Around the dial

Let's begin the week at The Twilight Zone Vortex, where Jordan watches the comedy episode "From Agnes–With Love" so we don't have to. It's prime, and sad, evidence of the show's dramatic decline in its final season.

John is up to episode three of The Omega Factor at Cult TV Blog, "Night Games," which shows the thickening plot as Crane discovers Department 7's involvement in government-conducted mind control experiments. 

David's journey through 1970s TV continues at Comfort TV, with a look at Saturday nights, 1977. It's the last season of CBS's Saturday powerhouse with Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett, plus ABC's The Love Boat, NBC's The Bionic Woman, and more.

At Drunk TV, Paul looks at the second season of The Patty Duke Show, and the season's 36 (!) episodes show that even if the ratings had started to slide, the stories themselves remain fresh and entertaining.

Roger reports a change of pace in this week's A-Team at The View from the Junkyard, as the Team moves to Kenya for the episode "Skins," with a slightly more serious topic: the illegal poaching of elephants in Africa. 

It used to be that we had a proper understanding of how to use the word "great," meaning large, significant, but not necessarily good. In that sense, it can certainly be said that Ted Turner was a great figure in television history. And there's no denying that his broadcasts of Atlanta Braves on the Superstation was a good thing for baseball, especially in American League cities that were seldom exposed to National League teams. Likewise, his creation of Turner Classic Movies was a very good thing, even though the quality of the channel has diminished in the last few years; someone had to keep these old movies alive. (We'll overlook, for the time being, his involvement in colorization.) 

And then, there's CNN, and I really don't know how to feel about that. The original Cable News Network was substantive, far more non-partisan than today's networks, and did much to keep America better informed on what was going on. Headline News was, in a sense, even better, cutting out the fluff in favor of a concise, 30-minute recap of the news on a constantly updating basis. However, it also pointed out the difficulties inherent in maintaining a 24-hour news cycle, and the consequent need to elevate certain stories to occupy a greater need for programming. And it brought us gavel-to-gavel coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. And it spawned Fox News, MSNow, and all the other constant news sources, which quickly evolved into a video version of English newspapers, simply recycling the same stories over and over through their own ideological slant. Someday, we may actually be able to understand just how much damage this has done to society. 

So, it would seem appropriate to say that Ted Turner's legacy, as is so often the case with great men, is a mixed one. And that figures, because, as any baseball fan would tell you, the only batters who never swing and miss are those who never step up to the plate. Turner did, and the fact that all of his media properties have suffered since he relinquished control of them, says much about exactly how great his impact was. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider leaving a tip at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!