What's on TV? Thursday, November 11, 1976

We all know that November 11 is Veterans Day, right? Not in 1976, it wasn't. Thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Veterans Day was changed to the fourth Monday in October, starting in 1971. It didn't go over very well; veterans groups especially objected to it, some states never did change the date, and in 1978 it was moved back to the original date. That's still in the future though, and so you'll not see any war movie marathons. What you will see, though, is NBC's memorable miniseries Captains and teh Kings, CBS's back-to-back crime shows, and two hours of sitcoms on ABC. If you can't find anything in this Northern California edition, you aren't really looking.

Guest Essay: Growing up with KTVU

Today I'm pleased to present a guest column by Bill Griffiths, a loyal reader of It's About TV. Sparked by our recent Northern California TV Guides, Bill and I struck up an email conversation, and Bill offered to share his memories of television in Northern California, in particular the then-independent giant KTVU. Whether or not you're from the Bay Area, I think you'll enjoy his essay; I'll bet it brings back some fond memories for you as well! 

by Bill Griffiths

Some time ago I came across It’s About TV and started reading with great interest Mitchell’s entries about TV Guide. No matter what the year or the regional edition, I’ve encountered fascinating nuggets about television and media history. It is also a reminder about how great and influential a magazine TV Guide had once been. The name may still be around, but the product is indistinguishable from other entertainment publications. What has inspired me to contribute an article came about from the recent spotlight of Northern California TV Guides. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, and while these late 1960’s issues predate me, I enjoy reading about the highlights and listings of these familiar channels—the ones I used to watch: KRON 4 (NBC), KPIX 5 (CBS), KGO 7 (ABC), KQED 9 (PBS). Unfortunately, we were not able to adequately view most of the UHF stations, although independent KFTY-TV 50 in Santa Rosa came in pretty good. 

Of all these channels, there is one that stood out, and it was easy to see why it was one of the top-rated independent stations in the country: KTVU Channel 2. As a child, it was impossible to watch KTVU for too long without hearing its memorable slogan "There’s Only One Two" accompanied by its familiar logo, which was refereed by many as the Circle Laser 2. While KTVU has changed over the years, going from an independent channel to a charter affiliate of the Fox broadcast network to being owned by the Fox Television Stations Group, the classic "2" logo is still in use as it has been since 1975. Even you have never lived in the Bay Area, you may have heard of or even seen a little of KTVU. The alliance with Fox would bring the station some national recognition with several scenes in the 1993 Robin Williams comedy hit Mrs. Doubtfire utilizing the Channel 2 studios at Jack London Square in Oakland. I remember watching the movie upon its release and when an establishing shot of the building signage came on the screen, there was an audible reaction by most people in the theater! 

Growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, those years viewing KTVU were a golden time. For starters, they seemed to have the best selection of cartoons such as the pre-1948 color Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry and Droopy, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Bullwinkle and Rocky, Spider-Man, and Scooby-Doo. Coming home from school, afternoons didn’t’ seem complete without some animated entertainment which generally was followed around 4:30 by that great live-action cartoon series Gilligan’s Island. Occasionally Gilligan and the crew would take a rest and another kid-friendly sitcom would turn up for a while such as the color episodes of My Three Sons and even the Barney Miller spin-off Fish.  

Even with these re-airings of repeats, KTVU was willing to try something different in the late afternoon hours. In the 1960s there was Captain Satellite (Bob March). Almost a decade after its finale, came Captain Cosmic (with his wonder robot 2T2!) which was primarily formatted around dubbed versions of Japanese superhero shows. Capitalizing on the popularity of Star Wars and Star Trek (which enjoyed a long run in the early evenings on KTVU starting in 1969) the show was a hit for a time. The cosmic captain was played by Bob Wilkins, who also hosted the phenomenally popular late Saturday night Creature Features. I only have vague memories of Captain Cosmic, but vividly recall one of the featured programs "Ultraman". Then again, I was never much into science fiction and thus did not see too many Star Trek episodes. 

Pat McCormick

In between all this entertainment, KTVU made sure to throw in a little education during the commercial breaks. These gentle life lessons were called "Bits & Pieces" and generally ran about one minute each. The PSA’s ranged from promoting good manners and kindness to acknowledging people’s diverse backgrounds and heritage without being heavy-handed or divisive. The most entertaining featured the puppets Charley and Humphrey who were created, performed and voiced by the legendary KTVU personality Pat McCormick. Not until later did I discover that Charley (a horse) and Humphrey (a bulldog) once hosted their own popular afternoon show featuring many of those classic cartoon shorts I would ultimately enjoy. "Bits & Pieces" would rerun consistently into the early 90’s. McCormick was quite a presence on KTVU, hosting the live Dialing for Dollars movie series middays, being the MC of a short-lived interactive kids game called TV Powww, co-hosting the local portions of the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon and serving as weatherman on The 10 O’Clock News until his retirement in 1995. 

