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The way it use to be

M

mbayus

A recent thread on this board got me thinking. I can find nothing on the web that shows how TV use to be in the 1950s. By that I mean a website that would stream a broadcast day starting with sign-on,Sermonette and Farm Report, go all day, and end with, News/Meditation, and then sign-off.
If not a website, how about a set of 5 DVDs that would start when you put the first one in your player at 6-30 in the morning and end when you took the last one out at 2-00 the next morning.
Those of us who post on this board who are under 40 have no idea just how it was.
I have no idea as to what would be involved in starting such a project, or if there would be sufficient interest.
I mentioned something on this board a very long time ago, and I didn't get much of a response. I would like to know what you all think.
 
I'm no expert, nor do I play one on TV, but recording video (even on kinescope) in the 1950s woulda had to be a quite expensive endeavor....

Add to that, the copyright issues of each show come into play.

The "entire broadcast day" of WJSV Radio in Washington DC in 1939 may be the only thing similar.

Yeah I would like to see that myself. But I am not holding my breath.

Actually I think with the advent of YouTube, we are now seeing more of this kinda stuff than we could have ever expected, albeit not entire broadcast days.

cd
 
cd637299 said:
I'm no expert, nor do I play one on TV, but recording video (even on kinescope) in the 1950s woulda had to be a quite expensive endeavor....

Add to that, the copyright issues of each show come into play.

The "entire broadcast day" of WJSV Radio in Washington DC in 1939 may be the only thing similar.

Yeah I would like to see that myself. But I am not holding my breath.

Actually I think with the advent of YouTube, we are now seeing more of this kinda stuff than we could have ever expected, albeit not entire broadcast days.

cd
Click to expand...

As he said, video archival storage back then was cost prohibitive. I don't know enough about video storage on how much of a broadcast day you could archive today. You might get a few days on an external hard drive.
 
You're right!
I'm thinking that all of the local programing could be generic, We could produce a new mock news cast, and the movies, soaps, and network programing could be stuff that is in the public domain. I did a google search and found no station with the call sign: WOLD or KOLD-TV. again just a fantasy.
How about it.
 
Yes, www.kold.com (Tucson)

To the OP: Do you mean, to re-enact a 1950s broadcast day, complete with wardrobe reflecting it, re-enactment of commercials, sermonette, news report form one certain date in the 50s, etc.?

If so, I don't know how much interest on YouTube, or whichever way you wanna broadcast, would be generated. Only us ol' geeks would be interested....it would be campy, for sure!

cd
 
I'm just not sure how compelling something like this would be. Perhaps somewhat interesting, as in "this is how TV used to be", but beyond that, most daytime TV in the 1950's was quite boring. A combination of education programmming, maybe some less than great kids shows, a news headline service (basically radio), and then the soaps and an occasional game show. Sure, as someone who was born right before JFK was elected, I would find it interesting. But as for quality, well, I don't think one would be too impressed today. The historical presentation would warrant attention from most 50+ though.
 
It's not the 50s, but the Museum of Broadcasting has "A Day of Broadcasting" from KCST/39 in San Diego (now KNSD) from the late 70s or early 80s. Each program in its entirety including original commercials. Someone had the foresight to think of recording it for posterity.

I watched a few programs when I visited years ago - mostly the NBC Game Shows airing at the time...
 
The Paley Center for Media (ex Museum of Broadcasting / Museum of Television and Radio) also has the entire broadcast day of WLS-TV (Channel 7) in Chicago from Feb. 26/27, 1979.
 
I did a google search and found no station with the call sign: WOLD or KOLD-TV.
Click to expand...

I used to have an aircheck of Harry Chapin's morning show at WOLD...

Isn't there a Tucson TV station that uses the KOLD calls?
Click to expand...

Actually, their sales staff made a lot of KOLD calls. (ducks flying vegetables)
 
At one time, The Museum of Broadcast Communications had what they called "Net Nights" an approximation of what was on Chicago Prime Time TV from 6:30-10 (CT), taking a particular year each night..Wasnt exact, as they mixed channels around..It was fun, though..Unfortunately its no longer part of their offerings..

