It's About TV: Cultural Programming

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January 31, 2026

This week in TV Guide: January 30, 1960

Ahat are we to make of this week's cover story, "Can Ratings Be Fixed?" Does it imply that the ratings system is broken, that networks and advertisers pay far too much attention to them, sacrificing admirable but low-rated programs at the altar of profitability and popularity? Or do we understand "fixed" to have the same meaning as "rigged," that the integrity of the ratings system has intentionally been breached so the figures reflect something other than the truth, all to profit an unknown someone in position to tamper with the numbers? Oh, the uncertainty of it all.

As it turns out, according to Bob Stahl, it's a little bit of everything. In addition to those choices above, the overriding question, one on everyone's mind, is: "How can electronic gadgets in only 1050 homes measure accurately what 112,000 viewers are watching?" A Senate investigating committee is looking into it (yes, they don't have anything better to do than that), for as Oklahoma Senator Mike Monroney says, "[t]he struggle for rating supremacy led to rigging of TV quiz programs." Put that way, compared to the constant threat of nuclear war, I guess it is an important question.

The fact is, as is the case with alcohol, guns, technology, and, well, television, the ratings are neither good nor bad, but neutral. "They serve a useful and necessary purpose in the business," Stahl points out. "The fault lies in the way ratings are constantly misused." Max Banzhaf, advertising director of the Armstrong Cork Co. (sponsors of Armstrong Circle Theater), says that ratings are "designed to serve only as a guide in making program judgments," but that "too often [they're] used as a substitute for judgment. ABC President Oliver Treyz says ratings are "only one factor in any program decision." Answering critics who claim networks are too eager to jump on the bandwagon and copycat successful shows, NBC Vice President Hugh M. Beville Jr. replies, "Is it wrong to give the people what they say they want?"

Counters historian Arthur Schlessinger, "The television industry must see its job, not as that of catering to the worst or even the average taste of its audiences, but in part as that of elevating taste." And Marion B. Harper Jr., president of the imposing McCann-Erickson ad agency, says that networks "must telecast more shows of quality than the ratings indicate the public wants to see." (We touched on this question of who decides what quality is in an earlier edition.)

Garry Moore, who's been on TV long enough to know a thing or two about ratings, raises this question: "Is a comedian any funnier when he gets a 30 [rating] than when he gets a 20?" As an example, "[s]uppose the comedian gets a 20 when he has a really good show. His audience will talk up the show to friends; more people will tune in the following week. So he may get a 30 rating that second week and not have as good a show. Wouldn't that mean he was funnier with a 20 rating than with a 30?" Yes, the ratings are necessary, but they "don't show whether viewers buy the sponsor's product." As to the question of whether or not the ratings are rigged, Sen. Monroney says they aren't. "[W]e concluded that rating samples are inadequate, that ratings receive far too much emphasis in the industry, [but] we never charged that ratings were rigged." It's possible that television could see something akin to the payola scandals that rocked the radio world, but unlikely.

Unsurprisingly, reports Stahl, "There is no clear-cut answer to all of this." Broadcasters and advertisers need to be taught how to use the ratings correctly, and, says Beville, since the press aren't experts enough to write about them, "ratings should have no place in the press." Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS, offers the final word: beyond ratings, the networks need to know something more: what people want to look at. "We need constantly to know what the audience things we ought to be doing." To that end, they're conducting their own public-opinion polls, but I'm not sure that's necessary, because we all know what the audience thinks the networks should be doing: putting on better shows.

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If you think we're done with Garry Moore because of that little quote above, you've got another think coming. He's looking pretty satisfied on the cover, and for good reason: his Tuesday night variety show has more than held its own against NBC's heavily promoted Startime specials despite the latter's massive budget advantage ($250,000 per show, as opposed to Moore's $100,000), and I've Got a Secret, the panel show he's emceed all these years, is doing "quite all right" against NBC's Perry Como Show. (You'll notice ABC's not even in the discussion, which is par for the course in these days.)

"You can't run scared," Moore says of the doomsayers predicting disaster for both of his prime-time shows at the hands of well-funded competitors. Of his Tuesday night show, he says that "we expected very rough competition and we were prepared for it." It's true that Startime got off to a good start, but Moore credited the loyalty of his viewers for his show's success. "People were familiar with our show from last year and I guess a lot of them liked it." It doesn't hurt either that the supporting cast includes Durward Kirby, Allen Funt and his Candid Camera, and Carol Burnett. "I guess the most important thing is to have faith in what you've all learned over the years and not start running around scared when the ratings slip a point or two."

Regarding that $100,000 per show budget, Moore provides an example of how that money doesn't really go very far. "Nine years ago if we wanted a smoke effect for some kind of a skit, somebody would borrow a bucket from the janitor and get 40 cents' worth of dry ice from the drugstore. Today you've got to have three special-effects men and a hand-forged bucket and the tab is $40. That's the way it goes." Multiply that by thousands, and now we know why simple things cost so much nowadays.

Moore closes with a great take on the quiz show scandals. Asked if they were embarrassed, he says, "Of course we were embarrassed. Embarrassed because no one bothered to investigate us." Apparently giving away $80 per show doesn't attract much attention. But Moore wouldn't have it any other way. "I turned down a job as host on a big-money quiz show because I figured that, on it, I wouldn't be a host at all. I'd be a croupier."

