MOURN THE LOSS OF LOCAL TV PROGRAMING
kala
3,362 Posts
back in the day channel 5 WNET would be killin' it right about now with some Kung Fu Flicksor some crazy ass low brow monster shit like the thing with 2 headscartoons all morning and then dope flix until nightcable was heiled as some next level shit but "the people" never really got their hands on it -CLEAR CHANNEL?let me run that shitThe Groovie Ghouliesthe mighty heroesfat albert cartoonsjackson 5 cartoonsbanana splitsSOUL TRAIN 72shaw brothers/sonny chiba/bruce lee 3-7pmmod squadgreen hornetjames brown tv specialdon kirshner's rock concertsctv/snlmore monster/horror flicks
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4 reeeelzz!
In Chicago in the seventies, it was all about:
- Horror movie host Svengoolie (and later the Son of Svengoolie)
- Soul Train, Red, Hot & Blue, Soul Of The City (local TV soul dance party shows)
- Popeye With Steve Hart (local puppeteer who showed Popeye cartoons)
- B.J. & the Dirty Dragon, Gigglesnort Hotel (two local children's shows...although Gigglesnort was later syndicated in Texas)
- Jubilee Showcase (music show featuring black gospel acts)
- Rock Of Ages (gospel variety show)
- Ray Rayner and Garfield Goose (the godfathers of Chicago kidvid)
I guess cable access is the next best thing these days, although the TV guides don't list 'em...
I'm with you. This is what's really sad.
The only true local TV programming around here is channel 25, which is a freaky religious channel. I watch it just to get that flavor. And when it happens that it's a dad taking his 15 y.o. daughter out for her first deer hunt and they miss the big buck and then he prays and the big buck miraculously comes back and the daughter bags the buck, it's kinda magic.
Also astounding is the talk show hosted by that blind lady.
Officer Joe Bolton - Hosted Three Stooges clips every weekday afternoon
Captain Jack McCarthy - Usually drunk dude that hosted Popeye cartoons
Wonderama - Saturday morning kids show hosted first by Sonny Fox and later by Bob McCallister....saw the obscure band Gunhill Road on this show in the early 70's.
Sandy Becker Show - Insane guy with puppets and characters
Chuck McCann Show - same as above
Claude Kirshner & Clownie - Saturday morning kids show that features Crusader Rabbit cartoons
Diver Dan - Insane action show shot entirely in someone's fish tank.
Uncle Floyd - 70's kids style show for stoned adults
Until 1996 or so, this was what WCIU-Channel 26 (in Chicago) was like. Now they're basically like a free, 24-hr. Nick At Nite, but in the eighties and early nineties they were all about the low-budget religious and ethnic programming.
I remember all of these. Jack McCarthy used to host the St. Patricks Day parade on Channel 11 every year.
i did the all tile work in ray rahners sons house, hes an optomitrist(SP?)
he's a helluva nice guy. he had some nice stories about when his dad (ray rahner) was at WGN theyd get box seats at all the sporting events and perks like that. Hes a serious guy and a dr. i couldnt imagine him having a parent like that..
I remember going into the tape vault (read "basement") of the station I used to worked for, and along with various tapes of "Home Improvement" and "Frasier" were a lot of older shows from the 70's, along with archived news broadcasts. I live in a "small market" area, and most of these tapes are supposed to have been returned. However, most stations go through tape accumulation, and most are generally dumped, but a few are saved with the station not knowing what they have. I would assume most of the large market stations are either in the process of digitizing them or have already archived everything, but when a certain actor or actress or musician comes into town, that footage is generally saved because it has good replay value. In the DVD era, companies/producers often look for this footage and if someone has it, they will either buy it or pay a fee to use it. Unfortunately, most stations didn't see a value in a lot of it, so like recording studios, they would just run it through a bulking machine and everything was erased in seconds. That's why a lot of great television performances are lost, with the exception of a few who may have made secret dubs, or did some dumpster diving.
However, for the late night production crew at a station who may know about the tape vault, they may do a bit of hunting and may be the ones who transfer it to a hard drive and upload it to Karagarga or something. One can also go thrift store hunting and take chances on the $1 VHS and Beta tapes, hoping for some really twisted local programming. Or even something as simple as Hulk Hogan playing bass while Mean Gene Okerlund sings "Tutti Frutti", that was classic.
"Hawaiian Moving Company", "Filipino Fiesta", the Hawaiian version of "TV POWWW" with Professor Fun, "Checkers & Pogo", man.
Hold it, hold it...is this the same "TV Pow" I'm thinking of? Where a voice-activated ping-pong ball would bounce across the screen? Y'all had this too, huh! If so, Ray Rayner had that in the Chi! And among the prizes for kids who won was a 12" disco single of Robert Gillaume ("Benson" from the TV show Soap) singing "I Who Have Nothing"!
(TV Pow was this pre-video game that Ray Rayner would feature on his show in the late seventies...he'd call up some kid who sent in a postcard with their phone number, and all they had to do was say "pow" in order to get the ball to cross the screen at the right moment.)
That would be the one. There was a station in the Bay Area that was shown in Hawai'i, channel 2. Don't remember the call letters, but their slogan was "there's only one 2" (after checking Wikipedia, it was KTVU). But that's where I had seen TV POWWW first, and about a year later we had our version. Every week I entered, hoping for a chance to play, only to say "POW POW POW" a bunch of times. I believe the cut-off age was 13, so I stuffed the entry form box and still I never got a chance.
There was a point where the game was slightly different, it wasn't just that circle going around in space shooting at ships, it was a bit more technical (in a 1982 sense). But I guess sometimes it didn't work, so they went back to the old one. There was one episode where a kid played, and he thought he had the formula by doing a machine gun-styled "POWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOW" performance. It ended up only shooting 8 times in 30 seconds, Professor Fun laughed and the kid was angry that he didn't get 150 points.
Anyway, after checking Wikipedia, it says the game came from the Fairchild Channel F system. Check out the stats:
Back then, that was interactive at its best.
Well, before 976 numbers.
Known in New York as TV PIX (On WPIX-11), with little kids trying to beat the game by shouting PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX ..
It was amazing how many kids didn't have the voice power at 7 AM to get that ball 'cross the screen. More than once, you'd hear some feeble "pow," like they weren't even trying (did the time delay throw off their game?). I remember once some kid hit on the magic formula by accident - after going "pow-p-p-pow!" and seeing it work, he did it a few more times and wound up winning. I would have figured that the rest of the audience would have caught on to this and started going "pow-p-p-pow" as well, but that wasn't happening.
But nobody I know remembers it. Anyone?
Also via WPIX/Channel 11:
channel 48 in philly: creature double feature
channel 17 in philly: ultraman
RIP yes indeed
Got it
I see your 'Steampipe Alley' and I raise you with 'Weinerville'...
http://www.platypuscomix.net/fpo/history/ramblinrod.html
And Bumpity was cool too, I watched that after Davey and Goliath on Sundays...
Wow, they rebroadcast KTVU in Hawaii? Then you might also remember Bits and Pieces
Bay Area heads, activate time machine here (mp4 audio link)