This week in TV Guide: June 2, 1973

Among the many pleasures of classic-era television, few bring about as many warm memories as those of the local children's shows that so many of us grew up watching. In my neck of the woods, those shows included Lunch with Casey, Clancy the Cop, Dave Lee and Pete, and Carmen the Nurse; slightly earlier, it would have been Axel and His Dog and T.N. Tatters. Just about everyone has similar memories of those shows, and the local personalities hosting them. Those days are long gone, of course, and as is the case with so many things, we're left wondering How things got this way. 

Recently, 40 of these hosts gathered in Key Biscayne, Florida, guests of the Muscular Dystrophy Association as part of their "backyard carnival" planning sessions, heavily promoted and supported on local programs. The stories they tell Neil Hickey are not pleasant ones, and together they paint a picture of an America that has long since vanished. 

It all began with the new addition to the Television Code by the National Association of Broadcasters, prohibiting children's shows from airing commercials during or adjacent to their programming "that might imply any endorsement whatsoever of the advertised products." The assumption behind the rule was that the hosts of said kiddie shows exert an "oversided influence" on their viewers, thus inducing them to pressure mom and dad for that special toy, candy, breakfast cereal, or other product. (I'm shocked, shocked, to find that commercials could influence shopping habits.) This, sensibly, led many of the sponsors to pull out of their local TV advertising, which in turn led many of those hosts to quit. "When the rule became effective last January 1," said Rex Trailer of WBZ, host of the syndicated Earth Lab, "they were like waiters who were told they couldn't take tips any more. So they just quit." 

Compounding the problem is lobbying by the villain of the piece, Action for Children's Television, which is pressuring the FCC to ban all commercial advertising on children's programs. The result, says Hickey, could "bring down the curtain on local, live children's programming, and undermine network kidvid as well." Says Chuck Zink of WTVJ in Miami, who has been playing "Skipper Chuck" in the market for 17 years, "I think they're out of their minds. They rave about Sesame Street, but nobody ever mentions that Sesame Street is fantastically well-funded. I'd love to have its budget. Give me nine million dollars and I'd show you what kind of shows I could do." 

"It's a dangerous Big Brother kind of thing," adds Bill McClain, "Brakeman Bill" on KTNT in Seattle-Tacoma, who thinks this kind of pressuring could extend to news programming as well. "Many pressure groups are unhappy with TV news, and this is one way of getting at it." He also points to the elephant in the room: "If you look at who the organizers are behind the pressure groups, you see that they're very heavily infused with public-TV people. They'd love to get a lot more Government money into children's programming. But then you have a dangerous concentration of Government power. First, they're teaching kids how to read and write, and then they're telling them how to vote."

As an example of the chilling effect the rule has already had, look no further than WSYR in Syracuse. "For years, WSYR had no fewer than 11 local, live children's programs a week: morning and afternoon shows each weekday, and a two-hour extravaganza on Saturdays. Now there is only one; Salty Sam is tucked away in a 7-8 A.M. Saturday slot, with minimal ratings and practically no budget." 

No matter how good national shows, whether from PBS or the commercial networks, may be, there's one thing they can't replicate from local hosts: personal appearances. Bill McLain makes a telling point about the loss of local kid shows: "One day the public will wake up and discover all the TV kid entertainers gone. Who's going to visit the hospitals, the schools, the shut-in children—Daffy Duck?"

Now, you can't lay the blame for this entirely on ACT, no matter how sanctimonious they were with their pseudo-altruistic rhetoric about the dangers of children's television. Over the decades the family home has changed completely; children don't come home for lunch, they're more active after school, they watch less TV and more video games, and the like. As I said, it's a lost world we're talking about, a way of life that no longer exists. But the demise of local children's programming certainly didn't help matters, and McLain's warnings about government involvement in children's programming are well-founded. And we haven't even begun to discuss the role that hyperactive programs such as Sesame Street may have played in shortening the attention span of children, which has shrunk to microscopic levels over the years. (True, nobody ever accused Howdy Doody of being sedate, but still.) Through the years, Fred Rogers was a welcome respite from such busyness, but now we don't have him. And we don't have those local hosts, either; more's the pity.

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

As yet another television season comes to a close (most of this week's programs are reruns), Cleveland Amory takes his annual look at the second thoughts he might have had during the season. The four reviews that provoked the most comments from you, the readers, were his takes on M*A*S*H, The Little People (later to become The Brian Keith Show), UFO, and Banacek. To those who wrote in, he replies that he "found M*A*S*H a little better, The Little People a little worse, UFO a lot worse and Banacek better." As he adds, "see, we can admit we were wrong."

