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August 3, 2019 11:25 pm  #1


Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

A few weeks ago, we looked at some of the early programming of WBEN, WGR and WKBW-TV from Buffalo. For many, it was a nostalgia trip back to a much simpler time when Saturday mornings were for kids and you got up way before your parents to watch whatever was on.
 
So this week, we’re taking a look back at the era when weekend mornings were reserved for cartoons, “uncle” hosted shows and even the occasional educational program. This one won’t appeal to everyone – it’s simply a reproduction of the pages of TV Guide magazine, to show what was on back then every year from 1953-1975. (Unfortunately, I don’t have an edition from 1958, so that’s the only year that’s missing. But as you'll see, a SOWNY poster has come to the rescue.)
 
So turn on the set, keep the volume low so you don’t wake your parents and take a look at what you were watching early Saturday mornings when TV – and you – were both young.
 
1953
 
Worth noting: TV Guide wasn’t in every city yet – and many didn’t even have a television station in those days. So the 1953 edition is from Pittsburgh, one of the early locations the magazine was published.
 

 1954
 
Worth noting: That Channel 5 showing the Argo game wasn’t CBC and wasn’t even in Canada. It was the old dial position of WROC (now on channel 8) from Rochester.
 

 
1955
 
Worth noting: Early TV was notorious for fitting shows into limited time slots. That’s why you’ll see the channel 3 movie listed at 12:30 PM is only on for an hour – and that includes commercials! Plus the New York Knicks are playing the Pistons – who at this point are from Fort Wayne, Indiana!
 

 
1956
 
Worth noting: There’s a certain irony in the fact that the page opposite all those kiddie listings is an ad for beer.
 

 
1957
 
Worth noting: Channel 17 is NBC-owned WBUF, a commercial station that proved to be a disaster for the peacock network. It eventually went broke and a few years later, morphed into WNED, the educational outlet that’s still on the air today. And you gotta love the “Mabel, Black Label” ad.
 

 
1958
 
As noted, the 1958 TV Guide is missing, but SOWNY contributor Mace was nice enough to fill in this blank. You can see what was on that year with a brief recap here.
 
1959
 
Worth noting: While Saturday morning would become the home for cartoons of all kinds, check out how many non-animated programs were around and being shown for kids. It was a TV trend that wouldn’t last long. Also notice that Channel 17 is gone.
 

 
1960
 
Worth noting: That great CHCH-TV ad in the bottom right. Not sure what game was kicking off and they don’t mention it, but it was hosted by veteran Bob McLean – who would do both a morning and afternoon show for Channel 11. The early one was called “AM” while the afternoon edition was known as – not surprisingly – “PM.” He would later work for the CBC.
 

 
1961
 
Worth noting: Channel 17 is back as an educational station, although it doesn’t sign on with actual programming until later in the day. Also check out Channel 7’s noon show “Buffalo Bandstand” hosted by WKBW Radio great Tom Shannon.
 

 
1962
 
Worth noting: CHCH is signing on earlier, but their Saturday morning fare is almost all educational. And I’m willing to bet no kids were going anywhere near it.
 

 
1963
 
Worth noting: Some familiar personalities turn up on CHCH, including Bil Lawrence, Jane Grey and others. The Professor is on CFTO and WROC has moved to Channel 8. Also, CHEX from Peterborough is listed for the first time. WGR’s infamous Channel 6 repeater is on the air from Jamestown. And WBEN has a strange post-noon CBS newscast – with soon-to-be-60 Minutes famous Mike Wallace as the anchor. Not to mention Jerry Orbach making a guest appearance on Shari Lewis' show. Now there's an episode I'd love to see!
 

 
1964
 
Worth noting: Under the 12:30 PM listing for WKBW, it says “Ch. 7 does not colorcast.” I’m not sure that’s true – it was Canada that didn’t get colour TV until 1966. And note “The Sonins” on CHCH TV – featuring longtime CFRB personality Ray Sonin.
 

 
1965
 
Worth noting: The Beatles have their own cartoon show, although none of the Fab Four are actually involved in it. And it was a time when the World Series was shown in the afternoon and not in prime time.
 

