Masters of UHF

Before cable television there was UHF.

Usually accessed on portable televisions with a secondary UHF channel dial and rabbit ears – which seemed to make UHF viewing synonymous with childhood bedrooms and cramped first apartments – requiring one to navigate, Admiral Peary-like, through staticky snow while adjusting the antenna just so.

UHF was the bargain basement of television and an often-interesting alternative to what the networks had to offer. There were some UHF shows available to viewers in New Jersey that were not just fun to watch but offered a strong homemade vibe that made them feel like labors of love, an enthusiasm transcending their inexpensive sets, wobbly camera work and visible boom mics.

When the UHF Hall of Fame gets launched, The Uncle Floyd Show will be among the first class of inductees. Billed as a kid’s show (if “kid” means over the age of 15), it was a daily half-hour of puppets, sketches, corny jokes, double entendres, insider humor and Floyd’s barrelhouse piano playing. Floyd’s cast of regulars lit a fuse of anarchy that threatened every show to collapse before its thirty minutes was up.

In 1982, Zacherle, another king of the UHF dial, appeared on The Uncle Floyd Show:

After his host gig on Chiller Theatre on New York’s WPIX ended, the Cool Ghoul returned to the airwaves (albeit UHF) from 1965 to 1967 with Disc-O-Teen which answered the question, “What if American Bandstand had no budget and was hosted by a crypt-keeping undertaker instead of the clean-cut Dick Clark?”

Disc-O-Teen ran on weekday afternoons and broadcasted out of a theatre in Newark. Kids danced to the latest records and hung homemade bedsheet banners around the studio while Zach introduced lip-synching bands like the Box Tops and Every Mother’s Son, asking them non-sequitur questions, addressing the girls as “my dear” and the boys as “old boy.”

The kids looked like the kind you’d see in the high school hallways between classes, not the Stepford-teens with clothing allowances of American Bandstand or the professional dancers on Soul Train.

UHF was also the home of Rockers 80, as Jamaican deejay/veejay Earl “Rootsman” Chin showed cheap-looking reggae music videos and scored several impressive interviewing coups, including Bob Marley, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Parts of Chin’s interview with Marley can be found online; it’s difficult to understand without closed captioning, given their heavy Jamaican patois and it’s seriously laidback (aka sluggish) vibe, no doubt courtesy of massive amounts of ganja. It seems to omit the end of the interview as I remember it, as Chin tells Marley that he’s “the greatest,” to which Marley replies, “No, Jah is the greatest.”

The Jagger-Richards interview, circa 1978, is remarkable in that both seem to be enjoying themselves, possibly thanks to the Heinekens they’re knocking back throughout and it’s one of the rare times that Jagger’s been filmed with a beard (which is pretty impressive):

Rockers 80 was sponsored by the Kew Motor Inn, which still exists in Kew Gardens, Queens. Nice to know that the theme rooms, including the Safari Room, that Chin would mention in the ad copy are still available at, according to its website, “very reasonable short-stay rates” – a wink/wink, nod/nod phrase that possibly also explains the allure of UHF TV: the potential for inexpensive fun.