Today is the day that television stations nationwide will finally begin ending their analog broadcasts for good. It’s great news for digital technology, but according to the AP, not-so-great news for the estimated 1 million people who haven’t gotten converter boxes for their older TVs and will be left without service by the end of the day. Scary, right? So you know what that means: Call your grandparents and make sure they’ve been set up with a box (go here to get more info). Or better yet, buy them a new freakin’ TV. Don’t they deserve one?
While we’re saying farewell to analog, let’s all share our favorite rabbit-ear memories. I’ll go first: one of my earliest TV experiences was watching Happy Days reruns and being perfectly content to stand really close and hold on to the antenna just so the picture would come in a tiny bit better. How about you?
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Not just “grandmas” rely on rabbit ears.
When I was in 10 grade upn was only watchable if you where standing in the right spot. We had no Wb in my area so I had never had a chance to see a buffy first broadcast episode.the two Hour season primer of buffy season 6 was worth standing up for.
actually, rabbit ears are still needed to pick up the digital broadcast (unless you use satellite, cable, or FIOS, in which case you aren’t receiving “broadcast”)
We use to have this little TV in our kitchen and it only had one antenna. At one point we kind of bent the antenna. Not sure if the TV worked better that way, but whatevs. There were only like 5 or 6 channels I would watch on that TV anyway. It was perfect when I ate lunch during my summers off from school. Watched some really bad TV including Passions and Muary.
If you don’t know about the switchover to digital by now, get out from under that rock and talk to people.
Sorry, Casey, take a look at this:
Fact: Only grandmas rely on rabbit ears.
Thanks to the author for writing this, my grandma is dead and seeing this headline made me cry a little. Your an awful author.
Well no more TV in our house. No cable and no more outlets to plug a box into.
It’s hard to imagine, but almost every house in my neighborhood had one of those tall TV antennas on the roof. The kind that had a wire that connected to a box by the tv with a dial you rotated to make the antenna move towards the best signal…and it made a funny noise when you turned it to tune in Gilligan’s Island on channel 13 in LA!
On our old Zenith console TV (circa mid-to-late 70′s) the color would go off kilter sometimes without warning. The tint would turn reddish/orange. Getting up out of your chair and hitting the side of the TV usually fixed it. Eventually I discovered that banging the floor hard enough with your foot while seated would do the trick as well.
Plenty of Grandpa’s out there too. Stupid sexist headline.
Waah, I couldn’t figure out how to get TV and had 2 years to do it. Those who didn’t switch don’t deserve TV. I am 70 miles from TV transmitters and receive digital just fine.
The bad news about digital is that it doesn’t penetrate buildings as well as analog. That means that, unless you’re already in a very strong service area, you likely won’t be watching any broadcast TV after the switch is made. My digital converter receives about half as many digital channels on the same antenna as we used for analog. A snowy picture is a lot better than no picture.
Holding onto the antenna for better reception? Didn’t your family have any aluminum foil? Talk about being out of the loop… sheesh!
Do not worry about grandma or grandpa. The research has shown that the over 55 age group is vastly more prepared for the DTV switch than the under 35 age group.
It should be the other way around. Parents and grandparents should be calling their slacker kids and grandkids.