My wife horrifies the grandkids, telling them about growing up in Rio without TV. For myself, I always remember having the old Dumont (see comment above), but they can’t believe my older brother also had no TV, here in the USA, until after I was born. They are also incredulous when I told them about my hand-held device that would “download” music free, without any gig limits. We called it a transistor radio. They would be hysterical if I told them I looked up “incredulous” in a dictionary, rather than Googling it.
We had the three networks plus PBS (no one watched). Our old Dumont floor cabinet didn’t tune to UHF, not that there was anything there. But it did have the FM radio band we had to skip through, between channels 6 and 7, as we hand-turned the dial. Settling that dial properly on 3, 6, or 10, the network stations, was an art. We also had a separate AM radio selector. If we were bored watching TV, the cabinet had a low-fidelity, 3-speed, record changer. My idiot brother emptied (i.e., destroyed) the insides in the seventies so he could make it into a planter in his apartment.
Dr. Asher’s book, “Mellow-Speak”, produced the funniest Doonesbury strip ever. (May 16, 1979).