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 Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1976 (WTVT/Tampa, FL)

Posted to YouTube by user 'eyeh8nbc'
Length - 2:15

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.

For the American bicentennial year as we move through "Sign-Offs Through the Years", here is a full sign-off from station WTVT in Tampa, Florida. The sign-off begins with the ownership/technical voiceover, over a slide of the station's "13" logo encircled by stars. The NAB television code is displayed prior to an unknown sign-off song (not the national anthem) which closes out the sign-off sequence.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from CBS/ABC (Oct. 2, 1976)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Pannoni 9'
Length - 15:39

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

In addition to a selection of ads for dolls, cereal, and kid-oriented food, this Saturday morning commercial block from October 2, 1976, has specimens from two legends of 1970s children's TV: "In the News" from CBS and "Schoolhouse Rock" from ABC. The "In the News" segment featured is a profile of figure skater Dianne de Leeuw who had competed in that year's Winter Olympics; while the "Schoolhouse Rock" segment is perhaps the greatest and most well-known such segment today, "I'm Just a Bill".

Drawn from both CBS (from "Sylvester and Tweety") and ABC (from "Jabberjaw"), commercials in the block include ones for Kellogg's Raisin Bran and Sugar Pops, Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles cereal, Keebler fudge-covered cookies, two different varieties of baby dolls (Don't Cry Baby and Baby Alive), the somewhat obscure board game Worm Wrestle, the similarly-obscure play figures called Wannabees, and Nerf Classic Fighters airplanes.

The block also has a PSA for change of address postal forms (was this an important issue in the 1970s?), several bumpers for the "Sylvester and Tweety" and "Jabberjaw" programs the commercials were pulled from, and the end credits for both programs, both with voiceovers promoting other shows.

Christmas at TFTP: "Johnny Cash Christmas Special" from CBS (Dec. 6, 1976)

Posted to YouTube by user 'PeterRabbit59'
Length - 50:24

Johnny Cash was a veteran at television as well as music by the mid-1970s, having starred in his own weekly TV show for two years from 1969 to 1971. This Christmas special from 1976 is the first of a series of annual Johnny Cash Christmas specials that lasted for the remainder of the decade.

The special is divided in to two distinct parts: The first part is a series of vignettes that are almost proto-music video in nature as Cash, sometimes alone, sometimes with others (including Roy Clark and Tony Orlando), wanders his farm and homestead, stopping for musical numbers that are highly visual and edited in nature. (There are quite a few Seventies-ish shots of nature and trees.) The second part is a gathering of Cash and family members, joined by the Reverend Billy Graham and select musical guests Merle Travis and Barbara Mandrell, in the Cash "home" (obviously a set on a soundstage), where they trade off performing musical numbers of various kinds.

This Christmas special is very light on Christmas music. Cash and guests instead opt for things like a medley of Stephen Foster-composed songs by Cash, Clark, and Orlando; instrumental guitar rags performed by Travis and Mandrell; and because Tony Orlando is a guest, a performance of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" (because in the 1970s, any time Tony Orlando was a guest he was going to sing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree"). The only two Christmas songs are a version of "The Christmas Song" (the "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" song) by Roy Clark and a duet between Cash and his brother Tommy on a catchy but obscure tune called "That Christmasy Feeling". The show ends with Billy Graham telling a Christmas-related story about how a child can change everything.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from KABC/Los Angeles (Oct. 5, 1976)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 18:14

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

This more lengthy 1976 sign-off sequence from station KABC in Los Angeles includes a feature that was in many sign-off sequences: a newscast. Sometimes a sign-off newscast would be simply a re-broadcast of the station's 10 O'Clock/11 O'Clock news (or a portion of it); sometimes it would be a news update-type newscast aired live during the sign-off; often--as in the case shown here--it would be just voiceover of headlines read over still slides (a technique most likely used in cases where the station had already shut down its studio cameras for the night).

And so the first three-quarters of this sign-off sequence is reporter/announcer Len Beardsley doing such a newscast. Here it is broken up into several parts (local, national, sports, weather) with commercial breaks in between parts. These commercial breaks include ads for some local or regional LA stores (Leo's Stereo, Zodys discount store, Ohrbachs department store, Ralph's supermarkets), a couple of PSAs (for the lawyer referral service of the Yellow Pages and the Fair Housing program in the LA area), and ads for other products such as Face Quencher Make-Up by Chap Stick, Grape Nuts cereal, Audi automobiles, Crisco Oil, and General Foods International Coffee.

After the final commercial break, Beardsley does the technical/ownership voiceover on a slide of the KABC circled "7" logo, followed by the "Star-Spangled Banner" film (here with imagery of paintings depicting Revolutionary War-era scenes).

TFTP Kids: "The Adventures of Letterman" from "The Electric Company" (Feb. 28, 1973; Apr. 6, 1976)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NantoVision1'

In this first TFTP Kids post, we have a pair of segments of "The Adventures of Letterman" from the legendary 1970s PBS kids show "The Electric Company." "The Electric Company" was the 1971 follow-up show from the Children's Television Workshop, after CTW--and the fledgling PBS's--smash success with "Sesame Street" which premiered in 1969. This second CTW program was focused on alphabet and phonics skills in youngsters (as opposed to the more broad-based concerns of "Sesame Street"). Although the two shows shared many characteristics (much animation, recurring segments, an ensemble of actors, an emphasis on teaching basic skills), "Electric Company" was less precious, more ironic and wry, and way more wacky in its comedy and perspective.

"The Adventures of Letterman" debuted on "The Electric Company" at the beginning of the show's second season (in Fall 1972) and was featured until the original run of the show ended in 1977. Letterman, a parodic superhero (and one that would not have been mistaken for David Letterman, whose fame was yet to come in the early- to mid-1970s), saved the day from the malicious spelling changes wrought by the Spell Binder (the villain which was, for today's tastes, a little too much of a parody of an Arab figure).  Like many of the segments in CTW's shows, this one featured a cast of celebrities: Joan Rivers as the narrator, Gene Wilder as Letterman, and Zero Mostel as Spell Binder.

The two segments here are "Hands Full", which appeared on the Feb. 28, 1973, episode of "Electric Company"; and "Small Talk", which appeared on the Apr. 6, 1976, episode.