What's on TV? Monday, January 6, 1969

You'll notice that as of today, Bob Clayton is now the host of Concentration, taking over for the show's original host, Hugh Downs. Downs had a remarkable run, not only hosting Concentration from 1958, but also acting as Jack Paar's sidekick on The Tonight Show until Paar left in 1962, and then moving on to host The Today Show. And before that, he'd been with Arlene Francis on The Home Show from 1954 to 1957. Of course, there's also 20/20, Over Easy, and other programs he either hosted or was part of. At one time, he'd appeared on more hours of commercial television than any other personality. Fear not, though; you can still catch him on Today in this Northern California edition.

This week in TV Guide: January 4, 1969

For our first TV Guide of 2026, we look back to the first issue of 1969. After one of the worst years in the nation's history, people must have looked forward to a new year with a mixture of relief (it has to be better, right?) and trepidation (that's what we thought last year). 

So what's new this week? Well, there's a fourth national network, for one thing. Richard K. Doan reports that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is creating a hookup for 150 noncommercial stations to facilitate receiving a unified broadcast schedule. In the past, National Educational Television (NET, the predecessor to PBS) had shipped many of these programs from station to station on film or tape. It is hoped that this will make it easier to promote public television on a national basis. A recent study indicates that ratings for public broadcasting shows are down by an "alarming" amount over the past three years, with the exception of cities such as Boston and San Francisco, where such programming is heavily promoted. Another survey shows that the most watched series on public television may be David Susskind's syndicated talk show Open End, which in fact is not a CPB program at all, but is merely a program picked up by some public broadcasting stations. (Many stations choose to classify it as "educational," which in fact it probably is, when compared to what airs on PBS nowadays.)

In fact, Doan says, the whole situation begs the question—several, in fact:

• If public television, which is supposed to act as an alternative to commercial broadcasting, has so few viewers, does the nation really need to invest in this? Does the public want such an alternative?
• On the other hand, has public television lacked the funds to do the kind of "quality" programming that viewers want?
• OR, does the quality already exist, but goes unseen because of the lack of advertising and promotion?
• Otherwise, why has the government earmarked $5 million for programs that the public apparently doesn't want?

You know, I'm not sure we even have the answer to this today.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Tentatively scheduled guests: Johnny Mathis; singers Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Shani Wallis; composér-conductor Henry Mancini; comedians Rodney Dangerfield, and Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber; and the Rolan Brothers, novelty act. (The episode guide notes that the Pter Gennaro dancers also appeared, and that the audience bows came from Jack Lord and Jean Claude Killy.)

Palace: Palace begins its sixth year as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope receive the first annual show business Hall of Fame Awards. Bing is also the host; his guests are Tiny Tim, Bobbie Gentry, Judy "Sock It to Me!" Carne of Laugh-In, comic Stu Gilliam, the acrobatic Dovyeko troupe of the Moscow State Circus and columnist Earl Wilson, who presents the awards.

It's always hard to go against Bing Crosby, and doubly so when he's joined by his old partner, Bob Hope, for the first (and last?) Show Business Hall of Fame Awards. (You can see a clip of that here.) However, let's be honest: Diana Ross and the Supremes, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini, and Rodney Dangerfield. You're just not going to beat a lineup like that. My decision: Sullivan kicks off the new year right.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

A show that you don't hear about much anymore, but one that still has a loyal following if the interwebs are to be believed, is The Name of the Game, which Cleveland Amory reminds us was billed as television's first "motion-picture series." It featured a rotating cast of stars, headed by Gene Barry as the head of an international publishing empire, with Robert Stack as editor of Barry's crime magazine, and Tony Franciosa as Barry's chief investigative reporter. The show is big, big concept—and has a 90-minute running time to boot. The advantages to such an arrangement were obvious, in that by having three stars alternating each week, the producers would have as much as three weeks to shoot each episode. Good idea, right? Except, says Cleve, for "one small detail. They forgot to get another good idea—one for the show itself."

