Thursday 21 November 2013

Day 21 - World Television Day

Day 21 of Rosalilium's blog every day in November challenge
World Television Day
(The invention of television certainly changed the world. Think about communication on a mass scale. You can talk about what telly means to you. Or your favourite TV shows. Make some recommendations, maybe?)


Andrew's dad has had a long history with televisions. When he left school in 1955 at the age of 15, his first job was as a Radio and TV Apprentice Engineer.

There was a local company a few miles away which rented TV's, fixed them and then later sold them to people and Andrew's dad decided he'd rather follow that as a career than go and work down a mine. He did that for about 10 years and then set up his own TV rental business which he still ran in the early 80's. Andrew can remember many evenings sat in his dad's car while they had to go and collect rental money from the customers. By the mid 80's it was pretty much a dying business as every man and his dog owned their own TV rather than rented but both Andrew and his dad are still interested in all things mechanical and electrical. We don't own any old TV's but Andrew's dad still has a 1950's Bush TV22 in his house proudly sat on display.

 
We don't tend to watch a huge amount of TV in our house; we don't follow any soaps or watch any kind of reality TV - we just never seem to have the time to watch anything!

I think our glory days of TV watching were when we were children - weren't all the best programmes on when you were a kid?


Andrew's favourites were:
Jamie and The Magic Torch (boy stays up late, goes down a hole into a magical world with weird creatures, oh and has a Old English Sheepdog which talks in a Somerset accent)
and Ivor the Engine (Welsh steam engine who communicates with his whistle saving the villagers from all sorts of calamities)
 
Childrens TV Programmes


My faves were:
Fingermouse (a little paper finger mouse puppet who could make music),
The Family Ness (scary looking Loch Ness Monsters get up to mischief with two very Scottish stereotyped young children),
Bertha (a machine that could make practially anything set in a manufacturing factory)
The Raggy Dolls (toys and dolls from a factory reject bin make their own fun),
and Fraggle Rock (a selection of muppet 'fraggles' live underground with lots of dancing and singing)


I do wonder what the producers of these programmes were on when they dreamt up their ideas!
("Oooh, I know what'll work as a TV series; a machine that makes stuff in a factory, surely every 5 year old wants to see that!")


What were your favourite kids TV programmes?


8 comments:

  1. Oh my I LOVED the Family Ness as a child!

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    1. I was born in Scotland and used to holiday there every summer - I always wished I'd been called Elspeth! :-) x

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  2. BERTHA!! "Bertha lovely Bertha, you are a lovely machine!!"
    I loved that programme, we used to have the video somewhere, must try to dig it out :) x

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    1. I know, I can still sing the theme tune as well! I reckon the writers of Bertha were on to a good thing, Bertha could make almost anything - surely she was the first 3D printer? :-) x

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  3. Brilliant. For every topic you have such an interesting story to tell - it's wonderful.
    I should have written about how my partner used to sell tellies shouldn't I ? Haha!
    x

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    Replies
    1. That would have still been interesting - what sort of tellies? :-) x

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  4. The Raggy Dolls - awwww Sad Sack...!

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    Replies
    1. I agree, I always felt so sorry for Sad Sack! :-) x

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