Wait... Real Housewives has ELEVEN Seasons? - Horace Tinglett

 

Pay TV, 1955 - How will this work?

As early as 1955, Americans were trying to figure out how to get people to pay for television. You maybe didn't know that till just now, but can you really be surprised? As soon as there was a TV in every living room in the country, of course someone was trying to figure out how to put a coin box on it.

This article is from the October 1955 issue of Popular Science, and people were understandably pissed at the idea of paying for TV. Please enjoy this outline of the proposed janky and complicated methods to deliver programming to the consumer for money, using 1955 technology (wires, gears, magnets, and levers, pretty much).

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Color TV broadcasts, the FCC, and YOU! - A nation in agony, 1950.

Back in 1950, TV manufacturers, the government, and up to four people were frantic about "What's To Be Done About Color Tee Vee?" Manufacturers were fighting about technical standards. Broadcasters were trying to figure out how to most effectively bury the color broadcasts in the schedule. This left the beleaguered consumer to decide whether it was worth over $700 (adjusted for inflation to modern Futurebucks) to stick a giant contraption to the front of their black and white TV, converting it to a color image, or just run out and spend $9,000 (again, converted for inflation) for a full-on color TV. Jesus.

We now present this article from the November, 1950 issue of LIFE so that you can relive all the anger, all the confusion, and all the Vitalis of this turbulent period of upheaval in our nation's history. Where were you when Howdy Doody switched to color? Probably hiding under the bed. He was freaky enough in grayscale.

A brief editorial on naming things:

It's interesting that LIFE felt the need to change the name of a "broadcast" to "colorcast" just because of the addition of color to the signal. A "broadcast" simply describes a signal sent over airwaves. Why should a relatively minor alteration of the signal's format call for a name change? Did they have "dramacasts" and "comedycasts"? No, they didn't. That would be just as stupid. But when people are all excited about something new, they get swept up in the fever of the moment and proclaim that we need a slightly new word to talk about the slightly different thing everyone's wetting their pants over at the moment.

This reminds me of the word "podcast". The word was coined by Apple as a portmanteau of "iPod" and "broadcast", and is more than a little cutesy, because that's Apple. Of course, Apple wants to claim inventorship of everything in history, no matter how many examples predate their execution of an idea. But, history is written by those who shout the loudest and have the best lawyers.

Anyway, the name "podcast" has stuck, due to adoption by most people, and to change it now would be awkward and forced. Sensibility and taste notwithstanding, Leo Laporte insists on calling his TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast a "netcast". Leo gets ten out of ten points for giving Apple the finger, but minus several million for trying too hard and being verbally clumsy. It has completely failed to catch on, so Leo should just let it go.

Another notable example are William Shatner's forgettable Tekwar series of books. In Shatner's lame vision of the future, everything has a dorky new name based on the manufacturing process. Plastic figures heavily in the future, apparently. So, a window is not a window. It's a "plas-window". If your wondrous vision of the future basically involves prefixing everything with "plas-", maybe consider having a cup of coffee and going for a walk until you have a real idea for a story.

Instead of getting more obsessive and granular with names, always trying to force people to learn your stupid made-up word, why not lean in the direction of simplicity? Why be complicated for the sake of complexity? Just call a podcast a "show". It's a perfectly good word that already describes anything from a vaudeville revue to Laser Floyd. Does the means of delivery matter enough to try to shoehorn a new and dorky word into everyone's brain? The desperate wish to make up a name for every iterative version of something that already exists betrays the obsessive lack of perspective of the would-be wordsmith. Your new thingy is very exciting for you, and possibly very nice for someone to use, but it probably doesn't need a new pronoun. Consider what a random person would call it after two seconds consideration. If a pre-existing word leaps easily to mind, you probably don't need a new name for your thing.

For example, electric cars are becoming pretty common, but it's still just a car. Thankfully, nobody has tried to rename them "electrotransports". Just wait, though. Apple has yet to unveil their electric car invention. I'm sure they'll have some pompous declaration with a twee new name they made up. "All other forms of transportation are now obsolete. This is the iScoot. It has more rounded corners. The line forms to the left."

Philco Televisions - High deaf gifts?

It's nuts how much television you can get for five hundred dollars. To the unfortunate troglodytes of 1957, twenty-four inches of grayscale was dizzyingly exciting. Know what, though? I'll bet their TVs sounded better than the built-in speakers of our TVs.

Here are two reasons your TV probably doesn't sound as good as these Philcos.

