1997 "Beakman's World"/"Weird Al Show" cassette tape - CBS via KOIN-TV audio channel - Audiolibro Gratis

God. I don't know if I should upload this thing or bury it.

Alright, I said there was another KOIN saturday-morning audio cassette and here it is, this time from late 1997.

KOIN (then channel 6, now channel 40) is the CBS affiliate for the Portland, Ore. area. Because of a major children's television overhaul that occurred as a result of the communications reform laws of 1996 (beginning of the "educational and informational" era) CBS had dropped "Garfield and Friends" and most of its cartoon programming by this point, and the promos had a definite "learning" theme. Thus there is no Garfield audio in this recording and its crowning jewel is the pilot of "The Weird Al Show". (Believe me, if Garfield had still been on the air then, this tape would have had some audio of it.) Obviously the programming at this early point in the reform still had far more entertainment value to a younger audience than the formulaic nature documentaries, baseball analyses, cooking shows and "kid-makes-bad-decision-kid-suffers-consequences-kid-learns-moral" rubbish that pass as "saturday morning entertainment" today! The internal code name for this "project", if it could be so considered, eventually became "Going to the Gorge" starting with the 1994 tape, I guess because I listened to it once on a road trip through the Columbia River Gorge that probably extended to Pendleton and it stuck. (Don't ask. The dumbass things that entertain you when you're 11.)

Since NTSC (system M) channel 6's audio track (87.75 MHz) falls within the passband of most FM broadcast receivers, this meant that it was readily listenable and recordable albeit at a lower volume level and in mono due to modulation and subcarrier placement differences between TV and conventional FM stations. This ended, with few exceptions, in 2009 with the ATSC cutover. Being that it was collected using a crappy DC-bias Emerson CTR911C boombox that was in its final months of existence, this recording is heavily contaminated with rumble and dropouts and the signal-noise ratio is very poor, even though it was on an audiophile-grade TDK AD-series CrO2 casette. The Emerson's FM frontend had piss-poor image rejection, so although the KOIN signal arrived at nearly full quieting you will also hear RF overload crosstalk from KWJJ (99.5 MHz) and nearby KMHD (89.1 MHz) throughout.

The crowd assembled, once again...

SIDE 1

Commercials

BEAKMAN'S WORLD

Whales and Optical Illusions II (1997 Oct 18) (includes commercials and "Think CBS Kids" promos)

IN THE NEWS (1997 Dan Raviv reboot)

Photosensitive twins

FUDGE

Play It Again, Dad (first 2/3 or so)

SIDE 2

FUDGE

ending music

WEIRD AL SHOW (beginning cut off)

Talent Night (1997 Nov 01) (see also: [https://archive.org/details/Weird\_Al\_Show\_08\_Talent\_Show](https://archive.org/details/Weird\_Al\_Show\_08\_Talent\_Show))

Commercials

The rest of side 2 appears to be a dub from the 1994 tape but I don't remember doing it:

BEAKMAN'S WORLD

Fossils and the Human Voice (1993 Feb 27)

WHAT'S ON YOUR PLATE

Exercise

CBS STORYBREAK (1993 Malcolm Jamal Warner reboot)

Harry the Fat Bear Spy (Gahan Wilson) (first 5-6 minutes)

I think McDonald's were still airing "What's On Your Plate" in 1997, but if they were I don't have any tape of it.

Further listening:

1994 recording (volume 1): [https://archive.org/details/1994GarfieldTape](https://archive.org/details/1994GarfieldTape)

1997/1998 recording (volume 3): [https://archive.org/details/19971998BeakmanStorybreakTape](https://archive.org/details/19971998BeakmanStorybreakTape)

Cover photo: Hamilton Mountain trail, Beacon Rock State Park, Washington; Columbia River Gorge looking east at Hamilton Saddle. Note Bonneville Dam near centre-right, with north spillways open. (45.65953N -122.01212W) (Pei-Ku Lu, Google Earth 360 panorama.)

Notes

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