Although far from perfect, YouTube has become an invaluable resource for historians, researchers, and television fanatics. Every month, I’ll share five or six videos that I find particularly interesting or noteworthy.
First up this month, here’s a collection of IBM commercials from the late 1980s featuring most of the cast of M*A*S*H. Not seen are McLean Stevenson, Mike Farrell, and David Ogden Stiers.
Next, here’s the complete “What’s New? ABC!” fall preview special from 1963, hosted by Edie Adams. It features previews of shows like The Outer Limits, Arrest and Trial, McHale’s Navy, and Channing.
Here’s the full ABC Evening News broadcast for Friday, January 1, 1971 with anchors Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner.
On October 10, 1949, NBC broadcast an experimental color episode of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. This is a black-and-white kinescope of that broadcast.
Here’s an installment of CBS Reports from June 1964 titled “D-Day Plus 20 Years – Eisenhower Returns to Normandy” that unfortunately has been cropped to 16:9 widescreen.
Finally, here’s an episode of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet broadcast on the DuMont Television Network on September 26, 1953.
Hit the comments with your reactions to these videos. And be sure to check back next month for another set of YouTube Finds!
Those are nifty uniforms space cadets will be wearing in the 24th century, what with raised dots all over their collars, cuffs and belts. And they prepare to take off in their space craft by “heating up their tubes”! I wish I were a 1950s child so I could get a pair of Red Goose shoes, with leather soles.
I may watch some of the other videos, but Dumont shows always come first.
It’s easy to forget how limited puppetry was before the Muppets came along. Kukla, Fran and Ollie were probably the biggest puppet show prior to The Muppet Show. And I still get their names confused.
What a time capsule the ABC newscast is! Big bonus for me: at 24:30, a PSA that features a piece of a song that’s been in my head for 50 years and I had no idea of what it was from! So ,thanks !