Buffalo in the ’80s: Remember Channel 17’s Great TV Auction?

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This 1983 photo is a bell ringer for anyone who remembers the Quickie Board, for sure.

Buffalo News archives

From 1970 to 2006, WNED’s annual auction was one of those television events that most Western New Yorkers couldn’t help but get sucked into watching.

Western New York celebrities like musicians, politicians, athletes, and radio and TV personalities from just about every station in Buffalo pitched in to help pull off the madcap effort, which generation over half a million dollars for public television through the years.

And just for the record — a bell ringer during the Great TV Auction was a product sold for greater than its retail value.

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.