Television

Television has been around for the entirety of my life, but, for my grandpa, he was out of the house and in college by the time his family got a television for their home. Although he does say, that it was still really exciting to go home and watch the television. The town my grandpa grew up in was really small, so their TV was broadcasted from St. Louis, and the signal was really scratchy. He remembers visiting his sister in Chicago and the picture being much better. Needless to say, he enjoyed that visit for the change in the quality of the TV signal. Some of the shows he remembers watching, included, the Ed Sullivan show, Jack Benny, Syd Cosner, and The Red Skeleton Show.

He also recalls, that if it was, a good show, the whole family would watch it together. He talked about some of the commercials he saw for items like Ivory Soap, Coca Cola, Ford cars, and
beer. He added that there are way to many commercials and he doesn't know why anyone would buy things off of them! We also talked about how TV related to the family life. As parents, my grandparents did not restrict there kids on what they watched. With only 6 channels, there really wasn't much to monitor. They said their children would watch cartoons when they got home from school, and at night watching TV would be a family event. My mom still jokes today that she was the family remote. Whenever a channel would need to be changed, my mom was in charge of going up to the TV to change it. As the years progressed and TV evolved, my grandfather states that TV has become a way of life now. It's not abnormal to have it on all the time. His favorite thing to watch on the TV now is sports. He told me that going to the games is obviously the most fun, but watching it on the television is better than the radio.  Today, my grandma watches her TV shows on Netflix, while my grandfather mostly uses the TV to watch countless sports games. Overall, television still impacts their life today just as much as it did when it was invented.