"EARLY TV MEMORIES"is the new collection of commemorative stamps issued this week by the U.S. Postal Service, featuring 20 stamps of classic television shows, popular 50 years ago during television's Golden Age. "It's Howdy Doody Time!" once again.
The 44-cent retro-style stamps tug at the nostalgic heart strings of Baby Boomers with photos of "The Lone Ranger," "Howdy Doody," and "Kukla, Fran and Ollie." The first-class stamps include images of "The Twilight Zone," "Dragnet," "The Honeymooners," "I Love Lucy," "Lassie," and "Perry Mason."
Nostalgia rules -- particularly when you are losing a lot of money and need to get revenues up. And, the U.S. Postal Service is losing billions of dollars.
At The Washington Post's Federal Eye blog, Ed O'Keefe asks if the postal service should devote so much time and money to postage stamps, particularly ones that commemorate 50-year-old TV shows, and at a time when it's losing so much money.
It costs around $40,000 to develop and produce a commemorative stamp, according to David Failor, the Postal Service's executive director of stamp services. Commemorative stamps generate somewhere between $250 million and $300 million for the Postal Service, said Failor. "...not nearly enough to make up for the billions of dollars in lost revenue," reports O'Keefe. The Postal Service's Failor added that the stamp program generates a priceless amount of free press and fuels the interests of several million "hardcore" stamp collectors, plus another 10 million to 20 million stamp "accumulators."