Oh, the wonders of YouTube. Two recent postings will be of particular interest to New Yorkers with an interest in the city back in the 1970s. Both were recorded in 1973 from WNBC-TV Channel 4 and are in superb condition. This is impressive in and of itself, considering the rarity of over-the-air recordings from this era, before Beta and VHS began to make inroads.
The first clip, from February 8, 1973, includes a bumper for the Bobby Darin show (he died later that year), and then a news update for "The Eleventh Hour." That was Channel 4's 11 p.m. newscast before it morphed into Newscenter 4, anchored by a name we don't hear much from these days -- Jim Hartz. Among the headlines: Rush-hour trouble on the Penn Central (what we call Metro-North today.) Hartz anchored the report from 1967 to 1974 before heading to the "Today" Show for two years. Also in this clip is a commercial for Tropicana (check out the old container designs) with Sandy Becker of Channel 5 children's show fame. It had been a few years since Becker left the station.
The second clip is from later in 1973, and includes Hartz doing a news promo again, Becker pitching Tropicana again, and an NBC promo for an "exciting Ann-Margret special, with Bob Hope and George Burns." Did the writer of this tag appreciate the hilarity of those words?
-- Rolando Pujol