Another Relic From My Collection
Jun. 22nd, 2005 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Hey.
No, not my own creation...just a piece of pop culture flotsam. I have in my hands a newspaper TV weekly listings booklet from the first week of February, 1983, from The Saint Petersburg Times. I kept it because The Winds of War premiered that week...perhaps the most ambitious of the early '80s miniseries trend. It and its sequel War and Remembrance are both on DVD now, and perhaps someday I'll get them, but that's not the point of this entry.
This was a sweeps period (as every February is) and so every network and every station brought out whatever they could to try to get big draws. Typical movies that were broadcast that week: Finian's Rainbow, Any Which Way You Can, The Way We Were, Shane, The Night That Panicked America, Mister Smith Goes to Washington, The Kid With 200 I.Q., An American in Paris, Caddyshack, The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank, The Omega Man, Singin' In The Rain, The In-Laws, Little Big Man, Rabbit Run, High Society, East of Eden, Show Boat, Flight of the Phoenix, The Magnificent Seven, and The Hunter.
For sports, if you were into basketball, the NCAA season was reaching its climax. If you liked football instead, you had the Pro Bowl on Sunday, then the start of the USFL season the next weekend. Some stations carried pro wrestling--but this was the regional leagues, not necessarily the WWF. ABC still carried the Pro Bowlers Tour, and followed that up with Wide World of Sports, which that week featured a boxing match and the national figure skating championships. That Saturday afternoon, NBC had golf and CBS had skiing.
Looking at the listings, it seems there was even less kids' programming than I remembered. The UHF stations would show two hours of cartoons before 9AM, and then an hour's worth at 3PM, but that would be it. The main PBS affiliate ran almost strictly grade-school level educational programs from 9AM to 5:30PM, broken only by an exercize program at 3:30PM! The second PBS affiliate in the market (oh joy!) was the station of the University of South Florida and ran open university telecourses over the lion's share of their daily schedule. Of course, the Big 3 networks had all their kids' shows on Saturday morning exclusively. What shows were there? Same-old same-old from Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera: Smurfs, Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Superfriends.
I don't know about delving into prime time and the soaps...not much you can say about soaps, and you could probably find a good fraction of the prime time stuff either on cable or on DVD these days. Perhaps I'll come back for this part.
In the booklet only nine cable channels are given schedules. Still, the cable providers were slow in getting everybody even these choices--one provider only offered five channels in addition to the aerial ones! Of course, the most lavish providers didn't have the variety of channels we have today.
So why did I get this pamphlet out of my pile? Make me feel old? Not really...more like confirm my experience, fill in the blanks. I really didn't miss as much as I thought I could have. A lot of these programs, if I didn't see them the first time, I saw them in reruns anyway. Heck, the same goes for many of the movies on cable at that time! I suppose that makes me a vid'erati.
And to tell you the truth, to remind me that my reasons for avoiding television today are rather justified. Yes, it has changed...but I don't think it has changed for the better where it counts.
FP
No, not my own creation...just a piece of pop culture flotsam. I have in my hands a newspaper TV weekly listings booklet from the first week of February, 1983, from The Saint Petersburg Times. I kept it because The Winds of War premiered that week...perhaps the most ambitious of the early '80s miniseries trend. It and its sequel War and Remembrance are both on DVD now, and perhaps someday I'll get them, but that's not the point of this entry.
This was a sweeps period (as every February is) and so every network and every station brought out whatever they could to try to get big draws. Typical movies that were broadcast that week: Finian's Rainbow, Any Which Way You Can, The Way We Were, Shane, The Night That Panicked America, Mister Smith Goes to Washington, The Kid With 200 I.Q., An American in Paris, Caddyshack, The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank, The Omega Man, Singin' In The Rain, The In-Laws, Little Big Man, Rabbit Run, High Society, East of Eden, Show Boat, Flight of the Phoenix, The Magnificent Seven, and The Hunter.
For sports, if you were into basketball, the NCAA season was reaching its climax. If you liked football instead, you had the Pro Bowl on Sunday, then the start of the USFL season the next weekend. Some stations carried pro wrestling--but this was the regional leagues, not necessarily the WWF. ABC still carried the Pro Bowlers Tour, and followed that up with Wide World of Sports, which that week featured a boxing match and the national figure skating championships. That Saturday afternoon, NBC had golf and CBS had skiing.
Looking at the listings, it seems there was even less kids' programming than I remembered. The UHF stations would show two hours of cartoons before 9AM, and then an hour's worth at 3PM, but that would be it. The main PBS affiliate ran almost strictly grade-school level educational programs from 9AM to 5:30PM, broken only by an exercize program at 3:30PM! The second PBS affiliate in the market (oh joy!) was the station of the University of South Florida and ran open university telecourses over the lion's share of their daily schedule. Of course, the Big 3 networks had all their kids' shows on Saturday morning exclusively. What shows were there? Same-old same-old from Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera: Smurfs, Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Superfriends.
I don't know about delving into prime time and the soaps...not much you can say about soaps, and you could probably find a good fraction of the prime time stuff either on cable or on DVD these days. Perhaps I'll come back for this part.
In the booklet only nine cable channels are given schedules. Still, the cable providers were slow in getting everybody even these choices--one provider only offered five channels in addition to the aerial ones! Of course, the most lavish providers didn't have the variety of channels we have today.
So why did I get this pamphlet out of my pile? Make me feel old? Not really...more like confirm my experience, fill in the blanks. I really didn't miss as much as I thought I could have. A lot of these programs, if I didn't see them the first time, I saw them in reruns anyway. Heck, the same goes for many of the movies on cable at that time! I suppose that makes me a vid'erati.
And to tell you the truth, to remind me that my reasons for avoiding television today are rather justified. Yes, it has changed...but I don't think it has changed for the better where it counts.
FP