 
1966
 
Worth noting: more and more shows are being listed in colour, as the trend to what’s now considered the norm rises. WWNY Watertown, N.Y., which took the best shows from all three networks, is listed for the first time since 1957. And so is CFPL from London.
 

 
1967
 
Worth noting: Canadian stations are now fully in colour. Anyone know who “Brian Olney” is? He’s listed as hosting CHCH’s “Dance Party” at noon.
 

 
1968
 
Worth noting: Just for a change, this TV Guide is the Western New York State edition, the one you could buy in Buffalo and Rochester. Most of the same channels are listed, including those from Canada, with a few extras you normally wouldn’t see here. Mike Marshall’s dad Norm is calling the Lacrosse game at 12:30 on CHCH, where the local Toronto team is playing. (Called the Leafs because wasn’t every T.O. team back then?) And WNYP from Jamestown N.Y. is mistakenly listed as a CTV affiliate!
 
Also, check out the ad for TV Guide carriers. Apparently it was only open to boys and not girls for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom. And why was Batfink, an old pun-filled cartoon that ran on CFTO, showing a Charlie Chaplin movie?
 

 
1969
 
Worth noting: After years of the same format, a new streamlined Guide is introduced, with a different font and more compact listings. But the shows aren’t any better!
 

 
1970
 
Worth noting: The show preceding American Bandstand on ABC is one I never heard of. It’s called “Get It Together,” and its main guest is Lulu, singing her then-current hit “Oh Me Oh My.” It apparently didn’t last long, only being on from January to September of that same year. It was hosted by KHJ D.J. Sam Riddle and, of all people, Mama Cass.
 
Here’s the only known record of the show, with a theme song by the Grass Roots and recorded off the American Forces Radio and Television Service :
 


 
1971
 
Worth noting: The introduction of the first UHF station in Canada, CICA Channel 19, now known as TVO. Also note the presence of another newcomer on the upper band – WUTV Channel 29 makes an appearance.
 

1972
 
Worth noting: It’s the beginning of the end for Saturday morning cartoons. Notice the increasing number of old sitcoms and shows being aired to fill time, taking the place of the more expensive animated series. Among them: Gomer Pyle, Star Trek, I Dream of Jeannie and the Beverly Hillbillies. And don’t miss the ABA playoff game between the Nets and the Pacers, back when basketball was still in two leagues and the smaller one used that multi-coloured ball.
 

 
“The ABA Ball”
 
1973

Worth noting: More new channels appear, including City TV and CBLFT, the French CBC service. This Saturday morning is from that year’s Fall Preview issue, so there are a lot of new shows debuting.
 

 
1974
 
Worth noting: Global makes its first appearance on several dial positions – including Channel 22 from Uxbridge. The early signal into Toronto often ghosted, unless you had a rotor on your TV to pull it in clearly because most masts were facing Buffalo. And in the era of Richard Nixon (long before Donald Trump) perhaps Channel 4 would like to replay that CBS noon time show asking the musical question, "What's Impeachment All About?" 
 

 
1975
 
Worth noting: The final entry, because I had to stop somewhere.
 

 
Listing Badly
 
TV Guide began being offered in Canada in the 1950s with the Toronto-Lake Ontario edition. In 1977, it was bought by Telemedia, which also owned CJCL (the former CKFH) and became a totally different entity from the U.S. version. Or so it seemed. In 1994, I subscribed to both countries’ editions and I caught the Canadian one doing something very bizarre – apparently borrowing letters from its American cousin, but disguising their origin.  
 
The U.S. one published a letter about David Letterman on Nov. 12. It was signed by a Dawn Kaestner of Washington State. Two weeks later, the Canadian edition came out with the exact same letter – minus the “naked” reference. It was signed by a “D.K.” who supposedly lived in Vancouver. Very cheesy and very deceptive.
 

 
Some (like me) would argue that Telemedia destroyed the publication, by offering recipes, food columns and horoscopes, which had nothing to do with TV, and deleting some of the more solid U.S. content for questionable Canadian entries.
 
Apparently, many readers agreed. On November 25, 2006, TV Guide Canada, now controlled by Transcontinental, issued its final printed edition, with plans to give it away for free on the Internet. It didn’t last long, and one of the once-best selling magazines in the country disappeared for good. Here’s a look at that last edition.
 



