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!

Merry Christmas from TFTP: Television from the Past!

Posted to YouTube by user 'Greg Rempe'
Length - 1:59:47

Some TV stations back in the day would pre-empt regular programming on Christmas Day and show an image of a yule log burning in a fireplace for several hours, usually (as in this recording that aired sometime in the 1980s on New York station WPIX) with holiday music playing.

And so here at Television from the Past, we offer this yule log as season's greetings, and we would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This Christmas Day post will be the last for a couple of weeks as TFTP goes on a holiday hiatus until the New Year. Our next post will be on Monday, January 8.

TFTP Flow: "CBS Late Movie" Intro & Commercial/Promo Break from KXJB/Fargo, ND (Sep. 1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'

Television "flow" - an unbroken sequence of various on-air elements such as program segments, news breaks, commercials, program promos, PSAs, station IDs, bumpers, and other interstitials, which can be analyzed to understand what viewers of the past experienced when watching TV.

Some time ago, TFTP featured a hometown station sign-off segment from CBS affiliate KXJB/Fargo, North Dakota. Here is a "flow" clip from the same station from September 1983. (See above for a definition of television "flow".) An intro to the CBS Late Movie is followed by several commercials, including ones for Rubbermaid microwave cookware (just becoming a thing around this time), Sears, and Kibbles n' Bits (n' Bits, n' Bits). Two program promos join the mix: for the "Barbara Mandrell Show" (Saturday nights at 10:30) and for a pre-scandalous Jimmy Swaggart's Sunday morning religious program. Finally, a PSAs for United Way and the US Dept. of Health and Human Services round out the flow sequence.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from KXJB/Fargo, ND (Mar. 29, 1989)

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

Posted to YouTube by user 'Richard58103'

This week's sign-off sequence is from close to home for TFTP, coming from our hometown. Station KXJB has been the CBS affiliate in the Fargo region since its inception in the mid-1950s. This late-1980s KXJB sign-off is short and sweet--just a brief standard sign-off voiceover (over an image of the station's former studio that it occupied from the mid-1980s til the mid-2000s), followed by "The Star-Spangled Banner" and color bars.

TFTP Flow: Commercial/Promo Break from NBC (Dec. 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WREYtube'

TFTP is fond of what television scholars (yes, there is such a thing) call "flow". "Flow" is the idea of looking at and analyzing a random segment of TV as aired and seeing what kinds of elements make it up--which usually includes the programs themselves, news breaks or updates, commercials, PSAs, station IDs, bumpers of various kinds, and so forth. Examining an unbroken string of such elements, such as in today's clip, helps to understand what viewers experienced when watching TV and how they experienced it.

Various blocks of commercials have been featured (and will continue to be) here on TFTP. But these are sometimes not continuous in terms of what a viewer at that time may have actually seen. For this and future "flow" posts, the clip featured will be an unbroken "flow" of material that is from a distinct program on a particular day; the term "flow" in part refers to the way in which the different elements sort of flow past the viewers in an often disruptive but yet still appealing sequence.

The "flow" sequence in this clip is from an NBC airing of the holiday special "Jack Frost" from December 1980. The sequence includes commercials for Minute Maid orange juice, Timex watches, and Kellogg's Graham Crackos cereal, and program promos for "Here's Boomer", "CHiPs", and "The Asphalt Cowboy". The voiceover in both the bumpers leading out and back into "Jack Frost", as well as in the program promos, is none other than Casey Kasem.

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Blocks from WUAB/Cleveland (Summer 1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Broadcaster1988'

Here are three commercial breaks from the same program, a 1983 late-movie airing of the 1942 film "Wings and the Woman" on Cleveland independent station WUAB. It's no coincidence that most of these are either ads for local establishments or mail-order ads, as these were the types of advertisers independent stations attracted, especially for something like a late-movie.

In the first clip above: (1) a great mail-order commercial for a camping knife called the "Travel Carver"; (2) a long-ish promo for WUAB's airings of "The Rockford Files" (weeknights at 8:00!); (3) a really cool animated PSA that basically is advertising the fact that WUAB runs PSAs; and (4) a bumper for "The Late Show II" leading back into "Wings and the Woman" (with "Late Show II" being the station's branding for this late-movie timeslot; there must've been another late-movie preceding it).

In the second clip: (1) a mail-order commercial for the album "The Best of Creedence Clearwater Revival"; (2) an ad for a local Cleveland store called the "Sunbeam Shop", which seems to be a thrift store benefiting vocational training (or some such thing); and (3) the "Late Show II" bumper again, this time followed by a few seconds of the film itself.

