January 2011 Archives

How's this for a vintage clip? February 8, 1965, KGO-TV in San Francisco, the news with Bob Dunn:

Note the very odd lower case graphics, the map of Vietnam, the cheesy Holiday Chevrolet ad (kids, that was what an adding machine looked like), and a young Peter Jennings reporting from outside Lester Maddox' cafeteria. Amazing that this tape survived.

SIGNING OFF

Gonna have to beg off again, because circumstances have me running way late tonight.

In the meantime, here's something that people who like the TV nostalgia stuff I post here might like, the fourth segment of Friday's Don Geronimo Show on KHTK Sacramento, during which Don and Carmichael Dave eventually get around to talking about the way TV stations used to sign on and off, plus, if I recall correctly that it was in that segment, Don reminiscing about being on the Captain 20 show on WDCA-TV in Washington as a kid, plus a little Count Gore deVol from the same station.

And here's Scoopy the Bee (actually, a "brother" version of Scoopy called Teevee the Bee) signing off KOVR-TV Sacramento, mentioned in passing by a caller. The McClatchy newspaper/TV/radio bees were designed by Disney:

Plus WPVI-TV Philadelphia signing off, with a shot of the old Philly skyline (City Hall then the tallest building):

EVERYBODY WENT TO GINO'S

"Everybody goes to Gino's, 'cause Gino's is the place to go!"

I grew up in an area where Kentucky Fried Chicken didn't have its own stores. If you wanted a bucket, you had to go to Gino's, the fast-food chain carrying the name of Baltimore Colts star Gino Marchetti that covered, roughly, the area from DC up through New Jersey. It sold KFC and its own burgers and fries, and it was basically my family's fast food choice when I was very young. McDonald's and Burger King came to our town later, but Gino's was always a short drive away, initially in a little open-air -- no inside seating, just a window under a big "Gino Marchetti's" sign, with some outdoor seating on the side -- building. The first picture on this Gino's tribute site shows another Gino's unit that had the same basic design as the one near us. It was also where my Dad and I more than once broke the Yom Kippur fast (very) early, heeding my mother's admonition that we could do what we wanted, but "not in the house." (I think my sister -- hi, Joan! -- tried sticking out those fasts with Mom and didn't come with us to Gino's. I could be wrong, though)

Gino's was a standby for me through college years until the chain was sold to Marriott in 1982, with most of the units converted to Roy Rogers, another old standby that's now gone.

Here's an ad with the late Robert Ridgely for Gino's, circa 1978 -- note how small the Gino's Giant was, even puffed up for television, compared to large fast food burgers today:

More Gino's, from 1971:

Soupy Sales with some trademark goofy schtick for Gino's:

This Gino's spot was from about 1976, and features the Heroburger, a hoagie-shaped burger that I liked a lot but nobody else did -- it was a notable bomb that's blamed by some people for ultimately sinking the chain:

Gino's is back, with one store in King of Prussia and its own chicken:

It can't be the same, though, not without KFC. And, with Five Guys a few minutes away down 202, I don't think I'd likely bother if I still lived around there. But in its day, it was our place to go.

PHILADELPHIA, 1977

Look at this -- a promotional film tour of Philadelphia from 1977, just before I moved there:

That's what it looked like back then, from the low-slung "skyline" to Mayor Rizzo, the Living History Center (now, I believe, home to WHYY) and JFK Stadium, Dr. J and Newmarket. There's the then-new Liberty Bell Pavilion, too. Strange -- I couldn't find any video of when they moved the bell from Independence Hall to the pavilion at midnight on January 1, 1976. There's audio, but not video. I remember watching the move -- I was still living in New Jersey, and I watched them move it slowly and painstakingly in a freezing rain; I think Channel 10 had it live, and I assume at least one of wither 3 or 6 did, too, so there has to be tape on it.

Anyway, it's interesting to see the city the way it looked when I rolled into town. A lot of it still looks that way, but it's still cool to look back.

