TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1982 (KCET/Los Angeles)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 2:22

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 1982 sign-off from Los Angeles public TV station KCET has just two main parts: a minute-long promo for the Great Performances presentation of "Charterhouse of Parma", and a ownership/technical voiceover that is over a panoramic view of LA. (For reasons unknown, in the later part of the voiceover the camera pans and zooms in on the panorama.)

There's no national anthem film in this sign-off, as usual for most public television sign-offs that have been featured on TFTP (such as here, here, and here). The reasons for this, as for that mysterious zoom in this KCET sign-off, are unclear.

TFTP's Monochrome March, On This Day: "The Tonight Show" w/ Jack Paar - audio only (Mar. 29, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'epaddon'
Length - 1:14:44

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

It Was 56 Years Ago Today: We finish Monochrome March today with an item that is not a monochrome program per se, but the audio from a monochrome program--Jack Paar's final episode as host of the "Tonight Show", which aired 56 years ago today on March 29, 1962.

Many programs from the earliest period of TV history do not survive, but there are others for which the full program does not survive but the audio track does survive--and this last Paar "Tonight Show" episode is one of those. The program's audio above accompanies still images that attempt to illustrate what is going on in the audio track. Perhaps unsurprisingly given Paar's reputation, he spends a good chunk of this final episode settling scores, including with columnists Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen and those who criticized his visits to Cuba during his "Tonight Show" run (which took place as that country was undergoing revolution). Of course, a farewell show being what it is, there are plenty of testimonials to Paar as well, including from the likes of Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Billy Graham, George Burns, Jack Benny, and Bob Hope.

Paar had been "Tonight Show" host for almost five years by March of 1962, having started in July of 1957 (succeeding first "Tonight" host Steve Allen). Paar's tenure on the "Tonight Show" had been famously rocky, and included a walkout of the show for several days in 1960 as a result of a dispute with NBC about censorship of jokes. (He quips in the monologue of this episode that the NBC legal department was having a luau to celebrate his leaving the program.) Paar was leaving at this particular time to launch a prime-time variety show on NBC that started in the fall of 1962. That program ran until 1965, and for a few years after Paar made an occasional TV special, but then he appeared on TV infrequently for the remainder of his life, which lasted until 2004.

TFTP's Monochrome March Will Return After These Messages: Miscellaneous Commercial Block from the 1950s

Posted to YouTube by user 'MattTheSaiyan'
Length - 12:25

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

And every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. Monochrome March will return after these messages...

This block of commercials from the 1950s features (among other products) cigarettes, bread, autos, and soap products. There are ads for Palmolive bar soap (for the "schoolgirl complexion look"), Snickers candy bars (an animated look at the layers of a Snickers bar), Jello Instant Pudding, and Spic & Span cleaning solution. There are three different Camel cigarette ads--two of which are animated, one with a lion tamer and lion, the other featuring water skiing. There are also three different Sunbeam bread ads--and only one of them is the same as those TFTP featured a few weeks ago.

As we begin to wrap up this year's Monochrome March, it's worth considering how different these ads are from those we are familiar with today. To begin with, they're much longer; a couple of the ads here clock in at around two minutes. Animation was much more prevalent in ads from the 1950s and '60s; animation is almost never used in commercials now. And there is an unmistakable air of innocence to many of these ads--a girl jump-roping to sell Sunbeam bread, clean-cut teenagers featured in the Palmolive ad. Heck, even in the cigarette ads the worst thing going on is whether or not the cigarettes will irritate your throat.

Maybe, in that era, things really were more black and white.

TFTP's Monochrome March: Network Promo from NBC (Mar. 21, 1958)

Posted to YouTube by user 'obsgia'
Length - 1:12

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

Here is another monochrome network promo from the late-1950s, this one from NBC on March 21, 1958 (not 1957 as the YouTube title suggests). TFTP analyzed some of the qualities of 1950s program promos here, in a previous post on a promo from the late-1950s, and the above promo certainly has the same qualities (and limitations).

The above promo, which promotes that evening's prime-time line-up, comes during an episode of the NBC daytime game show "Treasure Hunt". It highlights three programs from the Friday night line-up: "Truth and Consquences" with guest star Lou Costello; "M-Squad" starring Lee Marvin; and "The Thin Man", the TV series adaptation of the movie series by the same name. The promotion for the three programs is held together by a puzzle-piece theme (evident in the promotional art and the voiceover).

TFTP's Monochrome March, On This Day: "The Object Is" from ABC (Mar. 26, 1964)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WarioBarker88'
Length - 28:44

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

It Was 54 Years Ago Today: Early-1960s TV saw many game shows with a clue-guessing format that tried to capitalize on the popularity of "Password". "The Object Is" is a short-lived example of those game shows, and this next-to-last episode of the program aired 54 years ago today on March 26, 1964.

Like others of the clue-guessing subgenre of TV game show, on "The Object Is" a celebrity guest was paired with a regular contestant, with two such teams competing against one another. (The celebrities here are actress Joan Caulfield and comedian Stubby Kaye.) One member of the team tried to guess the identity of a famous or legendary person from a clue given by the other in the form of an object associated with that person. (For example, in this episode the clue "bearded clock" is given for the person "Father Time".)

