Retro: This Week in TV Guide, September 12, 1964 - MSP Edition

This week, the Dog Days of Summer near their end. ABC rolls out the new season, there's an insightful look at the "TV set of the future," "The Defenders" has fun with "The Fugitive," football and Miss America return, and more!

http://www.itsabouttv.com/2014/09/this-week-in-tv-guide-september-12-1964.html

As always your comments, positive as well as negative, are most welcome.

This week's listing is from Sunday, September 13.

WCCO, Channel 4 (CBS)
Morning
07:45a Sacred Heart
08:00a Fisher Family
08:30a Look Up and Live
09:00a Business and Finance
09:30a Religious News
10:45a Bowery Boys
10:45a Hopalong Cassidy
11:45a World of Aviation
Afternoon
12:00p News (local)
12:15p Bowlerama (return)
01:30p Movie – “A Blueprint for Murder”
03:00p Film Short
03:15p Film Short
03:30p Seven Wonderful Nights (CBS Fall Preview)
04:00p CBS Sports Spectacular (women’s tennis)
04:30p Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour
05:00p The Twentieth Century
05:30p Mister Ed
Evening
06:00p Lassie
06:30p My Favorite Martian
07:00p Ed Sullivan (Moscow State Circus)
08:00p The Celebrity Game (Yvonne DeCarlo, Fred Gwynne, Paul Ford, Sterling Holloway, Tina Louise, John McGiver, Cara Williams, Julie Newmar, Jan Murray) (last show of the series)
08:30p Brenner
09:00p Candid Camera
09:30p What’s My Line?
10:00p News (local)
10:15p Weather (local)
10:20p Sports (local)
10:30p All Star Bowling
12:00a News (local)

KSTP, Channel 5 (NBC)
Morning
07:45a Davey and Goliath (color)
08:00a Bible Story Time (color)
08:30a Light Time
08:45p Christopher Program (Reed Hadley, no relation)
09:00a Quiz a Catholic (color)
09:30a Frontiers of Faith
10:00a The Big Picture (Army)
10:30a This Is the Life
11:00a Film Feature
11:30a Mr. Wizard
Afternoon
12:00p U.S. Tennis Championships (special)
02:30p World Series of Golf (special) (color)
04:00p Movie – “A Bill of Divorcement”
05:00p Meet the Press (GOP Vice Presidential nominee William E. Miller) (color)
05:30p Love That Bob!
Evening
06:00p Bill Dana
06:30p Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (color)
07:30p Grindl
08:00p Bonanza (color)
09:00p The Rogues (debut)
10:00p News (local) (color)
10:15p Weather (local) (color)
10:20p Sports (local) (color)
10:30p Movie – “Please, Mr. Balzac”

KMSP, Channel 9 (ABC)
Morning
09:00a Insight
09:30a Oral Roberts
10:00a Soul’s Harbor
10:30a My Little Margie
11:00a Mantovani (Les Compagnons de la Chanson, Carle Carr)
11:30a Tony Parker (football pregame) (return)
Afternoon
12:00p AFL Football (Chiefs vs. Bills) (return)
02:45p Football Scoreboard
03:00p Movie – “Showdown at Boot Hill”
04:30p Peter Gunn
05:00p Movie – “The Skipper Surprised His Wife”
Evening
06:30p Olympic Trials (special)
08:00p ABC’s Wide World of Entertainment (special)
09:00p Olympic Trials (continued)
09:30p The Rebel
10:00p News (local)
10:15p Weather (local)
10:20p Sports (local)
10:30p Movie – “Bride for Sale”

WTCN, Channel 11 (NBC)
Morning
09:30a About the Home
10:00a That I May See
10:30a Faith for Today
11:00a Harmon Killebrew
11:10a Baseball Warmup
11:25a Baseball (Twins vs. Yankees)
Afternoon
02:15p Baseball Scoreboard
02:30p Amos ‘n’ Andy
03:00p Film Short (Chet Huntley)
03:15p Film Short
03:30p Bob Allison (baseball)
04:00p M Squad
04:30p The Invisible Man
05:00p Rocky and His Friends
05:30p 87th Precinct (return)
Evening
06:30p Polka Jamboree (return)
07:00p Bold Journey
07:30p Movie – “The Curse of Dracula”
09:00p Bishop Sheen
09:30p News (local)
09:45p Weather (local)
09:50p Sports (local)
10:00p Movide – “Song of Scheherazade”
12:15a Silents Please

