This week in TV Guide: September 2, 1961

How to watch TV: 1. Walk over to set. 2. Turn on. 3. Watch.

Well, that's how I learned to watch television when I was a kid, anyway. Obviously, Leo Rosten has something a little more in mind. His idea, however, is even more radical: if you want better television, turn it off.

Rosten, political scientist, author and social critic, calls the current fare on television "dreary at best and ghastly at worst," but that doesn't make it much out of line from other forms of mass media; many newspapers are "sensational and shoddy," paperbacks "that are part of the alleged 'cultural revolution' are shallow and worthless," and "much of what appears on the Broadway stage is banal and unworthy of a civilized man's attention." In that sense, TV is no different. "The public appetite for the silly and the trivial, for sheer distraction, the national mania for "escape" and narcotic "fun"—these are so great and so widespread that one can only wonder how our schools and families and churches have turned out so many people whose taste is so abominable."

Just when you want to dismiss Rosten as another anti-television elitist, however, he confesses: "I love television. I do. I love it and I use it." It is a place to catch up with the news, to view superior dramas, to watch a sporting event without freezing. It gives him "access to a thousand things I could not otherwise experience." And that's the point: it's because Rosten loves television, and because it is here to stay, that he becomes outraged by bad programs. And that's why he says that "[p]arents can surely teach their children how to use TV—instead of letting TV use them." Television did not abolish parents, he notes, nor teachers, preachers and critics, "and I wish they would stop acting as if they were dead."

If you want better TV, Rosten says, vote by turning off the tube. "There is no swifter or more effective way of influencing Madison Avenue than by registering your vote for or against a program—that is, by listening to programs which are superior and by not listening to programs which are bilge." That we spend so much time agonizing over the quality of television programming is a direct indictment of—ourselves. "The chief trouble with television is nothing more or less than the lazy public which patronizes it with so little sense or taste or judgment." Networks would give us better shows, he concludes, "if enough Americans helped them by supporting excellence and throttling that venality which surrounds us." I wonder what he'd think of TV today?

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In the December 31, 1966 issue of TV Guide, Neil Hickey and Joe Finnigan wrote about a "TV disaster" called The Tammy Grimes Show. The reason I bring it up, and I'm counting on you to click on the link and check that article out for yourself, is because this week Edith Efron has a profile of "a truly unusual girl," none other than Tammy Grimes herself.

She's become a star, thanks to her turn in the Broadway hit The Unsinkable Molly Brown. "She drives critics and reporters into frenzied explosions of prose when they try to describe her appearance," Efron writes. One called her "a sexy little screwball," another described her as "sea spray in the Rockies, calypso in a New England cemetery, and Cinderella in a strip tease." And then there's that voice, that "grits like a key turning in a boudoir lock," that "combines froggy throatiness with an amusing squeak." "She talks in a stream-of-consciousness patter, appears to say whatever comes into her mind and almost never answers direct questions," according to a reporter who's interviewed her. There's an oversized quality to her, one made for the stage, that worked to her detriment on The Tammy Grimes Show.

However, says Efron, there's also a "savagely shy, withdrawn girl with wistful little eyes that nibble at one in sidelong glances, a girl with a twisted, crooked smile that looks more like a grimace of pain." She is a private person at heart, one uncomfortable talking about the things that mean the most to her. She admits that she's suspicious about people; "Sometimes I get terribly enthusiastic. I put them up on a pedestal. Then . . they fall down from the pedestal and I am disappointed." For a moment, as she tells Efron this, she seems to relax for the first time. Her desires are not the same as others; "They don't go after something because they want it. They're really not seeking pleasure for themselves at all. They just imitate each other blindly." When she says things like this, one wonders if she isn't talking about her ex-husband, actor Christopher Plummer, father of her daughter and future actress Amanda. ("I never saw a girl child who resembled her father so much. She looks like Henry the Fifth.")

Her desires are simple: the theater, one man, and children. She goes through two more marriages: one to actor Jeremy Slate, which lasts less than two years, and another to composer Richard Bell, which lasted until his death in 2005. Efron notes that once she broached the subject of happiness, she went back into her protective shell. Reading all this, it's easy to picture how this fits in to the disaster of The Tammy Grimes Show. Whether she was "let down" by people who convinced her they knew best about the show, if her personality wasn't suitable for the small screen, or if it was just a lousy show—we'll probably never know this for sure. What we do know is that Tammy Grimes is, as Efron puts it, an "unusual girl," or, as the press calls her, "a kook."

