August 31, 2015

What's on TV? Thursday, August 31, 1972

Here we are on the last day of August, 1972.  I believe by this time I'd already moved on from the Twin Cities to The World's Worst Town™, because I never did get to see any of the Summer Olympics that year.  It was culture shock for me, to be sure.  So I share this particular listing with you with a sense of discovery, as I started to get used to being away from the city in which I'd grown up and lived my entire life.  I was, truly, away from civilization.


KTCA, Channel 2 (PBS)

Afternoon


04:00p
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

04:30p
Sesame Street

05:30p
The Electric Company

Evening


06:00p
Reading

06:30p
Piano Technique (debut)

07:00p
Jean Shepherd’s America

07:30p
Jazz Set

08:00p
Hollywood Television Theatre

09:00p
Yard ‘n Garden

09:30p
Town and Country

When Jean Shepherd was still known as a humorist instead of as the author of A Christmas Story, he had a wonderful PBS series where he toured America looking at what it was that made it America.  This week, he's in Milwaukee to investigate "America's love affair with beer."  Wonderful!


WCCO, Channel 4 (CBS)

Morning


06:30a
Summer Semester (The Cold War and Beyond)

07:00a
Clancy and Carmen

07:30a
Clancy and Willie

08:00a
Captain Kangaroo

09:00a
The Lucy Show

09:30a
The Beverly Hillbillies

10:00a
Family Affair

10:30a
Love of Life

11:00a
Where the Heart Is

11:25a
Live Today

11:30a
Search for Tomorrow

Afternoon


12:00p
Midday

12:30p
As the World Turns

01:00p
Love is a Many Splendored Thing

01:30p
The Guiding Light

02:00p
The Secret Storm

02:30p
The Edge of Night

03:00p
My Three Sons

03:30p
Movie – “The Second Greatest Sex”

05:30p
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite

Evening


06:00p
News (local)

06:30p
Scene at the Fair

07:00p
My World and Welcome to It

07:30p
Horton Hears a Who (special)

08:00p
Movie  – “Promise Her Everything”

10:00p
News (local)

10:50p
Movie – “Malaya” (B&W)

12:40a
Movie – “The Little Hut”

Horton Hears a Who never quite attained the status of Dr. Seuss' classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but it's still a much-loved story of those same Whos and the same Whoville that tormented the Grinch.  Imagine the big, bad Grinch being so small that he's just one figure living in a universe that can fit on the head of a pin!


KSTP, Channel 5 (NBC)

Morning


06:30a
Minnesota Today

07:00a
Today (guest host Edwin Newman, guest Helen Hayes)

09:00a
Dinah’s Place (guest Loretta Lynn)

09:30a
Concentration

10:00a
Sale of the Century

10:30a
The Hollywood Squares (guests Sandra Dee, Eva Gabor, Rose Marie, Kent McCord, Jan Murray, Tony Randall, Karen Valentine, Wally Cox, Paul Lynde)

11:00a
Jeopardy

11:30a
Who, What or Where Game

11:55a
NBC News (Floyd Kalber)

Afternoon


12:00p
News, Weather (local)

12:15p
Dial 5 (guests Bobby Goldsboro, Billy Thundercloude and the Chief Tones)

01:00p
Days of Our Lives

01:30p
The Doctors

02:00p
Another World

02:30p
Return to Peyton Place

03:00p
Somerset

03:30p
Mike Douglas (co-host Florence Henderson, guests Robert Reed, Helen Gurley Brown, Karl Wallenda, Pete Hamill)

04:30p
Dick Van Dyke (B&W)

05:00p
Hogan’s Heroes

05:30p
NBC Nightly News (John Chancellor)

Evening


06:00p
News (local)

06:30p
Circus!

07:00p
Magic Circus

08:00p
Ironside

09:00p
San Francisco: The City That Waits to Die (special)

10:00p
News (local)

10:30p
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (guest host Joey Bishop, guests Jerry Reed, Milt Kamen)

12:00a
Man in a Suitcase

I wasn't familiar with the British import Man in a Suitcase until a few years ago when I saw its late '60s premiere on ABC as a summer series.  I've seen several episodes since, but this is the first time I've run across it in syndication.  I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, since The Saint and The Avengers, made (I think) by the same production company, are already big hits in America.


