Spent most of last week at my aunt and uncles getting the property ready for the La Vigna Picnic/Bea & John’s wedding. It took Dean and I a good 3 evenings to get the sound system set up and tuned. My parents showed up on Friday morning so my mom could start on the flowers for the wedding.

The wedding started at 1 on Sat and blended right into the picnic at 2. It was a great affair. Check out the La Vigna Web site for pictures of both the wedding and picnic in the photo gallery. New pictures will be add as they come in.

It was one of the better picnics. I am already working on new ideas for next year, which is the 20th anniversary of the family news paper so I think we need to do something big. Any ideas let me know.

This little blip on the Internet that I found on ufies.org hit’s it right on the head. I remember a friend of mine who teaches at a local collage telling me that one of his students came to him to ask to change her term papers topic. He asked why? She told him that she couldn’t find anything on the Internet about it. He promptly took her over to the window pointed to the big building across the way and told her “that’s the library, the library’s your friend use it.”

Now I use the same line but for Google. But I know that not all is to be found on the Internet and that you have to use the library once in awhile.

I was deprived as a child…my parents took away the television when I was 10. That meant I was unable to watch TV at home, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t watch TV when I was out. When I was a kid and at the mall I could always be found at a major department stores television department just hanging out watching TV. It got so bad that the sales people and I knew each other on a first name basis. If I were at a family members house or friend’s house I would always try and get a little TV time in. I admit it I was and am now a television junky. I will watch just about anything if I have a chance. But the programming isn’t what it was when I was a kid.

When I was young you didn’t have all these paid programming infomercials. This of course was also before cable TV became big. You had to have an antenna to watch. You had to have one for VHF, which consisted of stations between 2 and 13. And most people use to get 3,6,10 the “big three”. But if you were a kid the shows that were gold were on UHF and you needed the round antenna. In the Philadelphia area the UHF channels were 17,29, and 48.

For a kid thought TV heaven was the “Saturday Morning Cartoon Marathon”.
Now on a Saturday you could spend a whole day just watching TV. You have to remember that there was no Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. Saturday Morning was the only time that you got the big three to put on cartoons.

A typical Saturday consisted of cartoons from 7am till noon on the big three, but when you saw Kukla, Fran and Ollie starting the CBS Children’s Film Festival you knew it was time to go out side play for about 2 hours then come back in and move on to UHF. Then the real fun would start. From 2 till 5 you had Dr Shock and Mad Theatre & Horror Theater on channel 17 showing “B” horror movies. They ranged from the “Incredible shrinking man” to any of the Vincent Price movies. This was followed by Kung-Fu movies. But as I grew up the cartoons were replaced by sleep and the networks started to stop hosting there own shows and syndication took over. But then I found channel 52 the NJ public television station. On Saturday afternoon they would run Dr. Who in movie format. That was a typical Saturday afternoon.

Sundays were a snore because it was mostly all sport shows and news. At night thought it picked up you had the “Wonderful World of Disney” and then as I got older the “Six Million Dollar Man”.

Weekdays were mostly taken up with school so no TV then but when I got home it was back to UHF before homework time. And channel 48 was the station to be on because you could see the first US/Japans cartoon “Marine Boy” followed by “Speed Racer” and then followed by the live action shows “Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot” followed by “Ultra Man”. I wasn’t allowed to watch much TV on weeknights so not much I remember… then the end came and the TV broke and mom and dad decided I watched a little too much.

Now before you say William didn’t you ever go out. Yes I did, when summer hit I was hardly in front of the TV unless it rained out playing and having fun.

So my question is what has happened to TV, as we knew it. I try to explain to my daughter about TV from the 70’s early 80’s and how much it has changed. In the early days of television the stations user to produce their own shows. Shows that were interesting, fun and that got a following. The Dr. Shock Chiller Theater was a good example of a show done by a small UHF station that had a huge following. And it wasn’t just in Philadelphia other major cities had there own version of Mad Theater & Horror Theater with there own hosts. Now there are less and less family owned television stations. The stations all show formula/cookie cutter shows during the week and infomercials and the same tired movies on the weekends. I understand it costs a lot to run a television station but what about the viewers who want to see something different. I know we could go out and rent a DVD but it’s just not the same. I mean you use to get a guy who would come out dressed up like a mad scientist and give you a few unknown facts about the movie and keep you entertained and you would just have fun.

I also understand why the Saturday morning cartoon fest isn’t happening anymore there is a good article out there explaining why the networks did it and why they don’t do it now.

I guess I am at the first stage of confronting my addiction by admitting I have a problem.

Hello my name is William and I am a Television junky

Got most of my stuff either thrown out or boxed up. I decided to keep it all boxed till the carpet gets done in 4-6 weeks. More pictures in the gallery too.

Well here is a picture of the desk from hell. It will be cleaned as well as the rest of the cube. More pictures are in the cube gallery of the mess. Check back later or tomorrow and I should have the clean pictures.