Hey, hey we're the Monkies!

The early 70's Saturday morning TV show 'The Monkies' is retro proof positive people will watch what ever kind of junk the networks decide to put in front of them (hard to believe the net-work execs thought that would be a good idea-"Hey, let's find 4 average looking Goobers with not much real talent and make a ridiculous 30 minute Saturday morning TV show that kids will watch. It'll work as long as one of them has a British accent and....." etc etc).
Growing up in Rolla in the 60's and 70's, we had an excuse for watching that kind of stuff: we only had 2 TV channels and sometimes only 1, depending on the weather.
KMOU TV-8 out of Springfield (an ABC affiliate) had some decent shows like 'Danial Boone', 'Wild Kingdom', and 'Ricochet Rabbit', but wasn't reliable for watchable reception. For some reason, KOMU showed up on our "set" on both channel 8 and 3. Ocassionally, we'd switch from channel 8 to 3 and pretend we had 3 channels to choose from instead of just up to 2.
Regardless of the time of day or the weather, we could always count on good reception from good old KRCG TV-13, a CBS affiliate out of Jefferson City, Mo (Jeff if you were a local). KRCG carried all the real good cartoons like 'The Jetsons' and 'The Flintstones' (the real Jetsons and Flintstones-not the ones you watch today with the voice folks who sound kind of like the originals), along with shows like 'Mannix', 'All In The Family', and 'Gunsmoke'.
When we faked being sick and stayed home from school, we could watch game shows like 'The Price Is Right', 'Hollywood Squares' and 'The $10,000 pyriamid' ($10,000 back then was about the average annual salary of people who had a good job). You could also watch the nightly news with Walter Cronkite and once a week or so, a 2 hour movie like 'The Birds' or 'The African Queen'.
Although it would have been nice while we were growing up to have had a few hundred choices for TV viewing like we have today, I'm glad we didn't. If we had, I might never have learned how to throw a baseball, ride a bike, or play Red Light Green Light. I'm sure I would never have been involved with the neighborhood kids in digging underground forts, damming up the creek or chopping down trees to build a log cabin. And with several hundred TV channels at our disposal, I'm sure my friends and I would never have found the time to carry that old toilet all the way up the road to set it on Mackman's front porch, ring the door bell, and run like scalded dogs for the safety of the near-by woods. And had we been inside all day and night watching TV, the Mackmen's probably wouldn't be thinking today, "I wonder what ever happened to those little bastards who lived down the road and left that old toilet on our front porch that time? They're probably in prison....watching old re-runs of 'The Monkies'"!