Silver screens, golden oldies, bad memories

In the 1960s, Kiwis watched telly on black-and-white sets with viewers beholden to TV schedules. Photo / NZME.

Kids today don’t get the telly trials of their last-century parent.

Our children will never know the sweet sting of the teacher's cane across their backsides. They'll never answer a landline and, most certain of all, they won't have to wait around on the couch for their favourite TV shows to start.

To my young sons terrestrial TV is as old fashioned as a fax machine.

I tell them horrific stories of my childhood. After school we were served up cheap, boring Canadian kids shows like The Littlest Hobo, The Beach Combers and The Edison Twins. Maybe TVNZ did some bottom draw Commonwealth content deal. If shows like that popped up now kids would run screaming to YouTube. Sadly, we had no other options. Sometimes it got so bad I was forced to go outside and play.

I've tried to explain to my boys the process of recording good shows on big, black plastic rectangles full of tape so you could watch them more than once. "Why didn't you just look them up on your phone Dad?"

My son laughed in my face when I told him people used to write to I Like That One Two and ask to have short bits of other shows replayed. Nowadays, if we want to watch an orange car with a Confederate flag on the roof jump a barn, we can. We live in a better world.

The very concept of a channel confuses my 5-year-old. TV for him is Netflix, Lightbox, Redbull and Neon apps. Whatever TV shows he wants to watch are there ready to go. My 5-year-old self would have given anything for that freedom. But my son is too futuristic even for this. He prefers to watch Stampy, an annoying-voiced English man, play Minecraft on YouTube.

The idea the viewer should get themselves in front of a box ready to view when a broadcaster deems it's time to play a show, does not compute with the kids of today. They will never live their lives to a TV channel's schedule.

I still do once a day. I wait patiently on the couch for my preferred news team of Simon, Wendy and Dan to appear. At 5:55pm Friday, Chip and Buzz were keen to watch Turbo FAST, the speeding snail show on the Apple TV Netflix app. "Watch the news now Dad and get it over with so we can watch Turbo sooner," they suggested. "It's not on until 6," I replied. "Why?" they inquired. "They haven't made it yet," I told them. "Lame!" they scoffed. So they watched the snails on my phone.

Some events still justify old fashioned turn-up-when-you're-told viewing. On Saturday night my boys and I watched the Super 15 final live. Not only were they waiting on the couch for it to start, we put in hours of preparation pre game. We popped four packs of super butter popcorn, boiled 30 odd cheerios and purchased all the key chip flavours, 2 x 1.5 litres of Fanta for the kids and a box of Speight's for me. Jet-planes and Jellytips for the second half. Most importantly, two iPads so the boys could watch Stampy playing Minecraft right through the game.

We were rewarded with a great game and an heroic victory for The Highlanders. I wouldn't have missed that two hours on the couch with my kids for the world.

But that's a one-off. Everything else my boys will watch when they want and where they want. My generation was beholden to faceless TV programmers' schedules and the crappy shows they choose. In 2015 the best television of all time is being made. Silicon Valley, Vikings, House of Cards, The Late Night Big Breakfast, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to name a few and the second those shows are finished we can watch them whenever we want. Television is dead, long live watching TV shows.

I tell my children "never to answer a landline". It's usually someone old fashioned wasting your time or trying to sell you something. Same deal with the box.