ABC Network - Good Morning America - WLS Channel 7 (Last 90 Minutes, 6/25/1981) ☀️

Here's a broadcast of the last roughly 90 minutes of an edition of Good Morning America as aired on WLS Channel 7, guest-hosted by Dynasty star John Forsythe with regular co-host Joan Lunden. A little bonus will follow.
Local voiceovers by Fred Kasper(?).
Includes:
Opening notice about source tape, followed by news update from Steve Bell with report from Bettina Gregory (recording skips through midway)
After John's segue, recording cuts to end of commercial for Nature Valley Granola Bars, followed by commercials for:
American Express / Pan Am (incomplete; recording cuts out midway)
Kraft Creamy Cucumber salad dressing (recording comes in towards end)
John Coleman's weather report (with local forecast cut-in)
Commercial: Geritol (jingle apparently sung to tune of "Joshua Fit the Battle")
Joan looks at current doings of former Wimbledon champs Rod Laver, Evonne Goolagong and Jack Kramer; followed by Ruth Batchelor's Hollywood, and John introducing segment from Joan on the importance of trademarks in brand names with Prof. Arthur Miller
Commercials for:
Neutrogena skin care
Listerine (voiceover by Dan Ingram)
Marathon Oil (voiceover by Alan Bleviss?)
Paba Plus skin moisturizer
Joan interviews Richard Mulligan about his role in coming film "S.O.B."
Commercials for:
ERA Real Estate - "We're Selling Houses"
Good Seasons Italian Dressing (with Anna Maria Alberghetti)
Sugar Free Tic Tac (with Kelly Harmon)
Promo for "Peter Pan" with Sandy Duncan at Arie Crown Theatre
John and Joan preview coming hour and tomorrow's edition
Promo for ABC News Closeup - "When Crime Pays" (voiceover by Fred Collins)
Commercials for:
Subaru
Woman's World
Weekend Warehouse Furniture Clearance Center
Station ID / promo for Hadley School for the Blind
Next hour, starting with Steve Bell news update (and reports by Susan King, Anne Garrels and Bob Clark), followed by John Coleman weather and John interviewing White Sox organist Nancy Faust, Orioles bat boy Dennis Cashen, and Yankee Stadium vendor George Whitfield on baseball strike
Commercial: Marshall Field's (with Burt Wolf; opening voiceover by Al Parker)
Joan interviews NOW head Eleanor Smeal on ERA
Commercials for:
Misericordia Homes
Weekend Warehouse Furniture Clearance Center
Kiddie Kingdom
Promo for Eyewitness Newsmagazine at 4:30pm
Schaumburg Toyota
AM Eyewitness News with Bob Petty
Commercial: Unity Savings (in-between news segments)
Mary Ann Childers promotes upcoming AM Chicago
Commercials for:
Dominick's Finer Foods
Baskin-Robbins ice cream
Bay Furniture $2 million anniversary sale (voiceover by Wayne Atkinson)
Next half, leading off with Steve Bell news update (and reports from Jack Smith and WJZ-TV Baltimore's George Baumann), and more weather
Commercial: Reach toothbrush
Host David Hartman speaks with Dr. Tim Johnson about human bites
Commercials for:
Maxwell House coffee (sung by Ray Charles)
Kool-Aid
Vidal Sassoon hair care
Breath Savers breath mints
Joan introduces Steve Fox segment on water pollution in Lake Carmel, NY
Commercials for:
Beautyrest by Simmons
Lipton Onion Soup Mix (voiceover by Fred Foy)
Eyewitness News Live Action Camera promo (with Kim Peterson) (voiceover by Gary Gears)
Eckrich franks
Continuation of "Women You Love To Hate" about soap villainesses, with Joan interviewing Dr. Harvey Greenberg and The Young and the Restless co-star Melody Thomas
Commercials for:
Myadec vitamin supplement
Alpo beef flavored dinner
Eckrich smoked sausage
Red Lobster shrimp dinners
John and Joan close this edition with preview of next day's show
Promo for General Hospital, All My Children, One Life to Live and Ryan's Hope (voiceover by Ernie Anderson)
Preview of coming AM Chicago
Commercials for:
Eyewitness Newsmagazine at 4:30pm promo
Venture White Sale
The Drapery Factory
Station ID / promo for "The Green Slime" at 3pm
Bonus: First five minutes of AM Chicago with Mary Ann Childers (opening voiceover by Fred Kasper?) and guest Daniel Yankelovich, social analyst (note: Opening theme of AM Chicago was degraded but it can be heard here: • Allegory (2021 Remaste... )
This aired on local Chicago TV on Thursday, June 25th 1981 within the 7:32am to 9:05am timeframe.
This footage was donated to The Museum of Classic Chicago Television as part of the Nancy Faust Collection.
About The Museum of Classic Chicago Television:
The MCCTv (FuzzyMemoriesTV) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose primary mission is the preservation and display of off-air, early home videotape recordings (70s to early 80s, mostly) recorded off of TV (in Chicago or other cities now too); things which would likely be lost if not sought out and preserved digitally. We preserve the entire broadcasts in our archives - the complete programs with breaks (or however much is present on the tape), for historical preservation. For information on how to help in our mission, to donate or lend tapes to be converted to digital, please e-mail [e-mail] Thank you for your help!

