February 15, 2016

What's on TV? Wednesday, February 16, 1977

This week we're in St. Louis, a city I've never visited except for stopovers in the airport. I have seen the Arch and the new Cardinals stadium from the air, though; very impressive.

There's a real similarity between these stations and those which I grew up with in Minneapolis-St. Paul.  Our Channel 4 was a CBS affiliate, and so is their's.  Our Channel 5 was an NBC affiliate; so is their's. Our Channel 11 is an independent - guess what? We had Channel 2 and Channel 9 as main stations, but our Channel 2 belonged to PBS, while here it's ABC. Our Channel 9 was ABC; here it's PBS. So it's the same, but different. Anyway, let's see what these stations have to offer.


KTVI, Channel 2 (ABC)

Morning


06:30a
Kidsworld

07:00a
Good Morning America

09:00a
Phil Donahue (guest Marlo Thomas)

10:00a
Family Feud

10:30a
Happy Days

11:00a
Don Ho

11:30a
Ryan’s Hope

Afternoon


12:00p
News (local)

12:30p
All My Children

01:00p
The $20,000 Pyramid (guests John Schuck, Jo Anne Worley)

01:30p
One Life to Live

02:15p
General Hospital

03:00p
The Edge of Night

03:30p
The Partridge Family

04:00p
ABC Afterschool Special

05:00p
News (local)

05:30p
ABC Evening News With Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters

Evening


06:00p
The $25,000 Pyramid (guests Lee Meriwether, John Schuck)

06:30p
To Tell the Truth (panelists Nipsey Russell, Peggy Cass, Charles Nelson Reilly, Kitty Carlisle)

07:00p
Wonder Woman

08:00p
Baretta

09:00p
Charlie’s Angels

10:00p
News (local)

10:30p
The Rookies

11:40p
Mystery of the Week

01:10a
Peter Gunn (B&W)

01:40a
Perception

I'm sure someone out there can tell me when Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue first met; they weren't yet married when this show was on, but they may have already been a couple.  There are still a lot of celebrity game shows on TV, starting with KTVI, and you'll notice the same names popping up over and over - John Schuck, Charles Nelson Reilly, Elaine Joyce.



KMOX, Channel 4 (CBS)

Morning


05:35a
News (local)

05:45a
People Speak

06:00a
PS 4

06:30a
Sunrise Semester (Teaching the Learning Disabled)

07:00a
CBS Morning News (Bruce Morton, Hughes Rudd)

08:00a
Captain Kangaroo (guest Alan Arkin)

09:00a
The Price is Right

10:00a
Double Dare

10:30a
Love of Life

10:55a
CBS News (Douglas Edwards)

11:00a
The Young and the Restless

11:30a
Search for Tomorrow

Afternoon


12:00p
Tattletales (guests Martin and Judy Millner, Ken Dudney and Barbara Mandrell, Bobby Van and Elaine Joyce)

12:30p
As the World Turns

01:30p
The Guiding Light

02:00p
All in the Family

02:30p
Match Game (guests Bill Daily, Richard Dawson, Elaine Joyce, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, Betty White)

03:00p
Mike Douglas (guests Doc Severinsen, David Soul, Earl Holliman, David Lander)

04:00p
Dinah! (guests Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper, David Groh, Julie Kavner)

05:00p
News (local)

05:30p
CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite

Evening


06:00p
News (local)

06:30p
Bobby Vinton (guests Phyllis Diller, Gabe Kaplan, Rene Simard)

07:00p
Monte Carlo Circus Festival (special)

08:00p
Movie – “A Man Called Horse”

10:20p
News (local)

10:50p
Movie – “The FBI Story: The FBI vs. Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One”

12:50a
People Speak

01:05a
The Name of the Game

02:35a
News (local)

03:05a
Movie – “The Geisha Boy”

I've always had a fondness for KMOX - not from television, but radio. You see, when I lived in the World's Worst Town™, the clear-channel KMOX was one of the stations I could bring in, so I was treated to Jack Buck calling the Cardinals games, a very young Bob Costas (before he became so full of himself) doing call-in shows, and the odd basketball game featuring the Spirits of St. Louis. Good times.



