Retro: Southeast Texas Saturday, December 17, 1977

[bpatrick]

From TV Guide, Southeast Texas Edition:

KPRC Ch. 2 Houston (NBC)

7 AM C.B. Bears
8 AM Space Sentinels
8:30 Super Witch
9 AM Bang-Shang Lalapalooza
9:30 I Am The Greatest: The Adventures
Of Muhammad Ali
10 AM Thunder
10:30 Search And Rescue
11 AM Baggy Pants And The Nitwits
11:30 Red Hand Gang
12 N This Is The NFL
12:30 Movie: "Pursuit To Algiers"
1:45 Movie: "Sherlock Holmes In Dressed To Kill"
3 PM NFL Football: Bills-Dolphins
6 PM News (time approximate)
6:30 Eyes Of Texas
7 PM Bionic Woman
8 PM NBC Movie: "The Incredible Rocky Mountain
Race"
10 PM News
10:30 Saturday Night (Live) (I think this is the one
hosted by Mrs. Miskel Spilman.)
12 M Monty Python's Flying Circus
12:30 Little Ole Show That Comes On

KATC Ch. 3 Lafayette, LA (ABC)

7 AM Superfriends
8 AM Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics
10 AM Krofft Supershow
11 AM ABC Weekend Special: "Psst! Hammerman's
After You!"
12 N American Bandstand (30 minutes today only)
12:30 The Commanders
1:30 Independence Bowl: Louisville vs. Louisiana Tech
(from Shreveport)
4:30 Wide World Of Sports: Sugar Ray Leonard vs.
Hector "Chinito" Diaz, welterweights, 8 rounds;
National 500 from Charlotte (taped); World Pro
Skiing Championships (taped) (joined in progress)
5:30 ABC News (Sylvia Chase/Tom Jarriel)
6 PM Wayne Newton: A Christmas Card
7 PM Tabitha
7:30 Operation Petticoat
8 PM NFL Football: Vikings-Lions
11 PM News (time approximate)
11:30 ABC News (Chase/Jarriel)
11:45 Movie: "Shane"

KBTX Ch. 3 Bryan (CBS/ABC)

7 AM Skatebirds
8 AM Bugs Bunny/Road Runner
9:30 Batman/Tarzan
10:30 Space Academy
11 AM Isis
11:30 NFL Today
12 N NFL Football: Los Angeles Rams-Washington
Redskins
3 PM Forum (time approximate)
3:30 1977 All-America Team
4 PM Wide World Of Sports (same as KATC, only in
its entirety, as is true for Chs. 12 and 13)
5:30 CBS News (Bob Schieffer)
6 PM Hee Haw
7 PM Tabitha
7:30 Operation Petticoat
8 PM NFL Football: Vikings-Lions
11 PM News (time approximate)
11:30 Movie: "The Great Bank Robbery"

KJAC (KBTV) Ch. 4 Beaumont/Port Arthur (NBC)

7 AM C.B. Bears
8 AM Space Sentinels
8:30 Super Witch
9 AM Bang-Shang Lalapalooza
9:30 I Am The Greatest
10 AM Thunder
10:30 Search And Rescue
11 AM Baggy Pants And The Nitwits
11:30 Red Hand Gang
12 N NFL Game Of The Week
12:30 Black Outreach
1 PM This Is The NFL
1:30 Ironside
2:30 NFL '77
3 PM NFL Football: Bills-Dolphins
6 PM Hee Haw (time approximate)
7 PM Bionic Woman
8 PM NBC Movie: "The Incredible Rocky
Mountain Race"
10 PM News
10:30 Saturday Night (Live)

KFDM Ch. 6 Beaumont/Port Arthur (CBS)

6:30 Sunrise Semester (topic not given)
7 AM Skatebirds
8 AM Bugs Bunny/Road Runner
9:30 Batman/Tarzan
10:30 Space Academy
11 AM Isis
11:30 NFL Today
12 N NFL Football: Los Angeles Rams-Washington
Redskins
3 PM CBS Sports Spectacular: Carlos Palomino vs.
Jose Palacios, welterweights, 15 rounds; NHRA
World Finals; U.S. Pro Armwrestling Championships;
World's Strongest Man competition (Part 10)
(time approximate)
5 PM Feedback
5:30 CBS News
6 PM News
6:30 Lamar University
7 PM Bob Newhart
7:30 We've Got Each Other
8 PM Movie: "White Christmas"
10:30 News
11 PM Movie: "Can-Can"
12:30 Soul Train

KPLC Ch. 7 Lake Charles, LA (NBC) (de facto NBC affiliate
for Lafayette)

