I miss that jazzy little tune with the spinning logo that alway CBS showed before airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas and the like.
For one little boy, it made specials feel extra special . . .
cue heartwarming music
Unedited Warners Brother cartoons on television every Saturday morning.
Uh, make that Warner Brothers …
I also miss . . .
The Saturday Creature Double Feature.
I don’t know if anyone else here hails from the Boston area, but some of my fondest memories are of watching Godzilla double features every saturday afternoon on WLVI Channel 56!
The General Cinemas logo with the guitar and the high-hat cymbals that ran before every movie.
Schoolhouse Rock cartoons.
Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I miss local programming in general. I hate how infomercials are cheaper to play than local programming such as live music shows, bowling shows (these might still be going back east), and variety shows in general.
There’s an interesting way they do this in my city. The local ABC channel, starting at about – I dunno, 5-ish in the morning, after the overnight news; there’s never a straight time – plays old, bad prints of Warner Brother cartoons (and rare RKO shorts, along with Felix The Cat cartoons that look like they were drawn in a day) until 6:00 am, when they abruptly stop to allow the presentation of one of those animal shows. I think they’re left over from when the station had a clown with its own show, and they played these during set changes, while stage-hands were dealing with unruly kids in an unbroadcastable fashion, and so forth. It’s odd, too – the early version of Porky Pig is about to finally chase the gophers out of the garden –
"This week, on Outdoor Zoo Adventure – Those naughty elephants are up to their tricks again!"
…It’s somewhat jarring, as well; your ears are used to hearing the grainy sound of these horribly reproduced (and colorized in many cases) cartoons, and then you are immediately and rudely transported to the Present, where Porky Pig and his plight disappears back into the bottomless pit of your subconscious and the only thing that matters is “Hey, that’s what the rodent-thing is called on that Infone commercial!”. You see the sun rise, and then even that doesn’t matter, since real life has began again and the lawn needs mowing and there’s shopping to be done. Thus, day has broken.
Audrey Hepburn
Yes! The Creature Double Feature on channel 56.
I partucularly liked the pairing of “The Increadible Shrinking Man” with “The Amazing Colossal Man”.
Right before they’d sign off for the night, one local station would play Classical Gas. My dad would start getting ready for bed while that played, so the dog was in, the house locked up tight, and everybody was safe and snug because of that song.
And Pippi Longstocking movies on rainy saturdays. Boy she was cool. Which makes me think of the Hope/Crosby road movies and Abbott and Costello meet X movies. Nobody plays those anymore, not around here at least.
local TV cartoon & horror film hosts (locally produced TV besides news & the very occasional local interest program in general)
INSIGHT (a 1960s-70s Catholic Twilight Zone)
Captain USA on USA Network, TBS’s NIGHT FLIGHT (which recently had another thread), Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ray Bradbury Theatre & classic horror films on SciFi Channel
butter or margarine or whatever used to poach the egg on EggMcMuffins
weird late night radio that wasn’t Art Bell/Coast to Coast (which I do like, btw)
UFO flaps (1973 was the last major one)
Rev Ernest Angeley
when Jim & Tammy were just goofy shysters who still seemed sincere
Jim Henson. The new Kermit just isn’t right somehow…
Mystery Science Theater 3000
The time when closing titles for network television shows were shown full screen.
Computers running MS-DOS.
Captain 20 on WWDC Channel 20 in Washington DC.
I miss when TV shows had proper theme songs and cool opening sequences. You just wouldn’t get a show starting like the A Team any more.
Wild applause, whistles, cheering. The whole franchise just isn’t right anymore. I miss Jim.
I miss the craziness of random TV attempts at shows. Everything now is calculated, pre-sanitized and fully-tested. That’s great in, say, a car–but entertainment should be a bit more…I don’t know…spontaneous.
Saturday Night Dead.
The Philly NBC station had a bad-horror-film show on after SNL back in the '80s, complete with cheesy hostess (“Stella, the Maniac from Manayunk”) and sidekicks. I still can’t hear the Ellington tune they used for theme music without flashing on Stella climbing, arduously, the steep set of stairs at the Manayunk train station.
Solid Gold Saturday Night - old country classics on the radio every Saturday night
:sigh:
Amen, brother!
Barry
Fred Astere. Life is less fun without him.
Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert
Midnight Special
Sunrise Semester
Captain Kangaroo
Hee Haw
King Biscuit Flour Hour
Old Test Patterns