Going deeper into the season, he concedes that he's "grown to like" both McMillan & Wife and The Streets of San Francisco, both of which suffered from weak starts. And he thought he'd given a positive review to Kung Fu, but apparently it wasn't positive enough. He also wants to reassure the person who suggested that he was jealous of Kaine that he, Amory, has "lots more hair than he has." To those who felt he disliked Bridget Loves Bernie, he didn't dislike either of them; just the show. One writer clucked that Amory seemed to have a predisposition against the old jokes that appear in both The Little People and Banyon, to which Cleve replies that "We don't mind old jokes. As our readers know, we even love making up old jokes. We just mind when a whole show is an old joke."

He saves some praise for PBS's landmark documentary series An American Family, which I wrote about here. While he thought it "technically mediocre, pointlessly overlong and poorly edited," the fact was that "here was a dramatization of the decline and fall of the American dream. It was the most talked-about show of the year, and just exactly what public television should be doing and should not be cut off from doing." Comparing and contrasting it with his favorite show of the year, The Waltons, Amory concludes, "Look at both these series. A Depression family with nothing. An affluent family with everything. And then ask yourself: which one had nothing and which one had everything? Ask yourself, in other words, not what the country has gained in the past 40 years, but what we have lost."

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Two of television's definitive rock music shows, NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert, faced off on Friday nights in the early '70s. Whenever the two slug it out, we'll be on hand to see who's better, who's best.

Midnight: Soul artist Curtis Mayfield hosts. Guests include Ravi Shankar, Jose Feliciano, Canned Heat, the soul singing Spinners, and pop duo Tufano and Giammarese. 

Concert: A lot of rock from groups T. Rex; Grass Roots; Beck, Bogert and Appice, and singer John Kay. Plus a little pop from Johnny Nash and the Sons of the Jungle.

I probably saw this week's Midnight Special; it would have been the only thing on television in the World's Worst Town™ on a Friday night, and when you're in high school, Friday and Saturday nights are a major occasion to be able to stay up late. (Oh, for the days when I could make it to midnight on any night of the week.) Anyway, I don't have a lot to go on as far as opinions, so for old times' sake, we'll give the edge to the Midnight Special.

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One of the treats of the week is Peter Ustinov's portrayal of King George III on the CBS News special "The Last King of America" (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.), part of their American Revolution series leading up to the Bicentennial. If you're too young to remember, the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was a big deal in this country, even though it was somewhat stained by the aftertaste of Watergate; still, the leadup to 1976 was tremendous, and this series on the Revolution was just one of the ways CBS, and all the other networks, sought to join in. The premise gives us newsman Eric Sevareid interviewing Ustinov's George, who improvises his answers based on history and his knowledge of George's politics.

Accompanying the program is a TV Guide Background article written by James Thomas Flexner, who authored perhaps the definitive George Washington biography, which was itself turned into not one, but two TV miniseries (1984's George Washington and 1986's George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation), both of which starred Barry Bostwick as Washington. In his article, Flexner provides a genuine insight into George III, explaining his family background and how, at first, George was well-liked both in England and the colonies. There are, in fact, several parallels between the Revolution and the American war in Vietnam, including how support for the war was initially quite strong in England, and how George was laid low by increasing public damands for peace, which would haunt George for the rest of his life (he reigned for 37 years after the Revolution). Flexner doesn't make a point of emphasizing these similarities; he doesn't have a political axe to grind, he doesn't want to score points with any particular ideological group: he just leaves readers to see these similarities for themselves. 

It's a popular belief that George was insane; Flexner points out that he likely suffered from porphyria, "an error of metabolism," which he inherited from his ancestors, including Mary, Queen of Scots. It is true, however, that he often behaved in an erratic, if not insane, manner. It's a tragic story, in many ways. As Flexner says, "No king ever had better intentions than George III. It was his misfortune to have been misaimed by his peculiar childhood and then to have stumbled into the American Revolution, a world-shaking event far beyond his competence to control."

