Rambling about TV history

lee4hmz

I notice we don't have a thread to just ramble about TV minutiae, and I don't want to clog up the logos thread with it, so here goes...

I was thinking about the Nickelodeon "silver ball" era earlier today, and I can see why it'd be a bust. Nick was a fledgling network at the time, but they decided to take the high road and make a semi-premium network with lots of Shows Adults Think Kids Like. I was a TV geek, so I probably would have loved the presentation and even liked some of the edutainment shows (several of which were grandfathered into the Frederator era), but an average 7-year-old in 1981 would have been like "Ugh, if this is what they're offering, I'm going back to my Scooby-Doo".

Changing from the glossy, HBO-wannabe graphics to the much cooler, MTV-ish"doo-wop" style helped a lot.

Anonus

It did!

lee4hmz

What's hilarious about this is that the FCC fell into the same "Shows Adults Think Kids Like" trap with the E/I mandate years later. Naturally, most of those shows are written for preschoolers and kindergarteners...older kids and tweens won't touch them.

lee4hmz

The ones on commercial TV, at least. I don't know how they do it, but the PBS shows seem to balance educational and informational content with a presentation that isn't deadly boring really well.

lee4hmz

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1e2wow_z-bec_lifestyle

I  actually have a tape here with a copy of that same commercial from WTTG.

Anonus

some commercials are just so dry

lee4hmz

That one's kind of amusing in its dryness, though.

lee4hmz

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg0oav_ford-1984-compilation_auto

Ford really wanted the Tempo to do well, it seems. This is better than the early ads....they had more to say about the computer running the engine than the car itself!

lee4hmz

Ford had just finished the EEC-IV system, and 1984 was the first year for it in most of their cars. A few applications got it in mid-1983, and trucks didn't get it at all for years. It was a huge deal at the time; the thing had Intel Inside (not even kidding). 

lee4hmz

I have a TV going at the server rack while I do some sysadmin stuff, and the logos on Antenna TV's prints of Father Knows Best are still all over the place. The one that went off at 3:30 ET had the 1987 LBS logo on it still!

Anonus

Does Sony own that show?

lee4hmz

Yes, it was a Screen Gems production.

Anonus

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1995-09-17/business/9509150363_1_warner-bros-cartoon-network-time-warner

Cartoon Network was - perhaps unsurprisingly for the Time Warner of 1995 - part of the reason that they wanted to buy Turner

The Time Warner of 2014 barely cares about Looney Tunes or Cartoon Network...

Anonus

Also, Bugs's agent wasn't asking for $400,000 an episode because he died in 1989.

lee4hmz

Yeah, I seem to remember that being a key factor mentioned back then. Now it seems they just want to milk the HBO and TBS cash cows, and pawn off CN to the highest bidder.

Anonus

I'm waiting for Jeff Bewkes to just throw up his hands and liquidate the company

Because (other than ABC Inc) I doubt anyone has the money/is dumb enough to snap up the whole company in one piece. But then again they'd probably fetch way less than their market cap for everything...

lee4hmz

I'm watching Fantasy Island on COZI TV, and I'm preeeeeeetty sure they just Bobbitted the entire end credits. They went straight from the executive-producer card to the Sony logo. :P

lee4hmz

That or they were retyped and I just failed to notice.

Anonus

lee4hmz said:

I'm watching Fantasy Island on COZI TV, and I'm preeeeeeetty sure they just Bobbitted the entire end credits. They went straight from the executive-producer card to the Sony logo. :P

Whoop, I forgot to update the prints with a Warner Bros. Television logo

lee4hmz

And an aside about TV sets, for once: It seems Curtis Mathes actually made their own sets, at least until the original company went bankrupt in 1992. I always thought they were some sort of odd rent-to-own place. 

They built everything themselves until the 1970s, when they started using RCA and NEC chassis, and RCA, Magnavox and Hitachi tubes.

lee4hmz

I recorded some E/I shows off of WDCW a Sunday or two ago, and they are awful. In particular, the "OH WOW I'M SO COOL" announcer needs to die. You sucked on Maximum Exposure (which wasn't even a kids' show!), and you suck here too. :P

lee4hmz

Since we somehow don't have a game shows thread, and I wanted to talk about this: 

A while back, I saw someone complaining about the Steve Harvey Family Feud and how there are "too many dirty jokes" on it. Clearly, people have forgotten such bastions of morality as Match Game PM, The New Newlywed Game and pretty much anyone in the center square. :P

Anonus

I'm glad I belong to a generation that won't be hailing things like Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life as wholesome, pure entertainment

lee4hmz

Heh...I liked both those shows, but I never once said they were good for younger kids!

