Retro TV Channels: ”The Good Old Days of Television”

[Tom Holmberg]

On April 30th, on H&I, they are supposed to be starting with Season 1, episode 1 of "Maverick."  Finally James Garner is back.

[Tom Holmberg]

Apparently "Z Living" is back as "Seek", at least on my cable provider.  Not sure it its 100% the same, but its pretty much so (all weekend "Real McCoys", for instance).

[Tom Holmberg]

On 4/28/2024 at 10:45 AM, Tom Holmberg said:

Apparently "Z Living" is back as "Seek", at least on my cable provider.  Not sure it its 100% the same, but its pretty much so (all weekend "Real McCoys", for instance).

Apparently this channel, despite what the cable guide says, is BINGE.  They show a lot of the shows that used to be on Z Living, except not the ones I like, Jack Benny, Route 66, MST3000.  But if you want 15 straight hours of Renegade, this channel's for you!

[chessiegal]

Probably not helpful, but this insomniac knows that antennatv airs one episode of Jack Benny at 5:30 am ET weekdays.

Edited May 2 by chessiegal

[Bazinga]

MeTV is replacing "My Three Sons" with "The Flintstones" starting Memorial Day.  Disappointing.  Would have preferred replacing one of the two showings of "Dragnet" or "Leave It To Beaver".  Also unnecessary, as "The Flintstones" is shown on METV Sundays and on Boomerang nightly.  And "MTS" just got up to the Polly years, which I like.  

And GetTV recently reduced the daily two episodes of "Ironside" to one, replacing it with two "Sanford and Son" episodes.  Also unnecessary as "Sanford and Son" is also aired four times overnight.  Why air the same show over and over? 

I am not doing well.

Edited May 21 by Bazinga

[Raja]

On 5/20/2024 at 8:20 AM, Bazinga said:

Why air the same show over and over? 

They must figure that their audience does not record and time shift programing. For them the ratings game is the same as it was before the VCR

[shapeshifter]

On 5/20/2024 at 11:20 AM, Bazinga said:

Why air the same show over and over? 

2 hours ago, Raja said:

They must figure that their audience does not record and time shift programing. For them the ratings game is the same as it was before the VCR

There are lots of reasons to air shows over and over.

My mother spent her last 5 years in an assisted living facility in Florida, spending most of the time "watching" TV, often seasons of a show running repeatedly.
This university page states there are about 200k people potentially living in similar situations just in Florida, which suggests to me that most may be set up with the similar viewing experiences. I could go off on an angry morbid tangent here, but will not.
But these hypnotic TV repeats do serve the purpose of keeping the residents distracted, reducing calls for assistance at these expensive but understaffed facilities.
And this does not include other elderly and disabled shut-ins who spend most of their days in front of the TV, with home health care workers only there part time.

Sometimes I let the TV run "in the background," which is another situation where it doesn't much matter if there are repeats of a show. In fact, if it runs "in the background" enough times, I eventually "watch" the whole episode. But this is probably not the viewing experience anyone is imagining. Heh, that was how I "watched" Fight Club while prepping to teach students how to research databases in the earlier 2000s. I even worked a bit from the film into a couple of my presentations, but my student audience was too young to have seen the film, and didn't get my "joke," so I cut it.

When I was in the hospital for 10 days, I think I had Law & Order on most of the time. The only part I can recall is when I turned the TV off mid-episode whenever one of the surgeons came in to check on my progress. I was imagining they smiled so nicely because I happily turned off the show in the middle. I am just now realizing that was part of the opium-like dream.
Still, hospital rooms generally have cable TV services that include the channels with non-stop reruns, so that's a lot of eyeballs. 
I also still recall an oft-repeated commercial for an ice cream that was just 3 natural ingredients, which I still prefer. 
So that marketing is working.

And then there's dentists offices. I don't know if they still do this, but I recall having a TV screen adjusted for me to watch while the dentist did a lengthy procedure with my mouth open. I seem to recall some stations I could select had a particular show running, which meant the dental assistant could set it up and let it run. 

Edited May 21 by shapeshifter

[BooksRule]

I just happened to notice that my cable service now has MeTV on the lineup.  Yay! I had been planning to get an antenna so that I could watch it (and maybe another retro channel or two on my TV).  Other than 'Adam 12', 'Kolchak' and maybe 'Dragnet' the lineup isn't too exciting right now, but I know that it changes now and then.  Someone mentioned 'My three sons'.  Hopefully, they'll bring that one back soon.  I haven't seen those in many years.  I wish they would show 'Quincy, M.E.', 'Marcus Welby', and 'Medical Center'.  I love those old medical shows.

[Raja]

I know Quincy M.E was broadcast on one of these stations last year. But I have only seen 80s and up medical shows, except the Rampart parts of Emergency 

[shapeshifter]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

I know Quincy M.E was broadcast on one of these stations last year.

Quincy M.E. is broadcast on GET TV here in Rochester NY.
I've seen all the episodes since moving here in 2021, and have no desire to rewatch them, even in the background. 
I'm not a fan of medical dramas, Jack Klugman is too shouty, and the plots are too preachy.
But to each their own.🤷🏻‍♀️

[Tom Holmberg]

11 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I'm not a fan of medical dramas, Jack Klugman is too shouty, and the plots are too preachy.