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How many of you remember watching an ABC miniseries called The Strauss Family? It goes without saying that I don't, given that I was stuck in the World's Worst Town™, but if you didn't suffer that handicap, it might ring a bell. It was a British Associated Television production, aired in 1972 over there, and in 1973 ABC carried it for eight weeks on Saturday nights at 9:00 p.m. PT. (I'm a bit surprised it didn't find its way to Masterpiece Theatre.) The Strausses wrote some lovely music, but I can't see the appeal that this series would have had in America, unless the thought was that we'd eat up anything British, and they might well have been correct. The biggest names in the series (not necessarily the stars) are probably Derek Jacobi and Jane Seymour, although many of the actors are probably well-known to Anglophile viewers. 

Sunday's highlight comes on The Wonderful World of Disney (7:30 p.m., NBC), a 50th-anniversary celebration. Included is the evolution of Mickey Mouse, highlights of past Disney TV shows and movies, and something I can guarantee you wouldn't see today: a clip from Uncle Remus singing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South, which the company has shamefully tried to purge from its history. If they ever reran this show today, they'd probably make sure to clip that scene out. And does anyone out there recall Reverend Ike? If you'd seen him, you'd remember; anyway, tonight his show premieres on WMUR in Manchester at 11:30 p.m.

The must-see TV on Monday comes later on; you'll read about it at the very end. But in the meantime, you might check out a pair of local movies, which are about as different as you could ask for: The Band Wagon (9:00 p.m., WCBV), starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and a scene-stelling performance by Oscar Levant; or The Fountainhead (9:00 p.m., WKBG in Boston), a faithful adaptation of Ayn Rand's controversial novel (adapted by Rand herself), with Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey.

One of the lesser Peanuts cartoons leads off Tuesday: He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (8:00 p.m., CBS), with Snoopy being sent off to obedience school. The series of strips on which this cartoon was based was funny enough, but let's face it: after A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, a lot of those cartoons really don't make much of an impression. Making a much greater impression is ABC's movie of the week, a repeat of That Certain Summer (8:30 p.m.), which discussed homosexuality in a far more frank way than television was accustomed to doing. Hal Holbrook, Martin Sheen, Hope Lange, and Scott Jacoby head an outstanding cast.

In addition to Peter Ustinov's bravura performance in "The Last King of America," Wednesday offers an ABC Theatre repeat of ◀ "If You Give a Dance You Gotta Pay the Band" (9:00 p.m.), a look at life in the black ghetto, produced by David Susskind, directed by Fred Coe, and written by ex-convict and former drug addict Stanley L. Gray, and stars Donna Bryan and a very, very young (11 years old) Laurence Fishburne. That's followed by an ABC News Special that stays on the mean streets: "The Methadone Connection" (10:30 p.m.), which investigates the growing use of the opiate to treat heroin addiction. 

On Thursday, we've got another one of those crossover episodes that tries to convince us that different series on the same network share the same universe: It's a special two-hour Ironside featuring the doctors from The Bold Ones, E.G. Marshall and David Hartman, treating a critically-injured Ed for a bullet wound that closely resembles the kind that paralyzed Ironside (8:00 p.m., NBC). I suspect this was originally one of those storylines that began on Ironside and ended on The Bold Ones.

The CBS Friday Night Movie is a three-hour epic, The Shoes of the Fisherman (8:00 p.m.), an overblown adaptation of Morris L. West's novel about the election of a new pope from the Soviet Union. Judith Crist calls it "mostly Hollywood with little true reverence," and, having both read the book and seen the movie, I'd agree with that, although the movie did take on added significance after the Church elected an actual pope from the Soviet bloc: John Paul II. Anthony Quinn does the honors; his Soviet adversary is Laurence Olivier.

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One of the provisos in this week's programming is that live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings could result in schedule changes or preemptions. In the early days of the hearings, all three networks carried the hearings live, with PBS showing taped replays in primetime for those unable to watch during the day So far, according to Richard K. Doan, the reviews have been mixed; in Chicago, ABC's affiliate WLS received just over 300 calls during the first two days of coverage supporting the coverage, while 450 were angered that their favorite soaps and game shows were gone. CBS says their feedback has been about 50/50, while NBC reports calls were running "more heavily to beefs." 

Networks are said to be losing about $1 million a day in revenue due to the coverage, and they're not sure how long they'll continue to provide it on a start-to-finish basis. As I recall, the nets wound up rotating coverage, which is what people have been calling for on major news coverage for years. Today, this would dominate the news channels, but I wonder how much of it would bleed over to over-the-air? In turn, would coverage that was exclusively cable-based have put as much pressure on President Nixon to resign? All speculative, of course, but one can't help but wonder, even as one marvels at how much things have changed over the years.

