Comedy gold: 1981 news report explores magical journalistic breakthrough
posted at 1:15 pm on January 29, 2009 by Allahpundit
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Via Breitbart, it’s 10 months old but new to me. Stick with it, as it gets funnier towards the end as they touch on the economics of this promising new medium. Hauntingly prescient exit quotation: “We’re not in it to make money.”
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The “owns home computer” caption at like 1:39 is epically funny.
The guy at 1:59 staring at the 5 inch screen is twice as funny as that.
lorien1973 on January 29, 2009 at 1:18 PM
wow
JeffreyLloyd on January 29, 2009 at 1:18 PM
Allah, I’ve got a couple of words to strike fear into your heart.
300 baud.
MadisonConservative on January 29, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Wow what a flash-back from the past. These people had no idea what they were starting.
Neat Video! I’ll post it on my own site.
tx2654 on January 29, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Invest in Microsoft…1981!!!!!!!
RobCon on January 29, 2009 at 1:19 PM
some experiment, they still havent figured out what all that means for journalism…meanwhile their experiment is sinking the industry! kind of like a journalistic pandora opening her box like a damned retard.
ernesto on January 29, 2009 at 1:20 PM
What is this blasphemy they are spewing? Like people would actually want to read their news from a computer screen.
/sarc
Glenn Jericho on January 29, 2009 at 1:20 PM
elgeneralisimo once had a modem just like that…
elgeneralisimo on January 29, 2009 at 1:20 PM
Dear god, how did we survive the 80s? Technology sucked, the hair sucked and the music sucked…
Rogue on January 29, 2009 at 1:20 PM
Wow, an acoustic coupler.
rbj on January 29, 2009 at 1:20 PM
It takes… 2 hours… to download the paper…
heh… Maybe they shouldn’t used all that Flash…
Skywise on January 29, 2009 at 1:21 PM
WOW – Does this mean I can watch Battle of the Network Stars anywhere!
RobCon on January 29, 2009 at 1:21 PM
I’m having bad newsroom flashbacks to the early 80s. Heck, we were still toting a Telex machine to remote events and sending back typed copy at the whopping rate of seven minutes a page.
When the damn thing worked.
JammieWearingFool on January 29, 2009 at 1:21 PM
We had Reagan. And at least the 80s weren’t the 70s.
rbj on January 29, 2009 at 1:22 PM
Lulz… I remember 300 baud.
spmat on January 29, 2009 at 1:22 PM
That is really funny. I remember having a modem similar to that for my Commodore 64 and using Q-Link (now AOL).
ScoopPC11 on January 29, 2009 at 1:23 PM
Sacrilege!
The music was awesome. The hair was even better!
Technology sucked though.
lorien1973 on January 29, 2009 at 1:23 PM
It looks like the newspaper was using Commodore 64s.
And “no ads”? What were they thinking?
Cicero43 on January 29, 2009 at 1:25 PM
I was born in 80, I just remember it being weird then and sucking when I started caring…
Rogue on January 29, 2009 at 1:25 PM
Ironic… the list of papers that were the first to become available electronically is a list of the papers on the verge of bankruptcy because news is now available from many other sources electronically.
mankai on January 29, 2009 at 1:25 PM
Ok , we got the technology , where’s the content?
the_nile on January 29, 2009 at 1:26 PM
His television? WebTV was way ahead of it’s time!
Tony737 on January 29, 2009 at 1:26 PM
And sell just before the Vista release.
Cicero43 on January 29, 2009 at 1:28 PM
Let that be a lesson learned, right?
Only almost 30 years ago & now the papers are bankrupting.
Classic!
Too bad Congress can’t learn from history, either!
Badger40 on January 29, 2009 at 1:28 PM
TWO HOURS! Wow! That would make the Slowskis (Comcast Turtles) very happy!
Funny, she said “It’s not that far-fetched”. haha
Tony737 on January 29, 2009 at 1:31 PM
“We’re not in it to make money…”
Obviously.
Cicero43 on January 29, 2009 at 1:32 PM
Is it just me , or does everyone from the 80’s look like a porn star.
MDWNJ on January 29, 2009 at 1:35 PM
Next thing you know people won’t be writing letters to the editor any more, they’ll just type things on their computer for other people to read.
backwoods conservative on January 29, 2009 at 1:36 PM
@1:28 Headline: DEMS: MORE ARMS SPENDING
…Yeah, that really was a different era.
bilups on January 29, 2009 at 1:36 PM
Wow! A rotary phone!
