Thursday, December 15, 2005
TV and Christmas Past
Put on those traveling shoes and go backwards in Time for a look at Christmas and Television the way it used to be. While I have never been part of the "it-was-better-years-ago" crowd, it is interesting to see how American culture has been so vividly and drastically changed with the arrival of half a billion TV channels to choose from compared to the handful of networks and independent channels that existed pre-1980s.
TV Party.com has a peek at what was, including the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special (yes, even then the evil secularists had used the word Holiday), plus a look at how the Rudolph special was made and those shows where old Hollywood crooners like Bing or Hope kept the family around the television. Check out the page here. I seem to remember it all changed the year Bing Crosby had David Bowie on his Christmas show.
They have loads of forgotten TV moments. You can rundown the schedule for a Saturday morning cartoon round-up in 1978 which included the Bay City Rollers cartoon, the sixth season of Fat Albert, and lots of superheroes and American Bandstand.
It all looks like ancient history today.
I just read that the original puppets used for "Rudolph" have been located!
ReplyDeleteA Rankin Bass tech had kept them & used them for Christmas decorations.