KSD, Channel 5 (NBC)

Morning


06:30a
Focus Your World

07:00a
Today

09:00a
Sanford and Son

09:30a
The Hollywood Squares (guests George Gobel, Gabe Kaplan, Paul Lynde, Karen Valentine, Marcia Wallace, Richard Anderson, Pearl Bailey, John Byner, Robert Fuller)

10:00a
Wheel of Fortune

10:30a
Shoot for the Stars (guests Tony Randall, Lynn Redgrave)

11:00a
Name That Tune

11:30a
Lovers and Friends

Afternoon


12:00p
News (local)

12:30p
Days of Our Lives

01:30p
The Doctors

02:00p
Another World

03:00p
Merv Griffin (guests Richard Hatch, Ronnie Schell, Rick Moses)

04:00p
The Big Valley

05:00p
News (local)

05:30p
NBC Nightly News With John Chancellor and David Brinkley

Evening


06:00p
News (local)

06:30p
Newsbeat (Dick Ford/John Auble)

07:00p
Grizzly Adams

08:00p
CPO Sharkey

08:30p
McLean Stevenson

09:00p
Tales of the Unexpected

10:00p
News (local)

10:30p
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (guests Tony Bennett, Joey Heatherton, Thalassa Cruso)

12:00a
Tomorrow (guest James Dickey)

KSD is now known as KSDK, and was the first television station in Missouri. Like so many other NBC affiliates, it was also the first to broadcast in color.  Unfortunately, the NBC programs they broadcast in 1977 aren't much worth watching, color or not. I think, although I'm not sure, Grizzly Adams was the longest running of the programs on tonight, although it could have been CPO Sharkey. It sure wasn't The McLean Stevenson Show.



KETC, Channel 9 (PBS)

Morning


06:30a
Captioned ABC Evening News

07:00a
Lilias, Yoga and You

07:30a
Technology

Afternoon


03:00p
Sesame Street

04:00p
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

04:30p
The Electric Company

05:00p
Sesame Street

Evening


06:00p
The Electric Company

06:30p
Zoom

07:00p
Nova

08:00p
Childhood (debut)

09:00p
Documentary Showcase

10:00p
Chris Moore

10:30p
Movie – “Richard III”

12:00a
St. Louis Sings

Not much to see here, although the primetime lineup is familiar to anyone who watches Nova. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Channel 9 has a reputation for frequently pre-empting PBS shows to show something less controversial; apparently, that's something that's not uncommon across the board in St. Louis, I'd like to know more about that someday.



KPLR, Channel 11 (Ind.)

Morning


06:00a
News (local)

06:30a
Bozo’s Big Top

07:00a
The Lone Ranger (B&W)

07:30a
Popeye/Bugs Bunny

08:00a
George and Friends

08:30a
The Flintstones

09:00a
Andy Griffith (B&W)

09:30a
I Love Lucy (B&W)

10:00a
The Lucy Show

10:30a
Dick Van Dyke (B&W)

11:00a
Not For Women Only

11:30a
The Gong Show

Afternoon


12:00p
The Jetsons

12:30p
Lassie

01:00p
Movie – “Come Back, Little Sheba” (B&W)

03:00p
The Flintstones

03:30p
The Archies

04:00p
Gilligan’s Island (B&W)

04:30p
Gomer Pyle, USMC

05:00p
Bewitched

05:30p
Emergency One!

Evening


06:30p
Hogan’s Heroes

07:00p
Gunsmoke

08:00p
Ironside

09:00p
Love, American Style

09:30p
News (local)

10:00p
Cross-Wits (guests Bill Cullen, Fannie Flagg, Elaine Joyce, Rick Hurst)

10:30p
Movie – “The Mountain”

01:00a
News (local)

01:30a
Good Day! (guest David Toma)

When you look at the network stations, you see how much the hour-long format dominates the scheduling. Not so at Channel 11, where the schedule is almost entirely half-hour sitcoms, with the occasional game show or cartoon thrown in. It's the kind of schedule you might have seen 20 years before.


KDNL, Channel 30 (Ind.)

