:D

WDAZ had the best broadcasting power.

KX96 had 100 thousand watts of power though. Blasting from Foxwarren.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVDK1HHRzhc

My grandparents had one of those in Windsor. I still remember the sound it made when you rotated the dial (I vaguely recall that on a good day they'd pick up a station in Toledo). They didn't even get cable until the 1990s, and only after we had it installed for them as a Christmas gift.

Anyone remember doing this?
https://www.groundedreason.com/wp-co...7-1024x657.jpg
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Or this: "OK Timmy... that's good, hold it juuuuust like that!"
https://pwilson.files.wordpress.com/...0218.jpg?w=500
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:previous: Actually that kid holding the antenna was probably just like me, at the cottage east of Sault Ste. Marie... grandpa had brought up a small black and white TV and connected it to a car battery -- no hydro there -- and depending how the antenna was oriented we'd get a channel from Sudbury (which I think was relayed at Elliott Lake) and one from SSM if the conditions were right, but the clearest was an ABC affiliate in Traverse City that also broadcast from somewhere in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Learned a lot about the state's geography when the news weather forecast was on!

He had a loud generator to power some tools and an ancient vacuum grandma used, but I think recharging the battery for the TV was its most common purpose. I made many trips from the TV to the generator outside toting that thing. Good times.

wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah..

Thanks for bringing me back down memory lane.

Lol. The model they had made more of a "ta-ch ta-ch ta-ch ta-ch ta-ch" sound. I think it even had a little light showing you where the antenna was aimed as it rotated.

Is that the villain from Rocket Robin Hood? That dreadful animation is seared into my brain. Yeesh, that was a godawful show! On the other hand, I still have much affection for shows from my childhood like The Amazing Spiderman, The Mighty Hercules (Daedalus's head bobbing up and down as he slinks through the forest:haha:), Dr. Snuggles, Fables of the Green Forest, Mr. Dressup, and The Littlest Hobo. We unfortunately didn't get Mr. Rogers (PBS) when I was a child, or I would have loved him. I grew to love him later (who wouldn't?). Also, in Ontario, did it get any better than avuncular old Elwy Yost and his movie shows? Even at a very young age, I was bothered by the ungrammatical, "This film not to be copied", that opened every feature presentation.

My American cartoon memories include this (though I only saw the reruns in the 1970s)... made me want to visit Lompoc. Maybe I will one day. ;) :D

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Magic Shadows!

PBS was great in that it showed Monty Python, uncut and unedited. Without that, my sense of humour would be vastly different today. :cool: (and clearly my parents were not paying attention to what I was watching, even before I hit 10 years old :haha:... my first glimpse of real boobies was when a Buffalo TV station aired The Godfather at some point in the 1970s; mom and dad later found out when they were watching that film and told me to cover my eyes during the scene, and I said "I've already seen this!!")

apparently he was an ally of Rocket Robin Hood. His name was Friar Tuck.

Here is a bio, in glorious high-quality animation:
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The absolutely most high panic theme song beginning (0:05-0:08) is that of Spiderman, c. 1967
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Spiderman, Spiderman. Just came out of the garbage can.
Is he strong? No he's not. He's got radioactive snot.

Remember those godawful PBS pledge drives?
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Yes! The "best" ones were WNED from Buffalo with Goldie Gardner and her epicly nasal Western NY accent :haha:

My older brother "Mum, the blonde lady on TV says we MUST support them"

Oh the 1980s! That haircut :haha:
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I hated how they made us wait until they had enough pledges to continue a show. I didn't understand the economics of public television. :D

I remember my dad watching the original Cosmos with Carl Sagan on PBS, which seemed really cool at points back then. I'll watch more when I have time, but at a glance the special effects have held up well for their age.

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And there was a show with this painter that used to do these nice landscapes with his "mighty brush"


Has the thread included this yet? Every time I come here, it's in my head. My apologies for Jean Stapleton's singing:

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While we're on the subject of PBS... a clip from another favourite show of my youth which also contributed heavily to my warped sense of humour. Here's their take on the public broadcaster personalities:

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No they were definitely re-runs, although I was alive (toddler) when they were still producing them. They were relevant re-runs though, Played after school, but not in the evening. I'm aware of both Laugh in and the Ed Sullivan show, and I almost remember Laugh In, but man it's waay back in the recesses, the same way that Under dog is..The Partridge Family definitely. There was one cartoon that I also barely remember..It was scary to us young uns and I sort of remember it being triangular stick figures centering around a witch. I remember the Vietnam War ending and it making major news, but not tuned into it while it was happening..I think it was on the news quite often though. My parents watched the news a lot..I had bigger fish to fry like making sure my brother didn't steal my big wheels!

The moon landing, I kind of sorta remember that..Just the excitement surrounding that event..As far as relating to the boomers..Yes definitely!.I was around them more .My baby sitters were boomers..My older sister, and older brother whom are a few years older then myself, technically fit into that age group. athough my brother once said he identified as an X'er (64)..The late Boomers were our baby sitters, younger hipper Aunts and Uncles but not teachers..I got my music influences from some of my younger boomer Aunts and Uncles actually. I would say I have slightly more in common with younger boomers then tail end X-ers listening to Nirvana.

