What's on TV? Tuesday, June 17, 1958

All this week, WGBH is broacasting specials from the Boston Arts Festival, which has been held, off and on, since 1952. In 1958, the festival would have been held at Boston's Public Garden, and the event was considered a major step in bringing the arts to the people, where it belongs. Tonight's feature: the Folk Dance Festival. As you might have guessed, the listing comes from the New England edition.

What's on TV? Saturday, January 28, 1967

Here's something that might only bother me, but I'm going to share it anyway. The CBS Golf Classic was a made-for-TV event that ran throughout the 1960s, with 16 two-man teams of top professionals. The winning team each week advances to the next round, and the season culminates with a championship match between the final two teams; the whole thing was actually taped months in advance, since I can pretty much promise nobody was playing golf in January at the Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. 

Anyway, as it was back in the day, programs don't always air at the same time in different markets, and in this case WHDH in Boston is showing the "live" match, while WABI in Bangor is on a one-week delay. The team of Ken Venturi and Johnny Pott are in both, but in Bangor they're playing Frank Beard and Miller Barber in a first-round match, while in Boston it's a quarterfinal match against Julius Boros and Don January. If you're still with me, you might see the problem: anyone in Bangor reading this TV Guide and noticing that Venturi and Pott are in a quarterfinal match on WHDH will already know how their own match is going to end; Venturi and Pott will win, otherwise, they wouldn't be in the quarterfinals. They can see it right there! Geez, talk about killing the suspense! Perhaps the listing could simply have read, "Julius Boros and Don January take on the winner of last week's match between. . ." Oh well. As you may have surmised, this is the Northern New England edition, minus the educational channels; they don't broadcast on the weekend.

What's on TV? Monday, January 15, 1968

Ah yes, the return of Arnold Zenker! We last saw him filling in for Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News, and now he's a co-anchor on the WBZ news; it's always fun to see a familiar name. And speaking of familiar names, last week we saw the New England edition of TV Guide, and now we've skipped ahead one week and ten years, to the Eastern New England edition. The Boston stations are still around, but Maine is nowhere to be found, replaced by a variety of Eastern locations; compare the differences. Oh, and did you notice Issues and Answers at 1:00 a.m. on WNAC, right after The Joey Bishop Show? Perfect time for it, if you ask me!

What's on TV? Tuesday, January 7, 1958

Three late-night movies stand out among today's programming. The Petrified Forest (WBZ) and King Kong (WJAR) are two classics that people might have stayed up late to watch. The third one is more unusual, however: Whispering Ghosts (WGAN), a 1942 mystery that stars Milton Berle. Berle had already made a name for himself on radio, although his radio fame would grow as the 1940s progressed, leading to his transition into television. His TV star is already dimming by 1958 (although he remains a big name in the clubs); this is an interesting opportunity to see him before his rise, but after his fall. This week's listings come from the New England edition.

What's on TV? Wednesday, October 6, 1965

Another year, another week, another World Series. Nowadays, one can say that all the way to Halloween, but back then baseball had the decency to finish its affairs early in the month and then get out of the way for football. But I digress. You'll notice some unique things if you take the trouble to go through all of the listings. First, we have a pair of twin stations, probably due to common ownership. WWLP and WRLP have the same lineup, as do the WHNP channels 30 and 79, so don't get the idea that I've copied myself. As well, WATR, channel 20, does not colorcast, and the handful of ABC color shows are listed accordingly. I'm sure you'll find other items of interest below.

What's on TV? Wednesday, April 17, 1963

Xt isn't often that you see a CBS affiliate with more color programming than an NBC one in the early 1960s, but that's the case this week with WHDH. The station appears to have made a major commitment to color with its local programs, with the result that it winds up looking like an NBC station! (And that doesn't include carrying The Tonight Show in place of NBC's own affiliate, WBZ). In fact, the history of WHDH (and its successor, WCVB) is a very colorful one, as you can see from the always-reliable Wikipedia. We're with the Eastern New England edition.

