What's on TV? Wednesday, February 1, 1984

If you're not a fan of college basketball, I'm afraid you're out of luck tonight, friend. Not only is the Purdue-Northwestern game on WFBT, it's also on WGN and ESPN, albeit tape-delayed on the latter. In fact, you've got three other games on tonight, all of which are appearing on multiple channels, either live or on tape. (And that doesn't include the two games from last night that ESPN's replaying during the day.) It harkens back to the days when USA used to show a lot of sports in prime time; as the United States home of the NHL, there's plenty of hockey on throughout the season (the NHL All-Star Game was last night), and come September, the U.S. Open tennis championships are on. As I say, a lot of sports, and yet when you compare it to today, where you can see pretty much every college basketball game being played, it's far from saturated. I'm sure I watched that Purder-Northwestern game, although I can't tell you who won. But those were the days. The listings are from the Minneapolis-St. Paul edition.

This week in TV Guide: January 28, 1984

All right, Cybill Shepherd, we’ll say it. You’re sexy. Satisfied now? Sheesh.

Cybill Shepherd, current star of NBC’s The Yellow Rose, future star of ABC’s Moonlighting, is this week’s cover story. We’ll be back later to find out if there’s anything else worth discussing, but in the meantime here’s the rest of the issue.

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One of the constant features of dyspeptic, apocalyptic police state stories has been the ability of governments to spy on their citizens through the television, looking out at you as you look at it. Stories of early television viewers worried that the characters on the tube could actually see them are legion, although you’d like to think most of them are urban legends. Still, the thought of moving pictures actually appearing in your living room, some of them being broadcast live as they happened, had to have been a pretty radical concept. Seen from today’s perspective, when we watch television on the same phones with which we have video chats with friends, maybe it wasn’t so far out after all.

This week, in another of the cautionary stories that marked this era of TV Guide, James Morrow commemorates the first month of 1984 by looking at just how close we are to the world of George Orwell’s book, and it turns out we’re pretty close—just not the way you might think.

For example, Morrow points out that to Orwell, "language is the blood of the mind. To abuse language is to abuse the human spirit." What better example of the power to abuse language, he says, than the television commercial? Consider the use of the word "natural." "It seems pretty straightforward, until you hear someone say, " 'Change your hair color. It’s the 'natural' thing to do.' " Orwell called this trait "doublethink," as in "War is Peace" and "Freedom is Slavery." Television does this kind of thing all the time.

American television, writes Morrow, may have developed a "dominion over human consciousness" similar to that existing in Winston Smith’s world. Viewers turn to fictional TV doctors for medical advice, they accept without question documentaries that portray American society as far riskier and dangerous than it really is. Some people might substitute Dr. Phil for Dr. Marcus Welby, while others would see either global warming (on the right) or Donald Trump (on the left) as evidence of American television viewers' willingness to be taken in by The Big Hoax.

And yet, a question remains: "[I]s the right to be stupid not one of the most fundamental freedoms afforded by a nontotalitarian government?" It reminds me of a comment by CBS news chief Richard Salant that the job of TV news was to provide "what people ought to know, rather than what people want to hear." As Morrow notes, nobody forces you to watch television. You don’t have to "abandon" your children to it or use it as your only source of knowledge. To do so, to suggest that the truth, or anything else worth knowing, comes from TV and only TV, "is to lower one’s guard against the day when somebody decides to chisel away your set’s on-off switch or to install a spy-camera adjacent to the picture tube, or to attempt some other truly Orwellian innovation."

For all of American television’s faults, Morrow thinks that Orwell might well have liked it, or at least parts of it. Orwell, says Morrow, "believed in the common sense of common humanity" and might well have seen TV’s "populist nature" as protection against the all-encompassing state. Orwell believed that "it was among the intellectuals, not among the working classes, that you found society’s villains": he probably would have loved Cheers.

So how close are we to the nightmare telescreen world of 1984. We’re not there, at least not yet. But, as Morrow concludes, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to those who seem to be crying wolf about TV's power and influence. "The boy who cried wolf was wrong—and the townspeople who ultimately ignored him were also wrong. Theirs was the sin of complacency."

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Cleveland Amory’s successor as TV Guide’s critic was Robert MacKenzie, and in a week where we’re looking for worthy information to assess, his review is probably as good a place as any. This week’s show is ABC’s Hardcastle and McCormick, a buddy comedy-adventure starring Brian Keith and Daniel Hugh-Kelly as, respectively, a retired judge hunting down scoundrels who escaped his justice via technicalities, and a young rascal paroled to Hardcastle’s custody because the judge "saw good in the lad."

It’s a preposterous premise, on many levels. Neither of them work, for example, yet they pay their bills every month. There are a lot of car chases and crashes, and McCormick drives so fast and so well that in real life he’d probably be a professional racing driver, thus solving the problem of where the two find the money to pay bills. Keith is fine as Hardcastle; MacKenzie believes he "can do better work, and has, but he likes steady employment." Hugh-Kelly is "cute" and has great hair, which puts him in competition with NBC's Knight Rider, which features David Hasselhoff, "who also drives fast and has even more hair."

Sometimes, after a long day of work, you just want to turn on the television and relax instead of thinking about the world’s troubles or having some talking head shout at you all evening long. The problem, as Orwell might have put it, is that this can lead to complacency, or at least laziness. Like so much of television in 1984, Hardcastle and McCormick "seems designed for workingmen who dream about hot cars but can’t afford them, who can flake out in from of a TV world in which the good guys have the fastest cars and the hardest fists." It’s a nice world to visit from time to time, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

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We’re now on to sports, and this is the early stages of the cable era, that unregulated free-for-all before sports governing boards figured out the power of collective negotiating, when leagues and conferences signed contracts with just about any cable network that would have them. This week there are no less than 26 college basketball games on, for example, and that’s only counting NBC, CBS, ESPN, WGN, and USA. There's still the impression of scarcity, though—we're just emerging from that time when we were lucky to get more than two or three games over the weekend—which makes them all feel a little more important, a little more exciting, than they otherwise would be. The atmosphere also hasn't been polluted by what I'd call the ESPNification of sports, meaning that the players were still more interested in playing the game than in winding up on a highlight reel posterizing their opponents.

On the professional side, the stars are out this week, with basketball, football, and hockey all playing their all-star games, and in a sign of the times, the NBA All-Star Game, from Denver. (Sunday, 1:00 p.m. CT, CBS) That's right: it’s not on cable, it’s not on in prime time, there are no slam dunk or 3-point contests. All we get is a bunch of pretty good players playing basketball: Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Isaiah Thomas, Kevin McHale, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, George Gervin. Not bad, I’d say. The NFL counters with the NFC-AFC Pro Bowl from Honolulu (3:00 p.m., ABC), which also manages to find some pretty good players to take part: Dan Fouts, Earl Campbell Joe Theismann, Eric Dickerson. The NHL version is on USA Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. from East Rutherford, New Jersey. No indication as to the players taking part, although a quick spin through the league stats tells us there were a few Hall-of-Famers on hand, names like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Ray Bourque, Grant Fuhr, Steve Yzerman, and Gilbert Perrault. Back in the days before fans could see just about any game they wanted just about any time they wanted, these contests were rare treats, the one time you could see some of the game’s greats in action. I do miss those times.