I would move on from the classic cartoons, but would eventually revisit them and develop a deeper appreciation for their humor which was more mature than my boy brain could ever realize.  From cartoons, my viewings of choice on Channel 2 shifted to comedies. Besides Gilligan, I laughed at the antics of I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Bewitched, The Odd Couple and other classics. In the 1980’s I often would watch M*A*S*H reruns, and that series proved very important to KTVU. Soon after the beginning of off-network repeats in 1979 the show became one of the biggest hits in the station’s history, so much so that it was being aired twice each evening. Significantly, the costs of each episode were made back in the commercial immediately following the opening credits. After that it was pure profit. That money went towards construction of a new state-of-the-art studio nearby from the old facilities. The building became known to staffers as "the house that M*A*S*H built". Equally enjoyable for me laugh-wise were other grown-up sitcoms such as Three’s Company, WKRP in Cincinnati, and two programs I first saw on KTVU before regularly watching them in first-run: Cheers and Newhart.  Cheers followed a similar trajectory as M*A*S*H in that soon after its addition to the schedule it was being seen twice a night.  

Popular rerun shows had always been the foundation of KTVU’s success in spite of the fact that the idea behind "There’s Only One Two" was to emphasize their strong position of independence. When looking at those 1960’s TV Guide listings, it surprised me that Channel 2 picked up some of CBS’s daytime schedule that was not cleared by KPIX. Thus, future classics such as The Jack Benny Program, The Andy Griffith Show and The Beverly Hillbillies had a weekday presence on Channel 2 while they were still producing new episodes. This even extended to game shows such as The [New] Price is Right when it premiered in 1972. Management must have decided that despite the prestige of network programming, by 1975 no CBS daytime shows were being seen on KTVU. If it wasn’t cleared by KPIX, one would have to look for them on either Channels 20 or 44, if they were picked up at all. Channel 20 (as KTZO and later KOFY) would take some CBS and NBC shows in the 1980’s (including daytime Price is Right) but that’s another story. 

    Betty Ann Bruno and Dennis Richmond, 1980s

KTVU would proudly assert its status as a popular independent station through first-run syndicated programs, movie series (The 8 O’Clock Movie, Weekend Premiere, Sunday Super Cinema, KTVU Presents, Dialing for Dollars, The Movie of the Week, Chiller Diller and Creature Features), acquired documentaries, talk shows, British imports (Benny Hill was a long time late night staple), the aforementioned off-network reruns, and a nightly 10 p.m. news program. The 10 O’Clock News was the quintessential example of an honest straight-forward award-winning newscast with anchors and reporters staying on for years and even decades-long tenures. To name more than a few: Dennis Richmond, Elaine Corral, Barbara Simpson, Vern Hawkins, John Fowler, Rob Roth, Betty Ann Bruno, Faith Fancher, Rita Williams, Lloyd LaCuesta, George Watson, Leslie Griffith, Bob Shaw, Tom Vacar, Brian Banmiller on business, sports with Gary Park, Mark Ibanez and Joe Fonzi, weather with Pat McCormick and Bill Martin, and feature reporter Bob MacKenzie who also reviewed shows for TV Guide. Some of his reviews you may have seen on this blog. 

It was a surprise when KTVU became a charter affiliate of the Fox Network in 1986. While Channel 2 could have stayed independent, research and ratings were showing the growing influence of cable/satellite which would ultimately make it more challenging to acquire first-rate movies and series-- thus the decision to join with an upstart network. Because Fox began with a limited schedule, KTVU would continue to look much like an independent station into the early 1990’s. Gradually during the decade Channel 2 would increasingly identify on-air as "Fox 2", which It does to this day. 