6:30 Better Way
7 AM C.B. Bears
8 AM Space Sentinels
8:30 Super Witch
9 AM Bang-Shang Lalapalooza
9:30 I Am The Greatest
10 AM Thunder
10:30 Search And Rescue
11 AM Baggy Pants And The Nitwits
11:30 Red Hand Gang
12 N Hee Haw
1 PM Movie: "Little Boy Lost"
3 PM NFL Football: Bills-Dolphins
6 PM News (time approximate)
6:30 Truth Or Consequences (Bob Hilton)
7 PM Bionic Woman
8 PM NBC Movie: "The Incredible Rocky
Mountain Race"
10 PM News
10:30 Movie: "The Honkers"

KUHT Ch. 8 Houston (PBS)

7 AM Sesame Street
8 AM Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
8:30 Electric Company
9 AM Once Upon A Classic
9:30 Zoom
10 AM Villa Alegre
10:30 Sesame Street
11:30 Crockett's Victory Garden
12 N Gift To Last
1 PM Portrait Of A Nurse
1:30 Those Golden Years (the elderly poor
in New York)
3:30 Daniel Foster, M.D.
4 PM Washington Week In Review
4:30 Wall Street Week
5 PM Mundo Real
5:30 Noticias
6 PM Black Perspective On The News
6:30 Minority Report
7 PM All-Star Soccer
8 PM Microbes And Men
9 PM James Michener's World
10 PM Movie: "Forbidden Games"
11:30 Territory

KTRE Ch. 9 Lufkin (NBC/ABC)

7 AM Superfriends
8 AM Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics
10 AM Krofft Supershow
11 AM Cosmic Christmas
11:30 NFL Today (CBS)
12 N NFL Football: Los Angeles Rams-
Washington Redskins (CBS)
3 PM NFL Football: Bills-Dolphins (time
approximate)
6 PM News (time approximate)
6:30 TBA
7 PM Bionic Woman
8 PM NFL Football: Vikings-Lions
11 PM News (time approximate)
11:30 Saturday Night (Live) (joined in progress)
12 M Discotheque America
1 AM ABC News

KLFY Ch. 10 Lafayette, LA (CBS)

6:45 Rosary
7 AM Skatebirds
8 AM Bugs Bunny/Road Runner
9:30 Batman/Tarzan
10:30 Space Academy
11 AM Isis
11:30 NFL Today
12 N NFL Football: Los Angeles Rams-Washington
Redskins
3 PM CBS Sports Spectacular (time approximate)
5 PM That Nashville Music
5:30 CBS News
6 PM News
6:30 Wild Kingdom
7 PM Bob Newhart
7:30 We've Got Each Other
8 PM The Jeffersons
8:30 Tony Randall
9 PM Kojak
10 PM News
10:30 Movie: "Anything Can Happen"

KHOU Ch. 11 Houston (CBS)

6:30 Saturday Morning Show
7 AM Skatebirds
8 AM Bugs Bunny/Road Runner
9:30 Batman/Tarzan
10:30 Space Academy
11 AM Isis
11:30 NFL Today
12 N NFL Football: Los Angeles Rams-Washington
Redskins
3 PM TBA
3:30 Movie: TBA
5 PM Sorting It Out
5:30 CBS News
6 PM News
6:30 Wolfman Jack
7 PM Bob Newhart
7:30 We've Got Each Other
8 PM The Jeffersons
8:30 Tony Randall
9 PM Kojak
10 PM News
10:30 Movie: TBA
12:30 Movie: TBA

KBMT Ch. 12 Beaumont/Port Arthur (ABC)

6:30 Jabberjaw (delay from Sun 9:30 AM)
7 AM Superfriends
8 AM Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics
10 AM Krofft Supershow
11 AM ABC Weekend Special
12 N American Bandstand
12:30 Movie: "The Red Pony"
2 PM In Conquest Of The Sea
3 PM Wayne Newton's Country Portraits
4 PM Wide World Of Sports
5:30 ABC News
6 PM Lawrence Welk
7 PM Tabitha
7:30 Operation Petticoat
8 PM NFL Football: Vikings-Lions
11 PM News (time approximate)
11:30 Baretta (delay from Fri 10:30)
12:40 PTL Club

KTRK Ch. 13 Houston (ABC)

6 AM Davey And Goliath
6:30 Treehouse Club
7 AM Superfriends
8 AM Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics
10 AM Krofft Supershow
11 AM ABC Weekend Special
12 N Movie: "Susan Slept Here"
2 PM Big Valley
3 PM 1977 World Finals Of Drag Racing
4 PM Wide World Of Sports
5:30 News
6 PM Hee Haw
7 PM Tabitha
7:30 Operation Petticoat
8 PM NFL Football: Vikings-Lions
11 PM News (time approximate)
11:30 Movie: "Flying Tigers"
1:30 ABC News
1:45 Movie: "Thunder Over The Plains"

