WHY I MISS OLD SCHOOL TELEVISION

Tweet

This note is inspired by 97.3 Classic FM’s Sly, who’s turned my Thursday Mornings into a retro trip of TV tunes and movie soundtracks, kinda like Childhood Wednesdays hosted by the incredibly gifted Chioma Okpala (and occasionally moi) back at City 105.1FM.

If you grew up in the 80s you’d share my pain and nostalgia. Nowadays, kids seem spoiled for choice with the array of shows on terrestrial and satellite Television… too much information yet not enough to remain memorable.

In my time, we anticipated… and that was sheer joy in itself. Not now when you have digital schedules and 6 hour block reruns! If you missed an episode of Voltron … sorry, on your own oh. Best believe your classmates will rub it in when retelling the show with plenty embellishment!

Television began at 4 o clock… after the long beep and colour bars which usually began around 3.30pm. You knew the kids came 1^st as soon as the Duty Continuity Announcer reeled out the list of programmes to be transmitted for the day.

I’m tempted to say that kids these days don’t really enjoy themselves as much as I did!

I had choices too but was fed in doses that made every stage of my pre-teen memorable.

I made a cape out of Granny’s wrapper, sculpted paper watches and assumed the leadership role of G-Force’s Mark, of the Battle of the Planets fame.

*transmute*

 This was long before Ben Ten’s Omnitrix even existed!

Voltron

Battle of the Planets and Voltron, helped me build my dedicated team of after-school playmates made up of the next door neighbour’s kids. As a team we came up with the most elaborate get out of trouble schemes. With one lie and four witnesses, the koboko was often kept at bay.

These kids these days *sigh* just snitch on each other over ice cream and promises of trips to the cinema!

I loved playing Natty (The New Masquerade), if the food in Zebrudaya’s (my neighbor) house was real, during our revised reruns!!!

I remember reenacting tales by moonlight… with morals in tow.

Battle Of The Planets

I wasn’t crazy about video games. I preferred the outdoors… catcher, police and thief, monkey post and a chance to steal a kiss while pretending it was a scene from yesterday’s Moonlighting episode.

The crush at the time get sense. Kiss ko, miss ni!

By the time SuperTed and the Ovide gang had taken over screen time, I was ready for boarding school and thus began the diminishing returns.

SuperTed

What I’m saying is, friendships were built on a strong foundation then and a common interest in TV shows. Somehow our sense of responsibility was built on what we watched. There was a moral obligation to build up our psyches and level of tolerance via suitably produced Television programs.

I’m still in touch with some of my childhood friends. Maybe not as much as back then, come on, we’ve grown up. But the memories stay fresh.

And I’m grateful to some people (like Sly) vested with the responsibility of reminding us of how good it used to be. Don’t get me wrong oh, there were awful memories too but as always the good ones outlive them bad ones!