These! And the Carol Burnett show. There was usually a musical number by the leading lady, surrounded by Boy Dancers flitting around (just like Lady Gaga’s and Madonna’s shows today!) I remember watching Carol Burnett to see that homely older Boy Dancer who just stood out like a lighthouse in the midst of the dancers.
And the Christmas specials. The last old fashioned Christmas special I can recall was Kathy Lee Gifford, not that long ago. Replaced by endless inane “Christmas movies” on the Hallmark channel. They should show Andy Williams or even Dolly Parton Christmas specials every year as a tradition.
I miss the exclusivity and simplicity of it. Before the new technologies, you had one chance to see something. If you missed it, you missed it, and just hoped that you might be able to see it again months from now. So, scheduling what shows you were going to watch when was a big deal. It made the whole television viewing experience special.
Also a big deal was the annual specials, like the various Charlie Brown specials. I remember me and my siblings running to the television at least five minutes in advance of the special airing, for fear of missing something, and my heart jumping when I saw that “CBS Special” text rotate around with the sound of the typewriter in the background.
I also liked the blocks of cartoons on Saturday mornings, and the various cartoons on the weekday afternoons like GI Joe and Transformers. They were exciting, and when they did a serial series of episodes, it was like watching a movie.
Oh, and then there was the Summer of Robotech. SIGH
I remember hearing a commentator talking about MST3K. Before DVRs and OnDemand, MST3K would have a 30 hour marathon (“What’s 30 hours? A metric day?” - Tom Servo) around Thanksgiving each year that him and his roommate would plan their lives around, and kept drinking coffee to stay up and see the whole 30 hours. So, it was an experience.
I also remember feeling special when I was a kid to be able to sit with my parents and spend some time watching the primetime adult shows with them. That’s how I learned adult humor and drama and pathos. So, it was a bonding and growing experience for me.
Also, National Geographic just seemed way better and more interesting back then.
I think a lot of what we miss is just the nostalgia factor kicking in. We miss Saturday morning cartoons, because we miss those mornings when we were a kid. Personally, I have mixed feelings about them, because my parents let me watch them, and my aunt and uncle didn’t, because they were shomer Shabbes, but on the whole, I liked being with my aunt and uncle, so Saturday morning cartoons were just small compensation for not getting to spend the weekend with my aunt and uncle.
People who were born in the 80s probably have nostalgic feeling about VCRs, and will give you reasons that they are “special,” even though DVRs are admittedly better, and they probably think that in some ways, the beginning of the cable explosion, when a bad show on a cable channel could survive for years (think, Small Wonder) had its own specialness to offer that can never be recaptured.
Who knows what TV will evolve into in 40 years, but my son will probably talk about the early days of digital as something special-- “Remember when we could choose only from what On Demand offered? and the TV pixelated if you bumped the hemi cords-- and those cables, there were so many of them, and syncing your laptop required either a router or a Roku device? and you only had so much bandwidth, so if your brother was playing WoW, and your parents were streaming Netflix, the picture was terrible? Yeah, I miss those days.”
Wow! That wasn’t even that long ago. My thoughts were drifting back more to the days when most network television was in black and white.
The TV movies of the week weren’t a bad replacement for anthologies, and the best of them were like high grade B pictures of old, but they began to decline pretty fast after the mid-70s. I guess all good things have to come to an end…
This. Before news was so damn ubiquitous, major stories stood out. Now, we’re so inundated with news that we probably spend too much thought on small stuff and too little on big stuff.
I was just a kid at the time, but the space shuttle disaster was on EVERYBODY’S mind. I wonder what the reaction would be now.
Slight nitpick, but then again, aren’t they all? “Small Wonder” was on first-run syndication and carried on local broadcast stations. Think “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Yes, “Small Wonder” was a bad show, but it wasn’t run on an exclusive cable network, even though you could watch it on the cable feed carrying your local stations.
I miss turning on the television and seeing the occasional ugly person, like Jack Klugman or Ernest Borgnine or Jack Warden. Now everyone’s gorgeous, even the reporters.
Don’t forget Marty Allen, Marty Feldman, and Morey Amsterdam. Might as well throw in the entire male casts of some shows, like Sgt. Bilko. Genuinely ugly women were always fewer and farther between. Even the ones who come to mind, like Agnes Moorehead or Irene Ryan or Margaret Hamilton, when you see them out of character (and in their youths) were absolutely no worse than plain and had nicely shaped bodies. Moorehead, in particular, had a knack for making herself old and homely for the screen.
It featured a lot of old time Hollywood with modern day TV stars. It was the last performance by Groucho Marx. By all accounts the show was a mess and may not be watchable now, but if it was up on Youtube or somewhere I’d watch it, mostly for nostalgia.
The tide is turning a bit on that score, though it’s still a drop in the bucket. I’m thinking of both leads in Mike & Molly, and last season that horrible Rebel Wilson show. Plus Mindy Kaling isn’t really a classic beauty. Still, even if someone thinks everyone I just named is unspeakably hideous, it’s only a drop in the bucket.
My thoughts were drifting back more to the days when most network television was in black and white.