Do Something Dreadful to Your Television

It's no great secret that TV SUCKS. But the seemingly endless collection of  RealMedia clips housed at TV Ark do a fantastic job of re-writing some local history. Folks who are native to WFMU's broacast area can sort the collection to feature just the New York City material, and will subsequently lose countless hours while plowing through ancient promo clips of 11 Alive's Action News helmet-haired newsteam, Channel 9's Million Dollar Movie intro, Emergency Broadcast System tests, public affairs promo spots, and other wonderfully primitive works of videography. If you listen to WFMU from elsewhere in the country, you can sort the clips for your area with this link. (Via Mr. Science's X818)

Comments

[grrrr]

thanks for this. I might just have to install shitty realplayer to watch these.

but seeing the pictures still bring back memories. Especially the movie spots. I can feel the miserable Sunday afternoon with the stink of meatloaf cooking...and if I hear the accompaning music I think I will kill myself.

I have always been a fan of the old channel 9 & 4 logos. It's really sad that everything now looks the same. WHOOOOSH! WHOOOSH! A FLYING LOGO! GO AND CLUTTER UP THOSE FUCKING GRAPHICS SOME MORE!

When I was young, each station had a distinct personality to me.

gaaaah.

[kg]

Wow, thanks. My favorite is channel 7's 4:30 Movie opening. I used to love those awful movies.

[drewo]

Thanks for these links. CBS's Jim Jensen was my favorite local anchor. He had a rather sad life - a son who died young, drug addiction and an early death.

I remember leaving class at Fordham Lincoln Center one evening in the early 1980's and passing by Jensen's limo, stopped at a street light. From the back seat, Jensen looked at me with one of those lost, world-weary, somewhat pleading, gazes. It was hardly the look of power one might expect from a TV celebrity. I felt sorry for the guy then, still do now. Fame ain't always all it's cracked up to be.

[Pete]

I discovered this site about a month ago and the sounds of Live at Five and the Million Dollar Movie and "Let's All Be There!" kept me busy for hours.

I'm especially wowed by the total recall brought on by the six-second-long [a href="http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/international/video/cbsspecial1987.rm"]CBS "Special" intro[/a] (and how great is that music?). Like my friend Roy said, "I feel like I'm about to be told to go to bed."

On Jim Jensen, my dad used to go for coffee late at night at the Howard Johnson's on Soldiers Field Road in Boston (presently the PAX studio for those familiar), next to the WBZ studios, and Jim Jensen would be there after he got off work. No word on his emotional state, but I generally picture him frazzled and chain-smoking, just because.

[Pete]

Sorry about the mal-formed link. Try this instead, and get ready for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" up next on CBS.

[W.B.]

I did mean to ask if anyone knew from which stock-music library WABC's "4:30 Movie" theme originated from, the title of the piece, and who wrote it. It seems like it could've been penned by either Johnny Pearson, or Syd Dale, or Alan Moorhouse, or Neil Richardson, or Alan Hawkshaw . . . has that flavor to it.

I have my own Jim Jensen story. As a young boy, I sat in behind the scenes, in the back of the set at the vast CBS Broadcast Center, during a live transmission of WCBS's 6 o'clock newscast (due to a former nursery school teacher and her husband knowing him). This was when they had the anchor desks that looked like they were glued to "Star Trek"-style transporters, and his co-anchor was Rolland Smith (back when he still had his mustache, and a few years before his iconic "Fighting the frizzies, at 11" promo). I recall Mr. Jensen as the ultimate gentleman, with no hint or hints of all the tragedies which were to follow only a few years later. During the visit, I saw the vast newsroom from which the 11 P.M. newscast (which Smith and Dave Marash anchored then) originated in the mid-'70's, as well as the control room and the large '60's-style color TV monitor out of shot in the studio. I can still see the vast Norelco PC-60/70 cameras used by them back then, to this day.