What do you mean there was no streaming?

I Explain to a GenZer That There Were Once Only Three TV Networks

They are still trying to process the concept

“I just finished the second season of Emily in Paris and there is literally nothing else to watch.”

“That’s because you never put down your laptop. I’d like to see how you would have survived before streaming.”

“What do you mean before streaming?”

“Before you could watch anything at any time — before cable even — you just took what the Big Three offered you.”

“The big three?”

“ABC, NBC, and CBS. There were three networks. That was it.”

“It for what?”

“It for what you could watch. There were three channels. Oh, yea, and PBS. For Sesame Street.”

“Wait a second — what about Netflix? Apple TV? Hulu? There had to have been Disney, right? I mean Disney’s like, eternal.”

“There was Disney but it wasn’t its own platform. There was The Wonderful World of Disney on CBS. That’s where I saw Parent Trap and Escape to Witch Mountain.”

“Just how old is Lindsay Lohan anyway?”

“I mean the original Parent Trap with Hayley Mills. We sat on our mustard yellow sofa and watched it on our 100-pound television while we ate apples and cheese and crackers. When the show was over, we walked to the set to turn it off.”

“What about the remote control?”

“Those came later.”

“Was this like in WWII times?”

“The 1970s and 1980s”

“So, no?”

“No.”

“What was even on then? Like old movies and cooking shows and Hee Haw?”

“How do you even know what Hee Haw is?

“TikTok.”

“Of course — well there were a lot of other shows too. Happy Days and Simon & Simon and Magnum P.I. and Cheers. You know Woody Harrelson, right? He was in Cheers.”

“Sure. He was a child actor, like Selena Gomez?”

“Not really. But it’s relative.”

“How’d you even know when your show was on anyway?”

“Oh, you knew, and if you didn’t it was in the TV Guide. Which was a magazine. On paper. It was in the bathroom with the Reader’s Digest. On Friday night it was Dallas. On Saturday it was the Love Boat followed by Fantasy Island. When Roots aired as a mini-series they did an episode every night for over a week. More than half the US population watched it.”

“What’s Roots?”

“It was originally a book by Alex Haley. A reimagining of his African ancestors from Colonial times through the Civil War.”

“Oh yeah, I think I saw the remake with Jamie Foxx. Tarantino did it?”

“Nope.”

“Wait, did you say there were three networks?”

“Three main ones, yes.”

“No FOX News? What did every barbershop in America put on TV then?’’

“CNN I suppose. They came first. And there was WGN out of Chicago. I used to think the Cubs were the only baseball team around. Now there’s a slew of them. 57 channels and nothing on.”

“57 channels. That’s a song. The Stones did it, right?”

“Close enough.”

Betsy Denson, 2022

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