Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Tag: television

Vintage TV: A WGN Christmas

Looking back at what was for many years a Chicagoland Christmas television tradition.

20 December 2022
Vintage TV: Bill Cullen

A look back at game show master Bill Cullen.

5 May 2022
Vintage TV: The New Price is Right

A look at the first ever episode of The Price is Right, with Bob Barker.

27 January 2022
Why local news is no longer appointment TV for me

Essay: why I hardly watch local TV news anymore. Hint: no substance.

7 August 2019
Channel 16, Father Hesburgh, and the Prayer for Peace

Seen for the first time in 30 years: the recording of Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame reading the Prayer for Peace of St. Francis at WNDU-TV’s sign-on/sign-off.

14 June 2019
Ozzie and Harriet for Kodak

Vintage commercials for Kodak cameras, via Ozzie and Harriet Nelson.

8 April 2019
1950s TV commercials for Ansco cameras and films

Remembering camera and film company Ansco through some 1950s commercials for its products.

29 March 2019
Vintage TV: Garfield Goose and Frazier Thomas

Even in the 1970s, children’s television could be frenetic. Frazier Thomas and his friend, puppet Garfield Goose, were the gentle antidote. A pleasant morning breeze upon the children’s TV landscape, Garfield Goose and Friends aired each weekday at 8 AM on WGN-TV in Chicago. The premise was that Garfield Goose thought he was the king of the…

2 May 2016
Vintage TV: The CBS Late Movie

I mentioned this post recently here and decided it’s high time to rerun it. It’s an oldie, originally published in August, 2008. Starting in the late ’70s, my brother and I got sent to Camp Grandma in southwestern Michigan for a couple weeks every summer. The rules were extremely relaxed at Camp Grandma. Pepsi and…

6 January 2016
Vintage TV: Freakies

It was a sugar-sweetened cereal for kids. But the cartoony characters that advertised them connected with young viewers in new way, at least for the early 1970s. My mom was not usually a sucker for TV commercials aimed at kids, but she fell hook, line, and sinker for the Freakies. And so we ate Freakies until…

26 October 2015
FilmingPentax ME, 50mm f/1.4 SMC Pentax-MKodak T-Max 4002015

9 July 2015
Tubes

We were the last family in the neighborhood without color TV. Dad was resolute: “Our set works. We’ll use it until can’t be fixed anymore.” And so we soldiered on with a black-and-white console set through most of the 1970s. It broke down occasionally, as tube-type sets did. Mom called the TV repairman, a small, wiry, salt-and-pepper-headed…

1 April 2015