[@bb-gc2tx]

brings me back being in first grade my mom would always have this on before i would leave for school

[@TheNameisPlissken1981]

I was in first grade, too!

[@dannyjaythompson1243]

Same here.

[@MLaker221]

I love putting these on the TV and just pretending. Hook a chromecast up to a retro tv and you've got it made

[@bobbillings]

YES! excellent idea. I bought a old glass listerine bottle off ebay, sterilized it, then filled it up with new listerine to use everyday and just keep refilling it.

[@davidwayneprins]

I am too young to remember John Coleman on GMA (Spencer Christian is the first meteorologist I remember). Being that this was the early 80s, I am in awe at the use of (by today's standards) primitive computer graphics and chroma key. But that pull out screen has me baffled how it worked. You'd think it was a hand drawn map that was drawn with markers but at other times it would change from one slide to another. I do remember reading John was one of the founders of The Weather Channel and Naperville had been considered for TWC headquarters but Atlanta won out.

[@wmbrown6]

And after he left both "GMA" and TWC, he was in New York for 11 months (September 1983-August 1984) doing the weather for WCBS Channel 2. Only the fact that he was on a CBS O&O in New York prevented him from claiming to have appeared on all three of the network O&O's in the city where he made his fame - Chicago. (A newscast with him on it is somewhere out there on YT.)

[@JohnLedbetter-cb9ep]

Everyone looks so young!

[@bryanloveseighties]

For all of you who haven't seen what Charles Townsend (The "Charlie" of Charlie's Angels) (John Forsythe) looks like, here he is guest-hosting Good Morning America".

[@wmbrown6]

This was on the eve of his becoming Blake Carrington on "Dynasty," so this was in a sense a preview.

[@jhzenor61481]

This aired 2 weeks after I was born!

[@robatsea2009]

Interesting the discussion about potential casting for the film version of "Children of a Lesser God" in 1981. It would take five more years for it to actually reach the screen, and of course with Marlee Matlin making her debut in the lead role and subsequently winning the Best Actress Academy Award the next year.

[@frankcheers7529]

I was three months old when this aired. I see how GMA was different from Today with Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw. And it's much different than the morning shows today. Back then, the pace was slower.

[@tkaye2]

Don't forget Morning on CBS with Charles Kuralt (or Bob Schieffer). That was slow even by 1981 standards. The presentation of morning TV now is an instant stress-inducer.

[@robertabray-enhus3198]

This was the day before my mom passed away from lung cancer at 46 years old..

[@greycatturtle7132]

Cool

[@andyrose5616]

24:06 I believe William Conrad is the voice of the Subaru commercial. 49:50 Squire Fridell as the "Toyotaman." 52:38 Ed McMahon for Unity Savings. 1:22:56 Michael Bell is the voice of the Red Lobster commercial.

[@deputay]

1:13:53 looks like Patricia Richardson in the Lipton commercial, too

[@williamwindomtributesite1640]

Love Richard Mulligan. A very humble man. I maybe wrong but I don't think his brother used him in any of his movies.

[@brianbradley769]

There was at least one. S.O.B. with Julia Andrews

[@AuroraMeansDawn27]

I forgot about all of these people.

[@ruffian-wl1nd]

Blake Carrington!

[@timdailey2690]

Charlie

[@TheTVsTim]

John Forsythe?!? Huh.