Of course, if you'd like to hear more about the great Garry Moore, I'd point you in the direction of the video I did with Dan Schneider last week.

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The point is none of these shows—none—would be on television today, save some niche streaming service that I'm not aware of. In fact, the best you can do is to seek them out on YouTube, which is not a bad alternative. After all, did you notice how many of these shows are there?

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What else? Well, there is sports on Saturday, though not at the volume we have today. Hockey takes center stage with the NHL game of the week, featuring the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Bruins at Boston Garden (2:00 p.m., CBS), while the NBA counters with a matchup between the Philadelphia Warriors (before they moved to San Francisco) and New York Knicks from Madison Square Garden. (2:15 p.m., NBC)

Sunday night, CBS presents a two-hour retrospective on "The Fabulous Fifties," hosted by Henry Fonda, with an all-star cast including Jackie Gleason, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Betty Comdon and Adolph Green, and news highlights with Arthur Godfrey, Roger Bannister (the first sub-four-minute mile), Navy Captain William Anderson (who sailed his submarine, the Nautilus, under the polar ice cap), and Edmund Hillary (conqueror of Mount Everest). Eric Sevareid provides commentary. (YouTube has it here.)

We didn't have a "Sullivan vs. Allen" face-off this week, as Ed was preempted by that "Fabulous Fifties" special; anyway, Steverion has moved to Monday nights, and this week his guest is singer Steve Lawrence (10:00 p.m., NBC). Later on, The Du Pont Show with June Allyson (got to get the full name in, right?) features June starring in "So Dim the Light," playing a movie star who discovers she will be totally blind due to injuries from an auto accident. Robert Taylor plays himself in a brief cameo appearance. (10:30 p.m., CBS)

On Tuesday, the aforementioned Startime presents Ed Wynn, Bert Lahr, and Nancy Olson in "The Greatest Man Alive" (8:30 p.m., NBC), a comedy about a man who, deeming his life to have been a failure, prepares to hang himself, when fate intervenes. Garry Moore, who more than holds his own against Startime, welcomes Andy Griffith and Carol Lawrence as his guests (10:00 p.m., CBS). And in the late night movie slot, a feature destined to become a thriller classic: The Night of the Hunter (11:15 p.m., Channel 4), the only movie directed by Charles Laughton, starring Robert Mitchum as a serial killer looking to murder a widow (Shelley Winters) for her money. The movie was deemed a failure in its time; Laughton never directed another film. Today, it's considered one of the greatest movies ever made. I'm always curious as to what leads to these kinds of reassessments. What was it the critics of the time didn't see?

Wednesday, Armstrong Circle Theatre presents "Ghost Bomber: The Lady Be Good" (10:00 p.m., CBS), a docudrama on one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II: the disappearance, without a trace, of an American bomber on a mission to Italy. Last May, the wreckage of the plane was discovered in the Libyan Desert, with no trace of the crew. You may remember a Twilight Zone episode from around this same time, "King Nine Will Not Return," starring Bob Cummings as the pilot of the mystery plane. Among the stars is a very young George Segal. The program is hosted by CBS newman Douglas Edwards

On Thursday night, the great French star Maurice Chevalier stars in a one-man show on CBS (10:00 p.m.), performing all his favorites, including "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," which he sings to some special members of the audience, including the daughters of Joan Crawford and Jack Paar. And in the late movie slot, Fredric March and Betty Field are in for a shock when they find out the German boy they adopted was raised as a Nazi in the 1944 movie Tomorrow the World! (11:15 p.m., Channel 13).

Friday, it's a one-man performance of another kind, as Art Carney stars in three one-act plays: Sean O'Casey's "A Pound on Demand," "Where the Cross is Made" by Eugene O'Neill, and "Red Peppers" by Noel Coward. (8:00 p.m., NBC, and in color, of course.) Elaine Stritch guest stars in "Red Peppers," doing a couple of song-and-dance numbers with Carney. Carney's singled out for praise in one of our Letters to the Editor as well, for his recent performance in "Cal Me Back." Anyone who thinks he's just Ed Norton has another think coming. Also on Friday, Robert Conrad makes a brief cross-over appearance as Hawaiian Eye's Tom Lopaka in "Who Killed Cock Robin?" on 77 Sunset Strip (9:00 p.m., ABC). Warner Bros. is always good that way.

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Interesting note in Burt Boyer's column about how Robert Young wants this to be the last year for Father Knows Best. When you figure that Young started out on the show in 1949 when it was on radio (he was the only member of the cast to make the transition to television), he's already been Jim Anderson for 11 years. Not only does Young want to do something different, his TV daughter, Elinor Donahue, is getting other offers herself. It's said that Young is looking for $11 million to sell a network the show's inventory of close to 250 episodes. As it turns out, this is Young's final season, and while I don't know how much he wound up getting, Father Knows Best ran for another three years in prime time; two seasons on NBC, and a final season on ABC. Think about that: three years of reruns in prime time, and additional years as part of ABC's daytime schedule.* The only similar example I can think of is Marshal Dillon, the name for the half-hour episodes that CBS ran on Tuesdays from 1961 to 1964 (while Gunsmoke was still in first-run), and then in syndication.

