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Rabbit ears and antennas, TV arrives

Rabbit Ears - Antenna- Tube Testers- Colour TVs?- TV Stations- Tv Test Pattern-Canadian TV Shows - American TV Shows

A personal note: When we first got our black and white TV in 1956 my father had to risk his life putting up an antenna on the roof of our two storey apartment by 6:00 p.m. because I was anxious to watch the Disney World at that time. I also wanted to watch the Leafs play the Canadians at 9:00 on Hockey Night in Canada. For some reason it didn’t start until after the first period so we would miss Rocket Richard scoring a couple of goals. The two TV stations we could get were London CFPL and Kitchener CKCO. Some times when the planets were aligned and the weather perfect, the antenna was able to pick up the Mickey Mouse Cub from Detroit. Some rich people had antennas that could be rotated with a signal from their armchairs to improve the picture. Other owners had the finicky rabbit ears which required one to jump up frequently to adjust the picture. Those were the wonder years, aye? by Paul Wilker

Rabbit ears and antenna.

Back in TV's early days, the only way to get a picture was to capture the broadcast signal out of thin air. And one way of doing that was with rabbit ears, usually after much fiddling around with their location, as Jackie Gleason and Art Carney demonstrated in a classic "Honeymooners" episode.

Usually placed on top of or close to the TV, rabbit ears were a common sight in millions of living rooms. Those rabbit ears, sure, they had a function, which was to bring great reception into your house. But also on top of that, they were a major, major decorative item.

To get better reception antennas were installed on roofs by service men and do-it- yourselfers. Antennas became a neighbourhood status symbol some costing more than the TV.

Tube testers were common in every drug store. Removing tubes was dangerous if you didn't unplug the TV.

Colour TV?

Some TV watchers put colour trasparencies over their 12 in screens to simulate a colour TV . The transperencies were either one colour , Red, Green or Blue or one sheet having all three colours as shown here making Bonaza look great ( maybe).

Personal Note: My uncle had these and he boasted he had the first colour TV.

TV Stations servicing Stratford in the 50s.

Baden Tower

CKCO Kitchener

The station first signed on the air at 6 p.m. on March 1, 1954. Its signal transmitted from the Baden Tower (a transmitter on Baden Hill), near Baden, just west of Kitchener. The transmitter became one of the most identifiable landmarks in the area. Originally, like all privately owned television stations in Canada from 1953 to 1959, CKCO was an affiliate of the CBC; it became an affiliate of CTV in 1963. The station increased its transmitter power in the early 1960s to reach London, from which Kitchener then received CBC affiliate programs on CFPL-TV.

CFPL tower

CFPL London

This television station first came on the air on November 28, 1953, with four hours of programming per day. That's night! There was a major fire in London, on which CFPL's news program was able to report almost immediately during its first news hour. The station's transmitter was originally located atop the 500-foot (152 m) CFPL Television Tower, which was completed that year.

CFPL was the second privately owned station in Canada (CKSO-TV in Sudbury, now CICI-TV, was the first). Its news program was the first to be scheduled at 6 p.m., during "the supper hour", which set the standard for other stations in Canada. In 1973, the station expanded its supper-hour news to a full hour. CFPL also later became one of the first in Canada to broadcast in colour. From the day it began broadcasting, CFPL was affiliated with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1961, CFPL-TV began transmitting its signal from a 314-metre (1,030 ft) tall guyed tower located in London, which is one of the oldest super-tall television towers in Canada.

When television station CFPL in London first went on the air on November 28, 1953, it was just the second private broadcaster in Canada. It quickly became an integral part of the cultural fabric of the London area, and a vital communications link throughout southwestern Ontario.

CFPL was started by Walter J. Blackburn, publisher of the London Free Press. In fact, the call letters CFPL stood for “Free Press London.” The station started out as a CBC affiliate. The CBC television network itself had only started broadcasting two years earlier.

The TV sign-off test pattern 1950s

The Indian-head test pattern is a test card that gained widespread adoption during the black-and-white television broadcasting era as an aid in the calibration of television equipment. It features a drawing of a Native American wearing a headdress surrounded by numerous graphic elements designed to test different aspects of broadcast display. The pattern was introduced in 1939 and over the following two decades became a fixture of television broadcast across North America. it was obsoleted by the rise of color television in the 1960s.

More: Television Reception in the 1950s: A Coming of Age

Popular Canadian TV shows in the 1954

Howdy Doody Show

The Canadian Howdy Doody Show made its debut on November 15, 1954, airing three times a week over CBC Television. The U. S version had started in 1947. Originating from the network's Toronto studios, the Canadian version of the show starred James Doohan and later Peter Mews as forest ranger Timber Tom, who corresponded to Buffalo Bob in the U.S. version. CBC's Clarabell, the clown, was played by Alfie Scopp. The future Captain Kirk of Star Trek, Bill Shatner, also filled in for Timber Tom occasionally as "Ranger Bob".

