TFTP Goes on Summer Vacation!

Posted to YouTube by user 'Ranger232'
Length - 1:27

Television from the Past is going on summer vacation!

There will be no posts between today and July 3. On July 3 and July 4, we will have some special posts commemorating Independence Day, featuring 4th of July festivities that have aired on TV in the past. Regular posting will resume on Monday, July 9.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1993 (WKFT/Fayetteville, NC)

Posted to YouTube by user 'SignOffsGuy'
Length - 6:47

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

As we reach 1993 in Sign-Offs Through the Years, we have this clip that is a combination sign-off/sign-on from Fayetteville, North Carolina, station WKFT (now WUVC). The sequence begins with a couple of well-known North Carolina references--the end of a spot for the National Hollering Contest in Spivey Corners, followed by a promo for a baseball game by the Durham Bulls, made famous in the movie "Bull Durham". Next comes the ownership/technical voiceover, on graphics displaying some of the information being conveyed in the voiceover, and the national anthem film.

After some color bars and tone (and presumably an edit cutting out at least a few hours of time), an ownership/technical voiceover for the sign-on comes on, which is basically the same as the sign-off voiceover with a couple of details changed reflecting the start of a broadcast day.

TFTP On This Day: NBA Finals, Game 6, Celtics vs. Lakers from CBS (Jun. 14, 1987)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Christopher Banez Lim'
Length - 1:44:00

It Was 31 Years Ago Today: The basketball rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics is legendary, and no period of that rivalry is more storied than the string of mid-1980s NBA Finals match-ups between the two teams. This 1987 Finals was the third time in four years that they'd met to battle for the NBA championship; with Boston winning in 1984 and LA in 1985, this was the rubber match for the Larry Bird-led Celtics and the Kareem-and-Magic-led Lakers. In this final game of the series, originally aired on this day 31 years ago on June 14, 1987, LA took home the trophy.

Above is the game in its entirety (minus commercial breaks). The Celtics took control early, with a five-point lead of 56-51 at halftime. But the Lakers caught up in the first moments of the second half and never relinquished the lead for the rest of the game. By the end of the game, LA was dominating, and the final score was 106-93. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the scoring for the Lakers with 32 points, but Magic Johnson ended up getting the series MVP award. Magic and Larry Bird had been personal rivals ever since they faced each other in the NCAA championship in their final year of college in 1979 (Johnson for Michigan State, Bird for Indiana State). Just like in that NCAA championship eight years before, Magic again defeated Bird.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from 1965

Posted to YouTube by user '31Mike'
Length - 4:58

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

Most of the commercials in this block from 1965 are video-taped ads that are from local markets in Florida, many (maybe all of them) from a commercial break or breaks during local news. A taped ad for Kentucky Fried Chicken, with an in-studio pitchman, leads off the block. Next is an ad (that suffers from some technical issues) for Rambler autos and local Florida Rambler auto dealers, and this is followed by a real-estate ad for the Sun City development in the Tampa area. A filmed ad for Doublemint gum precedes an NBC network program promo for an airing of the movie "The Rainmaker". Ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken (with voiceover about the local news sponsorship) and Zest soap close out the block.

TFTP Game Shows: "Here Come the Mother-in-Laws" from ABC (1967)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Wink Martindale'
Length - 4:58

This set of excerpts of "Here Come the Mother-in-Laws" is from the pilot episode for a game show that in its brief 1967-1968 run was known as "How's Your Mother-in-Law?" "Here Come the Mother-in-Laws"/"How's Your Mother-in-Law?" is notable in that it is an early hosting gig for game show icon Wink Martindale. The program was part of a trend in the late-1960s towards more raucous game shows, a trend better exemplified by the shows that were actually successful, such as "Hollywood Squares" and "The Newlywed Game".

It's no coincidence that "Here Come the Mother-in-Laws"/"How's Your Mother-in-Law?" was created and produced by Chuck Barris, the mastermind behind "The Newlywed Game", "The Dating Game", and, later, "The Gong Show". Barris' MO was to create a game premise and gameplay that facilitated this kind of raucousness. The quick failure of this program was an exception to Barris' general success in a late-1960s and 1970s culture much more permissive than in the years immediately preceding.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Your Show of Shows" from NBC (early-1950s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Shawm Kreitzman'
Length - 12:45

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

"Your Show of Shows" was one of the most celebrated comedy programs of the early-TV era. Airing on NBC from 1950-1954, it starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, was produced by Max Liebman, and served as a training ground for performing arts talent such as Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and Neil Simon. It was one of the first comedy sketch programs, and as such it laid the ground for later shows like "Laugh-In" and "Saturday Night Live". Because it was the early-1950s, "Your Show of Shows" was a live program, and Coca and others associated with it have discussed how this was a vital ingredient in the show's comedy mix.

The clip above is a sketch about a husband and wife's bickering about the husband forgetting about the wife's birthday (Caesar and Coca often portrayed married couples). The sketch displays the duo's skill at executing a scene that has looping emotional arcs as the two characters spiral back and forth among being angry, put-upon, wounded, resentful, and tender as they trade places several times in terms of which is the victim and which is the perpetrator.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1992 (KAPP/Yakima, WA)

Posted to YouTube by user 'VHSgoodiesWA3'
Length - 8:26

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

This sign-off from 1992 and Yakima, Washington, ABC affiliate KAPP begins with a local ad for Barrett-Martin Chiropractic ("Get Going Again") and the last moments of an episode of "The Rush Limbaugh Show". Additional ads (compiled from a series of commercial breaks) appear for National Review magazine, local car dealership Valley Toyota, Walt Disney's World on Ice, and Pay Less Drug Stores. Then there's an ownership/technical voiceover on a series of images from around KAPP's technical facilities (satellite earth stations, transmitter towers, and the like). The sequence closes with a national anthem-like film, but with an instrumental rendition of "America the Beautiful" as the music.

TFTP On This Day: "Night Flight" from USA Network (Jun. 7, 1985)

Posted to YouTube by user 'pannoni4'
Length - 14:51

It Was 33 Years Ago Today: "Night Flight" was a freeform program that aired on USA Network during weekend late nights in the early- to mid-1980s. Although mainly continuous music videos a la MTV, "Night Flight" also contained segments devoted to cult movies, alternative culture, and exploitation fare. The program format and scheduling was flexible, and "Night Flight" typically aired for anywhere from just a few to several hours on Friday and Saturday nights starting at around 10 pm and running sometimes until 4 or 5 am the following morning.

The set of clips above is from the fourth anniversary program for "Night Flight", which aired 33 years ago today on June 7, 1985. As a special edition, this night's program probably contained more older and vintage material than usual, but "Night Flight" nearly always had at least a helping of older black and white imagery. The set of excerpts above includes parts of performances by Ike and Tina Turner, the Doors, the Who, Cream, John Lennon, and the Kinks, as well as by jazz legends Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Lionel Hampton. (The typical "Night Flight" program had a high degree of current music videos, which are completely absent in this set of clips.)

A number of commercials appear here also, including as-seen-on-TV fare like Art Instruction Schools, Trim Trak exercise equipment, and an oldies music-compilation called "Cruisin'". There are some great USA Network interstitial materials, too: a program promo for USA airings of the late-1960s program "Room 222"; several "Night Flight" bumpers; and a promo for the network's inimitable late-movie host "Commander USA".

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Toy Ads from 1970s

Posted to YouTube by user 'tvdays' (both)
Length - 0:58 (top), 0:29 (bottom)

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

Here are a couple of toy commercials from the 1970s--one for a product that is still around after all these decades and one for a toy fad that didn't outlast the Seventies. The Easy-Bake Oven has got to be one of the biggest success stories in the history of toys--launched in the early-1960s and still available in stores today (now with an accompanying app, of course). The top commercial above is a fairly mundane one with images of a young girl mixing batter and putting pans in and out of the Easy-Bake Oven. Evel Knievel was a daredevil who was huge in the 1970s, as he mounted more and more elaborate stunts on his motorcycle; the motorcycle toy advertised in the bottom commercial is just one of a number of Evel Knievel toys that were available at the time (with the Evel figure that rides the bike, as you might expect, sold separately).

