Did TV Mess Up Baby Boomers? Say Many. Is It True?
You are watching a film made to excite folks to join the television industry when it was new. I am David Hoffman Filmmaker and I saw this film back then and it convinced me to go to NYU Summer Film/TV school.
Back in 1960 and the TV Industry was growing like crazy. To understand this moment time which is the time I decided to become a television show maker/filmmaker.
Classic television like it was needed a big production team and equipment. Cameramen. Sound man. Technical director. Assistant. And the director.
And they told us that we would have to join the union and the process of becoming a director took five years. You started off as a page in one of the networks if you got the job. That wasn’t for me.
I picked up the camera and made my first movie. It ran on prime time on national educational television, the forerunner of PBS.
Since many of you are younger than me I want to reflect for a minute on what TV meant to us at that time. They told us that it was the most powerful thing influencing families that ever existed. It was so powerful when it entered our home. It was a family experience that older people will remember.
I saw where food was grown. I saw the deserts. I saw California, which was quite amazing. Mountain climbing. Canada. And all way better than what I was learning in school. My parents saw it as useful education. It’s the first time I saw how other people lived.
I saw the president. I saw bluegrass and country singers, not just on the radio.
I saw car advertisements for fancy cars driving in wonderful places.
I saw lots of westerns and game shows. The Lone Ranger was one of the earliest TV Westerns, television brought other Western heroes into American homes
Cowboys and lawmen such as HOPALONG CASSIDY, WYATT EARP, and the CISCO KID
Like THE LONE RANGER or ZORRO, most programs of the early 1950s drew a clear line between the good guys and the bad guys. There was very little danger of injury or death, and good always triumphed in the end.
I saw the Coronation of the King/Queen in England. Revolution in Egypt. Tribal life in Africa.
Just imagine seeing all that for the first time.
You invited other people over, and as kids, we got to hear our parents talking about things that they saw on the TV. We could learn about them and how they thought.
And when you went to school the next day, everybody talked about what they had seen. Just a fun fact, during the commercial breaks, water consumption in the United States shot up as every viewer went to the toilet. There was no DVR for ability to delay live TV.
TV was family time for real. My parents watched game shows with great enthusiasm.
The $64,000 Question (a million dollars today).
We saw sports. And Broadway quality theater. and comedy — as a family.
Most familes watched domestic comedies like Father Knows Best – idealized family life which I and many others feel, is part of what caused the 60s generation to rebel and explode against the clear dishonesty of these Idealized family experiences.
And comedy? Our family laughed together with Sid Caesar, Milton Berle & Jackie Gleason
Lucille Ball’s new baby brought 44 million viewers to her show . TV Guide soon became the most popular periodical in the country
Ed Sullivan’s variety show provided entertainment ranging from the rock and roll to goofy scenes with trained animals. Ed Sullivan called it “a really big shew.” Although Elvis Presley had appeared on other shows in the past, it was his performance on The Ed Sullivan Show that grabbed the headlines.
My sister watched The Howdy Doody Show” — “Its Howdy Doody Time……
TV then was mostly live. All kinds of mistakes happened. When you watched the box, unlike going to the movies, you felt like you were watching reality right in your own home.
And of course, I saw commercials. Most people hated them from the start, having no idea how they were affecting us. Television sponsors ranged from greeting cards to automobiles, and the most advertised product was tobacco. Do you remember Be Happy Go Lucky? A study show that the more times they mentioned the product in one minute, the more likely consumers were to buy it.
Researchers studied its effect on the family. At the time and even today, some people think it was negative. Some parents thought that TV caused violence. Some parents thought it hurt their children’s eyes. Some parents thought that it caused eating disorders. Some parents only allowed TV on Sunday when the cartoons ran. Some parents saw it as bringing the devil into the home. Some parents refused to have a TV in their home so my friends would come to my house to watch TV. My parents saw it as useful education.
Then there is the issue of race. At first, we didn’t see any black people, except in Hollywood movies.
I’m sharing all this because for those of you who are younger, I wanted to give you a sense of what the TV experience was like and why it seemed so amazing to me and other young “filmmakers”.
cisco academie
12:51 Patrick Stewart???
You know what I remember? How extremely crisp black and white TVs were. As a kid in the early 1980s we of course had a color TV in the living room. But I was gifted a late '60s Zenith TV and was allowed to split the cable from the living room and have "my own TV" in my bedroom. That B/W Zenith TV had some of the best high definition I've ever seen. Later I got a small color TV for Christmas, and while it was amazing to have my own color TV, the crispness of that ol' black and white was just never there.
I really missed not watching TV with my daughters like I used to with my dad and brother.
if repetition sell more products it would seem possible that repitition of violent imagery and ideas would sink in deeply and at least partially mold behavior. I also have heard that repeating a lie over and over can convince many that it is true (including the liar!)
Dear Mr. Hoffman,
You have really 14 and 18 year old sons?!
Or are you reading off some old script;
8:20 Yeah watching too much T.V causes 'Square Eyes'
As far as I know, it can't really do any pernament dammage.
But it shure hurts. It can be cured by giving yourself an eye massage.
The real culprit is lack of sunlight in young children, which causes the eyes to maldevelop.
(Look up: why is evreyone wearing glasses today?)
9:00 My mum absolutely refused to buy a Television;
She comes from a war torn country, and did not want to expose us to violence prematurely.
There was a down side to some of its offerings. There were great things offered as well. But I’d bet me money it wasn’t nearly as destructive as the screen time projections into the minds of the babies who were handed smartphones in place of pacifiers.
Wow. I love hearing your experience, Mr. Hoffman. I wish my mom was here so I could pick her brain about all these shows you mentioned and about her experience with TV.
I wanna hear more about what you thought when you saw Indigenous, Black, and other non-white people for the first time on tv.
the lead paint exposure is what makes boomers act like big babys
The downside of TV is making people passive. It was also easy for adults to use as a way to keep their kids entertained – basically a babysitter. I remember my parents limiting television for us kids to Friday evening, Saturday evening, and Sunday evening. I can remember watching Saturday morning cartoons and parents kicking us out of the house to go outside and play.
With regard to the passivity of TV, I think this continues with computer gaming – people are being drawn into an artificial world and the real world is becoming more distant. This is amplified by people being on their phones so much of the time wherever they go and becoming how they socially interact.
Blah blah blah, tv this tv that, blah blah social media blah burgh!!!
I just read Jackie Gleasons book an he said Elvis was on his show before the Ed Sullivan show. Hey David, did you ever hear of the CIA’s operation mockingbird and experiment with different ways of maybe swaying public opinion and whatnot?
We can all agree that TV is nothing compared to TikTok. I always thought TV is already stupid and a waste of time. But TikTok takes it to whole new level. Now it’s not enough to become dumb passively, now it’s the age of actively engaging into mental degradation.
this reminds me of the first time i saw dial up internet waaaaaay back in the nineties
Technology and technological progress is fantastic. Who knows where it will head 100 years from now
The blue box. It changed the world for sure. The 1st time people saw murders and deaths, live.
The sad thing with Boomers is talk radio and then things like Fox News warped a lot of these Boomers. The once loving parent that you had in the 80's and 90's sadly turned into the bitter, angry, and fearful. Luckily my parents never got into the Fox News trap.
The Tenates of that Apartment Building pet up thair own Antennas.
TV was awful. Social media is awfuller. But what’s done is done.
Partially true. What would later be called the infotainment industry was used to steer the mass conscious level of Baby Boomers (especially born in the mid/late 50's) from a progressive to a regressive orientation from the mid 1970's to early 1980's.
Zenith, the quality goes in before the name goes on. Timex, takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
The honeymooners was family viewing while we ate homemade pizza which we all made together beforehand. Exercise shows for ladies. The tonight show. A time lost but not forgotten.
They don't call it Television (Tel a Vision) Program for nothing
Living in New Zealand it opened up the world to this rather isolated country, it was a good thing. Delia Morris
Certainly shaped people’s lives beginning at an early age. Remember Colonel Bleep, Farmer Gray, and especially Warner bros. cartoons? I didn’t know it at the time but was appreciating radio stars, humor, and animation from the 1930s and 40s, from the greatest hard edged studio. Will always be thankful and today enjoy those radio programs over the internet.
i remember watching lost in space as a 3 or 4 year old in about 1974 and it scaring the pants off me 😳
I watched the news,sports,cartoons,and pbs
I grew up as Gen x without power and all of the technology that most of my peers take for granted.
Personally I see a correlation between the saying “You are what you eat” to You are what you feed your brain. The brain can only eat up and store a certain amount of information so be careful what you feed it.
TV is to Boomers what tiktok is to Gen Z
Oh the CaptainKangaroo years I miss the TV guides. My parents only spoke ill of it when I didn't do homework or clean etc, ie: if I wasn't glued to that "boobtube" so much I could get stuff done! But it also was our encyclopedias coming to life, it opened up possibilities, much like. The internet today, it could be bad or good depending on how you use it.
As a Millennial, I don’t watch as much TV as I did when I was much younger.
I cannot even remember the last time I watched cable tv XD
i still have that bolex, still runs
Television and TV shows, news, etc. etc. were what today smartsphones are and social media, but worse.