Shy Guy on January 29, 2009 at 1:36 PM
1980s: The Golden Age of Journalism?
terryannonline on January 29, 2009 at 1:37 PM
Guess that dude handing out papers never got a bailout.
WisCon on January 29, 2009 at 1:39 PM
I think I saw 90 year old Helen Thomas in the background of the newsroom.
Bishop on January 29, 2009 at 1:40 PM
Hey, the 80s were great! We should have more of them. 1989 was one of the greatest years in world history, with the Eastern block countries falling, one by one.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) on January 29, 2009 at 1:40 PM
And even then you still got your news quicker than the printed type of even today.
- The Cat
P.S. Newspapers: Read yesterday’s news today!
MirCat on January 29, 2009 at 1:41 PM
Gold, Jerry! GOLD
Ugly on January 29, 2009 at 1:43 PM
she’s hot…
wonder what she looks like now…
max1 on January 29, 2009 at 1:43 PM
Here you go…
Mazztek on January 29, 2009 at 1:45 PM
They should call it “Roundtine”.
bilups on January 29, 2009 at 1:46 PM
Gee, this looks really neat. Where can I get signed up?
ort777 on January 29, 2009 at 1:46 PM
In 1981, I worked for a major oil company’s research and development division in their Technical Information Services department (aka, the library). One of my responsibilities was to retrieve citations and articles from online databases such as GeoRef in exactly the same manner shown in the video. I would dial the phone number, place the headset in a cradle, wait 15 minutes or so to enter my search terms and then return in an hour or longer to check on the results. Disconnection was a frequent problem. At the time, my work computer had only external hard drives.
That was 15 years before I had my first home PC with an internet connection.
Terrie on January 29, 2009 at 1:46 PM
Could someone tell me what’s in that video? I can’t play it on my Commodore CBM.
Yep, that’s right, I wasn’t cool enough for a PET, we had to get the “business-like” CBM.
Ahh, the days of filling it full of BASIC games from the latest issue of Compute! You kids and your CD-ROMs these days!
ExUrbanKevin on January 29, 2009 at 1:47 PM
Hey, but you could print it out! It’s the future.
pedestrian on January 29, 2009 at 1:49 PM
Heh. I think they missed an important point there.
Some things never change – the news chick was hawt.
Jaibones on January 29, 2009 at 1:52 PM
That was the funniest bit to me. The old guy was excited because after d/ling for 2 hours, he could print a copy at home…instead of, you know, walking down the street to pick up a copy. It never occurs to him the other, better benefits.
bilups on January 29, 2009 at 1:52 PM
I’m panicking – please tell me it’s not Andrea Mitchell.
Jaibones on January 29, 2009 at 1:52 PM
Where’s Al Gore? Wasn’t this his idea?
forest on January 29, 2009 at 1:53 PM
That first computer was a TRS-80 Model I, with expansion interface and acoustically coupled modem. What is pathetic is I used to sell them when I worked in the Norman, OK Radio Shack. While there I wrote a program to print commercial invoices (which we did a lot of being across the street from OU). When the HMFIC from Ft Worth saw that we were using the computer to print these invoices they went apoplectic. How dare we use a computer to improve customer service!. Our system took the big dirt nap, and since I wrote the program I was soon gone as well.
I can’t tell you how many times that I helped set machines up to communicate with OU. Boy did that bring back memories.
rpercifield on January 29, 2009 at 1:53 PM
I actually remember those phone modems. Dang.
Jaibones on January 29, 2009 at 1:53 PM
This was the early 80s though. Under all that makeup, she probably looked like Trini Lopez.
bilups on January 29, 2009 at 1:53 PM
I remember spending hours typing in a program from Mad magazine into my VIC 20 just so I could print out Newman’s face on my printer.
What a waste!
Badger40 on January 29, 2009 at 1:53 PM
Laugh now, but in 20 years when we see news reports about how much the government is going to do to ’save us’ you’ll have a different feeling. Great find though. Nice video.
ThackerAgency on January 29, 2009 at 1:54 PM
Wow, I never had to put my phone on anything but my first modem was 1200 baud and I would just use it to dial up the local BBS and play Legend of the Red Dragon.