LATE AGAIN

It's 9:48 pm. I just finished this week's column and I'm fried. I'll get something more substantial together for tomorrow. Maybe. In the meantime, I'm going to go get some sleep so I can be awake at 3.

Sleep is a weekend thing.

THE MYSTERY OF ROCHESTER

I could ask my friends in Rochester past (Wachs) or present (Fybush), but I don't think I really want to know what this 1979 ad is about:

Bobby Vinton, I know. The rest... even Google isn't aware of it. But now and forever, when someone Googles "The Marszaleks Summer Special" and perhaps even "Frank Gallelli," the road will end right here.

In the meantime, I have no idea,

IS THAT YO' CAT?

Wait, you didn't see my latest video sensation? The one with the spinning, possibly, rabid rodent?

Go here. I'd embed it here, but I like when the view count goes up on the YouTube page.

Believe me, it's worth the click. (But I'm biased)

SO... WHICH IS IT?

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website right at the moment I'm posting this:

Three? Two? Five? I'm so confused.

PRIORITIES

No time today, and if I told you why you'd completely understand, but I can't, not at the moment. Just dealing with some things that came up unexpectedly. Everything's been unexpected lately. Aargh.

EAGLES WIN! ER, WON

In honor of the conference championships tomorrow, something a little more pleasurable from 50 years ago:

OUT OF THIN AIR. AGAIN

Writing the column was incredibly difficult this week. I had nothing to say about any radio topic. And then, all at once, a column magically appeared. It's here, a commentary about the trendlet of colleges getting out of the college radio business. But it was a last-minute thing. I was way past deadline, in fact.

And that ends the week. I pray that next week has some radio news I can use, so the column-writing process isn't quite as much torture as this week's. Not that it's breaking rocks in the hot sun, but my mind's all worn out.

KIDS ARE ADULTS, TOO

After "Wonderama," Bob McAllister moved on to this:

Oh. My. Lord.

"Kids Are People Too" was not quite a national "Wonderama." It was more of a public affairs show for the adolescent. But can you imagine turning on the TV, or, worse, being in the audience, when proven children's crowd-pleaser Ralph Nader showed up to answer questions? Or having to sit there while Harry Chapin sang "Cat's In The Cradle"? "A Grown-Up Show For Kids" might have seemed like a good idea on paper, but even adults don't want to watch that kind of thing.

McAllister clearly knew this; he apparently wanted a show that would appeal to younger kids, and ABC wanted a show for teens. And that's why he was gone before the first year was over, replaced on a show named after his "Wonderama" catchphrase by another, younger host, Michael Young.

Amazingly, the show lasted four seasons, and was later broely revived for syndication. And, in fairness, it became more entertainment-oriented in later years. But Ralph Nader and Harry Chapin on a kids' show... wow. That was not going to work.

THE BIG SHOW

From 1980, here's NBC's attempt to revive the already-dead variety show "spectacular":

Where to start? There IS no place to start. You can smell the disaster. Throw Dorothy Hamill, Count Basie, Skip Stephenson, Buck Owens, and the Manhattan Transfer in with Barbara Eden and Dennis Weaver, regulars Graham Chapman and Mimi Kennedy with nothing to do, a freakin' water ballet...

"PLUS SHABBA-DOO."

No chance at all. DOA. But it did get nominated for Emmy awards. It was still pretty awful, disparate entertainment thrown in a blender. Someone thought this would work. Someone was very wrong.

AND MY POINT IS...?

Sorry, another PowerPoint evening. I know I'm forgetting to do something (besides this), but I'm just too fried from rearranging and editing that thing.

The paying stuff takes precedence. On the bright side, my PowerPoint skills are getting quite expert.

TODAY'S EXCUSE

Too late for anything tonight. Besides, it's a holiday. (Not that I took off, but it IS a holiday)

THERE USED TO BE A BALLPARK

Oh, geez, forgot to post tonight. Well, then here's something interesting, some home movie footage of Braves Field in Boston circa 1953-54 after the Braves moved. It's in (washed-out) color and a real artifact. The stadium was then intact, scoreboard (blank) and all, still labeled "Braves Field."

