Around the dial

Before we get to the links this week, a couple of things I want to remind you of.

First, as I think I mentioned earlier, I'll be presenting one of the seminars at this September's Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Martin Grams has put together a terrific lineup of celebrities this year, including Barbara Eden, Stefanie Powers and Robert Wagner, Loni Anderson and Howard Hesseman, Ed Begley Jr., Peter Marshall, Morgan Fairchild, and more. The seminars are always fascinating as well; in fact, I feel quite inferior being a part of it. The schedule is still a work in progress, but I strongly urge you to go to the website and buy tickets now if you can make it there. I can promise you'll have a great time, and of course I'd love to have you in the audience for my presentation!

Something else to look forward to later this year is my upcoming book, The Electronic Mirror: How Classic Television Shows Us Who We Were and Who We Are (and everything in-between!). It will be out in plenty of time for the Convention, and I can guarantee you'll hear more about it before then.

And now on to the week's best.

Really good piece by David at Comfort TV this week. Were classic TV's sitcom families really that unrealistic? He says they were more real than revisionist historians want to say, and I say he's right. This is the kind of thing that's a major part of my upcoming book.

At Classic Film and TV Café, Rick asks if you "Remember When" these Classic TV features were just the way things were. For example, do you remember when "The broadcast networks rolled out their new shows all at the same time as part of 'Premiere Week,'" or when "The World Series was broadcast only during the day." Sadly, I remember all of them.

Inner Toob has a fun piece on real-life movies that find their way into fictional television shows. I think Columbo's use of the Janet Leigh movie "Walking My Baby Back Home" in the episode where she played the killer (a former movie star) is my favorite example, but they're all good examples.

This isn't a recent story, but an interesting one, I think - Television Obscurities takes a look at a 1961 series called The Americans that's very different from the one we have today. It starred Darryl Hickman and Dick Davalos as two brothers fighting on opposite sides during the Civil War; as I think about it, perhaps it's not all that different from today's version.

A Shroud of Thoughts and David Hill's article at The Ringer both offer affectionate remembrances at Harry Anderson, who died this week at a much-too-young 65.

That should be enough to take us to tomorrow, when you'll be sure to return for a TV Guide from the late 60s. TV