Reason number A) Unless your a pharaoh or a sultan or something, your TV's cabinet is probably made of ABS plastic (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene). It's my favorite plastic. Yeah. I know. Who has a list of favorite plastics? Dorks, that's who. But ABS is great. It's damn strong, but you can easily trim it with a knife. It comes in brilliant colors. It tolerates thermal softening and reshaping without weird results. Also, it doesn't easily discolor over time and isn't very susceptible to sun bleaching. Legos are made of ABS for chrissakes, so shut up.

However, there isn't really any plastic that makes a good acoustic resonator. That hasn't stopped people from making everything from radios to drum kits out of plastic - mostly because it's so easy and great to make it look cool. Know what resonates very nicely with sound? Wood. Even plywood can sound great with a speaker mounted to it. Go rent a plastic cello and see how that sounds.

Yes, there are companies making carbon fiber cellos and stuff, but CFs freaky stiff properties can be manipulated to great effect in an acoustic instrument. Plus, it's a composite material, and not technically "just plastic".

Yes, you can get a tabletop radio made of plastic that sounds amazing, but the manufacturer has engineered into it special subwoofers and labyrinth channels to coerce decent sound out of a plastic radio. With wood, just give it a strong-ish speaker and screw it in nice and tight and you're done. Wood is acoustically wonderful.

Thing B) Almost all TV speakers today are an afterthought. They're only included to tick the box on the product manager's clipboard. "Yep! It's got speakers!" Yes, it will make sound at useable volume, but televisions are all about the picture. You're pretty much expected to buy, at least, a sound bar or use a component surround sound system with your TV.

Then there's the fact that TVs can be so thin nowadays. There's hardly any room for a decent speaker in there anyway. You think they're going to design a hefty cabinet just to make room for nice speakers when they can have a sexy thin cabinet to show off their anorexically thin LCD tech? Pull the other one.Your TVs picture is way better than your TVs sound.

Because all non-portable TVs were made from wood back then (the one that woman is carrying probably wa smetal and plastic), the sound quality was probably pretty great. Plus, nobody assumed you would be hooking up your TV to an external system. That was crazy talk, daddy-o.

Ooo! I just had a brilliant idea!
1 - Source two really old, beat-up cellos somehow. School rummage sale or SomebodysList.com?
2 - Take the guts and electronics out of a pair of nice, but possibly beaten up 12" three-way floor speakers.
3 - Make the cellos into your new speaker cabinets.

I am a genius. You're welcome!

So, let's see what you could expect to pay for these bad looking, good sounding TVs, back in '57.

Let's see. Inflation Calculator says that $279.95 amounts to $2,361.45 in modern day FutureBucks. And that's the starting price for Philco's "Wrap Around Sound" models. Oof! Philco's regular TVs started at $179.95 (or equivalent $1,523.09). Ladies and gentlemen, we are truly spoilt.

Hey! That lady carrying the TV looks familiar! Sure enough, she's basically the same piece of art Philco used in that other ad we posted in August '14. See?

She's obviously a heavily referenced painting of a photograph. They just did a new version with different clothes and slight changes to her face, and added the bow on the TV. It's interesting to look at two different rendering sof the same photo reference. It makes you wonder if the model looked exactly like either painting, or if they were taking creative licence with her face in both cases. I wonder if the model got an extra check for the re-use. Only joking. I don't wonder that at all. Of course she was paid just for the one photo shoot. Random models don't get royalties.

In any case, we posted her as a Graphic Gift back in '14, and of course we must provide her Christmas version now, just for the sake of completion, right? Gotta catch em all! She's a PNG.  She's got a present for you. She's 1600 pixels tall of pure woman, and she's all yours. You're welcome!

Click for full ad.

Click for 1600px left page.

Click for 1600px right page.

Read Heart dog food. Fort-two to get Reddy.

Does any food manufacturer do send-away premiums any more? I never read the backs of packages when I buy food, so I don't know. This big stuffed dog from Red heart dog food would have been a pretty sweet one, way back in 1957. However, "Reddy" was far from free. First you had to send in six labels from their product (natch), and also mail in $4.95 in 1957 bucks. Let's see... accounting for inflation that comes out to. Jesus Christ! Forty-two bucks!

For forty-two dollars, you could probably frikkin' buy a frikkin' actual dog for frikkin' out loud... which you probably already had, if you were going through six cans of actual dog food to get this fake one. Weird. But, if you think about it, every kid has stuffed animals, and many families have dogs, so, that's not that scandalous. I probably shouldn't have said all those frikkin' swears.

When an Alert Intern plopped this 1957 ad on my desk, the first thing that occurred ot me was how frikkin' much Reddy looks like Cuddly Dudley, the puppety co-star of the Ray Rayner show. "Who the frikkin's Cuddley Dudley, you frikkin' jerk?" you ask? Thanks for calling me a jerk, and here's who he frikkin' was.

