As a Sixties anklebiter in England the TV was ruled by Thunderbirds. But despite us only having three channels [how many did our US and European friends have then?] there were tons of other great kids programmes all vying for our attention: Scooby Do, Marine Boy, Top Cat, Flintstones, Herculoids, Frankenstein Junior and my own favourites, Spider-Man and the Impossibles on Saturday mornings. Here's my treasured Annual that went with the show.
The Seventies were just as good: Hong Kong Phooey, Wacky Races, Spot the Pigeon, Star Trek, Children of the Stones, Rhubarb, Hair Bair Bunch and loads more [please insert your own!]. The cop shows from the US were required viewing too as I turned teenager in 1973 and could stay up till 10 I seem to recall. My top six would be 6. Kojak 5. Ironside 4. Canon 3. Harry- O 2. The Streets of San Francisco and easilly at number 1, Columbo. I was saddened to hear that the superb Peter Falk died over the weekend aged 82. Feels like a whole generation has gone.
The Eighties weren't my decade for TV as I was busy growing facial hair. I did notice a few cartoon shows though: Brave Starr, Masters of the Universe and Thundercats. I suppose for Eighties kids the debate rages on as to which was the best!
Everythings a blur after that as I switched off!
What were your favourites in your part of the world?
My family lived in San Francisco which was probably one of the best served TV markets in the '60s. We only got a TV in 1969 but until UHF added several choices we had channels 2 (local), 4 (NBC), 5 (CBS), 7 (ABC) and 9 (PBS) - Sometime in the '70s we started getting as many as half dozen UHF stations as well.
ReplyDeleteI always loved Star Trek, The Outer Limits and the Irwin Allen shows and every year there would be new cartoons for Saturday morning... Jonny Quest is the one I still remember fondly...
What made me the happiest all through the '80s and into the '90s were the old SF and horror movies. Often I would have to be up at 2:30am because something really rare like "The Vampire's Ghost" (1945) was scheduled at 2:50 or some other end-of-broadcast day time-slot, which could not be accurately foretold... Might be 2:30. Might be 3:05. Might not actually be shown...
Of course now we live in an Age of Marvels and I own DVDs or avi files of almost all these previously elusive movies. The hunt was fun, but I have found that actually having the films trumps my sense of nostalgia.
I prefer to reamin Anomalous...
The number of TV channels in the U.S. was an amazingly complicated subject. You had the VHF dial, which ran from 2 through 13, and then the UHF dial as mentioned by my anonymous fellow American, which offered a variable number of channels depending on where you lived. In addition, different networks occupied different numbers on the dial in different cities, so in New York City channel 2 was the CBS affiliate station while it was an independent local channel in San Francisco, and it belonged to ABC or NBC in other places.
ReplyDeleteUHF was a bit like shortwave radio, in that the dial always required fiddly fine-tuning to get the desired spot. The picture quality on UHF was poor, and adjacent stations kept bumping one another off the air due to the nature of UHF technology. I vividly recall trying to watch UFO for the first time on a UHF station, and sitting through several minutes of growing confusion as I watched two boys talking with an alien woman about monsters invading from outer space -- this wasn't really what I was expecting from the new Gerry Anderson series -- until a station ID aired. It turned out this wasn't the channel showing UFO at all, but a channel on the neighboring frequency showing the Japanese monster movie Gamera versus Guiron! The channels would just blur into one another as you watched. The Weird Al Yankovic film UHF commemorates such channels for their slapdash, low-budget, shoestring nature.
And speaking of childhood favorites (I feel like the philosophic toad here, with the multiple comments) I've recently become reacquainted with Sealab 2020. NOT to be confused with Sealab 2021, which was a parody created decades later by redubbing the original with crass new dialogue. The original Sealab 2020 was extremely short-lived and obscure, all but forgotten today, but it was one of my very favorites…and one feels, not unrewarding to the SWORD audience.
ReplyDeleteHey, standing right here!
ReplyDeleteNever before heard of Sealab 2020, so thanks for the link, RAB.
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder what else I might have missed.
Poo ... now you've gone and made me do multiple comments again. (heavy sigh)
ReplyDeleteDear Anomolous and RAB, thanks for sharing the US TV scene back them . I thought you'd have had more channels than the measly threesome in the UK [and only one of them had any commercials!]. It's amazing that Cities could have different TV channels, which would have been unthinkable here. We did have regional TV companies like Granada, HTV and London Weekend Television but they had to all share Channel 3!
ReplyDeleteRe. comments - is the new word verification a pain or not? [Toadster, comment as much as you like!]
In the past I often envied American children having so much choice ... or apparent choice. But it's now apparent from RAB's description that maybe it wasn't quite as easy to access as I had been led to believe.
ReplyDeleteWe seem to have missed out in some ways here in the UK. And yet ... despite having only three channels (well, two really - who watched BBC2?) ... despite that, I feel I grew up amidst a wealth of good quality children's programmes. There are too many to name, but think of series like Ace of Wands, Catweazle, Tomorrow People, Freewheelers, Time Slip, Doctor Who (before it went silly) and my absolue favourite Arthur of the Britons. And there were the serials, such as Sky, Raven, Feathered Serpent, and so many many others which I can recall but not name. And don't forget ITC's The Saint, Man in a Suitcase, Champions, Persuaders, Zoo Gang, etc. And the imports shown during school holidays, like White Horses (yay!) and that seemingly never-ending Robinson Crusoe! And The Singing Ringing Tree
There was just so much wonderfully written, marvellously produced television when we were younger!
Oh, and to answer your question, Woodsy: I certainly don't find the word verification a pain. Better than having those damn spammers posting here.
ReplyDeleteAnd (hee hee) I think we can say I speak from experience, eh? Cos ... you know ... I have posted here occasionally. (laughs)
To RAB and The Anomalous One, I would like to ask: apart from obviously amazing things like Star Trek, do American's who were children in the sixties and seventies look back with fondness at the television that was available? Or did so much choice somehow lessen the experience?
ReplyDeleteNowdays I largely ignore television and when I do
watch it, seem to watch only a very small number of programmes (such as New Tricks, Castle, Big Bang Theory. (Note that two of those are American!). And this despite having more choice than ever before. There are so many channels ... and yet I don't bother. Am I alone in this?
Of course we do, toad. But you know how it is: then and now, in television viewing as in everything else, kids are always moaning "I'm SO BORED!!!!! There's nothing to do! There's nothing to watch!" And then as adults, it's all "Things aren't like they were in my day! It was nonstop adventure back then! We made our own fun! And the television shows were wonderful, the finest in entertainment every evening! These young people today, they don't know they're born..."
ReplyDelete