Instant Replay Bonus: The First Look At Some Legendary TV Shows

Next week: CP24’s Early Years.

 

August 4, 2019 7:54 pm  #2


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Interesting that the earlier station listings included the address and the phone number!

How were there two channel 10's in Rochester at the same time (1960 listing)? Here's the explanation:

[url]​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHEC-TV[/url]


"Life without echo is really no life at all." - Dan Ingram
 

August 4, 2019 8:33 pm  #3


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

I never understood that shared time insanity. Back then, there were so few stations, you might think they could each get assigned one, even though there were only so many designated to each market. I'm not sure if the audience cared or understood anything about it in any event. And as the ad below shows, I don't know if the owners understood it all, either.

Was "Sea Hunt" on WHEC or WVET? Who knows?

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 9:46 am  #4


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

1968. I remember Jamestown WNYP ch. 26 being affiliated with CTV. No mistake. It showed Definition and other CTV Canadian productions, but couldn’t carry US programs for which CTV had the Canadian rights.

Last edited by Hamiltonboy (August 5, 2019 12:42 pm)

 

August 5, 2019 9:50 am  #5


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Wow, I was sure that was a misprint. How did a U.S. station ever get affiliated with a Canadian network? That just sounds bizarre to me and I'm surprised the government let it happen. And I thought shared time stations were weird.  

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 10:37 am  #6


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

At one time there were 150 individual local editions of TV Guide printed weekly. That ended in 2005 when an east/west grid National edition was introduced. The U.S. edition still exists. I saw a copy in a variety store several years ago. It covers a two week period now and looks very much like your on screen guide. I think the price was $4.99.                                                                                                                                                                               RA: you seem to have a rather large collection of TV Guides. Do you have any of the Fall Preview issues? I think it would be fascinating to read the reviews of the premieres of all those legendary 50's and 60's shows. Whether they thought would be successful or be pulled after their initial 39 week run.I have often wondered what their record of predicting hits and misses was over the years.

 

August 5, 2019 11:19 am  #7


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

RadioActive wrote:

I never understood that shared time insanity. Back then, there were so few stations, you might think they could each get assigned one, even though there were only so many designated to each market. I'm not sure if the audience cared or understood anything about it in any event. And as the ad below shows, I don't know if the owners understood it all, either.

Was "Sea Hunt" on WHEC or WVET? Who knows?

It's... complicated.

The short version is that there were five applicants for channel 10 when it became available - basically, every radio station in town that wasn't WHAM. The comparative hearing process the FCC used back then could easily have held up a grant of a license for years, unless one applicant could get an edge on the others. Applying for share time jumped WHEC and WVET ahead of the other three applicants for a quick license grant. Two of the other three ended up with UHF construction permits they never built, and the fifth, Gordon Brown's WSAY, spent decades filing lawsuits to try to hold everyone else up.

The ambiguous "channel 10, WHEC and WVET" branding was deliberate. While WHEC and WVET each had its own studio and sales and programming staff, the stations worked closely together to put out a consistent face to the public. It went fairly well right up until 1961, when WVET's owners sold their half of channel 10 to WHEC and then bought WROC-TV.

There's a much longer and more detailed explanation here: http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/rochester.html
 

 

August 5, 2019 11:54 am  #8


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

mace wrote:

RA: you seem to have a rather large collection of TV Guides. Do you have any of the Fall Preview issues? I think it would be fascinating to read the reviews of the premieres of all those legendary 50's and 60's shows. Whether they thought would be successful or be pulled after their initial 39 week run.I have often wondered what their record of predicting hits and misses was over the years.

I have every Fall Preview issue from 1966 through till about 2005, when they stopped either publishing a print edition here or refused to deliver the U.S. version to Canada. For many years, I subscribed to both countries Guides, because both were substantially different. 

Not sure if you saw it, but there's a new online Instant Replay that sort of does what you're asking about in a rather limited way. You can find it here.

I obviously couldn't include everything. Scanning and writing all that would take forever. But I took a representative sample of a few of the more substantial hits in TV history (M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, etc.) and highlighted those. I might be able to do more in the future, but I'm also in the process of doing one on not-so-famous flops - shows no one ever remotely remembers that were launched with great fanfare in their debut season, only to disappear forever. I don't think most of them even made YouTube, they were so forgettable. And some featured actors who would one day become household names. Just not on the basis of their first shows.  

