When watching TV was still a luxury…

First half of the fifties. The neighbors had bought a TV. On installment!! The whole neighborhood was ashamed of it. You didn't buy on installments, you saved for something and only then bought it. But we did go on Wednesday afternoon with a penny in our hand to look at Aunt Hannie and brave DoDo. there was football, the men needed to return the bicycle pump they had borrowed a week earlier.

Especially on Wednesday afternoon watching TV at the neighbours. For a dime with a piece of candy and a glass of ranja. If one of them was full quickly to the other neighbour. Dapperedodo and indeed aunt Hannie. An hour on Wednesday afternoon and if I remember correctly have on Saturday afternoon. Now you have so many channels but often all nothing. Still a nice childhood memory.

The family always tells the following story about me:
My parents bought a television around 1955/1956. The neighborhood children were always present in large numbers to watch (free) the children's hour on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. I vaguely remember Aunt Hannie, Brave Dodo, the Binoculars, Professor Iron Wire, and someone who told stories. I didn't know any better than that those hours were the only hours that there was anything on the tube ... until that one evening. For some reason I couldn't sleep and went to the living room to find my parents watching MY television. Little did I know that there was also something for adults to see two evenings a week. The story goes that I sat on the couch furiously and said that the television was intended for small children and that they should have warned me. Apparently it took my parents a lot of effort to get me off that couch again. According to my father, it was mainly harpists who filled the two-hour evening programs on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the most. He loved music very much, but harp music never appealed to him after that.

My memories were that we used to watch German TV as children, instead of Dutch, because the programs started around 4 o'clock. We found Lassie, Rintintin, Bonanza, and many other westerns exciting and we played them in German. For us it was normal for Indians and Cowboys to speak German.
I remember the transition from black and white to color TV. Then templates were also sold, so that you could also watch color with a black and white TV!!!!
At one point we had received a central antenna and with the help of an extra box on top of the TV we could watch 15 channels (Dutch, German and Belgian). serve well. My mother had to have me every time she wanted to watch TV.
But personally I broke away from TV when I started working at 25. With my first salary I bought a TV and a VCR. I recorded my own movies and borrowed from the video store. And that's how I've used my TV for the last 35 years... now I get everything from the internet and watch it with my projector or my Oculus Go (a VR viewer) and occasionally on TV. But TV shows? No, not for many years. I have recently watched episodes of “The smartest person in the world”. A Belgian Quiz, which is really very funny.

I have experienced everything that has already been said. But I haven't met anyone who can remember the adventures of Koko the flying grunt. A cartoon of a pig with one of those propeller tails that flew through the screen!

And not to forget: there was a youth series about space travel (I thought) starring Ton Lensink as Professor Plato!

Nice stories,
This way you can see how quickly everything has changed after the 2nd world war.
And that continues at an accelerated pace.
My first experience with black-and-white TV was in 1959.
At the bakery in our neighborhood we were first allowed to peek in through the window during the TV broadcasts.
Later we were also allowed to come in on our socks and sit in front of the TV.
Color TV came in 1968 with the Olympics as a sales driver to buy color TV.
In the early 70s you could buy the first TV with a remote control... but that was for slackers.
Now TV no longer exists without AB.
In the late 70s, Teletext..
speaking of Luxury, it obviously only increased, just like the possibilities.
The picture tubes became flatter and were eventually replaced by the LCD screens.
Now I use a beamer myself, which is connected to an HD receiver/recorder and I have my own cinema at home.
Who knows when 3D TV will become common, without special glasses

My partner (Hagenaar) came to Zeeland in 1963, an unexplored area where hardly anyone had TV. In 1969 he brought me in. We bought lots of trade-in black/white TVs and converted them for reception in Belgium. That went smoothly. Antenna on the roof, we bought materials in Germany, gold mine.
Selling more than 10 devices in a day gave existing retailers a nightmare.
We did repairs at home in the evening. Customers were extremely happy.
I had copied the formula in the West. Hit Zeeland like a bomb.
Then quickly switched to color. Many German and later Japanese (Akai, Sony) brands. They made conservative Philips smell shit.
They offered us holiday trips to Thailand, among others, that's why...

born in the Waverstraat Amsterdam South and I also remember that the neighbors across the street were the first with a TV and there I saw, at the age of 9, with even more children, the final of the World Cup between Sweden and Brazil in 1958 with Pele,
later also the Binoculars and coco and the flying grunt. Well, good times!

On Saturdays, 15 to 20 children from the neighborhood were allowed to watch TV with elderly people who did not have children. So lots of boots, clogs and occasionally shoes at the back door. We lived in a small village in Nbr. and were able to receive Nl 1 and BRT 1 and were allowed to receive Pipo the clown and on the Belgian channel the little man without speech and with his tie straight back. never forget this again. Beautiful.

Many matches of the World Cup 54 football in Switzerland were already shown live. With twice West Germany Hungary.