KMSP, Channel 9 (ABC)

Morning


07:00a
CBS Morning News with John Hart

08:00a
News and Views

08:30a
Grandpa Ken

09:00a
Romper Room (Miss Jody)

09:30a
Beat the Clock (guest Rich Little)

10:00a
What’s My Line? (panelists Bert Convy, Arlene Francis, Phyllis Newman, Gene Rayburn)

10:30a
Bewitched

11:00a
Password (guests Tony Randall, Betty White)

11:30a
Split Second

Afternoon


12:00p
All My Children

12:30p
Let’s Make a Deal

01:00p
The Newlywed Game

01:30p
The Dating Game

02:00p
General Hospital

02:30p
One Life to Life

03:00p
Love, American Style

03:30p
Green Acres

04:00p
Lancer

05:00p
News, Weather, Sports (local)

05:30p
ABC Evening News with Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner

Evening


06:00p
To Tell the Truth (Panelists Kitty Carlisle, Peggy Cass, Bill Cullen, Nipsey Russell)

06:30p
Truth or Consequences

07:00p
Summer Olympics (special)

10:00p
News (local)

10:30p
The Wild Wild West

11:30p
Dick Cavett

01:00a
News (local)

I've mentioned this before, but for new readers it bears repeating, that until Charles Kuralt brought the Sunday Morning concept to weekday mornings, Channel 4 rarely carried the CBS Morning News.  My memories of it are that it was always on Channel 9, since ABC had no morning program at the time.  I always thought it was a good news show, no matter who hosted it, and as a kid I was certainly confused as to why the CBS news was on an ABC affiliate.  It only makes slightly more sense today.


WTCN, Channel 11 (Ind.)

Morning


07:30a
New Zoo Revue

08:00a
Casey and Roundhouse

09:00a
What’s New?

10:30a
Movie – “Woman in a Dressing Gown” (B&W)

Afternoon


12:00p
Lunch with Casey

01:00p
Movie – “The Informers” (B&W)

02:50p
Lucille Rivers

03:00p
It Takes a Thief

04:00p
Batman

04:30p
The Addams Family (B&W)

05:00p
The Munsters (B&W)

05:30p
Daniel Boone

Evening


06:30p
I Dream of Jeannie

07:00p
Country Fair Roundup (special)

07:30p
It’s Your Bet (guests the Rod Serlings, Elke Sommer and Joe Hyams)

08:00p
Merv Griffin (guests Otto Preminger, Peter Fonda, Virginia Graham, Fred Williamson)

09:30p
News, Weather, Sports (local)

10:00p
Perry Mason (B&W)

11:00p
Movie – “Interlude”

The Lucille Rivers show at 2:50pm is, believe it or not, a sewing show.  You won't see that on television nowadays.  The rest of Channel 11's schedule is basically MeTV before it was nostalgia: It Takes a Thief, Batman, The Addams Family, The Munsters, Daniel Boone and I Dream of Jeannie.  They're all on one of the retro networks nowadays, but back then it was no big deal; people probably looked at them as the same-old, same-old. TV  

4 comments:

  1. "back then it was no big deal; people probably looked at them as the same-old, same-old."

    I know I thought of them this way, and I took it for granted that these shows would always be there on one station or another whenever I wanted to watch them. It came as a bit of a shock to me when, in the late 1990s, these types of shows became harder and harder to find whenever I would cruise around the dial. Fortunately, the big TV-on-DVD boom was just around the corner and I took full advantage of it, fearing that it may be the only way to see them in the future. I didn't foresee the digital sub-channel nostalgia stations popping up. They are kind of like the modern version of the old UHF stations. But I don't regret building my own library while I could, as I'm not dependent on a cable TV subscription to get my classic TV fix.

