My love for television started as early as the day I was born and stepped into the world. At the time, I didn't subscribe to cable. My parents weren't financially stable enough yet to pay for television before Kindergarden, until my mom finally landed a full-time job at a Holiday Inn here in San Francisco. At the time, we had a mid 70's Mitsubishi CRT TV set in our living room which had only about 13 channels (from channels 2 to 13). This was long before over-the-air television went digital in America, and we were using rabbit ears on top of our television set. The signal wasn't always the best. We had to mess around with the antenna sometimes to get a clear reception on our channels. If the signal wasn't clear, our picture and sound on our TV would start ghosting and having a lot of static noise.
In the 80's, I mostly watched the primetime programming that ABC, FOX, CBS and NBC had to offer. My mom, my older brother and I would tune into a bone chilling suspenseful new episode of 21 Jump Street. On Thursday nights while my father was home from work, we'd tune into Unsolved Mysteries (which scared the bejeezus out of me!) and I would wake up Saturday mornings every week to watch the latest cartoons eating multiple bowls of Corn Pops cereal.
People don't know too much about this known fact about why Americans started subscribing to cable and paying for television in the 70's and 80's. It wasn't because of the "niche" channels like ESPN, HBO, Nickelodeon, MTV and CNN believe it or not. It was because at the time, cable TV gave us the best picture and sound on our television sets and it was the only way we could get a clear signal from the broadcast networks like ABC, CBS and NBC. Around the time I started Kindergarden in 1990, my father purchased a 32 inch Sony Trinitron, which became our living room TV set. That CRT console was huge! My current 32 inch Sharp HDTV set in my bedroom weighs only 15 lbs which is a huge difference compared to that early 90's Sony TV that weighed 250 lbs at least. But around that time, my mother started working and we called the cable guy at Comcast and hooked up our service at our home. This was before high-speed Internet services, and in 1990 or 1991, our cable bill every month was like $24.99 a month if I can remember correctly. At the time, cable wasn't as expensive like is today in the year of 2015 where my parents pay $140 every month.
But once we got cable at our home, I got the experience to enjoy the type of television programming that most people from my generation grew up enjoying. Nickelodeon began putting out their original live-action shows and cartoons during the early 90's, and I grew up escaping from the hardships of elementary school and the death of my grandfather watching shows like Doug, Rugrats and Clarissa Explains It All. I always loved rock music and I'm a very musically inclined person, so I got to watch the latest rock bands and their hit videos like Guns N' Roses, Metallica and Nirvana on MTV. Back when during a time when MTV wasn't about pregnant teens and trashy reality TV. I still kept up with the programming on broadcast networks, like watching family-friendly sitcoms like Full House and Family Matters on ABC. At the time in 1991 with a subscription to Comcast cable services, we had about 54 channels on our lineup in San Francisco. The childhood friends I grew up with who didn't pay for television and were still using rabbit ears basically had their major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX), PBS and maybe a few independent stations. Unlike today in San Francisco where you can get 52 over-the-air TV channels using a well designed television antenna and pay for 300+ channels on a cable package with Comcast. Back then, we didn't have as many channels. But the quality of television programming was simple, straight-forward yet very creative and entertaining. Even educational at the same time.
As some of you know, I didn't have a very easy time growing up. I didn't have a lot of friends in school, I had to deal with a lot of crappy people where ever I went and the situation me and my family were in was very tough. If it weren't for rock and roll music and television, I wouldn't have something I can turn to as a source of comfort. I used television as a way of dealing and coping with hardships I would later face in my life. When DJ Tanner on Full House had to find ways to deal with bullies, gossip and high school crushes, those were things I could relate to emotionally. Whenever MTV played the latest hit video from Blink 182 where the guys were running naked on the streets with that rocking music playing in the background, I fell in love with the music and it became the soundtrack to being 13 years old, angry, rebellious and trying to find your niche in society. I played guitar in a few local bands, and found my calling in life by being this so-called rock musician. But I was interested to know more about the greatest technology that came from the 20th century.
Almost everyone in the world knows who invented the iPhone, but sadly most people in this world doesn't know who actually invented television. When I went to school, they never taught us anything like that in history class except for the wars we fought and the dead guys who used to be our President. Television (or the first working TV set) was invented almost 90 years ago by an inventor by the name of Philo Farnsworth. Bu the man who commercialized television and made it what is today was the CEO of RCA Electronics, David Sarnoff, who was actually the Steve Jobs of his time. We've came a long way since. The technology itself hasn't changed much in a long period since color TV was invented in 1954. Other than a few things like pay TV service, VCRs, DVD players, video game consoles and television sets going from having mono to stereo sound. There hasn't been much of a significant change in TV between the invention of color TV in 1954 to digital high-definition television becoming the standard in 2009.
I think television has gotten better than ever. Not just the quality of the programming with shows like Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy, but most definitely the technology. Since then, the price of a monthly cable bill risen 2.5 times faster than the cost of living in the States. The transition from analog to digital high-def television given us all new ways to enjoy and experience TV like never before. Because the pay TV services like cable and satellite gotten so expensive in recent years, over-the-air television has experienced a resurgence in popularity since the transition from analog to digital. When we think of antennas, we think of those big funky looking antennas on the top of the roof of our house in the 50's and 60's and the rabbit ears that we painfully had to adjust on the top of our TV set to grab a clear signal. Digital television antennas are 10% the mass of the ones your grandparents had, and they're technically more advanced. Instead of just talking about the advancements in television antennas, the quality of over-the-air TV drastically improved as well. Now we have digital sub-channels which means we get more different kinds of programming in our area like sports, kid's shows, women's interest, African American programming, news, weather, throwback TV shows and movies. Plus we get free HD. Did you hear me guys? Free HD picture and sound! Thanks to the Internet, we can now also catch up on our favorite shows and movies from cable on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Hulu. So we don't necessarily need to splurge big money every month for a ton of channels we don't even watch. With a Netflix subscription, I can access movies and the latest cable shows for $8 a month. And I can catch up with my wresting on WWE Network, an online TV channel for passionate wrestling fans.
I think television is just going to get even better. It helped me through hard times. And the beauty of digital TV gave me an easier way to enjoy my favorite shows any time I want whether it's a stressful day after work or just in general. Television is indeed the window to the world. Most of my friends I know are on social-media like Facebook, but I find television to be more empowering, insightful and entertaining than fishing for more likes on my band's Facebook page from people who just don't see you for who you are deep down. TV is my stress relief, my educator and my window to the world.
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