Do others share your interest in retro tv? - Page 2  

David, Gary and Jeff I'm so glad that you guys said something I thought I was the only one!
I have'nt watched hardly any network tv since the late 80's either.

It's so embarrassing to have a family meal and "Everyone Loves Raymond" is on and the whole episode is about their sex life. Or lack of it. I mean I don't want to see that during dinner!!
I just want something fun to watch and relax!!

To me that's not writing that's just being lazy. The older shows are better written than the garbage now.

I've been looking at the old tv schedule grids at epguides.com and it really makes me miss having a great nightly line-up to look forward to, and then watching Johnny Carson each night. You didn't have to worry about any of those shows! Johnny was racy sometimes but never just gross like these guys now.

I know most of the classic shows are on dvd now but I wish they could release some sort of a time capsule dvd compilation of shows as they aired like "Fall 1976" or "Fall 1980". With classic commercials and Bicentennial minutes too. :)
Heck, I wish they could at least re-run the tonight show!





"Anyone can say something dirty and get a laugh but to be clean and get a laugh requires a comedian."  -Groucho Marx

"It doesn't require talent to be dirty." -Groucho Marx

It's Michael Medved, and he's a critic, not an "insider" (in the sense of running a studio or producing movies or TV). He has offered intriguing theories for discussion, but they're not going to get discussed here, because HTF has a long-established "no politics or religion" rule that this thread has come close to crossing on more than one occasion. If the thread is to remain open, then the participants need to remain alert to the applicable rules, going forward.

Well, most of my collection is before 1980, which puts me in this thread quite well.  A few weeks ago I attended a Dark Shadows convention in New Jersey and met fellow fans who also collect classic TV on DVD.

 

I've always said that someday a cable executive will finally get a clue and create a premium classic TV channel, the TV version of Turner Classic Movies.  The channel will show classic TV shows from the 1940s- 80s, in remastered prints without commercials.  Instead of Robert Osborne, the hosts should be actors associated with classic TV, like Adam West, Dawn Wells, Stefanie Powers, Jerry Mathers, Linda Kaye Henning, Robert Fuller, David Hedison, Jimmie Walker, Nanette Fabray, Peter Marshall, Davy Jones, Tim Conway, Bill Mumy, Diahann Carroll, Peter Graves, Barbara Parkins, Vicki Lawrence, Florence Henderson- you get the idea.  Also, this premium classic TV channel should:

-show vintage commercials, old network promos and variety specials (remember those?) from the vaults

- broadcast shows that haven't had exposure for years, like Our Miss Brooks, December Bride, Mr. Novak, The Defenders, Barnaby Jones, Dr. Kildare, Judd: For The Defense, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, The Farmer's Daughter and others,

- show original documentaries about TV history: particular shows, bios of stars, programming trends

-show vintage daytime soaps in the afternoon.  Past shows like Dark Shadows, Santa Barbara, and Loving are available in complete runs.  Also, Days of our Lives exists complete on color tape from its November 1965 debut.

-show unseen pilots from the past fifty years that have been lying in the vaults, along with some shows that didn't last up to a season.

I'm secretly hoping that some TV executive is reading this......

A great idea, but a terrifying one -- I'd never get anything done!

Marcus Welby is now being seen across the country as RTN schedule. And on weekends they have the Mike Hammer show with Darren McGavin. They're pulling out a lot of stuff from Universal's vault. Rumor has it that the guy behind THiS (he runs Me TV in Chicago) is putting together THAT TV network with Paramount and Sony titles.

There are people trying to put together retro TV networks as part of digital substations. There is work being done. 

Boy, I wish a Minneapolis subchannel would pick up some of this programming. All we get here is 24 hours of weather on one and repeats of the news on another. Seeing some Marcus Welby would be a vast improvement over such drivel since it seems like that show won't be coming out on DVD anytime soon.

Alas, none of this is happening in NYC!  I still say a 24/7 premium classic TV channel is a must- it would be a great way for the studios to go int their valuts and dig out things that haven't seen the light of day in ages.  Who knows: among those 'lost shows' may be some that can easily gain a new audience with a cult attraction inn reruns.  Look at hoe popular The Golden Girls has become among younger viewers in recent years, many of who were too young when the show first aired. 

Please pardon my ignorance. What is RTN?

Until there's a national station that is carried by Direct TV, these substations aren't going to reach that many people.  I never plan on going back to cable (Time Warner in my neighborhood), so all the sub-channel RTN's in the nation aren't going to help me. 

RTN stands for Retro Television Network, I believe.  They are sub-channels that usually work off one of the major network channels in a given city.  But like I said, if you have Direct TV or Dish or live in a city that doesn't have a RTN then it's all moot. 