*It was an episode of Father Knows Best that was running on ABC affiliates in the Mountain and Pacific time zones at 1:30 p.m. ET on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. The ABC footage on YouTube shows a follow-up voiceover bulletin interrupting the next to last scene of the episode, "Man About Town," before returning for some commercials and the wrap-up. Knowing what we do now about what the post-JFK years are like, it's actually kind of poignant. I do wonder what happened with Bud and the illusionist, though.

Then, there's Dwight Whitney's note on Edd Byrnes, one of the stars of 77 Sunset Strip. Byrnes has joined the impressive ranks of Warner Bros. talent, past and present, who've been engaged in contract disputes with the studio, and consequently he's on suspension. In the meantime, he's taken a job as a greeter at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. He's making $400 a week, which equals what he made playing Kookie. (No wonder he's upset with his contract!) Says Byrnes of his temporary career change, "The bills were piling up. I need the money."

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"Introducing Pat Crowley" in
the role of the Kookie.

Finally, this week's starlet is Pat Crowley, who, aside from her good looks, is known as someone who doesn't pine for her own TV series. She likes being a free-lancer, she explains; comparing it to a gym, she says it allows her to "work out on a different kind of bar bell every week." She's already been a success on the Great White Way, selected as "one of Broadway's most promising new personalities," and after a brief stint with movies ("The timing wasn't good," she explains. "Kookies weren't fashionable.*), she tried her hand at the small screen, and with appearances on Wanted—Dead or Alive, 77 Sunset Strip, and Maverick, she hasn't looked back.

*Except, as we've seen, on Sunset Strip.

She can afford to be choosy, since she's married to a Los Angeles attorney named Gregory Hookstratten. He's better known as Ed "The Hook" Hookstratten, and as one of the biggest legal names in Hollywood, he boasted of clients including Johnny Carson, Elvis Presley, Vin Scully, Joey Bishop, Bryant Gumbel, Tom Snyder, and Dick Enberg. He was general counsel for the Los Angeles Rams, fixed a DUI for Fred Silverman without it getting in the papers, and negotiated contracts for many a celebrity. All that, and Pat Crowley too (even though they wound up getting divorced). Quite an adventure, wouldn't you say? TV

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October 16, 2024

Thus spake Bernstein

It's no exaggeration to say that Leonard Bernstein was, at least in part, responsible for my love of classical music. His Young People's Concerts, which aired on CBS from 1958 to 1972, were mostly before my conscious time, but I remember seeing enough of them in the last few years to be really interested. My first live trip to a classical music concert was a similar Young People's Concert done by what was then called the Minneapolis Symphony (which has since then taken on the far more pedestrian moniker Minnesota Orchestra). Anyway, when you're being taught something by someone with a real passion for it, at least some of that passion is bound to rub off.

I have mixed feelings for Bernstein; starting with Tom Wolfe's infamous Radical Chic, which described in brutal, unrelenting detail the utter pomposity of the wealthy Bernsteins, in their Park Avenue apartment, hosting an awareness fundraiser for the Black Panthers. It's almost impossible to understand how anyone could take Bernstein seriously after that excoriating portrait, and then you combine it with Bernstein's increasingly flamboyant, almost campy lifestyle in his later years (I particularly remember his capes and other outrageous clothes), emoting on the podium, drinking heavily and often behaving crassly in public—well, the man was at times virtually a parody of himself. And again, one wonders, how can anyone take Lenny seriously?

Then you watch one of those concerts—almost all of them are on YouTube—you listen to how the man teaches, how he explains music to grade school children—not really children, but, as he called them, young people. I'm no musicologist, but I do know a fair bit about music, and yet watching some of these programs I find myself scrambling to keep up with this thought process. It's deep, profound, often engaging with ideas and topics such as philosophy in a quest to explain the relationship between music and life. Bernstein never talks down to his audience (either the young people in the concert hall, or those watching on television), he never condescends or patronizes, he always interjects enough topical language and music to let them know that he understands where it's at, and he presents all this as someone who finds the subject matter quite exciting, and wants his audience to share in that thrill. And, from the expressions on their faces, some of them do. Granted, they've been prepped for it by their music teacher in school (remember when they had music appreciation classes?), but there's really nothing that prepares anyone, young or old, from Lenny at full wattage.

Watch this program in which he explains Richard Strauss's famous piece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, better known as the theme to 2001. By the time it's over, you'll know more about Nietzsche's philosophy than you ever thought possible, as well as an absolutely stunning demonstration of how Strauss's music depicts the themes in Nietzsche's work. Bernstein expects his audience to be able to follow this, expects that grade school students can comprehend complex themes and ideas, and to relate them to the meaning of life. I found this as thrilling as Bernstein must have.

