A 1993 edition of CBS News Up to the Minute, the network’s overnight news service:
I mentioned this a few months ago in another thread, but it’s just as relevant here – a really interesting YouTube history of UPN, America’s “fifth TV network”:
Part 2:
A historical (1995-present) compilation of news opens from POP TV in Slovenia. It’s pretty easy to tell that the channel was launched as an American-owned venture:
What if you were a TV programmer & your country was in the middle of disintegration.
What would you put to air?
Nenad Pejic was the program director of Sarajevo TV in 1992, great interview:
From 1983, a tour of the brand-new newsroom and studios at WCCO in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, USA:
I love these old studio tour videos. Back in the days when you had to pass a technical examination to operate a videotape machine.
A look at 50 years of WABC’s Eyewitness News; the format (and sometimes the name) would later be adopted by many TV stations around the world:
And here’s a 1969 film with a behind-the-scenes look at the station:
And here’s another excerpt from Timothy Green’s 1972 book about television around the world, this time about Austrian television and how it brought the world to Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe (particularly the crushing of the Prague Spring) to the world:
(Click to enlarge)
From Chicago, WBBM’s newly uploaded video (remastered by the station and with a present-day introduction) of a special 10 p.m. newscast covering the Blizzard of 1979:
Part 2: CBS 2 Coverage Of The Blizzard Of '79: Part 2 - YouTube
Part 3: CBS 2 Coverage Of The Blizzard Of '79: Part 3 - YouTube
Part 4: CBS 2 Coverage Of The Blizzard Of '79: Part 4 - YouTube
You’d think they would have matched the volume level…
An old promo of ATC, Argentina’s public TV channel from 1993/94, where the station brags about being the only one on the air in the mornings, while its competitors (9, Telefe (channel 11) and 13) didn’t come in until noon, except for America TV (channel 2), which signed on at 10am. The reason: RATINGS. At the time, it was more important to have better viewing figures than signing on early. The ratings that matter (those who determine if a station won or lost the day, the month or the year) were measured only from noon until midnight. That practice began in 1990, shortly after the privatisation of 11 and 13 and continued throughout the decade. Fortunately, they later expanded their broadcast hours and we could see morning TV on the commercial channels by the 2000s.
…and the brightness level!
A 1982 promo from RAI in Italy touting the expanded distribution of the broadcaster’s third network, which then covered 66% of the population but would soon cover almost the entire country, and encouraging people to modify and/or reorient their antennas to receive its signals:
Was it a network or a third RAI channel?
These days, the channel is branded as Rai Tre, but at the time, it was referred to as RAI’s “Rete 3” (literally “Network 3”), and I suppose we can think of it as a literal network because it combined regional and national programming.
A great 1984 news open from KNBC in Los Angeles featuring George Clooney’s dad Nick Clooney – I just love this theme:
Story on The Guardian about a quaint custom of early British TV, the ‘toddlers’ truce’ where the BBC and later ITV would be required to sign-off between 6.00 and 7.00pm to get the kids away from the TV and to give parents time to put them to bed.
Plus some of the other over-regulated parts of British TV which seem a bit heavy-handed and oddly-specific (e.g. no programming allowed between the very specific times of 6.15pm and 7.25pm on Sundays to allow people to go to church)
Some other oddities include the Angelus at 6pm on RTE1 in Ireland. That practice continues to this day with the nightly news going to air at 6.01pm. The bulletin is called RTE News Six-One. Television advertising was banned on Sundays in New Zealand until 1989. It’s still banned on Sunday mornings even now and to my knowledge it’s still banned on Good Friday and Christmas Day and on the morning of Anzac Day.
Shame they’ve carried some of those quaint customs into the 21st century (like tv licences and cat detector vans)
An interesting look at local TV news in the United States–including the sets, the formats, the use of market research, etc.–from 1978:
A 1995 ID from Channel 5 in Singapore:
A news open from that era:
From New York, WNBC’s coverage of the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 66, 1975:
