LA Times TCM Article

[txfilmfan]

LA Times article on TCM, and more broadly, the history of movies on TV. Not much new here, to be honest. It's an argument for keeping the status quo w.r.t. TCM. I think there are a couple of minor errors in there (particularly, the line about CBS's first showing of The Wizard of Oz being uninterrupted is rather hard to believe.)

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... -movies-tv

[jimimac71]

This article was reprinted in my local newspaper as well.
Thanks for sharing.

[Dargo]

LA Times article on TCM, and more broadly, the history of movies on TV. Not much new here, to be honest. It's an argument for keeping the status quo w.r.t. TCM. I think there are a couple of minor errors in there (particularly, the line about CBS's first showing of The Wizard of Oz being uninterrupted is rather hard to believe.)

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... -movies-tv

Thanks for posting this L.A. Times article here, Tex.

As a native Angeleno of the Boomer generation myself and as it seems Robert Lloyd the author of this article appears to be, I felt his words held a special personal connection with me, as I also remember many of the same moments of this particular media market's early television programming of that era which he described. This may the very reason why so many of my friends who seem impressed with my familiarity with studio era films will often say as a reason for this, "That's because you knew up in L.A."

I'd guess their reasoning behind this being to imply because of it being the movie capital of the world, but I'd think--and as Mr. Lloyd states in his article--it being more the idea that with the Los Angeles market at that time having seven broadcast channels to choose from and with so many other Americans during this time and depending upon how large a city and market their formative years took place, they'd often have fewer television channels to choose from. Less channels making for less opportunities to catch "old movies" on TV.

I also found myself in agreement with many of the points and laments Mr. Lloyd makes in his article as well.

Oh, and btw, you were correct about Mr. Lloyd being in error in stating that there were "no commercials shown" during CBS's first 1955 broadcast of 'The Wizard of Oz'...well at least according to what the following excerpt from "The Wizard of Oz on television" Wikipedia page here says:

"For the first TV broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, the normally 90-minute Ford Star Jubilee was expanded to a full two hours to accommodate the entire film, which in addition to having commercial breaks, was celebrity hosted. The main reason that CBS arranged for a host for the film was that at 101-minutes, the film was not considered long enough to run in the allotted 120-minute slot at that time, even with commercial breaks, without additional content to pad the entire telecast out to two hours.[9]"

[txfilmfan]

LA Times article on TCM, and more broadly, the history of movies on TV. Not much new here, to be honest. It's an argument for keeping the status quo w.r.t. TCM. I think there are a couple of minor errors in there (particularly, the line about CBS's first showing of The Wizard of Oz being uninterrupted is rather hard to believe.)

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... -movies-tv

Thanks for posting this L.A. Times article here, Tex.

As a native Angeleno of the Boomer generation myself and as it seems Robert Lloyd the author of this article appears to be, I felt his words held a special personal connection with me, as I also remember many of the same moments of this particular media market's early television programming of that era which he described. This may the very reason why so many of my friends who seem impressed with my familiarity with studio era films will often say as a reason for this, "That's because you knew up in L.A."

I'd guess their reasoning behind this being to imply because of it being the movie capital of the world, but I'd think--and as Mr. Lloyd states in his article--it being more the idea that with the Los Angeles market at that time having seven broadcast channels to choose from and with so many other Americans during this time and depending upon how large a city and market their formative years took place, they'd often have fewer television channels to choose from. Less channels making for less opportunities to catch "old movies" on TV.

I also found myself in agreement with many of the points and laments Mr. Lloyd makes in his article as well.

Oh, and btw, you were correct about Mr. Lloyd being in error in stating that there were "no commercials shown" during CBS's first 1955 broadcast of 'The Wizard of Oz'...well at least according to what the following excerpt from "The Wizard of Oz on television" Wikipedia page here says:

"For the first TV broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, the normally 90-minute Ford Star Jubilee was expanded to a full two hours to accommodate the entire film, which in addition to having commercial breaks, was celebrity hosted. The main reason that CBS arranged for a host for the film was that at 101-minutes, the film was not considered long enough to run in the allotted 120-minute slot at that time, even with commercial breaks, without additional content to pad the entire telecast out to two hours.[9]"

You're correct about the number of TV stations in the (mostly) VHF era. Due to FCC channel spacing regulations, 7 VHF channels was the maximum any TV market/city could have. New York and LA were the only ones I know of to have seven. Chicago would have been the only other one large enough to support that number. In order to get seven, the channels assignments could only be: 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13. Oddly, the first 4 stations in the LA market were all independent, signing on in 1948. The 3 networks didn't get LA affiliates until 1949.

I grew up in between two medium-to-large markets (OKC and DFW) and we had cable television. The town's system started in 1951, as there were only 2 local stations available via antenna. The early system had a 5 channel capacity, but later expanded to 12 in the late 50s/early 60s. I grew up with 12 channels to watch from 4 different markets, so there was almost always an old movie running anytime during the "broadcast day," as they used to say.

[LiamCasey]

Chicago would have been the only other one large enough to support that number.

Chicago only had five channels in the VHF band (2, 5, 7, 9 and 11). Now I feel like my childhood was gypped!