For all that Bernstein accomplished, the conducting and the compositions and the writing, I think his lasting influence will be as a teacher. Not a teacher of other musicians, although he mentored a good many of them. No, it's as a teacher who tried to enrich the lives of his students just a little bit, to make them look at life in a different way, perhaps introduce them to something they hadn't considered before. I recall a TV Guide in which Judith Crist wrote about how one of the functions of a critic was to teach readers to demand more, to put a value on the time that they spend watching a movie and then expect that movie to be worth that time? To stimulate a response? That's what Bernstein does in these programs, and in other cases, and there's nobody better at it them him. You know how I've written about how a program like Alistair Cooke's America taught me more than my high school civics class? Never mind music appreciation; I can guarantee this program should have been shown in my college philosophy class.

So can we reconcile the two Bernsteins, the teacher and the tramp, the passionate musician and the inviter of ridicule? Should we even try? This is, I think, one of those cases where I'm going to have to agree to disagree with myself, for as hard as it may be to take Lenny seriously, when Leonard Bernstein talks about music, people listen. Am I a nerd for calling this kind of show "thrilling"? Perhaps, but it's so worth the ride. TV

November 11, 2020

What we lose when television ignores the arts

Given the choice between a cartoon of cats watching television and a video of musicians playing music, I opted to go with the latter this week. (You can let me know whether or not I chose wisely.) This video ties in with last week's clip of Glenn Gould discussing Mozart, in that it's from a time when arts programming was more common on television, although it comes from a BBC broadcast in 1954, and the Beeb still devotes some time and effort to this kind of programming today.*

*It should be noted, however, that the BBC can afford such programming because 1) it's a state-financed television network, and 2) people pay an annual television fee that subsidizes the BBC family of networks. I'll also mention that BBC news coverage is considered to have a decided liberal bias, which in turn has provoked a move against the fee. I'll have more on this kind of thing Saturday.

Anyway, back to the video! The conductor is the immortal Leopold Stokowski, and the piece in question is "When I am laid in earth," popularly known as "Dido's Lament," from the 1688 opera Dido and Aeneas by the English composer Henry Purcell (being performed with an orchestral arrangement by Stokowski himself). In Stokowski's prefacing remarks, he mentions how known and loved this piece is; it's annually played as part of the Remembrance Sunday ceremonies in England, and since today is Remembrance/Veterans Day, it's an appropriate example for us to us.

I don't know how familiar it is in this country other than for classical music aficionados; It's been used in movies and television shows over the years, including Band of Brothers. If it is true, as I believe it is, that music can soothe the savage breast, what better for our savage and discouraging age than something like this, which demonstrates the often-otherworldly quality that music possesses. This is the kind of thing that should be familiar to us, and of all the responsibilities that television has abrogated in the last few decades, that ability to provide this kind of programming is perhaps the most unfortunate.

April 25, 2020

This week in TV Guide: April 24, 1953

A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about the issue with Eve Arden on the cover, one of our readers commented that it was too bad I didn't write anything about her. Well, you know how it is—time and space, and I'm not talking about Doctor Who. I like Eve Arden too, and I love her sense of humor, especially her delivery. Well, I get a second chance this week: she's mentioned as one of the "Funny Females" that can be found all over the airwaves. Not just Arden, but Lucy, Imogene Coca, Gracie Allen, Gale Storm, and others. Which raises the question: why are there so many funny women on TV?

Dr. Bergen Evans, who moderates the show Down You Go, thinks that it's because women can succeed faster in television than in other, male-dominated professions. You see, afternoon soaps, which have a dominant female audience, thrive on "weak male characters and strong women." When hubby comes home, however, they have to revert to "chiefly comic" roles. "They will have to be attractive but giddy, blundering with charming impetuosity from one absurdity to another, to be rescued at last by the superior and forgiving male. That will make hubby beam." He's speaking partly with tongue-in-cheek, but I think there's something to this; We know stories about how men feel threatened by smart, clever women (never mind that Bogie always seemed to be attracted to them, and always seemed to get them), and that women often had to hide that intelligence in order to get ahead. But who really has the last laugh? That character that Dr. Evans is describing sounds a lot like Lucy, and she did turn out to be quite a television mogul, didn't she?

Dr. Miles Murphy, a professor of psychology, believes that women succeed in comedy because they don't face the same constraints that men do, the need that many men seem to have to appear respectable. Does this mean that comedy isn't respectable? I don't think so; I think it more likely means that women are less self-conscious than men might be about letting themselves go. Dr. Yale Nathanson, who practices psychology, looks at the ways in which women are often charged with holding families together and says that comedy is a relief, "the escape valve that lets off the pressure of responsibilities or worries." I admit, though that I'm partial to the explanation from anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who points out that "women are, on the whole, so much more appealing than men," and adds that it was inevitable that they would take over television entertainment. "Women possess the qualities of warmth and sympathy which immediately draw their fellow human beings toward them. Men may be clever, but it is the women who are good"

As for Eve Arden, "She's witty, easy on the eyes but generally finishes second to the male." THe first two are true enough, but second best? Just because she doesn't get Mr. Boynton? My wife says she never could understand what Connie Brooks would see in him. And anyway, it's not called Our Mr. Boynton, is it?

