What's on TV? Thursday, January 21, 1965

We're in Boston this week, with some additional stations from surrounding areas. Of course, we have some interesting items. For example, Regis Philbin, pre-Joey Bishop, pre-Kathy Lee! Can you believe it? WBZ, the NBC affiliate in Boston, carries Rege's nationally syndicated talk show, based on his successful local show out of San Diego, that started the previous October and would last another month. As was the case with the format followed by Mike Douglas, Rege would have a co-host that would be with him for the entire week. Although no guests are listed in the TV Guide, a little Internet research suggests his co-host for the week might have been Eartha Kitt. Because WBZ is carrying the Philbin show, The Tonight Show is being carried at 9:30 p.m. on WHDH, a CBS affiliate. Someone more familiar with the area could probably tell me why WBZ didn't carry the Carson show. 

And then there's the Harry S Truman program on WTIC in Hartford. This is, I believe, Decision, a series of 26 half-hour episodes that were syndicated during the 1964-65 serason. It was originally proposed by David Susskind, but after failing to secure enough interest with one of the broadcast networks, he gave the project over to Screen Gems, who eventually put the series together. As Stephen Battaglio points out in his Susskind biography, it was possible that "network executives knew Truman was still not very popular with the public and certainly not as compelling on the TV screen as the "Give 'em hell, Harry" mythology that was later built around him." Perhaps this series had something to do with it; American Cinema Editors later named Truman the outstanding television personality of 1964.

What's on TV? Wednesday, April 2, 1958

Once again, we're in New England, with our programming coming to you mostly from Boston, Portland, and Providence. I enjoy these issues from the late 1950s and early '60s partly because you have so many local stations with split affiliations, which means you get a good idea of what programs were considered "must see" in a particular area. Lawrence Welk often turns up in these situations; I wonder how many stations had secondary ABC affiliations primarily to make sure Welk was on the schedule? Same thing with soap operas and sporting events. I can tell you from my experience with KCMT, the examples would include Welk, Marcus Welby M.D., and General Hospital. If you're an aspiring Ph.D out there, you might consider writing your thesis on the correlation between split affiliation programming choices and the demographics of the viewing area, particularly those of race, age, and economic status. I'm sure it would contain some very interesting results.

What's on TV: Monday, May 6, 1957

One of the most enjoyable things about looking through old periodicals, whether it's TV Guide or some other publication, is finding names that had little significance at the time, but acquired an increased amount of fame in the years to come. Many of you may have seen the "Faces in the Crowd" feature in Sports Illustrated, for example, with some blurb about Tiger Woods before he was 10, or something similar, and there are a few names in the listings this week, as well as some others to whom a little bit of attention should be called.  This week's shows are from Boston, with Portland, Providence and Manchester thrown in for good measure.

What's on TV? Tuesday, March 23, 1965

This week's listings come to you live from Boston, and although it's Tuesday, these have something of the feel of a weekend about them. The Gemini coverage wipes out almost all of the morning programming and a good share of the afternoon shows, leaving us with, in most cases, abbreviated programming listings. And while that's bad because it doesn't give you everything that's normally on, it's good for me because it means less work.

What I meant was: it's good because it puts today in context as far as the space race and way a single news event can dominate programming. Would this happen nowadays? Would the coverage be this extensive, or would the networks cover the launch and return for the splashdown? It's hard to tell because there hasn't really been anything new with the space program for a long time, but my suspicion is that they'd opt for the lesser coverage, and allow the cable news networks to show the rest.

No commentary today, as I don't have a lot to add in the way of local color. While we do have listings for stations in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire, the bulk of what you see comes from Massachusetts. There are a lot of stations in that mix, so let's get to it.

What's on TV? Thursday, January 21, 1965

Boston is our location this week, not for the first time, but the listings might look a little different from the last time we visited. Four new stations are included in this issue, in Worcester, Providence, Hartford and Boston. We still have Manchester, NH (although I didn't include their programming), but we're now missing Portland, Maine. It's the Eastern New England edition, and I guess Maine just isn't far enough East - or at least too far Down East.