They had TV shows in the 40's?

Yes, and the one family on the street who had a tv had all kinds of friends.

1. Commercial television started in the USA in 1946 (though broadcasts go as far back as the 1930s. 1946 was when "network" TV started in that country), with British broadcasting starting in the 1930s.
2. "Andy Griffith Show" is from the 1960s.
3. Popular series of the 1940s included: "Toast of the Town", "Texaco Star Theatre", "Cavalcade of Stars", "The Voice of Firestone" and "The Life of Riley" (though "Riley" didn't become a really big hit until re-runs were done after the star of the show became famous).
4. The oldest complete United States telecasts preserved at museums come from 1947. The oldest existing TV footage of *any* country comes from Germany from the Hitler era, since unlike America and the UK, the Germans made many of their very first shows on film, though sadly post-WW2 German TV itself has a poor survival record (methods to record live TV did not exist until 1947, and even few took TV preservation seriously).
5. The oldest "live" show to have a mostly complete run surviving in an archive is "The Morey Amsterdam Show", which aired from 1948 to 1950.




"It's Bucket 'o Nothing! Surprise your friends, amaze your family, annoy perfect strangers!"

I thought KUKLA FRAN and OLLIE began in '49. Berle st... er, borrowed dozens of old night club and vaudeville shtik on his show c.1948, onward.

The earliest anything I can recall watching on television were cartoons which were broadcast about 1949.

Television was in the development stage as early as the 1920's. There is a sequence in the 1927 classic Metropolis in which the Mastermind of Metropolis uses a television to check on some workers.

Bela Lugosi was in Murder by Television (1933).

To God There Is No Zero. I Still Exist.

1. Commercial television started in the USA in 1946 (though broadcasts go as far back as the 1930s. 1946 was when "network" TV started in that country)You're confusing two different things. Commercial television broadcasting in the United States began in July 1941. Regularly scheduled network television broadcasting began in 1946 (the DuMont network)

U.S. Television stations on the air in 1944:

WNBT New York, NY NBC
WCBW New York, NY CBS
WABD New York, NY Allen B. DuMont Labs, Inc.
WRGB Schenectady, NY General Electric
WPTZ Philadelphia, PA Philco
W6XAO* Los Angeles, CA Don Lee Broadcasting
W6XYZ* Los Angeles, CA Television Productions Inc.
WTZR Chicago, IL Zenith
W9XAL* Kansas City, MO First National Television

* Experimental, non-commercial

Most television programs in the 1940s were locally produced. But here is the network television schedule for 1946–1947:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946–47_United_States_network_television_ schedule

1947–1948:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947–48_United_States_network_television_ schedule

It does indeed appear I was wrong, and you are right.




"It's Bucket 'o Nothing! Surprise your friends, amaze your family, annoy perfect strangers!"

my dad brot our first tv home in the 50s I've been glued since then.