TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Commercial Block from NBC (Oct. 8, 1982)

Posted to YouTube by user 'pannoni4'
Length - 7:48

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 NBC from Oct. 8, 1982, features ads for Campbells Soup, Listerine, Burger King, Pam cooking spray, Phillips 66, Zerex antifreeze, Inglenook wine, Windex glass cleaner, Wal-Mart, Stayfree pads (with gymnast Cathy Rigby), Rave hair perm kits, and Prestone auto products.

The block also includes a pair of bumpers for "Remington Steele"; promos for "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and for NBC's Saturday night line-up that included "Diff'rent Strokes", "Silver Spoons", "Gimme a Break", and "Love, Sidney"; and a short weather radar segment (for the state of Missouri).

TFTP Kids: "Calvin and the Colonel" from ABC (Feb. 3, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Tomorrowpictures.TV'
Length - 28:00

The early-1960s cartoon series "Calvin and the Colonel" is one of the more interesting phenomena of media history. The show, created and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll of "Amos n' Andy" fame, is an obvious adaptation of that earlier, more famous and more controversial program.

Created shortly after "Amos n' Andy" ended on radio in 1960, and several years after the "Amos n' Andy" television show's brief but controversial run, "Calvin and the Colonel" is a clear attempt on the part of Gosden and Correll to take the elements that had become questionable about "Amos n' Andy"--the voice characterizations of white men impersonating blacks, the stereotypical situations the characters found themselves in--and transplant them to a less threatening cartoon format where the characters were animals.

The episode above, titled "Wheeling and Dealing" and originally aired on February 3, 1962, is from about midway through the program's one-season 1961-62 run. At a time when prime-time cartoon programs were prevalent (this was the height of the popularity of "The Flintstones"), "Calvin and the Colonel" started out in prime-time in October and November of 1961 before being transferred to Saturday morning until its June 1962 cancellation.

The two lead characters are Calvin T. Burnside, a dimwitted bear (voiced by Correll), and Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a wily fox (voiced by Gosden). Calvin and the Colonel propagate an insurance scam in which they try to get and cash in on auto insurance for the Colonel's nephew's car--after it had already been in an accident. This plot was one that would have been right at home in "Amos n' Andy".

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: Commercials/Promos from ABC (Dec. 18, 1957)

Posted to YouTube by user 'pannoni4'
Length - 8:05

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

Although not a flow sequence in terms of all having been aired continuously in a solid block of airtime, here is a series of commercials and (mostly) promos from ABC from December of 1957. A pair of minute-long 7-Up commercials kick things off, with one very odd commercial featuring several birds (ducks?) performing different tasks (packing pickles, picking cotton, etc.) made more tolerable by having a bottle of 7-Up. This is followed by a second 7-Up commercial in a bullfighting setting (again with one of the strange birds as a matador).

Most of the rest of the block is ABC network promos, beginning with a short one for "The Frank Sinatra Show" with guest Bing Crosby. An ABC network ID follows, succeeded by a PSA for the U.S. Mail. A station ID for Philadelphia's WFIL-TV leads into a promo for "Wild Bill Hickok"; a lengthy "Season's Greetings" spot with names of ABC personalities displayed; promos for "The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom", "Wednesday Night Fights", and "The Saga of Andy Burnett" (a serial shown on "Disneyland"); and a closing, longer promo for the episode of "The Frank Sinatra Show" with guest Bing Crosby, a Christmas episode featuring various carols and holiday songs.

Interspersed among these are a couple of bumpers for "American Bandstand", an episode from which came all of the promos and other spots in this block.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1973 (WVIR/Charlottesville, VA)

Posted to YouTube by user 'stevations'
Length - 1:42

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 1973 sign-off from Charlottesville, Virginia, station WVIR (the community's NBC affiliate) continues the early-1970s pattern of consisting of original audio with still images. The audio (after beginning with a jaunty instrumental passage) again features just the ownership/technical voiceover. The still images here (and in all of these such sign-offs) are not just filler--they consist of interesting information about the station being featured. Here we see the WVIR station logo from the era, pictures of the WVIA studio and technical facilities, some of the station's on-air personalities, and even a "fact sheet" about the station.

TFTP On This Day: "ABC Evening News" from ABC (Jan. 25, 1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'efan2011'
Length - 18:08

It Was 50 Years Ago Today: This excerpt of "ABC Evening News", from fifty years ago today, January 25, 1968, focuses on reporting on the U.S.S. Pueblo incident in which North Korea captured the American ship the U.S.S. Pueblo. (The clip is from the mid-2000s ABC News program "Time Tunnel" that appeared on the ABC online service and digital subchannel called ABC News Now that existed from 2004 until 2009.)

Anchor Bob Young introduces the newscast by discussing President Lyndon Johnson's decision to call up military reservists in an attempt to counter North Korea's action. Correspondent Frank Reynolds (who would himself become the "ABC Evening News" anchor before the end of 1968) reports from the White House, followed by Jim Burns reporting on the reactions among reservists in Brooklyn and other reporters on reactions from other locations around the country.