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MST3K alert: Girls Town (1959) Unconvincing story of a wayward girl (Mamie Van Doren) sent to a reform school run by nuns. Fred: Mel Torme. Dick: Ray Anthony. Jimmy: Paul Anka. Vida: Gloria Talbott. Mother Veronica: Maggie Hayes. Serafina: Gigi Perreau. Sister Grace: Sheilah Graham. Stan: Dick Contino. Mary: Elinor Donahue. (Monday, 11:00 p.m., WSBK in Boston) There's really not much more to add to this one; despite Mel Torme, Ray Anthony, and Paul Anka (who plays a thinly-disguised version of himself), this is about what you'd expect. Which is to say: a perfect movie for MST3K. TV  

A change of pace: the Red Skelton Christmas Show, 1968

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: if you don't try to understand the context in which a classic television program was originally shown, you're losing at least half of its meaning. It's like overcooking vegetables—when you do that, you lose the nutrients, and wind up with something that's soggy, limp, less than what it should have been. Case in point: the Red Skelton Christmas show of 1968.

The Red Skelton Hour aired at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday nights, and in 1968, Tuesday fell on Christmas Eve. It was, in fact, quite an evening if you happened to be watching television; at 9:30 p.m., Red was followed by the famous Apollo 8 broadcast, in which the three astronauts read the Creation story from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. It had been a somber year, if anyone needed reminding: a year of war, assassinations, and riots, and this was reflected in the theme of that year's Christmas show. 

Red's annual Christmas shows were something of a departure from the format of his regular weekly episodes, and including a long set piece running for at least half the episode: "Freddie and the Yuletide Doll," in which Freddie the Freeloader dances with a rag doll (Cara Williams) who comes to life; "The Christmas Spirit," a full-length skit featuring Freddie and Greer Garson putting on a show to benefit orphans; "The Christmas Urchin," in which Freddie and a friendly beat officer (Howard Keel) help a young girl and her widowed mother; and so on. 

The 1968 edition was no exception; in fact, Red functions more as a special guest star on his own show, with the de facto hosting duties taken over by U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen, who had also appeared on Skelton's show the previous year. Dirksen, seated in a wingback chair on a set that included a fireplace and Christmas tree, introduced Red's Silent Spot (repeated from the previous year) and a performance by ballet dancer Jillana, and recited Clement Clark Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," before providing the narration for the night's centerpiece: "A Christmas Story—1777." 

As Dirksen reflects on the warmth of Christmases spent with friends and loved ones, he reminds viewers that "there are those whose duties take them away from the glow of the hearth and set them down in strange places where Christmas is sadly just another day." Such a place is Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the winter headquarters of General George Washington and his Continental Army. The weather is cold, bleak, and cruel, with little for the soldiers to eat or drink, and as many of them die from cold and starvation as from the bullets of British soldiers. What follows is their story, written by Red Skelton, "a story about some brave men whose sacrifices so many years ago enables us to enjoy this holiday tonight."

Skelton is "Patrick," one of the sentries standing guard; he mans his post, even though he knows that the real enemies—the cold, the hunger—are already inside the camp. In the last month, 2,500 men have died "without costing the British one bullet." Money for the war is going to the wrong people, who "get rich on our debts." His spirits are briefly lifted when he receives a Christmas gift from his loving wife: a warm muffler, knitted in blue so he won't be mistaken for a redcoat. Too often, though, the humor in the camp is cynical, the laughter that which is "born of sadness." 

One of the soldiers brings news from Philadelphia, where food is plentiful and people live as if this "wasn't their war." When Patrick asks if they know about the conditions under which the troops are living, he is told that they are, but "the war is not popular with everybody. . .There are young men on the streets who make speeches of protest." 

"If those agitators put self before freedon, before liberty," another soldier replies, "let them come on this battle line. Let both sides fire at them." 

Patrick wonders: "Why does a man who speaks as a traitor believe that the other side will trust him?"

"So it is our lot to do the fighting," the first soldier replies, "even for those who in their fight undermine us. Perhaps we who fight will appreciate liberty a little more." 

But what is liberty? Says Patrick, "Liberty is tomorrow."