TFTP Late Night: "The Tonight Show" from NBC (Apr. 22, 1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Jake Ehrlich'
Length - 27:06

Existing footage from the first decade of Johnny Carson's tenure on "The Tonight Show" (from his start in late-1962 until the show moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1972) is very scarce now, due to the fact that NBC at the time routinely erased the recordings. So being able to see an excerpt as long as this one, especially in color (even if the color is compromised technically), is pretty rare.

The guest in this extended clip is attorney and author Jake Ehrlich Sr., who at the time of this 1964 episode had just come out with a legal book titled "A Reasonable Doubt". Johnny and Mr. Ehrlich engage in an extensive back and forth--with Ehrlich carrying the bulk of the conversation--about a variety of legal topics, with an emphasis on the Fifth Amendment. In the mid-1960s, "The Tonight Show" was still 90 minutes in length and the last segments of an episode were often taken up by an extended chat with an author; it's hard to imagine a late-night talk show these days doing so.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Arthur Murray Show" from DuMont (Oct. 22, 1950)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'zigoto'
Length - 29:26

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Although not widely remembered today, Arthur Murray was a huge cultural presence from the 1930s through the 1950s due to his franchised chain of dance studios and then his television programs. By the end of the 1930s, Arthur Murray Studios had begun to establish a presence in most major American cities, and it's safe to say that by the time his TV program started in 1950, around the time of the above episode, that "Arthur Murray" had become synonymous with dance instruction in the U.S.

Murray's TV show aired for a decade between 1950 and 1960, at different times on all four networks and at different lengths ranging from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. For almost all of its run the show was called "The Arthur Murray Party", except for the year-and-a-half that it was on the DuMont network, when it was simply called "The Arthur Murray Show".

In the clip above, which is the second half of an hour-long episode from October of 1950, from during the show's DuMont run, we see host Kathryn Murray, Arthur Murray's wife and business partner, vivaciously usher guests and dancing couples in and out of the spotlight. (Curiously, Arthur Murray himself does not appear in this half-episode; it's not clear whether or not he appeared regularly.) Actors Reginald Gardiner and Beatrice Lillie guest star on this episode and both appear in comedy bits (Lillie alongside a very young Carl Reiner).

The entire program comes off more or less like an infomercial for Arthur Murray Dance Studios, as the chain of studios and the lessons available therein is mentioned several times throughout. This includes one segment with a dancing couple who had had just two Arthur Murray Studio dance lessons!

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1991 (WENH/Durham, NH)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MSTS1'
Length - 8:52

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

This 1991 sign-off is from New Hampshire public TV station WENH, which was and is the flagship in the New Hampshire public television state network. It begins with the last couple of minutes of that night's episode of "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour", which was and is the flagship news program for PBS (now under the name PBS NewsHour). A program promo for "The American Experience" precedes a "Star Hustler" segment with Jack Horkheimer, which is followed by a promo for an airing of the classic Christmas film "It's a Wonderful Life". A voiceover promoting upcoming programming comes next, after which is an ownership/technical voiceover that, curiously, includes a slide with a graph of the different revenue sources that WENH relies on as a public TV station.

TFTP On This Day: "Password Plus" with David Letterman from NBC (May 31, 1979)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Fun & Games Channel'
Length - 24:05

It Was 39 Years Ago Today: "Password Plus" was the second revival of the game show "Password"; the original had run on CBS from 1961-1967 and another run of the original game had appeared on ABC from 1971-1975. In this new revival, which aired on NBC from 1979-1982 and like all versions up to this point was hosted by Allen Ludden, the "plus" took the form of an extra element in which the individual passwords accumulated to become clues to an overall word or phrase that had to be guessed.

The episode above, which aired 39 years ago today on May 31, 1979, features David Letterman and Marion Ross of "Happy Days" as the celebrity contestants. (This copy of the episode is from a much later rerun on Game Show Network, and thus has packaging and interstitial elements from that broadcast.) Letterman, a few years prior to the launch of his "Late Night" program--and thus at a point in his career where he was having to do game-show guest appearances--is his regular grumpy and irascible self, but still engaging in the game at hand. Contestant Sally cruises through two "Alphabetics" bonus games (one with Letterman and one with Ross) to become the winningest "Password Plus" contestant ever to that point (five months into the show's run).

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Three Commercials from 1955

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'HappySwordsman' (top), 'Seto-Kaiba_Is_Stupid' (middle), 'HappySwordsman' (bottom)
Length - 0:59 (top), 1:22 (middle), 1:31 (bottom)

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

Here's a group of three commercials from the year 1955, a period when commercials were still fairly lengthy (the three here range from a minute to a minute-and-a-half in duration) and programs were generally sponsored by a single product (which is what allowed for the greater length).

The first commercial above is for Palmolive soap, and it utilizes a tactic that is still familiar to us today: demonstrating how using anything other than the product being advertised will produce an inferior result. The second commercial, for DeSoto/Plymouth autos, uses a mix of animated and live-action footage to help sell cars; animation was everywhere in ads of the Fifties, and it is put to effective use here. The third and final commercial is for Old Gold Filter Kings cigarettes, and it offers a lengthy testimonial to the use of filters (which were then still a novelty) using a fairly hackneyed marriage metaphor.

TFTP Kids: "The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show" from CBS (1974)

Posted to YouTube by user '70's Kids'
Length - 28:10

"The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show" is one of the more interesting shows--at least visually--from the 1970s live-action kids' show trend. The Hudson Brothers were a family musical act (those were also very popular in the Seventies) that had been around for about a decade by 1974, and the Brothers (Bill, Brett, and Mark) were just coming off of a prime-time summer variety show (those were also very popular in the Seventies). The summer show, titled simply "The Hudson Brothers Show", had aired in July and August, and just a week after its end, on September 7, 1974, "The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show" premiered on Saturday mornings (running until the following August).

Like many shows of the genre, the "razzle dazzle" consisted of brightly colored, somewhat psychedelic sets and costumes, a madcap sensibility to the songs and sketches, and a supporting cast of comical entertainers. The episode above includes several musical numbers, one with a troupe of acrobats jumping and flipping around using props such as a bathtub and a barber's chair. A couple of non-musical comedy sketches appear as well, one with a child network vice-president and another with a bear-costumed private-eye ("Sam Bear", a take-off of Sam Spade with noirish office complete with ceiling fan and blond moll).

There are commercials (most of them for toys of the 1970s) included in the commercial breaks in this copy of the episode, but they appear not to be original to the broadcast and inserted after the fact.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday (Special On This Day Edition): "What's My Line? at 25" from ABC (May 28, 1975)

Posted to YouTube by user 'What's My Line?'
Length - 1:26:57

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

We bring you this special edition of Monochrome Monday with a program that was partly in color, but was celebrating a show that was in classic black & white for the almost all of its 17 year run: "What's My Line?"

It Was 43 Years Ago Today: "What's My Line?" stands among the most important shows ever in the game show genre--the program, which aired on CBS from 1950-1967 and then in syndication until 1975, helped establish the popularity and venerability of the TV game show. Right as "WML" was going off the air in 1975, this program, "What's My Line? at 25"--originally airing 43 years ago today on May 28, 1975--appeared as a retrospective of its quarter-century history.

Airing as an installment of the ABC late-night umbrella series "Wide World of Entertainment" (after CBS passed on the special), "What's My Line? at 25" features the three individuals most responsible for the show's success: producer Mark Goodson, host John Charles Daly, and panelist Arlene Francis. Goodson, Daly, and Francis moderate the special by sharing some of their memories but also by introducing dozens of clips from over the years.

Celebrated in the special are the panelists who guessed contestants' jobs (including Fred Allen, Steve Allen, Woody Allen, and others not named Allen, such as Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, and Francis herself); the many celebrity "mystery guests" and some of the shenanigans (such as fake voices) they used to trick the panel; some of the more interesting "lines" (or occupations) guessed by the panel; and a look back at the hairstyles worn on the show by Arlene Francis.

