Need help with archival King Kong (1933) information, please

[Shokara]

I've lived in the NJ/NYC area my whole life. As some of you who have also lived there as far back as the early 1980's may recall, you and I are familiar with a time when local TV station WOR-TV Channel 9 (based in Secaucus, NJ) regularly showed King Kong (1933) along with The Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young (1949) and numerous other monster movies during the Thanksgiving Weekend. This is all well documented.

However, I need help in finding something that isn't as well documented. The first time I ever saw King Kong was with my family in our living room on a Sunday on WOR-TV 9 when I was five years old in 1983. Since then, I've learned that first viewing of mine was WOR-TV 9's airing to celebrate King Kong's 50th anniversary. Someone even managed to post a recording of a WOR-TV 9 promo for that specific viewing on YouTube. This is it:



I have tried and tried to track down when was the specific date for this, but so far I've come up empty. It was a Sunday in 1983 at 1:00 PM Eastern, but which one? If there's anyone here that's more resourceful than I or simply knows where to look, could you please help an old fan find out exactly when his fandom for a certain big gorilla started?

[mbozzo]

It might have started for me with the ABC King Kong cartoon series. It's a pity that it isn't in reruns. I heard that King Kong Escape is based on that cartoon series.

[H-Man]

I'm pretty sure it was April 10th. The time, day of the week, and channel match, and it was only a few days after a surge of 50th anniversary press for the big ape. What I can look at on Newspapers.com is pretty limited at the moment, since I'm not paying for a subscription right now, but TV listings from the same Sunday papers show that WOR also broadcast KKvG on Monday and KKE on Friday.

I'd recommend keeping an eye out for Newspapers.com's free trial weeks. It's a good resource for obscure and trivial information like this.