Christmas at TFTP: Christmas Commercials (c. 1980s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Retro Archives'
Length - 12:02

This block of 1980s-era Christmas-related commercials runs the gamut. Included here are: five different Polaroid instant camera commercials, including one with the product's longtime pitch duo James Garner and Mariette Hartley; four different Kodak Instant Camera ads, two of which feature Santa himself (one of which also contains children clad in rainbow-hued footie pajamas); two different versions of a commercial for 7-Up with that product's ridiculous red dot character; a cheery Slice lemon-lime soda ad; a Christmas cookie ad for Crisco; a Christmas card ad for Hallmark; a Christmas tree ad for Toll House cookies; a spot for a Pepsi/Nintendo sweepstakes; and ads for Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and Burger King.

In addition to all of these commercials, the block also includes some bumpers and the end credits for the classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" special and CBS program promos for the "I Love Lucy Christmas Special", "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "Frosty the Snowman", and "Twas the Night Before Christmas".

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).