And, finally, in the third clip: (1) a mail-order commercial (late-movie commercial breaks were lousy with them) for a series of romance novels called Sapphire Books; (2) a recruiting ad for Control Data Institute, a trade school; (3) a promo for an airing of the film "The Organization" with Sidney Poitier (under the banner of "Channel 43 Star Movie", a prime-time movie timeslot on WUAB); and (4) the bumper leading back into "Wings and the Woman".

TFTP News: "11 Alive Newsroom" from WXIA/Atlanta (Apr. 13 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'

From Apr. 13, 1980, is the local newscast--titled "11 Alive Newsroom"--from WXIA-TV in Atlanta, which at this time was the Atlanta ABC affiliate but later in 1980 would switch its affiliation to NBC, which it retains (along with the "11 Alive" branding) to this day. Curious local news tidbit: the painted portraits of newsmakers that are utilized as graphics in several of the stories here.

Stories featured in this newscast: demonstrations related to racial strife in the town of Wrightsville, GA; Ted Kennedy wins the Arizona primary in the 1980 Democratic presidential race in his run against incumbent president Jimmy Carter; a local rodeo in the Atlanta area; final results from the 1980 Masters golf tournament; flooding in Louisiana; and details related to severe weather in the Atlanta and north Georgia region, including a recent tornado watch.

Most of the commercials and interstitial elements have been edited out here, with a few significant exceptions: there is a Cadillac ad at the very end, an ad for the regional Krystal fast food chain midway through, and at the very beginning there is a brief bumper promo for local syndicated airings of "Star Trek".

TFTP Cable: Promo Breaks from USA Network and CBN (Feb. 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WREYtube' (all three clips)

USA Network and CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) were well-established as cable networks by the mid-1980s, both having been started in the first big wave of basic cable expansion in the late-1970s. At the time of these promo break clips, all from February 1986, both had as a mainstay of their programming off-network reruns of old shows from the major broadcast networks.

The first clip above from USA features a short segment of the game show "Jackpot" before moving into a promo break for "The USA Comedy Hour", a programming block airing at the time that had episodes of very obscure network sitcoms such as "Mr. Merlin", "The Second-Hundred Years", and "He & She" (as well as the less-obscure "That Girl"). USA showed a lot of game shows in those days, most of them off-network reruns, but "Jackpot" was at the time a Canadian-produced first-run game show.

Clip #2 (in the middle) is another, shorter one from USA that has a promo break for an Western/adventure block that included "The Monroes", "The Virginian", "Wanted Dead or Alive", and "Lancer". This is followed by an excellent example of the mid-1980s USA Network ID bumper, then the first seconds of an episode of the game show "Chain Reaction".

The third and final clip, from CBN, starts with the close of an episode of the game show "Go", followed with a nice CBN network ID. Then, a promo break features "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and then a "Late Night Comedy" block including Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life", the '70s version of the "Bill Cosby Show", "Dobie Gillis", and "Father Knows Best". The clip ends with a fascinating CBN image spot called "Family Power".

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from WXON/Detroit (Summer 1986)

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

Posted to YouTube by user 'Ej H'

TFTP signs-off this week--just like last week--with a station sign-off that features a song other than "The Star-Spangled Banner" (which is in most station sign-offs). This 1986 sign-off segment from independent station WXON in Detroit has as its sign-off song "My Country 'Tis of Thee" with stylized animated visuals highlighting colonial imagery (and apparently created by the Mormon church).

TFTP News: "58 After... News" (newsbreak) from KSCH/Stockton, CA (Oct. 20, 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Chuck's New Classic TV Clubhouse'

Here's a classic "newsbreak" of the kind that used to appear constantly in the afternoon and evening hours on local stations and networks alike. This mid-1980s example--from independent station KSCH (now KQCA) in Stockton, California--is an especially pedestrian one in that it doesn't even include any reported material or over-the-shoulder graphics (other than the station logo)--just the newsreader reading the news. Apparently, KSCH (channel 58) did such a newsbreak on a regular basis at 58 minutes after the hour (or 2 minutes before the top of the hour), thus the title "58 After... News".

