September 14, 2020

What's on TV? Wednesday, September 14, 1977


Despite the fact I was still living in the World's Worst Town™ when this issue of TV Guide came out, I have a fondness for this time. For one thing, it was the start of my senior year in high school, which meant I only had one year left before being released out into the general population; for another, it was the year in which cable TV would finally come to the area. We were exposed to Channels 2, 4, 9 and 11 (KCMT had territorial claims to NBC), and when it hit in December, I felt like a prisoner being released from solitary confinement, blinking my eyes at the sudden appearance of the sun. I mention this only because I still recall my delight at getting to see some of these shows, such as Tom & Jerry (3:30 p.m., WTCN). It wasn't that I was such a big Tom and Jerry fan; it was just so—different from what I was used to seeing. Remember, to a man in the desert, even warm water is refreshing. In case you can't tell, we're in the Twin Cities this week.




 2  KTCA (PBS)

MORNING

     8:00
SESAME STREET—Children

     9:00
ELECTRIC COMPANY—Children

     9:30
VILLA ALEGRE—Children

   10:00
ZOOM—Children

   10:30
INFINITY FACTORY—Children

   11:00
M.D.—Health
         
   11:30
SESAME STREET—Children

AFTERNOON

   12:30
MISTER ROGERS—Children

     1:00
ELECTRIC COMPANY—Children

     1:30
PAINT ALONG WITH NANCY KOMINSKY—Instruction

     2:00
BOOK BEAT
Guest: John Toland

     2:30
LILAS, YOGA AND YOU

     3:00
DICKENS OF LONDON

     4:00
MISTER ROGERS—Children

     4:30
SESAME STREET—Children

     5:30
ELECTRIC COMPANY—Children

EVENING

     6:00
ZOOM—Children

     6:30
MacNEIL/LEHRER REPORT

     7:00
UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

     8:00
CHILDHOOD—Drama

     9:00
COUNTRY CORNERS—Documentary 

     9:30
BOOK BEAT
Guest: Clive Cussler

   10:00
DOCUMENTARY SHOWCASE

   11:00
UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

Historian John Toland, Bob Cromie's guest on Book Beat, is discussing his seminal biography of Adolf Hitler. I read that book for a class on Hitler that I took in college; it's one of the few books I kept from my college days, and I've read it since a couple of times for the sheer reading pleasure. If you're interested in World War II, I highly recommend reading it.


 4  WCCO (CBS)

MORNING

     5:30
SUMMER SEMESTER
Latin America

     6:00
CBS NEWS—Morton/Rudd

     7:00
BUGS BUNNY/CAPTAIN KANGAROO HOUR

     8:00
PHIL DONAHUE

     9:00
HERE'S LUCY—Comedy

     9:30
PRICE IS RIGHT—Game

   10:30
LOVE OF LIFE—Serial

   10:55
LIVE TODAY—Religion

   11:00
YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
         
   11:30
SEARCH FOR TOMORROW—Serial

AFTERNOON

   12:00
MIDDAY

   12:30
AS THE WORLD TURNS—Serial

     1:30
GUIDING LIGHT—Serial

     2:00
ALL IN THE FAMILY

     2:30
MATCH GAME
Joyce Bulifant, Gary Crosby, Richard Dawson, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, Mary Wickes. Gene Rayburn is host.

     3:00
TATTLETALES—Game
John Ritter and Nancy Morgan, Gary and Barbara Crosby, Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. Host: Bert Convy

     3:30
MOVIE—Drama BW 
“The Hurricane” (1937)

     5:30
CBS NEWS—Walter Cronkite

EVENING

     6:00
NEWS

     6:30
LAUREL AND HARDY—Comedy BW 
“Jitterbugs”

     7:00
MOVIE—Adventure
“Spider-Man” (Made-for-TV; 1977)
[Pre-empts regular programming.]

