A Motherlode of Ancient TV

December 24, 2007 8:31 PM

A motherlode of ancient TVhas been found at a web address near you! Journey now to the dim, poorly produced, and poorly preserved, but somehow incredibly sweet primitive ancestors of today's tv travesties. See Captain Video hawk his amazing ring. Or gape as Foodini and Pinhead perform acts impossible for mere flesh-and-blood creatures. And these are not 10-second clips--they're whole shows.
And ads.
And Variety (that means a bunch of unrelated entertaining music, dance, or comedy segments, each a few minutes long)--in English, not Spanish like nowadays (cf Sabado_Gigante)

And lots of Rootie Kazootie, who was doing interactive video in the Eisenhower era! And more (though I haven't made it out of the kid shows yet.) And Kukla Fran and Ollie.

And even a Howdy Doody Christmas!

posted by hexatron (3 comments total)

Well, on deeper viewing, while the kid shows seem to be pretty complete, the other stuff is mostly the usual fragmentary teases for DVD sales. And apparently no Ray Heatherton, the Merry Mailman. Or Uncle Fred on the pre-PBS Newark NJ channel 13 (do you know how many commercial TV stations are based in New Jersey? You can count them on the fingers of your ass).

Well, it wouldn't be Christmas if it weren't somewhat disappointing, would it?
posted by hexatron at 9:38 PM on December 24, 2007

Hey! Fizzies!
We rocked the root beer flavor constantly.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:57 AM on December 25, 2007

(do you know how many commercial TV stations are based in New Jersey? You can count them on the fingers of your ass).

Say what? Just here in the Hudson County area, I can count at least 4:
WWOR, Channel 9 (Secaucus, NJ)
WXTV, Univision, Channel 41 (Paterson, NJ)
WNJU, Telemundo, Channel 47 (Fort Lee, NJ)
WFUT, Channel 68 (Newark, NJ)

Sure, 3 of them are Spanish language stations, but they're still commercial. And I am sure that there are a few that I missed.
posted by fings at 8:46 PM on December 25, 2007