Around the dial

We've dealt with televised college sports here from time to time, particularly in articles like this, and so I was quite interested to read Jon Wertheim's article at SI.com on how cable TV's decline could change the landscape of college sports forever.

With a tip of the cap to the Broadcast Archives at the University of Maryland, here's a story from The Archive of American Television on the 50th anniversary of the debut of The Joey Bishop Show, ABC's challenge to Johnny Carson's late night supremacy. It also gives us a chance to be introduced to yet another blog that discusses classic TV, Bobby Ellerbee's Eyes of a Generation.

This week's Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine focuses on the 1964 Alfred Hitchcock Hour presentation of "The Rose Garden," written by James Bridges and starring Patrick O'Neal. Not only does Jack demonstrate the classic Hitchcockian twist at the end of the episode, it also shows - as we have seen many times in this series - how an accomplished writer such as Bridges can take a good short story and turn it into a very good script.

At Christmas TV History, Joanna has, as she puts in, "had my head stuck in old TV Guide magazines" looking at old Christmas movies, episodes, and animated specials. She also ran across this Christmas TV quiz from 1996 - see how well you do on it. It may be 21 years old, but I can promise you the answers haven't been changed.

Television may have more sex in it today, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's sexier than it used to be, as Cult TV Blog points out when John looks at a Right Guard ad done by a mutual favorite, Patrick Macnee, which is surely as sexy as anything you'd see today. See, it doesn't have to show everything to tell everything.

Martin Grams pens a very nice obit on Don Gordon, the character actor (you'd know him if you saw him) who was in just about everything, frequently as a heavy but almost always giving a solid, occasionally excellent, performance. He died last month, but news is only getting out now; as Martin says, this kind of thing can happen with some frequency, which means we have to pay attention lest the news fly completely under the radar.

Inspired by the series Feud, telling of the conflict between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, our old friend Billy Ingram at TV Party! tells the wonderful story of an 11-year-old Greensboro lad's encounter with Crawford, the actress and soda pop magnate.

And finally, Faded Signals reprints this brief news article from many years ago, containing the reassuring news that "TV does not harm the eyes." I don't know about you, but I'll sleep better tonight. TV