TV Week listings for Sunday, September 30, 1973.

 

Here is the Sunday listing from the Minneapolis Tribune from 50 years ago today.  If it's Sunday in Minnesota in the Fall, there will be Vikings.  On this particular day, the Vikings played the Green Bay Packers on WCCO at 12:30 PM and won, 11-3.  The Vikings would go 12-2 during the 1973 season and end up playing in the Super Bowl.  I don't remember how that turned out but it must have been good.

You'll notice that 60 Minutes isn't on today.  In 1973, it was only broadcast from January - June and even then CBS ran it on Sundays from 5:00 - 6:00 PM - before prime time.  It was hardly the ratings behemoth in 1973 that it would become a few years later.

Notice also that the network programs started at 6:30 PM and the 9:30 - 10:00 PM slots were filled by a news feature program on WCCO and syndicated (non-network) programs on the other affiliates.  The networks wouldn't start broadcasting from 6:00 - 10:00 Sundays until the Fall of 1975.  Having an hour-long program start at :30 minutes after the hour seems odd today but I liked it then and I like it now.  The 9:30 show on WCCO was called "Moore on Sunday," and it was an institution in the Twin Cities for ages.  Hosted by WCCO's 6 & 10 PM news anchor Dave Moore, "Moore on Sunday" was an unpredictable show, sometimes with hard news, investigations, opinion pieces, interviews, comic skits, and even pie-in-the-face gags on occasion.  It was must-see television before we knew what that term meant.

The CBS program at 6:30 displays as "Perry Mason" in the grid but it's really "The New Perry Mason."  The ill-fated reboot starred Monte Markham and Sharon Gless (pre Cagney and Lacey) and was yanked after 15 episodes.  I remember watching it and liking it. If you wanted the original Perry Mason, WTCN aired a Raymond Burr episode at 10:30 PM.

The guests on "The Wacky World of Jonathon Winters" on KMSP this week were Chuck Connors (Gunsmoke), Jo Ann Pflug (not sure what her claim to fame was), Tony Orlando and Dawn, and singer Maureen McCormick.  "Wacky," indeed!

Notice as well the advertising insert at 8:00 PM.  Can you imagine a network promoting a 65-year-old actor as a way to hook new viewers today?

Finally, the program on KSTP at 9:30 PM that shows as "Surgeon" is actually a syndicated Canadian program called "Police Surgeon."  Believe it or not, it ran for almost 100 episodes over four seasons.  I remember watching the show a few times and it wasn't as crazy as it sounds but it wasn't great.  Sam Groom played a doctor who was also a police detective.  Not a medical examiner or coroner but an actual detective who was also a doctor.  I don't recall how cases came to his attention but he drove around Toronto in an ambulance van - with police livery, not ambulance - and interviewed witnesses and suspects and usually figured out what was wrong with his patients in the nick of time, saving the victims' lives and, I suppose, preventing a crime like poisoning from becoming a homocide.  I guess "Police Surgeon" was sometimes like "House MD," only with a badge.

Tomorrow: A connection to Game of Thrones.

TV Week from September 30 - October 6, 1973

 I was cleaning out a closet a few months back and came across a manila envelope with a couple of TV Week booklets from the Minneapolis Tribune, one of them for the week of September 30 - October 6, 1973.  That's 50 years ago, starting today!  This week, I'll be showing you some differences between the media universe from 1973 and 2023.  It's very like me to save souvenirs for no particular reason and at first I didn't understand why I saved this particular edition but it came to me after couple days.  I'll share that reason with you on October 2.

If you need someone to explain what newspaper was, or what a weekly TV booklet was, or what broadcast television was, I'm not your guy.  We're just going to have fun looking at what the three-channel television universe looked like and see how different it was compared to today's 500-channel cable systems and multiple streaming service reality.

First, I should probably point out that the Minneapolis Tribune is now the StarTribune.  For almost a century, the paper's owners published the Tribune in the morning and the Minneapolis Star in the afternoon.  In 1982, they killed the afternoon edition and changed the morning paper's name to the Star and Tribune.  Later, they dropped the "and" and pushed the two names together.  When I think about the Minneapolis paper these days, which is rarely, I still call it the Tribune.

On the cover of this TV Week is a promo picture for a new 30-minute Friday night comedy on CBS called "Roll Out."  It was supposed to be a World War II comedy in the style of M*A*S*H, and was produced by the company that produced M*A*S*H.  "Roll Out" would be gone after January.

When we start looking at the daily listings, you'll notice the Tribune only lists four channels.  That's because there were only six TV stations broadcasting in the Minneapolis-St Paul market at the time.  The two PBS stations (KTCA-2, KTCI-17) apparently weren't worth the newspaper's trouble to include in the schedule grid, although they did have a small side area each day - with small print - for readers who wanted to seek them out.  The stations in the grid are your standard CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliates, and one independent.  Compared to today's endless cable channels, the listings look kinda sparse.