TFTP has featured "What's My Line?" a few times in the past, including the premiere episode from 1950 (which was also the premiere post for TFTP back in 2014), a commercial for longtime "WML" sponsor Remington-Rand (introduced by Daly), and early panelist Fred Allen's first appearance (with Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody as mystery guests!).

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1990 (WLBT/Jackson, MS)

Posted to YouTube by user 'jacky9br'
Length - 8:29

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

As we enter the 1990s in "Sign-Offs Through the Years", here is is a somewhat longer sign-off sequence from Jackson, Mississippi, NBC affiliate WLBT. It begins with a few promos: for "Saturday Night Live" (which was in its 15th anniversary season) featuring guest host Rob Lowe and Dana Carvey in full church-lady dress; for the NBC Sports presentation of The Players Championship golf tourney; and for local WLBT 3 News. These are followed by two PSAs, for a women's shelter called New Life for Women and for the Special Olympics.

A "Sanford & Son" promo slide precedes a very strange ownership/technical voiceover. After a title card with a personal dedication for the sign-off (something mischievous master control operators would sometimes slip in), a segment begins playing with special effects and the title "Purple Haze" with audio of the band Winger doing a cover of the Jimi Hendrix song of the same name. Midway through this clip, a brief ownership/technical voiceover is heard.

The sequence is capped off  by a very nice national anthem film that features local/regional images of Mississippi, including several shots of a rainbow-striped hot air balloon with the name of the state emblazoned on it.

TFTP On This Day: "Marty" on "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse" from NBC (May 24, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'zigoto'
Length - 50:54

It Was 65 Years Ago Today: "Marty" is one of the most-celebrated programs of the live-drama era of early television (sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age" of TV). In the mid-1950s, for a period of approximately five years, before filmed TV programs made largely in Hollywood had taken over network TV schedules, live dramatic TV plays, presented anthology-style from New York, were a celebrated mainstay of American television. And this period was kicked off by "Marty", which originally aired 65 years ago today, on May 24, 1953.

"Marty" aired on the "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse", one of many live anthology shows on the networks throughout the Fifties. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky, who would go on to a celebrated TV and film writing career, directed by Delbert Mann, and produced by Fred Coe, one of the leaders of the live TV drama movement. Marty is played by Rod Steiger, who also would go on to a celebrated career, and the woman Marty meets (referred to only as "the Girl") is played by Nancy Marchand.

Marty is a bachelor who lives with his mother, works as a butcher, and has begun to settle for a life of loneliness as he approaches middle age. He is convinced that women are uninterested in him and that he is (as he calls himself) a "fat, ugly little man". This changes when he meets the Girl at a "lonely hearts" dance hall, and by the end of the hour-long drama they seem to have a glimmer of a chance at a happy relationship together.

There were several things that made "Marty" so groundbreaking in 1953. One was simply the raw acting talent of Rod Steiger; he would go on to lend that talent to such landmark films as "On the Waterfront" (1954), "The Pawnbroker" (1964), and "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), and to become a leading practitioner of "the Method". Another was Chayefsky's writing that dramatized mundane yet inherently dramatic events in the lives of regular people; the play was lauded for the way that it utilized dialogue that seemed like everyday conversation. The story of "Marty" was celebrated by 1950s culture, and it became an Oscar-winning story when adapted to film in 1955.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Mountain Dew Commercials from the 1980s

Posted to YouTube by user 'haikarate4'
Length - 2:29

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

Awhile back TFTP featured the evolution of Mountain Dew ads from the 1960s through the 1980s. Here are some more Dew commercials from the 1980s, after the beverage's outdoor, extreme sports image had been mostly established.

The first ad features teenagers cliff-jumping into a river, to the jingle refrain (and slogan) "Give me a Dew!" Ad #2 shows teens in a contest of pushing each other off of a log across a river to the same refrain. The third commercial, with more of a country music tone, shows a somewhat older (but still youthful) crowd engaged in off-road monster truck races, with the jingle and slogan "Dew It Country Cool!" (Someone still ends up getting pushed into the water by the time it's done.) Ad #4 uses the same slogan and jingle, this time with cardboard boat races. The final Mountain Dew ad in this block is another with the "Dew It Country Cool!" jingle/slogan, and here the kids are waterskiing--behind a horse running along the shore!

TFTP Cable: Miscellaneous Clips from The Weather Channel (1990)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Bryan Farr'
Length - 7:56

This set of clips from The Weather Channel from 1990 is mostly a series of title graphic sequences showing what the introductory titles to different kinds of segments looked like. Segment titles include "Local Weather", "Weather & You", "Pacific Regional Forecast", "Special Presentation", "Today's Forecast", and "International Weather".

Because of the then-current build-up in advance of the 1991 Gulf War, presumably for the benefit of the families of service members, there is also a title graphic for a segment called "Mideast Weather" (in a suitably Arabic-looking font).

In addition, there are some more prosaic graphics (just plain white text on a blue background) of local weather reports and a somewhat choppy sequence near the end of various Weather Channel personalities in the opening seconds of weather reports. Much of the material in this set of clips, including the local weather report mentioned above, comes from the cable system in Elmira, New York, from Thursday, October 11, 1990.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Big Record" from CBS (May 14, 1958)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'
Length - 29:01

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

"The Big Record" was a musical variety show that aired on CBS for about a year in 1957 and 1958. Singer Patti Page hosted what started as an hour-long series but was cut back to a half-hour midway through its run. There were some similarities to a show like "Your Hit Parade" in that currently-popular songs were featured, although "The Big Record" had no countdown.

The episode above, from May 1958, features singer Bill Hayes, singer Helen Forest, Harry James and his orchestra, and a female singing group called the Deftones, the winners of a high school talent competition. Page sings several numbers, the Deftones make their TV debut, Hayes belts out a song in a sailor's suit, and James and his orchestra provide a few tunes, to one of which Forest adds the vocals. A couple of filmed commercials for sponsor Oldsmobile also appear, introduced by Page.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1989 (KOMO/Seattle)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 4:15

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

Our 1989 sign-off is from Seattle station KOMO. It begins with a brief religious segment called "A Note of Faith", which unlike most such segments is merely a slide with voiceover. This is followed by a station editorial about children's TV viewing habits. Next comes the ownership/technical voiceover on a still of the KOMO-TV logo (they were them, to paraphrase KOMO's slogan). As a border station with a sizable Canadian audience (and similarly to other stations in the same circumstances), KOMO played "O Canada" (the Canadian national anthem) in addition to "The Star-Spangled Banner", and those two songs close out the sign-off sequence.

TFTP Late Night: Early Clips from "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" from NBC (1962/1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Sir Raymond Bell' (top), 'Johnny Carson' (bottom)
Length - 0:34 (top), 1:11 (bottom)

As part of TFTP's continuing series of posts on the history and evolution of "The Tonight Show" (see here, here, here, and here), these two clips feature moments from the first couple of years of Johnny Carson's tenure as the show's host. There is very little footage that remains from these years, as NBC destroyed copies of pretty much all of the episodes from Carson's first decade as host.

The first (very brief) clip above is from a little over three months into Carson's stint, in about late-December of 1962, and relates to Johnny's best moments to that point as "Tonight Show" host. The second clip (from the official Carson Productions archive) is from a 1964 episode in which Zsa Zsa Gabor rips Johnny's pants off in a sketch that has Carson doing a now-questionable impression of a Charlie Chan-like character (with a joke about Zsa Zsa from a much later episode thrown in at the end).

