Half-Hour of 1977 ABC TV Commercials

Not every post needs to contain a detailed story. Sometimes, the content pretty much speaks for itself, as is the case with this posting from Internet Archive. It contains a collection of TV commercials which aired on ABC television between January and May 1977. Some, such as those with Bill Cosby's voice-overs for Del Monte corn speak more to the particular point in time than they do any lack of oversight of Mr. Cosby's pre-#MeToo behavior.

Here's the complete list of what's included with approximate times:

• 0:00 Oscar Mayer Bologna
• 0:32 Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs
• 1:02 ABC Bumper
• 1:07 Del Monte Corn (Bill Cosby narration)
• 1:37 Mounds/Almond Joy Candy Bars #1
• 2:08 The Six Million Dollar Man promo (episode: Danny's Inferno)
• 2:29 The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries promo
• 3:00 Triscuits Crackers (with Betty Buckley)
• 3:30 Campbell's Noodle-O's Soup
• 4:00 The Captain and Tennille Show promo
• 4:24 Golden Grahams Cereal
• 4:54 The Kodak Instant Camera with a Twist
• 5:25 AT&T Super-Switcher
• 6:24 Happy Days/Fonzie Loves Pinkie promo
• 6:55 McDonalds Fish
• 7:25 Purina Cat Chow
• 7:56 Nescafe Coffees
• 8:27 Carefree Sugarless Gum (with Dena Deitrich)
• 8:56 Kentucky Fried Chicken
• 9:28 Eight is Enough promo #1
• 9:50 Gaines-burgers Dog Food
• 10:20 Singer Sewing Machines (with Debbie Reynolds, George Dzundza and Michael Tucci)
• 10:50 Tickle Antiperspirant
• 11:52 Final Net Hairspray
• 12:21 Eight is Enough promo #2
• 12:52 Future Cop/Three's Company promo
• 13:16 Mounds/Almond Joy Candy Bars #2
• 13:46 The 1977 Chevrolet (with Jerry Orbach)
• 14:17 Playtex Support-Can-Be-Beautiful Bra
• 14:47 Coca-Cola ("Coke adds life!")
• 15:18 Hanes Pantyhose ("Gentlemen Prefer Hanes")
• 15:46 Purina Puppy Chow (Sterling Holloway narration)
• 16:19 Boy Scouts of America ("Boy Power!")
• 16:40 Chevrolet Concours
• 17:10 Revlon Natural Wonder Crease-proof Cream Eyeshadow
• 17:40 Fritos Corn Chips
• 18:11 Soft & Dri Antiperspirant (with P.J. Soles & Charlene Tilton)
• 18:42 Log Cabin Buttered Syrup
• 19:12 Post Raisin Bran
• 19:43 U.S. Savings Bonds ("The Ant & the Grasshopper")
• 20:16 Oscar Mayer Bologna
• 20:47 Oscar Mayer Bacon
• 21:17 Clairol Nice 'n' Easy Hair Color
• 21:47 Pillsbury Plus Cake Mix
• 21:18 Clorox Bleach
• 22:49 Blansky's Beauties/Fish/Starsky & Hutch promo
• 23:20 Kinney Shoes (with Ken Berry)
• 23:50 Carnation Instant Milk (with Vicki Lawrence)
• 24:20 Kool-Aid
• 24:50 Gravy Train Dog Food (with June Lockhart)
• 25:22 Fotomat
• 25:52 Wheat Thins Crackers (with Sandy Duncan)
• 26:23 The Easter Bunny Is Coming to Town promo
• 26:45 Good Year Tires
• 27:15 Canada Dry Ginger Ale (with Aldo Ray, Broderick Crawford & Jack Palance)
• 27:45 Have a Pepsi Day

The video can be watched below, or by visiting https://archive.org/details/1977TVCommercials.

