This brings me back to the mid 70's when I was living in the Boston area. I was almost convinced that AM on ham radio was dead, and I had all but lost interest. Then I picked up a mid 1930's HRO receiver for $50 at a non-radio fleamarket to use to listen to the shortwave broadcast stations. Tuned across 75 and lo, and behold, I heard AM. And most of the AM'ers weren't old buzzards. The majority were in their late teens and early 20's! Then I went to a ham radio auction one Sunday afternoon in Sharon, MA. There I met Chuck, WA1EKV, Scott WA1MNQ, Rich K1ETP, WA1NXO, and several other members of the original AM "Mob." A few weeks later I took a trip to Dayton and found a Ranger for $55, and got it on the air in an apartment near Harvard Square. I was rockin' and rollin' on AM again!
You have to understand how bland and boring most TV was back then. A bleak wasteland of dumb sitcoms, assembly-line cop shows and cheesy variety shows. "NBC's Saturday Night" (as it was called in its first season) hit like a nuclear explosion when it debuted on Oct. 11, 1975. It was TV for people who didn't like TV. The people on "SNL" were recognizable human beings. They weren't ugly. They just looked like real people you might pass on the street.
You would hear drug jokes that are no longer allowed on TV. The racial humor would probably not pass muster, either. Nor would you hear a call for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, even in jest. The children must be protected, y'know.
Both the left and the right have their own brands of political correctness, and they're equally damaging to the spirit of satire. "SNL" even parodied political correctness before the term was invented. It was really the last gasp of the "counterculture."
a time capsule of the mid-'70s
