Story Friday, January 31, 2020

[Tom Sewell 268]

https://egscomics.com/comic/party-116

"Obligatory Party Prank"

[mlooney 3,594]

OK, why is Diane having fantasy of a party prank when they just said there was a penalty for doing that?  Does she secretly want to be stacked with a short skirt on?

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

I'm not sure Diane knows what she wants to happen

She only knows that she wants something to happen

And if she can make enough stuff happen, one way or another, then maybe something that happens will be what she actually wants to happen

Kind of like repeatedly flipping channels at three in the morning hoping that you will eventually land on something worth watching

[Scotty 1,061]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

OK, why is Diane having fantasy of a party prank when they just said there was a penalty for doing that?  Does she secretly want to be stacked with a short skirt on?

When she stated the need for a penalty, she wanted to do so as a way to "lessen her own temptation to misuse the wand", her fantasy shows that the temptation is quite strong after seeing Elliot girlify and shrink.

[mlooney 3,594]

36 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I'm not sure Diane knows what she wants to happen

She only knows that she wants something to happen

And if she can make enough stuff happen, one way or another, then maybe something that happens will be what she actually wants to happen

Kind of like repeatedly flipping channels at three in the morning hoping that you will eventually land on something worth watching

That might be the case here.  Of course I'll take you word on the flipping channel bit, because if I'm watching  a screen at 3 in the morning, I know what I want to watch.  But I'm weird like that.

[mlooney 3,594]

3 minutes ago, Scotty said:

When she stated the need for a penalty, she wanted to do so as a way to "lessen her own temptation to misuse the wand", her fantasy shows that the temptation is quite strong after seeing Elliot girlify and shrink.

Oh.  Good point.  I hadn't thought of that aspect of it.

[ChronosCat 158]

Yay for blurry-sunburst-with-stars background in panel four!

4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Kind of like repeatedly flipping channels at three in the morning hoping that you will eventually land on something worth watching

These days, the channels I'm most likely to watch play the same sorts of programming 24/7, so I'm actually nearly as likely to find something worth watching at 3 in the morning as at any other time of day or night.

That said, I do remember back in the 90s when in the early morning some channels went off the air entirely, and the others mostly played infomercials and "shopping" shows.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

I do remember back in the 90s when in the early morning some channels went off the air entirely

I miss the block of PSAs, Legal Notices, Generic Prayer, and National Anthems* that would begin and end every broadcast day
_{*Channels in Detroit would play both the Star Spangled Banner and O Canada}

[mlooney 3,594]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I miss the block of PSAs, Legal Notices, Generic Prayer, and National Anthems* that would begin and end every broadcast day
_{*Channels in Detroit would play both the Star Spangled Banner and O Canada}

Don't forget quoting High Flight.

 

[Darth Fluffy 338]

I recall falling asleep during Johnny Carson and waking up to a test pattern. Not a lot, but more than once.

[ijuin 594]

Post-Millennial kid: What's a test pattern?

[Darth Fluffy 338]

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Post-Millennial kid: What's a test pattern?

I am sort of assuming that is a rhetorcal question, but in case it isn't I'll answer it anyway. In the days when broadcast TV was the only form of TV, up to the 1990s, a typical station would shut down for the night at say 1:00 or 2:00 AM, it varied, and come on again in the morning. That's when all the stuff referenced above, national anthem et al, happened, at shut down. I think the generic prayer was a preamble to returning to the air. In the dead time in between, the stations would broadcast a static image, a test pattern, along with a single audio tone, all oriented toward calibrating the equipment, hence test pattern. Here is the wiki article on test patterns, the ubiquitous B&W Indian, now called Native American, and a further article on the color bars test pattern. I recall seeing the classic test pattern years after color was common, but it might have been just a station of two. I vaguely recall them being replaced by color patterns, but the station that carried Johnny Carson must have used a hybrid with the Indian, or I'm misremembering. As the one article states, in the 90's, stations moved to 24/7 broadcast.

A key point is that in the earliest days of TV, the tube based receivers were unstable enough that having a means of adjusting the set was particularly useful. By the solid state era, not so much, and today, it would be almost pointless.

Broadcast is still a thing, in the US, though not popular. I see ads for small urban antennas occasionally but large TV antennas on houses (like these) used to be ubiquitous as well. TVs used to come with built-in rabbit ear antennas, from about the 60s to the end of the CRT era.

In our area, we picked up Philly broadcast in VHF, three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and with a rotor (or a second antenna) we could get NYC. The network shows were the same, but there was a lot of local filler content. There was a local news and a network news; kids shows were local or syndicated, purchased from another local broadcaster. Most folks did not bother with picking up NYC, because the content was similar enough, and Philly covered news in our area, such as school sports scores, and NYC ignored us.

UHF was introduced in the 60s; a very few additional stations were available, and typically. By the 1970s, we had an independent station from Philly, and a local PBS; I think one was VHF and one was UHF.

Cable was only being introduced in the 60s in urban areas. Cable basically bundled all of the channels with its own channel schedule, so you could get them all on a standard VHF TV, with no antenna and a strong signal. Few people bothered, initially, it competed with free TV and added little. Initially, cable companies were small and local, unencrypted, and did not add content.

Optical fiber was not yet a thing. Lasers were in their infancy, so no off the shelf optical communications components.