Gary "a retro channel is a great idea - but it has to be national" O.

Oh. I guess it isn't available in my market. I've never heard of it.

There used to be a channel almost just like this.  I think it was called "TV Land".   Oh wait, it is still around, but it has degenerated into endless reruns of the same 4-5 sitcoms, and even worse is starting to program its' own original "reality TV" drivel.  How sad.  Perhaps if we could get THAT channel's executive to read this......


More recently American Life Network was showing a treasure trove of great old programs.... Combat, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Sugarfoot, Lawman, Bourbon Street Beat, and many other great old WB programs.  Alas, they are now also skewing towards a younger audience and eliminated MANY of those programs, if not all of them.  I guess if you're older in this country, you don't count for spit. 

 in the state of Florida, RTN is on (or about to go live) in 8 cities including Orlando and Key West. The old retirees are getting their Dragnet fix in West Palm Beach. Have you tried to get it in from your nearby city's TV station? It's the new UHF. 

A premium vintage TV network isn't that attractive to cable operators. when American Life had the deal with Fox and ran vintage Fox shows (and Mission Impossible and color Honeymooners) in prime time, they weren't a darling of the dial. Even here it's the last channel on the digital tier.

Oh, if I had it I wouldn't watch it. As I said in an earlier post, I'm not a fan of vintage TV. I just wondered what it was.

LOL about TVLand, Richard.  That's so, so true it's actually not funny and I shouldn't be laughing.  Sad is more like it.  What started out as such a promising channel, has degenerated into a pathetic shadow of it's former glorious self.  As with the RTN's accross the country, I never had access to American Life although I knew of it's impressive schedule a couple of years ago with those WB shows.  Such a shame I didn't have a chance to watch them.

I too hope we see some type of TV shows version of TCM some day, but I'm not as optimistic as others that it will happen.  If it ever did, I'd like to see it focus more on the 50's and 60's only, at least at first.  I feel like a lot of the 70's and 80's shows have seen airtime over the last 10 or so years.  I know not all of them have, but a good majority have.  Conversely, there are a bunch of series from the 50's and 60's that haven't seen the light of day, at least on a national level, for multiple decades.

Gary "like Michael said upthread, if there were a Classic TV network I wouldn't get much done" O.

"Ain't it the truth"   I'd say that would fit a lot of us on this Bd.

Charles, that idea is the way to go with this, imo.  I would pay a premium for a no-commercials classic TV channel.  Another requirement would be a nat'l channel, as Gary mentioned earlier.  This would need to be uplinked to satt for the major nat'l small dish carriers as well as C-Band.  If a local OTA channel picks it up, that's great as a sub-channel.  But as others mentioned, RTN is not available in all markets, as the American Life Channel wasn't offered by all major providers.

Richard V: 

You stole my idea. I too have been hoping that TV Land or another cable channel would show itself to classic tv reruns as oppossed to Spike, USA, and some other channels that rerun the same programs year after year. 

I would love to see runs of The Farmers Daughter, It's About Time, the Lieutenent, Stoney Burke, and even later programs like Bearcats, Man From Atlantis, or Salvage 1 and Spy Games which had unaired episodes.

There's so much unaired, forgotten, or rarely shown programs that you could have "New To You" seasons for several years.

Make it so. Make it so. Make it so.

James

We have an RTN affiliate in Denver (carried on DISH Network) but it's not a digital sub-channel, it's a full-fledged channel all its own, and carries many Universal staples (Quincy, Rockford, A-Team, Magnum, Simon & Simon, Dragnet, Adam 12, Emergency, McHale's Navy, Leave It to Beaver).  I had some email contact with the station manager and he mentioned he has to feature a ton of infomercials on the channel right now to generate some revenue, until he can assemble a sales team to sell ads on the regular shows and get rid of some of the informercials when that happens.  He hopes to add more of the RTN programming soon.

The one very frustrating thing about RTN is that they do not show episodes in any type of sequential order, and it's so bad at times that with two-parters, they hardly ever show the second part, so you don't know how it ends unless you have the show on DVD.  Recently, they showed the same episode of Magnum 3 nights in a row!  So I kind of think RTN is a mixed blessing. 

Bottom line is I'll take my classic TV DVD's any day over an oldies station, there's nothing better.  I'm my own program manager :)

I have a lot of fun making my own classic tv line up. I run The Incredible Hulk, and The Dukes of Hazzard back to back.  Even matching the air dates so they play just like they did on CBS Friday nights nearly 30 years ago.

Example: 
The Incredible Hulk season 4-Deep Shock(12/12/80)

Dukes of Hazzard season 3-Mrs Rosco P. Coltrane(12/12/80)

And yes.....I am a geek.

