I remember “It’s 11 o’clock, do you know where your children are?” before the late local news. I grew up in suburban Cleveland during the 1960’s and '70’s, and the announcement would have preceded either City Camera on Channel 8 (CBS affiliate) or Virgil Dominic’s anchoring of the Channel 3 (NBC) broadcast.
I heard it at a gig one night in Dublin “It’s 10 o’clock, do you know where your parents are?”
In Detroit, it played at 10:00 on one channel or another through the 70s. I heard it sporadically there and in Cleveland since then. (I’ve never heard 5:55.)
I’ve also heard the “Do you know where your parents are?” variant, although that seems to have occurred on a specfic date that I can’t recall. (New Year’s Eve? St. Paddy’s Day? Some other?)
The New York Fox outlet (WNYW) still does this at 10 pm, or did it until recently.
I’m 18 in the US, I know exactly what you’re talking about, albeit solely through reference in pop culture.
They still do- I heard it a couple nights ago.
WKBW in Buffalo did it in the 60s/70s - “It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”
clears throat
See post #13
We’ve traced the call … it’s coming from inside the house!
It’s five A.M. in Amsterdam
And This is how I know
That’s shockingly early!
Also, on the Wikipedia article in the In Popular Culture section, I don’t get the part about England in the joke it has listed.
“In England, they say, ‘It’s 10 PM, do you know where your family is?’”
Is it just continuing with (what I assume is) the drunkenness theme in the previous one about Canada?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I do this all the time! And the standard reply from my childless friends is “still in my nads”.
I’m wondering if the OP was (inexplicably) conflating the “It’s 10 o’clock - do you know where your children are?” statement with "It’s Friday, it’s five to five -it’s Crackerjack!.
No, I never heard of Crackerjack.
I thought the point was not that it was 5:55 but that whenever someone said “It’s X time” you responded with “do you know where your children are?”
Ditto the Virgil Dominic, but don’t remember City Camera at all. I’ll have to ask my husband when he comes home; he grew up in Texas.
I was hopin for a numerical palindrome thread. My odometer just turned 71617.
</end threadjack>
Haven’t heard it in years, but yeah, it was around the 11 pm local news from the Louisville KY TV stations around the mid-70s to early 80s.
I was always safe at home. It was my younger brother who was running around the neighborhood with his friends!
(Until the night some paranoid old fellow called the cops & they took all of them home. My brother didn’t run around as much after that. Hee hee.)