What's on TV? Friday, April 17, 1964

On Saturday I mentioned that the New York Mets game on WHCT marked the opening of Shea Stadium, but there's another baseball game that's a sign of the times: WHDH's coverage of the Boston Red Sox home opener against the Chicago White Sox, which serves as a benefit for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library Fund that's to be built at Harvard University. It occurred to me that this might have been a special game, an exhibition, but no, it was a regular season game. If you'd suggested such a thing could be possible on Opening Day 1963, you would have been laughed out of town. Enjoy the listings from the Western New England edition.

What's on TV? Wednesday, February 24, 1954

This is only the eighth-oldest TV Guide in the collection at the time of writing, but today's programs include something we haven't seen before: a listing for "Test Pattern." It wasn't unusual for the test pattern to be shown at times when there was no programming on the station, oftentimes accompanied by music. I don't know if that's the case here, but I'd like to think that at least in some cases, the music came from radio stations that shared ownership with the TV station. Nice corporate synergy, if you know what I mean. Something else that's unusual about this week: we have not one but two stations that have affiliations with all four networks, and that results in Boston having two stations with CBS affiliations. Yes, it's always entertaining when we go back this far in history. Our sample comes from the New England Edition.

What's on TV? Saturday, October 21, 1961

This week it's a return stop to New England, where we'll look not only at the Boston stations, but Hartford, New Haven, Providence, and other areas as well. And in case you were looking at the lower right hand corner above, you're right - that's another of the "This is the Week to Watch" issues. Can you recall the last time there was a week like that on TV?

What's on TV? Saturday, May 19, 1962

We're back in Eastern New England this week for an interesting day of programming. I think that by 1962 we're well into the transitional period between the Golden Age of the '50s, when technological advances weren't that pronounced, and the programming we're familiar with when we think of the '60s. Although you don't see it in today's selection, the evening news is still 15 minutes and there are still many shows from the '50s on the regular schedule, and yet I sense that change is in the air. That's probably one reason I like this period of the '60s so much.

What's on TV? Thursday, November 8, 1962

We're back in New England this week, with listings from Boston, Portland and surrounding points. Stand by for another round of weak jokes and fairly useless information.

What's on TV? Tuesday, July 21, 1959

This week signals a return to New England, and a return to the late '50s, so familiar and yet so different from the early '60s.  Or maybe that's just me; looking at all these listings, 1958 always seems to be so much older than, say, 1963.  But television is still an evolving medium in the late '50s, barely ten years old, and things change fast.

Yet, for all that, there are so many familiar names, whether on their own shows or guesting on others.  The two Andys, Williams and Griffith, Huntley and Brinkley, Captain Kangaroo, Jim Backus.  Jack Paar hosts Tonight, as he will until 1962; his successor, Johnny Carson, hosts Who Do You Trust? with his sidekick, Ed McMahon.  Similar, but different.

Well, let's get to it, anyway.  No commentary this week, just shows.

What's on TV? Wednesday, July 6, 1960

This week we revisit New England, and a typical night's viewing.  Nothing special here, nothing destined for immortality.  It's an entertaining night nonetheless, so let's take a closer look at what Wednesday night had to offer.

What's on TV? Friday, June 20, 1958

We're back up New England way this week.  I don't really have anything to add in the way of local insight and there's nothing special about the programming, so I'm going to let the listings speak for themselves this week, and depend on you good readers for the comments.  Have at it!

What's on TV? Thursday, April 18, 1963

We're in New England once again this week, with stations in Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, and despite the four years I spent in purgatory - I mean, Maine - I don't have a lot of local color to add to the listings. Let's just enjoy them for what they are!  The main listings are from Boston.

What's on TV? January 26, 1959

Last week I mentioned that we were making a trek into the Dallas-Fort Worth area - my new hometown, but one I'm not that familiar with, TV-wise.  This week is more of the same, with a trip into upper New England.   Let's see what the programming has to offer us on Monday, January 26, 1959.