     8:30
MOVIE—Crime Drama
“Relentless” (Made-for-TV; 1977)

   10:10
NEWS

   10:35
SCENE II—Dave Moore

   11:00
MOVIE—Crime Drama
“The Daring Dobermans” (1973)

   12:50
NEWS

Combining Captain Kangaroo and Bugs Bunny? What a travesty. And all because WCCO wants to show the smarmy Phil Donahue at 8:00, the Captain's traditional slot in all timezones. Don't get me wrong; I love both the Captain and Bugs Bunny, and they're both essential in different ways to a youngster's education, but combining the two is jarring in a way that was never intended for a show like Captain Kangaroo.


 5  KSTP (NBC)

MORNING

     6:00
MINNESOTA TODAY

     6:30
COUNTRY DAY

     7:00
TODAY—Tom Brokaw

     9:00
TWIN CITIES TODAY

   10:00
WHEEL OF FORTUNE—Game

   10:30
IT’S ANYBODY’S GUESS—Game

   11:00
SHOOT FOR THE STARS—Game
Nipsey Russell, Pat Carroll
         
   11:30
CHICO AND THE MAN

AFTERNOON

   12:00
GONG SHOW—Game

   12:30
DAYS OF OUR LIVES—Serial

     1:30
DOCTORS—Serial

     2:00
ANOTHER WORLD—Serial

     3:00
NEW MICKEY MOUSE CLUB

     3:30
BRADY BUNCH—Comedy

     4:00
EMERGENY ONE!—Drama

     5:00
HOGAN’S HEROES—Comedy

     5:30
NBC NEWS—Chacellor/Brinkley

EVENING

     6:00
NEWS

     6:30
GONG SHOW—Game
Panel: Jaye P. Morgan, Elke Sommer, Rex Reed. Gary Owens is the host.

     7:00
BOXING
Special
“A Night with the Heavyweights”
[The series “The Oregon Trail” and “Big Hawaii” make their debuts in this time period next week.]

   10:00
NEWS

   10:30
JOHNNY CARSON
Guest: Myron Cohen

   12:00
TOMORROW—Tom Snyder
Guest: Fred Graham

     1:00
BEST OF GROUCHO—Game BW 

I talked about that heavyweight fight lineup on Saturday; it's a very good lineup. And check out the panel on The Gong Show. I can't believe they tried a host other than Chuck Barris. I mean, I know they did it and all, I just can't believe it.


 9  KMSP (ABC)

MORNING

     6:30
GOOD MORNING MINNESOTA

     7:00
GOOD MORNING AMERICA—David Hartman

     9:00
DINAH!
Guests: Jack Jones, Robert Klein, Richard Jordan, Maynard Ferguson, David Horowitz

   10:00
HAPPY DAYS

   10:30
FAMILY FEUD—Game

   11:00
THE BETTER SEX—Game
         
   11:30
RYAN’S HOPE—Serial

AFTERNOON

   12:00
ALL MY CHILDREN—Serial

     1:00
$20,000 PYRAMID—Game
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy

     1:30
ONE LIFE TO LIVE—Serial

     2:15
GENERAL HOSPITAL—Serial

     3:00
MEDICAL CENTER—Drama

     4:00
MIKE DOUGLAS
Co-host: Diahann Carroll. Guests: Maynard Ferguson, Leslie Caron, Mary Jo Risher

     5:30
ABC NEWS—Reasoner/Walters

EVENING

     6:00
NEWS

     6:30
MUPPET SHOW

     7:00
EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Season premiere

     8:00
CHARLIE’S ANGELS—Crime Drama
Season premiere
[Expands to two hours, pre-empting regular programming.]

   10:00
NEWS

   10:30
STARSKY & HUTCH—Crime Drama

   11:40
MYSTERY OF THE WEEK
“If It’s a Man, Hang Up”

     1:10
RIFLEMAN—Western BW 

     1:40
NEWS

Dinah Shore has moved from NBC to syndication, and her guest lineup is about as good as it gets, whether daytime or latenight. You can tell Maynard Ferguson was hot back in 1977, with both Dinah and Mike Douglas. That's when you've got it made.


