Friday, April 21st, 2006...8:41 am
TV nostalgia
"Kol Ha-ir" ("Voice of the city"/"All the city"), the local Jerusalem newspaper, has a neat section on nostalgic TV shows in Israel. Up till not too long ago, maybe 15 years, Israel had only 2 TV channels available and even that was an improvement after many years of having only one TV channel to watch.
When I was going through the firsts years of school, there was only thing you could watch, but - somehow, that didn't keep us from watching whatever it is that they were feeding us. In a way, some of those TV shows they screened back then became cult shows that have influenced my whole childhood.
So, I'll take this opportunity to list some TV shows that I owe my childhood and teenager years to, sitting down to watch hundreds of their episodes. Some were pretty hard to track down on the net, and I'm sure I've missed a few.
Here goes: Nostalgic TV on my Del.icio.us
What were your childhood TV series? 
Wow, you watched a lot of TV as a child?
I was not allowed to watch TV. But the odd episode of the A-Team and Night Rider was always much appreciated!
Oh yeah, and those are the English/French/Spanish speaking ones, there are tons more in Hebrew, and there’s the obvious endless movies I loved watching
I think that even with the one channel it was always a social thing. Many things in society, revolved around it. I’m sure there are people who didn’t watch TV at all, but most of my classmates talked about what they saw on TV endlessly. In a way, you couldn’t afford not to watch certain things on TV…
My parents were strict. They thought TV rotted kids’ brains. We read books or took extracurricular lessons in music or whatever. =D
Plus, all the advertising etc. it’s difficult enough for adults to exercise restraint, let alone little kids who don’t know any better.
So I am quite glad I was not allowed to watch TV. It didn’t matter so much at school. In Taiwan, kids are studying 24/7 - only the least academically-able kids are allowed to watch TV. =D In Australia, I went to a very strict school, so we didn’t have time anyhow.
Don’t think I became brain damaged or anything. It was just different.
Heh, yeah, I could see how parents would think that. They wouldn’t be too far off, with some shows.
Historically, it’s an interesting fact, that of the two channels Israel had 15 years ago, one is forbidden by law to screen commercials (up till this very day), and the second channel (Channel 2) started off for a few years with no commercials at all in what was termed “a testing period”. Only a long while after that, the commercial TV with ads came in.
Even funnier is the fact that till the 80s the Israeli TV didn’t broadcast color. All the TV machines and equipment would support color, but the one TV channel Israel had wouldn’t enable that feature. Creepy stuff.
WHAT? No colour? How interesting! Wow…
But hey, no commercials, that I like very much.
I am not against TV (and probably parents should not be as strict as mine were when I was little). But I think kids do watch a bit toooooo much of it - at the expense of books and their own imagination!
But if they’re just watching documentaries and other educational programs, it can be very good. Documentaries are neat!
To each his/her own…
Well, isn’t that always? Opinions aren’t meant to be taken as facts. Nor do I believe in an absolute truth.
Mission Impossible-the series (1966)!!!!!!!!
Thanks for bringing it up in my memories.(It brings up the “21 Jump Street” as well somehow).
*My.Sinister lights a match with a brief hand movement*
Let the games begin