And speaking of ESPN as we were, it looks much different in 1984 than it does today. For instance, I had completely forgotten that it used to carry business programming in the early morning hours, but before it became a lifestyle network, it had to have something to show during the week at 5:00 a.m., and that was Business Times, which ran until 7:00 a.m. Frankly, I think it was an improvement over what it carries now. (No Stephen A. Smith, for one thing.) And the network had a children's program on Wednesday afternoons, if you can believe it: Vic's Vacant Lot, in which famed tennis instructor Vic Braden (whose students included two-time U.S. Open champion Tracy Austin*) worked with groups of children showing them how to organize competitive sports on a vacant lot. It ran for two seasons; who knew? In 1984, ESPN covered sports such as Australian Rules Football and the Canadian Football League, while still having time for serious interview shows and weekly fishing programs. I miss those times as well.

*Fun fact: Tracy Austin's sister-in-law is fitness author Denise Austin, who also had a show on ESPN.

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Coming to your TV screens Saturday night on NBC—it’s World War III! Or, to be more accurate, World War III! (8:00 p.m.) It’s actually a rerun from 1982, when this kind of speculation, in the Ronald Reagan-Evil Empire era, was all-too-real for some. It boasts an all-star cast including Rock Hudson as the American President, Brian Keith as the Soviet Leader, David Soul as "an American colonel trying to hold off a war,” and Cathy Lee Crosby as “an intelligence officer craving one last moment of love," among others. It runs both tonight and Sunday night, and since Judith Crist calls it a "dandy," I’m inclined to give it a pass instead of saying something even snarkier. You might prefer heading over to CBS, where two new series debut tonight: Airwolf  (8:00 p.m.), with Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine; and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (9:00 p.m.), starring Stacy Keach as the legendary private detective whose gun is quick and whose fists are even quicker.

Sunday night at 6:00 p.m., NBC Reports presents a profile of a man very much in the American bloodstream: Lee Iacocca. The man who saved Chrysler (among other things) and became a ubiquitous television pitchman and best-selling author visits with Tom Brokaw, who finds him "an emotional, sensitive and religious family man, who talks on the phone with his grown daughters at least twice a day." There’s no greater American success story in the early '80s than Iacocca, whose name is occasionally bandied about as a possible presidential candidate, though the idea of a successful businessman with no political experience running for office seems ridiculous…

On Monday (8:00 p.m.), NBC airs a live special from Hawaii as the aforementioned David Hasselhoff and Jayne Kennedy invite viewers to vote for The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, chosen from "21 international beauties." Entertainment comes from Air Supply and Engelbert Humperdinck. Opposite that, it’s the ABC Monday Night Movie “When She Says No,” examining the case of a woman who claims she was raped, and the men who insist she led them on. Crist calls it a “cogent and sensitive” movie, free from the leering exploitation that one often sees in such fare.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame has made its complete transition to movie format, but it hasn’t yet descended to saccharine Oprah-style greeting cards expanded to feature length. On Tuesday it presents a rip-roaring adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae (8:00 p.m., CBS), starring Michael York and Richard Thomas, and Crist views it as “first-class romantic adventure despite the final sugarcoat” which gives it a happy ending

Live From the Met headlines the PBS schedule on Wednesday, with the remarkable Plácido Domingo headlining an all-star cast in Verdi’s masterpiece Don Carlo. I’m not shy in using the word "remarkable" to describe Domingo, still wowing audiences 40 years later; and it’s not a case of him having been a young unknown back then, either; he was already a star, and has remained one since. It's a four-hour investment of time that opera fans won't regret.

This Thursday we get a look at one of CBS’s most successful programming nights of the 80s, starting at 7:00 p.m. with Magnum, P.I.: it’s the episode where he gets trapped in a bank vault with Carol Burnett. At 8:00 p.m. the detective-brothers Simon & Simon look after a flashdancer (a trendy thing back then) who’s a target for an assassin. Rounding off the evening, more suds with Knotts Landing, the venerable nighttime soap. Now, I ought to note that WCCO, the Twin Cities CBS affiliate, isn’t showing Simon at all this week due to a University of Minnesota basketball game, and they’re tape-delaying Knotts to 10:30 p.m., after the late local news, so if basketball isn’t your thing, you might instead watch Hill Street Blues (9:00 p.m., NBC), the most celebrated drama of the time, which tonight deals with the death of the much-loved actor Michael Conrad, who played Sgt. Esterhaus. ("Let’s be careful out there!") Or you could just forget it all and watch Grease on ABC.

Friday night has a cast of familiar programs, unless you’re last-place NBC—The Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, and Falcon Crest on CBS, Benson, Webster, and Matt Houston on ABC, even Washington Week in Review and Wall $treet Week on PBS. Stick with KTCA, the PBS affiliate, for the best of the night: Monty Python's Flying Circus, including "The Attila the Hun Show" (10:00 p.m.) and Doctor Who, with Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana II in "The Creature from the Pit." (10:30 p.m.)

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With co-star Sam Elliott

Let’s get back now to Cybill Shepherd. We mentioned that she was one of the stars of NBC’s The Yellow Rose, in which she plays a young widow who, with her two stepsons (not much older than she is) tries to hold on to the family ranch against, one supposes, a recurring cast of unsavory interlopers. Former co-executive producer Michael Zinberg says Shepherd was chosen for the role because they wanted "a very hot, attractive woman, and she was always our first choice." Oh, and she’s Southern too, so that helps.

Along the way we learn about her start in The Last Picture Show, her romance with the movie’s director Peter Bogdanovich, who viewed her in the same category as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Although her acting ability is often overshadowed by her looks, she’s learned the craft over the last few years, taking acting classes from Stella Adler; says John Wilder "We’ve put some real demands on her dramatically in the first couple of weeks, and she’s really come through."

She’s also learned more about herself, that marriage is "a male invention to control women," but that she still loves it; that childbirth is the most incredible experience, one that men envy because "women create life"; that even through adversity "we can’t be afraid of making mistakes." The Yellow Rose only lasts for 22 episodes, but it leads next to Moonlighting, which can hardly be said to be a mistake.

Longtime readers of the blog will recognize that in another era of TV Guide, her declaration of being sexy would probably have been seen by Richard Gehman as expressing a basic insecurity in both her physical appearance and her limited acting ability, resulting in an aggressive assertion of self as an attempt to legitimize her value as an actress and convince herself that she is, in fact, sexy. Am I not right?

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MST3K alert: The Master (1984) Max and the Master hel a woman trying to unionize a cannery in a small town where troblemakers tend to disappear. Lee Van Cleef, Timothy Van Patten, Crystal Bernard. (Friday, 8:00 p.m., NBC) The Master was a 13-week series that appeared on NBC, starring Van Cleef (who certainly deserved better) as a ninja master, with Van Patten as his annoying sidekick. This episode, "State of the Union," was one of two episodes stitched together to form the movie Master Ninja II. In this case, double the bad is still bad. TV  

Television in the 1980s

In my latest appearance on the Dan Schneider Video Interview, Dan and I discuss television in the 1980s: the growth of cable TV, the revival of the sitcom genre, major moments, and whether or not the 80s are remembered more for the shows or for the industry trends that helped shape TV today. Enjoy, and feel free to share your thoughts and any suggestions for future topics you'd like to see us discuss!

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What's on TV? Friday, August 15, 1980

I chose Friday for this week's listing because it's the only weekday not broken up by convention coverage, so it's the only day that really gives us a look at what's on. And the Illinois-Wisconsin Edition gives us quite a look; for the last few years I've tried to include in the listings all the local stations from the edition, but one of the things you notice as you get into 1980s TV Guides is the proliferation of stations, especially on the UHF side of the dial. There are 23 channels in this week's edition, including 11 UHF channels, and my dedication to providing you a comprehensive look at what's on does have its limits. Instead, I've opted to focus on Chicago and Milwaukee, and I think that gives us a pretty good sampling, don't you?