Comes Christmas Eve, and Dirksen describes the scene: "The eyes of men half alive blur with tears. The night is bitter cold, but that isn't what makes men cry. Men make men cry. Leaders of men cry, too. The spirit of Liberty makes men cry. The real heroes are dead, but those who still live are learning to be heroes. But do they live, or are they ghosts of the dead?" There is no water to be had other than that in the frozen stream; Patrick becomes so desperate from thirst that when he sees another soldier holding a canteen to his lips, he offers to exchange the muffler his wife made for him in return for just a couple of sips, but the soldier shakes his head, and Patrick runs away in shame and despair. In fact, the canteen is empty, the soldier merely miming the act of drinking: his own thirst had driven him nearly mad.

Remembering that it is Christmas Eve, and determined that they should not forget the night, Patrick sneaks out of the tent and returns with a small evergreen to serve as a Christmas tree for the other soldiers, to remind them of what this night means. "You should see them. There's light in their eyes for the first time. He then lights a candle and attaches it to a branch. I feel rejoicing; my heart overflows with gratitude and hope." For them, the little tree "beholds His divine grace." One soldier, young enough that he should be "at a Christmas dance, not walking around barefooted through the ice and snow, leaving his blood to feed the spring flowers," gazes lovingly at the tree before dying. "At least he saw the tree of the Christ Child before he walked into the valley of death." Patrick take off his muffler and wraps it around the dead boy. Even though there is no church, no altar, the camp is still alive with the spirit of Christmas.

It's an inspiring ending to a somber, stark story, but it might leave some contemporary viewers nonplussed. For instance, we're not accustomed to seeing Skelton in a straight dramatic role, with only flashes of humor. And there's nothing particularly Christmassy about Valley Forge in 1777 other than the time of year. We might wonder—where's the holly and mistletoe? Where are the soldiers singing carols? We don't even have the satisfaction of Washington's dramatic crossing of the Delaware on Christmas, 1776. Instead, we see men enduring incredible hardships; even nature seems to be against them. We know that victory eventually comes to Washington and his army, but we wonder how many of these men will live to see it. It's certainly not the stuff that Hallmark movies are made of.

But that's probably not how it would have been taken back in 1968. Viewed through the prism of the time, it's impossible not to see "A Christmas Story—1777" as an allegory on the Vietnam War. Instead of the bitter cold of Valley Forge in 1777, substitute the heat and humidity of the Southeast Asia jungle in 1968. The colonials are betrayed not by the loyalists and apathetic of Philadelphia, but by "Hanoi Jane" and the others accused of providing aid and comfort to the Viet Cong. The one constant through it all is the American soldier fighting and dying, and wondering if anyone out there cares. 

Is "A Christmas Story—1777" an antiwar story? It presents war in all its horror, stripped of its glory and nobility, reducing it to a desperate quest for survival. And yet, despite everything, the men know why they are there and what they are fighting for; it is what keeps them there, through it all, so that even though some will desert, many of them keep coming back. It's no secret that both Dirksen and Skelton were strong supporters of Vietnam*, and some might think that makes them, in part, responsible for the suffering and death that followed. Does this negate the power of what we see here? I don't think so; it doesn't seek to deny the horrors of war, and whatever one might have thought of Vietnam, either then or now, they way they were treated by many Americans after the war remains shameful. 

*Three weeks later, on the January 14, 1969 show (just before Richard Nixon's inauguration), Skelton would do his well-known and dramatic rendition of "The Pledge of Allegiance." 

Seen in context, Red Skelton's 1968 Christmas show takes on a different dimension, one that's perhaps more dramatic, more meaningful, even (for some) more controversial. In the end, I don't think it matters whether or not you agree with the message; what is important is that knowing the context enriches both the program itself, and the way in which we experience it. It also proves, once again, that there's more to "mere television" than one might think. TV  

Dispatches from Hell

I didn't intentionally set out to watch the 1968 Democratic National Convention on YouTube because of the riots that ripped through the Twin Cities last week and spread around the country from here. Incidentally, we're doing fine; we're far enough away from the troublespots that nothing dramatic happened, although many of the stores and gas stations were boarded up over the weekend, just in case. But much of the violence occurred in the part of Minneapolis where I grew up watching the TV shows I write about here. No, I didn't have the foresight for that.

In my case, it's what comes from finding myself unexpectedly unemployed (again!), this time due to virus-related layoffs. It's all there, the convention coverage; you might remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that there's a YouTube channel for just about everything, and that turns out to include classic television news. Virtually all of the CBS coverage is there, as well as much of NBC's, and the drone of speeches, the shouts of delegates, and the playing of bands makes a pleasant background while cruising internet job boards and filling out applications.

I had to stop and watch, though, when it came to the police riot.

