TFTP Will Be Back After These Messages: Commercials for TV Guide (1950s/1960s/1969/1980-81)

Posted to YouTube by user 'tapthatt2012' (first & third clips) and 'Diamond Pleshaw' (second clip)

TV Guide was once the most popular magazine in America. As a testament to just how central television was to American culture through the late-1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, TV Guide magazine had the highest circulation of any magazine in the country. This, of course, was an era before onscreen interactive program guides or availability of TV schedules via the Internet (not to mention before such things as DVRs and video-on-demand). Apart from daily or weekly listings in newspapers, if people wanted to have a schedule of TV programming, they had to rely on TV Guide.

These TV Guide commercials span this period of the late-1950s through the 1970s. We begin (in the first clip) with a one-minute spot from the early-1960s that extolls the virtues of TV Guide and gives some visual examples of the subjects covered in that era. Then, a series of shorter spots shows actor Michael Ansara from "Broken Arrow" in circa 1957, the stars of "Naked City" from circa 1960, and writer-director of "Noah's Ark" (and "Dragnet") Jack Webb from circa 1956.

In the succeeding clips are some additional TV Guide ads from 1969 and the early-1980s. First, a 1969 ad featuring Glen Campbell, who had one of the biggest shows that year with his "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour", a huge variety show hit. Finally, a couple of ten-second ads from 1980 and 1981, the first highlighting the new Fall 1980 TV season, the second the Ronald Reagan presidential inauguration.