[@TheRetrostationTV]

Fill in for Hartman

[@tkaye2]

1:14:19 How in the world did they get this shot? They're speeding down the freeway but the camera had to be held by someone in the driver's seat.

[@FuzzyMemoriesTV]

Good point!

[@andyrose5616]

My guess is that the cameraman was holding the camera to the side while looking at the road and driving with the other hand. Not easy (or safe), but you don't have to worry much about focusing or framing when the zoom lens is at its widest angle.

[@wmbrown6]

And just remember: "Y&R's" Melody Thomas (later Melody Thomas Scott) is of no relation to Kristin Scott Thomas, kiddies. ;-)

[@toddanthony6664]

Kid #1: Who is Melody Thomas Scott? Kid #2: I don't know. Who is Kristin Scott Thomas? Kid #3: What's a Y&R?

[@doubtfuldog]

I want to know what KOOL has trademarked for their joint.

[@Merylstreep1949]

Sandi Freeman, my first teenage crush❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@FuzzyMemoriesTV]

She's not in this one.

[@wmbrown6]

@@FuzzyMemoriesTV - It does beg the question as to for how many Mary Ann Childers was their first teenaged crush.

[@RusstheTroubadour]

​@@FuzzyMemoriesTV She left WLS to work at CNN in 1980.

[@RusstheTroubadour]

In September of 1984 Oprah Winfrey replaced Robb Weller as host of AM Chicago ( he left in July). Within a year it became The Oprah Winfrey Show.

[@wmbrown6]

And a year after that it became nationally syndicated. And to think Oprah's (the show, not the person) roots lay indirectly with "Kennedy & Company."

[@StudioZ7]

Weller went on to Entertainment Tonight.

[@wmbrown6]

@@StudioZ7 - At this stage, another future "ET" host, John Tesh, was still a reporter (or "correspondent" as anchor Jim Jensen would put it) and weekend anchor at WCBS Channel 2 in New York.

[@toddanthony6664]

Actually, Oprah's first day as host of AM Chicago, was January 1, 1984.

[@wmbrown6]

@@toddanthony6664 - Nearly nine months before that, on April 4, 1983, sister station WABC-TV in New York launched its third attempt to make it in the "ayem" with "The Morning Show," hosted by Regis Philbin and Cyndy Garvey. In its first two years, Phil Donahue wasn't exactly losing any sleep over the competition from "Reege" (unlike in his then-home base of Chicago with Oprah). It took Kathie Lee co-hosting starting in 1985 for the ratings situation to turn around (by then Donahue had moved his show to New York), and bringing WABC ratings in that slot they hadn't seen since Stanley Siegel hosted what was mostly "A.M. New York" from 1976-78 (although for a year starting in 1977, it was known as "The Stanley Siegel Show"); unlike with Siegel, though, Regis and Kathie Lee clicked and their ratings were more sustained. Thus together, albeit in separate parts of the country, Oprah and Regis knocked Donahue off his perch. But their show didn't get syndicated (as "Live With Regis And Kathie Lee") until 1988 - two years after "Oprah's" national launch.

[@scottdomenica2004]

I was a Good Morning America fan back in the day from 1975-2005.

[@syferdet]

51:48 Did they break into the Mayor's house and take that picture at 4am?

[@TelexToTexel]

Dynasty began October 11, 1981. John Forsyth was at the crossroads, should he become talk show host, or a soap star ?

[@dm95422]

Dynasty debuted on ABC in January 1981, filming of Dynasty took place in 1980, so by this time Forsythe was already a soap star.

[@wmbrown6]

@@dm95422- Aha, though I was somewhat off on the timeline. I thought this was the eve of his becoming the "Dynasty" patriarch. But then, I presume, was when it really took off.

[@Cad4702]

What exactly happened

[@FuzzyMemoriesTV]

I don't know - let's turn on the news - Channel 7.

[@darrylh1971]

Ed McMahon is doing the Unity Savings commercial!

[@RusstheTroubadour]

Worthless Trivia. Joan Lunden's real last name is Blunden .

[@wmbrown6]

And until 1979, she'd been a reporter and weekend/fill-in anchor for WABC Channel 7's "Eyewitness News" in New York.

[@RusstheTroubadour]

Prior to that she was an intern at WGN and later worked as an associate producer on The Phil Donahue Show when it was taped there.

[@ChatGPT1111]

Elvis Presley's real name was Pelvis Esley