Bored With The USA mentions both Starsky and Kojak, and Cool For Cats mentions The Sweeney.

Referenced by David Bowie on the track of the same name on the unreleased Toy, which became Slip Away on Heathen.

The Ramones and Dramarama also refer to the cable channel show.

also mentioned in an Abba song. Can't remember which one.

Talk about self-referential...

Mentioned in Bill Is Dead by The Fall.

To 'watching the news' in Thats Entertainment but a bit generic I know

Also a reference to The Archers in Life At A Top Peoples Health Farm, again stretching the question a bit!

"They talk in tongues on Coronation Street"
RT dontcha know.

Mentions Soul Train

Name checks "Jackanory"

so I'm not going to mention that they mention Match of the Day. Isn't there a Stop the Pigeon reference by them somewhere too?
The Jam mention News at Ten in The Combine.

gets namechecked in Barenaked Ladies' One Week.

'Meet The Wife' is mentioned in 'Good Morning, Good Morning', whilst 'Man About The House (with Paula Wilcox) is refered to in Belle and Sebastian's 'Photo Jenny'.

A track from Diamond Dogs - Big brother

mentions University Challenge, and rhymes it with cabbage.

Only Fools And Horses.

In "When the world is running down..." Sting sings about "...James Brown on the TAMI show..." - but was that filmed for television or for the cinema ? I have a sneaking suspicion that it was the latter.

We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel mentions Wheel of Fortune and Peyton Place.

Europe's The Final Countdown, just waiting in the wings for that show to be "decommissioned".

Harry Nilsson.

Ready Steady Go, in the song of the same name by Generation X.

Brucie and the Generation Game - St Etienne's "you're in a bad way"

by the Times. Follows that line with the double whammy:

"He lives next door to the Man in a Suitcase"

Ace.

Edit: and here it is - be seeing you!

in Johnny Cash's "The Night Hank Williams Came To Town"
"Ellery Queen" in The Tavares' "Whodunnit"
The Vapors' ace flop follow-up to "Turning Japanese": "News At Ten"

Nick Lowe.

Skeleton Key by the Coral. In the funky bit at the end. Blink and you'll miss it.

Ready Steady Go by Generation X - also mentions Juke Box Jury and Thank Your Lucky Stars.

Statler Brothers - Flowers on the Wall

In the song Black Diamond Bay from the Desire album, he sings of:

"sitting home alone one night in LA, watching old Cronkite on the seven o'clock news"

For the third time in two days, Ian Dury's England's Glory features in the blog.

The following are name-checked in the song:

Muffin The Mule (1946 - 1955. A new series appeared in 2005)
Billy Bunter (1952 - 1961)
Mortimer Wheeler - doyen of TV quiz shows including Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1952–60), Buried Treasure (1954–59) and Chronicle (1966)
Mr. Pastry - a regular on the BBC in the 50s and 60s and he actually appeared on the US Ed Sullivan Show several times!

Appears in "Own Up If You're Over 25" by John Dummer - from the time when a twentysomething would remember the Lulu show!

Both shows named after his songs (does that count ?)

- Life on mars & Ashes to ashes

Gangsters - The Specials.

recorded under the name Tom & Jerry in the 50s.

On the 1966 S&G album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme there is a track titled 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night.

The song also mentions the death of comedian Lenny Bruce, so it would work in both threads.

In 1997 the BBC ran a 6 part drama starring Keith Allen

- "Born to run"

Mentions US sit-com King of Queens

It's Thursday night she should be out on the scene
But she's sitting at home watching "The King of Queens"

Chuck Berry - Sweet Little Sixteen

Oh, and does "Up The Junction" by Squeeze count? (It was previously the title of a Wednesday Play.)

and I watched Columbo.

Iiiiiit's the neeeeeeew style - Beastie Boys

O superman

Jackanory Stories
and
Sooty's Disco Party

(I presume Shed 7 named the song in honour of the seminal daytime quiz show)

Crossroads.

Hill Street Blues! Dallas! Quincy!

Half Man Half Biscuit are a goldmine for this topic

The Trumpton Riots (also mentions Chigley and references characters from Camberwick Green)

A Country Practice (which also mentions fellow Aussie daytime soaps "Home and Away" and "Sons and Daughters")

Friday Night and The Gates Are Low mentions Denis Norden's nostalgia show "Looks Familiar"

We Built This Village on a Trad. Arr Tune refers to the 80s ITV comedy drama "Outside Edge" although Nigel call it "Roll The Square Arthur"

There are millions* of others that are referenced, though not always by the programme name, e.g Jim'll Fix It (*poss slight exaggeration)

Non HMHB references: The Fall mention Junior Showtime in "Sing!Harpy" and Shack mention Richard and Judy in "Finn, Sophie, Bobby and Lance" (the title of which comes from characters in Home and Away)

"Sweeping the Nation" mentions Happy Days spinoff Laverne and Shirley, although that might be the name of a band named after the tv show - does that count?

Catatonia - Mulder & Scully

You're in a Bad Way - St Etienne, the Generation Game.

And one of my favourite Half Man Half Biscuit lines :

"Watching Blue Peter and they're sampling the dishes
'I don't normally like tomatoes, John...
but this is delicious!'"

Gil Scott-Heron

"Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies & Hooterville Junction (sic) will no longer be so damned relevant"

Great song, Gil, but Green Acres,especially, is fantastic & original absurdist humour & I love it

... mentions 'Top Cat.'

Ziggy Marley - 'Tomorrow People.'

by 10cc mentions Minnie Mouse (and Pluto).

“You’re in a bad way”,Sarah Cracknell sings about “..watching Bruce on the old Generation Game”
“I can’t read” on the first much maligned Tin Machine disc contains the lyric “I can’t read and I can’t write down/ I don’t know a book from Countdown”. This may or may not refer to long running Channel 4 quiz of the same name – who knows with some of the Dames previous song references already listed?
Thinking the other way round, was the 80’s ITV documentary strand “TV Eye” named after the Iggy Pop Album/song of the same name? Have any other television programmes been named after bands or songs?

The Day Before You Came...there's not a single episode of Dallas that I haven't seen...

Walk the dinosaur - "I watched Miami Vice"

Next stop downloading it for my 5 year old daughter

Just leafing through old singles at the weekend and spotted this Captain Sensible song based on Leslie Crowther's 80s game show (and others like it).

....from, I think, 'Dancehall Sweethearts' (1974) which mentions 'The Late, Late Show' - Irish TV's 'Parkinson' of its day. But alas I can't recall the title of the song at the mo...

Anyone else...?

Calendar song - Osibisa

Rainbow

Her song I Wish I Were came up on shuffle the other day and reminded me of these lyrics:
"I watch a lot of PBS and BBC
I don't want to Meet The Press
I'm scared, I'm scared of what I see"

and Meet The Wife

Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" is the english translation of the french words jeux sans frontiers (and he sings those words throughout the song). Jeux Sans Frontiers was (is?) the Europe-wide TV competition for small towns to compete against each other playing silly games.

The British version was of course called, "It's A Knockout!", which is not in any way a translation of the French title.

So...when Peter Gabriel sings "It's a knockout" in the song, it can *only* be a reference to the televisual work of Messrs Hall and Wareing.

Morrissey song that doesn't actually namecheck a show,but at least it's a song about watching television. More than that, it's a song about watching a television show about television shows, so beat that.

It's also the only song I can think of that mentions an ITV Channel.

Friday nights 1969 / ATV, you murdered every line