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Care for some morning baseball? Of course you do, and why not, thanks to the Mountain time zone. At 10:55 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, the Detroit Tigers face off at Yankee Stadium against the New York Yankees, with the American League's three top candidates for MVP: Norm Cash of the Tigers (who wins the batting title this season), and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the Yanks. CBS brings you the games, with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese (◄) behind the microphones. Meanwhile, on NBC the action begins at 11:00 a.m. both days, with Lindsey Nelson and Joe Garagiola calling the play-by-play. Saturday it's the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Milwaukee Braves; Sunday it's the Cleveland Indians in Baltimore against the Orioles. If baseball's not your thing, Wide World of Sports has the World Water Ski Championships from Long Beach, with Jim McKay and Jim Simpson reporting. (3:00 p.m., ABC)

It is indeed a really big shew for Sunday's Ed Sullivan (6:00 p.m. MT, CBS), a rerun from last year with headliners Bobby Darin, Edith Piaf and Trude Adams, plus comedians Wayne and Shuster, Jackie Kannnon, the late Lord Buckley (who died in November, 1960), impressionist Rex Ramer, and the Pompoff Thedy Family of clowns. It's too bad I don't have anything to put up against it, because Ed would be a sure winner.

We've got an article about the resurgence of interest in the Glenn Miller Orchestra, led for the last five years by Ray McKinley, who calls it "real music"; "The kids, brought up on a diet of rock 'n' roll, sit there bored until they begin to listen to the music. Then they join their parents on the dance floor. I guess they find the old folks are right, that our music is pleasant and danceable." Find out for yourself Monday on Glenn Miller Time (8:00 p.m., CBS)

Playhouse 90 has a provocative offering on Tuesday night (7:30 p.m., CBS). "Journey to the Day" shows us what takes place in a group psychotherapy session through the eyes of six patients in a state mental hospital and their doctor. John Frankenheimer directs a stellar cast including Janice Rule, Mike Nichols, James Dunn, Vivian Nathan, James Gregory, and a rare TV appearance by Mary Astor, with Steven Hill as their doctor. A half-hour later, NBC presents a drama about the famed news photographer Margaret Bourke-White (who was played by Farrah Fawcett in a 1989 TV-movie), focusing on her dramatic battle for recovery from Parkinson's disease. Teresa Wright stars as Bourke-White, with Eli Wallach as fellow photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Jack Paar's in Berlin the latter part of the week, so his seat in New York is being filled by Orson Bean on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Fortunately, as far as I know there were no international incidents as a result of Jack's trip.

Thursday at 9:30 p.m. KCPX, the ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, has Tightrope, the police drama starring the pre-Mannix Mike Connors as an unnamed undercover agent who assumes a different persona in each episode; while KTVB, the ABC affiliate in Boise, has The Case of the Dangerous Robin, a ZIV-produced crime drama starring the pre-Combat Rick Jason as an insurance investigator. It's the time slot that, until February, was the home of Take a Good Look, Ernie Kovacs' bizarre panel show, co-starring wife Edie Adams. Ernie and his wild sense of humor (he says he's 10 5/8 years ahead of his time) are the subject of an article by Dwight Whitney. The show was not terribly successful in its two-year stint; Kovacs insists it was a satire of a panel show, but Whitney says the problem was that "he tried to pull his punches, to kid himself and his audience into thinking they actually were watching a panel show." It is a given by now that Kovacs has the most, well, unique sense of humor in the business; Jack Benny once told him that "Normally I hate what I don't understand, but I love this." He is said to have spent $3,000 on one three-second gag ("the used-car salesman whose car dropped through the concrete."). Studio crew members have been known to fight for the privilege of working on his shows. Dutch Masters, his loyal sponsor (even though he smokes only Cuban cigars), loves him; they even liked Take a Good Look. Even though that show is now history, ABC has signed him for a series of specials—three this year, six next year, which he, sadly, will not live to complete. He's not for everyone, but I think Ernie Kovacs is one of the funniest men ever born, and while you can see his influence in many shows over the years, I've yet to see anyone succeed him. And speaking of influence: tonight's Tightrope features a character named "Emile Kovacs." Coincidence?

Another thing on Thursday: Rocky Marciano, the former heavyweight champion, is one of Groucho's guests on You Bet Your Life (8:00 p.m., NBC). His mother was a guest on last week's episode. Friday, KBOI has a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (10:00 p.m.) starring Keenan Wynn and Phyllis Kirk; besides being a humorous episode, it marks the first on-screen appearance of Rod Serling, who actually gets sucked into the story.

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There's an unbylined profile of Dwayne Hickman, star of Dobie Gillis. It's a standard look at a young, level-headed man who's become an accomplished young light comedian, but there's a quote in here I think is worth noting. Rod Amateau, producer-director of Dobie Gillis, says, "I will surprise you. There is Steve McQueen, who has a cute little personality and could be a very fine young light comedian. With that single exception, Dwayne is all alone. Jack Lemmon? He's not young any more." Now there's a thought—Steve McQueen? True, he does have a nice light touch that he displays from time to time, but the King of Cool as a light comedian? The star of Bullitt, The Sand Pebbles, The Magnificent Seven, The Towering Inferno, The Thomas Crown Affair? Yes, a very interesting thought.

