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Johnny Carson - already said, but still.
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Movie trailers that were more like today’s teasers…they didn’t spoil everything.
This is a tradition I only recently got to miss, as he was still on the air in Chicago until a couple of years ago, and I rarely missed a show. He’s still on every week, but now on internet pay-per-listen only, and I’m too cheap to tune in!
I’d settle for a radio station, any radio station, that still takes requests. DJs are now completely at the mercy of the stations’ corporate owners and their computer-generated playlists.
Pandora. Not the planet, the website.
I really miss classic Doctor Who on the local PBS station (WVIZ in Ohio, WMFE in Orlando)
NewWho on BBC America on Saturday is close, but not quite for some reason. No pledge drives maybe?
Whizzo the clown, out of a Kansas City station. I loved his show when I was a little kid.
When the gentleman who portrayed him passed away I was an adult, and out of town. My mother sent me the clipping from the newspaper and I actually cried.
Old trailers were the worst. They spoiled everything!
I don’t know if they still do this, but when I was a kid (70s/80s) every summer we’d buy a big sheet of tickets for the local movie house. There were one or two movies per week, but they were not “current” movies, they were things like Pippi Longstocking, The Marx Brothers, the Disney live-action animal movies (Charlie the Lonesome Cougar), the Witch Mountain movies, etc. And they always had cartoons (Woody Woodpecker especially) or Three Stooges shorts before each movie.
The national anthem at the end of the broadcast day.
…and High Flight
Kung Fu Theatre on USA network; complete with bad dubbing
Very Special Episodes
Cliffhangers that ended the season
Traditional three camera sitcoms performed before a live audience. There are very few left on the air, and the ones that are left aren’t that great. Not that I don’t like the newer style of single camera shows with no laugh track (I don’t care for laugh tracks- it should be the sound of the audience laughing), but it seems odd to me to not see many traditional sitcoms on the air.
The movie theaters here are doing this, starting this month, matinees, for $1 or two.
Saturday morning Looney Tunes, with the cartoons from the (40s?) 50s and 60s that they reran so many times, over the sequence of shows, that you’d memorize them. “Belvedere, come here boy!” “Duck season! Rabbit season!” “Why you long-eared idgit galoot!” “I tell ya, that boy ain’t right in the head.” And the epic songs. “Out in the desert, early in the morning…” and “Oh Brunhilda you’re so lovely! Yes I know it, I can’t help it!”
There is a Looney Tunes show on Cartoon Network now. It is an abomination. A heresy. Blasphemy on all that is right.
The CBS “Bicentennial Minutes” that ran nightly from 1974 to 1976.
The other thread on the Twilight Zone reminded me that I miss Anthology shows. I would like to see a well made show that gives me something new each week.
Our local Tacoma PBS affiliate plays classic Who, including B&W episodes. Don’t know how common they are in the rest of the country.
The second run one screen theater (only one in town) where I saw all the Grizzly Adams movies and some similar family shows with my Brother in between the Hot Weekday Mexican films that they ran for the local Summer Migrant population. It did pretty well for out here in BFE.
And Milwaukee also had bad monster or Sci-fi movies after school. We eventually learned to turn the sound off on those and the Friday Night Monsterfests, and substitute our own (hi-lar-i-ous!) dialog. Long before MST3K.
Turner Classic Movies has been running old movie series/serials Saturday mornings for some time. The recently did (I think) Flash Gordon serials and before that The Bowery Boys. Right now they are in the middle of a Tarzan rotation. The next one on the 9th is “Tarzan and the Slave Girl” (1950) so you’ve already missed some of the best old ones.
I don’t know about Charlie Chan ever getting aired, given the stereotype issues.
As for monsterfests, they had been doing big blocks of crappy classic sci-fi movies on Thursdays. But the schedule for this month doesn’t have it. Maybe it was a June thing. “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” is coming up this Thursday I see.