For Your Viewing Pleasure

 Writing this blog post has been enlightening. I have been alive since the inception of television in San Antonio, Texas.  That makes me sound very old, which I am but it isn’t a bad thing.

Television came to San Antonio on December 11, 1949 when WOAI-TV aired at 4:30 in the morning.  It was the NBC affiliate.  

Then, on February 15, 1950 KENS - TV signed on under the call letters of KEYL.  That was two weeks before I was born.  

My father had been in radio before he went off to help Uncle Sam in 1943 and when he came back television was booming and he wanted to be a part of it.  So, he did and was the nightly anchor at KENS-TV for a number of years.  In this very building.  

In 1957 KONO, now KSAT, the ABC affiliate signed on for the first time.  It was in the winter and I remember running across the street to my cousin’s house to watch it come on — we watched the test pattern for hours — and hours — and finally, viola, there it was — and it was news.  Ugh.  

Back then television viewing was simple.  You bought the set — early on they had screens of about 10 inches — plugged it in, fiddled with the antenna and, if you were lucky, you could enjoy all sorts of viewing pleasure —- including watching my dad do the news and weather with a tear off paper map and a grease pencil.  It was so high tech — not — well, maybe for the time.

I remember getting bigger and better sets, I remember color coming in, I remember having VCR’s and finally getting cable.

Now what do we have?  A hot mess!

We ditched cable a number of years ago because we were paying large sums for large numbers of  channels we never used for various reasons.  We bought a Roku.  We were intrigued by the streaming channels being offered — and have subscribed to several — enough to make the bill almost as high as cable but what can I say —

And network TV has tanked.  There is very little on anymore and most nights I watch re-runs of “Frasier” from 7 to 9.  But, I had to subscribe to Paramount+ in order to watch the new reboot of the old 90’s sitcom.  I may or may not keep it — the show needs to get better and I need to watch more on there than just “Frasier” and, so far, that hasn’t happened.

Hubs and I are creatures of habit.  We tend to watch BritComs on PBS as well as British cozy mysteries.  Then, we have honed in on two popular programs — “Yellowstone” and “Heartland”.  

I have tried to watch “Yellowstone” a number of times but just couldn’t get into it.  So I decided to watch the two prequels — “1883” and “1923”.  I recommend both.  They are available for streaming but I purchased the DVD’s

I recommend both of these with some warning — graphic content, not for children.

But, by watching these I was able to get into “Yellowstone” and am enjoying it thoroughly.

We also watch “Heartland” which was recommended to me by a cousin.  It is much calmer than “Yellowstone” and definitely family friendly.  There are a lot of seasons of it which makes binge watching possible without running out of shows.  I watch it on Youtube and there are still new episodes being added.

So, what do you watch on tv?  How do you watch tv?  I will say that my tv watching has slowed down these days because, for some reason, I just can’t handle all the noise — it seems to be so loud these days — and I have learned to really love silence.  That takes us back to the third sentence of this blog entry.

Have a wonderful day!