Morning


07:00a
Popeye

07:30a
The Little Rascals (B&W)

08:00a
Ultra Man

08:30a
Underdog

09:00a
I Dream of Jeannie

09:30a
Financial Reports

10:30a
700 Club

Afternoon


12:00p
Financial Reports

03:00p
Popeye

03:30p
Spiderman

04:00p
Aquaman, Batman and Superman

04:30p
Superman (B&W)

05:00p
My Three Sons

05:30p
The Brady Bunch

Evening


06:00p
The Brady Bunch

06:30p
Adam-12

07:00p
Maverick (B&W)

08:00p
Movie – “The Wheeler Dealers”

10:00p
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

10:30p
Star Trek

11:30p
The 700 Club


Look at that lineup: My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, Adam-12, Maverick, Star Trek. Something for almost every classic TV lover's dream, isn't it? TV  

10 comments:

  1. I believe Phil first met Marlo when she was a guest on the very show you have listed. At one point each of them began expressing how wonderful they thought the other one was, and you could see something developing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TV was so bad in the 1970's, all I watched were sports. Interesting note on Costas...He was a year ahead of me in communications grad school at Syracuse U...suddenly he was gone, off to broadcast an obscure ABA St Louis expansion team which is chronicled in Terry Pluto's seminal book about the red, white and blue basketball league, "Loose Balls."

    ReplyDelete
  3. More or less in order:

    - The regular ABC show at 7:00 was The Bionic Woman.
    This was when Fred Silverman was running ABC's programming, and he liked to play pinball with the regular schedule, especially when he was in love a certain new show; this might account for Wonder Woman being on Wednesday that week.

    - The custom of this time was to tape a week's worth of game shows at a session; this accounts for why so many of the shows in a given week have the same celebrities - a matter of pure coincidence.

    - Sidebar:
    A digital channel called Buzzr is showing many shows from the Goodson-Todman library.
    One of the more popular ones is Tattletales, '70s-80s vintage.
    Watching it today can be a little unnerving, given the large number of "happy" celebrity marriages shown here that ended up in highly acrimonious divorces.
    I wonder if Buzzr has in the inventory about a week's worth of Tattletales that featured Mr. and Mrs. Albert Salmi, who as I recall won big when they appeared - and whose marriage came to a really bad end about a decade later (details on request).
    I should note that this week's Tattletales marriages were pretty stable: Barbara Mandrell's is still ongoing, Martin Milner's only ended with his passing last year, and Elaine Joyce, who was widowed by Bobby Van not long after this week, is now happily remarried to Neil Simon.

    - Most PBS stations only use the "network schedule" as a guideline, and the ones in Chicago are the worst offenders in this regard.
    I'd include examples, but it's after two-thirty am ...

    -A personal message for David Hofstede:
    I really enjoy your Comfort TV blog.
    I'd love to be able to comment on it.
    Unfortunately, your comment section doesn't have the Name/URL option.
    The ones you do have (Google, WordPress, OpenID, and the others) I can't access because they carry barriers in Technoslavian that I cannot decipher (and I have tried - and failed - often).
    I've run into this with certain other blogs, who always have Perfectly Good Reasons for not having Name/URL, mostly involving spam and trolls and the like.
    All well and good, but Name/URL is the one and only option that I can get to work (and Mitchell: if you ever drop Name/URL, you will in effect excommunicate me from here).
    So Mr. Hofstede, please consider adding Name/URL to your comment options, if you will.
    *The preceding was a Public Service Announcement*

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mike - just leave your comments on my blog here - I'm sure Mitchell won't mind. :)
    I'll look into this - these are changes made by a friend who knows more about the technical aspect of these things than I do.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great entry, as usual! Very "clean" network schedules, with nearly everything running in prescribed network order, and only one "punt"--"Gong Show" from channel 5 at 3pm to a tape-delay run on channel 11 at 11:30 (meaning there are competing NBC shows at 11:30 in STL.)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great entry, as usual! Very "clean" network schedules, with nearly everything running in prescribed network order, and only one "punt"--"Gong Show" from channel 5 at 3pm to a tape-delay run on channel 11 at 11:30 (meaning there are competing NBC shows at 11:30 in STL.)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey, I want to thank you for making a visit to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. I really appreciate it very much.

    ReplyDelete
  8. What did KMOX Channel 4 air at 1 P.M.?

    Did they carry a local newscast?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As the World Turns - it aired from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM Central time (1:30 PM to 2:30 PM Eastern) on CBS.

      Delete
  9. Wow Thank you so much Captain America http://fullmoviewatch.ga/ Online

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for writing! Drive safely!