting on Dec. 4. By January 1977, three more stations would join to create the Arkansas Educational Television Network. There are now six digital transmitters covering the state.

1968: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (April 4); then Robert F. Kennedy (June 6). TV covers the chaos that follows -- riots, campus unrest, disillusionment.

1969: Aug. 15-17, Woodstock happened (kids, look it up). The rumor that the Beaver had died in Vietnam swept the nation.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon as 600 million worldwide watched on TV. Many consider this the biggest TV event of the 20th century.

1970: PBS, the successor to National Educational Television, began operations Oct. 5.

1971: The first cable TV converter boxes hit the market and boomers became the first couch potatoes.

1972: On. Nov. 8, HBO became the first pay cable network. Some of TV's best programs have been on HBO, including The Sopranos (1999), The Wire (2002), and the current hugely popular Game of Thrones (2011). At the 2015 Emmys, HBO won an astonishing 43 statuettes.

1972: Atari introduced Pong (I bought one) and video games gained a toe-hold. Many boomers still have Space Invaders in a box in the attic.

1975: Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC. Boomers with money to burn could watch it on new-fangled giant-screen projection color TVs.

VCRs became increasingly affordable and the industry boomed in the 1980s until the introduction of DVDs in 1997 began the decline. Many boomers never figured out how to program those dang VCRs.

1977: The miniseries Roots was seen by an astonishing 130 million viewers.

1980: CNN, the first all-news network, was launched June 1. By 1980, 98 percent of households had a TV -- a statistic that has remained steady ever since.

1983: More than 125 million tuned in to the MAS*H finale.

1986: Fox launched as the fourth TV network on Oct. 9. Programming begins April 5, 1987, with Married ... With Children.

1990: Seinfeld became a hit on NBC. An estimated 76 million viewers watched the last episode in 1998.

1992: The first 21-inch full color plasma TV arrived. Baby boomer Bruce Springsteen (born 1949) had a hit song about cable TV -- "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)."

1994: ER and Friends debuted and NBC owned Thursday night.

1995: ABC World News Now was the first program broadcast over the internet.

1996: President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act that significantly deregulates the industry, and included the internet in spectrum allotment. It opened the doors for enterprising broadcasters and cable companies.

The first boomers hit 50 -- the age at which TV advertisers considered them irrelevant.

1997: Netflix was founded. In 1998, the company offered DVDs by mail. In 2007, it offered streaming media. Puzzled boomers asked, "Is it still TV if I'm not watching it on a TV set?"

Sharp and Sony introduced the first large flat-screen TV. It sold for more than $15,000. By the early 2000s, LCD technology brought the price down. By 2007, LCD sets were the worldwide dominant seller.

1998: There were 171 national cable video networks. By the end of the decade, approximately seven in 10 television households subscribed to cable. Digital TV led to the arrival of high-definition TV (HDTV).

1999: Digital video recorders (DVRs) introduced.

2000: Reality TV arrived with ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Sadly, it wasn't a fad.

2001: The Sept. 11 terror attacks played out on TV. Millions watching live witnessed the second plane hit the South Tower and both towers collapse. The major broadcast networks presented news coverage for 93 continuous hours.

2002: Roughly two of every three U.S. households had access to cable television, cellphones and personal computers. In addition, about 280 nationally delivered cable networks were available.

2009: On June 12, digital TV became mandatory and analog died. Miraculously for boomers, the sun still rose June 13, the day millions of baffled boomers begged their millennial children for help with the converter boxes.

2013: Netflix debuted its first original series, House of Cards, which became the first online-only series to win an Emmy.

2016: The oldest boomers hit 70 and the dinosaur factor has fully kicked in. From an original choice of three or four channels, there were -- between broadcast, basic cable, premium cable, internet streaming services and more -- 412 original scripted series and hundreds more of reality shows and documentaries. The list of all prime-time series topped a mind-boggling 1,400.

If all that is too much to absorb, TV Land still has reruns of Andy Griffith, Bonanza, Gunsmoke and The Golden Girls.

Style on 03/21/2017

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