Keith Morrison: "And then. . . well. . . you know what they say. . . "

Oldest sex symbol on network television. Face like the Gobi Desert, but that's why we love him. This speaks volumes about Dateline's age demographic. He also speaks in a certain language I call Keith-ese, with lots of low-pitched "well"s, and slightly archaic Canadianisms like "anna-thing" for "anything", and "rec-coards" for records. His pauses are more than pregnant, they have already given birth and are running around.

Click on bottom right corner, you can't watch this without the sound!

Logomania: or, the eagle bites the bolt

Ancient TV logos are a happy obsession of mine, though some would say there are no happy obsessions (but there are, Blanche, there ARE!). I collect them as gifs, because, let's face it, the soundtracks to these things are never that stimulating. The only exception is the original NBC In Living Color peacock from the late '50s, which had the most doom-y sounding music behind it. I was only four, and I was terrified of it and would run and hide as soon as I saw that peacock.

These are two similar (but not identical) ABC logos from the early '50s. ABC was always the third runner-up in the network sweepstakes. I think it's still that way now.

These strike me as a little strange.  They feature apertures which open, and I guess it's supposed to look like a camera lens. To me, it's like a doorknob that says ABC on it, but what do I know of technology?

And yet, it's NBC which became so famous for its zoom-in "eye" logo with - yes, an aperture that opens! And then it closes again. It's creepy, is what it is, but all the best TV logos are creepy.

It does make you wonder, however, who got there first.

This may seem like a still picture - but look closely, and it isn't. It's quivering and jumping up and down ever so slightly. This is what I love about old technology - the way everything trembles (trembles, trembles). It's one of the simpler versions of an early '50s ABC logo featuring an eagle with lightning in its beak.

This is a more sophisticated, animated version of the same logo. But it still looks awfully militaristic. I was probably scared of this, too, when I was four. The poor framing and flickering are things I prize, and the expanding star is slightly explosive. Early TV ads often featured that same lunging-at-the-viewer effect, with the names of products jumping off the label to fill the whole screen. This was a visual ambush which no one was used to, so it may have intimidated people into buying the product.

While this one may look the same, it isn't. Note how filthy the screen is, with somebody's hair stuck at the top of the frame (and also at the bottom, for a second). These are the kinds of logos that make me turn cartwheels of joy. If you're old like me, you'll remember the sound that went along with these extremely scratchy bits of film. It's very hard to describe, but it's the auditory equivalent of all that scratchiness and quivering hair. My brother and I used to try to imitate it by going "Phhhhhhhhhhhh!"

This is a weirdie, and I have no idea who it is. Someone's face appears in the middle of the star! I don't know who this is, and if I didn't know better I'd say it was from the primitive universe of the Dumont Network. It has a Dumonty feel to it. But no, it isn't, it has to be ABC.

But this one is Simply The Best. The lightning-bolt lights up dramatically as it seems to spear through the eagle's beak, and the eagle is illuminated in a big dramatic sweep from below. And oh that scratchy stuff, it's in abundance here! It's likely on an old film that has taken a beating over the decades, so it's doubtful it would look this bad when it was first broadcast. But you never know. I particularly love kinescopes of old shows that had their credits written on a piece of cardboard that was manually dragged across the screen.

Watch at your own risk! I can hardly describe this music, with its dark and doomy gong-sound followed by menacing upward glissandos of low woodwinds, then (under a voice which seems to be announcing the end of the world as we know it) a few bars of a creepily dissonant, almost gamelan-like theme that might have been used for the entrance of a bloodthirsty emperor who ate little girls like me for breakfast.

The visuals are, however, stunning, far more dramatic than any other incarnation of the NBC peacock, which has now been reduced to a sad, flat thing resembling a vinyl tile in someone's bathroom. The bathroom of someone with no taste. But I love this, it's a piece of art,  which is why I use it as one of my "signature" gifs at the bottom of the post. (That IS why I do it. Didn't you realize? It's a way to call attention to the link to my Amazon Author Page, which - I won't say nobody looks at it, because frankly I don't know. But every once in a while, I do.)

