Telivision

I find myself glued to the television screen, listening and watching all of the news broadcasts about the Presidential election. This year the news is so compelling, that I'm even changing my eating habits just to make certain I don't miss a TV news broadcast.

I haven't always been so involved in either TV news or programming.  There have been long periods in my life that I didn't pay attention to either, but I must admit there were several instances where I became momentarily addicted. 

One of the instances was President Nixon's 7 day visit to China in 1972.  I had just purchased a large cabinet television with a larger size screen than I had been used to and images of Nixon and his wife, Pat meeting Mao Zedong, and traveling to three cities, Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai and visiting factories and schools were certainly intriguing! 

Of course watching Watergate on television was a mesmerizing experience.  What more can I say?  Even reading the history of that time is still a mesmerizing experience.

When the O J trial took place, I tried not to miss any of the televised part.  At that time I was driving from Texas to California.  Since I wasn't in a hurry, I scheduled my motel stops so that I could watch the trial on TV in the afternoons. 

Television is such a part of daily living now that I have to laugh when I remember what is was like the first time I saw TV.  My husband and I had just returned that day from 3 years in France and before traveling on to Philadelphia, we stayed overnight with my sister and her husband in New York. 

They were living with her husbands parents and after dinner we watched television, which my husband and I had never seen.  There was wrestling and every so often there would be a break in the action while someone would advertise a product.  The advertisements were for different products each time and then wrestling would continue. 

The TV screen was a small square on the side of a small box and looked very much like a regular movie, only smaller.  I was used to watching a movie all the way through, so the breaks in action didn't seem to make much sense.  It made the pleasure of watching a wrestling match a dis-jointed experience.  Little did I realize that television was going to be the most important medium for advertising of any kind!
By 1952 this medium was used for a presidential election and has been so for every presidential election since.