This week in TV Guide: August 9, 1980

There have been, by my count, ten issues of TV Guide that I've written about that feature major articles on children's programming—its quality, its effects on children, its tie-ins to advertising. It's been a thing since before TV Guide was first published, and it's continued beyond the time when TV Guide, and television in general, ceased to become literate. The concerns have remained the same, as have the proposals. One could probably cut and paste from any of my past ten reviews, and come up with much the same content as this week's cover story by Claire Safrana, in which "A blue-ribbon panel offers guidance for parents." In fact, the only reason I'm even bothering to report on it is because of the capsule reviews of each show, some of which are frankly hilarious. 

First things first: the three best Saturday/Sunday morning shows, according to the panel, are PBS's Once upon a Classic and CBS's 30 Minutes and The New Fat Albert Show, with the ABC Weekend Specials coming in a close fourth. Once upon a Classic is the clear front-runner, with comments that include "Outclasses all the others" and "Handsome format, first-rate dramas. We could use more of those." But the entertainment value here comes from the shows at the bottom of the list.

Take CBS's The All-New Popeye Hour, which comes in at #21 out of 27 programs reviewed, scoring 2.4 out of a possible 10. The verdict: "All new? Nothing new! Violent, destructive behavior is rewarded constantly." Hello? Don't you know that's the way things are? Violent, destructive behavior is always rewarded today, provided you're on the right side. Maybe the kids watching this cartoon learned their lessons too well. 

And then there's The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, also on CBS, ranked right in the middle at #14. "The only thing to say is that some kids love this formula of chase, collision and comeuppance." And then, at #19, you've got NBC's The Daffy Duck Show, essentially the same program but featuring Bugs's nemesis. Even so, the panel comments, "Old cartoon favorites cut up into unintelligible segments. Surely the kids will notice." How this differs from Bugs Bunny is a mystery, I guess. Apparently the kids loved it well, considering they remain hugely popular today, especially when compared to the rest of the shows on the list; just look at the Blu-Ray, remastered versions on Amazon. Message to the panel: bite me.

Some of the other comments, however, are pithy and funny, and probably right on the money:

• Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo (NBC): "Basically schlock."
• The Skatebirds (CBS): "Terrible! What a waste of any child's time."
• The Godzilla/Globetrotters Adventure Hour (NBC): "Worthless, pointless, awful." [I wonder who thought combining a basketball team and a Japanese monster was a good idea?]
• Jason of Star Comman (CBS): "It aspires to a low level апd succeeds."
  
• Casper and the Angels (NBC): "Boring. A silly takeoff on Charlie's Angels. An excuse to show women in tights." [The real question is how you can do a takeoff on Charlie's Angels, featuring women in tights, and have it come out boring?
• Saving the best for last, it's Captain Caveman & the Teenangels (ABC); "No redeeming values."

The irony is that one of the most-praised cartoons on the list is Fat Albert, the brainchild of a man who, we have since discovered, displays the very worst qualities that one might have assigned to adults who grew up watching those other cartoons. We're reminded again that irony can be a real bitch.

For all this, though, the panel's conclusion is hard to argue with. "Most cartoon shows are on the same level. Indeed, they aspire to that same, very low level," says Harvard's Dr. Gerald Lesser. "Yet cartoons are not the worst menace io attack our society in recent years. They are harmful in that they waste a lot of a child's time. We can do better than that." Indeed we can, as I've been saying the last few weeks. But considering the quality of many of the primetime shows on television, the answer is obvious: iswhy should children's television be any different?

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Where have I read this before? "Reruns Loom for September as Actors' Strike Continues."  Yes, SAG-AFTRA is on strike against the networks and the major TV and movie studios, and Frank Swertlow gives us the latest on the work stoppage that leaves the start of the new television season in doubt. As was the case in the recent series of Hollywood strikes, the only prime-time shows that are unaffected are reality programs—Real People, Speak Up America, Games People Play, That's Incredible!, and Those Amazing Animals—and Prime Time Friday. Oh, and The Tim Conway Show, which operates under a different contract (probably since it's the only variety show left on television). It's true that there are completed episodes for many series, but the nets are reluctant to use them because they'd be scattered among reruns and would lose their promotional impact. For the same reason, events such as Shogun might be delayed. 

As was the case last year, the actors' strike is not a brief affair; it took three months, until October, before actors returned to work, although the agreement was reached in mid-February. (In fact, it was the longest actors' strike until last year's.) Unlike last year, the Emmy Awards did go on as s cheduled, but it was boycotted by the union, with best actor winner Powers Boothe (for Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones) being the only nominee to show. 

With the agreement reached in mid-September, Shogun went on as scheduled, airing September 15-19. Both sides claimed victory, as is often the case in such labor disputes, but there was one clear-cut, and most unexpected, winner: Carl Sagan's series Cosmos, which premiered during the strike, and faced little competition from the networks. I guess that outcome could have been predicted in the stars.

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The Democratic Party meets in convention this week at Madison Square Garden in New York City, with suspense in short supply. Despite a challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy, President Carter appears to have things locked up; he leads Kennedy in the delegate count, 1,982 to 1,235, with 1666 needed to win, and barring a movement to free the delegates from their primary commitments (the movement fails), Carter will win the nomination. But old traditions die hard, and Sally Bedell reports on the preparations being made by the networks for their gavel-to-gavel coverage of the proceedings. Once upon a time, the convention meant drama, suspense, and spontaneity, but today it's all about following the script. And I do mean "script"; says William Carruthers, former TV advisor to Presidents Nixon and Ford, "There is no reason that a convention should be laid out for prime time any differently than an entertainment special. You need a well-developed format and you have to consider the personalities and events to determine what you do each night." 

Although politicians and networks had long since learned the need for a certain amount of cooperation, the turning point in TV coverage probably dates back to the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, a perfect storm of conflict not likely to ever be repeated, and their 1972 soirée in Miami Beach, a gathering so disorganized and chaotic that presidential nominee George McGovern wound up giving his acceptance speech at 3:00 a.m. Friday morning. That determination to not let history repeat itself could be seen almost immediately at the 1972 Republican convention, held in Miami Beach a month after the Democrats. Their three-day conclave featured a script "so meticulously detailed it included pauses for applause and instructions for cheering. Football hero Bart Starr, who appeared on the podiurn during the opening ceremony, was even directed to 'nod' to the color guard as it passed by." 

With so little suspense at hand, why do the networks insist on spending large amounts of time, talent, and money covering the proceedings? According to former NBC correspondent and Ford press secretary Ron Nessen, "Prestige, money and ratings are at stake for the networks. The network that wins the convention will win the campaign and Election Night, and through the next four years will be the news champ." Add to that the personal rivalries that exist between floor correspondents, all of whom are busy jockying for air time "like a pack of frustrated bloodhounds." One CBS correspndent glumly admits that "We're concerned about Walter [Cronkite] this year. It's his last convention and he is going to want as much time on camera as possible." With the lack of news often palpable, reporters are often forced to great lengths to fill what air time they do get; one expert calls it "let's pretend journalism." "When nothing is going on, everyone runs around posing questions to people who are in no position to give an answer," he says. "They are saying, in effect, 'Let's pretend your answer means something'." And what does it all amount to? One veteran reporter says at the end of the day, "You ask me about the cnvention. I have memories of nothing."

Today's conventions play like very bad infomercials hosted by second-rate hucksters and thrust onto all-"news" channels, with minimul network coverage until the acceptance speeches; by comparison, the 1980 conventions were models of substance. I suppose it's possible, though not unlikely, that things could change someday. Perhaps, but I wouldn't count on it. As former Reagan aide John Sears says, "There is only one rule for politicians at conventions toдау. When you are out there, look good."

