If you were sitting around your house in Los Angeles on the night of April 1st 1974 and had the TV tuned (as it once was said) to KTLA Channel 5, you would have seen the above two minutes of ads. It’s the night before the 46th Academy Awards which
Perhaps it’s because I’m emptying out my late parents home of fifty years (mine too, I guess) but I’ve become acutely aware of how much of my childhood was spent not playing outdoors in the California sunshine but instead huddling indoors staring at the Zenith Television (rabbit ears, black and white etc.).
Here’s a nice little (seven minutes and change) reel of 1974 national commercials. A big part of the pleasure of watching this compendium (at least for me) is observing the gentle yet omnipresent video roll–apparently this was transferred from somebody’s VHS (or Beta?) tape. We see Steve Allen shilling for