Henry Harding's "For the Record" feature at the beginning of the programming section has some notes worth mentioning. There's Robert Wood, the manager of broadcast standards for NBC, i.e. the network censor, talking about the challenge he faces from the myriad number of complaints his office gets from "people or groups "who feel they have been maligned"—anyone from plumbers to milliners. "I don't blame them," he says, "but it sure makes things difficult. If we paid attention to all the complaints, our villains would be faceless, formless, backgroundless and with no visible means of support." And he's not even talking about sponsors, who've been known to meddle a time or two in the details of a story.

Rhode Island Senator John Pastore*, who's had more than one run-in with the television industry, has issued a stern warning to broadcasters about liquor commercials on television. Along with Washington Senator Warren Magnuson, Pastore has said that it would be "foolhardy" for the industry to try and get liquor commercials on television "in these trying times with criticism of the broadcasting industry mounting." The dividing line traditionally has been whiskey; beer and wine are OK to advertise, but nothing harder. Such commercials "would certainly be taken into consideration" when time came for a station's license renewal. The National Association of Broadcasters promises they'll keep their members in line. Pastore, you may recall, was the senator in front of whom Fred Rogers famously testified on the need for funding for public broadcasting back in 1969.

*Fun fact: Pastore won reelection to the Senate in 1970 by defeating an anti-war Catholic priest named John McLaughlin. McLaughlin would later leave the priesthood and become a political pundit and television host. His show—The McLaughlin Group.

I mentioned the New York Yankees earlier; well, WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City, is delirious about its ratings for Yankees baseball this season. They're up 16 percent, not because the Yanks are headed for another American League pennant (they are), but because the M&M Boys, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, are both threatening Babe Ruth's storied single-season record of 60 home runs. "Even former Brooklyn Dodger fans are watching, pulling against them, natch!" Maris breaks the record on the final day of the season, finishing with 61, while Mantle, hobbled by an injury, winds up with a mere 54.

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Finally, it's always good to catch up with the Letters section, to find out what the viewers of America are thinking.

Mrs. E. Schlenger of Stamford, Connecticut is one of a number of letter writers who thought to invoke Dorothy Parker in commenting on last month's article about Joyce Gordon, the glamour girl who wears glasses. She says, "As one of the many who wear glasses, I have come to realize that: "Men who make passes seldom stop at glasses!" Speaking as a man, I have no quarrel with this.

Diane Read Haeselbarth of Maywood, New Jersey, noticed that last month's article on "The Working Mother" was written by a man (George Lefferts, "unless we have another George Sand"), and has a bone to pick with him. "I am a college-educated, ex-newspaper reporter, but according to apparent Lefferts-Margaret Mead standards, I am now a simple, bored housewife." She concludes with an opinion that, a scant ten years later, would be quite unfashionable: "Let us hope for the sake of our own and future generations that the American woman has the sensitivity to recognize challenge in the world, wifehood and motherhood, if she is lucky enough to be so blessed." Hear, hear!

We end with a couple of anonymous letters on "Is Television Aimed at the 12-Year-Old Mind," from the August 19 issue. (You can see that kids and TV was a continuing topic in TV Guides of the time.) A writer in Kimberly, Wisconsin speaks up for the kids who aren't fooled by the pablum that television gives them: "They know what they want even if they put it forth in a childlike manner. The article proves that kids today won't be satisfied with shows that are mediocre, repetitious, uninteresting and unbelievable." Would that I had so much confidence it today's youth—but, of course, they don't watch TV.

The letter of the issue, however—if not of the year—comes from someone signing his/herself as "A 12-Year-Old" in DeWitt, New York, who offers a contrary opinion. "Where did you pick up those oblong 12-year-olds? All the kids around here love bank-bang, shoot-'em-up type of TV shows. As for classics, they're the squarest." And then: "P.S. Please withhold my name for certain personal reasons. Namely my mother." There's not much else one can say after that, is there?  TV

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Around the dial

We're into the "Patricia Hayes" season at Cult TV Blog, in which John assembles a season's worth of performances from an individual actor who's appeared in various shows he's watched. Hayes was a familiar face to British audiences for her various roles, none more so than her 1971 BAFTA-winning role as "Edna, the Inebriate Woman" in Play for Today.