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We’re always looking at Ed Sullivan’s competition around here, and in the first half of the 1950s, that competition is NBC’s Colgate Comedy Hour and its stable of rotating hosts. Colgate and Sullivan's Toast of the Town have been going head-to-head every Sunday since 1950. Let’s see how it looks this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents a preview of "Never Let Me Go" with Clark Gable & Gene Tierney. Guests: singers Roberta Peters & Jan Peerce; Willie West & McGinty, comedy team; and the Marquis Monkeys. Also the four Copa Girls, and comedian Wally Boag.

Comedy Hour: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello host this week, with guests Hoagy Carmichael, Teresa Brewer and the Amin Brothers.

Sullivan often presented movie previews on Talk of the Town, so you can't really consider Gable and Tierney as guests; otherwise, the competition would be pretty much over. As it is, Roberta Peters and Jan Peerce are two of the biggest stars that the Metropolitan Opera has to offer (I wonder if they were appearing together in anything that season?) Willie West & McGinty were second-generation vaudevillians carrying on an act that had been around since the turn of the century, and I'm guessing the Marquis Monkeys are better known as the Marquis Chimps. On the other hand, Abbott & Costello are big box office, and combined with Hoagy Carmichael and Teresa Brewer, that's a formidable group of headliners. Maybe if Gable was actually on with Ed. . . this week's nod goes to the Comedy Hour.

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What, from this issue, speaks to us today? The man on the cover is Ralph Edwards, and in 1953 he was a TV star, with his show This Is Your Life. It began on the radio, as was the case with so many shows of the period, and after four years, in 1952, it transitioned to television. It remained on NBC until 1961, and was revived a couple of times along the way. Does the name mean much to you today? What about the idea of surprising people with the story of their life, including voices and appearances from friends, co-workers, and family? To tell you the truth, it doesn't do a whole lot for me; I don't think I'd want my life story played out in public, and this guy sure didn't.

Does Mister Peepers speak to you? It had a great cast, with Wally Cox starring in the title role of the mild-mannered Robinson J. Peepers, before he became the voice of the mild-mannered Shoeshine Boy, alias Underdog. (I should ask, first; does Underdog speak to you?) You'd recognize some of the other names in the cast: Tony Randall, Jack Warden, Marian Lorne, Ernest Truax. I confess that other than scattered clips, I've never seen an episode, but I've been told that it holds up pretty well. This issue features a look at some of the gadgets that have become a trademark of the show's humor (a trick locker, a sagging gooseneck desk lamp, Peepers' shaving mirror). Of course, besides Peepers and Underdog, Wally Cox is probably best-known as one of the original regulars on The Hollywood Squares.

And then there's Jackie Gleason, the Great One. I would like to think that he still speaks to a lot of people, but then I'd also like to think that whoever succeeded Ed McMahon as spokesman for Publishers' Clearing House is going to show up at our door any day now, and I'll welcome that person with open arms, social distancing or not. At any rate, this week's lead story goes behind the scenes to show us the writers' room, where all those great Gleason bits come from; I take some comfort from reading about how even professional writers who compose professional jokes can have writer's block, struggling to come up with an idea that takes off, especially when dealing with someone as larger-than-life as Gleason. And speaking of the Great One, it comes as no surprise that he disdains things such as rehearsals, not even bothering with the script until the day before the show. But once he gets involved, watch out; he controls everything from the music performed on the show (and how the music is performed) to the camera angles for the dance routines. Says an observer, "I've often marveled that the show ever gets off the ground. Week after week I'm frankly surprised that it does. Somebody appears to be a genius around here—and my guess is that it's Gleason."

The TV Teletype asks questions. Will he or won't he? Danny Kaye is demanding $200,000 for a three-minute guest spot on an unnamed show. "Producers are convinced he made his asking price intentionally prohibitive" because he's not ready to move to the new medium. That won't come for another decade, but when he does, he'll meet with much success. Does he or doesn't he? Red Skelton is threatening to move to ABC in the fall with a filmed show. It doesn't happen, though: Red, who's currently on NBC, instead moves over to CBS, where he'll remain until he returns to NBC in 1970. Does this speak, can you hear it?

It can be a challenge, in these early, unshaped days of television, to know what to look for, to identify that which is significant, to find what speaks to us today. It seems so long ago. And yet all these people, and those you read about below, they do speak to us. They've helped to form the cultural world we live in today; even if you haven't seen This Is Your Life, everyone knows the premise and recognizes the spoof. We live in their world, after all, and we're richer for it, whether we hear them calling us or not.

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Cultural programming (i.e. the classy show) on TV isn't dead yet, and we've got several examples this week, even if they aren't in prime time. On Saturday, NBC Opera Theatre presents part one of a two-part Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss' magnificent opera, at 3:30 p.m. (part two airs next week). Then, at 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, NBC's back at it with a two-hour Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Hamlet (left), starring the great Maurice Evans (also known as Sam's father on Bewitched), Ruth Chatterton, Joseph Schildkraut, Sarah Churchill and Barry Jones; TV Guide calls it "the epitome of high level entertainment." In one of those unfortunate scheduling moments that people are always complaining about in the pre-VCR days, CBS's Omnibus (3:30 p.m.) has a terrific show of its own, including a dramatic reading from A Tale of Two Cities, a dance performance by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a look at the latest exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a short story by James Thurber. It's great stuff—providing you're willing to skip the last hour of Hamlet—and it's the kind of thing that you can see, if not all the time, with far more frequency than you see today.

