If you didn't have cable, how many 'channels' did a TV have in the 60s/70s? How did it all work exactly, how did you change the channel on a 60s or 70s TV--Was there a remote? Were there TV guides telling when certain programs would be on? Were old movies re-aired on television in the 60s and 70s?

Also, Would I be able to find out what channels existed in the NYC area during the 60s and 70s?

In the 60s, we had up to channel 13. No remote or converter box, just walked to our (black & white) TV and changed the channel.
We had NBC, CBS, ABC, CBC (English) , CBC ( French), CTV and 1 or 2 more I've forgotten. In the early to  mid 70s (can't remember the exact year), we got a converter box with more channels.

Yes, old movies were on TV back then.
Yes, TV guide existed as well.

Not from NYC, can't be of any help there.

We have 5 Broadcast Network Channels in New York: channel 2 - CBS, channel 4 - NBC, channel 5 (I cannot remember what it was before Fox) channel 7 - ABC,  channel 9 - WWORTV  , channel 11 - WPIX (Now the CW)and 13 was PBS (Cannot remember the call letters).  I WAS most certainly the remote!  If you wanted to know what was on tv, you had better have your t.v. guide handy.  I don't ever remember them replaying movies and they certainly weren't airing any movies that weren't at least 10 years old.

Hope that helps.

Philadelphia area in the 70's.

Channels:

3..KYW/NBC
6..WPVI/ABC
10..WCAU/CBS
12..WHYY/PBS
17..WPHL (UHF)
29..WTAF (UHF)
48..WKBS (UHF)

We had rabbit ears until the late 70's, put aluminum foil on the antennae for better reception. Plus you could use the
outer dial on the channel dial to fine tune the picture. Don't forget the horizontal hold. Around 1978 we upgraded to a
19 inch consol with an antenna on the roof, what a huge difference that was. Now I have a 50 inch digital HDTV and I
long for the roof antenna, at least then I didn't have to worry about a pixalating or freezing picture.

In Australia in the 60's we only had two channels where I lived (I think they had 4 channels in the city). There was definitely no remote (or colour tv for that matter). There was a tv guide published each week (but with 2 channels there was not much chance of missing anything)..... and when the dial broke (used to switch stations) we had a pair of pliers permanently on top of the tv. Couldn't switch it with bare hands... :-[  That tv used rabbit ears until we got the arial on the roof. Much better ... and Dad didn't get me to stand in weird places with the tv antenae anymore (to get better reception).

In the 70's we got colour tv and 4 channels. My family never got cable (or pay tv as it's called here). I still only view free-to-air stations. If I got cable, I'd never get away from the screen... :o

We have 5 Broadcast Network Channels in New York: channel 2 - CBS, channel 4 - NBC, channel 5 (I cannot remember what it was before Fox) channel 7 - ABC,  channel 9 - WWORTV  , channel 11 - WPIX (Now the CW)and 13 was PBS (Cannot remember the call letters).  I WAS most certainly the remote!  If you wanted to know what was on tv, you had better have your t.v. guide handy.  I don't ever remember them replaying movies and they certainly weren't airing any movies that weren't at least 10 years old.

Hope that helps.



Channel 5 was WNEW & and Channel 13 was WPBS. The networks call letters were just that, WABC, WCBS, & WNBC.



Cat

We didn't subscribe to TV Guide magazine but we didn't have to, because there was a section in the Sunday newspaper that had the TV programming schedule for the week.

As far as changing the channel went, remotes on TV were more of a luxury item back then so TV's had two tuning dials (one for VHF, which was Channels 2-13, and UHF, which was Channels 14-83).

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ufpTLwLlaFE/SiS6y1KuVaI/AAAAAAAAAKY/HwdRsSLBW1Q/s400/IMG_4789.JPG

And if you haven't seen it already, here's another thread I started about TV in the 70's:

http://www.inthe00s.com/index.php?topic=46289.0



Also, here's a couple websites which might interest you:

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/

http://www.museum.tv/

We didn't subscribe to TV Guide magazine but we didn't have to, because there was a section in the Sunday newspaper that had the TV programming schedule for the week.



Same here, and Blog forbid that you lose the thing, if you did there was hell to pay!

We didn't subscribe to TV Guide magazine but we didn't have to, because there was a section in the Sunday newspaper that had the TV programming schedule for the week.



But then you missed Judith Crist's in-depth 14-word reviews and Cheers 'n Jeers.
:(

But then you missed Judith Crist's in-depth 14-word reviews and Cheers 'n Jeers.
:(


Aw, nuts!  :-[

The first remotes for a TV were connected to the TV with wires.  We never had one of those.
Remotes back in those days never had numbers on them, usually just a power button, volume buttons and channel up and down.  TVs had about a 13 channel memory, so there was no need for anything fancy.

The popular style for TVs in the major living room of the house were the ones in the wood cabinets.

http://forum.videohelp.com/images/guides/p1614988/1981-zenith-tv.jpg

Channel 5 was WNEW & and Channel 13 was WPBS. The networks call letters were just that, WABC, WCBS, & WNBC.