One of the show's problems lies in the viewer having to figure out which side he was supposed to be on as he watched. "Most of the episodes so far have been, from opening tease to final wheeze, so crammed full of false values and phony status standards that, as movies, they move all right, but as far as moving you goes, our guess is that it will be primarily to turn them off." And that's too bad, because no show on television can match the star wattage of the guest lineup on The Name of the Game, even though most of them get shot ("from their good side, of course") before they can make much of an impact. "Even so, and hard as it is to believe, they were all overwhelmed by a sea of muddy melodrama and messy, unmotivated characterization." 

As far as the stars (i.e. the good guys), we haven't seen much of Franciosa so far ("apparently he not only alternates but hibernates, too"), but Barry and Stack have two expressions between them. "Barry is better than Stack, but that is still a long way from a compliment." And Susan Saint James, the only character to appear with all three leads, is caught between a mod Mata Hari and an "immod impression of Paula Prentiss." So what's left except to leave the magazine, marry Rock Hudson, and start solving murders? Maybe they should have hired her to run the crime magazine.

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Saturday's highlights belong firmly in the late-night hours, with a trio of classics to satisfy any movie lover's tastes, beginning with The High and the Mighty (11:15 p.m. PT, KXTV in Sacramento), the original airliner-in-jeopardy movie, starring John Wayne, Robert Stack, Claire Trevor, and Laraine Day, and capped by a memorable score from Dimitri Tiomkin. At 11:30 p.m., it's one of the great political melodramas of all time, All the King's Men (KGO in San Francisco), Robert Penn Warren's gothic horror show that won Oscars for Broderick Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, as well as taking Best Picture. And early Sunday morning, it's the original Cat People (1:50 a.m., KPIX in San Francisco), Jacques Tournier's classic starring Simone Simon and Kent Smith.

Sunday starts off with perhaps the most meaningless professional football game this side of preseason, the Bert Bell Memorial, also known as the NFL Play-Off Bowl (10:30 a.m., CBS), featuring the second-place teams from the Eastern and Western conferences, playing essentially to determine who finishes in third place in the league. If common sense hadn't ended this game, the players' association most certainly would have. On Firing Line (7:00 p.m., KQED in San Francisco), William F. Buckley Jr. and heart transplant surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard discuss whether or not moral and theological considerations should influence medical decisions, a topic that continues to be hotly debated today. And at 10:00 p.m., it's the premiere of the comedy-crime series My Friend Tony (NBC), a show I can honestly say I'd never heard of until I saw the opening credits for it on FredFlix a few years ago. One episode, which I wasn't able to watch all the way through, was enough for me to understand why I'd never heard of it; James Whitmore stars as a crime-fighting criminology professor, while Enzo Ceruico plays Tony, the young man he met in Italy during the war, who assists him in the field. It runs for 16 episodes, so catch it while you can.

On an otherwise undistinguished Monday, we'll recall a little-remembered soap opera named Hidden Faces, a "daytime drama" now in its second week (noon, NBC) that could easily be mistaken for a game show based on the title. ("Players try to uncover a hidden celebrity's visage by solving clues!" See how easy it would be?) Debuting on December 30, 1968, it runs until June 27, 1969, so catch it while—wait, I used that one already, didn't I?

We've got dueling newsmagazines on Tuesday, beginning with the premiere of First Tuesday (9:00 p.m.), one of NBC's many efforts over the years, hosted by Sander Vanocur. The show's title says it all: it airs on the first Tuesday of each month. Tonight's episode includes an interview with strongman Charles Atlas, who will see to it that no beach bully kicks sand in your face. Going up against the second hour of that two-hour program is the granddaddy of fthem all, 60 Minutes (10:00 p.m., CBS), which at this point is still shown on a twice-monthly basis. This week's edition includes a behind-the-scenes look at television comedy, and an interview with vice-president elect Spiro Agnew. 