A buddy of mine a while back sent me audio of WEWS-TV 5 ABC Cleveland for Friday, May 24, 1963..5 and a half hours straight through from 9AM-2:30..Including:


8:58 End of sign-on news
9:00 Western Reserve Telecourse
9:30 Romper Room-Barbara Plummer
10:00 Paige Palmer Show-Exercise, woman's issues-With Co-host Paul Wilcox
10:45 Cleveland TV Classroom
11AM General Hospital-First month or so on the air-delayed from 1:00 previous day

11:30 Seven Keys-Jack Narz
Noon News-Paul Wilcox
12:10 Captain Penny-Ron Penfound-With The King and Odie, Mr. Magoo and The Funny Manns-Local Pooch Parade and live commercials

1PM One O Clock Club-Dorothy Fuldheim, Bill Gordon

(KYW's Mike Douglas Show was lauched in December 1961 to specifically beat out One O Clock Club..It did that and much more)


2:30 Open of Jane Wyman Show

Here's the Cleveland Classic Media Facebook Page with several parts of this online..




http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cleveland-Classic-Media/245324499326?ref=ts
 
I use to enjoy Net-Nights. The only problem was, that the bright-cove player that the website used then didn't interact very well with screen readers for the blind. I couldn't choose, I had to watch (listen) to all of them at once. I did, and it took about 18 hours for everything to stream. I have E-Mailed the museum to ask them if Net-Nights would ever come back, and they said, "not now". I'm sorry that it's gone. The MBC archives does have a lot of the stuff that I am talking about, but there is no way to create a play list, like Hulu. Otherwise, I could make my own channel, and enjoy it as though it was back in the day.
 
Back when TV Land had creative programming, they would do a retro night that emulated a night of network television. I believe they called it "Retro Vision". One Friday Night had the ABC line up circa 1972 along with "Retromercials". Gosh, I miss that TV Land.
 
You may find just little snippets of daily airchecks on Youtube from waaaay back when...Like this, from WLW in 1955:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9M_0Gsrmzk

But for a whole day? They had no need to. They saw no need to. Whether it was a kinescope, or videotape, both would have been mighty expensive to keep.

No one back then thought TV would be worth saving, esp. a day's worth of local programming. They just didn't think of it as the reflection of american culture that we now realize it to have been. Did you know one reel of 3M 2" videotape, when it was first invented, cost $300? According to http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi, that's $2,341.68 in 2010 dollars!

One guy quoted in Jeff Kisselhoff's oral history The Box stated something like "it's good thing it wasn't saved. Most of it was pretty bad." ;D

Local airchecks of station breaks or local IDs from the sixties, seventies and beyond survives, I think, for a few reasons:

A time-delayed show, w/ local spots inserted, so the master control op wouldnt screw it up;
Recording a newscast for submission to awards;
Local ad agencies wanted proof their spots ran;
Someone left the videotape rolling, meaning to record somethign else.
 
It's a given that cost of tape media, among other (logical, if unfortunate) mindset factors, nixed any bright ideas of "doing a WJSV" with a broadcast day. 

But the WEWS/Cleveland audio recording reminded me of something that I read about:

In 1964, at the time both Jackson, Miss. TV stations had their licenses challenged, one thing the petitioner arranged to have done was for selected people to have audio recorders connected to their sets ... in order to "document" any of the racist practices on-air, they tape recorded one entire week's programming on both WLBT-3 (NBC/ABC) and WJTV-12 (CBS/ABC). 

The burning question I had while reading the book, and the same question reignited by this thread, is whether those tape reels are still in existence somewhere ... in a library*, in the archive of the United Church of Christ (which pursued the license challenge), one or more attorneys' files, or wherever!! 

--Russell

* = some of the WLBT files pertaining to this period are in one of the university libraries in the state (MSU, I believe).
 
Russell W. said:
It's a given that cost of tape media, among other (logical, if unfortunate) mindset factors, nixed any bright ideas of "doing a WJSV" with a broadcast day.

But the WEWS/Cleveland audio recording reminded me of something that I read about:

In 1964, at the time both Jackson, Miss. TV stations had their licenses challenged, one thing the petitioner arranged to have done was for selected people to have audio recorders connected to their sets ... in order to "document" any of the racist practices on-air, they tape recorded one entire week's programming on both WLBT-3 (NBC/ABC) and WJTV-12 (CBS/ABC).

The burning question I had while reading the book, and the same question reignited by this thread, is whether those tape reels are still in existence somewhere ... in a library*, in the archive of the United Church of Christ (which pursued the license challenge), one or more attorneys' files, or wherever!!

I worked in Jackson for WSLI in the early 80's and during a portion of time I lived at the transmitter site in an apartment originally built for the on site engineer. In one of the rooms, there were boxes of tape reels. Apparently back in the early 60's, WSLI would record the audio to the CBS TV newscasts aired on their co-owned TV station for playback on radio. There were hundreds of reels in 3", 5" and 7" sizes. All were dated. It was interesting to listen to some of them particularly days leading up to major events such as the day before JFK left for Dallas. I listened to some on old reel to reel machine I had a they were still playable 20 years later.

--Russell

* = some of the WLBT files pertaining to this period are in one of the university libraries in the state (MSU, I believe).
Click to expand...
 
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