What's on TV? Saturday, April 3, 1971

In the early days of Sesame Street, the listings included the episode number as well as the names of the celebrities appearing in cameos. (They also included the number on-screen at the beginning of the episode, as I recall.) I'm assuming that WGBH is showing the five episodes that aired during the past week, given that they're numbers 231-235. Now, this factoid may not be particularly notable, but it's the best I can do today, for this Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Friday, March 13, 1970

It's a night of documentaries on TV, and perhaps the most interesting is Charles Kuralt's look at the beginning of Expo '70, the World's Fair in Osaka, Japan. I suppose it was inevitable that these fairs would fade in importance given how small the world has become, and how "global" everything is these days. Still, I miss the sense of wonder that used to accompany things like world's fairs. Or anything, for that matter. Oh well; there's no reason to wonder about this week's programming; it comes to us courtesy of the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Sunday, January 31, 1960

I mentioned last week ago how WGBH, the educational channel in Boston, acted almost as a secondary NBC affiliate, broadcasting The Huntley-Brinkley Report because WBZ had a grudge against the network. Well, this week, we see that WGBH is taking on some programming from CBS as well, including Camera Three and CBS Television Workshop, the last five minutes of which include Harry Reasoner's news update. Then, they turn back to NBC at the end of the afternoon for Meet the Press and Chet Huntley Reporting. I suppose WBZ figured nobody would recognize Huntley on their channel! As you can tell, this is the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Wednesday, January 28, 1959

Now here's something you don't see every day: a network news program on an educational television station. But until May 1960, The Huntley-Brinkley Report was not carried on WBZ, the NBC affiliate. Instead, it was seen first, as in this listing, on WGBH (without commercials) and then WHDH, before debuting on WBZ. According to Tim Lones, it had to do with Group W's ownership of WBZ, and the "bad blood between Westinghouse and NBC over the WNBK/WPTZ [Philadelphia] swap in 1956. Though Westinghouse agreed to it, they felt they were pressured into the move by NBC. To get back at the network they didn't clear Jack Paar in most markets where Westinghouse had NBC affiliates. [As you can see in this issue, Tonight is on WHDH.] In Cleveland, WEWS, the ABC affiliate, carried Paar, then Carson, from 1957-66 and Huntley-Brinkley from 1959-60. Another factor is that Westinghouse Radio stations that were NBC went independent." Ah, the rabbit holes you can go down, in this Eastern New England issue.

What's on TV? Tuesday, January 13, 1970

Tonight, ABC presents a documentary on a bygone era. "The Golden Age of the Automobile," written and narrated by John Secondari (The Saga of Western Man) looks back at the amazing rise of the car, from its days as a culture-changing "horseless carriage" to today's threat to the environment. I've never been a car buff myself, but I've never been anti-car, and I am a lover of auto racing, and in this documentary you can see the incipient evolution of the car from pleasure vehicle to utilitarian transportation to what it is today: distained by the younger generation, so complicated and computerized that few can work on their own cars anymore (or build them from scratch, as was the case with so many teen boys and their hot rods), and so expensive that your car loan may well outlive the life of the car itself. And as an auto racing fan, I can see the effects of this: fewer new fans among the young, fewer attending races, more and more gimmicks introduced in hopes of increasing the audience. But Drive to Survive can only take you so far, and after that, what will survive? This and more comes to you from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Monday, December 1, 1975

Something I didn't mention on Monday amongst the various changes to the daytime schedule is that NBC's Wheel of Fortune is expanding to one hour, joining The Price is Right as the only hour-long game shows on television. Before too many years, there won't be any half-hour dramas left, and not that many years later there won't be any game shows at all, except for Price. Networks don't show reruns of their primetime series anymore; for that matter, save the morning shows, there's not a whole lot of network programming at all during the day. I wonder how long it will be before we see this happening in the primetime schedule as well? Ah well, this week's listing is from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Saturday, November 1, 1969

You'll notice that at 5:30 p.m., WCVB is airing It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which didn't air the previous week when it was shown by the rest of the CBS affiliates. (The station was showing the movie Bus Stop.) I say this because it is now November 1; Halloween was yesterday, which is a bit like showing Rudolph or Frosty on December 28; it loses something in the translation. Perhaps this is one of those cases where they should have thought twice before pre-empting The Great Pumpkin for a two-hour movie. The listings, in case you haven't already figured it out, are from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Tuesday, October 31, 1961

I never watched the early-morning educational on a regular basis; I was too busy getting educated myself, at dear old Longfellow Public School in Minneapolis. (Of course, I was also two years old when this issue came out.) I remember Sunrise Semester, but I know the rest of them only through the pages of TV Guide. And these programs, shown on commercial television, offered not just variety, but some pretty heavy topics: "Some Organic Chemistry," "Political Parties and the Founding Fathers," and "Reproduction of Cells," and that's just today's lineup. There's even a program called English for Americans because there was a time when newcomers to America wanted to sound, you know, like Americans. All these treats for Halloween '62 come from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV: Tuesday, October 8, 1974

Elsewhere in today's listings, we're warned that regular programming oculd be preempted due to the American and National League Championship Series (yes, boys and girls, the ALCS and NLCS used to be held early in October, once upon a time). Fortunately, if you're looking forward to seeing Yvette Mimeaux playing a hit woman, both of today's games, should they be needed, are scheduled for the afternoon, with the American League game at 2:00 p.m., and the National League game at 3:30 p.m.; if both games are played today, the National League game will be joined in progress. (You wouldn't see that today, either.) That's precisely what happened, so you can go ahead and wipe out most of NBC's afternoon lineup in favor of the Oakland Athletics and Baltimore Orioles, followed by the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers. It's all part of the road to the World Series, which starts next week. Yes, the Series used to be finished before Halloween, too. Ah, how times have changed, as you can see in this Eastern New England edition!

What's on TV? Thursday, August 29, 1963

You'll notice that ABC's afternoon schedule includes three programs geared toward the younger audience: American Bandstand, Discovery, and American Newsstand. Of the three, perhaps the least-familiar is American Newsstand, the network's afternoon effort to produce "news with an accent on youth." It was a ten-minute broadcast that ran five days a week, and attempted to capitalize on the audience from the preceding programs to build a news market that the perennial third-place network felt was underdeveloped. The newscast began in 1961 and ran through the 1962-63 season; when Bandstand became a Saturday program, Newsstand went off the air. As you can see from this broadcast, the news was surprisingly substantive, considering what news coverage in general has become. Our listings this week come from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Wednesday, August 15, 1973

One of the many good things about Fred Rogers, and one of the things missing from modern children's shows, can be seen in today's episode, in which his guest is pianist Van Cliburn. Cliburn was one of the most famous classical musicians of the time, a heroic figure dating back to his triumph at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, during the Cold War. Besides his musical talent, he, like Rogers, was a gentle and articulate soul, a perfect guest for bringing classical music to children. Rogers had many such guests, from all walks of middlebrow culture, and he invariably had the gift of making these people "real" to his small viewers. Could anyone do that today? This is not a referendum on public broadcasting, which encompasses a far broader discussion, only a meditation on why nobody seems interested in bringing arts to the people anymore, in a message-free manner. We're looking at the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Monday, August 1, 1960

Xhe 10:00 p.m. special on NBC, Holltwood Swings, would seem at first an unlikely vehicle for a trio of Boris Karloff, Tammy Grimes, and Eddie Albert. Karloff acts as host, while Grimes and Albert take a fond (and tongue-in-cheek) look back at musicals, from the early days of sound to more recent offerings. Karloff, of course, has such a cultivated, dignified voice, he could probably read the phone book and make it worthwhile. It originally aired in April, so in case you missed it, here's your chance. We're in the Eastern New England edition again this week.

What's on TV? Tuesday, July 10, 1962

On Saturday, we discussed, at what was probably excessive length, the feature attraction of the day, baseball's All-Star Game; surely, however, there are other things to attract our attention. So let's take a look at The Verdict Is Yours, which ran on CBS for five seasons, starting in 1957. It must be one of the more unusual daytime dramas on a network: a 30-minute courtroom drama, using real lawyers and judges, with the defendants and witnesses being played by actors ad-libbing their lines from an outline. Not only that, but the court reporter was played first by Jim McKay (before heading to Wide World of Sports and greatness), then newsman Bill Stout, and, this week, CBS sportscaster Jack Whittaker. That's the kind of courtroom show we need today! And you read about it here, in the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Sunday, June 11, 1972

