For those who grew up in Detroit, here is a link to my classic Detroit television page.
http://www.detroitkidshow.com/
Classic Detroit TV
Re: Classic Detroit TV
I just fell over this link today and I have a closeness to Detroit TV in the 1970s when I lived on an off with my mother's now late sister in Lincoln Park(48146). Allen Park low-band UHF was nearby and we lived under a flight path in and out of Metro airport which caused havoc to the TV transmission(also low-band TV was also a reception problem).
They were fun TV days in that period and echoed what I was used to in my home country of Australia. Many of the same Hollywood TV series and films run the same way. We even had some of the same logos and theme music promoting our TV stations.
I saw Soupy Sales a lot on TV and was aware that he started in Detroit. Danny Thomas was from Detroit and involved with the local March of Dimes and some members of my family had been too and knew Danny reasonably well.
I arranged a tour of Detroit News' then NBC-affiliate Ch4 which was interesting. The laws that lost Ch4 from the paper came into force in Australia too and they weren't justified. Relaxed a lot here now.
Bill Kennedy had been on CKLW Ch9 in Windsor/Ontario before going to UHF Kaiser Broadcasting Ch50 which also went out in other states on cable then. I saw many movies he hosted every afternoon from there and he had a lot of guests in who were passing thru on tours selling their books etc. One was Leo Gorcey of Bowery Boys fame. Got all those films but never saw the book. I rang Bill for a chat one day. I knew of his existence from supporting roles in Warner Bros films, particularly Westerns. Ch50 had a fire in those years and had a telephon to raise funds for recover from this calamity. Not sure of the extent of this fire.
A popular talk/magazine program at that time was conducted by Virginia Graham, who I believe passed on some years ago. I remember her son got high on drugs and drove a car thru the glass front doors of the TV station.
Mr Belvedere ads I remember very well and his catch phrase was "We Do Good Work". His ads showed a girl ready to take phone orders. There was a show that came on in the early hours of Mondays called For My People and was a radical Afro-American show with a lady with a rather high hairstyle. When the Belvedere ads were on this show the phone girl was an Afro-American. This followed the Sunday late night Lou Gordon Show. Lou was Jewish and his show was a consumer type show and he listened to peoples complaints about products and other things. His wife was Jackie and she acted rather jealous if he paid a lot of attention to some pretty guest. Might have been an act. Lou had personal medical insurance with a company that had an in-house hospital in New York state somewhere and he had to go there for his cancer treatment.
Other advertisers were Highland Appliance who had kiosk sized store with samples only and I guess stock was shipped from a central warehouse. They had a pseudo-Scot voice-over that went: Hi Hi Highland Appliance. A furniture warehouse turned up for a year or so called Joshua Doore and had a rail line into their warehouse. They advertised a lot.
A lot of businesses disappeared in the 1970s during a financial crisis and most multi-store or single location variety stores closed for good like Robert Hall and Topps(they had only one store that I knew of). The likes of JC Penney, Lerners and Montgomery Ward remained. The grocery trade shrunked after a flirtation with 24 hour shopping which was a couple of mergers and some chain closures in Detroit. A&P was the most expensive supermarket at the time, it seemed.
I saw Sonny Eliot being the village clown doing his weather often.
An actor who went under the stage name of Dean Miller was a news reader on WDIV in Detroit in the 1970s. He had been on the Spring Byington 1960s TV series December Bride(it played TV in Australia) which also starred Harry Morgan before MASH(and in the spin of Pete & Gladys). Miller came from Ohio and in 1965 he bought an FM station there and then an AM one in Sidney/Ohio. When Dean died of cancer in early 2004 he was living in Grosse Pointe Woods but he was buried in Sidney/Ohio. He was 79. His wife is said to still run the radio station.
Talking of archives and loss of recorded programs, that is a story familiar world-wide when there are archives in most countries that would take them. In about 1972 there was a Summer street market in an an office area, Downtown Detroit, on Sundays and stalls were set up against the closed for the weekend offices. One stall had boxes and boxes of quality average sized Hollywood film photos by the thousands. They all had company names and photo code numbers on them. Who knows where they ended up.
