Yesterday's News

 Spending time in the Poconos and NJ means that we watch local news in both places.  Thanks to technology (and my husband), we can watch the local NY/NJ newscasts, but we also watch local PA news.  

Saturday morning, I had WNEP (for Northeast PA) on as I wanted to catch the local weather. We regularly watch this station on the app on our TV.   Local PA news is SO different than the tristate area.  I like to watch both because why not?

The newscast wrapped up around 8:00. The anchor said that Good Morning America would follow. However, my husband said that since we were watching on the app that probably wouldn't happen. He said most likely what would happen is that the news would cycle back to when it started broadcasting that morning. So, I was guessing we'd either start at 5:00, 6:00, or 7:00 a.m. . . . We decided to keep the TV on to see what would happen. 

Imagine our surprise when after the break the local news did return, however what they were showing was not the news of 2026 but the news of either the late 1970s or the early 1980s! What was happening? 

It was obvious that what we were watching was not from the century. The video quality was not fantastic. It had that old VCR tape look to it. The sound quality was not good either. I had to turn the volume way up to try and understand what the newscasters were saying. And then there was their manner of dress and style. You can tell that you're not in the same century just by the way people look. 

Additionally, the graphics were what I would consider old school. When the weatherman was talking about the week's forecast (for whatever it what week it was in that decade, although it was obvious it was spring since Easter was quickly coming up), the graphics were more like what you might see on reruns of Match Game 1973. There wasn't anything digital about it. And FYI the weather on Easter was supposed to be "fair"

What really piqued my interest was the segment on Centralia. If you don't know the story of Centralia PA, stop and look it up right now. It is fascinating. It's also a little scary. 

The report was on the worth of the homes that remained occupied in Centralia. If I am recalling correctly the government was willing to pay residents a fair price (ha-ha) for their homes so that they can move out of the area. This was definitely that something that was a topic in the early 1980s. (Again, FYI the current population of Centralia PA is five. Or at least that's what Google tells me.) 

We were finally able to determine that this broadcast had originally aired in 1984 when one of the stories was about Michael Jackson's hair catching on fire. You had to be around in the 1980s to remember when Michael Jackson's hair caught fire during a Pepsi commercial shoot in Los Angeles due to premature pyrotechnics. The accident caused second- and third-degree burns to his scalp, requiring treatment and later causing him to suffer from chronic pain. It was big news!

There were no commercials during this broadcast which lasted about 16-18 minutes. So, I have to guess that with commercials this would have been a half hour broadcast.  When it finished, no other news came up; instead, the app went to a "slide show" of area photos. Since we had something we needed to that morning, we turned off the tv and got ready to leave the house.

But we couldn't stop thinking:  what the heck had we been watching?  Google again told us "WNEP-TV is streaming archived 1980s newscasts, particularly from 1983 as a retro content feature...to showcase their historical 'Newswatch 16' coverage...This initiative highlights the station's dominance during that era, when it became the highest-rated local news in the country."  (WOW!)

The thing is, there was no notification prior to the broadcast (at least not that we saw) so we had no idea what was going on.   Maybe people local to the area who have lived here for a while expect this, but we sure didn't.  It was like we were time traveling in our kitchen!

I know I'll be checking this out again next weekend because they've got me hooked.  But I have to wonder if there are any other stations out there that do something like this.   Is this truly unique or have other local networks done something like this? As they used to say, "Inquiring minds want to know."  So, I'm inquiring...

What year's news will I be watching next weekend?  I can't wait to find out!



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