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from NBC (Sep. 22, 1967)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Gray Flannel Videos'
Length - 3:05

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

This block of commercials that aired on September 22, 1967, on NBC includes ads for Aerowax floor wax; Aero Shave shaving cream; Campbell's Chicken with Rice Soup, Chicken Noodle Soup, and Chicken & Stars Soup (with some ultra-Sixties animation); Sta-Puf fabric softener ("The Wrinkle Reducer"); and Sta-Flo Spray Starch. (Spelling "stay" without the "y" was very popular in the '60s.) At the very end, for just a couple of seconds, is the "snake" logo used by NBC throughout the 1960s--complete with the NBC chimes.

TFTP Game Shows: "Queen for a Day" from NBC (c. 1960)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewQueenForADay'
Length - 8:50

"Queen for a Day" is a legendary program (airing from 1956-1964, and on radio before that) that seems of questionable taste to us now today. Four female housewife contestants each told the story of their circumstances, which were sometimes of impoverishment or affliction. Then audience response, measured by an applause meter, selected one of them as "Queen for a Day" (with accompanying prize package, of course).

Host Jack Bailey interviewed the women with a tone that was charmingly folksy but paternalistic and often patronizing. The set of clips above is from an episode with a circus theme, and the irony of the show's tendency to regularly have a circus atmosphere seems lost on those involved. The winner here gets a watch, a new washing machine and oven range, a record player, and a Spiegel catalog gift certificate.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The General Electric Theater" from CBS (Dec. 18, 1955)

Posted to YouTube by user 'HORDE'
Length - 29:17

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan, America's 40th president, had been an actor. But that doesn't mean its not still a little jarring to see him actually act, as in this episode of "The General Electric Theater". "GE Theater", which Reagan was also host of for its entire run from 1953 to 1962, was an anthology drama in which a different story with different actors appeared each week. The early years of TV had many such shows, although "GE Theater" was one of the few remaining by the end of its run in the early-1960s.

This 1955 episode of "GE Theater" is entitled "Let It Rain", and in addition to Reagan it features a very young Cloris Leachman. Reagan plays a journalist who has stopped off in the southern small-town where Leachman's character lives. The journalist ends up trying to debunk a local legend about a Civil War-era sword that was lodged in a tree trunk, while also carrying on a love affair with Leachman. (It's especially jarring to see Reagan in these romantic scenes.)

The episode is typical of early-TV anthology series: only a handful of characters, just a few locations (all of them sets on a soundstage), and stories that tended towards the personal and intimate--all of which worked well with the smaller budgets and smaller screen of early television.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1988 (WYES/New Orleans)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Chris Hadley'
Length - 5:06

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

For the second week in a row, "Sign-Offs Through the Years" brings you a public television sign-off--this time from New Orleans PBS station WYES and the year 1988. The sign-off sequence begins with a closing title slide from the movie showcase "Starlight Theatre", followed by an underwriting credit for Bookstar, a local bookstore. Next is a program promo for a musical program, "Echoes of the Big Bands with Merv Griffin", and after this is the ownership/technical voiceover, on miscellaneous images of WYES's facilities. This is followed by a piece with piano instrumental music and various nighttime images of New Orleans from the air. Closing out the sign-off is a national anthem film (with a cappella vocals), an element not always found in public TV sign-offs.

TFTP Variety: "Jack Benny's Bag" from NBC (Nov. 16, 1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 1:01:39

Jack Benny's long-running weekly sitcom (a continuation of his long-running radio program) ended in 1965, and for the remainder of his career until his death in 1974 Benny did occasional TV specials. The above program is one of the early such specials, with a theme lampooning youth counterculture of the late-1960s, entitled "Jack Benny's Bag".

Like a lot of old-line comedians, Benny was pretty clueless when it came to the counterculture he was lampooning. In most cases of mainstream TV treatment of counterculture, including here, some garish colors, some psychedelic imagery, some youth-oriented clothing, and some tossed-off slang was thought to do the job.

In "Jack Benny's Bag", though, the counterculture elements are mainly window-dressing. Benny himself wears either a tuxedo or a regular suit throughout most of the special, and there is little of substance regarding the counterculture. (The one sketch that does treat it is a groan-worthy parody of the film "The Graduate" where Benny-as-Benjamin-Braddock enters through an arch that is a large mock-up of Mrs. Robinson's famous leg.) A pair of hippies appears near the beginning to collect payment for painting Benny's house (he assumed given their values that they'd do for free); Benny's Maxwell car, in which he makes his first appearance, has been painted in psychedelic designs, as has the stage backdrop; and that's about it.

Guests abound, including Dick Clark, Lou Rawls, Phyllis Diller (who portrays Mrs. Robinson in the "Graduate" sketch), Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Eddie Fisher, and Benny's own former supporting player Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. (Rochester appears with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as their "Odd Couple" characters in the special's cold opening.) Sponsored by Texaco, the special includes a few filmed commercials for that product, and a group of young girls in Texaco "Fire Chief" costumes appear with Benny in a couple of segments.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken (1968/1971/1981)

Posted to YouTube by user 'chicagofilmarchives' (top), 'Bionic Disco' (middle), 'robatsea2009' (bottom)
Length - 1:06 (top), 1:04 (middle), 0:30 (bottom)

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

These three commercials from fast-food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken all feature the iconic red-and-white-striped KFC bucket. In the first commercial, from 1968 and the only of the three to also feature the actual Colonel Sanders, the Colonel puts wheels on the bucket to demonstrate its portability. (Was take-away food still that much of a novelty in the 1960s?) Commercial number two (from '71) uses the bucket as a punchline: a mother has served KFC chicken at dinner with her daughter's new boyfriend and passed it off as her own cooking, until little brother barges into the dining room wielding the bucket. Finally, the third commercial, from 1981, displays the bucket prominently upfront--a KFC employee fills and displays a bucket--before going on to show numerous groups of people eating fried chicken--out of KFC boxes.

TFTP On This Day: "Action News" from WPIX/New York (May 8, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'
Length - 32:18

It Was 38 Years Ago Today: Station WPIX has a history that goes back to the late-1940s, and until the mid-1990s it was one of New York City's independent TV stations. (In 1995 it became a WB affiliate and later an affiliate of The CW, which it remains today.) This late local newscast from WPIX is from May 8, 1980, 38 years ago today.

Featured news stories include reports on Cuban refugees, the aftermath of an aborted Iranian hostage rescue mission launched by President Carter, the funeral of Yugoslavian leader Tito, controversy surrounding New York City medical official Michael Baden, a local teen who interviewed former President Richard Nixon, and comedian Bob Hope's efforts to help with the Iran hostage crisis. In sports are reports on the NY Islanders in the NHL playoffs, baseball scores for the young 1980 season, basketball scores from the NBA playoffs, and local horse-racing results. Towards the end of the newscast is a report about the controversy surrounding the PBS program "Death of a Princess".

The newscast recording includes the commercial breaks and within the breaks are ads for Potamkin Cadillac (a local car dealership), two different Black & Decker products (garden hoses and step stools), Seven Seas salad dressing, Citizen and Corum watches, Oldsmobile Cutlass autos, Waterpik Shower Massage shower heads, Micom word processors, Exxon information systems, Kaufman - The Carpet Experts, Energizer batteries, and Gravely lawn and garden tractors.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "All-Star Revue" from NBC (Feb. 14, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'HappySwordsman'
Length - 56:57

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

In the fall of 1950, NBC launched a new variety show called "Four Star Revue"; the name derived from the four rotating hosts--Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas, Jack Carson, and Jimmy Durante. With the beginning of the show's second season in the fall of 1951--and an expanded roster of rotating hosts--the program's name was changed to "All-Star Revue". The episode above, hosted by singer Perry Como, is from the show's third season and originally aired on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1953.