Miscellany. 

Why was I always so terrified as a kid?

This is why. THIS would come on TV, probably when I was about 3 or 4 years old. Though I now think it's quite beautiful and use it as one of my signature gifs at the end of posts (and that's what those are, folks, in case you're thinking they're totally irrelevant), it petrified me then, because I had no idea what a logo was - or a network - or, frankly, even a peacock. I was a toddler, for God's sake, I was barely out of diapers, and permanently confused.

It's a strange sort of thing because it totally runs counter to the ugly, primitive-looking logos you saw for the other networks (and I have a gif for that!). It has a severe, harlequin-looking aspect to it and is quite complex, and when it goes from stark black-and-white to colour, you just don't expect it. It jumps off the screen, as they say. Someone designed this back in 1957, someone with real talent, and NBC then proceeded to dumb it down for the next 60 years. It's still used, only the peacock has something like four colours. Oversimplification. 

Like 95% of households in the '50s, we had a black-and-white TV, so what was the point of a colour logo anyway? And yet, and yet. The slightly disturbing quality of this early logo is what makes it so effective and such a piece of art. But it still creeps me out big-time. 

And the music, my God, the MUSIC on this thing - it still makes my guts cringe. It just scared me then. It wasn't friendly. At all. It didn't make you want to watch the show. It made you want to run screaming out of the room. It has a big gong and evil upward glissandi on dark woodwinds and a sort of dissonant non-melody that doesn't belong on TV at all.  I had not heard the music since probably 1957 or 1958, I had forgotten it even existed and had pushed the whole nightmare into the back of my head, when I stumbled on it on YouTube, and my God! I cannot even tell you how strange I felt. I was rocketed back in time, and let me tell you, it was not a pleasant feeling to suddenly find myself getting smaller and smaller and more and more frightened. 

Most of the "scary" logos on YouTube (and there are many compilations, all of which I watch obsessively late at night) really aren't that scary. If you turn the sound off, they aren't scary at all. The music is the main element of terror here - it's all hair-raisingly aggressive, with loud percussion like somebody hammering on railroad spikes, whining synthesizers, etc. In many cases it's more like noise. Why did they do this? You can look away - easily - but you can't keep sound out, even if you stick your fingers in your ears. This is why ads in general are so repetitive and shrill. Also why I find gif-making so comforting, because there is no sound involved at all.

BTW, this is the peacock logo only a few years later. It has been made a damn sight friendlier, with blurring Venn diagrams of colour rather than that odd black-and-white abstract net, and completely different music, with bubbly arpeggios on a clarinet and cheerful trills on a flute. All the threat has been removed. Gone is that King of Siam severe, exotic quality. But the final splash of pigment, the startling, paint-brushy effect at the end is still there. 

But look you here! as the ghost said to Scrooge. OK, it's fatter, has a shorter neck, but doesn't this partridge just a LITTLE bit resemble the NBC peacock without its tail feathers? It's facing the same way, it has a similar doohickey on top of its head, and - well. It could be I'm reaching here. But what network WAS that show on anyway? (frantic interval while she goes on Wikipedia - watch this in the interim!):

(gasp, gasp) I'm back. No, no, I was wrong, The Partridge Family ran on ABC, not NBC, and yet, here it is, this weird resemblance between the peacock and the partridge. Maybe it was one of those unconscious things (I don't mean as in knocked out), i. e. the artist or animator borrowing the image, or even sending it up: a fat, tailless NBC peacock equals a partridge! Any show that gave the world both David Cassidy and Danny Bonaduce has a lot to answer for. So I'd say stealing a logo is the least of its crimes.

Badda-boom: Here is the logo NBC uses now. Compare and contast. At least the music doesn't scare me.