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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

This Day in TV History: Blue Christmas, indeed

 On this night 50 years ago, CBS ushered in the month of December with what sounds like one of the most depressing television specials ever. Check out this summary of Blue Christmas: The State of the Economy from ultimate70stv.com:

This report examines the nation's current economic ills and explores possible avenues of recovery. Interviewed are: Paul McCracken, chairman of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisors; Paul Samuelson, M.I.T. economist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for economics; Walter Heller, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Auto Workers; Milton Friedman, economics professor at the University of Chicago; and Arthur Wood, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co.

All right! Who's ready to sing some carols and do some Xmas shopping! I think viewers who sat through must have needed an extra wassail or two to get through it. It's epscially funny to me that it comes at the end of the night after a lineup of Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Hee Haw, and To Rome with Love (sitcom about a professor in Rome--a professor from Iowa).

40 years ago, on December 1, 1980, the prospects were a little brighter.on CBS at 10:00 P.M. as it reran A Country Christmas:



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