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.