Hockey Night in Canada

Hockey Night in Canada began airing on Saturday nights on CBC Television in 1952. Regular-season games were not broadcast in their entirety until 1968, and only one game was televised each Saturday night until the 1990s. From 1952 to 1964, the HNIC telecast followed the lead of the radio broadcast by beginning at 9 p.m. ET; games were typically joined in progress shortly before (or during) the second period. Its start time was moved up to 8:30 p.m. ET at the beginning of the 1963–64 season, allowing games to be joined in progress late in the first period. In the fall of 1968, regular-season games were shown in their entirety and the program began at 8 p.m.

Romper Room, Kitchener

Romper Room was a daily half-hour program for pre-school children that CKCO licensed in the early 60s. Romper Room was franchised instead of syndicated, so local stations could produce their own versions.

An invited group of children took part in each show, which had several regular features including Doo-Bee, Paddington Bear, the Magic Mirror and Doc, whose main concerns were health and safety regulations for children. Basic physical activity to encourage an active lifestyle and the maintenance of good health was a regular part of the program.

In 1972, CKCO-TV took responsibility for producing the series for all CTV affiliates across Canada. In 1981 the series became known as Romper Room and Friends and was cancelled in 1992 because CTV did not renew its contract At that time, the CKCO produced Canadian Romper Room was the only version still in production in the world.

Paul Soles CFPL weatherman 1954

CFPL Paul Soles

Paul Soles was brought up in downtown Toronto during the Depression, studied fine arts at the University of Western Ontario and began his career in radio while in his early twenties. One of his first assignments was to report on the inaugural season of the STRATFORD SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL in 1953. That year he got his start in television as host and producer of variety, news and current affairs programs for London, Ont's first television station, CFPL-TV.

Paul Soles was one of the original hosts of the CBC's popular TV program "Take 30," which went on the air in 1962. Designed to be a "women's show," the daytime series evolved into a showcase for serious journalism, airing documentary reports and interviews on social and cultural topics. Soles shared the hosting duties until he left the show in 1978.

Popular America shows in 1954-55

Walt Disney's Disneyland

Walt Disney was the first major film producer to venture successfully into television. Disney wanted to produce a television program to finance the development of the Disneyland amusement park. The show contained episodes representing life in one of the park's main sections: Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Frontierland.

Frontierland featuresd the widely succesful Davy Crockett five-part serial which aired on ABC from 1954–55 in one-hour episodes. The series starred Fess Parker as real-life frontiersman Davy Crockett and Buddy Ebsen as his friend, George Russell. This series was known for the catchy theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" Every boy in Stratford had a coonskin cap and could sign the song.

The Jackie Gleason Show

The Jackie Gleeson show premiered on CBS Television on September 20, 1952.

The show typically opened with a monologue from Gleason, followed by sketch comedy involving Gleason and a number of regular performers (including Art Carney) and a musical interlude featuring the June Taylor Dancers.

The series was a big hit for CBS, finishing at #8 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1953–1954 season and #2 in 1954–1955. The series won Emmys for Jane Meadows as best supporting actress in 1955, Art Carney as best supporting actor in 1954 and 1955, and Taylor for choreography in 1955. Gleason never received an Emmy.

By far the most memorable and popular of Gleason's characters was blowhard Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden in the "The Honeymooners", with Jane Meadows as his wife Alice, and Art Carney as his upstairs neighbor Ed Norton. These were so popular that in 1955 Gleason suspended the variety format and filmed The Honeymooners as a regular half-hour sitcom .

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom that originally aired on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes, spanning six seasons. The show starred Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, along with Vivian Vance and William Frawley.

I Love Lucy became the most-watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons and it was the first to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings. As of 2011, episodes of the show have been syndicated in dozens of languages across the world and remain popular with an American audience of 40 million each year. A colorized version of its Christmas episode attracted more than eight million viewers when CBS aired it in prime time in 2013, 62 years after the show premiered.

Father Knows Best

Father Knows Best was an American sitcom starring Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin. The series, which began on radio in 1949, aired as a television show for six seasons and 203 episodes. Created by Ed James, Father Knows Best follows the lives of the Andersons, a middle-class family living in the town of Springfield.

This series premiered on October 3, 1954, on CBS.

Gunsmoke

The television series ran from September 10, 1955, to March 31, 1975, on CBS, with 635 total episodes. It is the second Western television series written for adults, premiering on September 10, 1955, four days after The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

During its second season in 1956, the program joined the list of the top-10 television programs broadcast in the United States. It quickly moved to number one and stayed there until 1961. It remained among the top-20 programs until 1964.

James Arness starred as Marshall Matt Dillon.

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