The place later got remodeled for football and is now the site of Nickerson Field, which includes part of the old park, including the entry gate and the right field bleachers. It's been used for pro soccer, the Patriots (in their first three seasons), the USFL, and Boston University, which owns the place.

THE MAGIC OF HAMBONE

When I was a kid, this was endlessly entertaining:

Bloopers from "The Sandy Becker Show"! Sandy Becker was a disc jockey who doubled as a children's show host on WNEW-TV in New York in the 50's and 60's, and my sister Joan and I rarely missed his show. He did characters like the sad sack Norton Nork and several others, with the sketches coming between Looney Tunes and commercials. Hambone was one of Sandy's characters and, no, watching a guy prance in a ridiculous outfit with a pith helmet and glasses made out of actual drinking glasses pasting a bad joke on a wall word-by-word isn't entertaining NOW. But in 1965, yes, yes it was.

POWERPOINTED INTO SUBMISSION

Oh, so you want original content here today, do you?

Well, bite me. I spent every moment of the day that I wasn't working on All Access and Nerdist working on a PowerPoint that I absolutely had to get done by this evening. PowerPoint, as you may know, drains every brain cell out of your head.

And so it did.

ALL YOU CAN EAT (RESTRICTIONS APPLY)

I got this e-mail from Virgin Mobile this morning. I use Virgin for a pay-as-you-go Mi-Fi, and it's been a great deal, allowing me to buy data only when I need it without a contract. A few months back, they announced new pricing plans, and it included unlimited data -- no 5 GB caps -- for forty bucks. It was such a great option -- again, no contract -- that I recommended it to others looking for a way to get mobile broadband without signing up for a monthly plan or jailbreaking and tethering their phones.

But, as I said, I got this:

Hey Perry,

Okay, what's the problem? Because you aren't going to e-mail me unless there's a problem or you're selling something.

Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices in order to provide the best possible service to the greatest number of customers.

Uh oh.

To make sure we can keep offering our $40 Unlimited Broadband2Go Plan at such a great price, we're putting a speed limit in place for anyone on that plan who uses over 5GB in a month.

There it is. And the way they're going to do it is this:

-Your data speeds will be limited for the remainder of the monthly plan cycle.

-During this time, you may experience slower page loads and file downloads and lags in streaming media.

-Your data speeds will return to normal as soon as you buy a new Broadband2Go Plan.

And then they note:

Keep in mind, 5GB is A LOT of data. To give you an idea, it's about 250 hours of web browsing or over 500,000(!) emails. So this change shouldn't affect you unless you're a heavy downloader/streamer/etc.

And that's true. For now.

When I've used the Mi-Fi, it's been to cover conventions or when I had to deal with some other stuff that meant I had to work away from the office for a few weeks. In that time, I didn't come that close to 5GB. But that's now.

At CES, the assumption everyone was making, and the thrust of the push for tablets and newer, faster 4G cell phones, was that we're all going to get our video and audio through broadband. They were talking about pushing to reclaim television spectrum for mobile broadband, meaning that some folks would like to see over-the-air TV go away. Radio? To be supplanted by streaming audio. Movies? Oh, you'll stream or download those to your tablet or phone. That's how it's supposed to be, soon.

Yet here's one of the last uncapped data plans getting a cap of sorts; you go over, you slow to a crawl until you pay up. You know about AT&T's 2GB plan, and how Verizon's making noises about that, too. When talking about LTE, the carriers get very quiet when anyone asks about data caps or throttling past a sertain usage level. The carriers are clearly moving towards tiering or capping at precisely the time that consumers are starting to demand Netflix and Hulu on their mobile devices, and the time content providers are ready to give them what they want. And meanwhile, even the recent FCC net neutrality proposals exempt mobile carriers.

This is shaping up to be a problem.

In an ideal world, competition would take care of the situation. Your carrier puts a low cap on data and hits you with overage fees, you move to another carrier. But when they're all doing the same thing or planning to do the same, the market, which is already artificially restricted to four national carriers, a few regionals, and some MVNOs, isn't going to work. Competition in the U.S. mobile marketplace seems to revolve around device exclusivity and coverage claims, not pricing and differences in data allowances.

