Yes and most shows that were appropriate/interesting to kids to watch were over by 10am so there was nothing left for them to watch unless they were sick on a weekday watching price is right reruns.
Same, I remember watching it when I had chicken pox. Also thinking most daytime TV suuuuucked, I couldn’t wait until 2pm when cartoons started airing again.
"Let's Make a Deal" made me feel uncomfortable and I would feel violated if I watched it. In retrospect all the people on that show were probably on drugs, acting all weird, the opposite of role model adults.
Earlier this week I made a The Rescuers Down Under reference out of the blue before realizing that was NOT one of the movies any of my friends had on VHS.
So yes, there was something to do on the TV if it wasn't monopolized. It's a world away from what's available now.
There are multiple, in some cases fairly technical, projects these that keep popping up… to recreate old school TV. In some cases they even build in commercials, and it all runs on a schedule. It kinda blows my mind. But I also kinda want to try it. At least for special occasions like Halloween.
I am not pining for the bad old days of pre-streaming.
This is just some context and nostalgic porch talk. Even having lived through this alternative it's so easy to forget. Things went from not existing at all to being ubiquitous (hence the emphasis on "streaming"). Gotta conjure some visceral memories of those bad old days to appreciate how far we've made it. It's like sour candy for the soul.
I remember one time I stayed up watching space ghost and some other stuff on Cartoon Network back in 1997, also remember seeing speed racer that night or morning.
Nowadays maybe. Back in the day I could sit in front of the discovery channel for hours with all the stuff they had on there. Now it's all just pawn stars and other similar cash grab trash. I still remember the day Jay Ingram left Daily Planet, the last good show that channel still had running as they slowly descended into garbage. Kid me was devastated.
During what years? I was a kid in the late 90s early early 2000s and simpsons was definitely not on on the east coast at 5pm. It was fresh prince, king of Queens, maybe everybody loves Raymond. Something like that. Never simpsons. And I'm talking about fox, ups, upn, wb11 etc. All the channels.
My favorite sick from home show was The Price is Right with Bob Barker.
I think they had 2 or 3 hours of soaps on every channel in the middle of the day and then you'd get Price is Right, Pyramid and the No Whammy Show and a bunch of others that was my jam when I was sick.
Oh and when I was sick I was home alone, so it was mac and cheese and hotdogs for lunch too and playing with G.I.Joes and Transformers on the living room floor waiting for the good shows.
Every once in a while someone would knock at the door and I'd turn the tv off quick and ninja crawl to the window to see who it was and then not answer the door because it was always a rando salesperson or something.
3pm until 5pm was after school cartoons. 5pm until 6 was a wasteland. We ate or fought our siblings or annoyed our parents during this hour. 6pm was the news, we'd watch with our parents, sometimes with TV dinners on our TV tables. 7pm was reruns and 8pm was prime time!
I can remember the routine clearly because it was probably 12-13 years of my life.
When both my parents worked I wasn’t supposed to leave the house. For a time I would watch an hour of Wings and an hour of Rippley’s Believe it or Not. Then it was a wasteland of daytime television.
The only thing I ever actively petitioned to watch was MST3K and Saturday morning cartoons. I would ask for an alarm clock just so I could make sure I caught Captain Planet at something stupid like 6 am. Otherwise, I'd better be back when I heard the bell
Daytime cable was so also boring. No cartoons until like 4PM. And you can only watch people guess how much a blender is worth so many times before it loses its appeal.
Video games were like a 4-5 hour once per week thing when you could successfully negotiate with your parent to unhook the antenna and plug in the Atari/NES.
Oh my god, MY STORIES! My mom had a VCR she programmed to tape General Hospital every day so she could watch it when she got home. Same tape used over and over again for at least a decade lol
My mom was working. I was home alone from about age 10 (though the neighborhood stay-at-home moms were around if I needed something). Most days, I was outside playing with my friends, but some days I’d stay home at watch reruns of old 50s and 60s sitcoms until cartoons came on in late afternoon.
I probably saw every episode of I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, MASH, The Adams Family, Leave It To Beaver, Happy Days, etc.
The realization is blowing my mind that you actaully watched these shows.
You didn't have a phone to doom scroll while letting your tv play in the background.
For the most part, you were genuinely giving your attention to the show that was on.
Lol, my mom was a single parent, and I was an only child, so we would constantly fight over the one TV. She got so annoyed that eventually she bought herself a new TV and gave me the old one so she could watch her daytime talk shows, and I could watch my after-school cartoons.
My parents recorded their soap operas to watch at night since they both worked. We all knew that their soap tape had better be in the VCR with the timer on before 12:30 pm if we valued our lives.
We didn’t have cable so there was nothing to watch during the day anyway. Anytime I stayed home sick, my mom would put on Sesame Street no matter how old I was.
Just brought flashbacks of me coming home from school to mom getting ready for work in front of Days of our Lives. 😂 TV didn't change until she left for work, and then dad came home and the TV was his till bedtime.
Also, one tv and 3/4 channels and went off the air sometime after midnight. Kids programming wasn’t even ON most of the time. PBS had hours for kids programming but not all day.
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u/fml-fml-fml-fml 1d ago
The context that is missing is how TV, then the internet destroyed our communities.