The balance of the excerpt is filled out by Bill Downs discussing American military options in the event diplomacy failed in resolving the conflict; commentator Howard K. Smith on how average Americans were responding to the crisis; and anchor Young offering additional headlines (with graphics) related to the Vietnam War and other topics. Included also is a lengthy Purina Dog Chow commercial that features a tie-in with the contemporary movie "Dr. Doolittle".

TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Kelloggs Commercials w/ Superman (1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'tvdays' (all three)
Length - 1:04 (top), 1:01 (middle), 1:02 (bottom)

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

As the sponsor of "The Adventures of Superman" in the 1950s, Kellogg's cereal had many different Superman-related commercials in that era. Here are three of them from 1954, all featuring premiums that kids could get with boxtops from Kellogg's cereals.

In the first commercial above, the premium is a snappy Superman belt--just like Superman himself wore! Kids could add to their Man of Steel wardrobe with the Superman t-shirt offered in the second commercial. Finally, they could through the third and last commercial obtain a flying Superman glider toy (which they could play with while wearing their Superman belt and t-shirt, naturally).

Premiums--in which a consumer would send in boxtops or other packaging elements ("proof of purchase") in exchange for some sort of gift--were central to childrens' programming going all the way back to the network radio days of the 1930s, and "The Adventures of Superman" brought the tradition into the earliest era of TV.

TFTP Comedy: "The Monkees" (series premiere) from NBC (Sep. 12, 1966)

Posted to YouTube by user 'pedroverito'
Length - 25:03

"The Monkees" represented the confluence of two big trends in popular culture in the mid-1960s: first, that of mop-topped four-piece pop music combos, a trend launched, of course, by the Beatles (the Monkees, due to the contrivance of their very existence, were famously the "Pre-Fab Four" to the Beatles' "Fab Four"); the second trend was that of the zany hijinx of 1960s situation comedies. Shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Bewitched", "Gilligan's Island", and "Get Smart" (and others) had laid the ground of zany hijinx well before the Monkees got to it in the fall of 1966.

The episode above is the first of the Monkees' eponymous sitcom "The Monkees". The group had been created with the express purpose of starring in the sitcom, and the original idea had been for the four to be just actors playing musicians. As time went on, the group (Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith, and Micky Dolenz), which had several hit singles in the last half of the 1960s, took greater and greater control of its own music, and they now have a respectable reputation as a late-1960s pop music mainstay.

This premiere episode isn't really a pilot per se--there's no deliberate setting up of relationships or establishment of the overall situation of the series, as in most pilots--but it is a great example both of the slapstick and zany humor that this series would practice and of this type of humor that was found more generally in 1960s sitcoms. At the beach, Davy saves from drowning a princess from an obscure (fictional) country, and the boys spend the rest of the episode trying to defeat the nefarious plot by her uncle to kill her and seize power. Hilarity ensues.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Video Village" from CBS (Sep. 16, 1960)

Posted to YouTube by user 'videoarchives1000'
Length (total) - 29:28

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

"Video Village" is one of the more interesting game shows in TV history. It's basically a life-size board game--with the contestants themselves as the pawns marking where they are on the board. The show's set is a large representation of an undulating ribbon of game spaces, each space indicating a different kind of action--some with cash prizes, some located in front of mock storefronts with merchandise prizes, some dictating certain types of movements (e.g., trading places with the other contestant), some sending the contestant to jail (like in Monopoly, but with an actual mock jail cell).

The program, from game-show impresarios Heatter-Quigley (best known for "Hollywood Squares"), had both daytime and prime-time versions that debuted within days of each other in July 1960. The daytime edition lasted for two years, until June 1962, but the prime-time version only made it a few months, until September 12, 1960, with the episode featured above. Jack Narz hosted both versions until the prime-time run ended; Monty Hall took over the daytime version thereafter; Red Rowe substituted for this final prime-time episode.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1972 (WTAR/Norfolk, VA)

Posted to YouTube by user 'stevations'
Length - 0:31

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 1972 sign-off is from Norfolk, Virginia, station WTAR, the CBS affiliate now known as WTKR. Like last week's sign-off from 1971, this one has original audio paired with a still image from the era. Also like last week's sign-off, the audio consists just of the ownership/technical voiceover (and maybe only part of that voiceover).

With audio that is not high-quality (and consists of only part of the sign-off sequence), and no video at all, these early-1970s sign-offs are not very dynamic, but they are part of the history of television and worthy of our consideration.

TFTP Promos: Local Promos for KTHI/Fargo, ND (c. Oct. 14, 1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'RetroWinnipeg'
Length - 1:01

KTHI-TV was one of the local network affiliates in TFTP's backyard (first for ABC, then switching in the early-1980s to NBC). (The station has since changed call letters to KVLY.) Here are a few local promos for various KTHI programs from October of 1983. First is a promo for a broadcast of the 1950s sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still" on a local Saturday afternoon movie series called "Take 11 Theater" (KTHI was on channel 11). This is followed by a promo for the drama "Fame" (premiering Saturday, October 15 at 6:00 pm!), which was just entering first-run syndication after having aired for one season as a network show on NBC. Finally, the clip closes with a promo for a football game between the regional home-team Minnesota Vikings and the Houston Oilers.