Some background: that picture at the top is from Wednesday night, the third night of the convention. To say that it had been a contentious convention so far would be an understatement; Tuesday, the second day, had been plagued by acrimonious debates over the seating of rival state delegations (those supported by the establishment and selected by party bosses vs. delegations that were more integrated, and more anti-war). The session ran past midnight, and is probably best-known for Dan Rather getting socked by security people during a brawl on the convention floor.



Wednesday afternoon had been taken up by the highly-anticipated (and feared) debate on the Vietnam War, with the pro-war forces (supporters of LBJ's Vietnam policy) winning a narrow victory over the anti-war proposals (favored by candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, and many of the delegates previously pledged to the late Robert Kennedy). It was a noisy, bruising debate, with much cheering and booing from each side, and a lot of bitterness afterward; mass protests in and outside the International Amphitheater where the convention was being held were a distinct possibility.

In a sense, though, this was just fanning the flames of a fire that had been smoldering for some time. Over 10,000 anti-war protesters representing various groups had descended on the city of Chicago prior to the debate; Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley countered with 6,000 armed National Guard troops, in addition to the 11,000 city policemen working 12-hour shifts. When you put that many people in a relatively confined space (downtown, near Grant Park), something was bound to happen, and on Wednesday night—the night of the voting for the presidential nomination—it did.

It happened during the nominating speeches for president. Vice President Hubert Humphrey had wrapped things up by then, with McCarthy and McGovern candidates (and those touting a draft for Edward Kennedy) passionate but outnumbered. Following the nominating speech for McCarthy, given by Iowa Governor Harold Hughes, networks switched to taped coverage of the violence that had broken out between demonstrators and the police. (The coverage was taped due to a communications strike that prevented live remote coverage, a strike that some thought had been encouraged by Daley in an effort to limit media access to anything outside the controlled environment of the convention hall.) This footage comes from NBC, and while it's about nine minutes long, I think you'll find it worth watching:


It's shocking footage, and meant to be. I'm not going to go into a great deal of it here; I've already addressed it before, and at some length, in this piece, so there's no need to do it again. Word of the rioting spread to the convention floor, where it was called out by Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff in his nominating speech for George McGovern.


Of course, none of this happened in a vacuum. There were the Watts riots in 1965, and the entire nation was rocked by rioting in 1967 and 1968. Chicago was not an isolated incident; it was, I suppose, inevitable.


I'm not trying to be political here, and this isn't going to be a commentary. My principle point here is that television played a major role in bringing the violence into the nation's living rooms, and that it serves as a primary source for anyone who cares about how history can help explain events and put them in proper perspective. I lived in Minneapolis during the 1967 and 1968 riots; I'd already seen it all, and perhaps worse. I remember that, just as it was over the weekend, there was a curfew, there were National Guardsmen, there were fires and clashes on the streets and areas we were told to avoid for the duration. As such, I wasn't as shocked as some here were, especially younger reporters. (I think my friend Marc Ryan would understand.)

All that doesn't mean I wasn't shocked, though, and dismayed. You like to think things have improved since then, but what it does go to show is that history seldom changes, it just recycles. Then as now, there were accusations of police brutality; then as now, there were charges of outsiders and rabble-rousers; then as now, buildings were torched, people were injured, property was destroyed; then as now, we saw it all unfold before our eyes on television. It was depressing then, and it's depressing now.

Things might not be as bad now as they were back in 1968; we've always had notoriously short memories, and today they barely stretch back more than a few months. We're on that road, though; if we just step on the accelerator a bit, we should be there in no time. TV  

Eyewitness to history

When we think about the chroniclers of the passing scene, the witnesses to the cultural history of our times, how many of us think of John Charles Daly? And yet, once you think about it, he seems so obvious, I wonder why it took me this long to figure it out.

Most people probably think of John Daly as the urbane host of CBS's What's My Line? from 1950 to 1967, a job at which he excelled. But if you'd been around back then, you likely would have been familiar with a different side of John Daly: that of a newsman, first for CBS Radio, and then at ABC television. And as it happens, Daly reported on some of the biggest news stories of the era.

He became known to audiences as CBS's White House correspondent, where he announced many of President Roosevelt's speeches. Later, he moved to New York to become the anchor for CBS's long-running news program The World Today, and that's where Daly was on December 7, 1941 when he was first on the air with the bulletin that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.


