Author Topic: Dating Game promo (Read 2638 times)

geno57 · « **on:** December 02, 2006, 11:40:32 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCUaVWftgAw...ted&search=

Stumbled on this ... it's about 3:05 into the file. This is from the Chicago TV station where I started my career, some mgwmph-ty years ago.

Strikerz04 · « **Reply #1 on:** December 02, 2006, 12:40:56 PM »

Makes me want to buy a BBQ Grill...wow.

I didn't know WSNS (or Telemundo) was actually english speaking. My earliest memory of this station was when I was watching Basta! in the early 90's.

geno57 · « **Reply #2 on:** December 02, 2006, 03:06:08 PM »

[quote name=\'Strikerz04\' post=\'139347\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 11:40 AM\']
I didn't know WSNS (or Telemundo) was actually english speaking. My earliest memory of this station was when I was watching Basta! in the early 90's.
[/quote]

WSNS started in 1970 with "Instant News" -- an alphanumeric news/weather/sports/stock ticker format, 18 hours a day. For the last 10 or 15 minutes a night, before sign-off, the ticker would be handed over to a group of hippies, and the title would become "Underground News".

After several months, live programming began to show up, little by little, a half-hour at a time. "Underground News" went live, and there was a regular newscast with human anchors. There were nightly talk shows about the supernatural, horse racing, motor sports, and anything else a producer could sell to the management.

None of that really worked out, but things started to click when the station bought the rights to the Sox, the Bulls and the Blackhawks. And for a while, it became the "Leave It to Beaver", "I Love Lucy", and "High Chaparall" rerun channel. Lots of cartoons, too.

They experimented with over-the-air subscription movies -- something called "OnTV". You'd get a set-top converter box that would descramble the signal. They spent many, many years fighting license challenges, because the scrambler at the transmitter didn't always work right, and kiddies could often see soft porn (Oh no! My six-year-old saw titties! She's ruined!) for several seconds at a time, until the scrambler kicked in again.

Then they took it Spanish language. I don't remember what year that was -- might have been '83 or '84.

It was a fun place to work, and to learn the art. I often told people that the station was so small and so low-budget, if somebody wanted to vacuum the carpets, we'd have to unplug the transmitter first.

I can still thread-up one of them old RCA quad VTR's (two-inch tape on -- IIRC -- 16-inch reels) in my sleep.

PS -- Who are you calling a "Basta"?

clemon79 · « **Reply #3 on:** December 02, 2006, 03:11:41 PM »

[quote name=\'geno57\' post=\'139355\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 12:06 PM\']
because the scrambler at the transmitter didn't always work right, and kiddies could often see soft porn (Oh no! My six-year-old saw titties! She's ruined!) for several seconds at a time, until the scrambler kicked in again.
[/quote]
And, when it WAS scrambled, if you shook your head up and down really fast, you could ALMOST make out a nipple...

...erm. So I've heard.

Strikerz04 · « **Reply #4 on:** December 02, 2006, 03:17:03 PM »

[quote name=\'geno57\' post=\'139355\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 02:06 PM\']
PS -- Who are you calling a "Basta"?
[/quote]

I might get whooshed for this in a minute, but it was a spanish game show called ¡Basta! that aired in the 90's. I think it was some kind of Spanish Boggle meets Jeopardy! kind of thing.

clemon79 · « **Reply #5 on:** December 02, 2006, 03:22:48 PM »

[quote name=\'Strikerz04\' post=\'139361\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 12:17 PM\']
I might get whooshed for this in a minute, but it was a spanish game show called ¡Basta! that aired in the 90's. I think it was some kind of Spanish Boggle meets Jeopardy! kind of thing.
[/quote]
Oh yeah, you're absolutely getting "whooshed".

SRIV94 · « **Reply #6 on:** December 02, 2006, 05:25:31 PM »

[quote name=\'geno57\' post=\'139355\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 02:06 PM\']
None of that really worked out, but things started to click when the station bought the rights to the Sox, the Bulls and the Blackhawks. And for a while, it became the "Leave It to Beaver", "I Love Lucy", and "High Chaparall" rerun channel. Lots of cartoons, too.

I can still thread-up one of them old RCA quad VTR's (two-inch tape on -- IIRC -- 16-inch reels) in my sleep.
[/quote]
They were using tape in those days? Seemed to me like most of the programs/commercials were on very grainy celluloid stock (with lots o' splices and a more than occasional flickering). That is, those programs/commercials/promos that were shot on film.

ObGS: WSNS showed GONG reruns for a while, pairing them up with the Hackett version of YBYL. I'm pretty sure they were also the home of CAN YOU TOP THIS.