At RealWeegieMidget, Gill treats us to reviews of three movies featuring the late, great Tim Curry: the TV series The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange (2012-14), the horror movie The Shout (1978) and an episode of Tales from the Crypt (1993) in which he plays not one, not two, but three family members.

And speaking of Curry, at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence has a look back at the gloriously eclectic career of Curry, which stretches from Rocky Horror to Clue, and which featured turns with the Muppets, an outstanding career on stage, and more credits than you can shake a stick at, as people my age might say.

The trip through 1970s television continues apace at Comfort TV, and this week David brings us to Wednesday night, 1978: as he says, it's yet another night of primetime dominance by ABC, with Eight is Enough, Charlie's Angels, and Vega$, but there's more, including a show even worse than Supertrain!

At Cult TV Lounge, it's a look at a series I've watched in the past, Firefly, Joss Whedon's sci-fi Western, starring Nathan Fillion in a rare non-crime figher role, and a cast of characters headed by Ron Glass's insightful performance as a man of faith. It's an intriguing premise, but I agree with our fearless author that it doesn't grab me enough to watch again.

How is it that, in all the things I've remembered and forgotten in my long life, I still recall Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch!?  I don't think I ever saw a single episode of this animated series, but I sure remember the title. Fortunately, we have Paul at Drunk TV to remind us of this 1970s animated Saturday morning Hanna-Barbera series.

We've been reading a bit about Dick Tracy at Martin Grams's site, and this week he looks at the 1991 novel Dick Tracy Goes to War, one of three Warren Beatty-era Tracy novels to be written by Max Allen Collins. Considering the first book was an infinitely superior adaptation of the Tracy movie's screenplay, I think it safe to say we're in good hands.

After all this, there's no 0ther way to end the week than at The View from the Junkyard, and Roger's review of The A-Team. This week, the Team actually try to settle down in a house they own, but as the title might tell you, "There Goes the Neighborhood" has ideas of its own. TV

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Isn't it Devine, or, I've got a Froggy in my throat

I hope you'll indulge me this repeat piece from 2019, but I'm in the middle of a busy couple of weeks, and I'm afraid I don't have the time I'd like to prepare what I wanted to write, so I trust this will do. The friend to whom I refer has since passed away, but we discussed this show the last time we saw each other in person, and it gives me great pleasure to repeat it today. 

One of the pleasures that comes about from getting together with old friends after a long absence (aside from them picking up the check if they're not only old friends but also generous ones) is that you're apt to learn something new—not just what's new in their lives, but things that are new to you in general. And so, when we recently had breakfast with a friend whom we hadn't seen in six or seven years, and he found out about my interest in the minutiae of classic television, he shared his memories of a program I'd seen mentioned in TV Guides but knew nothing about: the children's show Andy's Gang.

(By the way, I know that headline above sounds like the title of a Rocky & Bullwinkle episode, and I don't even have anyone to blame for it, since, unlike writers for major publications, I have to write my own headlines. I'm not going to apologize for it, though, because to do so would undermine my confidence—and perhaps yours, too—in my ability to write headlines.)

The first year of my existence was the last year of Andy's Gang, which had begun on NBC in 1955, but actually traced its roots back much further, to 1944 and a radio program called Smilin’ Ed McConnell and his Buster Brown Gang that transitioned to television in 1951. Smilin' Ed was a genial, homespun man who'd been on radio since 1932 in a variety of roles before starting the Buster Brown Gang. The show's format was simple: an adventure story for openers, commercials for Buster Brown shoes, a novelty song or two, and a recurring gang of human and puppet characters, including McConnell's most famous creation, Froggy the Gremlin.

Ed McConnell died of a heart attack in 1954, and in 1955 the show was reborn as Andy's Gang. The new host was Andy Devine*, the lovable, raspy-voiced character actor who served as a sidekick to Roy Rogers in the movies, Wild Bill Hickok on the radio, and Jack Benny's "Buck Benny Rides Again" Western skits. The format remained basically the same as under McConnell, with Andy seated in a large easy chair, telling a story from his giant "Andy's Stories" book. There was no live studio audience; there had been one during McConnell's first few years, but as his health failed, producers used previously filmed reaction shots from kids, which were then intercut into the studio scenes to give viewers the sensation of a live audience, and this continued throughout Devine's years.

*Interesting fact: Ken Curtis, who played Festus on Gunsmoke, sang at Andy Devine's funeral in 1977. Curtis actually had a very nice voice, nothing at all like Festus's hillbilly twang.