During the war, Daly was a correspondent on the front lines in the European and North African theaters. In 1942, he was "one of the first to report. . .of the growing concerts regarding the Nazi treatment of the Jews" based on reports coming from unoccupied France. He was covering the American advances through Italy in 1943 when General George Patton slapped two soldiers he accused of malingering (they were suffering from "shell shock") and was one of the reporters who brought the story to the attention of General Eisenhower. (Daly agreed to sit on the story at Eisenhower's request; "I need this man. I can't win the war without Patton.") Back home, it was Daly who broke another story on CBS: the death of President Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1945.


After the war, Daly hosted You Are There, the program that dramatized historic events as if they'd been covered on the radio. By 1952, Daly had moved to ABC, where he'd become vice president of news and public affairs, winning three Peabody awards, and he was anchor of ABC's evening news from 1953 to 1960. At Daly's suggestion, the network carried live coverage of Senator Joseph McCarthy's hearings on communist infiltration of the Army; neither CBS nor NBC were doing so, and it was cheap programming for a network that was a distant third in the ratings. Daly's "worldly charm" was so apparent, NBC responded by replacing longtime anchor John Cameron Swayze with a team of anchors, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. In 1959, when Vice President Richard Nixon engaged Nikita Khrushchev in the famous "Kitchen Debate," guess who was there to cover it? John Daly. He wasn't one of the panelists of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, which might have been one of the few things he didn't do, but he represented ABC in the negotiations with the other two networks and the campaigns.

In his 17+ years on What's My Line?, Daly was witness to people from every segment of society: politics, entertainment, sports, and art. Joe Louis was one of the Mystery Guests, as was Colonel Sanders. Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Herman Wouk, Ronald Reagan*, Victor Borge, Lucille Ball, Walt Disney, Frank Gifford, Sean Connery, Gypsy Rose Lee, Edward R. Murrow, Carl Sandburg, Billy Graham, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, Jacques Cousteau, Chuck Yeager, Pearl Buck, Eleanor Roosevelt; all sat next to Daly as the blindfolded panel tried to guess who they were. Blonde bombshells, Supreme Court justices, political party chairmen, football heroes, various Congressmen and governors, television stars: they were all on What's My Line?, either as Mystery Guest or guest panelist or both. And Daly saw them all.

*Ronald Reagan wasn't the only future president to appear as Mystery Guest; on the syndicated version, which Daly didn't host, Georgia governor Jimmy Carter stumps the panel.

In addition to the celebrities, there were the ordinary people who made up the bulk of What's My Line?'s guests, and from that chair as moderator, Daly could see how the American workforce was changing, how jobs that were done by people in 1950 were becoming mechanized by 1967, and how women were increasingly present in jobs that had formerly been done exclusively by men. People working in the aerospace industry were now side-by-side with those twisting pretzels by hand; it had to be a profound demonstration of the new American economy, presaging perhaps the economy of today.

Daly's life at the center of things doesn't end here, though. After What's My Line? ended, Daly served as head of the Voice of America through 1968. His second wife, Virginia, was the daughter of Chief Justice Earl Warren, and it was Daly who served as an intermediary between Warren and the Nixon administration in negotiating the date of Warren's resignation from the Supreme Court. He was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors, and throughout the 1980s he hosted forums for the American Enterprise Institute; indeed, a 1982 forum he moderated was on the topic "Terrorism: What Should Be Our Response?"

What, then, do we have? As a newsman, John Daly covered the New Deal, Pearl Harbor, World War II, political conventions, and the Cold War. As host of What's My Line?, Daly saw most of the cultural icons and political leaders of the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention the changing work habits of Americans from the post-war boom to the space age. During these times, he was, in the words of authors Jeff Allen and James M. Lane, "one of the most well known and highly regarded people in the country." For over 50 years, he observed the evolution of trends in politics, entertainment, sports, and American culture itself. By any definition, it is a remarkable career. Does anyone else compare? The only name that comes to mind is Edward R. Murrow, whose impact was formidable, but I'm not sure even Murrow's experience equals the length and breadth of Daly's.

John Charles Daly died in 1991. He never wrote his autobiography, which is a shame, because it would have been one of the most fascinating cultural histories of the 20th century, by one of the most fascinating men of the century: a man who was an eyewitness to history. TV  

The thousand words

The pictures you see each Friday in the "Around the Dial" feature capture people in the act of watching, and reacting to, television. The pictures usually illustrate enjoyment, amusement, occasionally rapt concentration. I was in the process of coming up with the picture I used last Friday when I came across a photo that was so striking, not just in its composition but in its ability to tell multiple stories at once, that I thought it deserved a mention of its own.

