For My First Impression

Why do I go on about TV? My earliest vivid memories of the outside world are of pop singles and TV: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Alvin Show, even Laugh-In. On tape, the period of 1966-1969 is even more vivid than on film (for a while, GSN was the only network with live-in-studio programming like this—late 1960s runs of panel shows like To Tell The Truth and What’s My Line? The style, perfectly preserved, is more than the game.

TV is like a Stargate, but throughout the 1970s and most of the 1980s it was a Stargate without a cartouche—nothing to dial to, with precious few exceptions. This is the reason why SCTV is so special, because for many of us, it was the only doorway to quality.