Bill Scrunty on January 29, 2009 at 1:56 PM
Even funnier, pause at the list of 8 papers and count how many are bankrupt or nearly so right now.
PJ Emeritus on January 29, 2009 at 1:56 PM
Man are you living in the past. My computer (TI 99 4a) runs Taipan with NO lagtime. Yup, I’m hot. That’s me, pretty much.
rihar on January 29, 2009 at 1:59 PM
Something in this thread reminded me. In the early 80s, I worked at a law firm in NYC. We had access to Lexis, the legal research service, on one of those huge, mambo-timbo terminals. One lawyer discovered that if you typed on top of whatever was on the screen, the new text would be printed instead of the original text. So one day, he “edited” a case he was reading so that it got closer and closer in facts and holding to exactly what the partner had sent him to research, and he printed out the revised case. The partner had multiple Os over it until he figured out it was a joke.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) on January 29, 2009 at 2:00 PM
I used to subscribe to the Examiner – before it collapsed and was swallowed up by the Chronicle – and remember that print ad. So eventually, that guy hawking Examiners on the street lost his job, along with hundreds of others.
The anchorbabe is Rita Channon, FWIW.
L.N. Smithee on January 29, 2009 at 2:02 PM
Hey, newsflash. There was life before the world wide web. Don’t be surprised to find that.
keep the change on January 29, 2009 at 2:05 PM
Ah the days of BASIC and FORTRAN…remember it well. Still have my old Radio Shack Color Computer with 8k of memory. (Someday I hope it will be in a museum!) It still is amazing what you can do with that thing! Back then the programmers had to be geniuses to fit so much into so little.
And then there was Compuserve and Delphi!
Christian Conservative on January 29, 2009 at 2:07 PM
“Owns Home Computer” caption – sort of like those old “In Color” captions from a decade earlier.
Am I a dinosaur? I remember those stick-the-receiver-in modems…..
Vashta.Nerada on January 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM
My 13 and 9 yo duaghters are shocked that we didn’t have PC’s when I was growing up. They also have the same attitude regarding video games, cell phones and dvd players. Also cordless phones.
I showed them a rotary phone the other day and my 13 yo was like, How does that work?
Pulchritudinous Patriot on January 29, 2009 at 2:11 PM
Yes, almost all of us.
DarkCurrent on January 29, 2009 at 2:13 PM
This internet thing is just a fad.
mankai on January 29, 2009 at 2:16 PM
Ah… the days of acoustic couplers, dumb terminals, and 24-hour turnaround time (average) for a printed report.
Now I get phone calls from customers asking why the report is taking more than an hour to process!
March Hare on January 29, 2009 at 2:17 PM
I had one of them. Instead of 30fps video you were looking at 1000spf.
shick on January 29, 2009 at 2:18 PM
Funny Funny stuff. And no the 80’s did not suck.
HawaiiLwyr on January 29, 2009 at 2:19 PM
I think my father still has his Trash80. Computers were actually easier to use then.
shick on January 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM
Allah, I’ve got a couple of words to strike fear into your heart.
300 baud.
Pish-posh. If you where a good reader, you could keep up with 300 baud as it scrolled in. Now this will frighten and confuse you:
110 baud
I R A Darth Aggie on January 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM
Best bit is right at the end: 2 hour download @ 5 bucks an hour line usage surcharge.
And the editor’s comment about not being in it to make money, he was talking about a pilot project, which a lot of the time, you don’t make money.
kerncon on January 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM
The Newsbabe looks like Andrea Mitchell
Bleach her hair blond and age her about 25 years.. there you go..
DaveC on January 29, 2009 at 2:21 PM
The ’80s ruled. Although that was from ‘81 so the hairstyle was more late ’70s she was wearing. Someone has been watching too many ’70s pornos. lol.
keep the change on January 29, 2009 at 2:21 PM
I still look like one. And my boobs are real.
Badger40 on January 29, 2009 at 2:30 PM
Brownchicken, Browncow.
juanito on January 29, 2009 at 2:32 PM
“the two to three thousand home computer users in the Bay Area.” In a community of 6 million and we were probably at the high end of per ca pita use.
oldvannes on January 29, 2009 at 2:35 PM
Wow. That was awesome. I was born in ‘87 so I guess we had made a bit of progress since then. I remember my dad had this huge desktop computer when i was 5. It had the huge floppy disks and horrible graphics. It was like 4-bit. ;-)
Our rainbow printer was horrible too. No internet that I remember in our house at that time. Just DOS…*shudders*
hockey2k5 on January 29, 2009 at 2:37 PM
Where da naked ladies at?
