It all began unceremoniously, as a test pattern became visible on a television set Oct. 15, 1949.

That test pattern, on one channel only, was the only thing the few people in the Tulsa area who owned television sets could see for 45 days. KOTV Channel 6 didn’t broadcast its first real program until airing a Tulsa Chamber of Commerce meeting, filmed at the Tulsa Club, on Nov. 30 that year.

Viewers could get only one station, KOTV, for five years. But in 1954, the television explosion began that would eventually allow Northeastern Oklahoma viewers to choose from a myriad of channels, through cable or satellite broadcasting.

Next up was KTUL Channel 8, which pushed its ratings by airing the first game of the Oklahoma Sooners, then coached by the legendary Bud Wilkinson, in fall 1954. KVOO, later KTEW and now KJRH, Channel 2, aired its first show, a broadcast of “Meet the Press,” Dec. 5, 1954. The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority’s station, KOET, began broadcasting on Channel 11 following funding from a 1959 legislative appropriation.

Though many people couldn’t get its signal because UHF stations weren’t manufactured until 1954, KOKI Channel 23, began broadcasting in March 1954. Viewers could buy UHF adapters for their sets. Tulsa’s second UHF station, KGCT Channel 41, didn’t begin broadcasting until 1981.

Television sets were distributed to stores so people could get their first glimpse of the new, albeit fuzzy, black-and-white miracle. Though they were considered a major investment at the time, many people decided they couldn’t live without them and took one home, into their living rooms. Families gathered, spellbound, to watch such classics as “I Love Lucy” or “Father Knows Best,” on their sole black-and-white set.

People who didn’t grow up in front of the tube remember how they saw it for the first time.

Dorothy Crawford of Tahlequah got her first taste at Purdy’s Sports Shop.

“I was walking down the street and all these people were gathered around there,” she said. “I had never seen a TV before. All the people were blurry. The first show I saw was the Lone Ranger.”

She still likes the adventures of the Masked Man, Silver, and Tonto, as well as other classic TV Westerns such as “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” and “The Rifleman.”

Her friend, Pat Wilson, shares her taste for the Western dramas. She also went without TV in her home for a while.

“We’d go to the grocery man’s house on the corner and watch television. Finally, my dad bought us a TV,” she said.

Many people who had worked in radio news transferred their writing experience to the new medium. The first shows were unsophisticated, by today’s standards, with bulky film or kinescope cameras and newscasters reading from typed sheets of copy.

Those newscasters, by the way, were white males. When women did get a place on television, they were relegated to “soft news” pieces because their voices and personalities were considered incompatible with serious news. Even women such as Barbara Walters, later to develop a reputation as a tough interviewer, gained their early television experience doing “puff pieces” with household or fashion themes.

And if a person with a black face worked at a station, he was probably pushing a broom. Minority on-camera people didn’t get a chance until after the civil rights movements had broken many barriers for them.