Anonus

I know, but still, the mindset you were describing made me think of that

lee4hmz

this is fucking awesome

lee4hmz

Okay, so, apparently Netflix has The Bells of St. Mary's up for viewing until 1 January. I decided to check it out, and lo and behold, it's an old NTA print in monochrome, probably the best one Paramount could scrounge up. NTA had this film colorised in the 1980s, though it was videotaped computer color and would almost certainly look crappy now.

lee4hmz

And the closed captioning is copyrighted 1991 by Rainbow Productions, which oddly enough still seemed to exist on paper some 20-odd years after Leo McCarey died. It also said it was made possible by Republic Pictures Corporation (oh hai thar NTA). 

lee4hmz

Since I'm thinking about it: "Only on NBC", or "Screw it, we're ripping off 'Come on Along'":

I loved this promo to death when I was 11.

Anonus

this isn't as good as the previous version but ABC REPRESENT:

Anonus

Also, note how Scooby-Doo, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Timer(?) have to make do with being costumes but Winnie the Pooh is fully animated, albeit smaller than everybody else

Anonus

But still, Hanna-Barbera has one representative, Warner Bros. has two, and Disney has one

it shows you who should REALLY be owning ABC :P

lee4hmz

My favorites of the Something's Happening series were 1987-1988 and 1989-1990, probably because they were tied to significant events (a big move in 1987, and a new school and a first crush in 1989).

lee4hmz

By the way, I read somewhere that NBC was #2 last season (2013-2014). How'd they manage that?

Anonus

Apparently, The Voice and football.

I'm pretty sure either then or during 2012-13, ABC had crashed into fourth place again.

I wonder if the people at Disney notice that ABC is dying because no sports (but of course ESPN does make more money than ABC Sports would...it's about image though)

lee4hmz

Wow, that bad, huh? Then again, I can't remember the last time I watched an ABC show that wasn't Modern Family, and they don't even own that show.

Anonus

Shonda Rhimes (who they handed their whole Thursday night lineup over to, under the name - no shit - #TGIT) seems to be partially responsible for their recovery...they seem to be doing okay again, but still no sports and a feeling that Disney just wants to be rid of ABC

lee4hmz

I wonder who they'd even sell it to at this point.

Anonus

The only company I would find to be a realistic suitor would be Hearst. They seem to have enough money and competence to run it decently, they already own several ABC affiliates, and they are Disney's partner in ESPN and A+E Networks, and have been involved with those ventures since before Disney bought ABC, and their stakes in those with it.

lee4hmz

Hmm.

Anonus

Something tells me that whoever replaces Iger (though he won't be leaving until 2018 at the earliest) WILL be dumping ABC.

Morven

I used to work for Shonda Rhimes' dad, oddly enough.  He's head of computing services at USC.

lee4hmz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipets

HOLY CRAP, I thought these were lost forever...seems FuzzyMemories saved a bunch of them.

lee4hmz

It's weird watching these old MST3k tapes and seeing ads for things like 1-800-COLLECT and Pert Plus...voice telephone service is essentially free these days unless you're forced to use a payphone, and Head & Shoulders is P&G's current cash cow, to the point that they actually sold Pert off.

Anonus

And they sold Sure deodorant off along with it...

lee4hmz

Oh, and hehehehe, the long-distance wars were still in full swing. AT&T is still around (sort of), MCI was absorbed by Verizon, and long-distance is also essentially free.

lee4hmz

Oh, wow, a "YOU WILL" ad! 

"Borrowing books from thousands of miles away" = oh hai Kindle, Google Books, etc. 

"Cross the country without stopping for directions" = Garmin, TomTom, Google Navigation 

"Sending a fax from the beach" = well, okay, email and MIME were on the verge of destroying this even in 1994, but if you need to send a fax from the Internet, I'm sure you can do it from your tablet

Calica

lee4hmz said:

Oh, and hehehehe, the long-distance wars were still in full swing. AT&T is still around (sort of), MCI was absorbed by Verizon, and long-distance is also essentially free.

Sprint was also a major player back then, weren't they?

lee4hmz

Yeah, they were.

lee4hmz

Looking at a different tape now (apparently recorded December 2002), and lolol AOL 8.0

My mom still uses AOL, though she doesn't use the desktop client anymore (thankfully...took a while to wean her off of it, too).

Anonus

is this still MST3K