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Daktari
1966 · TV series · 60 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Ivan Tors, Art Arthur
Daktari is an American children's drama series that aired on CBS between 1966 and 1969. The series, an Ivan Tors Films Production in association with MGM Television, stars Marshall Thompson as Dr. Marsh Tracy, a veterinarian at the fictional Wameru Study Centre for Animal Behaviour in East Africa.
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My mom read books during the day when my dad was at work. She'd tell my dad how hard she worked all day :-)
I'd look over her shoulder and wonder how she made any sense out of the page full of text, as there were no pictures. I was fascinated by that, and was well motivated to learn to read.
I was not allowed to watch TV beyond Daktari and Saturday morning cartoons. I hated that restriction, but in hindsight my parents made the right call. My dad would watch the news, but it was just gibberish to me.
Later, I was not allowed to watch Green Acres. My parents said it was "rubbish". I did not see an episode of it till I went to college, and eagerly watched to see what I had been missing. I lasted 10 minutes - it was indeed rubbish.
A lot of people simply turned the TV on as background. It doesn't mean they were watching it.
I remember daytime TV in the 60s. Jack LaLane's exercise show, aimed at bored housewives. You had to be desperately bored to watch that. There were daytime soap operas, about as interesting as watching paint dry (they were aimed at bored housewives). Then there were variety shows the local TV stations themselves produced aimed at preschool kids. Like the Krusty the Clown show on the Simpsons. The shows were just a camera pointed at a stage and the host tried to figure out something to do. I bet those shows are all lost from being taped over. There were talk shows, which were very cheap to produce. Game shows, which I never understood the attraction of.
The better stuff was prime time evening. I liked Daktari, but that was a half hour once a week. Movies were very rarely shown. The evening news 30 minutes was popular.
When Star Trek TOS appeared, that was amazing. Even my very skeptical dad actually said it was good.
It's not that I didn't want to watch TV all the time. I did. But there was very little to see on it. Much more fun to go outside and meet up with the neighborhood kids and do kid stuff.