 

Some, such as the promotional promo from "Captain and Tennille Show" (at 4:00) are worth revisiting since the Captain Darryl Dragon passed away just a few weeks ago, on January 2, 2019 at age 76, although as I noted in my post on the duo in April 2017, Toni Tennille was bitten by the celebrity bug, and it was more a showcase for her, with Mr. Dragon being mostly a musical backdrop for her. Another clip, this one for retailer Kinney Shoes starting at 23:20 featured actor and dancer Ken Berry, perhaps best known for his starring role as Vinton Harper on the seventies-to-eighties sitcom "Mama's Family" (catch my post on that http://hgm.sstrumello.com/2017/02/mamas-family-from-network-tv-also-ran.html for details) who passed away at age 85 on December 1, 2018.

Of course, I'm partial to the two commercials for Peter Paul Mounds/Almond Joy Candy Bars #1 which appears at 1:37 and another Peter Paul Mounds/Almond Joy Candy Bars #2 spot which appears at 13:16 because at the time, the company was still based in Connecticut where I grew up (long before being acquired by Cadbury, whose U.S. operations were later sold to Hershey). When I was growing up, class trips to the factory were always a favorite among grade school kids of that era.

Anyway, since these commercials were broadcast prior to the Copyright Act that took effect on January 1, 1978, the archivist presumes these commercials are all in public domain (most of them, at least) but he says he's certainly no copyright expert. These were included on DVD's of "The Brady Bunch Variety Hour" duped from tapes of the original broadcasts made by producers Sid & Marty Krofft which I obtained from a collector. They are broken into clips and shared them on various sites like RetroJunk over the years, but when he posted them as a complete collection on YouTube in 2013, the video quickly began averaging 1,000 hits a day. Due to the high-quality, extreme rarity and overwhelming popularity, it seemed like a no-brainer to make them available for download on The Internet Archive in full DVD quality.

The Forces Behind Iconic PSA's in U.S. Advertising

For Gen Xers who grew up in the 1970s, most of us remember at least a few of the iconic advertising campaigns by an organization known as the Ad Council.  Indeed, the crying native American TV ads helped influence an entire generation of us.  The ads themselves received all kinds of awards from the advertising industry.  But is this a case of a Hollywood-esque awards show sponsored by the industry, giving itself various awards and forcing the country to watch as it does so?  The short answer is "kind of".

Catch this iconic television ad which first aired in 1971 but continued for a number of years after, just as Generation X was growing up.  The iconic native American crying ad (incidentally, the book disclosed that the actor wasn't native American, but Italian-American) can be seen below, or by visiting http://youtu.be/9Dmtkxm9yQY:



The Ad Council was the creative force behind these iconic public service advertising (PSA) campaigns including the crying native American as well as versions of Smokey the Bear and others.  And while the Ad Council's creativity was behind the ads, the organization which based in New York City, began as part of the war effort in the 1940's.  But the actual organization which paid to run the ads was an organization that called itself Keep America Beautiful, which sounds innocent enough, but isn't your grassroots Sierra Club.  In reality, it is/was a a pseudo-charity funded by the packaged good manufacturers in this country.  In other words, companies like McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, Reynolds Aluminium, Nestle Waters, the American Chemistry Council — these are the companies who produce both the chemicals and the packaging material that ends up in our waste stream and in our garbage stream, and they were the ones lecturing us to pick up our waste to keep America Beautiful.  If only the ads weren't funded by the companies that created all that waste!

Book by Wendy Melillo

Wendy Melillo, an assistant professor of communications at American University is the author of a new (as of September 2013) book entitled "How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns", is interviewed by NPR about these campaigns and the organizations behind these iconic campaigns.  The interview which can be listened to below (or by visiting http://n.pr/1bMejQk) is fascinating.
I think its important to acknowledge that Ms. Melillo isn't trying to discredit the Ad Council's work.  Indeed, she claims it is a "premier organization we have in this country for public service advertising. And it does a lot of good."  She says her goal with this book is to take a look at the business model, and to recognize that there are some limitations.  She says society can work together to determine how we can improve that to make it even better, but she clearly thinks that one of the keys is making sure people know what the current business model's limitations actually are.

