Clintonville

Let’s visit TV’s good(?) old days

(This is the start of a book, “TV, and How It Got That Way.” It will emerge here, one chapter at a time.)
To see how far TV has come, let’s step back a bit.
We’ll go to 1952 in Clintonville, a Wisconsin town of 4,600, known for big, tough trucks and (back then) big, tough football players.
I’m in the living room with my sister, our parents, a grandmother and a grandfather. Stationed a reasonable distance from the TV set, we are watching … well, a man playing records.
The man says what record he’s playing and starts it. Sometimes, the camera shows the record going around; sometimes it shows the man watching the record go around. Read more…

Here are Wisconsin’s best and worst

This will be a week that shows the best and the worst of my Wisconsin homeland.
The best, of course, are the Green Bay Packers (shown here with Aaron Rodgers). They host a game at 6:40 p.m. ET Jan. 12, just two steps from the Super Bowl.
And the worst was Joe McCarthy. He was my senator when I was growing up; he was also someone whose lies desroyed lives. A PBS profile (9-11 p.m. Jan. 6) gives full details. Read more…