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The Boob Tube … AKA TV

Fun with radio’s younger sibling

The younger sibling of radio (also known as “radio with a picture”) has spawned a lot of great programs and advanced electronic communications. Portable wasn’t a word easily adopted by television … and it’s been interesting to see how real-life has adopted some of what it’s seen on TV.

KTLA “Telecopter”
This is a fascinating video from the earliest days of “portable” TV communications. We’re fortunate that the nature of radio and TV lends itself to archiving. Though we’ve lost quite a bit of our past to deteriorated film and tape (and even wire), there are plenty of great historical nuggets. This is one of them.

Star Trek … Made in China
I came across an interesting news story related to wealth, sci-fi, TV and “Star Trek.” If you’re a “Star Trek” fan, I think you’re going to like this.

Live, From New York …
Don Pardo made the opening famous, but the show has endeared itself to many of us over its 40-year run (with hopefully more to follow).

I even know a first-hand account of an engineer friend who gave a young Lorne Michaels a tour of Studio 8H. Years later Michaels asked that same engineer to “run over to New Jersey” (where NBC had film vaults) to get footage of “a car crashing over a cliff.” That footage was later seen as “Toonces the Driving Cat” (who inevitably drove over a cliff).

Though I’ve never been fortunate enough to get show tickets (via NBC’s “ticket lottery” each fall), it hasn’t hampered my appreciation for the magic of a live TV comedy performed so many times. If you’d like to see treasures from the show, there’s a traveling exhibit from the show’s history.

And finally …
As someone who does voice-over work, I enjoy hearing so many talented friends doing incredible work. I also enjoy hearing announcers from the past. Here’s an interesting story from The Atlantic related to how the old style of announcing (from years ago) came to be.

If you stumble across a good or unusual web site that might be of interest, please don’t hesitate to send me the link and any info you might have about it. My email address is [email protected].

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