After-School Game Shows

[That Don Guy]

There weren't that many game shows that aired late in the afternoon in the 1970s.  The ones I can remember:
Match Game 7x (my last class in high school usually ended at around 2:00)
TattleTales
Musical Chairs
Give & Take
(for some strange reason, the CBS station in San Francisco decided not to air Spin-Off)
also, I usually got home from middle school to catch the bonus round in The Diamond Head Game, and the Sacramento NBC station aired Celebrity Sweepstakes at 3:30 PM for a few weeks (before running a commercial apologizing for it, and announcing its move back to the morning)

[CeleTheRef]

here in Italy I enjoyed Remote Control. it was the craziest thing ever.  and contestants played for cash!

[MyronMMeyer]

Straight off the bus for the last 20 minutes of The All New Let's Make a Deal. Sometimes it would be a lucky day and I'd get home in time to see the first 10 minutes too.

-M

[golden-road]

Mine were J!/WOF & Bergeron Squares.

[MikeK]

MG/HS Hour amazed this then-8-year-old back in '83.  So did Fantasy's version of Diamond Head Game's Money Volcano a year earlier.  In the late 80s, it was Fun House, High Rollers during its initial run, and whatever USA showed back in the day.

[The Pyramids]

When I was in the eighth grade I would come home to a tape recorded earlier of the daytime "Wheel Of Fortune".

[Jimmy Owen]

I wonder how much different our lives would be if there had been a way to record television at home in the 60's and 70's?  We had three choices for afterschool viewing. No cable.  One station would show movies, one Mike Douglas or Merv and one a hodgepodge of reruns.  Cartoons were only on Saturday morning, sports only on the weekends. You couldn't just pop in a tape.  Would I have recorded the NBC morning game shows daily rather than watch the old Abbott and Costello movies the station was showing?

[clemon79]

Cartoons were only on Saturday morning,

In the '70s at least, I think this was very much not true...we had at least two stations in our market that ran a full lineup of cartoons / other children's programming (Captain Cosmic usually ran Ultraman or other poorly-dubbed Japanese live action shows - think Power Rangers, except you didn't want to gouge your eyes out with a fork) from the end of Dialing For Dollars at 2:30 (coincidentally, both channels had DFD franchises that ran at the same time) clear through to 5:00P or 5:30P.

That said, that's one anecdote and maybe *I'M* the anomaly. Lawn Defenders, was this true elsewhere in the country?

[Ian Wallis]

I wonder how much different our lives would be if there had been a way to record television at home in the 60's and 70's?

I guess most of us have probably wondered about that.  TV shows (especially in prime time) were presented very differently in the '60s and part of the '70s than they are today.  Sponsors and alternate-sponsors had complete control over the half hour, some even had their logos incorporated into the opening titles, and stars did "cast commercials" for the products the sponsors were selling.

In the past few years, in addition to game shows, I've started trading for some "classic TV" with original commercials from the '60s.  It's really neat to see exactly how shows were presented back then.  Old favorites like Bewitched had many different little additions in prime time than you've even seen in syndication.  It was a neat time, especially when shows started switching to color in the mid-'60s and before every show you had an "in color" tag.

Same was true for some game shows.

[catnap1972]

That said, that's one anecdote and maybe *I'M* the anomaly. Lawn Defenders, was this true elsewhere in the country?

Sure...(then) WNEW and WPIX in NY always had cartoons in the (weekday) morning and after school (up till about 4 or 5pm) up through at least the late '80s.

