Do you get over-the-air TV? You know, TV the way G*d intended it to be? I do. Even if you don't, you probably have Netflix or Hulu available.
Those old variety shows are out there. If the weather's right, I can get channel 13.2 in Baltimore, which is Decades. (I am in northern Virginia. Due to some quirk, TV stations in Baltimore are easier to get than TV stations in DC.) Decades shows reruns of Ed Sullivan.
Decades
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Programming
See also:
List of programs broadcast by Decades
Decades relies primarily on programming from the extensive content library owned by CBS Television Distribution, which includes the pre-2006 Paramount Television library – which CBS had acquired as a result of absorbing Paramount's syndication unit in 2006 through its split from Viacom into a separate company – along with series from Desilu Productions, Bing Crosby Productions, Don Fedderson Productions, QM Productions, Spelling Television and Republic Pictures Television. Decades also carries series and movies from NBCUniversal, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, Sonar Entertainment, the Peter Rodgers Organization, Shout! Factory, The Carsey-Werner Company and the public domain.
In order to stand out from other "retro-TV" multicast services (such as MeTV and Antenna TV), the Monday through Friday schedule initially featured a block of programming based on a daily theme, with interstitials to highlight the theme. Each six-hour block of programming was repeated four times a day and typically included a feature film, episodes of theme related TV programs, and biographical programs featuring celebrities, actors and actresses, musicians, athletes, and public figures of interest. The theme blocks were bookended with Through the Decades, an hour-long program hosted and narrated by Bill Kurtis (who formerly served as an anchor for Chicago CBS O&O WBBM-TV and CBS News) that explores the events and news from a particular day or period in history, using archival footage that CBS owns via services such as CBS News and CBS Television Distribution's syndicated newsmagazine program Entertainment Tonight.
The network's Saturday and Sunday schedule features "binge" blocks of classic television series. Beginning on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. (ET), forty-two consecutive hours are devoted to a particular series, which is usually sourced from either the CBS Television Distribution library of shows or a show Weigel Broadcasting has a contract to carry (such as one of the shows it broadcasts on MeTV).
Airings of The Dick Cavett Show were added to the schedule February 1, 2016 within the daily themed block, as appropriate. Episodes from Cavett's late-night ABC talk show from 1969 to 1974 as well as his later interview series on PBS, USA, and CNBC were all made available for airing.
On November 1, 2016, a major change was made to the programming lineup, with the daily programming block reduced to two airings daily (one from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, the other in overnight) as the 2:00 p.m. to midnight (ET) time period was converted to a "daily binge" with a different show airing each day. During the month of November, a different "cop show" was aired each weekday; in December, sitcoms were featured, and in January 2017, shows that aired in 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987 and 1997 were featured.
A further shift in direction from the original channel concept came on December 5, 2016, when the network added two daily airings of the NBC series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the first breaking the daily binge in half at 6:00 p.m. (ET) and the same show repeating at the conclusion of the binge time block. The themed block was also modified to include a daily airing of The Dick Cavett Show at the starting point of each day's block.
On January 2, 2017, the weekday schedule was further altered by the addition of back-to-back airings of two episodes of Ripley's Believe it or Not! at 5:00 p.m. (ET); it is followed by two separate episodes of Laugh-In at 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., Through The Decades at 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. (but without the associated themed programming), and a different episode of The Dick Cavett Show from the one in the themed block airing at 8:00 p.m. The "daily binge" then resumes at 11:00 p.m. until the daily themed block replay at 2:00 a.m.
The weekend "binge" schedule remained unchanged through the late-2016/early-2017 weekday changes.
As of 2018, Decades began airing a collection of series that had lapsed into the public domain: The Great Gildersleeve, Topper, The Bob Cummings Show, Life with Elizabeth, The Loretta Young Show and Annie Oakley.
"elfin," in post #7, mentions Carol Burnett. I've seen that not too long ago on one of the OTA (over-the-air) networks (
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