Back to the movies on Wednesday, with the television premiere of Otto Preminger's suspense thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing (9:00 p.m., ABC), starring Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Lauirence Olivier, and Noel Coward. Judith Crist describes it as "long on gimmicks and short on logic," but this story of a missing child—who may or may not even exist—provides plenty of mystery. Perhaps more straightforward is this week's Green Acres (9:30 p.m., CBS), which details Oliver's headaches when he tries to introduce chicken-raising to the farm. If you think this will go well, you don't know Green Acres. 

On Thursday, Ironside (8:30 p.m., NBC) takes on drug use, when Eve's niece is busted on a drug charge. Later, Les Crane talks about drug rehab (9:30 p.m., KNEW in San Francisco), with representatives of the controversial organization Synanon, which later turned into a religious cult, and (according to the always-reliable Wikipedia) disbanded in 1991 after several members were convicted of offenses including financial misdeeds, evidence tampering, terrorism, and attempted murder. And Orson Welles is among Dean Martin's guests (10:00 p.m., NBC); the brain behind Citizen Kane offers a humorous song, and joins Dean in comic vignettes aimed at American tourists in Paris. On the lighter side, ABC preempts its regular programming for a one-hour music special called This Is Tom Jones (7:30 p.m.). Don't be surprised to see this become part of ABC's regular schedule.

Among Friday's highlights is the memorable Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (10:00 p.m., NBC), an allegory about racial strife, starring Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio as the half-white, half-black combatants. Like many Trek episodes, it's a bit heavy-handed in making its point, but it remains one of the best-remembered stories of the series, and there's nothing wrong with the moral of the story. Better, perhaps, is an episode of Judd for the Defense (10:00 p.m., ABC), dealing with the mental capacity of a young woman on trial for murder. She's already pleaded guilty, and may well be: the question is, considering her diminished capacity, should she face life in prison or have a chance at being cured?

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One of Wednesday's shows is Hawaii Five-O, and so we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Leslie Raddatz's profile of Jack Lord, who has come a long way from the rodeo circuit of Stoney Burke (an underrated series, in my opinion) to the beaches of Hawaii. 

Lord has long referred to his admiration for his idol, Gary Cooper. However, while he boasts a lifestyle far removed from Cooper's (including "a 30-foot long, 16,000-pound, all-steel mobile dressing room, decorated by his wife and complete with |bedroom, kitchen, bath, make-up area, stereo, two air-conditioners and a self-contained water purifier"), Raddatz supposes that Cooper may not have had to work as hard, either. The Five-O crew often puts in 18-hour days, six days a week, utilizing as many as five different locations daily. The permanent sets, including McGarrett's and the governor's offices, are not soundproof, and often shooting is interrupted by the sound of rain on metal roofs, the rumble of passing trucks and planes flying overhead, and actual shooting from a nearby rifle range. Ah, well, nobody ever said stardom was easy.

Lord was not the first choice for the role of Five-O head McGarrett; as producer Leonard Freeman recounts, "You always start with Gregory Peck. Who knows? You might call him up and he’d feel like doing a television series that day." Neither, however, was Lord at the bottom of the pile. He and Freeman had worked together on an unsold pilot, and Freeman says of Lord that "He’s terrific. I'm a perfectionist, and so is he. Having a star like Jack is like having money in the bank. He’s always on time, no bags under his eyes, and he always knows his lines." He also projects the gravitas necessary to make viewers buy in; "When he flashes his badge, people believe it."