It started out good, but later too many plots were about various social problems of the day.  The worst was the one about horrible, deadly problems of punk rock.

[chessiegal]

I'm a chemist. My problem with Quincy is the science is bullshit. You can't run a sample through a gas chromatograph and get the answer to everything. 

Plus, medical examiners don't do lab work.

Edited Friday at 01:18 PM by chessiegal

[BooksRule]

23 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

It started out good, but later too many plots were about various social problems of the day.  The worst was the one about horrible, deadly problems of punk rock.

I'm looking forward to watching some of the episodes of 'Adam 12' and 'Dragnet' just to snark at some of those types of plotlines.  I seem to remember those shows had a lot of episodes that dealt with that demon weed and pesky hippies.

[Yeah No]

33 minutes ago, BooksRule said:

I'm looking forward to watching some of the episodes of 'Adam 12' and 'Dragnet' just to snark at some of those types of plotlines.  I seem to remember those shows had a lot of episodes that dealt with that demon weed and pesky hippies.

I have MeTV and FeTV and I get Adam 12 on both of them.  I'm really enjoying watching them again.  It's making me see things I never saw the first time and now look at differently after so many decades.  It's also reminding me of a lot of things I forgot about about how life was in those days.  My husband and I have a running game of who can name the car make and model first, LOL.  Despite the fact that he worked in the auto biz. and owned a few cars from this era I hold the prize.  I was crazy about cars as a kid!  I love it that there are websites with trivia on the show including photos and videos of what some of the street scenes look like today.

I remember having crushes on both of them as a teenager, but wow now looking at Kent McCord, he was incredibly handsome when he was young!  I never realized what a cynical guy Malloy was and what a "boy scout" Reed was.  Seeing the show again has given me a  new perspective.  I don't like that so many of women characters are portrayed as crazy but then the show tries to be modern and forward thinking by depicting policewomen that know their stuff and the like.

Quincy, ugh, we never watched that back then or now.  As soon as it comes on we change the channel, LOL.  No offense to Jack Klugman, we loved him as Oscar Madison.

[Raja]

3 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

I remember having crushes on both of them as a teenager, but wow now looking at Kent McCord, he was incredibly handsome when he was young!  I never realized what a cynical guy Malloy was and what a "boy scout" Reed was.  Seeing the show again has given me a  new perspective.  I don't like that so many of women characters are portrayed as crazy but then the show tries to be modern and forward thinking by depicting policewomen that know their stuff and the like

From its late 60s through mid 70s time frame some real social change was going on. Adam-12 had Officer Reed go from bright eyed rookie, who I think was spared Vietnam service to the jaded one. Vietnam service wouldn't really come up for characters until the 80s. While Officer Malloy had gone from the one who lost a partner killed to being rejuvenated by the bright eyed kid. Meanwhile female officers went from specialized duties with their service revolvers in their purse in their first, and last Dragnet seasons, to unrestricted patrol duties. So that by the end of the decade on TV but on a different city's department you could have the first detectives and not women as honey trap decoys on Barney Miller the a Cagney and Lacey got made the first homicide detective team

24 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

My husband and I have a running game of who can name the car make and model first, LOL.  Despite the fact that he worked in the auto biz. and owned a few cars from this era I hold the prize.  I was crazy about cars as a kid!  I love it that there are websites with trivia on the show including photos and videos of what some of the street scenes look like today

In the early days of first run syndication  where it hit the syndicator as 1 Adam-12 to distinguish it from the network running that year's new episodes if there wasn't a TV Guide description of the episode the year's LAPD cruiser would let me know about where they were in the story. Along with moving from the studio back lots to doing some filming on the streets of Los Angeles.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Yeah No said:

I love it that there are websites with trivia on the show including photos and videos of what some of the street scenes look like today.

I just remembered that Sergeant Friday on Dragnet when he narrated often gave street names that ran parallel to each other as cross streets to place the locations.

[Yeah No]

15 minutes ago, Raja said:

In the early days of first run syndication  where it hit the syndicator as 1 Adam-12 to distinguish it from the network running that year's new episodes if there wasn't a TV Guide description of the episode the year's LAPD cruiser would let me know about where they were in the story. Along with moving from the studio back lots to doing some filming on the streets of Los Angeles.

Another game we have is guessing the year of the episode.  Again, I'm uncanny, but I am about everything from that era.  It's one of my superpowers, LOL.  I can do it based on women's clothing alone.  I once dated an episode based on the top a woman was wearing because I had one just like it that year!  It was a black Danskin leotard with white collar and cuffs.  I wore it in 1973.

[DXD526]

A favorite exchange between Malloy and a hippie he was arresting:

Hippie: "It's just a little grass, man!"
Malloy: "Too many know-it-alls like you get tired of pot and decide to try the hard stuff: Heroin, the mainline to nowhere! We're doing you a favor!"

Delivered in a gravely serious, Joe Friday-esque manner, of course!

[Raja]

For all of Jack Webb's anti stance I can't recall Mike Brady or The Mod Squad even being neutral on the weed issue. And with deep cover cops they would have been mandatory drug kingpin stories.

By the end of the 70s we had pimps as lead good guy characters on Starsky and Hutch, and Baretta. The main cast students/players on The White Shadow were dealing with teen sex, pregnancy STDs, alcoholism and being dosed with PCP and acid.