That five-and-a-half minute newscast contained more news that you get in half an hour from WXYZ today.

We used to live in Lansing and we could pick up WXYZ when the wind was in the right direction and the antenna was directed toward Detroit, same for channel 4 and 50. I always wished 50 came in better because it had all the cool shows after school, Gilligan's Island, Brady Bunch, Addams Family and Partridge Family! Those were the days!

There was a WXYZ radio as you briefly hear in the sign-off announcement. It was once a pioneer in the golden age of radio for shows like The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. It's now sports radio WXYT, ironically owned by CBS. WXYZ-TV is now owned by Scripps Howard.

God I remember those late night movies. Seemed like magic happened with just me and whatever other souls must have been watching.

@strobe155

7 жыл бұрын

Me and Mom and Marlboros....just sad souls....LOL.

This was when the Red Wings were the Dead Things.

Rip Charlie you were the drummer for them

I'm going to order that Rolling Stones collection on 8-Track!!😜

@EricEbac22

8 жыл бұрын

+Lovejazz01 It's probably not available anymore, because 8-track tapes went out of circulation about 25-30 years ago if not longer; also, I think Sessions, the company that distributed the collection and so many other greatest hits albums besides, went out of business in the late 1980s-early 1990s. If you can find it in a record store in your hometown, more power to you; if not (E.G. no record store in your home town or anywhere close to you), you'll be stuck searching Amazon, E-Bay, so forth to try to find it.

@CelesteKTheNewWaveRevue

8 жыл бұрын

I think +Lovejazz01 is joking? LOL!

@rmartin7558

5 жыл бұрын

Dude, you got quad-sound in your car?

As for Name That Tune, WXYZ also aired the Jim Lange version (1984). Early in the season, it aired at 7:30pm in ET's permanent timeslot and in January 1985, it moved to 10:30am replacing the soap Edge Of Night. Also, I watched the Lange version in reruns on USA Network late '80s to early '90s.

Those Greenhouse cards! Wow! I forgot all about those information/reference card TV offers. Safari cards (I think Wink Martindale used to do those commercials), story of America cards, holy shit! The days before the internet, man!

To be exact, this was Easter Monday (April 7), since that’s when the new hostage situation in Misgav Am that saw 3 people die occurred. Meanwhile, the other hostage situation in Iran started in late 1979 and didn’t end until early 1981, unlike Misgav Am, which lasted only a day.

Name That Tune with Tom Kennedy on WXYZ, Joker’s Wild on WDIV, and Tic Tac Dough On WJBK makes the game show three musketeers of Detroit TV of 1980. I remember Joker’s Wild on WDIV. WXYZ Had Match Game PM, Hollywood Squares, Family Feud etc.

@JL-sm6cg

Ай бұрын

Tic Tac Dough and The Joker's Wild was what Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune became.

I remember that Greenhouse commercial very well! My favorite lines were "Where did you buy that beautiful geranium?!" "I didn't buy it, I made it." ;)

@LisaCupcake

9 жыл бұрын

She said where did you buy that terrarium, not geranium. lol :)

@tvtimetravel

9 жыл бұрын

My bad! Watched it on mute at a local library without my headset. Thanks for the correction!

@mariahbenetatos

Жыл бұрын

The way that announcer said the phone number too many times gave me anxiety for some reason. XD

The guy doing the voiceover for the Rolling Stones greatest hits album sounds just like The Real Don Steele.

I remember this so well from those days, how did it get to be 37 years later? Time goes by so fast it's like an hallucination. What happened to the interfaith broadcasting commission of greater Detroit?

Two comments: (1) From the same era I remember a CCR version of this Rolling Stones offer. I saw it so many f**ing times on TV in Toronto that I said, "If I see it one more time I am going to order the damn thing!" Needless to say I was the proud owner of a triple disc CCR set with a couple weeks. (2) 7:58 "Man, that girl sho is fine!"

The V/O heard at the end of the Greenhouse offer was the late Jack Reynolds of WUAB Channel 43 in Cleveland. As for the background music on "The Picture Show" (as Al Pinter was announcing what film would air the next week) - sounds like the same music heard in 1978 ads for Chicago radio station WDAI 94.7 (now WLS-FM). And as to the Stones LP set - seems like a repackaging of the "Hot Rocks: 1964-1971" compilation album.

And in New York, WPIX's sign-off newscasts were about as long as KNBC's. (With taped / filmed field reports and everything.)

The Red Wings were still in the West. The Avs were still in Quebec, and the Coyotes were still in Winnipeg. The Hurricanes were still in Hartford, and the Stars were the Minnesota North Stars. No Ducks, Thrashers, or BlueJackets yet.

@rmartin7558

5 жыл бұрын

Don't forget the Flames in Atlanta and Devils in Colorado.

