Vintage TV Job

[travis]

I have no doubt that many of you remember testing tubes and finding a bad one in your childhood.  The fact remains that tube equipment has now reached an age of at least 40.  Failures now are likely caused by leaky or dried out capacitors or resistors that have drifted out of tolerance.  Just like people, failures over the years are more involved.

 

This stuff was well built, but not intended to last a lifetime.  To get reliable service out of a 1959 TV is going to require recapping it along with replacing any bad tubes.  Sometimes you get lucky and find a piece of equipment that has been in use through the years that requires less, but not often.

 

[mark_wpduet]

It's funny that there wasn't very much change in commercial times from the 50's the in some cases to the 80s.....How could three decades go by with not much change.

A good example is I Love Lucy. It was like 25.3 minutes long on average.

Golden Girls in the mid-1980s was around 25 minutes as well - so I'm guessing most sitcoms in that time frame were about the same.

Two sitcoms.......over thirty years later, ran about the same time?

 

[rp2813]

The Tonight Show

-- With Johnny Carson -- was the last bastion of the NBC "living color" peacock sequence prior to the start of a color telecast.  Long, long after all programming was offered in color and NBC had dropped the peacock (remember that awful -- and thankfully short-lived red and blue "N" logo from the 70's?), Carson I presume insisted on continuing to run the peacock sequence ahead of his show.  Once he retired, so did the animated peacock, for good.

 

This was the NBC logo of my youth.  It would reveal itself in a single stroke, starting at the lower left corner of the "N" (well OK, it backtracked midway through the "B") and finishing off with the "C."

 

[lordkenmore]

Tubes wear out...but so do capacitors. I'm not sure about TV, particularly late tubed TV. But older radios used many wax and paper capacitors that were not, from what I understand, particularly reliable even new. These days, people restoring radios get rid of these ASAP. It often fixes the radio without doing any more work, and, even if it doesn't, it can get rid of many potential future problems.

 

[lordkenmore]

Back to ads

one thing that was interesting with some programs in the early days was how the ads at least sometimes got integrated with the show itself. I've seen with at least Burns and Allen, and I think Jack Benny. There would, for example, be a part when Carnation Milk would make some sort of appearance on Burns and Allen. In a way, this would be the advertiser's dream, because people would be more likely to stay, rather that bolt to the kitchen for a snack.

 

[lordkenmore]

This may be legend

but I heard a story that Alfred Hitchcock once told his TV show audience a story about having dinner with a boring person, but putting up with the boredom because that person was paying for the dinner. Then, of course, Hitchcock's program went to ad time....

I haven't seen that, so it may be a mixed up story I heard. But Hitchcock definitely had some things to say about advertisers on the shows of his that I have seen...

 

[supersuds]

Hitchcock kidded his advertisers in every show, so I would believe it. It was a running gag.

Integrated commercials, or commercials featuring the star of the show, were common in the Fifties. It tended to die out as TV time became too expensive for just one advertiser.

Here's Lee Marvin for Pall Mall cigarettes, for instance. (You might recognize the theme music for his show, M Squad, which was recycled for the Police Squad/Naked Gun TV shows and movies.)

 

[rp2813]

Integrated advertisements

Speaking of Pall Mall, I remember the something similar from The Beverly Hillbillies, with Irene Ryan (Granny) advising that Winston tastes good, "Like a cigarette had oughtta,"  putting her own spin on Winston's "Tastes good like a cigarette should" slogan.