I’ve had this conversation a few times with gen xers and older, but what do you miss about tv as it use to be?
For me, cartoons seemed much sweeter in one block on Saturdy mornings. I also miss the local variations on the guy who hosted bad sci-fi films on Friday night, or the person who emceed kids’ shows.
Oh, I still miss the local hosted Creature Features they used to show on Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights. We had The Baron, a klutzy vampire, hosting the awful old black and white sci-fi and horror movies, and that man (a local newscaster) was the biggest celebrity in the city for years. (He also made a hit record and hosted a kiddie show featuring Flash Gordon serials, and a weekly ‘dance party’ at the TV station.) There was also a James Bond spoof guy at the height of the Bond mania who hosted a weekly spy movie. Not to mention the syndicated shows, like Commander USA and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and Up All Night with Gilbert Gottfried. These people were quite often the best part of watching the movies.
Early morning cartoons? Still remember them, Bugs Bunny and Warner Bros. cartoons. And the original Astro-Boy, early anime - fascinated me.
TV shows used to have themes, actual little songs about the show. Now you’re lucky if you get five seconds of bass line played under the show’s title. I suppose it doesn’t make much difference to the show quality but I still miss it.
I miss there being more locally produced shows than just the news.
High-number UHF channels that ran exclusively syndicated shows from the previous decade and just random content, like really terrible kung-fu movies. There was an element of chance and surprise to just turn the dial and see what came up (yes, TVs used to have dials, kids).
If you have High-def, you can get the equivalent with Me-TV and other similar channels today.
Saturday morning kids shows: Wonderama, Sandy Becker, Chuck McCann, Pinky Lee, Colonel Clown*, Soupy Sales, etc.
*He used to be Captain Clown, but he was promoted.
Commercial breaks seemed shorter and there were fewer of them. They were also more entertaining than the infomercial style stuff that goes on endlessly now.
Well, when there were only the three major networks plus PBS, you could talk about what you’d watched with someone at school the next day, and be reasonably certain they might have watched it. This was especially true if a big miniseries like Roots was airing. TV nowadays is much more fragmented. And we looked forward to the annual broadcasts of movies like The Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz because we couldn’t see them otherwise.
But in general I prefer TV of today.
I miss finding interesting things to watch on a lazy day. This was mentioned above but the Kung-Fu flicks, monster movies, locally produced shows, and cartoons were all so much more fun to watch then an infomercial. That and car ads that weren’t just professional drivers on closed courses driving fast.
How’s this for old-fartness: I miss changing the channel, and having the channel instantly change, instead of waiting for a second or so for the picture, and THEN the sound, to catch up.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
TV is about 1,000x better now than it was when I was kid.
Another nice thing; TV Guide was genuinely useful when there were fewer channels. You could actually glance at the page to see what was on that night.
Saturday Night Live hosts doing the monologue as a monologue.
Must be an app or website for that, where you’d put in your state, county, cable provider, and package, and it would tell you what was on at any given day and time.
I watch so little TV, I wouldn’t know. (That’s not being snobby - clearly there’s some really good TV being made these days. I just don’t have the time to watch very much.)
The fact there weren’t network “bugs” in the corner during the entire program, nor endless pop-up ads or characters waving at you from the corner plugging other shows and blocking out what you are watching. That’s my biggest hatred of modern TV.
They didn’t just seem shorter, they were. The average amount of “content” during the 70s was 49 minutes per hour. I think it is like 41 now for first runs, and syndicated shows can be about 35. Shows used to have a set structure. Opening teaser and a two-commercial break, then act 1, then a 4-commercial (2 minute) break, then the half hour had 8 commercials, then back to 4 at the 3/4 mark, then commercials between shows. It was like clockwork.
And as Dewey Finn noted, TV Guide was a great and useful magazine. I miss it. But the classic TV Guide format can’t work with the number of channels we have now - you need the grid.
28 episode seasons. Hell, 26 episode seasons!
(I’m old enough to remember Bonanza running 32 or 34 episodes a season.)
Occasionally, I wish I didn’t have so much choice.
When you have 10 channels total, you either pick the best thing going after searching for 1 minute or you go do something else. I’ve got Godzilla or 9 shows I have zero interest in, so it’s Godzilla.
Today I go to Netflix and I have 4 Godzilla movies and 500 other movies to choose from, so I wind up spending 15 minutes searching for that one perfect movie that’s exactly what I want right now, then I don’t find it and I’m stuck trying to decide between 20 movies that are not exactly what I want but are entertaining enough to watch. Or maybe Amazon has a few different movies than Netflix, so I’ll search there as well, and maybe Hulu. Talk about first world problems.
I don’t recall shows going on hiatus between mid November and mid January.
Also, being able to turn on the TV at 2am and not be inundated with infomercials. THAT was when the poorly dubbed Kung Fu movies came on!
The only thing I miss is “Event” tv. Like having to wait an entire year for a chance to see The Wizard of Oz or the christmas specials. Being able to see them whenever I want robbed them of the magic. I still like them but they’re not as special.
At least you HAD programming. Our TV went off the air. We got the National Anthem and then static until 5-5:30 am.
Come to think of it, I prefer that to infomercials!