Just noticed a typo. WTCN 11 was not NBC. Looking at Bishop Sheen on the evening line up, I suppose this is DuMont? Are 87th Precinct and Polka Jamboree DuMont network shows? I suppose they've got to be network shows if they have (return) after their names. Off network syndicated shows wouldn't get a (return) listing.

Also I see they start the late news at 9:30 instead of 10 pm. Also the 12:15 offering, Silents Please, was the name of an occasional Ernie Kovacs show. Or maybe the local station simply ran a few silent shorts after the late movie before sign-off.

Per Wikipedia: the TV series "The 87th Precinct" first aired on NBC during the 1961-1962 season. Only lasted one season in first-run. I'm going to guess that "Polka Jamboree" was a local show, as Minnesota really liked its polka (or "old-time" as they called it in the 90s when I lived there.) The DuMont network went dark by 1956. Bishop Sheen's "Life is Worth Living" was a DuMont show, but per Wikipedia Sheen also produced a syndicated show in the 60s. I'll wager the then new show was the one presented. Speaking of all things Catholic, there's the locally famous "Quiz-A-Catholic" game show on KSTP. And to recycle a bad ol' joke from my youth, there were no holes in channel 9's schedule, since they all healed over with Oral Roberts in the line-up. (the actual joke went: why couldn't you play an Oral Roberts record? Because the hole healed over.)

joebtsflk1 said:

Speaking of all things Catholic, there's the locally famous "Quiz-A-Catholic" game show on KSTP.

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That sounds intriguing; could you say more about it? I tried looking it up online, and one of the few results was for a "Quiz-A-Catholic" in St. Louis. Was this syndicated or franchised?

installLSC said:

That sounds intriguing; could you say more about it? I tried looking it up online, and one of the few results was for a "Quiz-A-Catholic" in St. Louis. Was this syndicated or franchised?

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This might not help much, but in addition to the KMSP and KMOX (St. Louis) versions, I could only find references to Quiz-A-Catholic on KTHV in Little Rock (which, based on the host and guests, sounds like it was also the St. Louis version), as well as one that ran on KNBC in Los Angeles circa 1965. According to a Fontbonne College (a St. Louis Catholic college) newspaper article from February 1965, the show was described thusly:

"The object of the program is for the panelists to guess a personality, practice, object, or a teaching of the Catholic Faith which is submitted by viewers."

So by this time WTCN was an Independent, getting Bishop Sheen and 87th Precinct from syndication, and maybe producing Polka Jamboree on its own.

Also isn't 11:25 Central/12:25 Eastern a bit early for a baseball game, even on Sunday? That's not the pre-game, that's the starting time. And for an Independent in 1964, I guess it was pioneering to do a 9:30 pm newscast on Sunday. Most independents only did news Mon.-Fri. in those days. Even many network stations outside the big markets may have skipped Sunday night news.

I also see WTCN running Amos 'n' Andy repeats, which I guess was common in 1964 but was out of favor within a few years.

Gregg. said:

So by this time WTCN was an Independent, getting Bishop Sheen and 87th Precinct from syndication, and maybe producing Polka Jamboree on its own.

Also isn't 11:25 Central/12:25 Eastern a bit early for a baseball game, even on Sunday? That's not the pre-game, that's the starting time. And for an Independent in 1964, I guess it was pioneering to do a 9:30 pm newscast on Sunday. Most independents only did news Mon.-Fri. in those days. Even many network stations outside the big markets may have skipped Sunday night news.

I also see WTCN running Amos 'n' Andy repeats, which I guess was common in 1964 but was out of favor within a few years.

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Yes, WTCN had gone independent by this time, after ABC switched their affiliation to KMSP.