11 WTCN (Ind.)

MORNING

     5:30
WHAT’S NEW?

     6:00
PTL CLUB—Religion

     7:00
ROMPER ROOM

     7:30
POPEYE AND PORKY—Cartoon

     8:30
ARCHIES—Cartoon

     9:00
FRED FLINTSTONE & FRIENDSCartoon

     9:30
I DREAM OF JEANNIE—Comedy

   10:00
BEWITCHED—Comedy

   10:30
FATHER KNOWS BEST BW 

   11:00
COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER—Comedy-Drama
         
   11:30
WHAT’S NEW?

AFTERNOON

   12:30
ANDY GRIFFITH—Comedy

     1:00
VIRGINIAN—Western

     3:00
PARTRIDGE FAMILY—Comedy

     3:30
TOM AND JERRY—Cartoon

     4:30
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER BW 

     5:00
I LOVE LUCY—Comedy BW 

     5:30
MY THREE SONS—Comedy

EVENING

     6:00
FAMILY AFFAIR—Comedy

     6:30
ADAM-12—Crime Drama

     7:00
ODD COUPLE—Comedy

     7:30
MOVIE—Comedy/Drama
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967)

     9:30
NEWS

   10:00
FERNWOOD 2 NIGHT

   10:30
HONEYMOONERS—Comedy BW 

   11:00
GET SMART—Comedy

   11:30
LOVE AMERICAN STYLE

   12:00
FBI—Crime Drama

     1:00
ALFRED HITCHCOCK—Drama BW 

I don't have anything smart or smart-aleky to say; this is just a solid schedule for an independent station. If any of today's retro stations had this lineup, they'd be proud of it.


17 KTCI (PBS)

EVENING

     6:30
MEDIA 5

     7:00
NOVA

     8:00
GUPPIES TO GROUPERS

     8:30
LOWELL THOMAS REMEMBERS

     9:00
LEAF FROM A TOWN RECORD—Documentary

     9:30
CONSULTATION—Medicine

   10:00
ANYONE FOR TENNYSON?

   10:30
ABC NEWS—Reasoner/Walters
Captioned for the hearing-impaired


I think I've mentioned before that KTCI had, over the years, gone between being a rebroadcast source for shows originally shown on KTCA, and a station for secondary PBS programs that didn't fit on the KTCA schedule. This is early in the history of the station, and as you can see, they have a very limited broadcasting lineup. They don't broadcast on the weekends. TV  

9 comments:

  1. No HOLLYWOOD SQUARES, I see. I think this is when Fred Silverman had it dumped in the 9-10 AM CT hour, which lots of CTZ stations, including my NBC affiliate in Nashville, usually preempted for trash like DONAHUE by this time. I see KSTP-TV had a local show then called TWIN CITIES TODAY, which it likely renamed GOOD MORNING, TWIN CITIES after changing network affiliation just over a year later.
    At some time I'll have to find out who Maynard Ferguson was/is.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Twin Cities Today inexplicably did not change its name or time slot when KSTP became an ABC station.

      Delete
  2. A Bit, and Maybe A Piece:

    - The Gong Show:
    Recall that Chuck Barris, who created and produced Gong, was a last-minute choice to host.
    Fact: when Barris first sold Gong in syndication, Gary Owens was the host, a post he held for the first season of that version.
    The network sale to NBC came later; the announced host was John Barbour, who was found "unsuitable" (that could mean anything) during the first days of taping.
    Because Gary Owens had other commitments elsewhere, he couldn't take over the daytime Gong; as the deadline for air approached, Chuckie Baby stepped in at The Last Minute - and proved to be the perfect host for this show.

