The 90’s, episode 109: Offbeat TV

Episode 109 of the award-winning TV series The 90's. This episode is called "OFFBEAT TV," and it features the following segments:

01:23Copy video clip URL Cold open.

01:35Copy video clip URL 90’s opening.

02:09Copy video clip URL A 1939 newsreel explaining how television, a new invention, works.

04:34Copy video clip URL Show id with Joe Cummings.

04:46Copy video clip URL Marc Canter from Macromind Inc. discusses the future of computer technology and makes some predictions for that technology in the 1990’s. His predictions include how computer technology will change the entertainment industry (streaming TV shows as an example), and the merger between video games and other forms of entertainment.

07:10Copy video clip URL “Secret Video Game Tricks, Codes and Strategies” by MPI Home Video. A clip from a video game instructional tape.

07:47Copy video clip URL Excerpt from “The Laughing Alligator” by Juan Downey. (Called “A Life and Death Video Game” here). An excerpt from a video art piece in which Downey relates how he was saved by his video camera when he found himself in a stand-off with armed Yanomami Indians, who considered the camera a weapon on par with their own and backed off.

10:18Copy video clip URL “Virgil Q. Wacks Varieties” by Suzi Wehling and Appalshop. A documentary about Wacks, a man who produced a popular show that featured Appalachian locals for a local TV station. Includes clips from the show.

14:36Copy video clip URL “1954 Arthur Godfrey Show.”  A clip from a 1950’s TV show starring Arthur Godfrey plus a 1954 Lipton’s Chicken Noodle Soup commercial.

15:50Copy video clip URL “Brazilian TV” by Wendy Appel and Alan Barker. Brazilian actress Christine Nazareth gives us the inside scoop on Brazilian TV: the stars, the most popular programs, and the politics.

20:14Copy video clip URL “Ian Mitroff.”  Professor/author Ian Mitroff talks about TV: “TV has become a self-sealing universe… a culture. There’s too much garbage on TV but you can’t turn it off… how do you turn off a culture?”

21:18Copy video clip URL “Television Delivers People” by Richard Serra & Carlota Fay Schoolman. Text scrolls onscreen while benign-sounding Muzak plays in the background. In simple sentences, the text informs us about the true role of television: “Television delivers people to an advertiser.” “Mass media delivers masses of people, at least twenty million per minute.” “The television watcher is a product, which is consumed by advertisers.”

22:48Copy video clip URL “Morning Becomes Electric” by Mindy Schneider. A satirical look at the role of television in the middle-class family: Dad praises the “automatic homework robot,” saying, “Son, you’ve been missing too many TV shows lately. Why strive for A’s and B’s when you can have C’s instantly?”

25:23Copy video clip URL 1989 CLIO Award-Winning Commercial. A PSA that urges people to watch television “sensibly.”

26:21Copy video clip URL Maureen Moore, an advertising executive, talks about TV advertising: “The commercial industry is moving away from salesmanship to entertainment… we have to make people want to watch commercials…”

27:43Copy video clip URL 1989 CLIO Award-Winning Commercial for Nike shoes.

28:13Copy video clip URL Excerpt from “Greetings from Lanesville” by Media Bus, in which Laneville, NY locals are interviewed about a supposed UFO sighting as part of a playful spoof.

30:39Copy video clip URL An excerpt from a WBBM-TV Chicago news broadcast. Anchor Bill Kurtis reports on UFO sightings in the USSR.

31:58Copy video clip URL “Everyone’s Channel” by David Shulman. A documentary that argues for the importance of public access TV and provides a brief history of portable video cameras.

37:30Copy video clip URL Nixon Resignation. White House pool feed of Nixon before his resignation broadcast on August 8, 1974. Nixon jokes with the photographers and reporters: “My friend Ollie is always taking pictures. I’m afraid he’ll catch me picking my nose… You wouldn’t print that, now would you, Ollie?”

40:39Copy video clip URL “Microphone Technique” by Richard D. Rosen. A humorous look at a seasoned TV reporter’s relationship with his microphone. “He knows it’s a valuable prop… an implement of journalistic power…”

43:19Copy video clip URL “Attack of the Flying Logos” by Gregory MacNicol. A parody of television’s overuse of its “bells and whistles.” It will “dazzle, blind and astound you with millions and millions of pixels…”

45:06Copy video clip URL “Broadside TV” by Suzi Wehling. A documentary about “Broadside TV,” an early cable TV show produced in and about the small town of Johnson City, Tennessee.

48:32Copy video clip URL Albert Einstein graphic gives statistics on home video viewing in the ’80s.

49:01Copy video clip URL Kim Long, a forecaster, is concerned with the recent popularity of camcorders, citing the fact that a Denver man was arrested for taking pictures up women’s dresses. “You wonder how much of this is going on and when it will stop.”

49:53Copy video clip URL “Motor Sports Unlimited: Part 127.”  A clip from an actual cable TV program featuring scantily-clad shapely women interviewing fully clad men about their radio-controlled miniature racing boats.

50:53Copy video clip URL “ASTN Sales Meeting” A satellite-delivered series broadcast to car dealers across the country, complete with a news anchor and co-hosts, dealing with issues such as “how to conduct interpersonal relationships within a sale.”

51:46Copy video clip URL “Deep Dish TV” by Dee Dee Halleck. While preparing a pie, Halleck states that public access TV is a real way to exercise our First Amendment rights.

52:29Copy video clip URL More from Marc Canter. More prophetic words on the future of TV and how it will change because of computer and digital technology.

53:30Copy video clip URL 1989 CLIO Award-Winning Commercial for the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, G.B.

53:58Copy video clip URL “Sid & Irv” by Bart Lipton and Philip Paternite. A parody of two cigar smoking, insensitive, sleazy, opportunistic TV producers brainstorming to come up with some new program ideas.

56:19Copy video clip URL Tom Palazzolo, a Chicago-based filmmaker, believes that “video is ugly… the color is flat. Film is better.” He smashes some TVs.

56:50Copy video clip URL End credits over more Nixon resignation footage.

58:58Copy video clip URL Static.

59:27Copy video clip URL End of tape.