I'm working on that now and should have it ready soon. In the meantime, check out the linked article and see if that's the kind of thing you're looking for. 
Instant Replay Bonus: The First Look At Some Legendary TV Shows 

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 12:04 pm  #9


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

fybush wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

I never understood that shared time insanity. Back then, there were so few stations, you might think they could each get assigned one, even though there were only so many designated to each market. I'm not sure if the audience cared or understood anything about it in any event. And as the ad below shows, I don't know if the owners understood it all, either.

Was "Sea Hunt" on WHEC or WVET? Who knows?

It's... complicated.

The short version is that there were five applicants for channel 10 when it became available - basically, every radio station in town that wasn't WHAM. The comparative hearing process the FCC used back then could easily have held up a grant of a license for years, unless one applicant could get an edge on the others. Applying for share time jumped WHEC and WVET ahead of the other three applicants for a quick license grant. Two of the other three ended up with UHF construction permits they never built, and the fifth, Gordon Brown's WSAY, spent decades filing lawsuits to try to hold everyone else up.

The ambiguous "channel 10, WHEC and WVET" branding was deliberate. While WHEC and WVET each had its own studio and sales and programming staff, the stations worked closely together to put out a consistent face to the public. It went fairly well right up until 1961, when WVET's owners sold their half of channel 10 to WHEC and then bought WROC-TV.

There's a much longer and more detailed explanation here: http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/rochester.html
 

Thanks as usual Scott. I can always count on you to fill in the blanks on these things. I didn't grow up in Rochester, so I never experienced a "shared time" station, but it always seems to me it would have been awkward. 

We didn't have those here, but we did have a very weird and horrible situation, when the CRTC moved to force CTV to divest City TV, after they bought CHUM. The two stations (CP24 and City) worked not only in the same building but in the same newsroom for 6 months or more afterwards, while City tried to find a new H.Q. (They eventually bought a building near Yonge-Dundas Square.)

Imagine two competitors stuck in the exact same newsroom, trying to keep information and exclusives from each other, holding secret meetings they didn't want the "other guys" to hear, keeping editing bays separate and having people who were colleagues the day before now working for their competitor. Some stayed friends. Others stopped talking to each other.

A friend who was there told me it was like being in the Twilight Zone. And they couldn't get out of there fast enough. I guess that was sort of a shared time station. But it's not one you'd ever want to be in the middle of.

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 12:46 pm  #10


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Saturday morning cartoons were awesome in the late '60s and early '70s.   

 

August 5, 2019 1:34 pm  #11


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

RadioActive wrote:

Wow, I was sure that was a misprint. How did a U.S. station ever get affiliated with a Canadian network? That just sounds bizarre to me and I'm surprised the government let it happen. And I thought shared time stations were weird.  

I recall that Jack Miller covered this phenomenon in his Spec Radio/TV column. Is his material archived somewhere?
 

 

August 5, 2019 2:11 pm  #12


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Did City ever have a lineup of children's shows? I don't remember any, which meant it would've been the largest broadcaster in Toronto to skip out on that. While they were in various states of decay, both Global and CTV kept their stuff going until the early 2000s.

 

August 5, 2019 2:23 pm  #13


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Just tried the Newsstand database on the Toronto Public Library website, because I've been able to access old newspaper material that way. Unfortunately, however, they don't have any of his columns, since the material they have from the Spectator only goes back to 2008.

 

August 5, 2019 4:01 pm  #14


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Tim Brown 2016 wrote:

RA, a belated "thank you" for these weekly features. They're terrific!

Thanks Tim! One day I realized I had all this stuff saved up and no one ever saw it. So I decided to fix that here. It's not to everyone's taste but it's fun to write, gives me a reason to look at this old stuff and I've found some things I never really realized before. 

Even with all the info on the Internet, I still miss my weekly TV Guide delivery. It was the one thing that came in the mail that wasn't a bill or junk and was something I always looked forward to every Wednesday. I've seen the current U.S. one, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original.