The show retained the large cast of characters, now known as "Andy's Gang": Shortfellow the Poet, Alkali Pete the Cowboy, Midnight the Cat, Squeeky the Mouse, Grandie the Talking Piano, Gunga Ram, and Pasta Fazooli. The star of the show remained the irrepressible Froggie, who was summoned by Andy with the magic words, "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" There would be a puff of smoke, and then Froggy would appear, saying, "Hiya, kids! Hiya hiya hiya hiya!" In the great tradition of children's show puppets, Froggy was the nemesis of the show's adult characters: an irreverent troublemaker, disdainful of authority, prone to practical jokes, interrupting other guests, and in general acting as a conduit of mayhem. Naturally, kids loved him, and he soon became the subject of all kinds of toys and other marketing tie-ins.

Here's what an episode of Andy's Gang looked like, complete with the Buster Brown intro.

And this is a typical scene of Froggy torturing one of his human foils, in this case Pasta Fazooli, played by the great Vito Scoti:

Andy's Gang was in the great tradition of such live-action kids' programs as Howdy Doody, Soupy Sales and Shari Lewis, certainly more anarchic than Captain Kangaroo or Watch Mr. Wizard, but no less warmly remembered by those who grew up with it. At breakfast that day, when our friend asked if I remembered it, he pulled out his cell phone and started showing YouTube clips like the one above, laughing and smiling all the time. There was, I think, a human connection between the kids' shows of then and their audiences, a connection made possible by the human host of the show, willing to lower himself to the level of a child, to allow himself to be one-upped by a child, in order to make that child feel a little taller. Not Fred Rogers, perhaps, but then it goes to show that there's more than one way to form that connection.

There aren't shows like this on Saturday morning TV anymore, because kids aren't watching Saturday morning TV anymore. If they're not spending time on the road in travel soccer leagues, they're playing video games on their phone. And what was that we were saying about human connections? TV

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What's on TV? Thursday, September 4, 1980

We've talked about half-hour shows, hour shows, 90-minute shows, and even 45-minute shows, but here we see an example of the 70-minute show. What's that, you say? You don't remember 70-minute programs? Of course not, because there aren't any. In reality, they're nothing more than hour-long shows with ten extra minutes of commercials! As if some of these shows weren't already long enough, the late-night timeslot has become dominated by bonus commercials. Look at WCCO and KMSP, for example, or the ABC affiliates, in the 10:30 p.m. timeslot. All of a sudden, instead of programs starting on the hour or half-hour, they begin at 11:40 or 12:10. Yes, just what we need: more commercials. Well, never mind me; enjoy these listings from the Minnesota State Edition. Meanwhile, I have to tell some kids to get off my lawn.

This week in TV Guide: August 30, 1980

In May of 1980, the city of Miami was rocked by three days of rioting, described by Dan Rather as "the Nation's worst outbreak of urban disorder in a single city" since 1967 in Detroit and Newark. The riots broke out after the death of a black man in police custody. Fires burned out of control, looters ran in and out of destroyed stores, police patrolled the streets. Does the story sound familiar yet?

Media critic Edwin Diamond takes a close look at how the networks covered the violence, and concludes: "something was missing from the story." The carefully considered "riot coverage guidelines" used by the networks are necessary, perhaps, but "not sufficient for the reporting assignment at hand"—indeed, perhaps, they "may prevent television from finding the stories beyond the immediate breaking news."

The trigger for the Miami riots was the acquittal of four Dade County police officers in the death of a black salesman, Arthur McDuffie, in a struggle after a high-speed chase. At the height of the violence, Miami mayor Maurice Ferre talked of "two Americas," and was quoted by NBC that "There's no way that those of us who live in air-conditioned comfort with two cars outside and $30,000 boats in this community can live side by side with people who live 10 to a room. . . infested with rats." This was the exception, rather than the rule, to TV's coverage of Miami. Part of the problem was that the riots coincided with the eruption of Mount St. Helens, a story that dominated the news cycle. It was, in the words of ABC World News Tonight anchor Max Robinson ("probably the most prominent black newsman on television") a "safe disaster," one that Diamond describes as "much more confortable for whites to contemplate compared with the human volcano" of Miami. But then, as Diamond points out, network television can't be "too sociological" in its coverage.

Diamond reviews what he calls the "safe, neutral, [and] responsible" provisions of the "riot coverage guidelines." For instance:

• "Be restrained, neutral and non-committal in your comments and behavior."
• "Do not describe a disturbance as a 'riot' unless the police or some other respnsible agency or official so designates it. Do not call a disturbance 'racial' until it is officially so described."
• "Avoid reports about 'crowd gathering' following incidents involving police in known trouble areas and avoid pinpointing sites of growing tension and possible trouble in a city."
• "Regard with suspician any interviewing of participants during riots. It is questionable whether such interviews serve a valid purpose and they may incite rather than inform."

