It took a long time for television to make it over the mountains and through the woods to our house on Yuma Trail in Bisbee, Arizona. In this case, the “mountains” would be the Mule Mountains and the wood in question would be the scrub oak that grows on them.
Historical note about scrub oak. When mining first came to the area in the late 1800s, the surrounding hills were denuded of trees as they were cut down for firewood that was used in miner’s homes and in keeping the smelter fires burning. Scrub oak is a slow-growing tree. When I was a kid in Bisbee, the next generation of those downed trees consisted of little more than bushes. I know, because as kids we used a grove of those as a fort from which we fired my brother’s Red Ryder BB gun. (No, no one ever got an eye put out, but more on that later.)
The nearest TV stations were in Tucson–a hundred miles away. By the time the signals reached Bisbee, they were so weak that even with an antenna on the house, what mostly appeared on television screens were blurry, snowy images that were barely decipherable. Enter a guy named Carl Morris.
He was an entrepreneur who came to Bisbee and started a radio station–KSUN. (No, it is not the same station as the one broadcasting from Phoenix these days.) KSUN was a small town radio station with small town programs that featured local announcers and DJs. Father Howard’s mass from St. Patricks church was broadcast every afternoon, and the choir anthem and sermon from the Warren Community Church came on the air at 11:30 every Sunday morning.
So, despite the fact that Mr. Morris owned the radio station, he was smart enough to see that television would be a game-changer. For a while he was in both the radio AND the television business. He created a cable company that captured the Tucson-based TV signals on antennas located on Juniper Flats, the high point in the Mule Mountains. Then he used wires to bring those captured signals down into town. Suddenly whole families in Bisbee could gather in their living rooms to see whatever was on that night–I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, Maverick, River Boat, the Ed Sullivan Show, and the Garry Moore Show.
I notice that there’s a heavy preponderance of Westerns in that list, and I confess straight out that those were always my favorites. I’ve always loved stories, and those were the storytelling programs. Back then there was only one television set per household, and the idea of DVRs or TIVOs were decades away. In other words, what was on was what was on. Period.
There were nine people in our family. It wasn’t exactly a democracy. My parents were co-captains of the family ship. We kids could vote, but if we happened to be on the opposite side of the fence from what the parental units wanted to see, good luck with that.
Which brings me to Sunday nights way back then. There was no debate at all about the Ed Sullivan Show. We sat on my mother’s long “sectional,” lined up like so many birds on a branch, watching that in silent unison. But when we hit eight o’clock? That was the dividing line. River Boat was on one channel and Maverick on the other. I was the lonely voice in the wilderness who thought Darren McGavin was the cat’s meow. Everyone else was in favor of Bret and Bart Maverick, Guess which show we watched? You’ve got it–Maverick. I admit that James Garner grew on me over the years, and Darren McGavin has his revenge. Maverick is over, but we still watch Darren McGavin in that Red Ryder BB Gun movie, A Christmas Story, every single year.
What provoked me back then and the question I asked myself over and over was this: Why do television networks put all the good shows on at the same time?
They did it then, and they still do. In those days September marked the end of summer reruns and the beginning of fall TV, and that was something people looked forward to. When new programs came on, some of the commercials, which could NOT be skipped, featured previews of the “next year’s cars.” Now, they’ve muddied the scheduling waters so much with mid-season reruns that I’m not sure there is a real television season any more.
This week I read an article about how programs not aimed at the 18-25 market are scarce as hen’s teeth. We’re a good fifty years older than that. Longmire, anyone? That’s one’s long gone. Harry’s Law? That’s gone, too. But I notice that of the television programs we “golden-agers” might still enjoy, three of them have now been scheduled at the same time–Monday at ten o’clock.
No problem, at least not for us. We’re old enough that staying up until eleven no longer seems like such a great idea. As a result, we’ll take our discretionary income and go to bed after setting our downstairs recorder to tape two of the programs and the upstairs recorder to tape the third. The next day we’ll watch ALL of them without having to endure even a SINGLE commercial aimed at the eighteen to twenty-five demographic or mind-set.
Take that, you evil network programmers. We may be old, but we vote. With our clickers.
And better than DVRs is Youtube and programs you can watch right on the station’s website like PBS’s Finding Your Roots. I can watch some of the UK’s Who do you think you are? on Youtube. It is better than the US version IMO and I have ancestors from the UK. I actually disconnected the cable to the TV because I could not get the programs I liked. Again, IMO TV should be free to anyone who can buy a TV. Because I live in an apartment complex, I cannot even use a Radio Shack antenna to get programs.