A little something for everyone today, especially in the sports arena: baseball (two different games), tennis, track and field, judo, even roller derby. It's hard to complain about that. You'll notice what's missing, though: basketball and hockey, both of which have their finals series going on at the time that I'm typing this. In 1972, the NBA Finals ended on May 7 (!), while the Stanley Cup playoffs skated to an end on May 11. Those really were the days weren't they? Today's listings are from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Wednesday, June 6, 1973

I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned this in the past, but one of the great charms of early public television was the auction, which is running all this week on WGBH and WGBX in Boston. Back in the day, this was one of the main ways in which local public stations paid the bills; for an entire week, the station will auction off donated items from businesses and individuals, including "an antique fire engine, a week's stay in a villa in Portugal, two acupuncture kits, 500 pounds of chicken, a stuffed gorilla and a cruise on a Chinese junk." Among the guest auctioneers at WGBH are Arthur Fiedler, Gene Rayburn, John Updike, and Curt Gowdy. We had one of these in the Twin Cities when I was growing up, with similar prizes and local celebrities; although I never bid on anything, I never missed watching it, either. This week's listings are, as you might have figured, from Eastern New England.

What's on TV? Wednesday, May 6, 1964

This week's local note comes from WHDH and the Dateline Boston program, where the guest is the legendary Harry Ellis Dickson. Dickson was part of the first violin section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 49 years and also served as Associate Conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra, backing up Arthur Fiedler. His daughter, Kitty, was married to Michael Dukakis; when Dickson died in 2003 at the age of 94, Dukakis said that "No one on this planet could wish for a better father-in-law." As you might gather, we're looking at the Eastern New England Edition this week.

What's on TV? Wednesday, March 21, 1973

The last time we saw Arnold Zenker, he was in the process of becoming a cult celebrity thanks to his stint as anchorman of The CBS Evening News during the 1967 AFTRA strike. Following that brush with fame, he moved to Boston, where he anchored the local news, and eventually became host of a daily program, which you can see at 10:00 on WCVB; he also hosted an evening program called The Zenker Hearings, and there was a best-of show that aired at 5:30 a.m. I've no doubt myself that Arnold Zenker could do at least as well as those less-than-stellar talents currently anchoring the network news. Perhaps we ought to bring back those "Bring Back Zenker" buttons? You can see him, along with the rest of the day's shows, in these listings from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Monday, February 7, 1972

One of Edwin Newman's guests on this morning's Today is former British politican Sir Oswald Mosley, promoting his autobiography My Life, a man whose life would make a terrific miniseries. He was, over the years, a member of Parliament; leader of the British Fascist movement (for which he spent time in prison); married Diana Mitford, sister of writer Jessica Mitford (their 1936 marriage was held in Joseph Goebbels' home in Berlin); was an early proponent of European nationalism; and was father to Max Mosley, the future head of the governing body for Formula 1 auto racing, who himself became involved in a Nazi-themed sex scandal in 2008. How could that interview have fit into a ten-minute segment? The listings come from the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Friday, January 18, 1974

We're back looking at the Eastern New England edition this week, and among this week's offerings is the 1973 made-for-TV movie Genesis II, airing at 11:30 p.m. on WPRI in Providence. Whenever you see this mentioned nowadays, it's almost always because it was a failed pilot developed by Gene Roddenberry, so I was somewhat surprised to see it here with no mention of Roddenberry as a hook. Of course, times were different then; Star Trek hadn't become the behemoth franchise it is today, so this might not have been anything more than just another plot that didn't make it any further. But you can go further, just be scrolling down. 

What's on TV? Monday, January 8, 1962

Our cover star for the week, Vincent Edwards, stars in tonight's episode of Ben Casey, in which our hero tries to rehab a skid row wineo (Franchot Tone) by putting him to work in the hospital's lab, only to have him make an accident on a lab test that could cost a patient his life. Casey, as Saturday's article pointed out, was not one to tolerate any kind of mistake, so I wonder how he reacts here? Frankly, I'm surprised he'd even take a chance like that. Anyway, I'd recommend keeping with NBC's excellent police drama 87th Precinct, based on the Ed McBain series of books, starring Robert Lansing, or ABC's WB detective mystery Surfside 6, which wasn't great television but was fun to watch. Fortunately, neither of them are on against Casey, so you can have it all from this Eastern New England edition.