For the first ten years of my life, we were only able to get two TV channels: ATV (the Halifax affiliate of CTV) and CBC Halifax (CBC français was also available at the time, though the reception at our house was poor and my French wasn’t good enough to understand much of what I could make out through the static anyway). So when we were finally able to get “Cable TV”, that was a very exciting day – I think there were almost two dozen channels! Included in the basic package was access to four American networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS (no FOX, but luckily for us ATV broadcast Married…With Children, and upstart third local network MITV picked up The Simpsons during its first season).

The feeds for ABC and NBC came from Bangor, Maine, and the feeds for CBS and PBS came from Detroit, Michigan. This meant that many Canadians (in the Atlantic provinces as well as in towns and cities near the American border) grew up watching commercials for local businesses in the Bangor and Detroit areas, including ads for the Ray Whitfield Ford and the Alan Ford dealerships on Telegraph Road, and may well remember this catchy little jingle. I know I spent many a Saturday watching WWF Superstars of Wrestling on CBS and seeing ads for the Telegraph Road Ford dealerships as well as rival Mel Farr Superstar and his Ford dealerships, both over 2,000 km away from where I was watching in rural Nova Scotia.

What are some of your favorite “local” commercials? If I recall, we had a thread devoted exclusively to this topic back at the old Disqus site (and last night’s header was also partly devoted to this topic) but in addition to the usual night thread shenanigans, feel free to reminisce (and post clips too, if you can find them!)

Have a Great Night Thread, Avocado!