This kind of newsbreak, while still used occasionally, is one of the features of television from the past that has been made obsolete by newer forms of learning about the news. Now, online headlines, Facebook feeds, and 24-hour cable news have taken the place of such TV news summaries. But in 1986 (and more so in the years prior to that) this was one of the only ways to get a quick update of what was happening locally, nationally, or internationally.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from WCPX/Orlando (March 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WREYtube'

TV stations used to sign-off at night (usually at sometime between midnight and 1:00 am) and remain dark in the overnight hours until signing on again the following morning (usually sometime in the 5:00 am hour). Each Friday afternoon here at TFTP, we feature a station sign-off to mark the end of our blogging and posting for the week.

This mid-1980s sign-off from Orlando CBS affiliate WCPX (now WKMG) has as its centerpiece the main element of almost all station sign-offs: a film of the U.S. national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner". This is follwed (again, as most station sign-offs were) by a voiceover announcer stating the call letters, frequency (channel number), transmitting power and transmitter location, and mailing address of the station. Once this is completed, the signal changes to static--until morning!

TFTP Signs-On for May: Station Sign-On (w/ "A.M. Weather") from WTTW (Chicago) (Oct. 18, 1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'

Television from the past was not 24/7 like it is now, and stations usually signed-off for the night at around midnight or 1:00 am; this, of course, meant that they had to sign-on again the following morning each day.

This is a station sign-on for Tuesday, October 18, 1983, from Chicago PBS station WTTW, which starts with the color bars used by TV engineers to adjust the transmitted picture, followed by the customary voiceover info about the station's frequency and ownership (as required by FCC rules). This is followed by the day's segment of "A.M. Weather", a national round-up of weather information produced by Maryland Public TV with the support of several aviation-based organizations.

Station sign-ons usually took place around 5:00 or 5:30 am each morning (sometimes a little later), depending on when the station's first scheduled program for the day was. TFTP will feature one of these station sign-ons each month on the first of the month (or the first Monday if the 1st is on a weekend).

TFTP Late Night: The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers (Oct. 13, 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'RetroWinnipeg'

In memory of the late, great Joan Rivers, who died last week at the age of 81, we have a segment from her infamous FOX late-night talk show which ran for several months in 1986-87. Rivers had served as "permanent" guest host for Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" for a few years prior and had appeared many times on that show going back to the mid-1960s when she launched her career on the strength of Carson's stamp of approval. As she transitioned to beginning her own talk show on FOX in the fall of 1986, she and Carson had a very public break with one another from which their relationship never recovered.

This clip of the "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers" is from Monday, October 13, 1986, only the second week of the show. It begins with the top of the show and Rivers' monologue, during which she brings out her teenage daughter Melissa, in what may have been one of the duo's very first appearances onscreen together (they would go on, of course, to make many more with their red carpet hosting gigs and "Fashion Police" series). After a commercial break, Rivers continues with a comic bit revolving around the day's Columbus Day sales and phoning local department stores to try and get merchandise delivered to the show's studio before the end of the hour-long taping. After another commercial break, Rivers brings out the show's first guest, actress Angela Lansbury.

This clip is a bit peculiar in that it is not from American television, but rather from the "Late Show"'s airing on Canadian television; this is why the station ID at the very beginning of the clip as well as all the commercials are Canadian.

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

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

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

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

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

TFTP Will Be Back After These Messages: Commercial Block from WBBM (Chicago) (Dec. 9, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The "New" Fun & Games Channel'

Here's a mostly unremarkable block of commercials from Chicago's CBS affiliate WBBM from December 1980 (unremarkable is OK, though, as that's what the vast bulk of commercials have been since the beginning of commercial television!). The highlights are: a rather peculiar commercial (the first one in the block) for Santa Fe Industries featuring a grizzled prospector and a businesswoman who has (literally) helicoptered in to speak with him; a rather charming commercial for Mattel's Electronic Gin game, interesting in that it is a good example of the handheld electronic game craze that was nearing its peak at this time; and a rather intriguing commercial for Chicago Sting indoor soccer team that features legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray. Also found here are a local WBBM promo for "The Rockford Files", an Olympus camera ad featuring actress Cheryl Tiegs, and two different commercials for local Chicago department store McDade's.

The block ends with an announcement that the CBS Late Movie would start after a special broadcast. That special broadcast was a news special about the murder of Beatle John Lennon, which had occurred the previous day, on Dec. 8, 1980.

TFTP Flow: MTV (Music Television) from Nov. 1983

Posted to YouTube by user 'phxlefty'

A few weeks ago, TFTP featured its first post of a clip from a cable TV network (some promos from Showtime); here we have another clip of early cable TV--the legendary early MTV. MTV Music Television was one of the proto-cable networks that helped establish cable television as a medium after it launched in August of 1981. Early MTV, of course, featured mainly music videos, with a number of different kinds of segments as interstitials between the videos.

