News you can't use (because it's from the 1970s)

July 13, 2006 11:41 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

God bless YouTube. Seriously. If you didn't see it with your own eyes, would you ever believe that there would be a website where you could find just about every music video ever made, plus thousands of video clips of everything from movies to... TV news opening graphics?

Yet here they are. This one, from WNEW Channel 5 in New York in 1979, has perhaps the best TV news music ever. It pulses with energy, reinforcing the notion that yes, something happened in the hustling, bustling city today:

I would go so far as to say that the music and graphics are rockin'.

A little less stylish, but perhaps more evocative of the times, this WBAL opener from 1976 looks like the inspiration of Anchorman, sans the mugging for the cameras.

Classic. Total waste of my time, but classic.

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6 Comments

By Mike Doyle on July 13, 2006 1:17 PM

Oh My God. CPO Sharkey is on the TV, we just recovered from the blackout, the subway is still caked with graffiti, Evita's the hot new ticket on Broadway, and any minute now a helicopter's gonna crash on top of the Pan Am Building. That WNEW 10 p.m. news intro just flashed my entire Queensboro childhood before my eyes.

And, damn, was I a fat little kid. If that had been Channel 7's 4:30 Movie theme, I'd probably be back in therapy by now.

By rj3 on July 13, 2006 2:36 PM

They have a lot of WPIX (remember "new york's movie station"?) afternoon movie themes, but I didn't see any channel 7.

By rj3 on July 13, 2006 2:39 PM

Whoops, I was mistaken:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99cHPWGt4U

By Mike Doyle on July 13, 2006 3:31 PM

WPIX? 11 Alive?? You're just dragging me deeper here.

Remember the outer space video game you could play in the afternoon if WPIX called you, shooting at space ships on your TV screen for the whole city to see by shouting "Pix! Pix! Pix!" like a lunatic into your telephone?

Now you've done it. I'll be playing Atari 2600 ROMs in my Stella emulator all night. Curse you ;-)

By rj3 on July 13, 2006 4:02 PM

Have you seen these old Crazy Eddie's ads?

http://loop.smorgasblog.com/archives/2006/06/am_i_old_enough.html

I was little enough to be scared out of my wits by them. Then they opened up one in my neighborhood, and it was even scarier!

By Mike Doyle on July 14, 2006 2:00 PM

I love those, that guy was nuts. A good place to get Atari 2600 carts and ripped off on repair jobs. Then Nobody Beats the Wiz came to town and smacked Eddie down good. Ah, the days before the rise of the (multi-) national chains.

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