It's probably pretty easy to explain it to somebody from the 80s.
"Remember that discussion we had about phones? Yeah, so TVs are kinda like that except they're really big so we stick them in a room instead of taking them with us".
One of my best scores at Radio Shack in the late 1980s was an LCD TV. The screen was about 2.5", black and white. It was powered by 4xAA or AAA batteries. It featured a single-knob tuner, an FM-like telescoping mast antenna, a speaker, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The screen would snap down for carrying, and it was reflected for viewing in a mirror, so it required a strong light from above to shine through the LCD panel. There was an accessory backlight with its own batteries to snap on top.
It had a pocket-size form factor, and I carried it around to Disneyland so we could watch TV while we waited in line, and it could receive any OTA TV channel in VHF or UHF.
I kind of miss that little guy!