January 1, 2015

Ringing in the New Year - it's Around the Dial!

Happy New Year, everyone! It's the first day of 2015, the fifth year of this blog, and while it's a day when everything is new, there's nothing new about the high quality of the classic TV blogosphere.  Let's get started!

Betty White was a mainstay on NBC's coverage of parades from the '50s to the '70s (as you might remember from some of the TV listings you've read here), and the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland remembers this with vintage pictures of Betty hosting the Rose Parade.  A classy presence compared to some of the parade hosts of today.

TV Gems takes a moment for Dick Dale, one of the featured performers on The Lawrence Welk Show for almost 30 years, who died recently.  As Tom points out, Dale's passing didn't get much attention, presumably because most media sources don't think anyone remembers the Welk show anymore.  Well, we remember it here - it was a standard in my grandparents' house on Saturday nights when I was growing up.  I can't say I was ever a big fan, but it's a pity television doesn't have any room for shows like it anymore.

Time travel is always an appealing theme on television and in movies, and this week Rick at Classic Film and TV Cafe flashes back to the best time travel movies.  A very good lineup, and you can catch many of them on television from time to time, although I'm appalled that he doesn't include Dr. Who and the Daleks or Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.  Just kidding - I have a fondness for them as bastard children of the Doctor Who series, but that's about it!

Classic TV Sports combines two of my favorite things - sports and television - and it's been a great read this year.  In fact, Jeff's final post of 2014 gives some highlights of the blog's third year, and if you haven't read all of these I'd suggest you take a moment to do so.

I didn't know that Mary Tyler Moore started out as a dancing elf, did you?  Happily, Michael's TV Tray corrects this defect in my knowledge, with a vintage clip of MTM playing the elf in a commercial for Hotpoint appliances, in commemoration of her 78th birthday.  I thought that was familiar - our cooktop is a Hotpoint.  And it only looks as if it might have been in a MTM commercial.

Comfort TV points out that New Year's Day isn't really fertile ground for television shows, and in fact the day has always - to me - meant parades and football more than anything else.  But it is a time for new beginnings, which is the theme of David's 2015 project - looking at classic television series in which the main characters start out in their new lives in the first episode.  That should be fun!

Robert at Television Obscurities continues his tremendous series on TV Guide, week by week, for the 1964-65 television season, with the issue that closes out 1964.  I've got this issue in my collection as well, and earlier in the year I'd scheduled this for my year-end review as well.  But after seeing how great Robert's recaps are, I thought I'd wait for a year so I wouldn't have to compete!  He also was very kind to link to one of my TV Party! articles, which I'd be pleased to have you check out.

Finally, Television.au has a very interesting article on the advent of pay-TV in Australia, back in 1995.  It may have taken awhile to get started but once it did, it expanded quickly.  It's getting harder and harder not only to remember the days before pay-TV, but to remember how different the culture of that time was.

I think that's good to get you started for the new year, don't you?  But come on back Saturday, and we'll look at the first new TV Guide review of 2015! TV  

1 comment:

Thanks for writing! Drive safely!