    - As to John Barbour:
    This gentleman published an autobiography a couple of years back, in which he chronicles one of the oddest careers in showbiz.
    Your Mother's Not A Virgin! runs over 700 pages, in which Mr. Barbour explains why all the things that went wrong for him in his career (and there were a bunch of those) were never his fault.
    That's par for the course for a first-person showbiz memoir, of course, but Mr. Barbour is sui generis - "of his own kind".

    - Noting that on this night, CBS is running the first Spider-Man pilot movie they made, which went round in circles as an irregularly-scheduled series for a season or so.
    That said, take note of who's playing one of the villains here: Thayer David, right after he wrapped playing faux-J. Edgar Hoover on Washington: Behind Closed Doors.
    1977-78 was the last TV season of Mr. David's life; he had several more guest shots in the hopper, and there was that Nero Wolfe pilot that should have aired during this time frame ...
    ... which makes this yet another Incredible Coincidence - doesn't it?

    - I'm still trying to figure out exactly why ABC's Minn-StP stations wouldn't carry The Edge Of Night, even on a delay.
    This was when the great Henry Slesar was headwriter; the storyline they were running in '77 found the main hero, Mike Karr (then played by Forrest Compton), standing trial for a murder that he didn't commit.
    Regrettably, this storyline is unavailable on YouTube, and that is a damn shame ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fred Silverman was still at ABC when NBC moved 'Hollywood Squares' to that earlier slot. It was Lin Bolen who made that decision, in the summer of '76.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right, though she'd left NBC by then, since HOLLYWOOD SQUARES was moved to make room for STUMPERS, which her company produced. STUMPERS was an excellent show, with a great host in Allen Ludden, much better I think than 50 GRAND SLAM, which followed it. Both shows lasted just 13 weeks in NBC daytime.

      Delete
  4. I remember Channel 56 in Boston was running Fernwood 2Night w/the Best of Groucho @ this time. It was a great way to be introduced to late night TV as a kid.

    Also, I get the feeling that Dr. Jefferson more than held her own against Phil Donahue from listening to her on the David Brudnoy radio show.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Too bad she's dead...she'd be a Trumper today, assuring white folks that no, Donald DOES love the black race and doesn't want to exterminate them, the way Biden does.

      Paul

      Delete
  5. What did Barbour say about the Gong Show? Barris always claimed that Barbour played it straight and didn't get the joke, but I have a hard time believing a clever guy like Barbour didn't understand that the Gong Show was supposed to be played for laughs with deliberately rotten acts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mr. Unknown (whomever you may be):

      According to John Barbour's book (pages 500-505), Chuck Barris told him right out front that The Gong Show was always supposed to be a put-on, that the acts were purposely bad, that the idea was to get big laughs from a rowdy studio audience.
      Barbour's thought was that if he chatted up the contestants beforehand, he'd get them more empathy from the audience.
      Barris wasn't buying; indeed, when NBC's then daytime boss (Lin Bolen, op cit.) insisted that the show begin with the host explaining that the contestants knew that they could be gonged, that was what led Barbour to walk away (it says here).
      For the record, Chuckie delivered that very disclaimer at the start of every Gong Show for the whole run.

      *Side Note: In an interview many years afterward, Rip Taylor (frequent Gong flyer) stated for the record that all Gong contestants were pros who got paid for their efforts (remember the odd prize money that the "winners" got? That was AFTRA scale after the FICA tax came out - and according to Taylor everybody got that amount).*

      As to how "clever" John Barbour might have been:
      At the close of the Gong Show chapter, he mentions Barris's book, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, and expresses some doubt that the CIA part of the story could be true.
      I read that book when it first came out; my feeling then was that anybody who took one word of it at face value was in need of serious professional help.

      *Side Note 2: several years later, Chuck Barris wrote another memoir, The Game Show Man, which was a more straightforward account of his life and career; he followed this up in later years with several more books, which recounted his subsequent life (including his daughter's tragic experiences with drugs) quite seriously.*

      Well - you did ask ...


      Delete

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