The magic box
A Lad’s first experiences with Television in the Seventies
Television came to Australia in 1956. In 2022, we have flat screens running the latest OLED technology at 8k with mind-blowing clarity and streaming services. We take this on-demand technology for granted today.
You may be surprised to know that I grew up without television. Television was a magic box that popped up in my life as a grown-up. This is that story, starting in Sri Lanka and then extending to Dubai.
My first experience with television was well before television was introduced in Sri Lanka, where I was born. A massive international summit, a pride to the country, was to be hosted on the island. To beam the summit to worldwide audiences, the government authorised limited television transmissions for the duration of the summit. The broadcast was restricted to major news agencies and the conference hall.
The locals had no television sets, and there was no in-country transmission technology. Television was a novel concept, only experienced by those who travelled overseas.
To my luck, I was a budding techie working in the international division of the telecommunication agency tasked to deploy the new technology for the summit. I watched as my senior colleagues fiddled with screens in their test labs. It was a novel whiz-bang experience, images on flickering displays on magic boxes. It was an out-of-this-world experience for this lad.
A year later, I left Sri Lanka and landed in Dubai. Suddenly, televisions were everywhere, in glorious colours, wherever I looked. In the lobby of the hotel where I worked, in the restaurants and in my friend’s apartments. Every house had one. Famous brands Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Akai, JVC and Mitsubishi were sold in glittering shops. It was so different to where I came from, Sri Lanka. I was fascinated with the magic of television.
In Dubai, owning a television set was not a luxury. I watched popular sitcoms in my friend’s apartments. Gilligan’s Island, Some mothers do ‘ave ’em and Man about the house. I laughed my guts out watching these comedies. In the afternoons, I became a kid again in front of the magic box, watching children’s cartoons, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo. The evenings were the time for action shows, Charlie’s Angels, Six million dollar man and The bionic woman. Everybody loved the stars of these popular shows, Farah Fawcett, Lindsay Wagner and Lee Majors. They were household names for budding youngsters in Dubai.
I got up at four am to watch Muhammed Ali fighting his opponents, beaming live from the US, another magic experience. Ali was the epitome of a boyhood hero to many, myself included. Seeing him beating his opponent was the ultimate joy.
Meanwhile, a new government came to power in Lanka. Liberalising the country, it planned to introduce television. I wanted my family to enjoy television just like me in Dubai. I spent an entire month’s pay and bought a television set, taking it with me during my visit to Sri Lanka. A much-coveted Sony Trinitron TV, the biggest one could get at the time, a 22-inch model. It cost me an arm and a leg, but that was fine. My parents deserved the very best from their son.
In Sri Lanka, customs charged a hefty duty on the TV. When it arrived, transmissions were yet in the testing phase. Formal all-island transmissions were a few months away.
My television set was the eighth television set ever imported into Sri Lanka. Back then, a special licence was required to watch television. Government inspectors randomly visited homes to check TV licence permits when owning a TV was considered a luxury.
Back in Dubai, I thrived on my fascination with the magic box. Dubai’s channel 33 launched, and it instantly became trendy. I watched the weekly episodes of Columbo, and Starsky and Hutch, among my favourite detective and action shows. Watching a comedy after work was a great stress buster. I became addicted to the comedies Fawlty Towers, George and Mildred and The Jeffersons. The British comedies were the best; their dry sense of humour was rib-tickling, out of this world.
At home in Sri Lanka, having a television set became a community service for my family. When the weekly movie was shown on the only TV channel in the country, my parent’s home became a mini cinema hall for the entire neighbourhood. Our family hall was re-arranged, and chairs converted to cinema seats. By 8 pm, most of our neighbours and children were in our house seated, waiting for the magic show to commence. Children sat on the ground on mats. For them, that was a hypnotic moment. My mother’s job was to serve tea to the neighbours in between commercial breaks. The weekly movie finished 3 hours later, around 11 pm.
My kid brother must have found it hard to get to school the next day.
Those were the magnificent days of magic boxes, despite the stark contrast between Sri Lanka and Dubai.
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