Quote:
Originally Posted by Celt
I'm old enough to remember when folks would happily have something like that as their only source of music entertainment.
Well, along with an AM tube table radio and one small TV set.
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In the '50s, many TVs (RCA Victor, to name one make) had phono inputs so that the audio stages could be used with an accessory 45-RPM record changer. My folks had one they used with their first TV, a 1954 RCA Victor 21" console. However, this setup and an AM radio (or an AM radio with a phonograph input and an external changer or turntable) were probably the extent of "home entertainment" for most people in the 1950s. (My Zenith C-845 AM-FM radio from 1960 has such an input and switch for an external turntable.) The only downside (that I can see, anyway) to this arrangement was that, on many if not most TVs and radios of the period, the radio-phono selector was mounted on the rear chassis apron, so to switch between radio and records one had to reach behind the set. Many RCA TVs with phono inputs, however, had the input selector combined with the volume control or a separate switch on the front panel, if memory serves me correctly.
Radio was a lot more fun (and interesting) in the '50s up to the mid-'80s. NBC had their "Monitor Beacon" weekend entertainment program (before it disbanded the radio network [decades before NBC News Radio, the current reincarnation of the NBC radio network] in 1986
), CBS had its "CBS Radio Mystery Theater", et al., plus the stations all played real music in those days, not the loud cacophony of noises that passes for music these days. Radio stations were a lot more selective as to the people they hired to play that music as well, but those days are long gone, unfortunately.
BTW, a comment was made here earlier regarding 78-RPM childrens' phonographs. I did not realize that childrens' records were ever available as 78s; I always thought most records listened to by children and teenagers by the 1950s were 45s and, later, 33 1/3 LPs -- decades, of course, before cassettes, CDs and mp3s.