By Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist Published Aug 02, 2010 at 5:35 PM

Ah, the good old days. Prime time on NBC in the early 1960s as a bearded guy led a choir singing a bunch of songs that were old even then. That was Mitch Miller, who died today at 99.

His "Sing Along with Mitch" ran from 1961 to 1964.

It was canceled because it skewed old -- even then. But he provided plenty of material for comedians, and I know plenty of people who grew up with "Sing Along with Mitch" Christmas albums.

Here's a sample of the show. Frankly, the commercials are more entertaining:

 

Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist

Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.

A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.

In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.

When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.