CALM Act: Congress Re-Regulates Practice the FCC Deregulated in the 1980s

At one time, I honestly thought that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prohibited television advertisers from allowing the volume on television commercials from being much louder than that of the programming (I seem to recall a mention of it in a college communications and/or marketing course), and that may have been true up until the roll-back-all-the-regulations 1980s.  However, since that time, I think the problem of excessively loud TV commercials had became so pervasive and routine, that massive, routine complaints to lawmakers of all political persuasions and the FCC really forced Congressional lawmakers to re-regulate this highly annoying practice.

Indeed, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said "I cannot tell you how many hundreds of citizens have told me — personally, through emails and letters, at public hearings, even across the family dinner table — how obnoxiously intrusive they find loud commercials."

That prompted a new law called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act to be passed, which very recently took effect. President Obama actually signed the bill into law back in 2010, but for a variety of reasons, it FINALLY took effect on Thursday, December 13, 2012.  NBC's Today Show reported about the CALM Act going into effect.

The CALM Act comes more than a year after Congress actually passed legislation regarding commercial volume and directed the FCC to come up with enforcement rules. The architect of the bill was Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park, California), who pushed for the legislation after hearing complaints about loud commercials from her very own family.  The press release for the implementation of bipartisan CALM Act can be found at https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials.

The FCC says that cable and satellite TV companies as well as local broadcasters are now required to make sure the volume on commercials is kept in check. The new rules went into effect on December 21, 2012.

It's not just viewers who were pushing for this legislation.  The L.A. Times reported that television producers also often griped about the discrepancies between the sound of commercials and of their programming.

"It may be the single best thing government has ever done," said "Modern Family" co-creator Steve Levitan told the L.A. Times (see http://lat.ms/X2zW26 for the article). "Now if they could just mute the volume of political ads, I'd be thrilled."

Some people have looked for technology to automatically level the sound, but many of the devices sold were pure junk and were little more than a costly and unnecessary add-on to an entertainment system that already has far too many wires to begin with.

In late December 2012, WNYC's "On The Media" program featured an entire show about that new CALM Act law, speaking to The Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Williamson who explained to Bob why regulators weren't able to turn down the volume of commercials until now.  It's definitely worth having a look at, and that radio program can be seen at http://www.wnyc.org/story/238183-loudness-wars/.

The CALM Act effectively reverses the FCC's deregulation of commercial volume resulting in ever louder ads.  Penn State Telecommunications and Law professor Rob Frieden put it this way in his blog (see http://goo.gl/aYQa3 for his write-up):

"The unregulated marketplace for commercial volume led to an upward spiral, unmitigated by any notion of marketplace self-regulation."

Now, broadcasters, cable TV operators and satellite broadcasters are required by law to ensure that commercials and program content sound the same.  If the problem doesn't get better, complaints about excessively loud TV commercials can (and should) be filed by using the online complaint form to the FCC, known as form 2000G, at http://www.fcc.gov/complaints, and then selecting "Broadcast (TV and Radio), Cable, and Satellite Issues" and following the instructions to file such a complaint.

Penn State's Rob Frieden suggested this was really a function of an industry that was unable to police itself and therefore brought the consequences upon itself, writing:

"Congress reached a better solution: Regulation in the face of the inability of broadcasters to resist the temptation to offer advertisers a sneaky opportunity to 'cut through the clutter' by raising the volume of their spots.  Of course the advantage proved short term when more and more commercials got louder and louder."

He also notes that the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, something almost unheard of in Congress these days.  In my opinion, there are probably more a few other industries that were once deregulated that now need re-regulation because they cannot be trusted to do the right thing for anyone other than their shareholders and, in turn, their own wallets.  But at least we can watch TV without adjusting the volume control every time a commercial comes on!