It was a great time to be in USA for me then and I will never forget those years as long as I live. Many of the players in my life then have passed, some too young, and my aunt died from a fall on her head at 89 about 14 months ago. My aunt was a lady whose childhood was movie magazines passed on to her by an aunt in the 1930s(and always with her head in them, even at school) and she loved films, TV, nostalgia in general, opera along with Mario Lanza whose society she belonged that still goes today.
They were fun TV days in that period and echoed what I was used to in my home country of Australia. Many of the same Hollywood TV series and films run the same way. We even had some of the same logos and theme music promoting our TV stations.
I saw Soupy Sales a lot on TV and was aware that he started in Detroit. Danny Thomas was from Detroit and involved with the local March of Dimes and some members of my family had been too and knew Danny reasonably well.
I arranged a tour of Detroit News' then NBC-affiliate Ch4 which was interesting. The laws that lost Ch4 from the paper came into force in Australia too and they weren't justified. Relaxed a lot here now.
Bill Kennedy had been on CKLW Ch9 in Windsor/Ontario before going to UHF Kaiser Broadcasting Ch50 which also went out in other states on cable then. I saw many movies he hosted every afternoon from there and he had a lot of guests in who were passing thru on tours selling their books etc. One was Leo Gorcey of Bowery Boys fame. Got all those films but never saw the book. I rang Bill for a chat one day. I knew of his existence from supporting roles in Warner Bros films, particularly Westerns. Ch50 had a fire in those years and had a telephon to raise funds for recover from this calamity. Not sure of the extent of this fire.
A popular talk/magazine program at that time was conducted by Virginia Graham, who I believe passed on some years ago. I remember her son got high on drugs and drove a car thru the glass front doors of the TV station.
Mr Belvedere ads I remember very well and his catch phrase was "We Do Good Work". His ads showed a girl ready to take phone orders. There was a show that came on in the early hours of Mondays called For My People and was a radical Afro-American show with a lady with a rather high hairstyle. When the Belvedere ads were on this show the phone girl was an Afro-American. This followed the Sunday late night Lou Gordon Show. Lou was Jewish and his show was a consumer type show and he listened to peoples complaints about products and other things. His wife was Jackie and she acted rather jealous if he paid a lot of attention to some pretty guest. Might have been an act. Lou had personal medical insurance with a company that had an in-house hospital in New York state somewhere and he had to go there for his cancer treatment.
Other advertisers were Highland Appliance who had kiosk sized store with samples only and I guess stock was shipped from a central warehouse. They had a pseudo-Scot voice-over that went: Hi Hi Highland Appliance. A furniture warehouse turned up for a year or so called Joshua Doore and had a rail line into their warehouse. They advertised a lot.
A lot of businesses disappeared in the 1970s during a financial crisis and most multi-store or single location variety stores closed for good like Robert Hall and Topps(they had only one store that I knew of). The likes of JC Penney, Lerners and Montgomery Ward remained. The grocery trade shrunked after a flirtation with 24 hour shopping which was a couple of mergers and some chain closures in Detroit. A&P was the most expensive supermarket at the time, it seemed.
I saw Sonny Eliot being the village clown doing his weather often.
An actor who went under the stage name of Dean Miller was a news reader on WDIV in Detroit in the 1970s. He had been on the Spring Byington 1960s TV series December Bride(it played TV in Australia) which also starred Harry Morgan before MASH(and in the spin of Pete & Gladys). Miller came from Ohio and in 1965 he bought an FM station there and then an AM one in Sidney/Ohio. When Dean died of cancer in early 2004 he was living in Grosse Pointe Woods but he was buried in Sidney/Ohio. He was 79. His wife is said to still run the radio station.
Talking of archives and loss of recorded programs, that is a story familiar world-wide when there are archives in most countries that would take them. In about 1972 there was a Summer street market in an an office area, Downtown Detroit, on Sundays and stalls were set up against the closed for the weekend offices. One stall had boxes and boxes of quality average sized Hollywood film photos by the thousands. They all had company names and photo code numbers on them. Who knows where they ended up.
It was a great time to be in USA for me then and I will never forget those years as long as I live. Many of the players in my life then have passed, some too young, and my aunt died from a fall on her head at 89 about 14 months ago. My aunt was a lady whose childhood was movie magazines passed on to her by an aunt in the 1930s(and always with her head in them, even at school) and she loved films, TV, nostalgia in general, opera along with Mario Lanza whose society she belonged that still goes today.