I do miss those simpler times coming home from school and turning the set onto Channel 2 to be entertained for a while. Thanks to YouTube, I can experience some of those bits and pieces of KTVU video memories. For example, I recently discovered a half-hour 50th anniversary special from 2008 comprised of various clips and interviews covering the station’s history and legacy. Going further back is an almost complete 1968 episode of Captain Satellite with promos for upcoming telecasts of roller derby, Giants vs. Dodgers baseball and Romper Room. Others have posted shorter moments such as promos, station ID’s, Charley and Humphrey's PSA's, Bob Wilkins’ sardonic host segments, and the introductions to movie broadcasts with graphics and music that could rival those of the networks. They’re worth checking out. Perhaps they may lead you to look for local television clips from where you grew up. For me, seeing those KTVU Channel 2 images come alive once more takes me back to a time of the not-too-distant past where "There’s Only One Two". 

l  l  l

Many thanks, Bill! I'm grateful for you taking the time to share your thoughtful essay. The warmth of those memories shows through in what you've written, and I think that's precisely what so many people feel about television of the past, and what we risk losing in these homogenized times when the local imprint of television seems to be getting smaller and smaller. This will certainly enhance the experience for me whenever I write about a TV Guide from the Bay Area!

If you'd like to share your memories of growing up with television, or if you have a TV Guide you'd like to relive, I'd be only too happy to share them with everyone else. You know how to reach me! TV  

What's on TV? Sunday, February 2, 1969

How many of you, besides Mike Doran, remember My Friend Tony? (10:00 p.m., NBC) I must confess that, until I saw a few episodes of it pop up on YouTube last year, I had never heard of it. No memory whatsoever, not even of having run across it in Brooks and Marsh's Complete Guide to Prime Time Network TV Shows, and I used to browse through that just for fun; I can assure you that doesn't happen very often. At any rate, James Whitmore stars as John Woodruff, a criminologist assisted by Tony, who was a street urchin in Italy during WW2 (where he met Woodruff while trying to pick his pocket) and later emigrated to America. Sixteen episodes; I watched a few minutes of it last month and was not impressed. But hopefully you'll be impressed by the rest of this lineup from the Northern California edition.

What's on TV? Friday, January 29, 1965

This week we're in Northern California, and a program that caught my eye is NET Playhouse's prodution of the verse play "A Sleep of Prisoners," by English playwright Christopher Fry, best known for his play "The Lady's Not for Burning" (9:00 p.m., channel 6). It tells the story of four prisoners of war locked up in a church overnight, and the Old Testament style dreams they have springing from an argument between them, representing a kind of universal human conflict. The broadcast boasts a strong cast including Barry Morse, Paul Stevens, Ramon Bieri, and Jon Voight. Despite what you might think, I'm not always saying that television was better back in the day than it is today, but I do wish there were more thoughtful dramas like this at least occasionally--you know, ones with adult themes that didn't involve drug cartels or crooked lawyers or meth manufacturers or vampires or zombies. That's not asking for too much, is it?

What's on TV? Tuesday, August 5, 1986

Saturday’s piece was, in a sense, about growing old, and the TV Guide of the 1980s is not for old eyes. With cable stations being listed, there are now so many channels, with so much information, that I’ve got my magnifier on extra-large to make sure I catch it all. And among the things we see in this San Franciso Metropolitan Edition is that there are a lot more infomercials than we've seen in the past, though not as many as we will see. Along with some timeless favorites of the past, more recent series like Simon & Simon and Magnum are now included in the syndication rotation. (KOFY has a particularly strong crime lineup throughout the day.) As for this week's choices, in addition to the main stations from the Bay Area, I've also added SuperStation TBS and USA to give you a flavor from those good old days.

What's on TV? Sunday, May 1, 1955

Last Monday it was Bay Area Sunday television circa 1980; today we go back 25 years to look at the same lineup on a Sunday in 1955; some of the stations are the same, but very little of their programs are. KQED, the educational station, didn't broadcast on the weekend back then, and DuMont, the network, doesn't broadcast at all anymore. Anyway, have fun with the comparisons.

Two specials of note: at 11:30 a.m., KPIX presents a repeat of the 1954 Studio One play An Almanac of Liberty, within the context of the Democratic Legacy Awards program from the Anti-Defamation League. The Anti-Defamation broadcast probably doesn't exist anymore, but you can see An Almanac of Liberty here. And then, in a preview of things to come, KPIX hosts a debate on the future of pay TV at 2:15 p.m. Should viewers pay for the programs they watch? TV Guide promises a writeup of the issue next week.

What's on TV? Sunday, April 27, 1980

Over the years, we've lived in both the Eastern and Central time zones. (The Central is, in my opinion, the most natural, but I'll make an exception now that we're living in God's country.) Although we've never lived in the Pacific time zone, I've visited there before, most recently a couple of years ago, and I will never get used to the idea of sporting event starting at 10:00 in the morning. You'll notice that there's a doubleheader NBA playoff game on CBS today, but it's all over by 3:00 p.m.—what are you supposed to do the rest of the day? Well, this is your chance to find out. Our stations come from the Bay Area.