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Well, this has been depressing so far, hasn't it? And since the convention dominates primetime, it falls to the local stations to offer counterprogramming. Milwaukee's WVTV handles things nicely; they're planning to air a three-night, six-hour adaptation of Taylor Caldwell's Testimony of Two Men (Monday through Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.), starring David Birney, David Huffman, Steve Forrest, Barbara Parkins, William Shatner, and J.D. Cannon. Those living in Chicagoland are fortunate; the White Sox have a three-game series against the New York Yankees, with all three games airing at 7:00 p.m. on WSNS in Chicago and WQRF in Rockford.

WGN offers specials and movies as an alternative; on Monday, it's The Madwoman of Central Park West (7:00 p.m.), a one-woman musical comedy starring Phyllis Newman. She co-wrote the semi-autobiographical story with Arthur Laurents; the songwriters include the team of Adolph Green (Phyllis's husband) and Bette Comden, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Barry Manilow. On Tuesday, it's Casablanca, 1943's Best Picture, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, and Paul Henreid. (But you probably knew all that already. At least I hope so.) Wednesday brings 1965's Cat Ballou (6:30 p.m.), the Western comedy for which Lee Marvin won his Best Actor Oscar; Jane Fonda co-stars as the title character. And on Thursday it's Charade (6:30 p.m.), the light-hearted thriller also known as the best movie Alfred Hitchcock never directed (it was Stanley Donan), with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and a very hummable theme. The convention ends on Thursday, and Friday WGN's back to basics, with the White Sox taking on the Boston Red Sox in Chicago (7:30 p.m.)

Of the three non-convention days, the best is Sunday, a day for sports, with ABC offering expanded coverage of the PGA Championship from the Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York, with Jack Nicklaus romping to a record seven-stroke victory over Andy Bean. (2:30 p.m.) CBS counters with same-day coverage of the Formula 1 German Grand Prix, won by France's Jacques Laffite, while NBC is live in Milwaukee for Indycar's Milwaukee 200, with Johnny Rutherford taking first. (3:00 p.m. for both). 

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On weeks when we can, we'll match up two of the biggest rock shows of the era, NBC's The Midnight Special and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner: Guest performers are Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, the Police and the Specials. Musical selections include "Hurt So Bad." 

Midnight: Gladys Knight & the Pips (hosts), Linda Ronstadt, Frankie Valli, Randy Newman, the O'Jays, Herb Alpert and Glen Campbell. Also featured: a salute to Elton John. Musical highlights include "Midnight Train to Georgia" (Gladys and the Pips), "When Will I Be Loved?" (Linda), a medley of Frankie Valli's hits, and "All His Love" (Randy). The episode first aired in 1976. 

I guess the two Linda Ronstadt perforamnces cancel each other out, while I think it's hard to top the Police, they're cancelled out by Fleetwood Mac. (Again, your mileage may vary.) On the other hand, you've got Herb Alpert, Glen Campbell, and Frankie Valli, and that's going to give the edge to The Midnight Special.

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Even though subliminal advertising has long been a no-no for both the movies and television, but that doesn't mean you can't expect to see some not-so-subtle messages appearing on your favorite shows when they debut following the end of the actors' strike. 

   Fight back—wear buttons!

Despite CBS spokesman Gene Mater's protestations that "We don't believe we should use entertainment programming to transmit message" (long pause here for the laughter to die down), it appears that several series are taking up President Carter's suggestion that prime-time entertainment shows should encourage viewers to practice energy conservation. Last September, the president met with the heads of the three networks to discuss how this could be done, and several TV producers, including Norman Lear, Garry Marshall, and Gene Reynolds, have been working with the Department of Energy and a citizen's group called the Solar Lobby on how to educate viewers. 

For instance, an episode of Archie Bunker's Place last season included "a 10-minute segment about setting thermostats at 68 degrees," while Marshall plans to include messages on Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork & Mindy. "I told these people we gotta tie energy up with sex so the viewers will listen," is how Marshall explains a proposed scene in which "Fonzie may show that his room has a 'solar side' by bringing a girl friend into what he calls 'а warm spot.'" Marshall even uses the term "subliminal" in describing the tactics being used.

Now, none of this is really new. During my conversation with CBS newsman Joseph Benti a few years ago, he mentioned how television would use various techniques such as producing commercials with racially integrated casts to try and influence attitudes in society without people being overtly aware of it. And if you listen to old-time radio sitcoms from the World War II era, you'll often hear characters talking about buying war bonds and contributing to scrap metal drives. I have to admit being uncomfortable with the whole idea of the federal government overtly promoting such messages through TV shows. I didn't like it when Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign tried it, and I don't like it now, especially when someone like Marshall admits that it's a subliminal message. After all, while nobody is opposed to putting out a positive message, who gets to decide what "positive" means?

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MST3K alert: Marooned (1969) Oscar-winning special effects enhance the tension as mission control races against time and a threatening hurricane to retrieve three astronauts trapped in space. Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen. (Friday, 3:00 p.m., WLS in Chicago) Marooned is the only film featured on MST3K to win an Oscar, and so it's appropriate that when it was shown, it was under the name Space Travelers, having been redistributed byFilm Ventures International, "an ultra-low-budget production company that prepared quickie television and video releases of films that were in the public domain or could be purchased inexpensively." I like to think that this (and the terrible new opening and closing credits) is what makes it MST3K-worthy. TV  

What's on TV? Tuesday, January 29, 1980

If you're a fan of M*A*S*H and you have a sharp eye, you've probably been able to figure out the episode that's on WKYT, Channel 27, at 7:30 p.m. Since it's listed in black-and-white, it has to be "The Interview," the final episode of the fourth season and the only one to be shot in B&W, and features TV journalist Clete Roberts essentially playing himself as a war correspondent interviewing members of the 4077th. For my money, the pick of the night is 1964's Seven Days in May, on of the great political thrillers of all time, with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster and a brewing military coup in the U.S. As timely as ever, don't you think? The listings are from the Kentucky edition.

This week in TV Guide: January 26, 1980

Having started the year with issues from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, it seems only appropriate that this week we look at the 1980s. I don't think you should count on this trend continuing with the 1990s next week, though. I'm only willing to take this kind of thing so far.  And if you're thinking this is too bad because the Nineties were your favorite television decade, I can only offer this by way of consolation: Life isn't fair.

We begin, however, with a question that's as relevant today as it was forty-four years ago, and by relevant I mean a question that we find ourselves right smack-dab in the middle of: should television bring war coverage live to your living room? 

Tom Wolzien, a producer for NBC Nightly News, is the one asking the question. You may think of it as one that's been asked and answered already. Vietnam, after all, was "the living-room war," the first war brought into the intimacy of our homes. But, as Wolzien points out, there was a difference back then: "[D]uring Vietnam there was a large gap between an event and the time it was seen in the states—sometimes 24 hours or more. And then the pictures were in the murky, subdued colors of film processed in the Far East." Now, imagine the vivid colors of modern television, combined with the minicams that can go anywhere, and the ability to broadcast live.

The example Wolzien uses is one that cuts particularly close at the moment: that of an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon to crush a PLO training camp. Government-run Israeli television transmits live pictures showing heavy fighting around the camp. "At the same time, PLO cameras are showing live pictures of the Israelis attacking the camp. But from the PLO cameras, the place looks more like a refugee camp than a guerrilla base." Each side wants to present its own version of events; who do you believe? Furthermore, the pictures, whether accurate or not, have to be considered propaganda since they're being produced by government organizations. Do U.S. TV networks want to be accused of airing propaganda? Not just that, but what if the live coverage captures images of soldiers being shot and killed as it happens, for everyone (including family and loved ones) to see instantaneously. Bad taste? Images that could be used to manipulate the public to either favor or oppose the war? 