Chelveston, Ray, Random Dog, and Fake Dudley.

In The Sixties and Seventies, there was a brilliant kids' show on WGN, the best local TV station in Chicago. the show was Ray Rayner and his Friends. It was a perfectly low-budget show with a reassuringly consistent variety format that's a big hit with kids. (Kids like reliability.) Ray was the host, of course, and his show featured regular in-studio characters like Chelveston the Duck (actually a goose).

Real Cuddley Dudley and Ray.

Once per show, Ray would walk over to camera two and read the fan mail with Cuddley Dudley, a life-sized cocker spaniel puppet. The patter was nearly always improvised, sometimes had a subtext of dirty humor, and usually went over the heads of the audience. Ray's show was also a good source of cartoons, like Mr. Magoo and Looney Tunes, which were sprinkled throughout each episode. Great stuff.

Incidentally, you can see the puppets and other artifcats from the Ray Rayner show at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, down on State Street. I really gotta get down there and see it.


You could also get a Cuddley Dudley doll as a special promotional item for subscribing to the Chicago Tribune. Dudley looked exactly like Reddy, as I will now demonstrate with a side by side compariso...

Oh.

Not very similar after all.

Hell. Now I have no post for today. Double you tee eff am I gonna do now? Just run it anyway and post a few Ray Raynor videos? Sounds like a plan. See you tomorrow, kids!

Click it to big it.

Video Review! Danger 5!

Short version:
If you have eyeballs and ears, use them to watch Danger 5, or go to hell.

Long version:
Danger 5 is an Australian television series. Two seasons are available, with a third on the way. It takes place during World War II, looks like it was made in the Sixties, and was actually made over the last few years by the Sydney Broadcast System (SBS). Currently available on Netflix. It's brilliant.

Dario Russo, with intensity.

The creator / director is Dario Russo, an Australian writer, producer, director, and composer who seems to really really like old film parody. His first project was a serialized internet series called Italian Spiderman, now viewable on FaceTube as a complete movie here.  The Sixties / Seventies look of the film is even more accurate than Grindhouse. From watching it, you can see how the SBS gave him money to make Danger 5.

Italian Spiderman starred David Ashby, who, after substantial weight loss, now fills the role of Jackson, the American member of the Danger 5 team. He hates "nazzis". The other actor who appears in both projects is Carmine Russo, who plays Hitler. Maybe he's related to the director?

"...and for God's sake, kill Hitler!"

Danger 5 are a team of spies on a mission to kill Hitler, as directed by their commander, an Eagle-headed human, Colonel Chestbridge, who seems to be American also. Duh.

If you're the type who always has to have backstory filled in, and always demands "why this?" and "why that?", you're going to have a hard time getting through Danger 5. Some people have animal heads. The Sixties took place in The Forties. Shut up and enjoy it.

Jackson and Claire battle a shark, obviously. Claire spends most of Season 2 as a severed head, carried around by her heartbroken husband, Tucker. Wups! Spoiler!

Production values fall somewhere between Batman and Doctor Who. All buildings are models. All vehicles are toys. All strings are proudly unhidden. Shut up again.

Oh, Ilsa. We're from two different worlds...

All dialogue is dubbed, even if the characters speak English. This captures the zero budget exploitation film aesthetic. Also, everyone can understand every language, even if they can't speak it. This keeps it feeling very international, without  any tedious interpretation needing to be done. Ilsa, for example, who only speaks Russian, can be perfectly understood by anyone, though her dialogue is subtitled for the viewers at home. Also, I love her, although we can never be together.

That's pretty much everything you need to know. Oh yeah: any ally who gets killed recites, with their dying breath, their perfect drink recipe into the ear of a weeping Pierre, who is the team's bartender.

In one episode, there's a Nazi triceratops with machine guns on his head. Goddammit, would you just go and watch it already? Jeez. I need to get back to clicking the "refresh" button on my Netflix queue until season three comes out. Here's a trailer.

General Electric - TV On the Wall!

Just in case you were thinking that you're all modern, with your amazingly good, amazingly affordable LCD television stuck on your wall, stop it. Right there in 1959, GE totally had that dialed in and perfected. Boom. Now who's living in The Future, huh, smarty pants?

 

Disclaimer: This is a two-page spread, but since Blogger doesn't allow any image to be more than 1600 pixels in any one dimension, we split it into two. Otherwise it would be so low-res, you couldn't read the text. In any case, click them to big them.