What's on TV? Thursday, November 11, 1976

We all know that November 11 is Veterans Day, right? Not in 1976, it wasn't. Thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Veterans Day was changed to the fourth Monday in October, starting in 1971. It didn't go over very well; veterans groups especially objected to it, some states never did change the date, and in 1978 it was moved back to the original date. That's still in the future though, and so you'll not see any war movie marathons. What you will see, though, is NBC's memorable miniseries Captains and teh Kings, CBS's back-to-back crime shows, and two hours of sitcoms on ABC. If you can't find anything in this Northern California edition, you aren't really looking.

What's on TV? Sunday, December 17, 1972

When you live in the Pacific time zone, football Sunday gets off to an early start, as you can see from this week's Bay Area listings. I've been to San Francisco a couple of times, and I never could get used to live events starting so early—and, conversely, taped prime time programs ending at 11:00 p.m. instead of 10:00. I think Central time is just ingrained in me. And speaking of prime time, does anyone else remember when CBS and ABC used to have the late Sunday news? I remember seeing it late night, just before sign-off , but these stations show it ahead of or instead of the late local news. Trust me though: there's more to these listings than the late news.

What's on TV? Saturday, May 4, 1974

We're in the Bay Area this week; I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, but for the several times I've been in California, I've never gotten used to Pacific Time. Sporting events that begin at noon in Minneapolis start at 10:00 a.m. out there, while prime time doesn't wrap up until 11:00 p.m., well after my bedtime during the week. Oh well—that doesn't mean the programming is any less interesting. We've got plenty of movie thrillers today, and a throwback schedule of morning cartoons: let's go and meet them.

What's on TV? Saturday, May 21, 1977

We're in the Bay Area this week, and no matter how often I see a TV Guide from this part of the country, I don't think I'll ever get accustomed to the time change. It's one thing to live in the Eastern time zone, which I've done a couple of times in my life; that makes more sense than to get it coming and going, as you do in the Pacific. Live events, in this case sports, start in the morning or before you get home from work, while prime time still runs until 11:00, as it does in the East. At any rate, I'm sure this won't keep you from enjoying your favorites.

What's on TV? Wednesday, June 5, 1974

We're in the Bay Area this week, looking at the listings from San Francisco and Sacramento, with San Jose thrown in for good measure. What struck me as I was going through this was the list of celebrities appearing on this week's game shows. Hollywood Squares really has the B list this week, plus Dr. David Reuben (Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex*) - I can imagine what kind of questions Peter Marshall asked him. Nipsey Russell, the king of game shows, is on two this week, one on ABC and one on CBS. Celebrity Sweepstakes, a show I remember only by name, has a really varied cast - regular types like Joey Bishop and Buddy Hackett, plus Lois Nettleton and Luciana Paluzzi. Oh, and how about KPIX's Mike Douglas Show, with Don Meredith, NFL Films head Ed Sabol, Tiny Tim, Miss Universe Maria Margarita Moran, and a woman's football team. Why do I get the feeling SCTV booked these shows?

What's on TV? Monday, December 2, 1968

This week we turn to the Bay Area for our TV festival. It's December 2, but as we saw on Saturday, the televised holiday season isn't fully in swing yet. No matter; people still have to watch TV, and the networks oblige.

I don't have a lot of comments about our shows, although I will note the KPIX morning news programs, which feature Ron Magers. Magers was a legend in Minneapolis-St. Paul television, leading KSTP in battle against WCCO for local news supremacy. Eventually he headed on to Chicago, and was replaced in the hearts and minds of Twin Cities viewers by his brother Paul, who during his long local run made KARE the number one news station in the market, before he headed off to Southern California.

Also, did you notice the KPIX afternoon lineup? Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin back-to-back. Now that's talk-show television.

What's on TV? Friday, April 7, 1972

This week we make (I believe) our first visit to the Bay Area in California. With more than a few stations to choose from, I've decided to go with the listings for San Francisco-Oakland, with Sacramento thrown in as a bonus. It's an area that, broadcasting-wise, I know absolutely nothing about, although I can tell you from having spent a vacation there once that there's nothing like watching a live sporting event starting in the morning to remind you that you're not in Kansas - or Texas - anymore. Let's get to it, and if any of you out there have some added details to offer, by all means please do!