Mormons are proud to point out that it was Philo T. Farnsworth, a Mormon, who invented television. No one could be more proud of that fact than me, the son of a television broadcast engineer.
My dad felt personally responsible for the quality of the television picture on Channel Five. When he watched TV, he turned the sound down so he could concentrate on the picture better. If something didn’t look right to him, he called KSL-TV and said, “This is Bill. It looks like you need to adjust the colorbust just a hair.” The engineers on duty must have dreaded his calls.
We were the first on our block to get a color TV, back in the early 60s. There were so many good shows on in those days. Even now so many old shows keep coming back as re-runs, and are re-run and re-run over and over.
I lived in such an imaginary world then -- like all kids -- that TV
was real to me. When Lassie swam across the lake to warn somebody of impending danger, I jumped up and down on the couch. “Come on, Lassie, you can make it in time!” I believed that the whole drama was being played out inside my TV set at that very moment.
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