I've been collecting various issues and music charts since I was a kid. Whenever we'd go away on a trip, I'd buy their local TV Guide or get someone to bring one back for me, and get a local radio station record survey. Which is why I have issues ranging from Hawaii and L.A. to N.Y.C. and Georgia. A weird thing to collect, I'll admit, but then I was a weird kid. (And as you can see, nothing has changed since I got older!) 

Somehow, all these collectibles survived without dear old mom throwing them out along the way. (It was my brother who took all the comic books and the hockey cards.) So in a way, I guess you can thank her for all this stuff surviving all this time.  

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 4:11 pm  #15


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Tim Brown 2016 wrote:

Retaw wrote:

Did City ever have a lineup of children's shows? I don't remember any, which meant it would've been the largest broadcaster in Toronto to skip out on that. While they were in various states of decay, both Global and CTV kept their stuff going until the early 2000s.

I'm pretty sure citytv always aired ethnic programming (primarily produced by CHIN TV) on weekend mornings. Can anyone confirm or correct this?

Outside of the horrible "Rocket Robin Hood," which sometimes aired in the afternoon, I don't ever remember City having any kind of kids programming. And indeed, the listings above indicate it was mostly ethnic programming, which helped pay the bills. 

In the early years, Moses Znaimer did EVERYTHING on the cheap. If he could lease time to ethnic shows that helped raise money, you can bet he'd do it. Syndicated cartoons cost money. He wouldn't spend it. So instead you also got things like The Shulman File, Friday Night Boxing and awful game shows like "Greed" starring Joey Bishop's otherwise unknown cousin Rummy Bishop. (I think Dan Aykroyd was the announcer on that show, so there's that.)

The early days of City, if I recall, were more like a cable station than a professional one. And I don't know it's true, but my old friend, the late great Clint Nickerson, who worked there twice during his career, once claimed that the reason for the name SCTV was that a lot of that show was based on what happened at City. It was, he told me, literally a "Second City." Hence the name. 

I have no idea if that's true but he insisted to his dying day that at least part of that classic show had some of its roots in that early cheap City TV programming.

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 4:18 pm  #16


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

There was also a rumour once that City TV was in the running to take the wonderful All Night Show (with Chas Lowther as Chuck The Security Guard and Erroll Bruce as his trusty cameraman Ryerson.) I'm never sure why it didn't end up there, but it was a great idea and a terrific show in an era when stations still signed off, and I still miss it to this day.



  

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 6:21 pm  #17


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Hamiltonboy wrote:

1968. I remember Jamestown WNYP ch. 26 being affiliated with CTV. No mistake. It showed Definition and other CTV Canadian productions, but couldn’t carry US programs for which CTV had the Canadian rights.

I managed to find this on Wikipedia about Channel 26's flirtation with CTV.

According to the article, the place was a comedy of errors with endless on-air mistakes and non-stop screw-ups in programming. Ironically, it was started by the same owner that now runs Ion TV on Channel 51 - a network that buys a lot of its programming from - you guessed it - Bell Media, owner of CTV. 

You really do learn something new every day.

WNYP's Ill Fated CTV Affiliation

     Thread Starter
 

August 5, 2019 11:51 pm  #18


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

RadioActive wrote:

The early days of City, if I recall, were more like a cable station than a professional one. And I don't know it's true, but my old friend, the late great Clint Nickerson, who worked there twice during his career, once claimed that the reason for the name SCTV was that a lot of that show was based on what happened at City. It was, he told me, literally a "Second City." Hence the name. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_City#History
 

 

August 6, 2019 12:03 pm  #19


Re: Instant Replay: Your “Guide” To Saturday Morning TV

Retaw wrote:

Did City ever have a lineup of children's shows? I don't remember any, which meant it would've been the largest broadcaster in Toronto to skip out on that. While they were in various states of decay, both Global and CTV kept their stuff going until the early 2000s.

No line-up per se, but early morning screenings of Rocket Robin Hood, animated Abbott and Costello, and Hilarious House of Frightenstein surely count.

There was also a pilot made for a series called CityKids but Moses nixed it as he felt City was an adult station and there was no point in coveting the younger demo which was better served by other local stations. That said, I would love to hear more about the stuff Gene Taylor hosted in the mid-70s, like SEA WORLD and MONSTERS WE KNOW AND LOVE (I think they showed afternoon monster movies and he hosted in character as various mad scientists and vampires)