The episode begins with a rather lengthy and elaborate musical number that has Como arriving at his office and being attended to by a large group of chorus girls, servants, deliverymen, even a shoeshine boy. The rest of the episode features comedy sketches with Joan Blondell, Ben Blue, and Patti Page; songs by Page ("How Much is That Doggie in the Window?"), Como ("You'll Never Walk Alone" from the play "Carousel"), and Page and Como duetting ("Side by Side"). There is also a very strange sketch near the middle in which Como and his kids tour an art museum in which the paintings all come to life and the figures in the paintings do short commercials for sponsor Pet Milk.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1987 (KTCA/Minneapolis-St. Paul)

Posted to YouTube by user 'mjanovec'
Length - 3:21

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

Here is a 1987 sign-off (from Saturday, October 17, 1987, to be exact) from Minneapolis-St. Paul public TV station KTCA. (Several months ago, TFTP featured another sign-off from KTCA from just a few years after this one.) After the end of the end credits (and some underwriting announcements) from an episode of "Austin City Limits" is a long ownership/technical voiceover that includes images and title slides from quite a few then-current public TV programs produced by KTCA. This is followed by a credit scroll that lists the roster of KTCA station employees, then by color bars.

TFTP Game Shows: "Get the Message" from ABC (c. mid-1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MatchGameProductions'
Length - 21:35

"Get the Message" was one of a number of "clue-guessing" games that were in vogue in the early-1960s after the success of "Password". (TFTP featured another one, "The Object Is", in a recent post.) Hosted at the time of this episode by Frank Buxton (later replaced by Robert Q. Lewis), "Get the Message" itself wasn't much in vogue--it only lasted for about nine months in 1964.

Two three-person teams--one regular contestant and two celebrities on each team, one team all men and the other all women--competed in guessing a "message" (a name, a title, a phrase, etc.). (The celebs here are Howard Keel and Orson Bean on the men's side and Peggy Cass and Phyllis Newman on the women's side.) The two celebs each wrote a one-word clue that were given to the regular contestant who would try to "get the message" based on those clues. The guess alternated until one side solved it. First side with three correct guesses won the game and got to proceed to a bonus game where the regular contestant gave clues to the celebrities.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from 1972

Posted to YouTube by user '31Mike'
Length - 5:34

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

This commercial block from 1972 features ads for GE television sets, Superior motor homes, Goodrich tires (with two separate, but very similar, ads), Colt 45 malt liquor, the Yellow Pages (with football player Bart Starr), Alka Seltzer, Taconis tobacco, and New York Life insurance. Also included is a bumper slide promo for ABC's "The Odd Couple".

TFTP Variety: "Solid Gold" from syndication (Jul. 12, 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Michael Pannoni'
Length - 49:13

"Solid Gold", which was syndicated from 1980-1988, is from a genre of TV program that doesn't really exist anymore today--the weekly music countdown show. These programs highlighted the top charting pop songs of the week, sometimes by having the original artist sing them but just as often by featuring a stable of singers or dancers in re-enactments of the songs.

"Solid Gold" usually had dancers do a brief dance routine for the thirty seconds or so of a song that was featured when the original artist was not performing it. Sometimes these routines bordered on the ridiculous, like here with the John Mellencamp song "Rain on the Scarecrow" that features one dancer in a rhinestone scarecrow costume. In this episode, counting down the top ten songs for the week of July 12, 1986, the original artists performing are The Bangles for "If She Knew What She Wants" (#8) and Falco for "Vienna Calling" (#5). And when we say "perform", of course we mean "lip-sync".

Often there would be "performances" by artists that did not have songs in the week's top ten. Here that includes Smokey Robinson, a-ha, Patti Austin, and Kenny Loggins. There are also in this episode segments that seem a little random, such as regular people on the street lip-syncing to the Huey Lewis and the News song "The Heart of Rock and Roll" and a short dance segment based on jukebox hits of the past.

For the record, here's the entire top ten countdown featured in this episode of "Solid Gold": #10 - "Mothers Talk" by Tears for Fears; #9 - "Who's Johnny" by El DeBarge; #8 - "If She Knew What She Wants" by The Bangles; #7 - "Nothin' at All" by Heart; #6 - "Rain on the Scarecrow" by John Cougar Mellencamp; #5 - "Vienna Calling" by Falco; #4 - "There'll Be Sad Songs to Make You Cry" by Billy Ocean; #3 - "Crush on You" by The Jets; #2 - "Move Away" by Culture Club; and #1 - "On My Own" by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald (sung by the show's host, Dionne Warwick).

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Break the Bank" from ABC (Dec. 1955)

Posted by YouTube by user 'Shokus Video'
Length - 27:35

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

"Break the Bank" was a pretty simple game show, both from a gameplay perspective and from a production values perspective. Host Bert Parks and contestants simply stood on a mostly bare stage as Parks asked questions for progressively higher amounts of money ($25, then $50, then $100, $200, $300, and $500). At the top of the money ladder was a final question that if answered correctly would "break the bank" and win the contestants whatever amount the "bank" had built up to (starting at $1000 and rising with each set of contestants that didn't win it).

Contestants generally were couples or groups, as with the young family and then the older couple in the above episode. The family in the first part of the episode is successful in its attempt to "break the bank" (to the tune of $1300), whereas the older couple is not. In some respects, as with a lot of 1950s game shows ("You Bet Your Life" for sure, probably others), on "Break the Bank" it's the interaction between host and contestants that is just as important as whatever game is being played.

"Break the Bank" was sponsored by Dodge automobiles, so there are a couple of filmed Dodge ads in the mix in this episode, as well as the Dodge logo that is displayed prominently on the backdrop on stage.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1986 (WKBW/Buffalo, NY)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Travis Doucette'
Length - 4:51

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

Buffalo, New York station WKBW has made a sign-off appearance before on TFTP, and like in that previous appearance, this 1986 sign-off from WKBW features not just the American national anthem but also the Canadian anthem, "O Canada!" This is the result of Buffalo being a border city where its TV stations reached probably just about as many Canadian viewers as American ones. The "O Canada!" film here (a different one than in the previously featured WKBW sign-off) consists almost entirely of views of Niagara Falls, highlighting that natural wonder's dual role as both a Canadian and American landmark.

The sign-off sequence starts with the last few seconds of a WKBW newscast (this being sign-off time, probably a re-broadcast of the station's late newscast from that night), followed by a PSA with a priest encouraging undocumented immigrants to apply for citizenship (following on 1986's amnesty legislation). The ownership/technical voiceover comes next, with part of it on the same slide of WKBW's transmitter tower seen in that earlier WKBW sign-off. The "O Canada!" film then plays, seguing directly into the "Star-Spangled Banner" film, which closes out the sign-off sequence.

TFTP Kids: "Bozo's Circus" from WGN/Chicago (1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Brian P. Collins'
Length - 56:10

Bozo the Clown is a legendary children's TV character that appeared in local kids' programs in various cities but nowhere as famously as in Chicago on WGN-TV. The Bozo character had been around since the late-1940s on children's record albums and by the late-'50s had begun to be franchised for television. WGN started to air "Bozo's Circus" in 1961 as a midday program aimed at kids who were home from school over the lunch hour.

The episode above is from 1968 and features Bozo (Bob Bell), Ringmaster Ned (Ned Clarke) who was the nominal host of the program, and Sandy the Clown (Don Sandburg). The cast engages in a number of shenanigans, including an attempt at plate-spinning by Bozo and a human-marionette act in which Bozo pulls the strings on Sandy. A Bozo cartoon is shown and two lucky kids (one boy and one girl) from the studio audience get to play the "Grand Prize Game".

This game was the centerpiece of the program into the 1980s, after WGN had begun to be carried on cable systems nationally and the program shifted to an early-morning timeslot (with a new name, "The Bozo Show"). In the "Grand Prize Game", kids attempted to toss ping-pong balls into a series of six buckets, with each successful toss resulting in a group of prizes, progressively more valuable as the game proceeded from bucket #1 to bucket #6. This 1968 episode (which includes original commercial breaks) ends with another signature segment of the Bozo show--the grand march that closes the program.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Three Commercials from 1954

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'HappySwordsman' (all three)
Length - 1:08 (top), 1:19 (middle), 1:18 (bottom)

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

Only two of these three commercials from 1954 feature a product spokesman on a set that looks like a well-appointed, wood-paneled study. The third is a classic product demonstration. Commercials of the 1950s, besides being longer and more leisurely than those we are familiar with today, also were drawn from definite genres, of which the stately product testimonial and the practical product demonstration are two.