This was most fascinating David; I could sit around for hours on end listening to you Sir. 😉 I recall documentary on the birth television those in the film industry from the late 1940's and early 50's felt that television would just be a passing fad. As you know and pointed out television has become a powerful media. I recall when television stations would sign off at night or wee hours in the morning. Thanks again David Hiffman. 😊
And part of the baby boomers.
And if I have to admit it TV has probably messed me up. I have spent many hours entertaining myself and not being protective.
To the east of Albuquerque is a place called Tinkerville. There is a Ford truck covered in pennies. There's two signs with it. One says I turn my phone into a Lincoln. The second sign is part of the Tinkerbell experience. This man built an impressive display. The sign says"I did all this while you were watching TV"
The later part of the baby boomers probably, but the earlier part were still rooted in the end of the old war not the new one ? Just observing. 🌎✌️🌍
I turned 6 in December of 1969. For the next 10 years I knew what day it was by what shows were on TV that night and what time it was by what shows were currently playing on the TV. Aside from homework; the only print media I ever read was TV Guide. This all seemed normal to me at the time but in retrospect I was a "TV baby". The television was always on in my house and only turned off when we went to bed but some in my family liked to sleep with the television on. I stopped living like this around 1980 when I turned 16. By the 1990s everyone had their own TV in their room and the idea that we would all sit down together in the living room to watch television was old fashioned. But we sometimes still did when it was serious news, Super Bowl or weather alerts.
I got to meet Duncan Renaldo (Cisco Kid) in 1959. He had a really cool horse.
I remember the first time I realized that commercials were kinda fake. I saw a G.I. Joe tank on a morning cartoon and begged my parents to get it for me. At the end of the summer after mowing the lawn all summer they bought it for me. Probably $10. Anyways it wasn't remote controlled like I thought it was in the commercial. Was quite a disappointment
Tea left teapots and started coming in little bags. Quick brew on station break.
As an elder Millennial (I’m 42) I absolutely grew up on cable tv. Still watch it, but not like I used to. Now it is one of the apps usually.
You know, nobody ever seems to notice how good the video editors were back then.
Nice work, David. At age 5 I saw the Beatles on Sullivan, and I watched Wyatt Earp in the early/mid-'60s when a local station aired reruns of it in the afternoon.
When I was in elementary school they would wheel a projector into the classroom and show us 16mm educational films, many of which were made in the '50s and looked just like the doc you've included in this vid. For us this was a treat, regardless of what the film was about. Plus, it got us out of doing classwork. Very cool that THIS doc inspired you to pursue your career. 😎
YES
I'm at the end of the baby boomers and I watch maybe two hours of television a week mostly the X-Files reruns and days like today when it's hot as heck out I'll watch YouTube. Until I was disabled I would have been outside in the morning and at night when it wasn't so hot out, now I unfortunately spend a lot of time on YouTube when I'm not with retiree friends
Did radio have an affect on the greatest Generation?, Did the Telephone have an effect on the Lost Generation? How about the telegraph, and of course smoke signals. On smoke signals it's important to get the little curl at the bottom just right or you can screw up a whole paragraph. And lastly is the knee bones connect to the shin bone?
I watched everything you mentioned in the video and I think people would be surprised to find out Elvis was only filmed from the waist up due to his gyrations. These were some weird times. loved every minute of them.
Right from the start TV was phenomenal! Very powerful and exciting for a long time, it's amazing to think David that you were there from the beginning, even watched as it evolved into such a powerful force, and in your profession you personally helped shape a portion of it! (How cool is that?) But sadly looks like we're all here for its decline, and ultimately I think it's done way more good than harm, can't imagine where any of us would be today without it? But I suppose the future holds something very different, hopefully we're off to bigger & better! 😊📺📺☮✌
There is a REASON why it is called TELEVISION 📺 PROGRAMMING!!! It is designed to get inside of your mind and INDOCTRINATE you to accept the agenda and narrative that the "powers that be" want you to think is true!!!
As a kid, I loved having a tv even though it was black and white. After school,I was outside playing but Saturday mornings were the showsI loved. And tv was free then but only 4 stations. Like you, I loved The Lone Ranger! I saw places too I'd never seen before. I watched tv with my dad whereas my mom didn't. I loved the ending of Walt Disney. Watched baseball with my dad– he started taking me to live baseball games and still love baseball to this day. Notice that every single tv show had a tune to go with the beginning? I had World Books but tv taught me much! So many shows then were live. As a teacher I had to learn how to thread a film projector and worse was the filmstrip projector that got overheated way too much! And those films were old even then. Having a VCR in my room was used only for certain things as was the tv. Technology has proressed so much– maybe to the point that I miss how it was from the get go.