You get the point. The overall reporting from all three networks was typical, with talks of how white businesses and black consumers were most hurt by the destruction, promises of Federal investigations, and so on. But do they get to the bottom of the story? Says one black journalist, "[I]n all my years in television, I don't recall ever sitting down at a meeting to discuss the different overall perception blacs and whites have of the racial climate in America," while another says, "We need special reports holding up a mirror to white America, but do people want to see that?" Diamond's conclusion is that television desperately needs to engage in coverage which involves "a lot of us—black and white—more deeply in its stories, and allow us to find our reactions to the major continuing American story of our time." And we need to do it "before the fire next time."

Has coverage really changed over these 40 years? Look at this summer, for example.  There was scarcely a whisper visible of the old riot coverage guidelines; oftentimes, reporters not only didn't regard participant comments with suspicion, they took them at face value and became advocates for it. Was reporting "restrained, neutral and non-committal"? My perception is that we're hearing much of the same rhetoric as before, but this time it comes from the media, advocating rather than reporting on the issue, lecturing instead of encouraging open discussion—prohibiting open discussion in many instances. Of course, that's only one way of looking at it, and this is hardly the place to debate the underlying issues. It's just fascinating, as always, to see how seldom things really change—either in America or in television.

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So just how smart are these televisions of 1981, anyway? Well, for starters, they've got computers! And keypads have replaced dials! Now you can use your TV's remote to tune your cable stations! And some models even offer stereo sound! Is there no end to this technology?

Yes, this can only mean that it's time for David Lachenbruch and his annual look at the new model TVs. Most of the technological advances discussed in this issue have to do with refining color and adding inputs in the rear of the television for the discerning technophile's VCR or laserdisk. I shouldn't really make fun of this; I was around in these days, and I remember being as impressed as anyone by these advances. But what interests me most about this article is that there's no attempt at forecasting the future, envisioning television screens as large as walls, or anything like that. It would have been fun, as always, to see just how close they came to predicting the future.

In the end, though, it's true that all of these advances have been incorporated into today's televisions as a fundamental part what makes TV work, and without them we probably wouldn't have what we enjoy today.

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Herminio Traviesas tells us what it's like to be a network censor, or as the headline puts it, "the thankless task of cleaning up everyone else's act." Traviesas is the former vice president of Broadcast Standards for NBC, which means one of the shows under his purview is Saturday Night Live, enough to give anyone a headache.

It's interesting getting a look at the SNL skits that Traviesas vetoed—for example, the one that made fun of the plight of the Iran hostages, proposed shortly after the militants seized the U.S. Embassy. Or the skit in the wake of the Jim Jones massacre in Guyana, when the show wanted to use it as imagery to represent the large number of shows NBC had just cancelled. That one might make it through today, but I think the hostage bit probably would never have a chance—it's fine to use the historical event in a movie such as Argo, but for humor? Likely not, but who knows in this "nothing sacred" era?

Traviesas also tells of a line that he vetoed from the old Laugh-In show, belonging to Henry Gibson's meek pastor, who would have said, "I don't understand members of my flock who on Saturday sow their wild oats and on Sunday pray for crop failure." That one definitely would make it today; in fact, even if Gibson's pastor was a Catholic priest, they'd probably let it go.

Lest you think Traviesas' job was limited to the series that one might expect to be pushing the envelope of good taste, he throws this one in, from The Dean Martin Show. Seems that one year Dean's producer, Greg Garrison, wanted to open every show in a bar. Traviesas explained to him why this couldn't be done: "community standards, the feminist movement, the plight of alcoholics," and so on. That probably wouldn't be an issue today; you'd likely have to glamorize it in a setting other than that of a successful variety show headed by a man known for having a fondness for drink. At any rate, Garrison wasn't having any of it, either. "Last year," he told Traviesas, his voice rising, "you took away the broads. Now you want to take away the booze. What have I got left?"

The show that gave Traviesas the most problems? None other than Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Johnny would, on occasion, throw out a word that he knew wouldn't make it past the censor, but he used it to get a rise out of the studio audience. He was cool with it being bleeped out of the show. His guests, however, weren't as understanding, as in the case of one who used a word which, interpolating the context of the story Traviesas relates, I would guess was "ass." You hear a lot worse today on family shows, but this one got the boot. (Kind of nice, when you think about it.) Says Traviesas, tongue-in-cheek, "I just made another momentous policy decision for NBC."

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That really bad artist's depiction on the cover (not the art, but the colors are all wrong, especially on that Los Angeles Rams uniform) can mean only one thing: time for Melvin Durslag to pick this year's NFL winners. Over the course of the next few weeks, we'll probably run across several Letters to the Editor critiquing Durslag's picks, using the most colorful imagery available to a family magazine. However, we'll just have to make due with comparing his predictions to what really happens.