@gidzmobug2323

5 жыл бұрын

@@rmartin7558 Thanks--I had not known that (I only started following the game just before the first Winnipeg team moved to Phoenix).

@rmartin7558

5 жыл бұрын

Yep, before they moved to Calgary the Flames played in Atlanta. And before The Avalanche and baseball Rockies, there was The Colorado Rockies of the NHL who moved to Jersey and became The Devils.

@gidzmobug2323

5 жыл бұрын

@@rmartin7558 And the Lightning, Panthers, Wild, BlueJackets and whatever Seattle's team will be was years away.

@MetalHockeyHead

7 ай бұрын

@@gidzmobug2323Seattle Kraken!

I missed that number for the greenhouse card collection...what was it?

Graphics were from ABC's Still the One campaign. WXYZ customized that campaign that year, as did other ABC O&Os.

You think that was long, KNBC in LA in the late 1970's was even longer than this as was WNBC in New York.

It's sad how things don't last for long.

Actually, William Pryor, sign-offs still happen, but only on Sundays at midnight or 1:00 am twice a month and they stay off the air until about 4:30, maybe 5:00 am at the latest. About the only reason TV stations still have for signing off, however, is to do station maintenance at their transmitter sites.

Greater Media. They also own classic rock WCSX-FM and adult contemporary WMGC-FM.

What was that number again?...lol my mom had one of those green houses. Thanks for sharing!

I want to know how WJBK TV 2 signed off. WJBK’s had the DANGER commercial for the Michigan Heart Association before signing off for the night.

That kid in the Ambi commercial is a grown man now, and the grandma WOULD be old! Probably a great-grandma by now (if even still with us).

Yes, that is true. My station is on a Satellite Music Network overnights, so the content is different. All I hear at night on the AM Dial is Coast To Coast America, or R.G. Stair, the preacher out of Walterboro, S.C. At night, this world is on 24/7, with so many choices with TV, Online, etc. There have been some in the media say, if your not making money after 11 pm, just turn it off until 4 or 5 AM the next morning, unless it is an emergency, like all this weird weather this country has had.

The good ole days of Analog TV Sign Offs. Now, the local TV Stations are on all night with spots running Adult Chat Line Phone Numbers. Late Night TV has just gone to the dogs, we'll I should say the "Below The Dogs! I remember very well in this market, TV Stations would sign off at 12 Midnight, no cable or satellite TV back then, and through the VHF & UHF Bands, everybody was off after 12 AM!

Easter was on April 6 in 1980, incidentally.

I remember the Lange version (though I often refer to it as the "Sandy Frank" version myself) on WDHO ch. 24 here in Toledo.

That was Hair by the Cowsils. :)

The 1979-80 season would be the last for Houston and San Antonio in the NBA's Eastern Conference; starting with the following season (1980-81), the Rockets and Spurs would trade places with the Chicago Bulls and the Milwaukee Bucks, with the Bulls and Bucks moving to the Eastern Conference and the Rockets and Spurs moving to the west.

@richardburkard9839

5 жыл бұрын

And a few years later, Kansas City would lose the Kings. :-(

At least they managed to use those calls at all.

This is awesome! But, as great as it is, I would love to see the WJBK Channel 2 newsbreak from the late 1970's. It is just like this one from Channel 7, but they had a teletype sound in the background and used pictures for each part (news/sports/weather). Is there a chance you could get that? How about finding the opening of Scream Theatre, from WXYZ? I will be watching.

i love my Detroit a men.

that number is 1-800-annoying

That would be Emmis

A pretty dismal season for the Red Wings, which in that era, was par for the course. Most depressing about 1979-80 was ditching the Olympia for Joe Louis.

"I always wished 50 came in better because it had all the cool shows after school, Gilligan's Island, Brady Bunch, Addams Family and Partridge Family! Those were the days!" Me too, though I got to have 50 on cable anyway!

@rockvilleraven

10 жыл бұрын

Perhaps try one of the digital subchanels on your local broadcast TV station that had tons of classic television.

@ChristopherSobieniak

10 жыл бұрын

I already get a few.

@rockvilleraven

10 жыл бұрын

Some even have sports now, I still miss Universal Sports which specialize in Olympic type events.

@ChristopherSobieniak

10 жыл бұрын

My town still doesn't get "Antenna TV" but I do get MeTV and RetroTV if I bother with those.

@rockvilleraven

10 жыл бұрын

The remote on my Vizio broke last year, the universal one is a bitch to use. I don't watch much digital TV, loved Bounce with the Soul Train classics, going to look on KZread to see if Elton John who was the first white artist on the show rendition of Philadelphia Freedom is up there. Fun fact its the only hit song that mentions a World Team Tennis franchise, the Philadelphia Freedoms and it was about his long time friend Billie Jean King. I was watching them play the Washington Kastles at the Smith Center and they were introduced to this song.

