Morrand: This Victory Auto Wreckers Ad actually has THREE different phone number seen in this commercial. If you pause the video at 1:40, an old ending title graphic says 263-3405 for a split second in a smaller font than the duplicate ending title graphic with the more familiar 860-2000. The tow truck has 766-012? painted on it.

The answer in how Snipets got around so early to non-Field stations, lay in an ad put up on eBay: Starting in 1978, these segments were nationally syndicated via The Samuel Goldwyn Television Company. This factor may explain why pre-'77 Kaiser-made episode-lets bore Field copyrights. There is still a yuuuuge question-mark as to whether Snipets made it to the biggest TV market in the country, New York City, and if so, on which station?

That this aired within Big Blue Marble also bears some irony. In NYC, that show aired for quite a few years on WPIX Channel 11 (which also ran WLS Chicago-originated Gigglesnort Hotel on Saturday mornings for a few years beginning in '77). Today KTLA is a sister station to WPIX - and therefore, also, to Chicago's own WGN Channel 9.

Pushbutton - Great story, thanks for sharing. :-)

TeleFrank - Thanks for the great info, as usual. :-)

Rocketboy - Thanks for the ID! :-)

And in case you were wondering, the music bed on the sign-off is "Romanticarium" by Bill Giant from the NBC production music library.

While this clip aired I was pressing "record" on my little shoebox cassette recorder and pointing my microphone at the TV speaker. I was 14 years old and thought Martin Mull was a real hoot. I played the heck out of that cassette that summer. My friends and I enjoyed Flo & Eddie's "history of rock n' roll thus far" or whatever they called it. Nice to have an exact airdate; thanks for this!

Is that Orson Welles doing the voice over for the Time Magazine commercial?

Panos Productions did not produce the Outdoor Sportsman. Joe Wyer the host and producer of the show may have used them occasionally and they did produce the program open. Other than that Joe produced his show out of Studio B at WCIU-TV's Board of Trade Studios. Often he showed 16mm films produced by others. But I clearly remember the day he prepped a deer for "stuffing" live on the desk of the Stock Market Observer. Joe was a taxidermist by trade. His show was a little different every week.

Ernie Panos the owner of Panos Productions was a Greek born dentist who created Panos Productions to produce his own greek language show. He soon discovered that his fellow ethnic broadcasters would use his services for location shooting and occasionally a commercial. They were cheap and incidentally, since you made such a big deal about it in the description the main draw was the CG. WCIU had an art department but not a CG. Paying for the art department to create a slide or a graphic card was a cost that could be avoided by just typing on the Panos CG. It was amazing for these producers.

Not sure what happened I had left WCIU by then but Panos's show went off the air and I think the production company followed. Some years later I recall that Mr. Panos was in the news for fondling young patients. He was acquitted for that. I think he's dead.

Sort of reminds me of the New York Mets' 1980 ad campaign "The Magic Is Back" . . . six years before they won the World Series in seven games. But in '80 they had no magic whatsoever.