Speedwagon82 on January 29, 2009 at 2:38 PM
My first computer was a Commodore 64. I wish I’d boxed it up and kept it around. I taught myself to program on that thing and still have a few of the 5″ floppies in storage. I’d love to show it to my kids.
DarkCurrent on January 29, 2009 at 2:38 PM
And no mention of the high priest Al Gore? How come nobody gave him any credit for inventing this wonderful technology? Blasphemy I say! They will pay for this by drowning in the rising oceans! or baking under the hot sun, take your pick. Classic video though. I remember my first mac with the dot matrix printer and typing essays for school.
TitleofLiberty on January 29, 2009 at 2:41 PM
I still used the card punch mainframes in those days. You had to write your program in COBOL or FORTRAN, punch in your program on the card punch machines and then hand it over to the computer room engineer. Regular geeks were not allowed into the uber-geek mainframe room.
oldvannes on January 29, 2009 at 2:43 PM
110 baud? You were luhcky! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in a shoe box in the middle of the road.
shick on January 29, 2009 at 2:44 PM
I read something about this technology in the latest edition of OMNI magazine.
hanoverfist on January 29, 2009 at 2:45 PM
Sorry That’s Andrea Mitchel :P
borg on January 29, 2009 at 2:45 PM
Duuude! The 70’s totally rocked!
Have a nice day!
:-)
guitarguy on January 29, 2009 at 2:46 PM
Bah! It’ll never replace the horse.
logis on January 29, 2009 at 2:48 PM
Rita Channon wasn’t even the hottest newsbabe at the KRON-TV in that era. The weather was done by Kristine Hanson, Playmate of the Month for September 1974 (Work safe). Hanson — who said in her Playmate profile she wanted to be a professional dancer — has far exceeded her own ambitions, and has been a solid, professional broadcaster since braving the inevitable snickers to progress in the biz. She’s even won a local Emmy. She’s no longer a pinup, but still cute as a button.
Personally, I preferred the lovely brunette KGO morning anchor Terry Lowry, who eventually left the station after marrying KRON anchor Fred LaCosse. My lasting memory of the brief time Lowry and LaCosse did the newscast together was one Saturday night when Lowry closed the program by reminding us that Daylight Saving Time was ending, so we should wind our clocks back an hour and get another hour of sleep. LaCosse chimed in, “Or, another hour of play.” Lowry’s eyes widened, giggled, and slyly looked into the camera. “Good ni-i-i-ght.” Schwing!
L.N. Smithee on January 29, 2009 at 2:51 PM
Ah the C64. What an upgrade from the TRS80.
shick on January 29, 2009 at 2:59 PM
I remember the mainframe engineer in our lab when personal computers first came out: ‘they’ll be joining the home movie camera in the closet once the novelty wears off.’
oldvannes on January 29, 2009 at 3:07 PM
Amigas.
7 pound issues of “Computer shopper”.
“Flock of seagulls”.
Good times.
BallisticBob on January 29, 2009 at 3:14 PM
Ascii-art porn. Google it.
pedestrian on January 29, 2009 at 3:19 PM
for the self-referential win
urbancenturion on January 29, 2009 at 3:19 PM
Wait a minute…. you mean to tell me that there were computer networks back in the early 80s? But… but… I thought Al Gore invented the internet when he was VP in the 90s!
UltimateBob on January 29, 2009 at 3:25 PM
ROFLMAO…it’s you…the pornstars all looked like they were from the 80’s…too much VHS for you. LOL.
Jarhead68 on January 29, 2009 at 3:26 PM
So are Ron Jeremy’s, and he’s a porn star too. You might want to enhance that description a little.
Oldnuke on January 29, 2009 at 3:37 PM
Excuse me but didn’t AlGore invent the internet? Where is he in this video?
milwife88 on January 29, 2009 at 3:44 PM
We made mixed tapes.
perries on January 29, 2009 at 3:55 PM
Very good history lesson.
mindhacker on January 29, 2009 at 4:01 PM
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