The TV Guide

When I was young I couldn't wait for Fridays when the TV Guide hit the stores in our area. My fingers quickly flipped to the movie listings section so I could see the lineup for the week. My main interests were the monster and sci-fi movies that came on Friday and Saturday nights. There were also Saturday and Sunday matinees where I could catch a good monster movie.

I remember when "Gunsmoke" was actually called "Marshall Dillon" The proof is in the page! Technically, "Gunsmoke" went into syndication as "Marshall Dillon". Wasn't it great when there were few enough shows that they actually got their own episode details? There was so much to this magazine, all for a hot 12 cents! The ads were great too, especially when they advertised my favorite shows such as the case with "Sea Hunt".

And so perfect were the times when cartoons actually got their own spots in the guide, describing just which shorts we were going to see! That's just one of the things that made this such a special era; there were few choices and even fewer channels . You could truly appreciate what little there was. But to us then, it seemed like there was a lot on TV, and in a way, there was. It wasn't such overkill like it is today.

"Kukla, Fran, and Ollie" is listed here as "Kukla and Ollie". This also leads me to remember others I'd forgotten about like Beanie and Cecil, Romper Room and "Jeff's Collie" which was the pre-cursor to Lassie. Interestingly, My name is Jeff, and we had collies in our household.

What I looked forward to the most when buying a TV Guide was the movie listings near the front of the book. It wasn't until I was in the third grade that I actually went so far as to go to the store to buy the TV Guide.

My mom never had to put it on her shopping list. Each week, I'd make sure there was one in the house. There were usually great horror movies on Saturday nights and in the afternoons. I guess this week in 1961, there weren't any on. Maybe that was the week I actually got my room cleaned.

I also recall Saturday mornings with Superman, The Lone Ranger, My Friend Flicka, Sky King, Roy Rogers, Bomba, the Jungle Boy, and Highway Patrol . After all of that, there was usually a movie on at noon, and in the afternoon, we'd all sit around and watch Jon Gnagy the master artist work miracles with his chalks and charcoals.