Wednesday, January 13, 2010

TV'S DEBUT IN TERENGGANU

My late aunt's (Mak Long) house in Lorong 3, Kg Besut (adjacent to SMU Al-Falah) fast became the centre of curious television viewers from the neighbouring houses. It was our television set brought there from Perak when my parents decided I be left in Kemaman to continue my studies.

It was, if my memory is right, somewhere in 1964. At the time Terengganu just began getting tv services and not many folks owned a tv set at the time.

I remember seeing so many people watching tv programmes at night in my aunt's house. She graciously placed the tv set in the hall where many people could sit and enjoy the programmes.

Many funny incidents happened during these tv viewing sessions. I do not mean to make fun of them, but just to highligh the realities back then.

One came from my grandmother. She was puzzled seeing cartoon series for the first time that she asked,"Where are these people from?"

"Wan, there are not people. They are cartoons," replied Zaimah, my cousin.

We all burst into laughter and so too my grandma.

At the time there a was long family drama that was liked by all of us, including my aunt and my grandma. It was Peyton's Place. Despite them not understanding a word of English, they knew the storyline and even knew the characters by name, names like Norman.

There was also this girl by the name of Zaitun, the same age as me, but she studied in an English medium school. She was so uppity that she thought that she was the only one there who understood English. More than once we got ourselves in heated debates about the meanings of some words in certain series.

Little that she knew even at the time, my English was quite good, perhaps better than hers.

That time it was still black and white. My favourite series included Dangerman, The Fugitives, Honeywest, Peyton's Place, The Saint, High Charparral, All in The Family, etc.

3 comments:

Martin Lee said...

I remember only watched ultraman, flintstones and a different kind of Tarzan that commanded a dinosaur and the name sounded like O-O-La! The little land on the prairie seems to be in the early 70with a little girl running down the prairie with small flowers all over the place.
I remember the theme song of RTM before the news was broadcasted! The song " Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa" was popularly aired too. Later part was the bintang RTM and now I never watch RTM anymore!

azahar said...

What about Bonanza, the longest running cowboy series or any series for that matter?

Then in the 80's there was this western series, How The west was Won...I was drugged to this series...the McCahans...

Another western that I liked was The Centennial...sort of the history of US...

RTM? Well it has to be completely overhauled, in term of equipment, technology and people behind it to compete with TV3, TV7, etc

azahar said...

Aha! One more programme that was favourite among many, including my grandma, aunty...guess what?

Combat...you know that series where the American won all the time!