Yet I understand why this is happening. The carriers can see a few heavy downloaders ruining service to the other users. They want to manage their networks. I get that. But if we're moving at a quickening pace to getting our TV and radio and movies over mobile carriers' networks, and we're now going to have to watch our usage lest we go over the limit and incur a massive bill, that can't be good for the growth of video and audio over mobile broadband.

(I know, use Wi-Fi. Maybe there's free Wi-Fi everywhere YOU go, but tell that to someone who uses their tablet to ease their long bus commute, or wants to listen to streaming audio while jogging in the neighborhood)

So, which is it going to be? Cheap, open mobile broadband that encourages media consumption, or capped or throttled data that makes using your devices either expensive or unpalatable? They're going to have to figure that out soon.

My busy schedule means you get this:

"Tobor, The 8th Man" was a staple of local independent TV in the 60's, among the earliest Japanese imports dubbed and renamed for the U.S. market. I watched it, but I can now admit I had no idea at all what I was watching. I knew it was Japanese -- it, "Gigantor," and "Speed Racer" had that odd dubbed thing going, and even a 6 year old knew what was up -- but I wasn't following any of the story lines or subtleties, if there were any to be followed. I wouldn't know.

Only after the fact did I learn that Ralph Bakshi created the opening sequence above for the U.S. version. Winston Sharples, composer for Paramount's cartoon factory for years, wrote this theme. But I never figured out why he was called "The 8th Man," although I know it was "8 Man" in Japan and "Tobor" is obvious. The character is still alive in manga, but I haven't seen it for a long time. Not all that interested, either. What was mesmerizing eye candy to a 6-year-old watching a blurry signal on a black-and-white TV isn't that alluring four decades later, I'm afraid.

I DIDN'T NEED SLEEP ANYWAY

I've taken on yet another project, and it'll eat up more time this week and maybe next.

Another excuse! Geez!

But it's a project that's fairly important, and it's going to require some thought, time, and creativity, so if there's nothing more than placeholders here for a bit, that's why. Gonna try to do more than that, but between All Access, Nerdist, and this additional project, I'm going to be slammed. And when that happens, you end up doing the stuff for which you get paid. That's just the way life works.

In the meantime, do check in here; I'm hoping to carve out some time to post more stuff here, the kind of stuff that's not appropriate for the other sites. Thanks for bearing with me yet again.

'THE GAME GAME' GAME

The interesting thng in this sliver of a TV Guide listing from August 14, 1970 in Western New York State is at 4:30 on channel 4, WBEN-TV in Buffalo:

I vaguely remember "The Game Game" as a very dull, odd, of-its-time show that... well, look, here's an episode:

Turd Ferguson... er, Burt Reynolds! Jessica Walter! Actor Doug McClure! Hosted by veteran game show host Jim McKrell and based on psychological surveys! Yes, someone -- and that someone turns out to be Chuck Barris -- created a game show based on a psychological test, sort of like taking one of those personality tests you have to take when you apply for certain jobs, only with a prize at the end. And the parting gift is a stack of 8-track tapes and a cart machine!

You can see why this one didn't last past a year. It's rather dull, and a little more intellectually-oriented than a game show should be, not that it's terribly intelectual. It's just a lot of talk. And the name... "The Game Game"? What the hell is that?

Other things of note: "The Galloping Gourmet" was cooking pigeon, which is a tad revolting. On Mike Douglas, you'll note "Bob Darin," not Bobby. Same guy, of course, but those were his protest folkie years, when he had a 'stache and went all Dylanesque. He passed away three years later. Channel 21 -- a public television station-- ran "Davey and Goliath", which is odd; D&G were usually on commercial stations, in an era when a blatantly religious kids' show was an accepted part of a station's morning schedule.

And, kids, that "C" mark by some shows means "Color." Yes, not every show was in color back then. Later, when most shows were in color, they marked exceptions with a "B/W" for Black and White. I'm old.