(One of the reasons we don't see programming like this anymore is because weekends are dominated by sports. Well, this weekend all we have is a horse race on Saturday, and a pair of Cubs games Saturday and Sunday. Makes you wonder how people freaked out by the virus-induced sports meltdown would have reacted back then.)

On Monday night the classics continue, as the enduring Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., NBC) features opera stars George London and Dorothy Warenskjold performing hits from both opera and musical theater. There's music of another kind on Tuesday; on Dinah Shore's thrice-weekly show (6:30 p.m., NBC), Dinah "welcomes Nashville, Tennessee to the network* and goes to a senior prom, singing "Tennessee Waltz" and "Dear Hearts and Gentle People." Later on, it's Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater (7:00 p.m., NBC), and Uncle Miltie's guests are Bob Cummings, the aforementioned Wally Cox, and Lisa Kirk. Arthur Godfrey hasn't fired Julius LaRosa yet, so you'll see him Wednesday on Arthur Godfrey and Friends (7:00 p.m., CBS), along with friends including Frank Parker, Marion Marlowe, Janette Davis, and the Maguire Sisters.

*WSM, according to Wikipedia; the radio station of the same name is home to the Grand Ole Opry.

Thursday night Amos 'n' Andy (7:30 p.m., CBS) puts the Kingfish in a spot; a computer error results in a vocational guidance center grading him as an artistic genius. Next, it's Dragnet (8:00 p.m., NBC), as Sgt. Friday investigates the case of a man who apparently died from a heart attack—that is, until they find traces of poison in his system. On Friday, Dr. Bergen Evans—you remember, from the article on funny women—hosts Down You Go at 9:30 p.m. on DuMont; earlier, one of those funny women, Eve Arden, tries to help Principle Conklin make a good impression for "Board of Education Day" on Our Miss Brooks (8:30 p.m., CBS) And at 10:00 p.m., WBKB's Jim Moran hosts the fourth annual "Chicago Fights Cancer" Telethon, where you can see "Show Biz Greats" help hit a goal of $100,000 for the American Cancer Society. And who knows? You might win a 1953 Hudson!

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There's a nice article this week on 20-year-old Judy Tyler, aka Princess Summerfall Winterspring on Howdy Doody. You might remember her from this 1956 issue in which she shared the cover with Ed Sullivan; you might also remember her for the somewhat, shall we say, colorful aspects to her life that I mentioned at the time—with the kinds of details that don't make it into the pages of TV Guide, at least not in the 1950s.

But here all is goodness and light. The profile mentions how she's always wanted an acting career (her parents were both entertainers), and how, "[a]t a time most girls were concerned with dolls, Judy was modeling for Harry Conover. And that's not all, I want to say, but I won't. We don't, after all, know, although based on what we've learned, we can't help but wonder. But there's no question that Judy's got talent, and she's well on her way to having a big career; she's already won a national beauty contest, had her own show on WOR, and appeared in movies and as a bit player in nightclub acts. She married in 1950, when she was 18. She currently makes between $25,000 and $30,000 a year, which isn't chicken feed in 1953.

She'd just finished Jailhouse Rock with Elvis when she and her second husband were killed in an auto accident in 1957, when she was just 24. I prefer not to think of her that, or the other things; better to picture her as she is here, 20 years old, with a whole life to live and a career that seems limitless.

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There was a time—indeed, a very long time ago now—when, if something was wrong with your television, you didn't just up and buy a new one. You see, back then, TVs were—well, when they first came along they were pretty much a luxury item, and even after they became more commonplace, they were still pretty expensive relative to the amount of money the average household had. They weren't disposable items, in other words. So when something happened to your set, if the sound went bad (or you had no sound at all), or if suddenly black bars started appearing across the picture, you'd call a television repairman.

The repairman would come out to your home and remove the back of your set (as that repairman is doing at left) to see what the problem was. Televisions were made of tubes, resistors and capacitors, things that could be repaired or replaced, and it might be a case of merely changing a couple of tubes, like you might change the spark plugs on your car's engine; otherwise, he'd wind up putting the set in his truck and taking it back to the shop, where he'd repair the set and then bring it back to you, along with a bill for parts and labor.

The problem, which you would constantly be reminded of by the media, was that many television repairmen were crooks. They'd charge you for parts that didn't need to be replaced, or tell you they'd spent more time working on your TV than they actually had. They had the same reputation as auto mechanics, but since by then the television, like the family car, had become indispensable, you either asked your friends who they used or you picked a name from the phone book* and hoped for the best.

*A big book with names, addresses and telephone numbers in it. I'll tell you about it sometime.

The ad at the left is something you definitely would not have seen in any TV Guide from the past 40 years or so. There are several other ads in this issue for individual repairmen. It looks like good business to me; after all, if you're having trouble with your TV, why not trust someone who advertises in TV Guide? Notice that several of the shops offer "day & night" service, because you never know when your set might go on the fritz, and if you're like me, you're not going to want to wait until the next day to see if it can be repaired.

