Sometimes I know that a post I’m putting together is destined to get 20 views if I’m lucky. But I have to follow my muse wherever she may lead me, and today she leads me to TV newsrooms across the country.

I can’t say exactly why, but I find these old advertisements for network TV news programs to be just so… quaint? Charming? I don’t quite know how to put it. I just love how much these ads convey what it must have been like to watch the news back in the day — not slick in the least. Just a bunch of square white men (and sometimes white women) reading the day’s events.

And now the news of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s…

WOKR (Rochester, NY), 1969

WCAX (Burlington, VT), 1973

KGO-TV (San Francisco, CA), 1971

WKTV (Utica/Rome, NY), 1973

WCTV (Thomasville/Tallahassee, FL), 1975

WMAL (Washington, D.C.), 1975

WTVM (Columbus, GA), 1975

WTVO (Rockford, IL), 1959

WTEN (Albany/Schenectady/Troy, NY), 1960

WPRO (Providence, RI), 1962

WTHI (Terra Haute, IN), 1963

KCEN (Temple/Waco, TX), 1964

KCRG (Cedar Rapids, IA), 1966

WECT (Wilmington, NC), 1967

WFMY (Greensboro, NC), 1967

WITN (Eastern Carolina), 1967

KCAU (Sioux City, IA), 1969

KELO (Sioux Falls, SD), 1969

WCHS (Charleston/Huntington, WV), 1969

WDEF (Chattanooga, TN), 1969