STALLING

So much for more time to write here- I didn't even finish work and I realized it's bedtime.

And the less said about the Eagles, the better.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

THE OTHER SIDE OF CES

Much of CES is like this, the Sony nation, "booths" that, really, aren't booths but displays a mile long and a mile wide, bustling with people, with all the newest gadgets, stuff you want:

Yes, CES is where they show new 3D TVs and electric cars and tablets and 4G smartphones and things you didn't even know had been yet invented. But it's also one of the world's largest repositories of random crap.

Say, do you need one of those whiteboard-type things where you write on it and it goes all neon-y like at Spencer Gifts? Here you go:

Hey, does your back hurt? Step right up:

And for when your electronics get unclean:

But for the discriminating, technology-savvy douchebag, here's the one booth you can't pass up:

I imagine Affliction was there, too, but I missed that.

CES was, as always, just overflowing with... stuff. Nothing that was absolutely must-have, but that's okay. Maybe there'll be jetpacks next year.


CONVENTION FATIGUE

I'm sitting in a conference room in Las Vegas listening to three FCC commissioners say nothing of note about communications regulation. When it's over, I'm out of here. My brain is already driving south on I-15. I think it's approaching Baker right now.

So the long national nightmare of light or non-existent posting here may be ending. Depends on how much sleep I get this weekend. Maybe I'll round up CES observations I didn't post at All Access or Nerdist. That sounds good. Yeah, maybe that.

LOOK UP

It is too late for anything here, so I'll just post my Fondest Wish for CES: People, will you LOOK UP FROM YOUR DAMN CELL PHONES AND STOP WALKING INTO ME?

Geez. Nobody's looking where they're walking. It's hazardous down there.

HOW CAN YOU BE IN ONE PLACE AT ONCE....

You'll have to go to AllAccess.com to find me this week, and while you won't see a byline, there's a lot of CES stuff there from me as I run from press conference to panel and try to find time to wander the floor tomorrow and Friday. Yeah, that should be easy. Presently, I'm trying to find time to write three columns plus stuff for Nerdist and here, and I'm just fresh out of time and energy. Can't do it. Sorry.

Gah.

FOLLOW THE LINKS

At CES, no time, try Nerdist for my observations and All Access for news coverage from Vegas.

SOMEWHERE AROUND BARSTOW (OR BAKER)

The CES march starts tomorrow.

Here, someone else driving through the Mojave:

Whole lotta nothing, at high speed.

KINGS OF SAPPY HOLIDAY SPECIALS

I just don't have time, so, here, look at the King Family, from March 1969:

I just saw a special on them, with generous hunks of one of their "Christmas With the King Family" shows, on KOCE. I still don't know why they were getting TV specials back then. The interesting thing isn't this show, but what it replaced: "The King Family Show" was brought back to fill the gap left with the now-infamous cancellation of "Turn On," the comedy series that was so bad it was canceled after one showing. ABC needed something to fill the Wednesday slot but fast, so the Kings were drafted.

The King Family has a website. And cartoon voice guy Cam Clarke grew up as one of the extended King Family members, Tina Cole of "My Three Sons" was one of the Kings, and, of course, legendary "talking guitar" guy Alvino Rey was on the shows, too. So now you know.

TV FROM 1949

Thanks to YouTube user musicom67, we have this kinescope of the 10th anniversary show of WNBT-TV (now WNBC) New York:

Turns out TV in 1949 is a bunch of people in front of a curtain. But it's amazing that someone kept this.

March 2012

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Who?

    Perry Michael Simon. Talk radio guy. Editor of the News-Talk-Sports section at AllAccess.com. Editor and writer at Chris Hardwick's Nerdist.com. Former Program Director, Operations Manager, host, and general nuisance at KLSX/Los Angeles, Y-107/Los Angeles, New Jersey 101.5. Freelance writer on media, sports, pop culture, based somewhere in the Los Angeles area. Contact him here. Copyright 2003-2012 Perry Michael Simon. Yeah.

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This page is an archive of entries from January 2011 listed from newest to oldest.

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