Reminiscing About Watching DS

[The Doctor and K9]

And I went to high school with a Jeff Arsenault who lived in RI and who was active in fandom. Could that be who you're referring to?

`

I am almost certain he's the same person. His fanzine, "The Collinsport Call" lists his address as Cumberland Hills RI. Although I lived in Newport for 23 years, grew up there, I'd never heard of that town. Is Cumberland short for Cumberland Hills or are they two different places?

According Issue Two WLVI 56 ran DS from April 5 '77-April 1 '78.  WMUR 9 NH ran it from Sept 19 '78.  Issues 7-9 do not note an end date in the editorials. Rerun episode 234 was audiotaped by me on Monday Aug 28th. It should have been shown on a Thursday (all ep. #s ending with a 4 or a 9 would run on Thursday if there were no preemptions).  Projecting forward from that date, it should have aired on August 11th, if my calculations are correct. I'm not rechecking. I'm procrastinating enough as it is! I have a ton of work I am SUPPOSED to be doing!  If one assumes they would probably have ended their run on Sept 15th (the date they would have run out of episodes if they showed them Mon-Fri every week with no gaps), they would have ended on the gallows with rerun 248. It's possible they ran them all, but it seems unlikely. Most stations make programming changes in early to mid Sept.  With no more episodes coming, I think they would have started something new in that timeslot at some point on or after Labor Day. I doubt they'd have cared at all about leaving viewers hanging, as Vicky was at the end of 1795.

[The Doctor and K9]

I don't know about the part about being compelled to pick up where WNBC had left off, but you're probably thinking of PBS station WNYC.

It was a PBS station, I believe it was channel 30. The part about being compelled is supported by a tape I have of a DS Special and an introductory piece that recaps the events leading from Barnabas being released from the coffin to the point where WNBC left off. I think Frid narrated it, but it could have been the annoying woman from the special that  kept calling the house CollinSwood.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Is Cumberland short for Cumberland Hills or are they two different places?

Cumberland Hill is just a specific area of Cumberland, RI that's treated separately purely for census statistics purposes, but they're one and the same town.

According Issue Two WLVI 56 ran DS from April 5 '77-April 1 '78.  WMUR 9 NH ran it from Sept 19 '78.

Apparently his mind played tricks on him because he's a year off on both. But then mind tricks happen to all of us.  

but it could have been the annoying woman from the special that  kept calling the house CollinSwood.

Don't you love when they do that. Though I don't find it as bad as the time one of the hosts of CNN's Showbiz Today pronounced Anglique as Angelic. 

[The Doctor and K9]

According Issue Two WLVI 56 ran DS from April 5 '77-April 1 '78.  WMUR 9 NH ran it from Sept 19 '78.

Apparently his mind played tricks on him because he's a year off on both. But then mind tricks happen to all of us..

Actually, no, he got the dates right, which would be expected, since his zine was publishing this information as current news. I wrote them wrong here.  I started my post and probably had the correct years, then a glitch occured and I lost the whole thing. In a rush, I tried to recompose it and got the years wrong.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

  That restores my faith in him.    And quite possibly you could have been thinking the correct years but your fingers, with a mind of their own, typed the wrong years. Trust me, it happens - more times than I care to remember.  

[The Doctor and K9]

This either proves I have NO LIFE, that I dread working so much that I'll jump on any excuse to avoid the stack of work I brought home, or both! In any event. I just made a spread sheet that tells me when rerun ep 234 SHOULD have aired on WMUR Manchester. Don't ask why I care, I have no other answer than to say that I am obsessed. If anyone but me cares, it's Aug 10 1978. It actually aired on Aug 28 of that year. It was scheduled to go off on Sep 15th, but projecting forward from the 28th, they'd have left off with Vickie literally hanging.  I think it's likely though, that they probably yanked the show on the first of September, the Friday before Labor Day. As a kid, I think I recall that being the day they premiered some of the new syndicated shows. That was not the case in the previous year with DS though, as Arsenault recorded in his zine it started on the 19th.  Ok..I have no life, I admit that freely........

[PennyDreadful]

Yep, MB, I also used to watch DS on channel 58 Vineyard Haven/Hyannis and used to tape the episodes.  I remember at one point during the Quentin's Ghost storyline there was a threat of cancellation because Channel 58 was running promos urging people to write in to save Dark Shadows.  They showed images of Quentin and Ezra Braithewaite while the voiceover announcer asked "What is Quentin's secret?  And who is this man?"  I think I might even still have the commercial on tape somewhere.  I got a petition going and managed to get a few hundred signatures on there! 

Anyway, I'm very glad they didn't cancel it!  Channel 58 played the series all the way into 1970 Parallel Time - the end of the available syndicated episodes.

~Penny~

[The Doctor and K9]

I was never able to pick up DS on the Martha's Vineyard station. Oddly enough, I would, on occasion get it from New Jersey Network!  NJN stations were 200 or so miles away, but on very cool summer days or very warm winter days, I'd be able to pull the signal in, often with a very good picture quality. One time I was watching Doctor Who and was preparing to call WGBH Channel 2 out of Boston. I was upset because they were showing the wrong episode of Doctor Who. The call letters for the station came up. Channel 2 out of FLORIDA had overpowered the Boston station!  I should note that WGBH was a fringe station for us. It was snowy and  fraught with ghosts. Still, that was a very bizarre day, one of those excetionally cool days we sometimes got in August.

[Taeylor Collins]

When I reminisce about watching DS I think about getting the 1840 flashback, which at the time seemed so foreign! I love the episodes they meshed together and I can quote a lot of lines from it.  I had of course read about 1840 but this was before it was released completely.  So that is one of my main memories. My first memory of the original was the episode where Barney kills Jason which I found to be so very creepy in all it's black and white glory!

[joe integlia]

ds also ran around 1981 in atlantic city, nj at a tv station i worked at called wwac tv53. we were the last to air the 1st 2inch syndicated tapes that worldvision created. this included the famous outake with grayson hall and jerry lacy where the director yelled "cut' and grayson asks "why?" and cameras start panning all over the place. this is included in the mpi blooper dvd and the vhs tape because i recorded and saved it and gave it to jim pierson. it was later corrected and removed when wnyc in nyc aired it. wwac was the 1st station to go beyond the 1st 260 syndicated episodes. we showed about 300 episodes ending in the middle of the dream curse storyline. we probly would have shown the whole series but alas it wasnt meant to be. the station had financial problems and went off the air leaving atlantic city with no more ds and me with no job!

[Taeylor Collins]

Does anyone know the story behind Lara's footage playing the twins? Why was this saved? Was it on the episode reel?