Early 1980s sitcom about a TV station in a house

May 7, 2012 1:57 PM

Trying to remember a sitcom from the early 1980s about the "world's smallest television station." Was it real or did I just dream it up?

I swear I remember this show being on TV, but it must have flopped because Google can tell me nothing about it. This would have been broadcast in the USA. If I am remembering it right it was about some family living in a suburban home that had a television station in their house. In fact I think the station was in a booth in their living room.

I seem to recall that there were a lot of jokes about how amateurish the operation of the TV station was and the father grumbling about how hard it was to compete with the other stations in town.

Other than that I don't remember any other details of the show, other than I think it would have been on somewhere around 1980-1981 because I think I was 10 or 11 at the time. It may have been syndicated but I'm not sure.

I've been able to look up pretty much every single obscure movie or TV show I can remember but this one has always eluded me.

posted by smoothvirus to media & arts (6 answers total)

Maybe this list will jog a memory?
posted by xedrik at 2:02 PM on May 7, 2012

Life imitating television ...
posted by tilde at 2:04 PM on May 7, 2012

It sounds like the UK show "The Kumars at No. 42"; there was a short-lived US version called "The Ortegas" as well, which starred Cheech Marin. But these were much more recent.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:11 PM on May 7, 2012

According to a TV listing in Google News Archive from 1978, this was (likely) the series Please Stand By, "a comedy series about Frank Lampert [sic: Lambert] and his family, who own the world's smallest TV station -- KRDA in DeQueen, N.M. Frank was persuaded by his wife to quit his high-pressure job as a Los Angeles executive and begin enjoying the simple life -- but they never dreamed it would be so complicated to run the only television station in town."

There's also a bit more in credits in this TV encyclopedia.
posted by dhartung at 2:58 PM on May 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Wow thanks for finding that dhartung. I'm certain this has to be the show I was trying to remember. I do remember the part about the different family members having to do the shows on the station.
posted by smoothvirus at 3:10 PM on May 7, 2012

There was also Second City Television
posted by mattoxic at 4:20 AM on May 8, 2012