Love the TV record company (sessions), which essentially takes the Stones' Hot Rocks album & sells it under a different name...

@richardburkard9839

5 жыл бұрын

"19th Nervous Breakdown"?! Mick Jagger must be above 50 of them now. :-)

WXYT-AM switched back to a talk format (the same format it had throughout the '80s and '90s) a couple of months ago. They no longer simulcast 97-1 The Ticket. WXYZ was also a very popular Top 40 station in Detroit during the early '60s with jocks like Lee Alan, Dave Prince, Fred Wolf, and Joel Sebastian. Later on it became a middle-of-the-road station and the second Detroit stop for Dick Purtan in the morning before it went talk around 1978. WXYZ-FM became WRIF about 1970 or '71.

The Picture Show released Jesus Christ Superstar from Universal and that film from WB

No it's Southern Ontario too. It used to be in central ontario untill they yanked it and put it up on channel 705-725

Did anyone ever notice that the first guy in the Ambi commercial (the guy in the black suit) looked just like Judge Joe Brown?

@gidzmobug2323

7 жыл бұрын

EricEbac22 Maybe he was!

God I hate that yell and sell advertising. :P

@EricEbac22

7 жыл бұрын

Did you notice that the guy doing the advertisement for the Rolling Stones' greatest hits album sounds like The Real Don Steele? That's who it sounds like to me!

i rymber saw that on my tv

Do you have more sign offs from WXYZ from 1979 because of the sign off news had a different font than the one in this video in the other video

Nowadays, it's paid programming after 12 AM. TV stations should sign-off at night so they could save energy and so kids will go to bed earlier. And besides, the stuff they play at night are stupid and boring. They should also bring back analog TV because analog's user-friendly, and with analog unlike digital, you can still get a signal even with a fuzzy picture.

@StukInBuf

7 жыл бұрын

Bring back the late night movies; drop the "paid" stuff.

@tonyneal3266

3 жыл бұрын

@@StukInBuf playboy commercials on channel 50 after midnight and benny hill

WRIF is a Greater Media station. Emmis has no properties in Detroit.

At 14:14 Midwest Farmland! And At 14:22 Great Plains Farmland! Great Ha?

No "Moving Pictures" theme music for the Channel 7 movie at this time?

@wmbrown6

8 ай бұрын

Never . . . not even Walter Raim's iconic "Big Show Theme."

5 million? Wow! Lucky if there are 800,000 in greater Detroit now! The world sure has been horrible to the states in the last thirty years!

@ChristopherSobieniak

Жыл бұрын

They have. I miss what we had been.

@stevenburns8817

8 ай бұрын

Oh, come on. The metro area had 4,392,041 people in the 2020 census. Down, but hardly "800,000."

12:53 What is the name of this song?

hey, do ya know if bill bonds, Robbie Timmons, and eric smith are still on there ?

@maryellen1971

8 жыл бұрын

Eric Smith and Robbie Timmons are retired and Bill Bonds died in 2014.

@sr71ablackbird

7 жыл бұрын

Mary Ellen Adkins that is terrible and a shame. Used to watch them when i could

@dariowiter3078

7 жыл бұрын

Bill Bonds used to broadcast here in L.A. in the late '60s-early '70s from what I understand. 😃

same circle 7 used by WABC New York City, WLS Chicago, KGO San Francisco, and KABC Los Angeles.

@richardburkard9839

5 жыл бұрын

Because all of them were ABC O&O's at the time.

@ChristopherSobieniak

4 жыл бұрын

@@richardburkard9839 Yep! WXYZ was one of the original O&O's for ABC during those years.

@11:16 Recognize Dave Dials - who moved from ABC Sports college football scoreboard shows to WXYZ.

@arthuridis

11 ай бұрын

Dave Diles

What about the sign-on version?

Who owns the FM station, WRIF, now, to refresh our memories?

@jessecoffey4737

6 жыл бұрын

It was owned by Greater Media when this comment was posted. In 2016, WRIF was sold to Beasley Broadcast Group.

LOL!!!!

I dont get it,,,

WXYZ? Only in Detroit...

@1L6E6VHF

5 жыл бұрын

WXYZ was a very good call sign for the station (actually a 3 way combo back then, AM-FM-TV). WABC, of course, were their New York stations.

@tkaye2

10 ай бұрын

​@@1L6E6VHFThe WXYZ calls were around long before the ABC network. (It was a Mutual station in its Golden Age of Radio heyday.) KXYZ in Houston also had those calls well before it was acquired by ABC.

wxyz is abc cbs & nbc tri