Bigfoot and Wildboy

The Wikipedia page.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 06, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Cryptozoology, Family, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Television, 1970s

Static

A quirky, out-of-place worker (Keith Gordon) at a crucifix factory invents a device he claims can show pictures of Heaven. Discouraged and confused by the inability of those around him to see anything but a screenful of static, he charismatically hijacks a bus of friendly elderly people in order to get media attention for his invention.

The director's page.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 05, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Death, Eccentrics, Crackpots, Inventions, Television, 1980s

Flush Ratings

In 1974, the Lafayette waterworks in Louisiana revealed an apparent correlation between drops in water pressure and television viewing habits. In particular, the water pressure would drop immediately after popular shows and movies had aired... presumably from viewers waiting until the end of the shows to relieve themselves:


So, the idea was floated that flush ratings might serve as a surrogate for the Nielsen ratings.

I had always thought that the idea of popular TV shows having an impact on sewage systems was an urban legend. However, while Snopes dismisses the idea that any shows such as the Superbowl have ever broken a city's sewage system, they allow the lesser claim that massive simultaneous flushing can put an observable strain on a city's waterworks, noting: "toilet use during breaks in large-audience programs can certainly be much higher than average."

Related post: Flush Polling

North Adams Transcript - July 5, 1974

Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 09, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Bathrooms, Television, 1970s

Follies of the Madmen #490

Our televised brainwashing will turn honest citizens into criminals.



Source.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 07, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Advertising, Crime, Propaganda, Thought Control and Brainwashing, Television, 1950s

Muffin the Mule

Non-talking puppets with uninterrupted narration by a weird lady: pure kiddie gold!

Or, as the urban legend has it: "There! That oughta hold the little bastards!"



The Wikipedia page.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Sep 30, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Puppets and Automatons, Television, United Kingdom, Twentieth Century

S&H Green Stamps Motorboat Redemption

Folks of a certain age recall "trading stamps," tokens with a certain value given out to shoppers when they made a purchase.

This site has a nice summary of the phenomenon, with lots of pictures of pages from the redemption catalog.

Here's an ad from 1968 which reveals you could get a Chrysler motorboat with Green Stamps.

Source.



I got curious about how many books of stamps that might take. So I did some very rough calculations, fudging the different years, etc.

This site reveals that a similar boat cost about $1500.00 when new in 1969.

In the catalog at the previous link, an Admiral Color TV demands 150 books.

Here's the likely price in dollars of such an item, as seen below.



So the boat cost six times a TV, and might, I'm guessing, demand 900 books of stamps. However, I also read that each filled book was worth $1.20, so that would require 1,250 books!

That's a lot of weekly shopping trips to your local IGA, since you got only a handful of stamps with each purchase. I wonder how many people ever took advantage of the offer.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Sep 28, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Boats, Business, Loyalty Programs, Shopper Incentives, Coupons and Other Discounts, Television, 1960s, 1970s

Subjective Color

July 25, 1967: During its broadcast of the TV series Combat!, ABC aired a commercial for a soft-drink called Squirt. The commercial appeared in color. What made this unusual is that it appeared in color even on black-and-white TV sets.



The commercial used a technology developed by the Color-Tel Corp., and patented by James Butterfield, that used pulses of light to trick the brain into thinking that it was seeing color. Butterfield described this as "subjective color".

The company had informed the media before the broadcast, but most people didn't know it was going to happen, and so they thought they were going nuts when they suddenly saw flashes of color on their black-and-white sets.

Detroit Free Press - Sep 14, 1967

The technology had some limitations. It could only be used for still images. Also, the colors were muted and flickered a lot. But the really big problem was that the technology emerged just as color TVs were becoming popular. So it was a clever gimmick that no longer had much practical purpose.

More info: Chronicles from the Analog Age Blog

Also worth noting: the idea of being able to see color images on a black-and-white set was the premise of a famous April Fool's Day hoax that occurred in 1962 in Sweden.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Sep 20, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Inventions, Patents, Television, 1960s

Henry Gibson Anti-Littering Ads

Anyone of a certain age recalls Henry Gibson and his "naive" poems on LAUGH-IN. Apparently, some ad agency thought he'd be perfect for their anti-littering campaign.





Source.

And they were even collected in a book, by the Glass Container Manufacturers Institute.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 25, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: PSA’s, Television, Poetry, 1960s

Telemeter:  1960s Pay TV

Pay TV in the 1950s and 1960s? Yes, it was a thing, as the article below explains.



Here is the Wikipedia entry on the topic.

Here's a good article on the Canadian version.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Jul 24, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Regionalism, Technology, Television, 1950s, 1960s

B.A.D. Cats

Lasted for 6 episodes, according to Wikipedia.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 25, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Crime, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Motor Vehicles, Television, 1980s