Anyway. See? Wall TVs - perfected! So maybe the screen is smallish, and maybe it projects from the wall far enough for you to clip a knee cap on it as you walk by. Wall TV, every bit as good as your fancy pants flat panel Panashibasonics TV, right there.

How to Create your Very-own Tele-Vision Scanning Disk! Behold!

Great news, tele-vision hobby-ists! To-day, Phil Are GO! is proud to bring you detailed instructions for building your own Tele-Vision scanning disk - the heart of your very own home Tele-Vision system! You'll still need other brick-a-brack, such as a light and electric-motor, but any gent on the street will tell you that, by far, the most difficult component to acquire of any Tele-Vision set-up is the Tele-Vision  scanning disk. Here now is a complete article for a perfectly current issue of Popular Science Monthly to show you, yes you, the home Tele-Vision hobby-ist how to make your own! How splendid!

Simply click each electro-photo with your computo-mouse to view each in a clearer, easier-to-read version.

"But wait, you bastard!" you may well be shouting. What in The World is on the Tele-Vision here in 1931? This is a fair question. Let me tell you there are ever so many programmes on your new Tele-Vision apparatus, from fisticuffs to piano instruction and a wonderful programme about Tele-Vision itself: Television Today! Observe such a list as this...

• Exhibition Boxing Bouts premieres on the experimental W2XAB (1931–1932)
• Hints for Swimmers premieres on the experimental W2XAB (1931)
• Piano Lessons premieres on the experimental W2XAB (1931–1932).
• The Television Ghost premieres on the experimental W2XAB (1931–1933).
• Television Today premieres on the experimental W2XAB (1931).
• W2XAB debuts music segments with Doris Sharp, Elliot Jaffee, Grace Yeager, Harriet Lee, and Helen Haynes, among others.
• W2XCD debuts a semi-regular segment with singer Alice Remsen.

Please view this electro-film to see how your Tele-Vision apparatus will look once you complete your Scanning Disk...

Fixing Video-Tube Troubles

In case you were thinking about forgetting how good we have it here in The Future, here is an article from Popular Science in 1961, to help readers figure out which tube in their TV set needed to be replaced. Good times.

Depending on what kind of crappy your picture looked like (apart from the "working perfectly" kind of crappy that you and I would call a TV from 1961) , you could possibly diagnose which of the dozen or so tubes in your set had bit the finger, and then run down to the hardware store and (probably) find a replacement. Maybe your video amplifier tube had become gassy? The article doesn't seem to mention how to figure any of this out if there's more than tube wrecking the picture at the same time. Also remember that 1961 TV would cost a few months' of your pay to buy, too.

Truly, readers, we are spoilt.

RCA Victor TV - Slender!

Hi, spoiled brats! It's time to stare in wonder at the "slender" televisions of 1957.

So slender! Knock nine inches off of the Longport and you have a cabinet only (estimated) eighteen inches deep! What will you do with all that extra space? Put in a sun room? A dance studio?

While we may scoff at the sheer bulk of these old TVs, they were nice and stylish. This gives reason to wonder if there's a market for more stylish flat panel TVs? Yes, current designs want only to disappear completely behind the all-important screen, but could somebody design a 56 inch LCD whose cabinet (what there is of it) looks interesting? Maybe just the stubby legs underneath your TV could look "atomic", or be made of walnut-finished formed plywood. The stand underneath my gigantic future-TV is shiny black plastic. I don't have any other shiny black plastic stuff in my living room, so it's not like the TV stand jives with anything else. All you can say for it is that it wants to be invisible... but it just isn't. Hmm. Maybe there's a niche to be filled? Maybe there's room for aftermarket TV legs of a stylish nature? If one or two manufacturers would standardize the swivel socket underneath their TVs, there could be a healthy third party market of cool looking TV legs.

These are pictures of coffee tables that I found, but you can easily imagine a set of TV legs made in a similar way.


If I were about to spend a thousand dollars or more on a TV, and I had the option to spend maybe a hundred more on a nice set of legs for the thing, I think I'd definitely choose to spend a little extra. Would you?

Halloween-ish viewing material - Yes, a little early.

It's cooling off in Chicago, and that means Halloween is on the way. Call me crazy, but when it gets to be Halloween, the perfect thing to get me in the mood is documentaries about life in historical England. Maybe it's because, for most people back then, the world was filled with superstition and crazy beliefs. Not like we're living in an age of enlightenment now or anything, but at least the Medievals had an excuse to life in ignorance, and hence, fear. For whatever reason docs about old England fascinate me, but especially so around Halloween.