What Wolzien imagines is, I think, a little different from the coverage that embedded reporters provided during the Gulf Wars. I don't recall, during either of those conflicts, an interview being conducted with an officer while his battalion was involved in active battle. But would that happen if U.S. forces were involved in, say, Ukraine or China? Would the government impose some type of control over satellite transmissions and try to block those that put the war in a bad light, and would that turn into a more general censorship of all negative war news? 

On the other hand, such a question probably wouldn't be limited to television; in all likelihood we'd be talking about coverage on social media, and we all know how many faked images and old photographs purporting to show some wartime atrocity or other have popped up online. AI just makes things more complicated, the truth more elusive. Perhaps live coverage is the answer after all, provided we can guarantee the coverage is live, and not manufactured. As if there weren't enough ethical questions regarding war to begin with, now we have to consider how the war is covered. 

Wolzen warns that the technology is coming; well, it's long since been here. "But in the end, there are only two real questions: Is it ethical to show a war live on television? Is it moral not to?" There is no conclusion to this conversation, other than to say that there are no easy answers.

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I've probably done Robert MacKenzie an injustice over the years; for all of the Cleveland Amory reviews I've looked at, I seldom have anything to say about MacKenzie's, which tell us just as much about the TV landscape of the times. I figure this seems to be a good time to rectify that injustice, so for our mutual edification, we look at—The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. 

Lobo, a spinoff from NBC's BJ and the Bear, is a flagrant practitioner of what Mac calls "bun shots," that is, shots that "contrive to have a girl in shorts or tight pants on some errand that heads her away from the camera." (Of course, nowadays she'd be doing that strut without the shorts or tight pants, but that's progress for you.) Lobo makes a practice of using these shots with frequency; not only that, the camera "invariably zooms in for a tight frame of the featured position." And MacKenzie admits to being a little embarrassed by these shots. "I mean, a man might well wish to let his eye rove over a lady and pause at a likely curve. But a zoom-in bun shot makes a blatant voyeur out of the viewer. There's no way he can pretend to be checking out the actress's hairdo." But then, as he points out, Lobo does not pretend to be a masterclass in subtlety. 

Lobo has a two-season run, producing 38 episodes, and if MacKenzie is embarrassed by the bun shots, I'm a little embarrassed on behalf of the network that they let the show run for that long. Lobo is played by Claude Akins, a man with "a face like an abused prune" (beat that description, Cleve!), was the heavy in BJ, but here he's called to be "convincingly treacherous and decent at the same time," and whether it's Akins' abilities or the scripts he has to work with, he can't pull it off. When he does the right thing, it just seems contrived; "he smells fraudulent, like a perfumed outhouse." Some actors weren't meant to be good guys, and I've always thought that of Akins, who often plays men who seem dedicated to making you want to punch them in the face. Miles Watson, who plays Lobo's corrupt Deputy Perkins, does the slapstick well (especially when prompted by Brian Kerwin's naïve Deputy Hawkins), but "the car chases and destruction gags frequently fall a bit flat (because there’s no laughtrack? I'd hate to think so)." 

The most damning statement comes at the end, when MacKenzie returns to the show's most notable feature: "breaking a woman down into parts is a low male-chauvinist trick. Those zooms implicate me in the director's piggism, and I resent it—even when I secretly enjoy it." Guilty pleasures like that are often an indication that perhaps you shouldn't be enjoying it in the first place.

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On weeks when we can, we'll match up two of the biggest rock shows of the era, NBC's The Midnight Special and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner: Performers include Ashford & Simpson, Kansas, Michael Jackson, Brooklyn Dreams, Stephanie Mills and comic Garry Shandling. Music: "People of the South Wind."

Special: Part 2 of the seventh-anniversary show features Captain & Tennille (hosts), Crystal Gayle, the Commodores, Olivia Newton-John, the Village People, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Andy Kaufman, the Outraged and Outrageous players. The Captain & Tennille sing "Do That to Me One More Time," and the Commodores sing "Still" and "Sail On."

There's a sports term called "backing in to the playoffs," referring to a team that clinches a playoff spot even though they've lost, because their closest competitor has also lost and now can no longer catch them in the standings. Well, that might be what we have this week. Of the Special's guests, I can only vouch for Olivia and Dolly, while Kirshner's class rests with Kansas, Michael, and Garry Shandling. Should a comic be the deciding vote when comparing two music shows? I don't know, but this week, Kirshner gets the last laugh.

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It's coming up on sweeps time, and while things won't really hit their stride until next week, we've got a good number of specials and new shows being hyped this week. I'll spare you most of the ads, but you can be the judge as to whether or not any of these shows are truly special.

Saturday features one of those episodes that you see so often during sweeps: Barbi Benton on Fantasy Island (10:00 p.m. ET, ABC), as a former centerfold (really stretching her acting range, isn't she?) who wants a chance to treat men like sex objects. I assume there was a long line of men at the Island offering to help out with this one, don't you?

If you're looking for science fiction, then Sunday's the night for you! It starts with Galactica 1980 (7:00 p.m., ABC), the low-rent sequel to the late Battlestar Galactica, with Lorne Greene reprising his role as Adama, leader of the space wanderers. In tonight's episode, the first of a three-part story, Galactica has finally found Earth—now what do they do? Guest stars include Kent McCord, Barry Van Dyke, Robyn Douglass, and Robert Reed. Though I never watched it, I think you're better off with Sci-Fi's reboot of the series in 2003. 

Or, you can just wait an hour for part one of the six-hour miniseries The Martian Chronicles (8:00 p.m., NBC), based on the Ray Bradbury classic. Chronicles boasts an even bigger-name cast, led by Rock Hudson, with Nicholas Hammond, Roddy McDowall, Darren McGavin, Fritz Weaver, Bernadette Peters*, and Maria Schell. Parts two and three air Monday and Tuesday nights at the same time, and Ray Bradbury would probably prefer that you skip it; Bradbury bluntly told Fred Silverman that the miniseries was "boring," which is, to my way of thinking, even worse than being bad, and told friends that sitting through it was "his idea of hell."

*That ad does Bernadette Peters a real injustice: "The sexiest woman on Mars," it reads. "The only woman on Mars." I think she could stand up to any competition.

Sci-fi aside, ABC follows Galactica with the special two-hour premiere of Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (8:00 p.m.), starring Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum in, according to the late Tom Shales of the Washington Post, "One of the most dazzling, dizzying, exhilarating debuts an action series has ever made on television." I can understand why this series might have been greenlighted; odd couple-buddy movies are often good fodder for comedy/action concepts, and it was heavily promoted both before and during the network's coverage of the Winter Olympics, but after a promising start, the ratings fall dramatically, and the show is cancelled after 14 episodes.

Following Tenspeed, it's Donna Summer in her first TV special! Honest, that's what it says in the ad. The special (10:00 p.m., ABC) wisely avoids most of the variety special tropes, concentrating on Summer in concert at the Hollywood Bowl, augmented by staged numbers taped in-studio. Except for a campy version of "Bad Girls" that features Donna's "backup trio" of Twiggy, Debralee Scott, and Pat Ast, it's pretty much all music, all Donna.

Tenspeed and Brown Shoe isn't the only series that must have seemed like a good idea at the time; on Monday, Dennis Weaver stars in Stone (9:00 p.m., ABC), playing a police detective who writes best-selling novels on the side. (Sound familiar?) Like Tenspeed, Stone was produced by Stephen J. Cannell, who also created the series with Richard Levinson and William Link. Weaver's an established star with a pedigree as a cop, so you'd think this would have done well, but perhaps viewers missed the cowboy hat; only nine episodes were produced, seven of which were aired before the show was cancelled in March.

