I’ve mentioned that I was in Packwood WA for the annual Labor Day
fleamarket. Somehow I managed to only spend one green dollar the entire
day there, and that was on this – the October 18-24, 1970 edition of
the Yakima (WA) Herald-Republic’s Sunday paper’s “TV Weekly”. So above is a scan of Tuesday the 20th’s entire programming schedule. Yakima only had four VHF
stations – the ABC affiliate KAPP 35, the NBC affiliate KNDO 23, the
CBS affiliate KIMA 29, and the PBS station KYVE on 47. The Big Three
broadcast between 7am and 1am, with the National Anthem playing at the
start and finish of the day, but public broadcasting was only active
between 9am and 10pm weekdays and less on the weekends.
The
thing of note, beside any interest you may have in certain programs you
have heard of – and recall, anything not marked as a rerun with an “r”
was a first-run program, in this case amongst which were Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies (and on Fridays, The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family)
– is what was playing on PBS during the day. Back then there were 15
minute programs, usually filmed in black and white, centering in music
or art or learning Spanish, broadcast during the morning to early
afternoon when either some teachers would tune in their classroom sets
– or you were home from school sick and watched TV in bed. (That
couldn’t have just been me!)
I do remember Art Cart a.k.a.
Art Starts and the woman that would paint with one hand while operating
her hand puppet, a spider named Grandpiere [as opposed to
Grand-Père, “grandfather” in French], with the other; I also
remember the song mentioned on the above link (that’s how I found the
link!) “Shh, Be Quiet” from one of the music programs, and I don’t know
the show’s name either… Music Time perhaps? Sesame Street was
one year old at the time and broadcast in black & white. Some of the
educational shows on the list were broadcast through the 1970s and as
late as 1980, and other shows that were 30 minutes long filled the
places of the 15 minute ones. Along came The Electric Company, plus Two
Cents’ Worth, Mulligan Stew, The Righteous Apples, and others to teach you valuable lessons about life.
