TV Listings from 10/14/83

[launderess]

Eastern, Central Mountain and Pacific Time

Remember hearing programmes being announced, say as in a commercial for an upcoming episode or such as "8 Eastern.....", and wondering just what and where was "Mountain Time". *LOL*

IIRC old telephone directories had area code maps of the United States, and they broke down areas into "Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific" times. That was the answer to my question.

L.

 

[launderess]

ReRuns On Daytime Televison

Well that was the norm in the pre-cable world, wasn't it? I mean now all those programs are owned by huge conglomerates which in turn also own the networks, and mostly are held captive to the score or so of affliated cable broadcast stations.

After weekday morning televison was over (news, perhaps a chat show, cartoons and the like), re-runs started and pretty much ran until soap opera time and in some cases right up until 6PM news.

 

[frigilux]

I think old films have been best served by the era of VCR/cable/satellite/DVD.

Old movies ran late at night pre-cable/pre-VCR, but you'd wait a lifetime trying to see, for instance, all of Cary Grant's films, or Katherine Hepburn's. I recall our local movie theater would run an old classic every once-in-awhile---Streetcar Named Desire, or Suddenly Last Summer. They would sometimes pop up at the drive-inn, as well.

Thanks to Turner Classic Movies, I think I've seen nearly every film made by one of my favorite old-school directors, George Cukor.

 

[launderess]

Well, Until Recently

One could see many of those "vintage" films on PBS, well at least in our area.

Both Channel Thirteen and WLIW, amoung others routinely showed great films as part of their Saturday night line up. However now that those films are the property of aforementioned huge companies, the offerings are much slimer. For obvious reasons Turner and other "broadcast" networks would rather keep such things to themselves, than have them seen for "free" and without commercials on PBS.

When one says "free", this is not totally true, as PBS stations like others had to pay a fee to run the movie, but back in the old days this was rather small beer. As cable grew and the big companies that owned the vast film archives realised there was gold in those reels, the price went up.

Who is Afraid of Virgina Woolf?
Butterfiled8
Suddenly Last Summer
Streetcar Named Desire
Now Voyager
All About Eve
Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte
The Graduate

And many others were films one first saw on PBS stations.

L.