The Golden Age of TV Shows and Cartoons
The 50s and 60s: TV Shows & Cartoons for kids. At least a nodding acquaintance with this topic is essential, if you want to well-rounded. Most of these shows have been released on DVD, and a new generation is watching them. For better or worse, they've impacted American speech and reflect the changing values of their time. You don't need to watch every episode of every show, but it would be valuable to watch at least 5-10 minutes from each title. You know, just enough so that you don't stand there with your mouth open when someone mentions Gilligan or says "Danger, Will Robinson".
Whether these shows are new to you or seem like old friends, you do need to remind yourself that their target audience was very different from today's. Back then, IF you had a television (and that's a big IF), it was most probably BLACK-AND-WHITE and pretty small. An unexpected windfall in my family resulted in a colour TV in our house in mid-1964. Let me tell you, it made us something special, and there was always a crowd at our house. We didn't know anyone else who had color at that time. In fact, we didn't even know anyone else who knew anyone else who had a color set. (And we lived in a big city.) There was one catch, though. In the early 60s, viewing time was limited, in most families in our area, to one half-hour on Friday night and one feature-length time slot on Saturday night. As the 60s wore on, we were allowed to watch a show during the week, as long as we had: completed our chores and homework, eaten our dinner, and gotten ready for the next day's school. So, you can see, we didn't get much mid-week watching in, since it was usually bedtime before these things were done.
But Saturday. Oh, glorious Saturday. Saturday morning meant cartoons. That was the time you waited for. Two hours or so of uninterrupted cartoons. That's in the winter, of course. During the summer, nobody bothered. The great outdoors called, and it was only re-runs anyway. Our average viewing time, as kids, was probably about 15 or 20 hours per month in the winter, about half that in the summer. To put this into perspective, the average American's TV-viewing time in 2008 was 151 hours per month.
So, go quickly through the list, and then go do something worthwhile. You'll be better off on both accounts.
(Shows in the filmstrip: Yogi Bear, Lost in Space, Andy Griffith, Popeye, I Love Lucy, Beverly Hillbillies, Mighty Mouse.)