For Lord, who takes both himself and his work seriously, it's been a long haul to the top. He is a painter (the Metropolitan Museum of Art owns five of his works done when he was 18 years old) and can recite poetry at the drop of a hat (his father would give the five children a penny for every line of poetry they memorized). He's also sensitive and vulnerable, and still resents an article from years ago (which I think was in TV Guide, actually) that suggested he visualized himself as a second Cooper. He and Cooper had been friends until the latter's death, but Lord denies he ever had "illusions of filling his idol’s boots." And Lord has no need of such lofty dreams today, given the success of Hawaii Five-O (which will run until 1980, the last series of the 1960s to go off the air), part ownership of the series, and financial security (known as a shrewd businessman, he's not even represented by an agent). Not to mention an apartment at Waikiki. 

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One of our other stories this week looks at the so-called "waist-up" fashion displayed by many female television personalities. The phrase refers to the fact that what these women wear below the waist is generally hidden from viewers, and while this is often true for men as well as women, the article is written by Cindy Adams, which explains why the accent is on the distaff side. Barbara Walters, for example, is often clad in "stunningly attired top half winks and blinks with the regulation three-piece set—earrings, pin and one refined-looking bracelet" while, below the desk, she's wearing sneakers and slacks. Walters remarks that "I live in fear that one of these days the camera will catch me standing up or walking away."

Then, there's the story of Nancy Dickerson, one of NBC's most prominent correspondents and anchor of the network's five-minute morning news update. Her wardrobe consists mostly of "double-breasted lapel suits with turtle-necked blouses. The fabrics and colors vary but seldom 'the look, since she considers it her most flattering." As proof of this, Adams flashes back to last July 5, when Dickerson, following her newscast, headed off to the hospital to give birth the next day to a bouncing baby boy. Not a single viewer even suspected she was pregnant. A similar story applies to ABC's Marlene Sanders, who continued to do the news even after she'd severed her Achilles' tendon, leaving her to hobble around in a cast for several weeks. On air, she was cool, calm, and authoritative. "Meanwhile, back at the studio, her crutches were stacked against a wall and her leg was propped up on a chair off to the right." Pauline Frederick, reporting for NBC from the United Nations during the Six-Day War, couldn't even wait for her clothes to be cleaned, and so raced to Saks and grabbed something that had a good neckline but was too large. Said Frederick, "I’ll have it altered when the war’s over." 

I recall Peter Jennings talking about this kind of thing many years ago. Long considered one of the best-dressed men on television, he explained that he often wore inexpensive suits bought off the rack, and plain shirts. However, when combined with a pocket hanky and cufflinks, it made all the difference. The moral, according to Jennings: use that hanky, and you've got it made. Hey, works for me.

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Speaking of the news, as we can see this week, there's more than one way to look at it:

At least Fox News's advertisements weren't quite this blatant. 

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MST3K alert: Attack from Space (Japanese; 1964). Spies from the planet Sapphire force a Japanese scientist to aid them in their plans for invading earth. Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi. (Sunday, 11:30 a.m., KCRA in Sacramento) Another less-than-classic from Rifftrax, featuring a not-so-heroic figure named Starman, trying to fight off space aliens from the Death Star by using ordinary guns. Not ray guns, not lasers, just regular guns with bullets in them. Ah, technology is wonderful, isn't it? TV

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Around the dial

It used to be that one of the one of the rituals of the new year was seeing how long it would take for you to correctly write the new year on a check—in other words, when you'd automatically write "26" instead of "25" when filling in the date. Now that we do most of our transactions electronically, I suppose that's another quaint custom gone by the wayside, but time marches on, as they say, 

We'll keep marching on here as well, to Cult TV Blog, where John returns to The Prisoner with a provocative proposition: suppose the order of episodes was reshuffled so that the final episode, "Fall Out," was not the final one? Think that's ridiculous? Read on, and think again.

David's journey through 1970s TV continues at Comfort TV, and we're now up to Monday nights, 1977, which includes a few series you might not recognize, including Young Dan'l Boone, Rafferty (starring the aforementioned Patrick McGoohan), The San Pedro Beach Bums, and more.