You can find a lot of really good documentaries on the FaceTube... and I'm not talking about the (mostly) idiotic crap that History Channel runs. The last time I tried finding something to watch on History Channel, I swear I could feel myself getting dumber by the second. No, I mean good ones with actual historical facts and stuff.

Tony Robinson has had a long career in British TV, but lately he seems to focusing on making really interesting historical documentaries with a high educational value as well as entertainment. This is more or less a lost art in here America, but The Beeb is still producing excellent stuff.

It's not clear why, but The BBC doesn't seem to be bothered by the fact that there are full-length versions of their shows available to watch on the FaceTube. And, I don't mean the kind of thing where the program is chopped up into ten minute segments to get around the (now outdated) time limit on FaceTube videos. No, the complete show is up there, all in one chunk. So, here are a bunch of his shows that are really good Halloween-season watching. Don't tell anyone, but you'll probably learn something too.

If any of these links go dead for some reason, just do a search on the title of the show. Someone else will have the episodes up there.

The Worst Jobs in History. The series is broken down by eras. First episode is Anglo-Saxon. The second one is Medieval, and so on. Tony consults historians and always has a go himself at actually doing every job. What a trooper. In this scene, he's learning how to wash clothes by stomping them in a bucket of human urine, and he's not using pretend urine. Want to feel lucky? learn about some of the worst jobs in history. Twelve episodes.

Gods and Monsters. Each episode explores a topic of ancient superstition. The undead, witches, etc etc. At left, we see Tony dressed as an Average Tudor Bloke, finding his chicken mysteriously dead. The only logical conclusion? Witches! Five episodes.

Walking Through History, Fact or Fiction. Tony examines stories from history, separating out fact from legend. There is an episode all about William Wallace, whom you may remember from the wildly apocryphal Braveheart  movie. Guess what? The blue face paint (woad), and the kilts? Wallace lived 1000 years after they stopped putting woad on their faces and he was 400 years too early to ever wear a kilt.

Please enjoy!

Philco Portable Televisions - Philco Are Goco!

Just to remind you how spoiled we are, please enjoy this ad for Philco portable televisions, from 1957. And to spoil you a little more, have a Graphic Gift or two.

 Advertisers in '57 loved to make up bogus names for things even more than we do now. See the handle on top of that TV where the antenna comes out? Well, because the antenna "rotates to locate the strongest signal" (which, they would have loved for you to assume was an automatic, motorized type of thing, but surely wasn't), it was called the "Scan-Tenna" handle.

These TVs are all pretty neat looking. I'm sure they were available in colors besides brown and orangey-brown. They probably just chose those colors for the ad to adhere to a vague color scheme, and maybe to keep the lady at the bottom - the only element of the ad with yellow or green in it - nice and prominent.

Oh yeah. The affordable price that Philco is so proud of? Well $160 is over $1300 in today's money. Oof. But I'm sure the fake alligator skin cabinet was an optional extra, so you probably didn't have to have that on your Philco unless you suffered from Elvis Presley levels of taste.

Art students, take note. The woman is holding out her pinky. This was done to try and show you how light the TV is, and how effortless it is to move around. Why, even this Slender Seventeen-year-old slip of a girl can whip it around without breaking her smile. Holding out the pinky is a dainty hand, used effectively here.

However, don't use the dainty pinky for everything. I've reviewed portfolios in which every hand not shoved into a pocket was holding out the pinky. There was a drawing of a fantasy dude holding a sword... with a dainty pinky. We get it: you've discovered a secret of "good art", but your new discovery is not the solution to every hand problem you're faced with. Use the pinky judiciously. If you're using the dianty hand for fantasy warrior art, you need to learn to draw more hands. Back to the woodshed with you!



This TV-lugging lady would be useful for your next movie night flyer, or a note to remind your wife about your next "hugging grownups obscene infotainment date night" together. Here she comes. You knew her in the Philco ad, but now she's on a transparent alpha background to slip into whatever composition you have in store for her. Get ready to right click her with your erect pinky in three, two, one....CLICKWITHERECTPINKYNOW!!!

Click for big.

 And because you'se gots an honest face, here's the questionably styled fake alligator skin TV too. I clipped off the Scan-Tenna. Sorry. It was in my way. You're welcome.

Click for big.

Click for big.

"Television" images on film allow viewing anywhere.

Today we bring you breathtaking news from 1931, when Man discovered the secret of transferring video images to film, so that the man in the street can visit a theatre to see what the new experimental technology of "television" looks like!

Travel to your local cinema with all speed, citizens, for your chance to witness Television images of "Man's Head". Please refrain from burning down the cinema theater. There are no demons at work.