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

Is there any bit of obscure television that has not been saved to Ewe toob?

[ijuin 594]

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I am sort of assuming that is a rhetorcal question, but in case it isn't I'll answer it anyway.

Yah, I'm not a post-Millennial myself (actually on the border between Generation X and Millennials), but I can just imagine all the currently-actually-children who wouldn't know what a test pattern is.

[Darth Fluffy 338]

11 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Is there any bit of obscure television that has not been saved to Ewe toob?

Yes, I'd imagine quite a bit. While video tape was available from near the infancy of public broadcast, film was more widely used if the broadcast was recorded at all. Video tapes were often reused by the studios and stations, so original content was slot. Reruns of I Live Lucy and The Honeymooners were common when I was a kid, so I guess they were on film; also cartoons. Sgt. Bilko/You'll Never Get Rich never seems to see the light of day, so I suspect films were lost or damaged, or there were rights issues. Ernie Kovaks is considered to be foundational in modern video comedy, but you'll find precious little of his shows preserves.

Viewers did not record shows. Video tape was not available as a consumer item until the mid seventies. Film was available to consumers in an 8mm format, and it was crappy. Taping just the audio would have been doable.

So, just did a search, Phil Silvers Sgt. Bilko is on You Tube. I'll have to watch some.

There is some Ernie Kovaks, not a lot.

What's Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This, they have the title song, the credits, and one other song.

Leave it to Beaver, quite a bit; Dobie Gillis, quite a bit; The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, check; the animated Pogo special, yes, and one I didn't know about; Claymation Christmas Special, check; The Adventures of Mark Twain Claymation, check; Dennis the Menace TV show, looks like they have some episodes; George Burns and Gracie Allen, check.

You make a good point, I'm not finding much that You Tube doesn't have.

 

 

[hkmaly 490]

On 1/31/2020 at 8:47 PM, ChronosCat said:

That said, I do remember back in the 90s when in the early morning some channels went off the air entirely, and the others mostly played infomercials and "shopping" shows.

... we still have most channels like that. Also, there is channel which for some reason is playing short loop of airplane circling above terrain. No idea why.

 

[ChronosCat 158]

On 2/2/2020 at 3:03 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

Yes, I'd imagine quite a bit. While video tape was available from near the infancy of public broadcast, film was more widely used if the broadcast was recorded at all. Video tapes were often reused by the studios and stations, so original content was slot. Reruns of I Live Lucy and The Honeymooners were common when I was a kid, so I guess they were on film; also cartoons. Sgt. Bilko/You'll Never Get Rich never seems to see the light of day, so I suspect films were lost or damaged, or there were rights issues. Ernie Kovaks is considered to be foundational in modern video comedy, but you'll find precious little of his shows preserves.

Viewers did not record shows. Video tape was not available as a consumer item until the mid seventies. Film was available to consumers in an 8mm format, and it was crappy. Taping just the audio would have been doable.

Not exactly obscure, but a large number of episodes of Doctor Who from the 60s were taped over by the BBC. In some cases they'd sent out copies to stations in other countries and the episodes were later restored from those copies, but for many episodes all that remains is the audio recordings made by fans.

On 2/2/2020 at 3:03 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

You make a good point, I'm not finding much that You Tube doesn't have.

Ironically, it's probably easier to find obscure TV than popular TV on You Tube; stuff that a company actually cares about posted without permission tends get taken down.

[ijuin 594]

Yeah, in the pre-color era, there wasn’t really a concept of “reruns”, especially for series that were not highly rated at the time of production, so many stations did not see any value in retaining the recordings.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

14 minutes ago, ijuin said:

there wasn’t really a concept of “reruns”,

Rerun Rant Triggered

Desi Arnaz is one of the individuals we have to thank for "reruns"

When planning "I Love Lucy", Desi wanted the show filmed with three cameras like a movie instead of shot live with a single camera, which was standard in television at the time.  When he approached CBS and Phillip Morris (their primary sponsor) about the idea, they both turned him down.  They liked the idea, but didn't like the extra cost.  Eventually, he and Lucy put up the extra money themselves with the condition that they,  not CBS or Phillip Morris, would own the shows after they aired.  Thus was born Desilu Productions.

Desilu Studios came about a few years later when Desi took a long lunch off the set of "I Love Lucy" and announced upon his return that he had just bought the old RKO Studios.

It gets me when I watch them behaving so ridiculously on the old show, that as funny and talented those two were as entertainers, they were absolute geniuses when it came to the business side of show business

[hkmaly 490]

On 2/3/2020 at 5:19 PM, ChronosCat said:

Not exactly obscure, but a large number of episodes of Doctor Who from the 60s were taped over by the BBC. In some cases they'd sent out copies to stations in other countries and the episodes were later restored from those copies, but for many episodes all that remains is the audio recordings made by fans.

I knew there was show with this problem.

On 2/3/2020 at 5:19 PM, ChronosCat said:

On 2/2/2020 at 9:03 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

You make a good point, I'm not finding much that You Tube doesn't have.

Ironically, it's probably easier to find obscure TV than popular TV on You Tube; stuff that a company actually cares about posted without permission tends get taken down.

While there is high correlation between those two, popular and what companies care about is not exactly same. I would say that big companies may care even about their not-really-popular stuff while smaller companies don't have the means to take down even their best stuff. Also, US companies have advantage here.