KAMU Ch. 15 College Station (PBS)

8 AM Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
8:30 Electric Company
9 AM Once Upon A Classic
9:30 Daniel Foster, M.D.
10 AM Washington Week In Review
10:30 Consumer Survival Kit
11 AM French Chef
11:30 Crockett's Victory Garden
12 N Hodgepodge Lodge
12:30 Flower Show
1 PM Word On Words
1:30 Guppies To Groupers
2 PM By-Line
2:30 Opa
3 PM Garden Show
3:30 Cinema Showcase
4 PM Best Of Families (drama, and not ABC's
"Family")
5 PM Open House
5:30 Viewpoint
6 PM Black Perspective On The News
6:30 Portrait Of A Nurse
7 PM Best Of Families
8 PM James Michener's World
9 PM Visions
sign off 10:30 PM

KDOG (KRIV) Ch. 26 Houston (Ind.)

6 AM Cartoons
7:30 Movie: "The Ghost Rider"
8:30 Fury
9 AM Movie: "The Silent Code"
10 AM Cisco Kid
10:30 Movie: "Rainbow Over Texas"
11:30 Lone Ranger
12 N Maverick
1 PM Wally's Workshop
1:30 For You
2 PM Medix
2:30 Journey To Adventure
3 PM Superman
3:30 Movie: "PandaAnd The Magic Serpent"
5 PM Swiss Family Robinson
5:30 Avengers
6:30 Disco Fever (the premiere of "Saturday
Night Fever")
7:30 Don Kirshner's Rock Concert
9 PM Movie: "White Christmas"
11:30 Movie: "House Of Usher"
1 AM Movie: "Arrivederci, Baby!"
3:30 Movie: TBA

KHTV (KHCW) Ch. 39 Houston (Ind.)

7:30 Better Way
8 AM Campus Workshop
8:30 Facet
9 AM TBA
10 AM Marlo And The Magic Movie Machine
11 AM Buck Owens (separate show from "Hee Haw")
11:30 Tom Landry: Dallas Cowboys highlights
12 N Soul Train
1 PM Wanted: Dead Or Alive
1:30 Thriller (Boris Karloff)
2:30 Batman
3 PM Tarzan
4 PM Untouchables
5 PM The FBI
6 PM Star Trek
7 PM Mickey Gilley
7:30 Marty Robbins' Spotlight (with a format similar
to "This Is Your Life," Marty salutes Brenda Lee--
Steve Allen, Mel Tillis, and Sonny James are on hand)
8 PM Nashville On The Road
8:30 That Nashville Music
9 PM Porter Wagoner
9:30 Pop! Goes The Country
10 PM Wrestling (Houston)
11:30 700 Club

 

[Mike Stroud]

KPLC Ch. 7 Lake Charles, LA (NBC) (de facto NBC affiliate
for Lafayette)

bp, one of my completely useless trivia questions. This concerns the downfall of KLNI, channel 15, as an NBC affiliate for the "Cajun country" of south central Louisiana. According to the Broadcasting Yearbooks on David Gleason's web site (http://www.davidgleason.com/Radio_Archives.htm), that station stopped broadcasting sometime during 1976, clocking in about eight years from its start in 1968. Any idea why this UHF didn't make it? Could it perhaps have been because it was surrounded by three strong NBC VHFs, not only from Lake Charles, but also Alexandria (KALB) and Baton Rouge (WBRZ)? (NOTE: a year later, NBC moved to UHF in Baton Rouge in 1977, from WBRZ to WRBT, now WVLA).

I have one TVG from 1974 for Louisiana, and KLNI, much like its Lafayette competitors KATC and KLFY, ran French-language programs for local speakers of the language, but it also ran a full-hour newscast weeknights at 6. Maybe the station did too much in the way of local programming and earned too little money--that often undid some idealistic broadcasters during that time period (a notable exception was WCVB in Boston). The UHF issue was probably more determinative, however, as it probably made minimal impact on viewing habits shaped by the two VHFs during the 1950s and 1960s.

"Laissez le bon temps rouler"???

 

[bpatrick]

I never heard of the station and didn't move to that part
of the country (Dallas) where I could get access to TV Guide
editions for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New
Mexico until December 1976. My only previous knowledge of
Louisiana television was seeing WWL, WDSU, and WVUE's schedules
in the Gulf Coast edition when I lived in Alabama a few years
earlier.

