I think a lot of us who fall into my age group, I'm 47, kind of took it for granted regarding the kind of programming we were lucky to have as kids. I scroll through the vast wasteland of 200+ channel TV of today and most times, I can't find anything I want to watch. As mentioned in my introductory post, back in the day we had seven channels and everything was on. So, we took it for granted. It was TV so we just watched and enjoyed. Of course, we could not predict back then what television would become in the next 30+ years so it sort of let's us off the hook.
One of my hobbies is collecting old TV Guides from the NY Metro area. I have quite a few that range in year from 1961 to 1981 with the majority being from the 1970's which happens to be the decade I remember most and the decade that had the most impact on me. When I look at those old Guides, aside from smiling a lot, I marvel at what TV had to offer. Excellent prime time shows. Great made-for-tv movies. Terrific theatrical films making their TV debuts. Sports. News. Wonderful cartoons. Fantastic old movies and superb off-network reruns. All cramped into seven measly channels. I marvel at it to be quite honest.
Since this blog will mostly be about the films that appeared on TV back then, do you realize or even remember that on any given Saturday night you could see a ton of great movies that all started after 11:00PM!! If you liked movies back in the day or liked staying up late or was an insomniac, you had a field day. Dramas, Westerns, Musicals, Horror, Science Fiction, you name it and those seven channels had it. Sometimes you would get a "slow" Saturday night and only stumble upon 7 or 8 films but many times you would get a Saturday night of your dreams and find 11 or 12 movies!! It really blows my mind when I look back at it. Perhaps saying we took it for granted is incorrect but one thing I know is right......we were very lucky for what we had back in the day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I so agree with you. If I were growing up now, I don't think I would be a movie fan. Or I would be a different type of movie fan. But back then on TV you had movies, movies, movies! Now we have TCM, but it is kind of a Catch-22: You have to already like old movies to watch TCM, but if you don't watch TCM, you're probably not going to like old movies. Also back in the day, it was a real event when a certain movie came on. Saturday night was my favorite night because I would stay up to watch those late movies. Thanks for the memories!
ReplyDelete