The first ad, featuring "Super Circus" star Mary Hartline, is a demonstration of Dixie paper cups. The ad was clearly a live one in which a member of the program's cast pitches the product, and Hartline discusses the benefits of Dixie cups at a time when disposable paper cups were apparently still a novelty to many viewers. Ads number two and three, for Colgate toothpaste and Welch Family Wine, respectively, show the versatility of the wood-paneled-study genre of commercial; just about any product could be pitched within these confines and seem respectable. As a result, 1950s TV was lousy with them.

TFTP On This Day: "CBS Evening News" from CBS (Apr. 24, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'
Length - 29:28

It Was 38 Years Ago Today: This broadcast of the "CBS Evening News", from 38 years ago today on Thursday, April 24, 1980, was near the end of Walter Cronkite's nearly two-decade run as anchor. (At the end of the broadcast, Cronkite announces he'll be on vacation the following week, with his future replacement Dan Rather filling in.) The newscast is dominated by two stories: Rep. John Anderson's announcement from that day that he would run as an independent in the 1980 presidential campaign, after having failed to secure the Republican nomination; and ongoing developments in the Iran hostage crisis, which had begun the previous fall and would last until early-1981, thus dominating the news throughout 1980.

The Iran hostage crisis garnered several separate stories, including about new sanctions against Iran, about possible plans for military action in response to the crisis, about attempts by the parents of one of the hostages to negotiate with the Iranian government, and about reports from Iranian officials on their perspective on the crisis. Other significant stories in the broadcast include a summary of an address given by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a report on Congressional investigation into the regulatory authority of federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission.

Original commercial breaks are included in this recording from Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS. Ads appear for Nevada National Bank, Lincoln Continental autos, Remington Micro Shave electric razor, Bulova watches, Uniroyal tires, Visa travelers checks, Sanka coffee (with spokesman Robert Young), Bayer aspirin, Safeco Insurance (with spokespanther the Pink Panther), General Tire, and Five Alive orange juice. Two IDs for KLAS also appear at the very beginning and very end of the broadcast.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "School House" from DuMont (Mar. 22, 1949)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'zigoto'
Length - 26:05

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Although little-known today (except among those well-versed in TV history), from the late-1940s through the mid-1950s there was a fourth national TV network, the DuMont network. DuMont Laboratories was an electronics firm founded and run by inventor Allen DuMont, and the DuMont network was an offshoot of his television set manufacturing business. Many of the programs DuMont aired were a little eclectic, even peculiar, compared to the other networks. "School House" is one of those programs.

Sort of a hybrid between a musical variety show and a sitcom, "School House" is set in a high school classroom where Kenny Delmar presides as the professor. Several students from his class--which includes later notables such as Wally Cox and Arnold Stang--sing, dance, juggle, and recite poetry in the episode above, the only known surviving episode, which aired on Mar. 22, 1949. (The series aired for only a few months between January and April of 1949.)

Part way through the episode, there is a very interesting ad for DuMont television sets, although it is entirely within the setting of the show's classroom. Wally Cox and another student have wandered over to a large console television that happens to be stationed at the side of the classroom, and Cox pontificates to Delmar and the class (and, of course, the viewers) about the qualities of the DuMont TV set.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1985 (KLPB/Lafayette, LA)

Posted to YouTube by user '20th Century Vision'
Length - 2:11

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

This 1985 sign-off from Lafayette, Louisiana, public TV station KLPB (LPB for Louisiana Public Broadcasting) is one of the very few that features on-screen lyrics to follow along with during the national anthem film; here, the lyrics scroll up the screen, rather than along the bottom, bouncing-ball style, like in this sign-off featured by TFTP earlier this year. The national anthem film is preceded by the ownership/technical voiceover that is on a still of the KLPB "24" logo.

TFTP Promos: Affiliate Station Promo from ABC (1971)

Posted to YouTube by user 'VintageTelevision'
Length - 2:04

This two-minute long promo film is not one that was used on-air by ABC affiliates but rather one that was part of a presentation to affiliates at their annual convention in 1971. As part of the network's presentation of its promotional campaign themes--"This is the Place to Be", which appears at the end here, was used as ABC's on-air promotional slogan for a while--films such as this served as mood-setters for the staffs of the dozens of network affiliates that convened to hear what the network had to say.

The music here is so seventies-mellow that it's almost ridiculous (at first listen, the first few moments sound like Nilsson's 1969 hit "Everybody's Talkin'"). The raster-like graphics of the multiple ABC logos have a definite seventies-mellow vibe as well. And the multi-colored silhouettes, presumably from scenes of ABC shows, are just bizarre.

The many images from ABC programs that make up the middle portion of the promo film include glimpses from then-current shows such as "The Brady Bunch" (with several images), "Marcus Welby, M.D.", "The Courtship of Eddie's Father", "The Odd Couple" (with separate images of Jack Klugman and Tony Randall), "The FBI", "Monday Night Football" (which had just premiered in the fall of 1970), "The Smith Family" (with Henry Fonda), "The Mod Squad", and "The Partridge Family".

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from WLS/Chicago (Jun. 25, 1971)

Posted to YouTube by user 'pannoni4'
Length - 7:37

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

This block of 1971 commercials from Chicago station and ABC affiliate WLS includes ads for the Kleenex Americana collection (a special set of tissue boxes commemorating America), Cheetos (an animated ad with a mouse painting a billboard), Pepsi, Bravo floor wax ("brightest shine under the sun"), Raid mosquito coil, Rival "Ranch Partner" dog food, Wishbone Italian Rose salad dressing, Northern paper towels, Bactine, Wonder Bread ("how big do you want to be?"), Pop-r-corns snacks, Jewel supermarkets (big meat sale!), and Diet 7-Up.

There are also two local WLS items: a promo for "Howard Miller's Chicago", a talk show hosted by the local radio personality, and a voiceover PSA ("art treasures of the world at the Chicago Art Institute") on a slide of the WLS/Chicago logo.

TFTP On This Day: "Winner Takes All" from CBS (Apr. 17, 1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Game Shows n' Stuff'
Length - 28:46

It Was 67 Years Ago Today: "Winner Takes All" is a landmark program in broadcasting history, especially for game show history--it was the first game show created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. In addition, it was the first show hosted by game-show icon (and Goodson-Todman mainstay) Bill Cullen. "Winner Takes All" began on radio in 1946 and on TV in 1948; the episode above, which is from the program's brief daytime stint in 1951, first aired 67 years ago today.

Barry Gray is the host of the above episode, and he's not exactly the most endearing game-show host ever. He's a bit dismissive of the contestants and seems more interested in cracking wise than in facilitating the gameplay. The gameplay is pretty simple and consists of the host asking the contestants questions (many of them based on brief little skits that are presented) to which the contestants try to "buzz in" on. One contestant had an actual buzzer, the other a bell--with respective symbols for buzzer and bell displayed in front of them. (TV game shows were young. Viewers needed some help.)

The radio and TV versions of "Winner Takes All" combined had about six years on the air, from 1946 until 1952. In these earliest years of TV history, networks tended to keep bringing back programs again and again, and networks more often picked up existing programs that had been dropped by other networks. Both happened with "Winner Takes All": CBS kept the game going in a few different formats (including as a segment on the daytime variety program "Matinee in New York") for several years before cancelling it for good in 1951, when it was picked up by NBC, where it ran for an additional year.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Bob Hope Chevy Show" from NBC (Oct. 21, 1956)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 54:59

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Here is one of the many Bob Hope specials that the legendary comedian did for decades on NBC, this one from fairly early in that stretch, on October 21, 1956. This one is pretty standard for Hope's output in the earlier years of his TV career--he comes out and does a monologue, then several comedy sketches with guest stars fill out the hour.

