Which to me seems like a ridiculous name. It certainly isn't similar to Black Tuesday – October 29, 1929 – when the stock market crashed. It's a good day – heck, even a great day – for shoppers and a retailers alike. So why is it Black?
Anyway, to a lot of Baby Boomers like me, the day after Thanksgiving used to mean one thing: special cartoon programming for kids who had the day off from school.
Since my memory isn't always the greatest, I went back to the newspaper microfilms to see just what was on the day after Thanksgiving from the mid-1960's to the early 1970's. As it turns out, there really was just one TV network that did this: ABC. And more often than not, it was a wholesale rehash of the Saturday morning cartoons from that period.
The website www.tvparty.com confirms my suspicion with a description of ABC's traditional day-after-Thanksgiving cartoon block which you can read here.
1967 seemed to be a banner year as far as I'm concerned. The day started off early with Bullwinkle at 9:30, followed by Milton the Monster, Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Fantastic Four, Spider Man, Journey to the Center of the Earth, King Kong, The Beatles and George of the Jungle last at 1:30.
Here's the TV listing for Thanksgiving 1967 with the next day's listing under it. (Give it a click so you can read it.) It sure is weird remembering how stations signed off back then – and how some of them signed on with a Farm Report!
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1967 Thanksgiving Day TV Listing |