TURNING ON TO THE PAST

The Nostalgia Channel, produced for nearly two years at the Las Colinas Communications Complex but new to Dallas last month on Heritage Cable, mixes the best of nearly fifty years of film and radio with the best of today’s broadcasting and restorative finesse.

Air time is devoted to golden oldies, movies from the Twenties through the Sixties, and a hodgepodge of cleverly collected and presented historic newsreels and newscasts, classic commercials, episodic cliff-hangers such as Zorro’s Fighting Legion and The Return of Captain Marvel, and a regular feature, Megaphone Video, short excerpts from favorite vintage musical productions.

Nostalgia Radio Theatre, a three-minute between-movie feature that producers call “Theater of the Mind.” brings a new kind of visual appeal to the programming. From beginning to end of broadcasts of radio greats such as Fibber McGee and Molly, Orson Welles, and The Lone Ranger, the screen holds a single image, an old-timey radio that is shown from slowly changing angles with a little ivy thrown in back for effect.

Although The Nostalgia Channel is a new option to local viewers, it’s been broadcast to 200 other cable systems across the nation for nearly two years. The Nostalgia Channel is aired by Heritage eighteen hours daily on SATCOM IV. sharing a slot with Home Sports Entertainment Channel. It’s preempted by HSE during prime time hours from 6 p.m. until midnight, but some of the scheduled attractions this month merit a matinee or late-night date and a full carton of Milk Duds. On New Year’s Eve, The Nostalgia Channel will air “Jumpin’ and Jivin’ with Cab Calloway.” and later in the month, “The Lost World,” a 1925 silent film and reportedly the first model-animated movie ever produced.