The first guest star, who comes out at the tail end of the monologue, is British actress Diana Dors (a pretty obscure figure now). Dors banters with Hope before the two of them mount a two-part sketch. In the first part, Dors plays a doting wife to Hope's lord of the manor in a portrayal of a British couple; part two reverses the roles in an American portrayal with Hope becoming the doting one to Dors' spoiled wife. Next up is New York Yankees star pitcher Don Larsen, fresh off of his perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He too banters with Hope before they engage in a less-ambitious playact in which Larsen "re-enacts" his historic pitching performance with Hope as a hapless batter.

The "Hollywood Deb-Stars", a group of debutantes, are announced by Hope alongside guest James Cagney, prior to Cagney singing a musical number. Lastly, Hope joins the foursome from "I Love Lucy" (Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley) in a final lengthy sketch that scrambles the male roles from that top-ranking sitcom.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1984 (WJXT/Jacksonville, FL)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 6:06

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

Jacksonville, Florida, station WJXT is the source of this week's sign-off, from September of 1984. The sign-off sequence begins with a few local spots, first a promo for local coverage of Southeast Conference (SEC) college basketball, then a PSA for the Jewish National Fund, and finally a bumper slide promo for "Wheel of Fortune". These are followed by a fairly weird little film with mostly instrumental music against an image of ocean waves lapping the shore, but also with some spoken word poetry or inspirational verse. The ownership/technical voiceover follows this, on a slide of the WJXT logo, with the national anthem film (including the rare second verse) closing out the sign-off.

TFTP Kids: "Time for Beany" from Paramount TV Network (c. 1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'dentelTV1' (all three)
Length (total) - 29:39

"Time for Beany" was a pioneering kids TV program that aired in the early-1950s on the ad-hoc Paramount Network of stations. (Movie studio Paramount Pictures created this small network, that existed from 1948 until 1955, consisting mostly of a few stations it owned.) Animator Bob Clampett, who had worked on Looney Tunes cartoons for many years, created the Beany and Cecil puppet characters that are the stars of "Time for Beany".

Although the production values are not very sophisticated (a characteristic that "Time for Beany" shares with other early childrens' TV shows), the characters Beany, a young boy clad in a propeller beanie, and Cecil, a friendly dragon (that was basically a sock puppet), proved to be distinctive and popular. In this episode, they venture into the jungle to try and find a mysterious and elusive white gorilla. Along the way, they encounter some jungle natives that are pretty offensive stereotypes to us now (let's just say that the threat of being boiled alive in a large kettle is involved). Finally, they find the white gorilla (an actor in a white gorilla suit, of course), who roughs up Cecil a bit but nothing worse.

"Time for Beany" garnered considerable accolades in its time--it won one of the first Emmys for children's programming. Some of the voice actors for the show are notable, too, including Stan Freberg, later to become a cutting-edge comedian, and Daws Butler, later to become a legendary cartoon voice actor. Clampett went on to create a successor program, "Beany and Cecil", which featured the same characters using traditional cel animation. That program aired from 1959 to 1962 (partially under the "Matty's Funday Funnies" umbrella title), with repeat episodes airing right up until 1969, giving Beany and Cecil a solid two-decade run of entertaining children.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from ABC (Nov. 4, 1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 10:02

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

This block of commercials from November 4, 1983, comes from Tampa Bay-area ABC affiliate WTSP. It features ads for Arrid Extra Dry deodorant, Canon Snappy cameras, Biskits restaurants, Nutri Grain cereal, L'Oreal lipstick, Polaroid cameras (with longtime pitchman James Garner), Sears department stores, Wrigley's Spearmint gum, Burger King (with Emmanuel Lewis of "Webster" fame), and Gulf Oil car care centers. In addition, there are two different ads for AT&T, which was at the time trying to re-establish itself in the midst of antitrust action against it; one of these ads is for the re-branding of the Bell Telephone Phone Center into the AT&T Phone Center.

There are also several ABC program promos representing the cream of ABC's 1983 crop--for "Hardcastle and McCormick", "T.J. Hooker", "Love Boat" (a 2-hour "Oriental holiday" episode), "That's Incredible", "Monday Night Football", NCAA college football, "Trauma Center", "Nightline", the network TV premiere of the movie "Stir Crazy" with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, the special "Life's Most Embarrassing Moments, Part III", and an ABC News special on JFK that was presumably timed for the approaching 20th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination.

Interestingly, ABC was really getting a jump on promoting the 1984 Summer Olympics, as every promo here--a full nine months before the start of the games--features a line of text at the bottom that says "1984 - The Olympic Tradition Continues". A newsbreak from local WTSP news appears, too, along with a promo for the upcoming late local news from WTSP.

TFTP Late Night: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" premiere episode (audio only) from NBC (Oct. 1, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'TheNlsnn'
Length - 3:00

In the past few months, TFTP has featured a lot of items related to the early years of "The Tonight Show": the premiere episode of "The Tonight Show" with first host Steve Allen, the final episode of "The Tonight Show" with second host Jack Paar, and a Jerry Lewis-hosted episode of "The Tonight Show" from the interim between Paar and Johnny Carson. Today, we have an audio-only clip of the first few minutes of Carson's first episode from Oct. 1, 1962. (This is another case where only the audio survives, not the entire episode.)

There had been an interim of several months between the final Paar episode (in March of 1962) and this first Carson episode (due to Carson needing to complete his contract as host of the ABC game show "Who Do You Trust?")--an interim that Carson refers to in his comments in this clip. The person Carson is conversing with in the first part of the clip is comic Groucho Marx, who had come on first to introduce Carson in his first episode as host of "The Tonight Show". Carson, in addition to commenting on the publicity build-up resulting from the months-long interim, also summarizes in perfect Carson form his reaction to the pressure of the high-profile gig.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Our Miss Brooks" from CBS (May 20, 1955)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 22:04

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Like many early TV shows, "Our Miss Brooks" started out as a radio program (in 1948) and then was adapted for TV (in 1952). The radio and TV versions ran simultaneously then until both left the air in 1957. Eve Arden starred in both versions as Madison High School English teacher Connie Brooks. Arden was surrounded by a supporting cast made up of staff members and students of Madison High, including Gale Gordon (later best known as Lucille Ball's foil in her 1960s sitcoms) as Principal Conklin and Robert Rockwell as biology teacher Philip Boynton.

The episode above, from May of 1955, shows the dynamic between stuffy Principal Conklin and well-meaning but flighty Miss Brooks. It also is a great example of that perennial sitcom trope--the misunderstanding. Conklin wishes for Madison High to have a new mascot for the school's football team (to show up a rival at another high school); through a misunderstanding stemming from having received only part of a note from Conklin, Brooks ends up getting him a different mascot than he had in mind.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1983 (WKRC/Cincinnati)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Chris O'Brien'
Length - 3:35

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

This 1983 sign-off from Cincinnati station WKRC (the city's ABC affiliate at the time) is a rare one that does not feature the national anthem but does feature an alternate song, which here is "This is My Country". For all practical purposes, this film of "This is My Country", with its nationalistic lyrics and images of mythical American locations, serves as a functional equivalent to the national anthem.

"This is My Country" closes out the sign-off. Preceding it is the ownership/technical voiceover, which includes slides of the seals of the NAB Code and labor union for radio and TV broadcast engineers.

TFTP On This Day: "Scrabble" from NBC (Apr. 5, 1993)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Digifangsn'
Length - 21:20

It Was 25 Years Ago Today: Scrabble the board game has been a family favorite for decades. "Scrabble" the TV game show, while not quite matching up to that record, did have a healthy, two-part run on NBC, first from 1984 to 1990, then for a brief time in 1993. The episode above, which aired 25 years ago today on April 5, 1993, is from the short second run of "Scrabble".

The host for both runs was game-show mainstay Chuck Woolery. Woolery brought his easygoing and amiable demeanor to a game that did not really have the easiest gameplay. "Scrabble" the game show has only a passing similarity to Scrabble the board game, and that similarity is mainly cosmetic. Contestants are shown words with one letter completed on a Scrabble-like board, words which they then have to guess based on other letters that they can choose from to fill in the word.