Yes to all of that, and like the cliche, us kids were the remote!

Remember when we went to the toilet to actually.. poop?

Remember sneaking the Sears catalogue along when we weren't?

Eaton's had the better models. :cool:

We had a rotator for our rooftop TV antenna in Charlottetown too. It was a pretty novel device on the island. Not too many people had them.

There was only one TV station on PEI when I was growing up - CFCY-TV in Charlottetown. It was a CBC affiliate, but had some independent programming. With the rotating antenna, it was possible to bring in signals from Moncton (CKCW-TV, then an independent and CBAF-TV, French CBC), and from Sydney NS (CJCB-TV, also then an independent).

CJCB was my favourite - it brought me the wonders of Batman (the Adam West one), and the original Star Trek. :)

Oh yes, and the sound the rotator made was a loud cha-chink, cha-chink, cha-chink while it rotated the antenna to it's new position.

I went through a rabbit ear phase in the early 2010s (after cutting cable). I think somewhat easier in the digital era though.

Man. You guys who grew up with less than six TV channels are the true OGs.

When I was a kid in the 80s I only had channels 2-13, and I thought I had it rough. My parents' TV only went up to 13 so that even when basic cable pushed beyond channel 13, we didn't have a device capable of viewing them until we got a new VCR maybe around 1989 or so?

Going out to the cottage meant only pulling in CTV, CKND (Global), MTN and CBC. It felt primitive :haha:

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If I lived in a place like Toronto with a lot of channels available over the air I think I'd cut my cable package and just use rabbit ears like in ye olde days at the cottage. But alas, here in Winnipeg the OTA offerings are a little sparse. Basically CBC, Global and City, along with some sort of religious broadcaster. Apparently CTV is available too but I have no idea how to actually pull it in.

Our antenna rotator was me or one of my siblings. Another would be positioned at the doorway to relay "BETTER!" or "WORSE!" to the person actually rotating the antenna (with a hockey stick, standing on a snowbank).

:haha: :haha: :haha:

Our rooftop antenna was on a tall mast, and the rotator occasionally allowed us to pull in exotic signals.

In the winter and spring, a phenomenon called "e-skip" could occur, where the reflectivity of the "e layer" of the ionosphere would increase, allowing signals in the VHF TV spectrum to bounce back and forth to the surface of the Earth and dramatically increase the range of the TV signal.

This phenomenon was sporadic, seasonal, usually occurred early in the morning and could not be predicted, but occasionally we could pick up TV signals from the midwest USA and central Canada on our TV.

I clearly remember one time when I was about 12, I went down and turned on the TV to CKCW in Moncton to watch the Saturday morning cartoons. The channel was just starting to broadcast for the day, and Oh Canada was playing. I wasn't really paying much attention, then suddenly I heard the Star Spangled Banner playing too, so I perked up quickly, to find that the channel I was watching was actually in Sault-Ste-Marie ON, and the reception was strong enough that it was drowning out the signal from the Moncton station. :haha:

TV watching was an adventure back then.........

If Norman Rockwell had painted scenes of Canadian life, this would have been a good one. :)

It was usually "Hockey Night in Canada", as well! It literally took a team of 3 to tweak reception to one of the 3 or 4 channels (half were French) that we got where I grew up. Our original antenna pole was actually a rough, delimbed tree trunk.

Regarding the witch and stick figures, I wonder if you were remembering the cartoon, Tales of the Wizard of Oz, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054568/ it was one of my favourites, along with Kimba, lol.

yes, to look at the lingerie models :naughty:

Anyone out there miss the weird, trippy McDonaldland commercials that saturated the airwaves on Saturday mornings back in the 70s?
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The weirdest of all was Mayor Ford (err, McCheese)
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I remember them, apparently they were dropped by Macdonald’s after a lawsuit said that those characters were too similar to the characters in HR Puffnstuff, another one of my favourite childhood shows.

https://www.mashed.com/136474/how-mc...nd-characters/

Could never figure out what Grimace actually was.

Did he represent what you need to do when helping your GI tract complete the digestive process for the food? :wah: :shitstorm:

The beauty of one (1!) channel is that there was never any arguments about what to watch!

I was born in 61 so I was a late boomer who didn't get to experience the SDRR of the earlier Boomers. I distinctly remember watching the Moon landing at home, Apollo 13 re-entry at the school gym, Paul Henderson's goal in my Grade 6 Classroom.
Anyone remember visiting the Centennial Train? I remember waiting for hours in Brandon to walk through the train.
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.1bfe9e41...pid=ImgRaw&r=0

Finally, not wearing seatbelts in the car, I would migrate from the front to the back seat while Dad rocketed down country roads (distinctly remember hitting the roof of the car when Dad took a grid intersection a little too fast!

Ahh the centennial train I do remember it coming through Edmonton. And My family drove across Canada that year to go to expo. in a 66 Plymouth Belvedere with no AC (the vent window turned to force air in)and 3 young boys. The car pulling a tent trailer behind.

