media: tv

I use to believe (about 30 years ago) that when you turned the television off, the actors would all go and sit down somewhere inside the TV, until you turned it back on. Partly because it seemed like the Brady Bunch or cartoons were always on. Or maybe that's all my parents would allow me to watch.

Until I was 9, I thought shows that came on the tv were being performed at that very time. Live. So...I also thought all the bands were at the radio station.

when i was 4 i thought that when you shut the tv off, your program would stop right there where you left it, so you could come back later and continue...

but then my whole world was shattered the day my mom and i went to the store in the middle of Batman and then i came home to find the evening news running instead.

i still hate the evening news.

I used to believe that you were not supposed to laugh out loud at TV sitcoms. I think because no one laughed when there was a laugh track.

My father told me that a local TV transmitter tower was where space rockets were launched from. For years I watched the tower to see the next moon launch.

I used to think that when actors died on telly, they really died. But since I still got the concept of actors, I figured that the people who made the movies just gave the actors everything they wanted for a week, on the condition that they could kill them on film at the end.

When I found out years later that this formed the basis for snuff films, I was outraged that they'd stolen my idea.

In the U.S., televion programs are frequently aired an hour early in the Central time zone, presumably so that they may be simulcast to the east coast and the midwest. I assumed that this practice extended: when a commercial announced a show airing at "8, 7 Central", I assumed that we on the west coast would get it at 5 o'clock.

My parents never subscribed to cable, and it took me a while to figure out what it was. First I thought my mother was just mean becuase she whouldn't let me watch cable like my grandmother did. Once I figured out that we didn't get the channels, I thought it was something special that you had to live in the city to get (since I lived in the country and all my friends in town had cable). I had to be six or seven before I figured out you had to pay to get more than a couple of channels.

I believed that TV shows continued on after we watched them. I thought we only got to see an hour of their lives.

I was sure that all television stopped broadcasting when I turned off our set. I was extremely egotistical, evidently.

I thought that, when an actor kissed another actor on tv, they had to get that actor's spouse to stand in for the other actor, because it was wrong to kiss anyone other than your own spouse. I think this was inspired by an episode of Mork & Mindy somehow.

i used to believe that all television was live. and that if an actor were appearing on two shows at the same time, they were running around backstage to get to their places on different sets. i was always amazed that they weren't out of breath doing this.

I used to believe that if you stood under a satellite TV dish while someone changed the channel, you would die.

When I was a wee lad, 4 or 5, I realized that TV wasn't real, but I hadn't quite grasped make up and special effects. I wondered where they got a guy with pointed ears to play Spock, or a giant hairy thing to play Chewbacca, etc.

I used to believe that when an actor died or was killed in a TV show that they were really dead. I was always amazed to see that actor appear in a different show at a later date. "That can;t be the same guy, he died on that last Perry Mason episode".

I used to think that if you stood next to the television and looked into and past the edges of the screen, you would be able to see more of the picture, much like you can when looking into a mirror.