By 1969, I was done with Saturday morning cartoons. I notice the "color" bar has been replaced by a "C"

Paul Jeffries wrote:

mace wrote:

By 1969, I was done with Saturday morning cartoons. I notice the "color" bar has been replaced by a "C"

About 40 years later, I'd buy my first high-definition TV. I think I'd equate the difference in HD and SD to that of colour and black & white.



PJ

There is one big difference, though - if you didn't have a colour set, you could still watch everything. If you didn't have a HiDef set after a brief "get ready" period, your TV was filled with snow - and you couldn't watch anything. And I remember that switch to a "black and white" indicator - it just became easier to list shows that weren't in colour. I'm not exactly sure when that happened but it was likely in the early 70s. 

I'm hoping your folks eventually got an HDTV. Prices have come way down and you can buy a set at a Wal-Mart for around $100. That would have been unthinkable when HD was launched. 

I remember our first colour TV set. It was in the early 70s and I'd been bugging my dad for years to get one. I don't think I realized we weren't well off or how much they cost back then!

The set we eventually got was made by Viking - which I believe was an Eaton's brand. And as a young neurotic type, I loved it, but it also drove me crazy. The picture had to be adjusted by tint, colour, and hue. I was forever fiddling with those controls trying to get the colour just right. But I never could. Today, of course, you don't need those and every set - even the cheapest ones - works mostly perfectly. 

There were also battles with my siblings over who would get to watch their show in colour and who was relegated to the now old fashioned black and white set that was put in another room. As the youngest of four, I frequently lost those fights!

As for the TV Guide, I checked. Listings from 1972 still used the "C" for colour. By 1973, it changed to "Black and White," as the samples below will attest.

My parent's did upgrade their bedroom and kitchen tv sets in 2013. However, their basement set, a 1978 Zenith 20" was still in good working order when my sister and I started cleaning out the homestead after our mom passed in May 2016. The quality really did go in before the name went on. I think the set cost around $600 when it was originally purchased.

That "Lazy Bones" remote control was introduced by Zenith in 1950. Funny that a remote control was developed before the majority of consumers owned a television set. A wireless remote control called the Flashmatic surfaced in 1955. The following year Zenith began selling their version of a wireless remote called the Space Command.

I can help with some of this. When CBLT first debuted on Sept. 8, 1952, it was on Channel 9. 

When the market was opened up for more stations, CBLT agreed to move to Channel 6, with a power boost. The date of the ad below is August 28, 1956, although it could have happened on Sept. 1st. CFTO would eventually get the licence and came on the air in 1961.



As for Channel 5, that was an attempt to make room for Global in Paris and Desoronto on Channel 6.



I've told this story before, but I was up early that morning to watch the official sign on over the new frequency. It was Sept. 11, 1972. I wish there had been VCRs at the time, because something happened that I'm positive was a deliberate nod to the past. 

When Toronto's CBC TV affiliate first signed on in 1952, there was a massive screw-up that saw the I.D. slide inserted upside down and backwards.



It was corrected and the broadcast went on, but it was something of a cause celebre in the rest of the media and the newspapers had a field day. The morning of the Channel 5 switch, they did the same thing, showing the I.D. slide backwards and upside down for about 2 secs., only to completely reverse it the proper way on air. 

I always felt it was a deliberate nod to the original mistake, and that they did it on purpose. It was 6 o'clock in the morning and they probably felt no one was watching. But I was and I've never forgotten it. 

Hansa wrote:

HR Pufnstuf was the trippiest kids show ever. 
 

Another trippy creation from Sid and Marty Krofft (although they were working under the Hanna-Barbera umbrella at the time), was The Banana Splits.




A couple of interesting lawsuits around H.R. Pufnstuf: 

Paul Simon successfully sued the Kroffts for copyright infringement, claiming that the theme song for H.R. Pufnstuf closely resembled his "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)".

And in 1977, Sid and Marty Krofft successfully sued McDonald's, claiming that a number of the fast food chain's "McDonaldland" characters (particularly Mayor McCheese) closely resembled the characters in the Pufnstuf universe. The Kroffts were previously approached by McDonald's to work on an advertising campaign, but then the company decided not to move forward with the association, although former employees of Sid and Mary Krofft worked on the sets and costumes for the fast food chain's commercials, as well as supplying voices for the ads.




PJ

 

Last edited by Paul Jeffries (October 19, 2021 1:24 am)