TFTP Cable: "Pinwheel" from Nickelodeon (early-1980s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 1:22

A few weeks back we featured a block of promos from early-1980s Nickelodeon, and this clip of the opening credits from the Nickelodeon program "Pinwheel" is from that same era. The segment is light, airy, and whimsical--setting a tone that is unrecognizable from the Nickelodeon of more recent years. "Pinwheel" is a type of program that has also long since disappeared from Nickelodeon: one with this kind of tone, with a mix of human and puppet characters, and with a setting reminiscent of "Sesame Street".

The show mainly took place in a large, Victorian-style boarding house called Pinwheel House in which the human and puppet characters interacted with one another. The program actually pre-dates Nickelodeon altogether, as it premiered in 1977 on one of the channels on Warner cable's QUBE interactive cable TV experiment. This channel, which took the name Pinwheel for awhile in honor of its flagship program, would become Nickelodeon in 1979; "Pinwheel" went along in the transition and continued to air on Nick with original episodes until 1984 and in repeats all the way until 1990.

TFTP Cable: Commercial/Promo Block from Nickelodeon (1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'JustinInAtlanta'
Length - 6:13

The cable kids' channel Nickelodeon went on the air in 1979, so this commercial/promo block from 1983 is from fairly early in the network's history. It's early enough that the longtime Nick branding with its signature orange color was yet to be implemented (that didn't happen until the following year, 1984). The logo and branding seen here, with the large silver ball underlying the multi-colored "Nickelodeon" wordmark, was known as the "pinball" logo.

There are some great nuggets of vintage Nickelodeon here: The billboard for "coming up next" programs "Third Eye", "Livewire", and "Tomorrow People"; the ads for ViewMaster's line of glowsticks (who knew?), the Simon electronic game, and Stratego board game; the promos for "You Can't Do That on Television" (Nick's flagship program in the early-1980s), Leonard Nimoy-hosted "Standby...Lights! Camera! Action!", and "Reggie Jackson's World of Sports"; and the spot for the "Great Nickelodeon Sweepstakes".

TFTP Signs-On for September: Launch Day Sign-On for TV Land (Apr. 29, 1996)

Posted to YouTube by user 'mark loudin'

TFTP: Television from the Past returns after a long absence and signs on for the month of September with this clip of the April 29, 1996, moment of launch for Nick at Nite's TV Land cable channel. It's a fantastic compilation of bits from many different classic TV programs edited together to make it seem as if it is counting down to--and in the process celebrating--the launch of a channel dedicated to classic TV.

The network's early moniker as "Nick at Nite's" TV Land indicated the channel's origins as a spin-off of the popular Nick at Nite classic TV programming that had been airing in the evenings on the Nickelodeon kids' channel for over a decade by 1996. Nick at Nite developed the offbeat and campy sensibility that became TV Land's approach for its first several years on the air.

TV Land has to some extent moved away from its longtime focus on classic television with original programs that have lately aimed for a younger demographic. But at launch and for many years thereafter, TV Land was THE cable network dedicated to (usually in a playfully tongue-in-cheek fashion) the preservation and celebration of classic TV.

And that's why it's fitting that this clip also launches the return of TFTP!