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Mongo:
Basically, what I'm tring to say is that the seeds for the late 60s early 70s Monster movie craze on NYC Television were planted in the early to mid 60s.

Well, to be fair, "the seeds" go back all the way to 1958 with the release of the Shock package by Screen Gems. Ever see the picture of the Frankenstein monster sitting outside Yankee Stadium promoting ABC's late night Shock Theater?

I have several old TV Guides, but a better resource has proven to be the ProQuest database that lets you search old New York Times TV listings (that's what I used for a couple of the DvdDrive-In site's NYC Monster Movie Memories columns I contributed to). And you think TV Guide reviews were short and idiosyncratic? For a somewhat dodgy title, the Times would often give only this description (or advice): "Your move." Huh? Wuh?

In general, I would agree with Joe that, at least in the New York/New Jersey area, there were many more horror/sci-fi titles that seemed to run all weekend (and frequently during the week). Of course, this is back when local independent channels (which NY had three of - channels 5, 9 and 11) actually ran old movies. When channel 5 started running their Creature Features showcase in late 1969, Saturday night became the monster movie night. For a while, Chiller Theater on channel 11 and Creature Features on 5 actually ran opposite one another, forcing Monster Kids in that pre-VCR era to choose one over the other. You can bet there was lots of dial-turning (remember dials?) during the commercial break ("So many of the melodies of well-known popular songs were actually written by the great masters, like these familiar themes..."). As mentioned, there was the 4:30 movie on ABC that would often have "theme" weeks (Godzilla, Japanese monsters, Fly movies, etc.) and later the CBS Late Night Movie on Fridays would show AIP and Hammer titles you generally never saw during the day or early evening.

So, yeah, there were many more genre titles on general broadcast TV back then. But that's where stuff gets tricky. Are we only talking about broadcast TV? Are we adding in cable channels? How basic the channel? What about digital channels. What about Netflix on demand? One thing I never forget is that while there were many more old horror and sci-fi titles on air back then, there are many more available today courtesy of vhs, dvd, and, of course, the internet. If he were of a mind to, the interested fan can readily download tons of famous and not-so-famous genre titles.

Looking back, the really fallow period for NYC monster movie-watching would seem to be the mid- to late-1980s. VHS was spreading but many monster titles still weren't yet out, but local TV had already dropped much of their genre showcases (except for something like Fright Night on WWOR). Luckily I discovered Joel Eisner's Horror and Sci-Fi Emporium store in Greenwich Village where you could rent VHS tapes (including lots of dubs). There were lots of titles I got to see thanks to him that I hadn't seen in years.

"I'm sure you'll recognize this lovely melody, 'A Stranger In Paradise' ".

"But did you know that the original theme is from the Polovtsian Dance No. 2 by Borodin?" You know, I think we actually had those records!

Re the movie listings, I keep meaning to go back to the start of Shock Theater in 1958 and list what they showed and the order in which it aired, but the problem is that (naturally) the earlier you go back the more incomplete some of the newspaper scans are. (I did get far enough to realize that it wasn't all classic Universal stuff... there were an awful lot of Columbia mysteries and horror-in-name only kind of stuff; I can only imagine how disappointed a fledgling Monster Kid would have been back then on certain nights).