For instance, Durslag has as his three AFC division winners New England, Pittsburgh and San Diego. That actually sounds as if it would be a good bet today as well, doesn't it? In fact, however, of the three only the Chargers made it to the playoffs; both the Patriots and Steelers had winning records that would probably have gotten them into the playoffs nowadays, but back then there were only three divisions and two wild cards, so New England's 10-6 and Pittsburgh's 9-7 were just not good enough. Over in the NFC, Durslag faired no better. Of his division winners—Philadelphia, Chicago and New Orleans—only the Eagles came out on top (and they'll go all the way to the Super Bowl, before falling to the Oakland Raiders, whom Durslag had finishing third in the AFC West). The Saints, who Durslag saw as a team possibly on the rise, finished with a record of 1-15, the absolute worst in football. They didn't call them the 'Aints for nothing.

Of interest is Durslag's commentary on ABC's Monday Night Football. The franchise is still going strong, with Fran Tarkenton filling in for Don Meredith in nearly half the games. But there are possible cracks in the foundation, mostly pointing back to Howard Cosell. It's true that ad rates for MNF have risen from $65,000 a minute to $230,000 a minute in 1980.* But for the first time the ratings have slipped a little, and CBS Radio, also carrying the games, reported a record audience. Stories are that people watch the picture on ABC but turn down the sound to favor CBS. No such long-term worries, though: MNF (now seen on ESPN) and its progeny,  NBC's Sunday Night Football, continue to rule the ratings roost for their respective networks.

*All I can say is that it's a hell of a lot more today, by comparison.

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It's Labor Day Weekend, which back in the day meant only one thing: the Jerry Lewis Telethon. If I can digress for a moment and give a personal opinion, I'm still offended by the way in which the Muscular Dystrophy Association gave Lewis the heave-ho after so many decades of service, making a heretofore unknown disease into one of America's Charities (if that isn't too crass a way of putting it; it isn't meant to be). The MDA Telethon was an institution, and by the time it left the air altogether it had been reduced to little more than an infomercial with a few music videos thrown in. The failure of MDA to disclose the reasons for the change don't say much for the organization's definition of transparency either, enough so that we've stopped giving to them. For all the criticism Jerry Lewis took over the years, there was never a shred of evidence of any financial impropriety, a rarity for any charity nowadays, and given MDA's tight-lipped response, it would cause one to wonder how reputable the agency is in handling its donations with Lewis gone. The sad part of this is that it's the kids, as always, that suffer. I know they have a completely different fundraising model they follow now, and you still see many of the same community groups out their raising funds at this time of the year (firefighters asking you to fill the boot for MDA, etc.), know they're still taking in a lot of money (although I've heard that the conversation rates on pledges is much lower than previously; whether that's an urban myth or not I don't know), but they're not getting any of ours.

Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the show's quality declined over the years, which isn't surprising given the shift in entertainment, away from variety shows and mainstream Vegas entertainers and toward artists that no longer carry the cache in mainstream America. The 1980 lineup features some big names, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Liza Minnelli, John and Patty Duke Astin, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, and more. Now, there was an actors strike that year, so it's possible not everyone appeared, but it's still a pretty good lineup. I'm pretty sure I watched the Telethon that year; it might have been one of the last times I decided to make a go of it and watch the whole 21+ hours without sleep. I could do that back in my younger days, you know. The haul that year was $31,103,787.

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I realize I've gotten this far, and I really haven't talked a bit about what's on television. Hmm.

Saturday: Not a program, but one of those "Vital Statistics" that TV Guide used to insert into the programming guide to fill space. According to the Screen Actor's Guild, "Although they are a full one-third of this Nation's population, people under the age of 19 make up only one-tenth of television's fictional population." I wonder if that's still true today; it sure seems as if there are more youngsters, or adults playing teens, than there used to be. At least as far as the IQ of today's shows, we can rest assured that teens are well-represented.

Sunday: Here's a program that has a reach far beyond its local roots: Three American Reporters (9:00 p.m., PBS/KAVT), which I suspect was produced by KTCA, the PBS affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It features, well, three American reporters with Minnesota roots: Harry Reasoner, co-host of 60 Minutes; Harrison Salisbury, the distinguished New York Times correspondent; and Eric Sevareid, CBS commentator. Sailsbury was born in Minneapolis; all three attended high school in the city and went to the University of Minnesota; Reasoner and Sevareid both wrote for Minneapolis newspapers; and Reasoner worked for the precursor to Minneapolis' KMSP, while Sevareid's brother Paul was a news anchor in the city. The program's host is Minneapolis Tribune editor Charles Bailey, who was co-author, with Fletcher Knebel, of the best-seller Seven Days in May. Quite a show, huh? For people who think of Ted Baxter when they hear about Minneapolis news anchors, nothing could be further from the truth; before CBS, Walter Cronkite was offered a job as anchor at WCCO, a station which also produced CBS correspondents Susan Spencer and Tom Fenton, and CNN correspondent Skip Loescher, among others. Cedric Adams was a nationally-known television and newspaper personality, Headline News veteran Don Harrison was previously at KMSP, and the Magers brothers, Ron and Paul, both went on to great success in Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively. The local news situation isn't much anymore, but back in the day Minneapolis-St. Paul produced as many network correspondents as anyone.