On Tuesday, ABC brings out "The comedy that's the new hit of the 80's!" (Again, that's what it says.) Goodtime Girls (8:30 p.m.) stars Annie Potts, Lorna Patterson, Georgia Engel, and Francine Tacker as four woman sharing an apartment in Washington, D.C. during World War II. It's a joint effort of Paramount and Garry Marshall's production company, and they must have hoped they had the next Laverne & Shirley on their hands, but it was more like the next Stone; twelve of the thirteen episodes make it to the air before the show meets its demise. 

And now we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma.  NBC boasts that Wednesday is "The Funniest Night of the Week!" and looks to back it up with Real People at 8:00 p.m., Diff'rent Strokes at 9:00, Hello, Larry at 9:30, and The Best of Saturday Night Live at 10:00. However, that comes in direct conflict with Thursday, which ABC calls "TV's Funniest Night!" To bolster their claim, ABC points to Mork & Mindy at 8:00 p.m., Benson at 8:30, Barney Miller at 9:00, and Soap at 9:30. (I'm not sure how the producers of 20/20, which airs at 10:00, feel about it.) I think history will record ABC as having the more accurate pronouncement.

Speaking of Soap, though, this week's cover story profiles Richard Mulligan, who plays the goofy Burt Campbell. Mulligan has a long career of playing dramatic roles on stage and in the movies, and is a serious man (he discusses Montaigne and Gnosticism easily), but when he auditioned for the role of Burt, he bowled over producer Susan Harris, who now says that "I can't remember my original concept because when I think of Burt I think of Richard and when I think of Richard I think of Burt."

I've always enjoyed Mulligan's work; in his previous sitcom, 1966's The Hero, he played an actor who was a heroic cowboy type on a TV Western but in his personal life was, as The New York Times described him, "a good-natured family man with 10 thumbs and a fear of horses." In other words, a quirky character not completely unlike Burt Campbell. I also thought he was hilarious in the Blake Edwards movie S.O.B., where he plays a suicidal movie producer trying to salvage his latest movie, a bomb starring his wife (Julie Andrews). No matter what he was in, he was never the biggest name in the cast—but when he was on-screen, he was the one you noticed. -He wins an Emmy for Soap in 1981, and a few years later he'll win another one (and a Golden Globe) or the sitcom Empty Nest.

On Friday, it's the network TV debut of An Unmarried Woman (9:00 p.m., ABC), with Jill Clayburgh in her Oscar-nominated role of a woman trying to cope with life after marriage. Judith Crist calls it a "feminist milestone-movie," with Clayburgh brilliant as the woman forced to start over after her husband leaves her, and fine supporting work from Michael Murphy and Alan Bates. 

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I alluded to the Winter Olympics earlier; ABC's coverage of the Games, being held this year in Lake Placid, New York, begins on February 12. But it's the Summer Olympics getting our attention this week. In the face of a possible boycott of the Games by the United States, Rick Cohen reports that NBC is moving ahead with their broadcast plans, but acknowledges that they do have "contingency plans" in case the Games are cancelled or boycotted by the U.S. That boycott is the topic of this week's "As We See It," a rare full-page editorial entitled "Moscow Is No Place For the Olympic Games." 

"The argument that the Games are above international politics is idealistic but fallacious," the editorial states at the outset. Comparing the situation to that faced in 1936, when the Summer Olympics were held in Nazi Berlin, the editorial acknowledges that the four gold medals won by Jesse Owens did, "somewhat," tarnish Hitler's triumph, but goes on to say that, "in hindsight it was a mistake. We should have taken the opportunity to show the German people that the United States, at least, refused to countenance the barbaric cruelty of the German government." Referring to the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan and Cambodia, and its proxy wars being conducted in Angola and Ethiopia, the editors ask, "How can we think of clean competition and sportsmanship on the playing fields in Moscow"? The Soviet veto of a UN resolution calling for economic sanctions against Iran because of the hostage crisis simply underscores "not only the Soviet enmity toward this country but their determination to undermine the West and force their political system upon the world by whatever means."

Yes, it's true that boycotting the Summer Olympics would be a great disappointment for American athletes who, through no fault of their own, would lose perhaps the only chance they'd ever have to compete in the Games—not to mention the millions of Americans who enjoy the Games on television and look forward to the international spectacle every four years. Despite this, the editorial concludes, "it would be in the best interest of our country—and the world—if we were to tell the Soviet people in unmistakable terms that we are not hypocrites, that we cannot send our athletes to compete in a country whose government flouts basic human rights, bullies small countries, and poses a constant threat to world peace." 

I wonder what the editors would have had to say about the recent Summer and Winter Games in Beijing? From where I sit, red is red whether the shade is Soviet or Chinese. TV  

What's on TV? Tuesday, December 7, 1982

There's something vaguely encouraging about the title of the WNEV program, So You Think You Got Troubles?!, as if no matter how bad things are for you, they could be worse. It's a good thought. This week's TV Guide is the New Hampshire edition, but you'll notice that it's got comprehensive listings for Boston, and Portland, Maine as well; I recognize all those stations from the four years I lived in Maine. The programming tonight is quiet; we covered the Christmas shows on Saturday, but if you're not yet in the mood, I recommend the WLVI movie, Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, and Gene Kelly, in the tragic story of the Scopes Monkey Trial. They don't make movies like tht anymore, but then they don't have actors like that anymore, either.

This week in TV Guide: December 4, 1982

I thought we'd try a little experiment this week. Last week, I pointed out in passing that TV's Christmas season seemed to start earlier and earlier every year; today, it pushes right up against Thanksgiving. (Excluding Christmas movies; I'm pretty sure some FAST network is already showing next year's movies, while this year's movies started somewhere around Halloween—or was it Labor Day?) 

Now, where was I? Oh yes; in order to prove this hypothesis, we'll take a look at two other issues of TV Guide in addition to this week's issue from 1982. They're from similar points in the month: one from December 4, 1953, the other from December 3, 1966. Is there a difference in how television programmed Christmas back then, or is it all just my imagination? Let's see just what each issue tells us.

We'll start with 1953, and the tale of the tape is pretty easy: there is no Christmas programming this week. Now, that doesn't mean there isn't anything Christmassy on, but most of what you see concerns cooking or decorating ideas for the holidays—how to make a Christmas mobile, for instance, or a table centerpiece with a Christmas motif. The singers on Bob Crosby's daytime variety show (2:30 p.m. CT, CBS) offer a Christmas tune or two, and Omnibus (Sunday, 4:00 p.m., CBS) gives viewers a look at the Christmas windows in NYC's Lord and Taylor department store. Otherwise, that's it. 

There's a logical explanation for some of this; as of 1953, there are no animated Christmas specials, and most of the weekly variety shows will air their special episodes closer to Christmas itself. We know that the shopping season is in full swing; there's an article about how toys based on television characters are a hot thing this year, and there's a note in the Teletype that RCA-Victor is putting out a record of Dragnet's complete Christmas episode ("The Big Little Jesus"), which I'm sure would make a fine gift for those who want to relive the moving story over and over. So my bet is that there are plenty of Christmas commercials on the the air, but nothing yet as far as specials.