This extended (25 minute) clip is of those interstitial elements (the music videos themselves have been excised). Included in the clip are: VJ (video jockey) segments with original MTV VJ Mark Goodman; promotion of concert dates by The Police and Black Sabbath (and a taped intro to a Police concert by VJ Martha Quinn); classic MTV network IDs with the shifting-colors MTV logo and the iconic spaceman; promotion of the network's "Friday Night Music Fights", in which two music videos were pitted against one another; a spot for one of the network's famous giveaway promotions (here for Neil Young's pink Cadillac); and a "World Premiere" video announcement for Bob Dylan's latest music video.

The clip includes several commercials as well, and there is no mistaking the channel's adolescent target demographic based on the commercials featured here: compilation record albums, the Atari video game system, Panasonic boom boxes, and Compound W wart remover (!).

TFTP Will Be Back After These Messages: Commercial Block (ABC) (Nov. 7 & 14, 1981)

Posted to YouTube by user '80sCommercialVault'

This is another block of commercials, this time from ABC on Saturday mornings, November 7 and 14, 1981. There's a lot of great stuff here, including some toy commercials (Nerf basketball, Tonka trucks, couple Barbie products), junk food (Reese's peanut butter cups, SpaghettiO's, Burger King), public service announcements (including one starring Brooke Shields and another starring Ed Asner), and the piece-de-resistance, Underoos. There are also several bumpers (the brief, usually 5-second, bits leading into and out of the commercial breaks for Saturday morning shows) and the complete end credits for an episode of "Thundarr the Barbarian.

TFTP Promos: Showtime promos 1983

So far on TFTP we've featured strictly network television material from the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) or their affiliates. But television in the past now includes nearly forty years of history for cable networks as well, so here is our first post from a cable channel--the Showtime pay-TV network. HBO (Home Box Office) was the first pay-TV channel, launching nationally in 1975, but Showtime was not far behind and was established as HBO's main rival (which it remains today) by the end of the 1970s.

This is a block of Showtime promos from 1983, and it includes promos for: (1) "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1981) with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange; (2) a double feature of "Divorce: Kids in the Middle" and "Shoot the Moon" (1982) with Diane Keaton and Albert Finney; (3) "Chariots of Fire", the Oscar-winner from 1981; (4) "Cat People" (1982) with Malcolm McDowell and Nastassia Kinski; and (5) the opening bumper for an interstital called Showtime Take 5, which appears to have been some sort of music video segment, based on the images shown.

TFTP Flow: WDAZ News Update w/ promos (1985)

This is a flow clip with a news update from 1985 that hits close to home for TFTP; the station, WDAZ (Grand Forks, ND), is right in our backyard. The clip begins with an ABC network promo for "David Hartman: The Future is Now", an ABC News special about space travel featuring then-host of "Good Morning America" David Hartman (you can read more about it here). The news update follows, with Kathryn Bursch reading the news. This news update is in a form commonly found over the years: simply an anchor or newsreader in a head shot looking into the camera with no graphics, no B-roll footage, and no other accoutrements, reading news for 30 seconds.

The update is followed by the beginning of an ad spot--I think for the sponsor mentioned at the beginning of the news update--but then abruptly cuts to the end of an ad spot for Kingsford charcoal, followed by a network promo for "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure." This is likely due to one of the major reasons that flow clips like this have survived for us to watch them now: This was probably the transition point in the video tape recording of two programs, one of which had the WDAZ news update after the end of the program being recorded, the next program which started with the Kingsford ad and promo before the beginning of the program.

TFTP Special: Sign-Off on WTVJ (Miami) (1980)

The very first TFTP post a few weeks ago was a TV station sign-on used at the beginning of the broadcast day. Here is its counterpart, a sign-off, the segment of programming at the very end of the broadcast day--from when stations used to actually sign off and go off the air overnight. Many sign-offs included a brief news update (this one does not) and they almost universally featured a brief film or tape segment of the U.S. national anthem (as this one does). This sign-off from 1980 also includes a few program promos (including for a CBS TV broadcast of the movie "Rocky") and a couple of public service announcements (PSAs), which stations often loaded into this late-night period.  It's from station WTVJ in Miami, Florida's first TV station (launching in 1949), which at this time was on Channel 4 and was a CBS affiliate but has since switched to Channel 6 and NBC.