tv

My mother had my sister and I *convinced* that there were only 7 child actors in Hollywood. No matter how much we protested that they all looked different, she still insisted that they were all the same actors. Let's just say that we were really confused us when we watched the Cosby Show.

To this day, I have no idea why she lied to us like that.

Dave

I used to think that the only things they were allowed to show on television on Sundays were golf and the news, because that's what my dad was always watching. I thought it was some religious thing and they weren't allowed to show anything that kids might enjoy watching.

Athazagoraphobia

I used to think when you turned the telly off the program just stopped. Therefore you could continue watching it later on by turning it back on!

Anon

I always thought that when you turned the tv off it would "pause" whatever program you were watching until you turned it bac on again.

Ben

As a southern kid in the sixties I was walking through a J.C.Pennies with my Grandmother and I saw a color television for the first time. The colors weren't as sharp as today, it was more like one dull shade each of green or blue or red. Anyway, as we passed I asked "Grandma, what kind of TV is that? She said "a color TV" which I interpreted as a "colored" TV. Walking on behind her I kept wondering why Black Folks had different TV's than Whites.

M.Dowd, San Francisco

When I was about 5 or 6 I used to think that poeple who appeared on TV used to live in the TV ariel.

Anon

As a child of around 4, my father was a TV repairman, and one day he brought home a new TV manufactured by Marconi. Soon after, a relative commented on the Marconi, and I indignantly retorted "It's not your Coney, it's Dad's Coney!"

Anon

oneday, somebody showed me how people make cartoons when i was little. pages of drawing and when u fan the pages, it creates a motion picture/cartoon. so i thereon thought that thats how TV works, you have bundles of papers with picture and it moves then quickly to make motion picture. and thats why TV looking like a big box (then the TV we had was huge) made sense. but news and live program didnt make sense to me.

naive

I use to believe that when commercials came on the actors had to always go on and do it over and over again never knew it was recorded =) And i always asked myself how come they never mess up.

Anon

When I was younger I used to think that where ever you turned off the television is where it would pick up when you turned it back on. I couldn't grasp the idea of the programs continuing after it was turned off.

jogo

I thought If you hit the T.V. with a hammer and the screen broke then what ever you were watching would come out of the t.v.

BrownSugar778

This one isn't my own...
About a year ago, my younger borther said he likes when we stay at our grandma's place, because her TV is bigger than ours. Nothing wrong with that, but his reason for wanting a bigger TV was that grandma's TV fits the whole picture on it. He didn't realise, despite growing up in a house with TV's of varying sizes, that the picture shrinks to fit on the screen.

Anon

I grew up in western Canada we got the Spokane affiliates of all the American networks. For most of my childhood I believed that while movies were made in Hollywood, all TV programs were made in Spokane, Washington.

Sandra

When I was three or four years old, I had seen an aerial view of New York City. I asked my father, a left-brained engineer, what would happen if I would "bust" into the tv. He answered that, of course, I would die. I assumed that I would be killed as a result of falling from the sky onto the concrete of New York!

Cheri M

I remember being 6 years old and watching some sitcom (Silver Spoons, maybe?) On this particular episode, Soleil Moon Frye (aka Punky Brewster) guest starred. I told my parents I hoped she got a good night sleep, because she had to wake up early the next morning to be on Punky Brewster. They laughed and tried (unsuccessfully) to make me understand that TV shows are not shown on TV as they are filmed.

Itty

When I watched PBS programs, there was always a long pause between the programs. I remembered watching my teacher rewind the movie reels in class, and stick another film on the projector. I imagined that was what was happening at the studio during those long pauses...the people in the studio were re-winding the movie, and sticking a new one on. Now that I am a broadcast technician by trade...I know what I thought was actually occuring...because TV programs back when I was growing up actually did come off of movie reels. Nowadays though, they come off of videotape. I also thought if you held a piece of videotape up to a bright enough light, you could see the pictures on it, just like on a piece of movie film

steven W

I read here how other people thought that when you turned the TV on, it started again at where you switched it off.

I believed almost the same thing. Being a rather canny 5 year old however, I knew that just flicking the on/off switch would not save my program. I used to unplug the tv from the mains electricity, to try and 'keep' the program I'd been watching.

fluss

When I was young, I knew that all the cartoon Disney features I watched were drawn by animators. When I watched grown-up movies (ie live action), I was quite surprised and wondered who could draw that well... I was about 7 when I found out that they were actually filmed.

Sheltered Child