The Tonight Show leaves New York, 1972

Here's an interesting slice of "Tonight Show" history -- a clip from the show's final week in New York City. In May, 1972 Johnny Carson moved "Tonight" to Los Angeles, where it would stay until Jimmy Fallon took the reins in 2014. For the most part, all of the show's New York City episodes (whether under Steve Allen, Jack Paar or Johnny) are lost forever, since the tapes were recycled. Starting in 1972 (although some sources say 1970), someone realized the value of "Tonight" and started archiving the tapes. This snippet features Mark Richards (aka Dick Liberatore) in the audience. I don't know much about him, but if you check out the rest of his channel, there's a number of game show-related clips of his work. Here, he manages to upstage guest host Joey Bishop, as well as Ed McMahon.

The "lost" episode of SNL, 1981

This a live 1981 TV special, "Steve Martin's Best Show Ever," which is now available on the DVD set "Steve Martin: The TV Stuff."  The beauty of this particular special is that it was done live, directed by Dave Wilson, produced by Lorne Michaels, from NBC's Studio 8H, on November 25, 1981 at 11:30 pm, with associate producer Cherie Fortis and announcer Don Pardo, and featuring writers/performers Laraine Newman, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Davis, Jim Downey, Al Franken, Tom Gammill, Sarah Paley, Max Pross, Alan Zweibel and Paul Shaffer.  Even the "orchestra" is conducted by Howard Shore and looks like most of his All-Nurse Band.  All the ingredients of the classic 1975-80 original cast.  It's essentially a lost episode.  Guests include Emily Prager (briefly a castmember at the end of season 6, and Tom Davis' girlfriend), Eric Idle (frequent host with the original cast), Gregory Hines (musical guest in season 4), Lauren Hutton (who had just hosted on Nov. 7 with the "new cast") and Lynn Redgrave.

This is the clip with Gregory Hines, and here is the entire show on Hulu.

The Lawrence Welk Show Christmas, 1972

One of the greatest Christmas intros in the history of mankind... from the 1972 Lawrence Welk Show Christmas special.  I do not understand why everyone laughs when he says something about a riding/writing song?  Is this a weird in-joke?  I will get you for this, Mr. Welk.

As an alleged bonus, here's "In the Mood" (not Christmasy) from one of the final Welk episodes in 1982.  This features Gayle, Ron and Michael.  Weird to hear it with words, play acting and Ron's apparent sunburn.

Finally, a spell-binding (for babies) version of "Georgy Girl" by John Lennon's Lennon Sisters.

Terror, cola wars and butter on Indian TV

Television did not spread from the major cities of India until the mid-1970s, so their "classic" commercials are mostly from the 1980s.  Here's a sampling, along with some other Indian TV bits...

Amul commercials (I believe Amul is a collective of dairy farmers):
-Amul ice-cream ad (1990s?)
-Amul "pizza cheese" (2000s... hot hot hot)
-Amul butter (a very old ad, from the early 1970s -- these seem like they would be shown in cinemas as opposed to on television... another is here)

-Doordarshan ID (this is the national TV network, not unlike the BBC... this terrified me then and now)

-Gold Spot commercials (I very much enjoy the man's over-British pronunciation)... as I understand it, the Indian government used to require foreign companies to partner with a local company.  So they didn't have Honda motorcycles, they had Hero-Honda.  They tried the same thing with Coca-Cola (which was already established) in the 1970s, and Coke said "forget it!  We're not partnering with someone local and giving you our formula."  So they left, and the soft-drink void was filled by already existing local drinks, then Pepsi, before Coke returned (under relaxed partnership rules).  The local drinks today barely exist, but in the 1980s, everyone could enjoy Gold Spot (orange), Limca (lemon-lime) and Thums Up (cola, SIC).  An article on the Indian cola wars is here.

The ABC Sunday Night Movie, 1982

This used to terrify me when I was little... the intro music and graphics for the ABC Sunday Night Movie.

MTV's The State

From MTV's under-appreciated series "The State," here's two classics... The first sketch (Bumblebees) is appropriate for #SNL4kidz; the other is not.

Paul McCartney's 1969 Christmas song

Following on this post about the Beatles' Christmas disks, someone has re-edited Paul's 1969 Christmas ditty into "45-length."  Enjoy -- it's better than "Wonderful Christmastime," if you're into that sort of thing.