With the election of the mayor of New York City just hours away, I thought it might be instructive to flashback to a very different city and time. This is a short news clip that aired on WPIX in the early-to-mid 70s in which New Yorkers are asked what they
The 1970s were peak TV-watching years for me. I logged about five hours of TV a day–starting with old syndicated shows in the afternoons after I got from school, (Andy Griffith, Ozzie and Harriet etc.) moving onto dinner served on a stack table while watching The Three Stooges and ‘I
The above 1973 commercial for a Pioneer home stereo system plays more like a current day SNL parody of a 1973 Pioneer home stereo system commercial than the real thing. Yet it’s the real thing. Did we really look, act and talk like that? The early 70s are becoming as
Here’s a dandy reel of deeply offensive television commercials from the 1970s. There’s loads of chauvinism, sexual harassment, mockery of Native Americans to go around, and cameos made by convicted rapist Bill Cosby and convicted murderer O.J. Simpson do not help matters. The female stockings commercials would make Benny Hill
Here’s a nice little (fifteen minute) collection of daytime commercials aired on Chicago’s WGN-TV station in 1971. Since they are specifically daytime they lean heavily on kids toys and amusements, many of which are defunct. Ronald MacDonald was still appearing live at McDonald’s locations back then. A woman named Mrs.
Apropos of Monday’s post featuring some fascinatingly mundane (yes I just jammed those two words together and did so on purpose) footage of L.A. in the 70s, here’s more of the same but with a tourists touch. We get some nice nasty Freeway shots, a little Sunset Strip, a tad
At some point in 1973 the local Los Angeles television station KTLA (channel 5) sent a camera crew out to gather footage for a now forgotten news segment on gas prices. The crew returned with the above four plus minutes of dailies. Was it ever turned into an actual segment?
My family moved from New York City to Los Angeles in 1969 when I was five years old. The house my parents bought was at the top of Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive. In terms of public schools this meant that I was able to go to schools either in
What do Ann Miller, Roy Scheider and Bing Crosby all have in common? The answer: commercials in the 70s! While Ann and Bing were very much known and recognizable, Scheider appears to have been just an everyday lucky actor who got a much sought-after gig doing a Folger’s Coffee commercial–I
Nothing transports me back in time to my childhood quite as much as watching old local TV commercials and station I.D.’s. This is clearly the result of spending way too much time staring at the tube as a kid but what the hell–it was back in the days before children