That's right, it's the famous WPIX Yule log in the picture above. As a child in the early 1970's I experienced the birth of cable television. We thought we had it all back then. Instead of the normal 3 local chanels my house now had 32 channels. One of the newly aquired channels we were able to receive was WPIX channel 11 in New York City. Being able to tune to WPIX in New York gave us folks in Boston the opportunity to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees on cable television. In the 1970's baseball was not broadcast on pay per view networks such as NESN or Sportschannel that became available in the early 1980's.

I was thinking this afternoon about the affect of cable television across the country. With the advent of cable tv, stations that used to be local were now broadcast nationwide. The commercials that were broadcast to the tri state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were now being broadcast to a whole new audience across the country.

On the nights the Red Sox would play at Yankee Stadium I would tune my television to WPIX and watch the game. The announcers would piss me off for sure. Phil (The Scooter) Rizzuto and Bill White would broadcast the game. The sound of Phil Rizzuto yelling Holy Cow was not a phrase that Red Sox fans really cared to hear. Years later Meatloaf used The Scooter in his song Paradise by the Dashboard Light. A rock favorite that still sounds just as good today. "Holy Cow I think he's gonna make it" Then the woman screams...."Stop right there" Meatloaf was just about to score. Seinfeld even based on of the episodes on Phil Rizzuto saying Holy Cow. Had it not been for cable television, who outside the New York are would have ever heard of "Holy cow".

Who would have ever heard of Crazy Eddie and his insane prices had WPIX not been picked up by cable and made available to millions more viewers. I have heard the catch phrase now for over 30 years. "Crazy Eddie, His Prices Are Insane". He'd be screaming and jumping up and down and waving towels over his head. A New York legend had become an instant celebrity virtually overnight.

Another commercial that WPIX ran was for Carvel Ice Cream Cakes. Remember the voice of the narrator? He sounded old. His voice was actually gravelly and raspy. To tell you the trugh his voice was so nasty sounding to me that I didn't want to go anywhere near a Carvel Ice Cream store.

The following comes from Wikipedia:

Carvel's commercials stood out and raised brand awareness primarily through their lack of sophistication. Carvel had a distinctive "gravelly" voice, lacking the "slick" sound of most professional voice-over artists, and all his narration was unrehearsed. His wording was conversational, with commercials frequently ending with the words "Thank You". Television commercials, aired primarily in the "tri-state area" of New York, New Jersey and Connectucut, began in 1971. Accompanied by the familiar Tom Carvel narration, footage showed the products, and employees in the stores; very few graphics or effects were used.

I also recall that Carvel made cakes with shapes. There was a whale cake. Then one winter there was also a Santa Cake. Little did I know that all Carvel did was turn the mold around 180 degrees. Voila....Fudgie the whale became the Santa Claus cake.

Gone are the days of the local television station broadcasting whacky commercials like these. I miss those commercials. They weren't flashy, the were obnoxious and the stuck with you.

I was in a little shop yesterday. When I went to the counter to ask the shop keeper "how much" for a particular item, I was impressed the the price was so low. He looked at me and said "I don't know how I stay in business with prices this low". He was kidding and I knew it. I did say "Kind of like Crazy Eddie huh?" Here we are in a small little New England town and as I turn to walk out the door, we both said "His Prices Are Insane".