science

The Baby Blue Movie

The Baby Blue Movie is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Baby Blue Movie rather than just read about it. In short: The Baby Blue Movie is a late-night programming block on the Canadian television channel Citytv that primarily aired softcore pornography and erotica films. Initially broadcast from 1972 to 1975 to generate publicity for the then-upstart channel, Baby Blue was the first regularly scheduled adult television program to air in North America.

Key takeaways

The Baby Blue Movie belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Baby Blue Movie to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Baby Blue Movie from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Baby Blue Movie is a late-night programming block on the Canadian television channel Citytv that primarily aired softcore pornography and erotica films. Initially broadcast from 1972 to 1975 to generate publicity for the then-upstart channel, Baby Blue was the first regularly scheduled adult television program to air in North America. The series was revived in the 1990s as Baby Blue 2, which aired until 2008.

History CITY-TV began broadcasting out of Toronto, Ontario on September 28, 1972, as the first commercial ultra high frequency (UHF) television station in Canada. Station founder Moses Znaimer aired feature films as the bulk of Citytv's programming as the station established itself, and hired Brian Linehan to purchase and schedule movies. To generate publicity for the new station and communicate that it was for "mature, urban adults," Znaimer conceived of a regularly scheduled block of softcore adult films to air on Friday nights, which became The Baby Blue Movie. The title was suggested by Znaimer's partner Marilyn Lightstone, who noted that because the films were not "blue" movies (a term for X rated films), they could be classified as "baby blue" instead. I Am Curious (Yellow) aired as the first Baby Blue Movie on September 29, 1972, with the film's companion I Am Curious (Blue) airing the following night. Robert Lantos later joined as a producer after acquiring Canadian broadcasting rights to short films from the New York Erotic Film Festival and selling the rights to Znaimer, which aired as The Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival. The Metropolitan Toronto Police exerted frequent pressure on Znaimer and Citytv over Baby Blue, and in January 1975 the station was charged with obscenity for the Baby Blue broadcast of Love Boccaccio Style. While the charge was eventually dismissed, Znaimer elected to cancel Baby Blue shortly thereafter, stating that the program had accomplished its goal of generating publicity for Citytv and that the network was running out of acceptable films to broadcast. On May 2, 1975, the all-ages film Cat Ballou aired in the time slot normally reserved for Baby Blue, with the viewer discretion notice comedically re-phrased to indicate that "the following program is for family audiences." To mark the 20th anniversary of Citytv, The Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival was screened on September 28, 1992 as a one-off installment of Baby Blue titled Baby Blue Returns. The series was revived as Baby Blue 2 in the late 1990s as a companion to Ed's Night Party, with the viewer discretion warning delivered by Citytv journalist Mark Dailey. CHUM Limited was acquired by CTVglobemedia in 2007 and the Citytv stations were sold to Rogers Media later that year; Baby Blue ceased broadcasting shortly thereafter, with Sex House Volume 1 airing as the final Baby Blue Movie on August 30, 2008.

Programming

Films

Television series Beverly Hills Bordello Number 96

Impact and influence Baby Blue was the first regularly scheduled adult television program to be broadcast in North America. A 1973 survey by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement found that the series was viewed by 210,000 of the 450,000 households that Citytv was broadcast to; at its peak, Baby Blue was watched by two-thirds of the television-viewing public in Toronto. The popularity of the series allowed Citytv to set commercial advertising rates for Baby Blue at CAD$250 per minute, nearly double what the channel charged for other programs on its schedule. In 1975, the theater company Theatre Passe Muraille staged the original play I Love You, Baby Blue, which used the series to examine Toronto's sex culture; the success of the play allowed the company to purchase its current space on Ryerson Avenue, which it occupies to this day. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome, which focuses on a fictional Toronto-based UHF television station that is infamous for broadcasting sensationalistic material, is inspired by Citytv and Baby Blue.

See also Bleu Nuit (Midnight Blue), a softcore programming block that aired on Télévision Quatre-Saisons (TQS), now Noovo in Quebec Cinérotique, a softcore programming block that aired on CFVO-TV in Quebec

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading Bidini, Dave. "It’s a friggin’ nuclear Technicolor smutfest!" National Post, January 30, 2011.

External links Baby Blue 2 at Citytv (defunct; link via Internet Archive)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Baby Blue Movie

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Baby Blue Movie claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Baby Blue Movie before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Baby Blue Movie ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Baby Blue Movie

In research: The Baby Blue Movie appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Baby Blue Movie in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Baby Blue Movie is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970s Canadian anthology television series, 1972 Canadian television series debuts, 1990s Canadian anthology television series, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Baby Blue Movie outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Baby Blue Movie in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Baby Blue Movie means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Baby Blue Movie out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Baby Blue Movie in simple terms?

Why does The Baby Blue Movie matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Baby Blue Movie?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Baby Blue Movie.