Great Article! With Longmire I have season 1 & 2 on DVD. When season 3 is on DVD I will purchase it. In the mean time I will watch season 3 on YouTube. We have Longmire and now Dallas cancelled leaving cliffhanger endings. It goes to show the powers that be, don’t care about the fans. They care only about themselves.
Great Article!
Amen, sister! I own all 3 seasons of Longmire on Amazon Prime and watch episodes COMMERCIAL FREE any time I please. I also own all your Arizona based books and love to re-read them from time to time. I may be over the age of the precious demographic, but I know how to use technology and make my voice heard.
Thank goodness for the D V R The first button I learned to push was record. .. Now
we watch at our convenience.
We grew up on an Air Force base in Northern California. We got the first T V on the block. SUNDAY nights the living room was FULL of neighbors my Mom served coffee and cake .. Ed Sullivan , L. Welk and Gunsmoke has a special place in my heart. I can remember life before technology we were so naive about life. About the world.. I enjoy your blogs on Friday Mornings, I get up eariler so I can have a cup of coffee and read your blog. Thank you…Jan
Still watching reruns of Maverick 5 days a week on Encore Westerns!
Being the oldest of 10 kids I am still amazed we had TV so early in the game. I’m sure Daddy had to wheel & deal to do that. It was an 8 incher in a big cabinet. We never did have color while I was still at home, but we did have 2 B&W televisions. They were stacked one on top of the other, sound on one, picture on the other. All the channel changing knobs seem to have been broken off, we used pliers to change the channels. A lot of my education came from TV.
Thoroughly enjoyed the history of TV in Bisbee! Thanks for sharing.
TV didn’t come to my home in Central Iowa when I was growing up because my dad said it was a fad that would never last. He finally gave in after most of us had moved away. He discovered baseball was on TV and mom loved Lawence Welk. When his show came on nothing would keep her away. She loved all of the music especially the Lemon Sisters, as we called them to upset her.
I’ve watched some of those shows on re-runs and marvel at the costumes and production. To think they did this every week.
Back in the day as a child in Wyoming, I watched Fury, Sky King, and maybe, Gunsmoke. What was around me was replicated in my limited television choices. Western values were emphasized, even when they were not the first response to situations on the screen. What is given today for consideration seems to be an ever escalating reflection of desperation , violence, and enemy is ‘them’ mentality . Voyeurism as entertainment has driven me towards seeking content that might still offer some similance to simpler Times. Reading, and books-on-tape offer a way of controlling input. The loss of programs, such as Longmire, only confirm the need for solitude. Such a shame. I do love the JA Jance books. But then, they reflect my choices for entertainment.
Great article! (and I love your J.P. Beaumont books).
When I was an undergraduate student at the University of Wyoming (in Laramie), we used to laugh ourselves sick at the things they got so wrong – one of the worst was when they had to escort a prisoner from Laramie to the penitentiary in Rawlins (where it was when I was at uni) – they went via Sheridan. Now Sheridan is in the far North of the state whereas Laramie and Rawlins are in the South, with the highway going directly between them. To make matters worse, at the time of the TV show (historically), the pen was located in Laramie.
When we first got (B&W) TV in Douglas, Wyoming, the picture was so snowy that we stuck blue cellophane over the screen to make it clear. I can remember the night the sheriff caught a mass murderer (Charles Starkweather) who had been killing people in Nebraska and Wyoming – there was a high-speed chase through the centre of town and out the highway with the sheriff leaning out of the car to shoot his rifle, finally nicking the crim in the ear and causing him to faint at the sight of his own blood (or so the story went). The sheriff was interviewed on the TV broadcast that night – as an old cowpoke, the sheriff kept picking his Stetson up from the floor to put it on and then remember he was on the box and putting it down again.
The TV show was “Laramie”, just in case people didn’t guess.
My reply to the “blue screen” comment should have been to the UWyo comment – the TV show we watched was “Laramie”.
I’ve loved your books for years, just starting JP Beaumont. Was looking up the chronology of his series and found your blog. And this article tickles my heart no end. I’ll just mention a childhood TV story: watching our TV with flickering reception north of LA, opened TV cabinet doors covered with a blanket, my brother and I ‘sharing’ the view on from a footstool under the blanket. Nudging each other for good balance. Fortunately we also learned to read early, and now we share books and movies together, almost 60 years later. Thanks for your stories and humor.
I’m glad to hear there is another “Riverboat” fan. Loved that show. Also, I really liked “The High Chaparral” although that was in the ’60s. My dad was a real history buff, and he enjoyed it, too. He thought they got a lot of the history correctly.
For Christmas, my husband got me the complete set of DVDs. The problem was that the only place where they can be legally bought is Germany. So he also had to get a PAL DVD player. Now THAT’s love!