December 2012 Archives

It's amazing that this video still exists, let alone is posted on the Internet for easy access. It's a film documentary about the early days of Cleveland television, made IN the early days of Cleveland television. Behold, from WEWS-TV, "Right Before Your Eyes," first aired in October 1953 and probably not seen since then:

It's a lot of staged action, but it's pretty rare stuff from that era, especially of UHF in its infancy, and of some defunct stations like WICA-TV Ashtabula and stations that didn't materialize the way they expected, like WHK-TV and WERE-TV.

There's a nice writeup at WEWS-TV's website- find that here.

So, yeah, what the hell happened?

A lot, but that meant I didn't have the time or energy to do anything here. And I'm far from alone, judging by the number of blogs you see abandoned or sluggishly (is that a word?) updated these days. As I've told you before, time has become a commodity in severely short supply for me, and my original reason for this site -- to maintain a regular, daily writing regimen -- has become obsolete, because I'm writing daily for AllAccess.com and Nerdist.com. They pay, this doesn't, and at the (literal) end of the day, I just don't have time or energy to write any more.

Not that I'm not grateful for that. To be gainfully employed, period, is a blessing in 2012, and to be gainfully employed by not just two websites but two great places for which to work is especially gratifying. But it doesn't leave much time for anything else.

But I still want to keep this going, because who else will look for things like this?:

That, courtesy of the indispensable FuzzyMemories.tv, is a Christmas-time commercial from Weise's department store in Rockford, Illinois, circa 1976. Weise's lasted until 1982, when it was renamed after parent store chain Bergner's (the logo, which is pretty much Bergner's with "Weise's" where "Bergner's" would go, is a tipoff). Bergner's, of course, still exists, part of the Bon-Ton chain. WHO ELSE WOULD CARE ABOUT THAT? See, that's why I have to keep this place going....