[Tim L]

In my "era" (1964-72) At our house we only had access to 3 network affiliates (The CBS Cleveland affiliate was hit-or-miss for the most part)..During a lot of that time you had Mike Douglas (Live 12:30-2PM at KYW-TV before the move to Philadelphia) Merv Griffin mid-afternoons to late evenings depending on the year and channel..Two well-established Cartoon shows, Barnaby (half-hour daily and 2 hours Saturday, with sidekick Woodrow who had his own Sunday Show on TV-3) and Captain Penny (Noon and 5:00 daily shows on Channel 5)  After early 1966, you had movies on 5 and 8 late nights...My big game show times were 10-1 and 3:30 to 4:30, mostly on KYW/WKYC-3..By 1971 Captain Penny was gone and Barnaby was on Channel 43..Cartoons were mostly on UHF channels, except for Saturday mornings..

[Jimmy Owen]

Cartoons were only on Saturday morning,

In the '70s at least, I think this was very much not true...we had at least two stations in our market that ran a full lineup of cartoons / other children's programming (Captain Cosmic usually ran Ultraman or other poorly-dubbed Japanese live action shows - think Power Rangers, except you didn't want to gouge your eyes out with a fork) from the end of Dialing For Dollars at 2:30 (coincidentally, both channels had DFD franchises that ran at the same time) clear through to 5:00P or 5:30P.

That said, that's one anecdote and maybe *I'M* the anomaly. Lawn Defenders, was this true elsewhere in the country?

Now that you mention it, there were a couple of shows available which played cartoons in conjunction with a live host.  Bozo, etc.  The only reason they were on were to pitch Bozo Milk, Bozo Bread, etc. to the youngsters.  When Action for Children Television got concerned with advertising to kids these shows went away.

[DoItRockapella]

Cartoons were only on Saturday morning,

In the '70s at least, I think this was very much not true...we had at least two stations in our market that ran a full lineup of cartoons / other children's programming (Captain Cosmic usually ran Ultraman or other poorly-dubbed Japanese live action shows - think Power Rangers, except you didn't want to gouge your eyes out with a fork) from the end of Dialing For Dollars at 2:30 (coincidentally, both channels had DFD franchises that ran at the same time) clear through to 5:00P or 5:30P.

That said, that's one anecdote and maybe *I'M* the anomaly. Lawn Defenders, was this true elsewhere in the country?

Hey...I grew up watching Power Rangers and its related shows. Even watching them now, I don't exactly want to gouge my eyes out with a fork.

Of course, this could easily just be Nostalgia Filter, but I have no shame whatsoever about being a child of the 1990s.

[TimK2003]

Cartoons were only on Saturday morning,

In the '70s at least, I think this was very much not true...we had at least two stations in our market that ran a full lineup of cartoons / other children's programming (Captain Cosmic usually ran Ultraman or other poorly-dubbed Japanese live action shows - think Power Rangers, except you didn't want to gouge your eyes out with a fork) from the end of Dialing For Dollars at 2:30 (coincidentally, both channels had DFD franchises that ran at the same time) clear through to 5:00P or 5:30P.

That said, that's one anecdote and maybe *I'M* the anomaly. Lawn Defenders, was this true elsewhere in the country?

Depends on the area.  Most Large-Market cities in the Midwest (Cleveland/Detroit/Cincinnati) had at least one independent TV station (usually UHF) and a PBS station, but Toledo did not get their first independent station until the mid-80s (but then again, it wasn't too too hard to pull in the two Detroit indies).

If you look at some of the cities in the Mountain Time Zone (Colorado, Montana, New Mexico...) there were some smaller broadcast markets that still had stations which were affiliates to two or all three networks well into the 80's.

But for the most part, if your town or area was lucky enough to pick up an independent station off the antenna in the 60s & 70s, you were usually treated to reruns of some great shows of the past and some movies as well, with the better ones at night during prime-time.

Would've loved to have a VHS and a chance to tape the old reruns of the Allen Funt Candid Cameras back in the day -- one of the few non-game shows that are hard to find in reruns or on the internet anywhere, for that matter.

[WarioBarker]

When I was in the eighth grade I would come home to a tape recorded earlier of the daytime "Wheel Of Fortune".

Just curious: you wouldn't happen to still have any of these, would you?