LUCKY SEVEN (1978) – Years before the hacker calling himself Captain Midnight hijacked HBO airtime to protest their high prices and years before the weird Max Headroom parody hack in Chicago came this forgotten incident in the annals of pirate broadcasting.
As many people know, pirate radio stations were often able to operate for months or even years before getting shut down, but pirate television broadcasting was limited to random hacks of a few minutes tops. The exception was Lucky 7, a rogue outfit that operated on the (then) unused frequency for what would have been Channel Seven in Syracuse, New York.
The host for Lucky 7 was a memorable man wearing a gas mask on his face like he was some kind of late-night Horror Host. This figure would introduce the programs and movies being shown on the channel and would also editorialize about the way corporations and the government held a monopoly on the airwaves.
Not content to merely hack into other television broadcasts for a few minutes the rebels at Lucky 7, who called themselves the Renegade Broadcasting Company, were seen on thousands of tv screens in Upstate New York for roughly eight hours per night. 8 or 10 PM to 4 or 6 AM are often claimed. Continue reading
WILDSIDE (1985) – After The Wild Wild West, The Barbary Coast and Bearcats but before The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. came this short-lived series about a secret crime-fighting group in the 1880s American West. 
HOWARD ROLLINS portrayed Bannister Sparks, who had been a demolitions man as an outlaw and retained that expertise as a crime-fighting operative. 
WILLIAM SMITH played Brodie Hollister, gunfighter extraordinaire. Hollister breeds and trains horses.
THE BEST OF BROADWAY (1954-1955) – Balladeer’s Blog’s latest look at a Forgotten Television item deals with The Best of Broadway. The color program aired on CBS once per month and its failure to last more than one season may be explained by the fact that the other three weeks the program that aired in its time slot was … Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts. 
THE ROYAL FAMILY (September 15th, 1954) – From the Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman comedy The Royal Family of Broadway. Paul Nickell directed this depiction of a Barrymore-esque thespian dynasty and the chaos that results when the family matriarch is outraged to learn that her daughter and granddaughter are considering leaving their stage careers behind for marriage. 
NBC OPERA THEATRE (1949-1964) – Believe it or not, television networks used to regularly broadcast presentations of operas. Gradually, declining public interest drove operas off the networks and onto educational television. 
ARREST AND TRIAL (1963-1964) – Decades before Law & Order came this forgotten television series which used one half of its 90-minute run-time to depict the police tracking down and arresting a suspect and the other half depicting the trial. Ben Gazzara, Chuck Connors and Don Galloway starred. 
Arrest and Trial lasted just one season (yes, some shows did 30-episode and even 39-episode seasons back then). Audiences may have been too used to the comfort food of crime shows where they knew going in who was guilty and who was innocent. Cop shows like Dragnet always showed the police nabbing the guilty and lawyer shows like Perry Mason always showed the defendants being innocent. No such convenience on this show. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s Forgotten Television feature wraps up its look at 
MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN (1964) – An example of Hicksploitation. H.G. Lewis of all people wrote and SANG for this movie. A country western singer, tired of the artificial feel of mainstream Nashville music, spends some time with his North Carolina relatives to soak up some authentic atmosphere. 
IT’S HOT IN PARADISE (1960) – This is a film about hot nightclub ladies and their schmoozing manager getting stuck on an uncharted island after a plane crash. They learn that a now dead mad scientist made the place his lair and his experiments spawned dog-sized spiders whose bite transforms people into half-assed human-spider creatures. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s Fifteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues! A few days ago I made an encore post about the Susan Lucci version of the Dickens classic. 
FREDERIC MARCH PRESENTS TALES FROM DICKENS: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1959) – Basil Rathbone IS Edgar Winter as Ebenezer Scrooge! Or at least that’s what he looks like with his incredibly long white hair in this television show. 
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