Cat

Yup.  Thanks.

The popular style for TVs in the major living room of the house were the ones in the wood cabinets.

http://forum.videohelp.com/images/guides/p1614988/1981-zenith-tv.jpg


Ah, yes. The good old console TV. We never had one of those but I believe they weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 lbs.  ;D

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that TV screens were a lot smaller back then. All through the 70's and 80's we never had a TV that was larger than 19 inches, and my parents STILL have maybe a 19-inch non-HD flat screen. In 1998 I moved in with my brother and we went in on a 25-inch RCA and we thought we were living high on the hog. I'm not sure, but I don't think any TV manufacturer ever made a picture tube larger than 32 inches.

But the super-sizing of TV's is still a recent thing, it's only happened within the last 10 years as the cost of LCD and plasma screen technology has gone down, so I'm sure even the younger people here can still remember the pre-HDTV days.

In the UK there were only three channels.  The channel was changed by pushing the revelant button on the tv set itself. 

If you wanted the proper tv guide you had to buy two publications.  Radio Times had all the listings for the BBC - both radio and tv.  TV Times had the listings for ITV (that is the commercial channel).  My family only bought these at Christmas when they did a bumper two week listing of all the programmes on over the holiday period.  Otherwise the daily paper listed whatever was on. Programmes followed such a regular schedule back then anyway.

The first remotes for a TV were connected to the TV with wires.  We never had one of those.
Remotes back in those days never had numbers on them, usually just a power button, volume buttons and channel up and down.  TVs had about a 13 channel memory, so there was no need for anything fancy.

The popular style for TVs in the major living room of the house were the ones in the wood cabinets.

http://forum.videohelp.com/images/guides/p1614988/1981-zenith-tv.jpg



That looks a lot like ours. Yes, we still have a console t.v. bought in 1988-and still works. Unfortunately, the picture on ours isn't the best and we are thinking of replacing it. The problem we have with replacing it is where are we going to put all the stuff we have sitting on top of it? You can't put it on a flat screen t.v. I will miss the console when we finally replace it.


Cat

I was born in 1971.  As a child we had 2 channels ( NBC and CBS) on a normal day and 3 ( ABC) if it was a particularly nice day and the reception was good.  We lived in rural Montana and got ABC from Canada if the weather was right.  There was no remote control.  I didn't even know they existed until the 1980's.  When I was in 8th grade, cable came to our area and we got 20 some channels plus HBO.  We were in awe of having so much tv.  Times have changed so  much. 










If you didn't have cable, how many 'channels' did a TV have in the 60s/70s? How did it all work exactly, how did you change the channel on a 60s or 70s TV--Was there a remote? Were there TV guides telling when certain programs would be on? Were old movies re-aired on television in the 60s and 70s?

Also, Would I be able to find out what channels existed in the NYC area during the 60s and 70s?

I collect vintage TV guides and have about 60% of all issues from the '70s, about 80% of the '80s, and a few from the '60s and very early '90s mixed in, and I recommend collecting TV guides for the nostalgia sake along with some more information of various programs, even if lots of the content is available online. Where you lived in those days before cable was mainstream was crucial in terms of picking up the most channels, along with having a good antenna. Some places deep in flyover country only had one station in the '70s! If you lived in a market with ten channels, you were considered in a major market! At least where I live I could get that many living between Baltimore/DC, and I tried one last time in early 2009 before the HDTV switchover. I could get 2 (ABC), 4 (NBC), 5 (Ind, later FOX), 7 (ABC), 9 (CBS), 11 (NBC), 13 (CBS), and on the UHF dial 20 (Ind), 22 (PBS), 24 (Ind), 26 (PBS), 45 (Ind, later FOX) 50 (Ind, later UPN and the CW), and 54 (Ind, later UPN and later CW). So I would be fortunate to pick up as many as 14 channels in the '70s (if I was alive then), and many aired reruns (especially the independent stations) of classic TV shows during the daytime, and local programming was more important back then as well. Then cable exploded in the '80s and satellite/digital cable took over in the '90s/'00s making this era feel like a dinosaur.

You didn't have much in the way of reference books about TV until late in the decade, so the TV Guide was the thing to keep if you wanted to keep episode summaries/cast lists of your favorite shows. Also, some countries still didn't have color TV until some point in the '70s (Australia and Italy for example), and many third world countries just got TV for the first time in the '70s. I like to think of the late '60s and '70s as TV's silver age, it was finally starting to be old enough to have a classic "golden age", while still influencing some of the principle still around today.

We had only 2 channels in our area...CTV and CBC.  CTV was more popular as it had all the american shows on it ( Dukes of Hazzard, Happy Days, Three's Company etc.) while CBC was great for Hockey Night in Canada. On the odd Saturday morning we could pick up an independant station out of Edmonton and watch some cool cartoons before getting our $2 allowance and heading down to the comic store and then the corner store to get munchies for the Saturday TV rituals. That was basicaly 2 hours of wrestling ( Stampede Wrestling and the later in the mid 80s WWF) and then Hockey Night in Canada.