Also on Sunday, an episode of William F. Buckley Jr.'s Firing Line (4:00 p.m., PBS) features Buckley's tribute to liberal activist Allard Lowenstein, who'd been murdered five months earlier. I include this because it shows how much politics has changed since the '80s; Lowenstein and Buckley were about as far apart politically as could be. Buckley was the author of the nation's conservative movement, while Lowenstein was a former congressman and head of the radical Americans for Democratic Action. Yet he was also a frequent guest on Firing Line, and the two men maintained a mutual respect despite their political differences. According to Buckley, Lowenstein "spent a praiseworthy and highly unusual amount of time listening to his constituents' complaints and trying to redress their grievances and injustices one-to-one, face-to-face." That, Buckley said, was a reason why he endorsed Lowenstein's reelection effort. Buckley was one of the eulogists at Lowenstein's funeral; here's a clip from the episode of Firing Line in question.

I wonder how many on either the right or left are like Buckley and Lowenstein today?

Monday: It's Labor Day, which means regular programming is subject to change. The Telethon continues on many channels, both independent and network affiliate. The CBS stations are covering the start of the second week of the U.S. Open tennis championship, with the broadcast starting at 11:30 a.m. CT and continuing through to 5:30 p.m., although WCCO bails out at 3:00 p.m. to present The Joker's Wild, followed by The John Davidson Show (talk about an unforced error). Until I started rereading the early '80s issues, I'd completely forgotten that Davidson had taken over for Mike Douglas on the Group W stations. He had the whole format down, from the 90-minute timespot to the celebrity co-host. Davidson didn't have Mike's easy charm or appeal, though, and the show ended after two seasons. I never really liked John Davidson, by the way, either professionally or personally. But then, I'm sure he feels the same way about me.

Labor Day sports include a matinee between the Cubs and Braves, tying up both WGN and WTBS for the afternoon, and a live broadcast of the All American Futurity quarter horse race from Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. It was billed as the richest event in horse racing, and was broadcast at 7:00 p.m. on KMSP. I always coupled the Futurity with the Telethon back in the day; I didn't consider my marathon TV watching complete unless I was able to make it through the race as well.*

*I was so disappointed the first time I saw the race; it was the first time I'd ever seen a quarter horse race, and I wasn't expecting the even shorter-than-usual event. I remember thinking, "All this for a million bucks?"

Tuesday: It occurs to me that I've neglected to give you the biggest television story of the week, the continuing actors strike, which has indefinitely postponed the start of the new television season. As such, we're stuck with reruns, bad television movies, and reruns of bad television movies. Tonight we get part 1 of the massive war epic Midway (8:00 p.m., NBC); the disease-of-the-week drama "Echoes of a Summer Night" (8:00 p.m., CBS), salvaged by a cast including Richard Harris, Lois Nettleton and Jodie Foster); and reruns of staples like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. And you wonder why I don't spend much time on television of the '80s?

Wednesday: A 90-minute NBC White Paper (8:30 p.m.) looks at the influence of Fidel Castro, "the spiritual godfather of every leftist revolution in Latin America." Back then, the U.S. still fought against Communist insurgents, particularly in this hemisphere. On the flip side, a coterie of stations present night two of telecasts from Billy Graham's crusade in Edmonton.

Thursday: PBS' afternoon talk-show lineup features a couple of episodes worth watching; the late, great Hugh Downs' interview with Peter Pan herself, Mary Martin, and her son, Dallas' own Larry Hagman (2:00 p.m., KTCA). Following that, Dick Cavett talks with the great opera baritone Sherrill Milnes, and there were few better than him.

Friday: The action's all on late-night this time: Bob Hope, Richard Chamberlain and David Bowie are among Johnny's guest on The Tonight Show (10:30 p.m., NBC), while CBS' late night features a classic Steed-Mrs. Peel episode of The Avengers (11:00 p.m.), followed by part 1 of the Charlton Heston-Sophia Loren epic El Cid (12:10 a.m.). And if that isn't enough for you, the classic sci-fi movie The Incredible Shrinking Man airs on WGN at (11;00 p.m.). In a week of reruns, it proves that the classics can still be the best thing on TV. TV

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