Sitting on dads lap while he smoked a cigar and we got to drive the car on country roads some Sunday afternoons.

Sitting in the basement watch Apollo 11 on the TV in B&W.

Yup watching the Summit series in the Classroom.

As elementary kids protesting the Nuclear testing in the Aloussian Islands.

Watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. we only had cbc and ctv. so we were forced to watch Wayne and Shuster. kids shows like Junior Forest Rangers, Chet Helen (where we all learn french for the first time), Mr Dress-up and the Friendly Giant. Born in 58.

I drove my family from Winnipeg to Banff last summer but it was tolerable thanks to the help of Nintendo Switches and tablets... I can't imagine doing a drive 3x as long and without the help of those devices, relying only on books and toys :haha:

I didn't have cable growing up in Windsor in the '90s and most people I knew didn't either. There was enough free tv available from Detroit. We had a roof antenna too and we would turn it southward if we wanted to watch a Toledo channel. The only Canadian stations we could get were CBC and TVO.

Books, books, and more books. When I was 11 we drove up to Thompson to visit relatives. I must have read a dozen books on that trip.

With my own kids who were tweeners just when personal entertainment devices were being introduced, it was still books, talking and listening to the Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio.

I didn't have TV growing up so I can't relate to anything most of youse here (and IRL) talk about. I grew up reading the Hardy Boys, Swallows and Amazons, Little House on the Prairie series, Two Little Savages etc then going out to the woods to recreate plots: built the teepee, the log cabin, built a boat etc. Digging around the neighbouring farmland, I'd often come across ancient arrow heads like https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/londo...yard-1.6012638

I always thought maybe one day I'd watch all these 1970s/80s TV shows; but nope, other than WKRP I haven't bothered.

I've been trying to watch more older movies lately. Watched Klute a few days ago which featured a very young Donald Sutherland. It was fine. :haha:

I had handheld Coleco video games like Head to Head Football.

We'd also play games like trying to find as many different licence plates as possible on passing vehicles.

Though depending on where you are in Canada that can suck a bit because the provinces are so big that when you're in the middle of it there are few out of province vehicles.

Playing that game in the eastern US is awesome though!

I listened to Korn in jr. high and highschool but they were a guilty pleasure. Back then I related to Jonathan Davis' lyrics but didn't know why. I got heavy into Korn again in 2016 when I remembered some childhood trauma. I think that band was a trailblazer for more than just musical sound. Jonathan Davis' candid lyrics about his sexual abuse were unheard of in music at that time or really since. Michael Flynn of Machinehead also has songs about abuse he suffered as a child that are quite haunting.

Korn is considered the father of nu metal bands. Besides the heavy bass and quick tempo changes they didn't really rap. Sure there were guest stars, but no real hip hop to my ear unlike Limp Dickzkit. SOAD is another band lumped into that category but they had more Polka elements than anything else. I liked them as well and actually saw them in concert.

If you want to see the OG nu metal influence bands check out Faith No More and lead singer Mike Patton's other band Mr. Bungle. The most obvious precursor though was Rage Against the Machine.

I had no idea you lived in Edmonton. Is that what led to your fascination with ugly architecture?

O-tac, he lived there when Edmonton was still considered the better city of the two in Alberta ;) :P
The city was probably planning for the Commonwealth Games and construction of ETS! :cheers:

My daughter (29 yo) and I watched the original Spartacus (with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the other day. She really enjoyed both and love the way outlaw story of the Hole in the Wall Gang was portrayed.

Haven't seen Spartacus in a very long time but I watched Butch Cassidy recently and thought it was ok! Others i've watched recently include Charade, The Conversation, and Blow Out. All really great.

Pong? Atari? Colecovision?

Yes, no, yes.

I still have a Colecovision somewhere in my basement, as well as a Commodore-64, complete with floppy disc and external tape drive. :)

My dad still has our C-64. Won't part with it because it "will still be worth a lot in the future" especially with the floppy disc drive! But my parents also tend to keep e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, so some day it will fall to me to find it a home. :haha:

I bought a Colecovision with birthday and Christmas money I'd saved up in the early 1980s. Still had it in 2020, sitting on a closet shelf unused for more than 35 years, but when I moved it was on the list of things to sell (including a bunch of D&D books I also still had :cool:). I found a used game store that would take a look at it and had the right connector to link it to a modern flat screen, and amazingly, after a few fidgets, it still worked! Sold it and 4 or 5 games I had. Also found a taker for the D&D books. My wife didn't think I'd get anything for this stuff but appreciated the nice dinner it paid for. :tup:

My dad worked for CNR, and he got transferred there. After 3 years, my mom gave him an ultimatum: move us all back to Montreal, or that she and us were going to move back to Montreal without him.

Edmonton was, back then, a bit of a culture shock to my UK-born, Montreal-raised mom.

my first computer
https://www.old-computers.com/museum...y_coco2_3s.jpg

TRS-80 CoCo2 with 8K RAM!!!

mostly used to play this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZSvZ0lZ1m...00/dodmain.PNG

I had both a VIC-20 and a Commodore 64. Can't remember which one I had first.