Thanks, good info about RTN.  From your info, I can't say that it impresses me with showing programs out of sequence, skipping 2nd parts of a 2-part episode, etc.  I also seem to remember a while back reading posts that some of the shows were in "rough" shape, 16mm prints with considerable noise, etc.

You're right, there's nothing like having the shows in your DVD collection.  The only problem is that we have to wait and hope for our favorites to get released, then hope they sell enough #'s to complete the series.

Interesting that RTN is up on DIsh Net.  Hopefully, with the upcoming launch of DirecTV's next bird (D12), we might see RTN available on DTV.  The launch is supposed to me mainly to increase HD bandwidth capacity but maybe we'll get RTN as well.

Medved is an insider to the movie industry like Rush Limbaugh is to the Republican Party. He's a commentator with a radical conservative agenda, no more, no less.

Maybe Encore? They already exist and Encore Westerns Channel isn't afraid of old TV shows or black and white stuff in general. At least it's a start.

 better chance of these shows ending up on Hulu or another web based video streaming service. Turner Classic Movies can get away with it's programming because it's not ad based and it doesn't pay top dollar for its programming. 

I enjoy older shows on DVD, but not for the reasons laid out here. I actually think that programming was more daring before the days when every channel was owned by a major corporation. Sure, they always were sensitive to the advertisers, but as corporate ownership crept in, programming got even less daring (with exceptions, of course). There's been a lot of great shows in the last 25 years too, and there still are.

I also think that when TV was essentially a young medium (1950s-1960s) it was more full of possibilities, and didn't pander to the lowest common denominator (something you could tie into corporate ownership and its desire to maximize viewership). There isn't a lot of cerebral programming these days (with exceptions).

None of which should be taken to mean I don't think there has been good programming in the 25 years or so. Every genre has seen excellent programs in that period: cop shows (NYPD Blue may be the best of its kind ever on TV), sitcoms (Seinfeld and Friends were top notch; The Office and 30 Rock currently are too - would put any of them up against the best comedies in TV history), sci-fi (Babylon 5, Battlestar, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Lost - all among the best sci-fi ever), drama (Mad Men, The West Wing, Gilmore Girls), and other genres we never considered before (no one would have created a show like the Sopranos - focusing on criminals - in the 60s or 70s). Two genres that seem to have died: the anthology and the variety show.

I do not believe for a second that we are seeing nothing but immorality on TV. That's a more subjective thing than quality in some fashion. If you ask me, reality shows that humiliate contestants and call it entertainment are immoral. A story in which Tony Soprano beats a guy is not.

My Wife likes alot of the older comedies, I have friends that are very retro show fiendly. But I still like alot of newer shows. I'm not so against modern stuff on a moral baseing, even older shows can be immoral if you consider murder immoral and not just sex, etc, but I'm just tired of all the Reality crap on the airwaves.

I definately agree that most Nick shows and Disney shows have alot of "Adult" situation comedy show packaged in a TV Format aimed at tweeners

Oh, there's no doubt that everyone has their own opinions on what is or isn't immoral.  That's a given.  But for some of us, especially when we have children watching, it's just nicer to not have to worry about things like profanity, sexual situations, or graphic violence.  With almost every show from the 50's and 60's that wasn't an issue.  With almost every show on today it is an issue.  So clearly the broadcast standards have changed (I prefer the term dropped).  For some of us, this makes classic material much more appealing.  There's a certain comfort in not having to hold the tv control in one's hand poised to hit the mute button or the on/off button every couple of minutes.  To each his own.

I will say I believe I've got some pretty good, albeit anecdotal, evidence that young people today will enjoy older material if they've been exposed to it.  My two teenagers are much more apt to put in an episode of I LOVE LUCY, RAWHIDE, PERRY MASON or any other older show than they are to watch current programming from any source (even stations and shows aimed at teens).  So I've never bought the argument that young people inherently won't watch and enjoy classic material because it's not "modern" enough.  It's a matter of what they are fed, so to speak, when they are little.  If all they see is modern stuff when they are kids then yes, they'll gravitate toward that as they become teens and young adults.  But if they are shown classics even as grade schoolers, then I think they'll grow up to enjoy vintage material.  This is why it really is a shame we don't have at least one or two national channels that actually carry nothing but classic TV shows.  If the kids don't have access to it on TV, they aren't likely to just randomly pick up the dvds in stores. 

Gary "I still think it takes a smarter and more creative person to write funny or interesting clean material than it does to write dirty material" O.

Absolutely agree.

Gary "no doubt in my mind about that" O.