Television Obscurities celebrates its 19th anniversary today. Sort of.
If you’ve read the About page or the two part history of Television Obscurities I wrote back in 2013, you’ll know that the early history of this website is murky. It dates back to around 1999 when I started building a personal database with information about TV shows that interested me.
In late 2000, I started a website called “Forgotten Television” that later became “Television That Time Forgot” at some point in 2001. Both of these websites have vanished without a trace from both the World Wide Web and my computer backups.
The first incarnation of Television Obscurities debuted in November 2002. For a long time I didn’t have an exact date but recently while searching through files on my computer I discovered some images from that early version of Television Obscurities. Based on the dates of the image files, I can say with some certainty that Television Obscurities was born on November 9, 2002.
I relaunched the site on June 11, 2003 and that is the date I’ve always considered the start of Television Obscurities. That means as of today I’ve been writing about obscure TV for 19 years. But maybe now that I have a firm date for when the original version of Television Obscurities launched in November 2002, I’ll start using that to observe anniversaries. That means in five months I’ll be able to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Television Obscurities.
For a variety of reasons there hasn’t been much activity at Television Obscurities over the past eight or nine months. I hope to change that soon by focusing on a few things I’m currently interested in writing about. A few years ago I got back into trading cards in a big way so I’d like to write more about trading cards based on TV shows. I may write about specific network fall preview specials, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
Also, coming up on July 1st is the second annual Lost TV Day at Television Obscurities. Unfortunately, given how busy I’ve been lately, I don’t have a lot planned this year. But I’ll throw something together to mark the occasion.
Thank you for all the time and effort you’ve put into Television Obscurities. I’m not sure of the year when I discovered your website, but I’m pretty sure it was during a search for information on the DuMont Television Network. As someone who has written about history I know how hard it can be to find reliable information on obscure topics, so I’m impressed that you’ve hunted up 1940s newspaper references to early TV series. I look forward to all future articles you’ll be posting. Happy 20th anniversary.
I should have written “Happy upcoming 20th anniversary. “
I appreciate all the information you have shared over the years.
Happy 19th Anniversary! I must admit I don’t visit the website frequently but I enjoy your snippets and updates on Twitter — always interesting!