Fast-forward thirteen years to 1966, and we can see right away that times have changed. On Sunday (5:30 p.m. PT, NBC), it's the second showing of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, with all kinds of commercials featuring General Electric's suggestions as to what would make good gifts. ABC's special The Saga of Western Man (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.) has a show with an explicitly Christmas theme: "Christ Is Born," a recreation of The Nativity and the history surrounding it. It's sponsored by B.F. Goodrich; I'll bet at least one commercial will be for Goodrich's "For a Musical Merry Christmas," the third volume in their annual Christmas series. On Friday, CBS reruns Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" (7:30 p.m.), narrated by Eddie Albert, with Edward Villella, Patricia McBride, and Melissa Hayden. 

There are also specials that are non-Christmas but function as outstanding vehicles for Christmas advertising: Wednesday's Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of "Blithe Spirit" will  have a slew of commercials for Christmas cards—Hallmark always coordinates its shows to align with major card-sending holidays, and after all, it wouldn't do any good to advertise them once it became too late to mail them, would it? There's also a Frank Sinatra special Wednesday on CBS, and that same network's "The Glass Menagerie," with Shirley Booth, Hal Holbrook, and Barbara Loden, on Thursday. But in total we have only three holiday specials and, once again, there are no variety specials. 

Now look at how things are in 1982. We start on Saturday, with the acerbically funny movie The Man Who Came to Dinner (7:00 p.m., WGBH in Boston), and A Disney Christmas Gift, scenes with holiday themes from Disney cartoons and animated features. (8:00 p.m., CBS) Monday evening, with a CBS doubleheader: A Charlie Brown Christmas at 8:00 p.m. ET, followed by Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales at 8:30; opposite them, it's Rudolph's Shiny New Year (8:00 p.m., ABC) On Tuesday, it's another CBS doubleheader, and now we're seeing the variety specials: Johnny Cash's Merry Memphis Christmas, with June Carter Cash, Rosanne Cash (no relation), Crystal Gayle, and Eddie Rabbitt (9:00 p.m.), followed by Andy Williams' Early New England Christmas, with Dorothy Hamill, Aileen Quinn, James Galway, and Dick Van Patten. (10:00 p.m.) 

On Thursday, we've got a pair of movies: White Christmas (8:00 p.m., WLVI in Boston), and It's a Wonderful Life. (9:05 p.m., WENH in Durham, NH, repeated Friday on WMEB in Orono, ME) But that's not all; HBO is running Laurel and Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers and Rich Little: A Christmas Carol throughout the month, including this week; the same goes for Hans Christen Andersen's The Snow Queen, seen several times this week on various PBS stations. Inexplicably, Cinemax also has an Easter movie, Quo Vadis, throughout the week. Quite a difference from years past, don't you think? And in case you're wondering, Rudolph was already on last week; December 1, solidifying its standing as the first Christmas special of the year. 

Obviously, one of the reasons for the plethora of programs we're seeing here is simply that there are more of them than in years past, and that's even taking into consideration that the first animated special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, went into syndication in 1970, while the first program of any kind to become an annual Christmas special, Gian Carlo Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, hadn't appeared on TV since the late 1970s. In addition, any variety specials are going to come early in the season (for the convenience of advertisers) since there aren't any weekly variety shows anymore.

Now, before we go too far with this, let me stress that I'm not against Christmas programs; from December 1 on, that's pretty much all we watch in the evenings, unless there's something else going on. I say the more programs, the merrier. And I don't mind Christmas commercials, either—who doesn't get a warm feeling remembering the Norelco Santa, or Ed Herlihy talking about Kraft recipes. (And that's not to mention the General Electric elves in the original commercials that ran during Rudolph.) For those of an age, those memories are as much a part of the Christmas season as the programs themselves.

What I don't like is showing all your holiday inventory in the first two weeks of the season, as if the only reason for them to exist at all is as a vehicle for commerce. I particularly don't like the cartoons that don't tell any story at all, but are around as a tie-in to the product they're trying to sell. (The Santa Bear animated special, for instance.) Leave at least a little something for Christmas week itself, even if everyone's already done their shopping. (Remember, they have to spend those gift cards they receive!)

Fortunately, thanks to the plethora of viewing options out there, from FAST stations to on-demand services to the good old-fashioned cable stations, there are options right up to Christmas Day and beyond (I mean, look at them!), and while a lot of them aren't particularly to my taste, beggars can't be choosers. Anyway, we've got our DVDs to keep us warm. 

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I don't want you to think that it's all about Christmas this week; far from it. One of the feature programs of the week is the Hallmark Hall of Fame's presentation of "Witness for the Prosecution" (Saturday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), a remake of the classic Agatha Christie courtroom drama, one of the greatest ever made, starring Sir Ralph Richardson as barrister Sir Wilfred Robarts (played in the movie by Charles Laughton), Beau Bridges as Leonard Vole, the defendant (formerly Tyrone Power), Diana Rigg as Vole's wife (Marlene Dietrich), and Deborah Kerr as Sir Wilfred's nurse (Elsa Lanchester). Judith Crist praises the remake and the performances (while finding Bridges a bit lacking), even though she questions the need for such a remake in the first place. It would be a pity if it was because audiences won't watch a black-and-white movie, whether in 1982 or today.

Sunday is a night of specials on CBS, starting at 8:00 p.m. with An All Star Party for Carol Burnett. CBS took more than a little criticism a while back when they didn't take a flyer on the 90th birthday celebration for Carol (it wound up on NBC instead); it's nice to see them honoring her here. Among the guests are Steve Lawrence, Jimmy Stewart, Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway, Tom Sellick, and Beverly Sills; there are also tributes from Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Monty Hall, Glenda Jackson, Jim Nabors, Jack Paar, and Burt Reynolds. I mention them all here to show that in this instance, "All Star" wasn't just hyperbole. There are also a few stars on hand for the seventh annual Circus of the Stars (9:00 p.m., CBS), although there are a few more examples of "stars" in this case. Mickey Rooney is the ringmaster, assisted by Scott Baio, Morgan Fairchild, Vincent Price, Martha Raye, Debbie Reynolds, and Isabel Sanford; among the performers the bigger names include Robert Culp, Roddy McDowall, Bob Newhart, Jean Marsh, and Brooke Shields.

NBC's blockbuster movie for the week is the made-for-TV Remembrance of Love (Monday, 9:00 p.m.), a somber reflection on the Holocaust (as timely now as it was back then, alas), with Kirk Douglas as a survivor of Auschwitz, traveling to Tel Aviv for the World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors—and to search for the girl he loved and lost during the war. Pam Dawber co-stars as Douglas's daughter, and Robert Clary appears as himself. Judith Crist gives it a guarded recommendation, saying that the recreation of the Holocaust Survivors event "overpowers the contrived plotting." 

Now here's a series I have absolutely no memory of. It's called Gavilan (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., NBC), and perhaps I don't remember it because it's just another one of the many series that Robert Urich starred in; only 10 of the 13 episodes that were made were ever aired before it left the air in March. If I had seen it, it likely would only have been because of the presence of Patrick Macnee as one of Gavilan's sidekicks. I never saw Bruce Boxleitner's Bring 'Em Back Alive (8:00 p.m., CBS) either, but at least I'd heard of it; it's based on the life of big-game hunter Frank Buck. Well, I guess I can't remember everything.

Speaking of shows that weren't, shall we say, memorable, there are a couple more on Wednesday; Tales of the Gold Monkey (8:00 p.m., ABC), starring Stephen Collins, is, like Bring 'Em Back Alive, an obvious attempt to cash in on the excitement generated by Raiders of the Lost Ark; like Bring 'Em Back, it doesn't last very long; 17 episodes for the former, and 22 for the latter. This reminds me of the fad that started in the wake of Animal House; there were three shows based on that, and none of them did very well either. The other little-known series on Wednesday is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (8:00 p.m., CBS), based "loosely" on the movie of the same name, and starring Richard Dean Anderson. It, too, lasts for 22 episodes, but Richard Dean Anderson will make out just fine. I tell you, though, these series made no impression on me; frankly, I was surprised to find out they lasted as long as they did.