There's no question that times are different today; I think the last time I had a TV repaired was in 1988, and that only bought me a few more years at best. It's said that most modern televisions can be repaired, and it can save you a lot of money by having someone look at it, but I wonder if most people do that, or they just buy a new TV. Still, there's something about getting rid of an otherwise perfectly good appliance, like a television, just because a small part might not work. I hate the idea of planned obsolesce, but that kind of philosophy is itself obsolete. There's something about this ad that I like; it reminds me of my childhood, and of the shows from that time period. Just don't ask me to give up my big-screen TV. TV

February 1, 2020

This week in TV Guide: January 30, 1960

What are we to make of this week's cover story, "Can Ratings Be Fixed?" Does it imply that the ratings system is broken, that networks and advertisers pay far too much attention to them, sacrificing admirable but low-rated programs at the altar of profitability and popularity? Or do we understand "fixed" to have the same meaning as "rigged," that the integrity of the ratings system has intentionally been breached so the figures reflect something other than the truth, all to profit an unknown someone in position to tamper with the numbers? Oh, the uncertainty of it all.

As it turns out, according to Bob Stahl, it's a little bit of everything. In addition to those choices above, the overriding question, one on everyone's mind, is: "How can electronic gadgets in only 1050 homes measure accurately what 112,000 viewers are watching?" A Senate investigating committee is looking into it (yes, they don't have anything better to do than that), for as Oklahoma Senator Mike Monroney says, "[t]he struggle for rating supremacy led to rigging of TV quiz programs." Put that way, compared to the constant threat of nuclear war, I guess it is an important question.

The fact is, as is the case with alcohol, guns, technology, and, well, television, the ratings are neither good nor bad, but neutral. "They serve a useful and necessary purpose in the business," Stahl points out. "The fault lies in the way ratings are constantly misused." Max Banzhaf, advertising director of the Armstrong Cork Co. (sponsors of Armstrong Circle Theater), says that ratings are "designed to serve only as a guide in making program judgments," but that "too often [they're] used as a substitute for judgment. ABC President Oliver Treyz says ratings are "only one factor in any program decision." Answering critics who claim networks are too eager to jump on the bandwagon and copycat successful shows, NBC Vice President Hugh M. Beville Jr. replies, "Is it wrong to give the people what they say they want?"

Counters historian (and Kennedy confidant) Arthur Schlessinger, "The television industry must see its job, not as that of catering to the worst or even the average taste of its audiences, but in part as that of elevating taste." And Marion B. Harper Jr., president of the imposing McCann-Erickson ad agency, says that networks "must telecast more shows of quality than the ratings indicate the public wants to see." (We touched on this question of who decides what quality is last week.)

Garry Moore, who's been on TV long enough to know a thing or two about ratings, raises this question: "Is a comedian any funnier when he gets a 30 [rating] than when he gets a 20?" As an example, "[s]uppose the comedian gets a 20 when he has a really good show. His audience will talk up the show to friends; more people will tune in the following week. So he may get a 30 rating that second week and not have as good a show. Wouldn't that mean he was funnier with a 20 rating than with a 30?" Yes, the ratings are necessary, but they "don't show whether viewers buy the sponsor's product." As to the question of whether or not the ratings are rigged, Sen. Monroney says they aren't. "[W]e concluded that rating samples are inadequate, that ratings receive far too much emphasis in the industry, [but] we never charged that ratings were rigged." It's possible that television could see something akin to the payola scandals that rocked the radio world, but unlikely.

Unsurprisingly, reports Stahl, "There is no clear-cut answer to all of this." Broadcasters and advertisers need to be taught how to use the ratings correctly, and, says Beville, since the press aren't experts enough to write about them, "ratings should have no place in the press." Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS, offers the final word: beyond ratings, the networks need to know something more: what people want to look at. "We need constantly to know what the audience things we ought to be doing." To that end, they're conducting their own public-opinion polls, but I'm not sure that's necessary, because we all know what the audience thinks the networks should be doing: putting on better shows.

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If you think we're done with Garry Moore because of that little quote above, you've got another think coming. He's looking pretty satisfied on the cover, and for good reason: his Tuesday night variety show has more than held its own against NBC's heavily promoted Startime specials despite the latter's massive budget advantage ($250,000 per show, as opposed to Moore's $100,000), and I've Got a Secret, the panel show he's emceed all these years, is doing "quite all right" against NBC's Perry Como Show. (You'll notice ABC's not even in the discussion, which is par for the course in these days.)

"You can't run scared," Moore says of the doomsayers predicting disaster for both of his prime-time shows at the hands of well-funded competitors. Of his Tuesday night show, he says that "we expected very rough competition and we were prepared for it." It's true that Showtime got off to a good start, but Moore credited the loyalty of his viewers for his show's success. "People were familiar with our show from last year and I guess a lot of them liked it." It doesn't hurt either that the supporting cast includes Durward Kirby, Allen Funt and his Candid Camera, and Carol Burnett. "I guess the most important thing is to have faith in what you've all learned over the years and not start running around scared when the ratings slip a point or two."