Doug

rugrats1 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 02, 2006, 05:29:53 PM »

[quote name=\'SRIV94\' post=\'139371\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 05:25 PM\']
[quote name=\'geno57\' post=\'139355\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 02:06 PM\']
I can still thread-up one of them old RCA quad VTR's (two-inch tape on -- IIRC -- 16-inch reels) in my sleep.
[/quote]
They were using tape in those days? Seemed to me like most of the programs were on very grainy celluloid stock (with lots o' splices and a more than occasional flickering).
[/quote]

In the early-1980s, some filmed repeats were now being distributed on videotape (or, in some cases, delivered via satellite and recorded on video at the station). Around this period, one of my local stations, WTSP in Tampa Bay, showed repeats of Hawaii Five-O partially in this matter -- some episodes on 16mm on a telecine, some episodes off of videotape, and the difference was like night and day.

SRIV94 · « **Reply #8 on:** December 02, 2006, 05:41:43 PM »

[quote name=\'rugrats1\' post=\'139372\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 04:29 PM\']
[quote name=\'SRIV94\' post=\'139371\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 05:25 PM\']
They were using tape in those days? Seemed to me like most of the programs were on very grainy celluloid stock (with lots o' splices and a more than occasional flickering).
[/quote]

In the early-1980s, some filmed repeats were now being distributed on videotape (or, in some cases, delivered via satellite and recorded on video at the station). Around this period, one of my local stations, WTSP in Tampa Bay, showed repeats of Hawaii Five-O partially in this matter -- some episodes on 16mm on a telecine, some episodes off of videotape, and the difference was like night and day.
[/quote]
Right. I think we're going back a few years earlier for the era I was talking about.

Doug

pianogeek · « **Reply #9 on:** December 02, 2006, 06:48:22 PM »

A special converter box to descramble OnTV pay-per-view signal on a broadcast channel...

Hmmm...how do you place an order...get billed?

DrBear · « **Reply #10 on:** December 02, 2006, 10:31:28 PM »

Such "scrambled channels" were popular in the 70s and 80s when cable hadn't gone into most big cities. I'm not sure how it worked, whether it was connected to the phone line or whether you paid a monthly fee and got a rented descrambler, but basically at 7 p.m., an announcer would come on, say the station was switching over to SelectTV or whatever the service was called, and on went the scrambling. Mostly, it was first-run movies (sort of HBO without cable or original programming) with dirty (hard-R) flicks late at night. Occasionally, if you had a dirty mind but no descrambler, you could see repetitive movement

If nothing else, it got a lot more TV stations on the air; most didn't operate the service themselves but sold the time to an outside group.

toddyo · « **Reply #11 on:** December 04, 2006, 12:20:52 AM »

A station in Cincinnati (ironically who had been the OnTV station), ran programs like Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart Show from 16mm or 3/4 transfers from their filmchain.

At the PBS station, I ran quad up through 1990, complete with an old Ampex quad cart machine, which were from 2 other Cincinnati Stations ("Fred" from WLWT and "Barney" from WBTI/WSTR. We named the WCET model "Pebbles"). I miss banding and hearing an engineer cuss a blue streak when a 90 minute reel would drop while loading it.

mmb5 · « **Reply #12 on:** December 04, 2006, 08:12:51 AM »

[quote name=\'pianogeek\' post=\'139381\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 06:48 PM\']
A special converter box to descramble OnTV pay-per-view signal on a broadcast channel...

Hmmm...how do you place an order...get billed?
[/quote]
Pretty much the same as cable. You needed a box. You didn't pay, they repossesed the box.

ON-TV, at least in Detroit, did have some original programming. They usually had one Tiger, Red Wing or Piston game a week. Also there were college replays, such as a Michigan football game the following Sunday afternoon from back in the day when football teams had only two or three games on live a year.

--Mike, ON-TV family from 1980-1982

Argo · « **Reply #13 on:** December 04, 2006, 08:47:38 PM »

Does anyone know if the music used in the clip when the bachelor meets his date is on the trading circut? It was used as the theme to Monty Hall's, the Joke's On Us, in Canada in 1983, written by Milton Delugg. Would love to hear it. Its soo catchy

Mark

[quote name=\'geno57\' post=\'139344\' date=\'Dec 2 2006, 11:40 AM\']
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCUaVWftgAw...ted&search=

Stumbled on this ... it's about 3:05 into the file. This is from the Chicago TV station where I started my career, some mgwmph-ty years ago.
[/quote]

Ian Wallis · « **Reply #14 on:** December 05, 2006, 09:07:34 AM »

Quote

Does anyone know if the music used in the clip when the bachelor meets his date is on the trading circut? It was used as the theme to Monty Hall's, the Joke's On Us, in Canada in 1983, written by Milton Delugg. Would love to hear it. Its soo catchy

AFAIK, no. However, there were some episodes of Joke's On Us where the theme was back-timed (at least one of which is on the trade curcuit), so at least we got to hear it to its conclusion.