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Man, I love this stuff. Philadelphia radio, circa 1973, a bandscan checking some of the major stations of the time:

Remarkable, isn't it, that KYW sounds pretty much the same today. WFIL was the typical Top 40 of the era, with legend Dr. Don Rose (who lingered on in Philly as the voice of Channel 48's cartoon block long after he decamped to San Francisco). WIBG sounded sluggish by comparison, and did until the end; by the time they tried to reinvent themselves as Wizzard 100, the handwriting was on the wall for AM Top 40. It's interesting to hear WIP and WPEN, middle-of-the-road stations that were all over the dial, all over the country in that time, and are now practically nonexistent, replaced by "adult contemporary," which has slowly mutated into more of an adult Top 40 as tastes changed and audiences aged. You couldn't do now what Ken Garland was doing back then -- the appeal is too old, the pace too slow. For its time, though, that was a dominant form of radio.

The YouTuber who posted this, stevations, has a bunch of airchecks posted from that era. I could listen to them all day.

It's amazing that this video still exists, let alone is posted on the Internet for easy access. It's a film documentary about the early days of Cleveland television, made IN the early days of Cleveland television. Behold, from WEWS-TV, "Right Before Your Eyes," first aired in October 1953 and probably not seen since then:

It's a lot of staged action, but it's pretty rare stuff from that era, especially of UHF in its infancy, and of some defunct stations like WICA-TV Ashtabula and stations that didn't materialize the way they expected, like WHK-TV and WERE-TV.

There's a nice writeup at WEWS-TV's website- find that here.

So, yeah, what the hell happened?

A lot, but that meant I didn't have the time or energy to do anything here. And I'm far from alone, judging by the number of blogs you see abandoned or sluggishly (is that a word?) updated these days. As I've told you before, time has become a commodity in severely short supply for me, and my original reason for this site -- to maintain a regular, daily writing regimen -- has become obsolete, because I'm writing daily for AllAccess.com and Nerdist.com. They pay, this doesn't, and at the (literal) end of the day, I just don't have time or energy to write any more.

Not that I'm not grateful for that. To be gainfully employed, period, is a blessing in 2012, and to be gainfully employed by not just two websites but two great places for which to work is especially gratifying. But it doesn't leave much time for anything else.

But I still want to keep this going, because who else will look for things like this?:

That, courtesy of the indispensable FuzzyMemories.tv, is a Christmas-time commercial from Weise's department store in Rockford, Illinois, circa 1976. Weise's lasted until 1982, when it was renamed after parent store chain Bergner's (the logo, which is pretty much Bergner's with "Weise's" where "Bergner's" would go, is a tipoff). Bergner's, of course, still exists, part of the Bon-Ton chain. WHO ELSE WOULD CARE ABOUT THAT? See, that's why I have to keep this place going....

This is awesome:

HT: Zoo With Roy

Here's a commercial from 1983, courtesy of FuzzyMemories.tv:

I wasted a LOT of time with Dig Dug. Not the home version, but the arcade version, which occupied the back of Roache and O'Brien's bar on Lancaster Avenue near my college campus. I think the Dig Dug machine went in either in my senior year or just after, and it became a ritual: Duck in the back ("Ladies") door, order a burger from the kitchen, grab a 25 cent Schmidts draft at the bar, then start pumping the Dig Dug machine with quarters. I became pretty decent on it after all that practice (and despite the beer). That, and Qix, were the cause of much distraction in my youth. What? You remember Qix, right? This:

Imagine what I'd have been had I not devoted all that time and money to soon-obsolete video games. I wouldn't have fit in as well at Nerdist, probably.

This is the box score of the last basketball game my father and I watched together. We were in his room at a hospice in Florida, and we both knew that time was running short and I was there to say my goodbyes. He was in pain that was beyond intense, and every once in a while he would whimper from it; the morphine had long since ceased to have any effect, and all he could do was wait for the end. That was May 27, 2004. I saw him again the next day, flew back to California, and waited for the call; it came on May 29th. He was 73. And, a few weeks later, I experienced the first Father's Day without him.

Sports were -- was? -- a primary bond between me and my father. He'd been an athlete, good enough to get a look by pro baseball scouts, good enough to play in the Army's league for the amusement of European base commanders during the Korean War, not good enough, at least after an injury, to make it his career. I was, to put it politely, non-athletic, when it counted, that is; I learned to be passable at basketball and tennis long after it was too late for it to matter. He never expressed disappointment in my lack of on-field prowess, at least not to my face, but I know he felt it. Nevertheless, when I demonstrated an aptitude for knowing ABOUT sports, and even talking and writing about it, it strengthened our relationship, and it led to our ritual.

Every day, he'd call or I'd call at about 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern, and we'd talk, but during basketball season, it was about basketball. He was once a Knicks fan but followed the Heat; I was, and am, a Sixers fan, but we talked about whatever game happened to be on the previous night. He marveled at Shaq and Kobe, loved San Antonio's Twin Towers, analyzed every game and every team. And, if a game that night came down to the wire, one of us would call the other and we'd watch the game together on the phone, analyzing and coaching and kibitzing the whole way through. All through the NBA season, that's what we did, night after night.

And then it was over, and to this day, I miss every moment of it. I still watch NBA basketball, but it's not the same. In a way, it's like how Dodger fans will feel when Vin Scully no longer calls the games -- there'll still be action, but it'll be different and not as good. On Father's Day 2012, at this moment, Oklahoma City and Miami are playing, and it's halftime. We would have been on the phone right now, going over the first half. I'll probably watch some of the second half, but it's hard to do without Dad. The love isn't there any more.

Dad didn't believe in religion or an afterlife. But if he was wrong about that... hey, Dad, you watching?

My mother has been gone since 1994. I miss her still.

On Saturday, we walked once again in the Revlon Run/Walk for Women 2012, and it raised money for cancer research; We walk to honor Fran's survival, and our friends and family who have fought the disease, but also to honor Phyllis Simon, who we've missed for 17 Mother's Days now. This 10 seconds of drumming is from the band that greets walkers and runners at the end of the walk every year:

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Just one question. What the hell is that thing in the upper left corner of this screen shot from a recent Phillies-Braves telecast from Turner Field?:

It's "Homer," I believe, the mascot the Braves put in because anything connected to the name "Braves" would be, you know, a little racist. Not that it stops them from chopping. But that baseball-head HAS to be the stuff of nightmares for little kids all across the South. Geez, he's disturbing.

While I have a second, there's this, found in David Gleason's invaluable Broadcasting Magazine archive:

That's how WINS in New York addressed ad agency questions about its about-to-debut all-News format. It's not like WINS was the first all-News station; Gordon MacLendon had gotten there first, at XETRA in Tijuana and at WNUS in Chicago -- but it was the first in New York and far more ambitious than MacLendon could afford. People really had nothing to go on, no idea what it would sound like, or whether, as the last question asks, they'd run out of news. 47 years later, they haven't run out.

My Dad would have been 81 today. Had it not been for a horrible disease that wasn't the result of anything he did himself, he would have been, I have no doubt, in great shape, playing tennis every day under the Florida sun, calling me nightly to talk basketball, loving life. But that wasn't to be, and it's been almost eight years since he's been gone. I still miss him something fierce.

He always loved Sinatra, so, Dad, here's one I know was a favorite. Happy birthday: