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WCVB 50 years of remembering

Pre-empting ABC’s 11:00 am sitcom reruns (Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley etc) in favor of boring talk shows.

Bastards.
 
I remember many years ago an ad for the station during the winter in which the 5 logo was covered with snow at the top. Also I remember a promo in which you had several people at a park singing a jingle called Gimme 5 with the big 5 logo that they were next to.
 
Kbirdusa said:
Pre-empting ABC’s 11:00 am sitcom reruns (Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley etc) in favor of boring talk shows.

Bastards.
Click to expand...

WCVB still pre-empts MeTV's weekday evening reruns of "Happy Days" on their 5.2 subchannel for a rebroadcast of their "Chronicle" show. If I wanted to watch "Happy Days" I can see it on WJAR's 10.2 MeTV feed from Providence.
 
The Nature World of Captain Bob

Tom Ellis, one of Boston’s first “star anchors”.

Natalie Jacobson, Chet Curtis, and the “anchor baby,” Lindsay.

Dick Albert, Don Gillis, Jim Boyd, Martha Bradlee (later Raddatz of ABC News), Susan Burke (originally from Ch 7), Jorge Quiroga, David Muir, Bob Copeland, Bill O’Connell (later of Ch 7), Brian Leary, Pam Cross, Janet Wu, Janet Langhart, John Willis, Bill Hovey, Jack Hynes.
 
Kbirdusa said:
Pre-empting ABC’s 11:00 am sitcom reruns (Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley etc) in favor of boring talk shows.
Click to expand...
In the 1970s and early 80s WCVB had a reputation for preempting a lot of network programming for “socially relevant” public affairs shows and documentaries. These seemed to have faded away after management realized that the average viewer wanted to be entertained, not lectured.
 
Kbirdusa said:
The Nature World of Captain Bob

Tom Ellis, one of Boston’s first “star anchors”.

Natalie Jacobson, Chet Curtis, and the “anchor baby,” Lindsay.

Dick Albert, Don Gillis, Jim Boyd, Martha Bradlee (later Raddatz of ABC News), Susan Burke (originally from Ch 7), Jorge Quiroga, David Muir, Bob Copeland, Bill O’Connell (later of Ch 7), Brian Leary, Pam Cross, Janet Wu, Janet Langhart, John Willis, Bill Hovey, Jack Hynes.
Click to expand...
What happened to Susan Burke? I seem to recall reading that she was headed to New York (no specific station mentioned) after she left Channel 5, but I've never seen anything about her since. No footage on YouTube beyond her WCVB years at all. Did she leave the business?
 
Mediafrog+ said:
In the 1970s and early 80s WCVB had a reputation for preempting a lot of network programming for “socially relevant” public affairs shows and documentaries. These seemed to have faded away after management realized that the average viewer wanted to be entertained, not lectured.
Click to expand...
It coincided with the loss of local ownership after Boston Broadcasters sold out to Metromedia in the early 80s. BBI had promised lots of local programming when they persuaded the FCC to give them the Channel 5 license (over Herald Traveler, the operators of the old Channel 5, WHDH) in the early 70s.
 
Kbirdusa said:
The Nature World of Captain Bob

Tom Ellis, one of Boston’s first “star anchors”.

Natalie Jacobson, Chet Curtis, and the “anchor baby,” Lindsay.

Dick Albert, Don Gillis, Jim Boyd, Martha Bradlee (later Raddatz of ABC News), Susan Burke (originally from Ch 7), Jorge Quiroga, David Muir, Bob Copeland, Bill O’Connell (later of Ch 7), Brian Leary, Pam Cross, Janet Wu, Janet Langhart, John Willis, Bill Hovey, Jack Hynes.
Click to expand...
Speaking of Bill Hovey...is he still around?? He was my meteorology professor back in 1969/70 when I was a freshman at the now defunct Belknap College in Center Harbor NH.
 
Always liked Ernie Anderson voicing the opens for their newscasts. He never did any TV here in Hartford/New Haven.
 
I was born in 1986, so I don't remember WCVB in its infancy. But coincidentally, the show Chronicle turned 40 last month, just before the station turns 50. Chronicle had a prime time special celebrating 40 years.
 
WCVB, created by wrestling control of the license away from the Boston Herald by way of a FCC action, had these high hopes of being a hyper local station with all sorts of local content.... they wanted to be a commercial version of WGBH .... and they managed to pull it off for a while until someone else showed up with a pile of money and then the investors in BBI decided to cash in and recover all the money it cost them to wrestle the license away from the Herald and then some.
 
They may mention it on chronicle but it costs money to put stuff like that together dig tapes out of the archives etc if they can't make money on it they're not going to do it
 
MRBIboredop said:
They may mention it on chronicle but it costs money to put stuff like that together dig tapes out of the archives etc if they can't make money on it they're not going to do it
Click to expand...
You don't think advertisers would be interested in such a show? Or do you figure that the audience a retrospective would attract might be large but too old to matter?
 
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