Craig’s notes
The tape says “FREE VIDEO,” and Columbia House spends most of it asking people about television: favorite comedy, favorite cop show, favorite theme song, favorite one-liner. Good Times and I Love Lucy give way to Adam-12 and Star Trek. It feels like a TV-memory poll until the price turns up.
The first video from a series you choose costs 89 cents plus shipping and handling. After that, future videos in the series arrive on a ten-day preview. I watched the whole pitch August 26, 2026. The show clips and audience memories do a lot of the selling before anyone asks you to start a collection.
On this tape
- Favorite comedies: Good Times, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, The Honeymooners and The Andy Griffith Show.
- Favorite cop shows: Law & Order and Adam-12.
- Theme songs: Green Acres, The Flintstones, The Jeffersons, Rawhide, The Twilight Zone and All in the Family.
- TV memories: I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners on a furniture-store TV and The Waltons.
- Science fiction: the original Star Trek and The Twilight Zone.
- One-liners: “Be careful out there,” lines from Hogan’s Heroes and “One of these days, Alice.”
- Offer: a multi-episode video of a chosen series for 89¢ plus shipping and handling, followed by later series on a 10-day preview basis.
About the program
VGRAM Free Video WATCH IT! is a Columbia House Video Library promotional tape built around classic television. The label prints “FREE VIDEO” and “89¢”; the latter is the introductory series-video offer in the program, not a current price. A 1999 year in the catalog has not been established as this version’s release date.
