And even more specifically, this will describe how I never got to see the opening theme song to Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm until a Saturday AFTERNOON in the mid-'70s.
Okay, here we go:
So I had known about the Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm show on CBS on Saturday mornings during the 1971-1972 TV season. I knew the shows that were on through those two-page ads the networks used to take out in the middle of comic books. But I couldn't see them. I'm in Canada. We didn't get CBS, NBC, or ABC in Canada.
(Well, we sort of got ABC shows. We could get a station out of Pembina, North Dakota, right across the border, called KCND, using rabbit ears antennas we placed on our TV set. KCND was mostly an independent station that sold ads in the Winnipeg market. But they did accept some limited ABC programming. On Saturday mornings, they broadcast whatever shows ABC aired at 8:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. CST and on Sunday mornings, they aired Make A Wish at 10:30 a.m., and they delayed the shows ABC aired Saturdays at 7:00 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. and aired one of those Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and one at 4:30 p.m. The purpose of the 4:30 p.m. one was because KCND aired two movies before that, and if the movies ran overtime, they could join the cartoon show in progress. This must have been before broadcasters teamed with movie producers to somehow make movies and commercials fit into prescribed time slots. Now, all of this has NOTHING to do with the subject at hand - until we get into a CBS affiliate delaying cartoons later on in this - so that's why I've put it in brackets. Just to show that we did get a few ABC network cartoons through KCND before the fall of 1972.)
Then came the fall of 1972, when I assume Winnipeg was given access to North Dakota affiliates to CBS, NBC, and ABC, that we could now get on cable. At least that's when our apartment block started getting cable. It was mid-September, so we missed just two or three weeks of the new Saturday morning cartoon schedule.
During the 1972 season, CBS aired The Flintstone Comedy Hour at 10:00 a.m. The first half-hour was new short Flintstones cartoons and Bedrock Rockers (Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm's band) music videos. The second half-hour was a half-hour long Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm cartoon, which I figured was the previous season's Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm show incorporated into the Flintstone Comedy Hour. Pebbles' voice was different in these cartoons - hey, it was the voice of Sally Struthers from All In The Family! (she had to quit being Pebbles' voice after she got All In The Family) - and the animation was better, closer to the animation of the last couple of years of the original Flintstones series.
During this season, CBC in Canada even replaced their long-running Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour at 5:00 p.m. with the Flintstone Comedy Hour for a while.
The following year, in September 1973, The Flintstone Comedy Hour became the Flintstone Comedy Show, as it became the first half-hour of the show only, in reruns, as the second half, the Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm Show cartoons, had been retired. It was common on all networks that if a show ran for a second season, which would be reruns, it would be retired after that.
So that year ran its' course, and beginning in September 1974, that whole spin-off conglomerate was forgotten.
But wait.....much later on, it came back!
Okay, now, first we have to discuss CBS and their Sunday morning cartoon lineup to give you some background here.
CBS and ABC in those days used to have short Sunday morning cartoon lineups in addition to their all-morning Saturday cartoon lineup. In CBS' case, they only aired two shows at 8:00 a.m. CST for one hour. In Winnipeg. though, we never had that. Our CBS affiliate, KXJB in Valley City, ND, at first didn't air the CBS Sunday morning cartoon lineup in favor of religious programming (something many affiliates did). But later on, in the mid-'70s, they did start to delay that one hour of cartoon shows to the following Saturday at 1:00 p.m., after CBS' Saturday cartoon lineup, including the CBS Children's Film Festival at 12 noon, was over. "Delaying" is TV lingo meaning the exact same thing as when you set your VCR or PVR to record a show and you watch it later with the commercials intact. All of CBS' commercials stayed intact. It sure blew my mind away as a kid, to have gone through a whole week of school and winter weather, then to watch on TV shows and their commercials that originally aired on CBS the previous Sunday, BEFORE that entire work week occurred! As well as the entire morning of Saturday cartoon shows that just finished.
At one point, the two shows were My Favorite Martians at 1:00 p.m. and Bailey's Comets at 1:30 p.m. This still has been the only time in my life I have ever seen these shows. But then, Bailey's Comets was taken away and replaced by.....Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm!
And I finally, after all these years, got to see the opening credits to the Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm show! What year was this? 1976? On a Saturday afternoon at 1:30 p.m.!
If any decision-makers at KXJB in the mid-'70s are reading this, if they're not already dead, thank you very much for deciding to air that CBS Sunday morning cartoon lineup, even if it was delayed by six days!
And there's a perspective on cartoon shows you could only read from a Canadian living close to the border with our unique access to American channels and networks.
And yes, I do now have the entire Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm series on DVD and can watch the opening credits and the episodes any time I please. But when will the Flintstone Comedy Hour (or actually, Flintstone Comedy Show) come out on DVD?