Oh dear! Hal is back with another Love That Bob review at The Horn Section, and this one sounds concerning: "Bob Falls in Love." Could we be losing our favorite playboy photographer? Is this the last show of the series? Can I stop this from sounding like the end of a Batman episode?

At RealWeegieMidget, Gill reviews Karen Romanko's book Historical Women on Television, a look at 120 real-life women, and how they were portrayed on television. What a fascinating concept! With Romanko's friendly writing style, it sounds like a great addition to your TV library.

The A-Team continues to shake up the formula at The View from the Junkyard, as Roger discovers in "Deadly Maneuvers," an episode that finds the team being kidnapped one by one, to be used as bait in a deadly plot designed to capture Hannibal.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence closes out the year with a tribute to Gil Gerard, who died last month at the age of 82. Although he didn't make it to the 25th century, his long and successful career, including Buck Rogers, stands as a tribute to, by all accounts, one of Hollywood's good guys.

We're still in the twelve days of Christmas, which means we're never too late to learn something at Mavis Movie Madness, where Paul looks back at seven animated Christmas classics, putting me in the mood to watch them all over again.

Finally, and in keeping with the season, my latest video podcast on television history with Dan Schneider centers on three "Carols for Christmas": Carol Burnett, Diahann Carroll, and Carroll O'Connor. Not a bad way to round out the year.

And with that, we're off and running on another year. How long can we keep it up? Keep tuning in and see! TV

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Happy New Year!

On this last day of 2025, many are wondering if 2026 will be a better year, or a worse year. There's no question that this past year has been a rough one: bad in many ways, not quite so bad in others. For some, the year has been one of personal success, while some have seen heartbreaking setback, and still others have triumphed over adversity. I don't have much room to complain about 2025 myself; I published Darkness in Primetime, and I'm nearly finished with the first go-round of my new novel, which should be out next year. 

One of the great things about classic-era television is that it is, in somewhat the same sense as the Latin language, dead. By that I mean it's established, unchanging, set in its ways. There will always be debates regarding what makes a television series a classic, and what constitutes the canon of classic television. For me, whenever I think about it, I'm looking at an era that is comprised primarily of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. That's the classic era. It's not completely frozen in time; there's always room for additional programs, and some of my favorites are far more recent than this seemingly narrow definition would allow. But what unites all of these programs is a common thread, something that brings them all together in a recognizable way. In other words, for a relatively recent program to achieve classic status, it has to adhere to the definitions and conventions of what made these older programs classic in the first place. This can be done in different ways, but even with the advent of color, even with the introduction of special effects, and even when it comes to rougher, more adult content, there are still threads that retain the quality and durability of classic TV. 

That's good news for fans of such programming, because in a world that seems to change by the millisecond, it provides us with something reliable, trustworthy, dependable. As my friend David Hofstede puts it, it's comfort TV, and in uncomfortable times, there's somethign to be said about these programs to which we can all relate in one way or another. That's what makes my job here easy: I don't have to invent anything, I just have to look back at what was, and see what it can tell us about what is. 

And as we prepare to begin this new year of 2026, there's no lack of what is to look at, and no end to how looking at what was can help us understand it. And as long as I keep typing about it, I hope you'll keep reading about it. 

In all respects, may this be a happy, holy, and providential 2026 for us all. TV

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

What's on TV? Wednesday, January 2, 1974

Ah, for the days when there were only five stations from which to choose! This old Minneapolis-St. Paul edition is right there: the three commercial networks, independent WTCN, and KTCA, the PBS station that only programs from 4:00 p.m. on. And what a fine lineup WCCO has (with the exception of Sonny and Cher, but even there, they've got a great guest lineup: Laurel and Hardy shorts at 6:30 (now that's the kind of local-access programming I can get behind) and a crime back-to-back of Cannon and Kojak. It certainly beats NBC's schedule, two-thirds of which is going off the air after tonight. Anyway, it's a grand way to get 1974 off to a flying start. Right?