This gameplay--apart from being somewhat convoluted--is completely different from what one does when playing the board game Scrabble, which involves a player taking an assortment of letters and creating words from them. Nonetheless, contestant Jean, who cleans up on all of her opponents in this episode, seems to have gotten the hang of it.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from WTTG/Washington, D.C. (Nov. 2, 1971)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Michael Pannoni'
Length - 13:43

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

This 1971 block of commercials is from Washington, D.C., station WTTG, which was independent at the time, but had previously been one of the key affiliates in the DuMont network and later became one of the first affiliates of Fox. In '71, it was owned by the Metromedia group of stations, which is what the "MM" stands for in the ID slides seen in this block.

A wide variety of commercials appear in the block, including for Bronkaid mist, Procter-Silex blenders, Westinghouse "Super Bulb" light bulbs, Soft-Weve toilet paper, Bromo Seltzer, Close-Up toothpaste, All laundry detergent, the board game Score Four, Tiparillo cigars (featuring a pre-fame Fred Willard!), Anacin and Dristan medicines, and Chase & Sanborn and Maxwell House coffees (the latter featuring comedian Danny Thomas and his daughter).

Several WTTG bumper slides and promos are also featured, including a few appearances of the same WTTG news bumper, an election day news promo for local WTTG news, and multiple instances of a bumper slide for the David Frost show (probably because it was that program that the commercial breaks were taken from).

TFTP Comedy: "The George Burns Special" from CBS (1976)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 50:35

George Burns was 80 years old at the time of this CBS special in 1976. He'd been in show business for decades, including in the pioneering TV sitcom he starred in with his wife Gracie Allen in the 1950s and which was featured on TFTP back in January. This special (his first since 1959, as he notes in his opening monologue) came as he was making a bit of a comeback due to his Oscar-winning performance in the film "The Sunshine Boys" in 1975--and as he settled into the final phase of his career, which was mainly a schtick on his increasingly advancing age.

Much of the special consists of Burns standing and puffing on his cigar while offering quips (many of them about his increasingly advancing age) and short renditions of old-timey musical numbers in his syncopated spoke-sung style. These are punctuated by all the other segments of the special: his introduction of the Osmond Brothers, who lip-sync a song; his playing straight man to Madeline Kahn, who takes the ditzy female role that Gracie Allen had played; his banter with Walter Matthau (again with Burns playing straight man); his interplay with Johnny Carson, who comically attempts to provide Burns with an opening act for his special; and his introduction of Chita Rivera, who sings "All That Jazz" from her hit Broadway show "Chicago".

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Rate Your Mate" from CBS (1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'videoarchives1000'
Length - 26:31 (total)

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Every single year of television history there have been pilot episodes made for programs that were never picked up by the network. The game show genre has had more of these pilots than most types. Here we have one of these game show pilots that was never picked up as a regular series.

"Rate Your Mate" was an early game show pilot by Goodson-Todman Productions, based on a radio version of the same concept, that was made for CBS in 1951. Goodson-Todman had been producing TV game shows for a few years by '51, with its early flagship program, "What's My Line?", having premiered the previous year. "Rate Your Mate" has some characteristics that are similar to other early-1950s game shows (Goodson-Todman or otherwise), including a format that features a married couple as contestants, relatively simple gameplay, extremely small stakes for winning (maximum $100 here), and fairly crude production values.

In "Rate Your Mate", hosted by comedian Joey Adams, one spouse goes into a soundproof booth while the other spouse guesses whether or not they will correctly answer questions that are posed to them. Some of the questions are straight factual questions but other ones involve models either wearing or displaying objects which must be correctly identified. Three different couples appear in this pilot, each with varying success.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1982 (KCET/Los Angeles)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 2:22

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off sequence for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

This 1982 sign-off from Los Angeles public TV station KCET has just two main parts: a minute-long promo for the Great Performances presentation of "Charterhouse of Parma", and a ownership/technical voiceover that is over a panoramic view of LA. (For reasons unknown, in the later part of the voiceover the camera pans and zooms in on the panorama.)

There's no national anthem film in this sign-off, as usual for most public television sign-offs that have been featured on TFTP (such as here, here, and here). The reasons for this, as for that mysterious zoom in this KCET sign-off, are unclear.

TFTP's Monochrome March, On This Day: "The Tonight Show" w/ Jack Paar - audio only (Mar. 29, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'epaddon'
Length - 1:14:44

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

It Was 56 Years Ago Today: We finish Monochrome March today with an item that is not a monochrome program per se, but the audio from a monochrome program--Jack Paar's final episode as host of the "Tonight Show", which aired 56 years ago today on March 29, 1962.

Many programs from the earliest period of TV history do not survive, but there are others for which the full program does not survive but the audio track does survive--and this last Paar "Tonight Show" episode is one of those. The program's audio above accompanies still images that attempt to illustrate what is going on in the audio track. Perhaps unsurprisingly given Paar's reputation, he spends a good chunk of this final episode settling scores, including with columnists Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen and those who criticized his visits to Cuba during his "Tonight Show" run (which took place as that country was undergoing revolution). Of course, a farewell show being what it is, there are plenty of testimonials to Paar as well, including from the likes of Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Billy Graham, George Burns, Jack Benny, and Bob Hope.

Paar had been "Tonight Show" host for almost five years by March of 1962, having started in July of 1957 (succeeding first "Tonight" host Steve Allen). Paar's tenure on the "Tonight Show" had been famously rocky, and included a walkout of the show for several days in 1960 as a result of a dispute with NBC about censorship of jokes. (He quips in the monologue of this episode that the NBC legal department was having a luau to celebrate his leaving the program.) Paar was leaving at this particular time to launch a prime-time variety show on NBC that started in the fall of 1962. That program ran until 1965, and for a few years after Paar made an occasional TV special, but then he appeared on TV infrequently for the remainder of his life, which lasted until 2004.

TFTP's Monochrome March Will Return After These Messages: Miscellaneous Commercial Block from the 1950s

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'
Length - 12:25

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

And every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. Monochrome March will return after these messages...

This block of commercials from the 1950s features (among other products) cigarettes, bread, autos, and soap products. There are ads for Palmolive bar soap (for the "schoolgirl complexion look"), Snickers candy bars (an animated look at the layers of a Snickers bar), Jello Instant Pudding, and Spic & Span cleaning solution. There are three different Camel cigarette ads--two of which are animated, one with a lion tamer and lion, the other featuring water skiing. There are also three different Sunbeam bread ads--and only one of them is the same as those TFTP featured a few weeks ago.

As we begin to wrap up this year's Monochrome March, it's worth considering how different these ads are from those we are familiar with today. To begin with, they're much longer; a couple of the ads here clock in at around two minutes. Animation was much more prevalent in ads from the 1950s and '60s; animation is almost never used in commercials now. And there is an unmistakable air of innocence to many of these ads--a girl jump-roping to sell Sunbeam bread, clean-cut teenagers featured in the Palmolive ad. Heck, even in the cigarette ads the worst thing going on is whether or not the cigarettes will irritate your throat.

Maybe, in that era, things really were more black and white.

TFTP's Monochrome March: Network Promo from NBC (Mar. 21, 1958)

Posted to YouTube by user 'obsgia'
Length - 1:12

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

Here is another monochrome network promo from the late-1950s, this one from NBC on March 21, 1958 (not 1957 as the YouTube title suggests). TFTP analyzed some of the qualities of 1950s program promos here, in a previous post on a promo from the late-1950s, and the above promo certainly has the same qualities (and limitations).

The above promo, which promotes that evening's prime-time line-up, comes during an episode of the NBC daytime game show "Treasure Hunt". It highlights three programs from the Friday night line-up: "Truth and Consquences" with guest star Lou Costello; "M-Squad" starring Lee Marvin; and "The Thin Man", the TV series adaptation of the movie series by the same name. The promotion for the three programs is held together by a puzzle-piece theme (evident in the promotional art and the voiceover).