However, Lafayette did get a Fox affiliate on Ch. 15, so my guess
is that viewers in the '70s (unless they had cable) would rather
watch a strong VHF signal (like KPLC) than a weak UHF one. I know
that back in the '50s, before UHF was mandated, a lot of people in
Raleigh/Durham watched CBS from Greensboro (Ch. 2) than their own
station (Ch. 28 at the time). Despite the fact that UHF had been mandatory
on sets since 1964, perhaps the same mentality applied in bayou country.

 

[Mike Stroud]

All righty then ... any of yawl Cajuns wanna take a crack at it? Anybody from Leezianer remember KLNI?

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

From TV Guide, Southeast Texas Edition:

KPRC Ch. 2 Houston (NBC)


10:30 Saturday Night (Live) (I think this is the one
hosted by Mrs. Miskel Spilman.)

Yep, that was the one, which also featured the classic "E. Buzz Miller's Art Classics" skit:

http://snl.jt.org/ep.php?i=197712170

 

[cowboybud]

From TV Guide, Southeast Texas Edition:

KPRC Ch. 2 Houston (NBC)

12:30 Little Ole Show That Comes On

KHTV (KHCW) Ch. 39 Houston (Ind.)

11:30 Tom Landry: Dallas Cowboys highlights

7 PM Mickey Gilley
7:30 Marty Robbins' Spotlight (with a format similar
to "This Is Your Life," Marty salutes Brenda Lee--
Steve Allen, Mel Tillis, and Sonny James are on hand)
8 PM Nashville On The Road
8:30 That Nashville Music
9 PM Porter Wagoner
9:30 Pop! Goes The Country
10 PM Wrestling (Houston)

- Little Ole Show was a locally-produced comedy show...its full title was That Little Ole Show That Comes On After Monty Python. I think "Captain" Harold Gunn was on this show. And yes, KPRC was one of the few non-PBS stations to show Monty Python (edited, of course, for time and content).
- Channel 39's call letters are now KIAH. The Saturday night country music shows followed by rasslin was a local institution. It's also worth noting that The Tom Landry Show was seen in Houston, while Oilers coach Bum Phillips didn't even have a show till the following season.

 

[bpatrick]

The block of country music and rasslin' was also seen on
Channel 39's then-sister station KTVT Dallas/Ft. Worth,
although they interspersed "High Chaparral" (9-10 PM) with
the music and the grapplers. BTW, when did 39 change its
calls (because KHCW is what I saw on Wikipedia)?

I seem to recall from Castleman and Podrazik that KPRC was
the first commercial station in the U.S. to carry "Monty Python's
Flying Circus."

 

[cowboybud]

BTW, when did 39 change its
calls (because KHCW is what I saw on Wikipedia)?

Couple of years ago, around the time the Tribune stations removed "CW" from their branding. IAH is the Houston (Bush Intercontinental) airport code.

 

[Ultimajock]

- Little Ole Show was a locally-produced comedy show...its full title was That Little Ole Show That Comes On After Monty Python. I think "Captain" Harold Gunn was on this show. And yes, KPRC was one of the few non-PBS stations to show Monty Python (edited, of course, for time and content).

...any idea who did the editing -- KPRC, the BBC, the Pythons themselves or Time-Life Television (as I recall they were distributing BBC content in the U.S. throughout the '70s, their logo even being seen as late as 1992 on WTTW/11 Chicago's Sunday night run of Dave Allen at Large)...

 

[Ultimajock]

The block of country music and rasslin' was also seen on
Channel 39's then-sister station KTVT Dallas/Ft. Worth,
although they interspersed "High Chaparral" (9-10 PM) with
the music and the grapplers.

...although I suspect the KTVT wrestling was strictly Fritz Von Erich's World Class Championship Wrestling promotion; Paul Boesch, the Houston promoter, drew almost equally on talent from the World Wide Wrestling Federation, the American Wrestling Association, and several NWA-associated regional promotions. I seem to recall he was one of only two promoters in a powerful enough position to do that, the other being Bob Luce in Chicago, whose late-night wrestling show was offered at one point by WSNS/44 as a weeknight strip against The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on WMAQ-TV/5...

 

[bpatrick]

You would suspect correctly; KTVT's show
was indeed Fritz Von Erich's, although it wasn't
being called World Class Championship Wrestling
at that point. I remember it being pretty dull,
since his sons tended to win all the time.

 

[classictvfan]

Could you please post listings for Wednesday 12/21/77?

 

[cowboybud]

You would suspect correctly; KTVT's show
was indeed Fritz Von Erich's, although it wasn't
being called World Class Championship Wrestling
at that point. I remember it being pretty dull,
since his sons tended to win all the time.

At this time, Fritz's promotion was called "Big Time Wrestling"..the WCCW moniker came about in the early 80s. And Fritz himself was still the top star at this point; his sons had just started wrestling.