And yes, that is very early for a game. I don't know if it was the first game of a doubleheader, if there was another reason for the early start time, or if that's just the way it was with the Yankees at the time. One of the things I'm struck by in these TV Guides is how the start and running times of sporting events has changed. For example, many teams (in hockey as well as baseball) would begin weeknight games at 8pm (local time), and until doubleheaders became the vogue, the AFL's televised Sunday games often started at 3pm (ET), so that it would be an afternoon broadcast in all time zones.

Speaking of which, the running time: most football games were assumed to run under three hours, which is why a post-game scoreboard show often shows up in the last 15 minutes of the timeslot. And I just did a listing (which I'm going to post in a few minutes) that has a running time of 2:30 for a baseball game. I don't think many individual games run under that now, let alone the average time!

On the news time, yes - the independent stations (Channel 11 back then, and Channel 9 afterwards) did those 9:30 newscasts. I can't remember if Channel 11 did them during the week back then, but I know that by the 70s their 9:30 newscast was a staple, which Channel 9 then adopted when they became the independent.

installLSC said:

That sounds intriguing; could you say more about it? I tried looking it up online, and one of the few results was for a "Quiz-A-Catholic" in St. Louis. Was this syndicated or franchised?

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I'm going on memory now, so I could be off-base, but I'm inclined to think that at least some of the episodes were local, in that local pastors were the guests. It could have been a franchised show that had local inserts or it could have been entirely local. It would be nice if one of those showed up on YouTube, wouldn't it?

Gregg. said:

Just noticed a typo. WTCN 11 was not NBC. Looking at Bishop Sheen on the evening line up, I suppose this is DuMont? Are 87th Precinct and Polka Jamboree DuMont network shows? I suppose they've got to be network shows if they have (return) after their names. Off network syndicated shows wouldn't get a (return) listing.

Also I see they start the late news at 9:30 instead of 10 pm. Also the 12:15 offering, Silents Please, was the name of an occasional Ernie Kovacs show. Or maybe the local station simply ran a few silent shorts after the late movie before sign-off.

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Mea culpa on the typo. I forgot to change over from the previous listing I'd done - Channel 5 was NBC, Channel 9 was ABC, Channel 11 was independent. Only Channel 4 has stayed the same throughout.

I don't remember if the Silents Please show was the same one that Kovacs did, but I can vouch that his name was not included in the listings, as was often the case with network shows.

Was Minnesota on Central Standard or Central Daylight Time in those days? I'm wondering if the baseball game started at 1:25 (EDT), which would be 12:25 (EST/CDT) and 11:25 (CST). If Minnesota was on Central Daylight, then it's possible the game did start at 12:25 (EDT), but I can't recall games starting that early; at the time we here in North Carolina stayed on EST in the summer (we didn't go to EDT until 1967) and usually baseball would be on at about 12:45.
'

bpatrick said:

Was Minnesota on Central Standard or Central Daylight Time in those days? I'm wondering if the baseball game started at 1:25 (EDT), which would be 12:25 (EST/CDT) and 11:25 (CST). If Minnesota was on Central Daylight, then it's possible the game did start at 12:25 (EDT), but I can't recall games starting that early; at the time we here in North Carolina stayed on EST in the summer (we didn't go to EDT until 1967) and usually baseball would be on at about 12:45.
'

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You know, this turned out to be much more complicated than I thought it was going to be. A quick search through the Minnesota history files says that Minnesota went to DST (called "Fast Time") in 1957, but for the Twin Cities and Duluth only. It wasn't until 1960 that the entire state went on DST, and even then it was the shortest period in the nation (fourth Sunday in May through the Tuesday following Labor Day), and in an even better twist, St. Paul went on it two weeks earlier than Minneapolis! In 1966, the Uniform Daylight Saving Time bill was passed, and it was only then that Minnesota conformed to the rest of the nation.

If this is accurate (and I really have to wonder about a time change occurring during the work week), it means that Minnesota went off DST on the Tuesday after Labor Day, which would have been September 8. Therefore, it would NOT have been in effect on September 13, which would explain the time difference.

The things you learn on this board!