When TV Came to Town

Written by George Gilbert Lynch

Today, with the push of the remote control button, we can select most anything in the world we want to see. But in the early years of television in Bakersfield, it was not all that easy.

The few fortunate owners of TV sets in Bakersfield in 1947 was reminiscent of the owners of the first automobiles: the ride was exciting after all the pitfalls of getting it started and keeping it running.

Problems quickly arose. Bakersfield had no TV stations to transmit a signal at that time. Los Angeles had begun broadcasting KTLA channel 5 in 1947 and everyone thought it could be viewed only in the Los Angeles Basin. It was discovered here by chance! The VHF signal from channel 5 bounced along the Tejon Pass Mountains like radar and if your home was in the right place in Bakersfield, KTLA channel 5 from Los Angeles could be seen on your TV set.

TV owners in La Cresta and other high ground areas could receive channel 5 if they purchased a big, powerful 7- to 10-inch receiver along with a list of expensive accessories needed to capture the “ghost signal” from the mountains including a massive 8-bay antenna towering up to 100 feet above the home, a rotator motor on the antenna to position it perfectly toward the signal, and lastly, two to six signal booster boxes to amplify the ghost signal enough to see a fuzzy picture. Over $1,000 could be spent just to be able to see a snowy channel 5.

My future wife lived in La Cresta at this time and her family’s 7-inch picture tube, Hoffman set, had neighbors gathering nightly in their living room to watch new family entertainment. They were the most popular family on the block...even if most guests brought binoculars to be able to see the little screen.

The expense of installing a TV system was justified in the next year, in 1948, because two more Los Angeles channels began broadcasting. This prompted hundreds of locals to consider buying a TV set. Some parts of Bakersfield could not receive the ghost signals, so electronics stores would furnish a free test of your property to find out if it was “dead” to the TV signals. They had trucks equipped with an extendable antenna mast that could find the right size of antenna you needed, as well as the height it should be placed. Their slogan was “Try Before You Buy.”

The year 1949 saw two more Los Angeles channels added: channel 4, KNBH; and channel 7, KECA. The average picture tube had now grown to 15 inches and the big 8-bay antennas were springing up all over town as Roller Derby, Wrestling, Time For Beany, and Hopalong Cassidy movies began to cut down local drive-in theater and dance hall attendance.

We bought our first TV in 1952 from Ward’s Department Store.

It had a tuner that received channels 2 through 13 (the norm at the time) and we could get most Los Angeles channels with our 75-foot, 8-bay antenna. Remote controlled tuners were years down the road at this time but we were so thrilled to have so many channels that it was nothing at all to manually tune the set. Within a year, in August of 1953, KBAK UHF channel 29 came to Bakersfield. In order to receive this new channel, I had to buy two more accessories: a UHF local antenna and a UHF converter box, to add to the half dozen other boxes already on our console’s top. A month later, local VHF channel 10 KERO began broadcasting in town.

Those early TVs used a bunch of vacuum tubes that lit up like a Christmas tree inside the cabinet, putting out a lot of heat and consuming great amounts of electricity (transistors and chips were a few years down the road). The tubes needed constant replacement and TV repairman pickups became as common on our streets as pizza delivery cars are today.

I, like many others, bought TV repair books and did my best to keep the family entertainment center in working order.

Most markets and drug stores had a “do-it-yourself tube testing instrument” for the man who wanted to try to fix his own TV. They also had tubes for sale if one of mine tested weak. Many times before a big game was to be telecast, I had to stand in line at the tube-checking machine to try to make my set function. Later on, I learned to save all the old tubes from junked-out TV sets for reserves. With spare tubes, I could keep switching tubes until the TV started working. In time, I amassed boxes filled with tubes.

No additional TV stations came to Bakersfield for six years until KGET channel 17 began broadcasting in 1959. Now about this time, thousands of big, tall antennas covered Bakersfield like an aluminum forest, because everyone wanted to receive all the Los Angeles channels as well as local stations. I recall a severe windstorm about this time that bent over or toppled nearly all the big antennas in the county. But nobody replaced them because the three local channels could be picked up with rabbit ear antennas.

We finally bought our first hi-tech, tubeless, transistorized, color set and I threw away my boxes of spare tubes, condensers, and console top control boxes, lead in wiring, multiple weird antennas, and all my TV repair manuals, but I still have good memories of those pioneering days of the first TV sets.

With today’s hi-tech electronics, it’s cheaper to replace the whole set than to attempt a repair.

Back in the ‘50s, we laughed when someone mentioned paying a fee to watch TV, but in 1966, the first pay-cable company came to town and the rest, as they say, is history.

Copyrighted by George Gilbert Lynch, July 2, 2007

Article appeared in our 26-4 Issue - October 2009