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    Replies
    1. This morning, I took delivery on several fair-sized packages, mainly of DVDs of movies and TV, old and not-so-new, now residing on my DVD wall.

      I know where SaturdayMorningFan is coming from; I've lived there most of my life.

      I'm a Fifties kid, born in 1950.
      At that time, there were four commercial TV stations in Chicago, representing all four networks. CBS was ch2, NBC was ch5, ABC was ch7, and Dumont was ch9.
      The nets didn't program 24/7 back then, and the daytime and late night hours were fair game for everything else.
      Early syndicated film shows, really old B-movies, long-forgotten comedy shorts .. all running together with the 'new' prime time stuff on the networks. This is where I learned to read credit crawls, and noticed many of the same names in all of them.
      Only one set in the house, and TV GUIDE to tell me what I was missing (and would likely never get to see at all) on the stations we weren't watching.
      If you'd told ten-year-old me that one day I'd own my own copies of the TV shows I was watching - or for that matter the movies I was going to see with my parents -
      - hell, at that point I wouldn't have believed color TV.

      The DVD wall is now my defense against the constant copycatting of the digital nostalgia channels, who all seem to use the same shows - and lately seem intent on weeding out anything earlier than the onset of color.
      At least in prime time. (Black-and-white is usually relegated to overnights).

      My own tastes are all over the place. I can bounce back and forth between decades and color or its absence and genres and whatever ... it's all of a piece to me.
      These days, I get catalogs and websites that can supply me with some really obscure shows that I was always sure I was the only one who remembered them.

      Anybody here remember Soldiers Of Fortune?
      Lee Marvin Presents Lawbreaker?
      Craig Kennedy, Criminologist?
      Tales Of Tomorrow?
      Autolite presents .. Suspense?

      ... or any number of others I could call out at random from my wall?
      There's a ton of stuff out there (much of it in surprisingly good condition) that the digital stations aren't touching ...
      ... and that's their mistake.

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    2. Born in the late 60's, but I think of myself as a 70's kid because I can't remember any of the 60's (fortunately). Like Chicago, the Boston market was a vibrant one with 3 network stations, 2-5 UHF stations depending upon if you had an aerial or not, and a PBS station that made original programming. So I was spoiled and didn't know it. My DVD wall is my defense against the seemingly inevitable transition to streaming as the only way to watch anything, if the studios have their way. Like you, 10-year-old me never even dreamed of owning all my favorite shows and movies in a personal collection, and I'm saddened to see the state of TV viewing essentially being thrown back to the 1970s. I get the feeling this is the Last Call for owning copies of shows in physical form, so get 'em while you still can. I've just about wrapped up my collection; I've got all the shows I know I want with the exception of a few odds'n'ends I may or may not pick up, and that should keep me entertained for the rest of my life (barring catastrophes, of course). However, I do occasionally read a review that convinces me to buy something sight unseen. I got Lee Marvin Presents Lawbreaker and Science Fiction Theater that way, and I was very pleased with both of them.

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  2. The 1972 Summer Olympics represented the first time that a network would pre-empt an entire night's prime-time schedule night-after-night (three hours a night) for Olympic coverage.

    The only daytime coverage was on weekends; although I think ABC did add a couple of afternoon hours on Monday, September 4th (which was Labor Day in the U.S.), in part to show live Mark Spitz winning his record-breaking seventh gold medal in swimming (which I believe the network re-ran during their prime-time broadcast that night).

    By contrast, I'm pretty sure NBC will carry fourteen hours of Olympic coverage on it's broadcast network (and many more hours each day on its cable siblings) each day of next summer's (2016) Olympics in Rio, which will likely be divided-up among eight hours of daytime coverage, five hours in prime-time, and one hour in late night (which may be a wrap-up).

    Going back to Mark Spitz and 1972; sadly, the day after Spitz made Olympic history, terrorists stormed the Israeli dormitory at the Olympic Village. Spitz, whose events had finished, had planned to stay in Munich to attend other events for the rest of the Olympiad, but since he was a member of the Jewish faith, he decided to leave town ASAP after the attack.

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Thanks for writing! Drive safely!