Regarding that $100,000 per show budget, Moore provides an example of how that money doesn't really go very far. "Nine years ago if we wanted a smoke effect for some kind of a skit, somebody would borrow a bucket from the janitor and get 40 cents' worth of dry ice from the drugstore. Today you've got to have three special-effects men and a hand-forged bucket and the tab is $40. That's the way it goes." Multiply that by thousands, and now we know why simple things cost so much nowadays.

Moore closes with a great take on the quiz show scandals. Asked if they were embarrassed, he says, "Of course we were embarrassed. Embarrassed because no one bothered to investigate us." Apparently giving away $80 per show doesn't attract much attention. But Moore wouldn't have it any other way. "I turned down a job as host on a big-money quiz show because I figured that, on it, I wouldn't be a host at all. I'd be a croupier."

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Invariably, one of the programming victims of the ratings game is the cultural/educational genre. These shows haven't disappeared from TV completely, but with few exceptions they've been relegated to the Sunday ghetto, This week is a good example, beginning with CBS's famed trio of Sunday morning religious and cultural shows. At 10:00 a.m. ET, Lamp Unto My Feet presents "Far God and Country," a documentary on the role of religion and the Scriptures in American politics during the Revolutionary War. At 10:30 a.m., it's Look Up and Live, with "The Betrayal," the final episode in the five-part series "Images of the Bible." Finally, at 11:00 a.m., Camera Three has scenes from Colette's novelette The Vagabond, interpreted in dramatic and dance sequences. Following that bloc, CBS continues with the CBS Television Workshop, an hour-long anthology series that ran on Sundays throughout 1960. This week's presentation is the drama "Heart of a King," but the program also utilized Afredo Antonini and the CBS Symphony Orchestra for opera and classical music programs.

Speaking of, the culture continues at 3:15 p.m. on NBC (following the NBA game of the week between Detroit and Boston), with NBC Opera Theatre's live, color special of Mascagni's one-act opera Cavalleria Rusticana. The title might not be familiar to you, but this might be: the Intermezzo, one of the most famous orchestral pieces in opera, used in all kinds of movies including Raging Bull.

Following the opera, it's back to CBS at 4:30 p.m., with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, on Ford's Sunday Musical Showcase. While Bernstein is famous for his Young People's Concerts,* he's also a frequent teacher and commentator on classical music; in this program, "The Creative Performer," guest Igor Stravinsky conducts the Philharmonic, with pianist Glenn Gould and Met soprano Eileen Farrell. And after that, it's NBC, with G-E College Bowl at 5:30 p.m. (Case Western Reserve University of Cleveland vs. Purdue; the Boilermakers win, 260-15).

*He's also famous for having written the music for On the Town and West Side Story. Well, it didn't hurt.

None of these shows—none—would be on television today, save some niche cable station, and I'm not even sure about that. Nor am I sure that there's any network television on Sundays outside of prime time, save the political talk shows and sports. And where are those "public affairs" programs? Well, Meet the Press is on at 6:00 p.m.—prime time!

Bernstein is just fortunate that in Ford, he has a big sponsor supporting his show. Hallmark is another big sponsor, which is why Hallmark Hall of Fame airs in color on NBC Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. It's not one of those saccharine pieces of drivel you see on the Hallmark Channel, either; it's Shakespeare's The Tempest, starring Maurice Evans, Richard Burton, Lee Remick, Roddy McDowall, and Tom Poston. Don't worry; I promise I'm not going to go off on one of my toots about this. I'm saving that for a Wednesday piece of its own.

What else? Well, there is sports this weekend, though not the volume we have today. At 2:00 p.m. Saturday, the NHL game of the week has the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Bruins at Boston Garden, while at 2:30 p.m. NBC counters with the NBA matchup between the Philadelphia Warriors (before they moved to San Francisco) and New York Knicks from Madison Square Garden. Sunday night, CBS presents a two-hour retrospective on "The Fabulous Fifties," hosted by Henry Fonda, with an all-star cast including Jackie Gleason, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Betty Comdon and Adolph Green, and news highlights with Arthur Godfrey, Roger Bannister (the first sub-four-minute mile), Navy Captain William Anderson (who sailed his submarine, the Nautilus, under the polar ice cap), and Edmund Hillary (conqueror of Mount Everest). Eric Sevareid provides commentary.

On Thursday night, the great French star Maurice Chevalier stars in a one-man show on CBS (10:00 p.m.), performing all his favorites, including "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," which he sings to some special members of the audience, including the daughters of Joan Crawford and Jack Paar. Friday, it's a one-man performance of another kind, as Art Carney stars in three one-act plays: Sean O'Casey's "A Pound on Demand," "Where the Cross is Made" by Eugene O'Neill, and "Red Peppers" by Noel Coward. (8:00 p.m., NBC, and in color, of course.) Elaine Stritch guest stars in "Red Peppers," doing a couple of song-and-dance numbers with Carney. Carney's singled out for praise in one of our Letters to the Editor as well, for his recent performance in "Cal Me Back." Anyone who thinks he's just Ed Norton has another think coming. Also on Friday, Robert Conrad makes a brief cross-over appearance as Hawaiian Eye's Tom Lopaka in "Who Killed Cock Robin?" on 77 Sunset Strip. WB's always good that way.

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"Introducing Pat Crowley" in
the role of the Kookie.