After all that, it was a relief to come to Thursday's listings and see some familiar names: Magnum, P.I., Simon & Simon, and Knots Landing on CBS; Fame, Cheers, Taxi, and Hill Street Blues on NBC; and Joanie Loves Chachi, Star of the Family, Too Close for Comfort, It Takes Two, and 20/20 on ABC. Okay, Star of the Family (10 episodes) and It Takes Two (22 episodes) weren't smash hits; still, you can see what a blockbuster night of television it was on all three networks. 

One of the things I miss about television today is that it's so hard to go over the top nowadays. Take Friday's episode of Dallas (9:00 p.m., CBS), in which "J.R. and Sue Ellen's wedding party is interrupted by a brawl between Cliff and the Ewing brothers." Now that was exciting television back then, but today it's just another episode of Real Housewives or one of those other reality shows. Back then you could watch Dallas and enjoy it guilt-free; today, you just shake your head at what the world has come to—a real-life comic book. 

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It's been awhile since a regular-season college basketball game drew much attention. After all, even the best teams usually wind up losing several games a year, and they're all getting into the post-season tournament anyway, so the stakes aren't very impressive. It wasn't always that way, though, as we see in William Gildea's article about how Ted Turner's cable superstation, WTBS, outbid the networks for coverage of next Saturday night's highly-anticipated game between Ralph Sampson's Virginia Cavaliers and Patrick Ewing's Georgetown Hoyas. "The game," Gildea says, "has stirred the imagination of fans across the country like no other since 1968, when [Kareem] Abdul-Jabbar's UCLA Bruins took on the Elvin Hayes-led University of Houston in the Astrodome." That game, college basketball's Game of the Century, drew a then-crowd of more than 52,000, and was the first regular season college basketball game ever broadcast nationwide in prime time, on the syndicated TVS network. 

The game isn't quite a cable exclusive; with only 34 percent of homes nationwide having access to basic cable, and with the demand for the game far outstripping the supply so to speak, WTBS winds up brokering agreements with local stations in major markets to show the game on broadcast TV. Nevertheless, WTBS's victory represents not only a landmark for television—the first time a cable network has outbid the legacy networks for a major sporting event other than boxing—it's a harbinger of things to come. TBS and its sister station, TNT, will eventually add the NBA, the NHL, the NFL (for a time), and the Final Four to its stable of programming, while more and more major games—not just "niche" sports like tennis and golf—move to cable stations such as ESPN and USA. Today, finding a big game on regular television seems to be the exception rather than the rule; except for the NFL, which might explain why it continues to be the top sport on television, and in every other way of life.

As for the game in question (which you can see here), it's a good-but-not-great game, won by Virginia 68-63.

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Speaking of which, Jefferson Graham says that "the hot new approach in pay-TV is charging a fee for special events," known as pay-per-view, and he asks if "Paying to see the Super Bowl" is what's next. Graham discusses the recent history of PPV events, such as a recent special airing of Star Wars that earned $2.43 million without even appearing in the theater, thanks to 324,000 people who paid an average of $7.50 to watch it on television. The Rolling Stones broadcast the final concert of last year's American tour to about 25 percent of the total PPV audience, earning $3.7 million, and The Who's "farewell" concert (yeah, right) from Toronto in a couple of weeks will be looking to do the same. And a special showing of the Broadway show The Pirates of Penzance, with Linda Ronstadt, Rex Smith, and Kevin Kline, will be debuting in theaters and PPV the same day.

Studios admit to being worried about the competition, and there are whispers that some might boycott some releases in protest of PPV. Meanwhile, the networks are taking the long view, but concede that competition from pay-cable, and particularly PPV, will hurt them. John Severino, president of ABC, worries that there will be less of an audience for theatrical films by the time they show up on free TV. On the flip side, the studios are enthusiastic, to say the least. "There is no question in my mind," says MGM/UA chairman Frank Rothman, "that the ultimate release pattern is PPV as the first source before theatrical." And so on and so on.

Well, just what did wind up happening here? It's kind of hard to say; PPV on TV has, for the most part, been confined to sports, particularly wrestling, boxing, and MMA; plays, musicals, and other special events have wound up in the theaters, thanks to Fathom Events and similar services. And as for the movie industry, during the virus scare there was a moment where it appeared on-demand streaming would take the place of the theater experience completely, with Warner Bros. and Universal releasing movies in theaters and streaming simultaneously, but by 2022 it was already proclaimed a "dead" practice. Still, the amount of time movies spend in the theater shrinks by the day, with some of them making only a cursory appearance in your neighborhood metroplex. As is so often the case, we know what doesn't work anymore, but we have yet to find out for sure what does. We just know that the Super Bowl isn't headed for PPV—at least, not yet.

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You know that I consider myself second to none when it comes to admiring classic television. At that, I don't think it's ever occurred to me to compare television's sitcoms to the classic French farces of Victorien Sardou and other artists of the Gilded Age. And yet that's precisely the question being asked by Sam Toperoff, professor of art at Hofstra University. Sardou, a master of the comédie de boulevard, or boulevard comedy, in which "all the characters would have a chance to display just about every frailty and foible known to man." Dialogue is crisp and witty, with fast-paced action, misunderstandings, and Toperoff calls it "a beautifully crafted piece of machinery." 

Which brings us to 1980s sitcoms, as Toperoff wonders if we have anything like boulevard comedy today. He concedes that "[a]t first glance, the comparison may seem absurd," but then begins to build his case. Like boulevard comedy, today's sitcoms feature ordinary people—"waitresses, cops, entrepreneurs, taxi drivers, maids, schoolteachers, secretaries and soldiers." Like good theater, the best sitcoms are built around a standard set, be it the home living room or the workplace office. Dramatic tension exists, in the conflict between, for example, Judd Hirsh and Danny DeVito's characters in Taxi. Characterizations of human weaknesses abound, but not too much exaggeration, lest the character become a caricature, "not really worth caring about as a human being." Toperoff cites Archie Bunker as an example of this "delicate balance," through which "we learn something about inadequacy in the process—Archie's and our own." 

"Just read any of the plot lines to the dozens of situation comedies listed each week," Toperoff says, "and you'll discover the heart of the old boulevard play." "George Jefferson discovers that Louise has taken a job at his competitor's cleaning establishment." On 9 to 5, "Judy is fired and throws the office into a buzz by posing as a man to regain her job." Laverne & Shirley is a "beautiful" example of the boulevard play staple: "a pair of friends—one wise, the other dissolute—[who] set about trying for a day or two to be something they are not." On the other hand, there's Bosom Buddies. "It wasn't unusual, in a Sardou farce, for a young man to spend the latter part of the evening in drag—that was often the comic peak. In Bosom Buddies, it was the comic premise, and a remarkably narrow one. So the show became a predictable, one-note exercise."

I'm not sure how I feel about Toperoff's analysis, whether he's reading too much into all this, or if I've underestimated some of the shows he mentions. And he worries that some of the best examples, shows like Barney Miller and WKRP in Cincinnati, have gone off the air recently, while broader caricatures such Too Close for Comfort and Three's Company, continue on. But then he tunes into an old episode of The Honeymooners, a classic comedy theater done "not for 600 ladies and gentlemen on a glittering Parisian stage once a season, but for the masses every week." It is with that realization that, "maligned as the sitcom may have been over the years, if is, at its best, a superb piece of work. It not only tickles the funny bone; it can touch the heart." And maybe that's what we all need nowadays, n'est-ce pas? TV