The game-play seems to proceed smoothly enough, but it must not have been too compelling to viewers, because the show only lasted for about three months, from Dec. 30, 1963 until Mar. 27, 1964. Dick Clark, although already well-known to audiences as the long-time host of "American Bandstand", was making his game-show hosting debut with "The Object Is".

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1981 (HBO)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 2:27

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.

TFTP's Sign-Offs Through the Years has stuck mainly to broadcast stations that are major network affiliates. But this week we are featuring a cable network sign-off--from the era in which cable networks actually signed-off for the night. TFTP featured a 1979 sign-off for HBO a while back, and the 1981 sign-off here features the same exact "bedtime" film at the very end of it.

The animated "bedtime" film consists of images pertaining to things one would do before turning in for the night--setting an alarm clock, turning out lights, pulling window shades, and the like. The film is preceded by a series of promos for "HBO Weekend", including the movie "Alien" (on Friday), a concert program with country music star George Jones (on Saturday), and the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter" (on Sunday).

TFTP's Monochrome March: Local Newscast from KCMO/Kansas City (Oct. 1959)

Posted to YouTube by user 'KCTVFive'
Length - 5:18

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

This brief clip is from Kansas City station KCMO (now KCTV) and consists of part of the local newscast from a day in October of 1959. Anchor Harold Mack reports several stories, including a local case in which a teen poisoned her parents, a local industrialist who had died, and a Future Farmers of America convention taking place in Kansas City. An ad for sponsor Maxwell House coffee appears, with a jar of Maxwell House sitting on Mack's news desk at the end of the clip.

TFTP's Monochrome March Will Return After These Messages: Sugar Crisp cereal ads from the 1950s

Posted to YouTube by user 'Vintage Fanatic' (top), 'spuzzlightyeartoo' (bottom)
Length - 1:31 (top), 0:50 (bottom)

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

And every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. Monochrome March will return after these messages...

These two Sugar Crisp cereal ads from the 1950s feature three bear mascots that are precursors of the cereal's later smart-aleck bear from the 1970s. The first commercial, done with traditional animation, is a western saga set in a saloon and featuring a stand-off between a good guy and a bad guy--but how bad can a guy be if he likes to eat Sugar Crisp? The second ad portrays the three bears in stop-motion animation style as they assist a little boy and girl in enjoying their Sugar Crisp. Both commercials suggest that Sugar Crisp can be eaten as a meal, as a snack, or as candy, a rather peculiar set of suggestions it would seem to us now.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "See It Now" w/ Edward R. Murrow on CBS (Mar. 9, 1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'KD'
Length - 25:50

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

Edward R. Murrow is perhaps the most legendary newsman in radio and television history. And his attempt to report on and expose the malfeasance of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the mid-1950s is one of the things that made him legendary. This 1954 episode of Murrow's "See It Now" is where he did most of his work in exposing McCarthy--with a huge assist from McCarthy himself.

The bulk of the episode consists of film and audio clips of McCarthy making various statements about the supposed threat of communism in America, often juxtaposed with other clips where he contradicts himself. Murrow introduces the clips and provides framing statements at the beginning and end of the program, but for the most part he lets McCarthy's own words do him in. Murrow's statement at the end of the program has become famous for blaming the state of American politics for the problem of McCarthy, quoting Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves."

In the following weeks, McCarthy asked for and got a chance for rebuttal to Murrow's presentation in this episode, to which Murrow provided a further response. Ultimately, McCarthy's downfall was the result of his censure in the U.S. Senate in December of 1954, a result that this episode of "See It Now" probably helped to hasten.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "Cavalcade of Stars" from DuMont (Oct. 26, 1951)

Posted to YouTube by user 'WABDtv'
Length - 49:48

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

"Cavalcade of Stars" started in June of 1949 on the DuMont network as a garden-variety early TV variety show--with dancers, singers, comedy sketches, and rotating hosts. Starting in July of 1950, one of those rotating hosts -- soon to become the show's only host -- was comedian Jackie Gleason. Gleason had been kicking around Hollywood for a number of years by 1950 and had appeared the previous year in the first version of the "Life of Riley" TV sitcom. "Cavalcade of Stars" would become the vehicle by which Gleason rocketed to stardom in TV comedy.

By fall of 1952, Gleason had been snapped up by the more prestigious CBS and "Cavalcade of Stars" moved over to the Tiffany Network, renamed "The Jackie Gleason Show". But before that, Gleason had a couple of solid seasons on DuMont as his star rose, and this episode is from the middle of that period, October of 1951. Most of Gleason's famous characters originated on the DuMont show, including Charlie Bratten ("The Loudmouth") and Reggie Van Gleason (both of which appear in the above episode), as well as the Honeymooners--which had appeared for the first time a few weeks before this episode aired.

This episode, after a brief monologue from Gleason (and his signature line "And away we go!"), begins with a dance number by the June Taylor Dancers, followed by a song from Georgia Gibbs. Gleason does a magic act which is followed by a musical/dance number called "Hangin' Around With You". The Loudmouth makes his appearance (with Art Carney's Clem Finch supporting) followed by a pair of songs. The show closes with a long sketch (that includes a comic musical performance) featuring Reggie Van Gleason, a character that lampoons upper class pretensions.