I don't think I need to identify the occasion, do I? The photograph, taken by Philadelphia Bulletin photographer Jack Rosen, is entitled "Announcement of Death of John F. Kennedy, Sears Roebuck Store, Levittown PA," Look at the amount of detail in this single picture. We know it's in a department store, based on the variety of merchandise: organs in front of a bank of television sets. On those television sets: the picture on the left is of Walter Cronkite at CBS, having just read the flash that President Kennedy is dead. In the middle, ABC is showing a slide with Kennedy's picture and the caption "1917-1963". And on the right, NBC's Frank McGee is talking via telephone with Robert MacNeil in Dallas, who has just relayed the news from press secretary Malcolm Kilduff. The other sets are all tuned to Cronkite; perhaps these three, the easiest to reach, reflect people seeking the most up-to-date information, or maybe it was someone hoping desperately to hear that it was all just a bad dream.

It's an extraordinary moment, don't you think? For all the times we've been able to watch this footage, over and over again, have we ever seen it synchronized like this, capturing the fateful announcement as it is being made?

Just as extraordinary, though, is the reaction of the woman sitting on the organ bench. I don't know how old she is, if she's a young mother, if it's just her hair that is fashionably short, giving her a youthful appearance. I prefer to think of her as a young woman, out running errands on a Friday afternoon when her attention is captured by the bulletins. She's turned away from the TV, a instinctive, convulsive gesture, burying her face in her left hand while her right arm is held tightly against her purse. Surely there must be others standing around, watching the news, and yet the picture frames her perfectly in that second, absolutely and utterly alone and grief-stricken, reeling from a hammer blow. The photo captures that moment and freezes it forever.

There are so many pictures of the remarkable things that happened that weekend, and it would have been difficult to deny the Pulitzer to Bob Jackson for his picture capturing Ruby shooting Oswald. For my money, though, the picture of this lone woman encapsulates everything: the event, the scope, the nation's reaction. Will there ever be such a universal feeling again?

A thousand words? More like a million, or 200 million, if you ask me. TV  

The untold stories of history, as seen on TV

There's a scene in the classic Yuletide movie The Bishop's Wife—the original version, with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven—in which Grant's character, an angel, explains to a history professor (Monty Wolley) the significance of a seemingly unimportant old coin. It's a coin that Julius Caesar minted to honor Cleopatra, Grant says, and Caesar's jealous wife ordered all copies of the coin destroyed; this particular coin is the only one that survived. Grant point to the professor (and I'm paraphrasing here) is that these untold stories are what make up history, and he's right. The headlines may tell us what happened, but oftentimes it's these little moments that make history real, that bring it to life.

Case in point is this video from the Archive of American Television, a product of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and let me take a moment here to put in a plug for the Archive's YouTube channel, which is a veritable oral history of television. Click on one of these videos, and I can almost guarantee that two hours later you'll still be pursuing a thread of interviews, each one more interesting than you could possibly have imagined, valuable not only to a humble television historian such as yours truly, but to anyone interested in television of any era.

What we have here is a segment from a longer interview with Max Schindler, veteran news director at NBC. He's talking about his role in the coverage of John F. Kennedy's assassination and funeral, and in just a little over eight minutes he provides several such moments of untold history, none more fascinating than his final anecdote, one dealing with the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, carrying the late President Kennedy and the very-much alive President Lyndon Johnson. Listen to the story of Johnson's departure from the plane to face the cameras for the first time as president.*


*Here is a link to the scene that Schindler describes. 

It's that untold story, told to Schindler by LBJ, that you won't read in most history books. And yet, as Jim Lehrer says in another of the Academy's interviews, everyone has stories like this; and it is these stories, taken together, that form the mosaic that is history. It lives, it breathes, it jumps off the page and the screen. It becomes the story of us, the story of humanity—and that is how history lives forever. TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 31, 1959

I don't often write about purely local events, let alone lead off with them, but this is an unusual week; we're interested in just a few specific shows, and most of our attention goes to things philosophic rather than the content on the tube, so there's no reason why we shouldn't start with a look at the big event in the Twin Cities: the St. Paul Winter Carnival.

1959 marks the 73rd edition of the great winter celebration, and even if you're not one for enjoying cold weather, you'll be able to stay in touch with the week-long excitement. It all starts at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday with the Winter Carnival Parade, covered on all four Twin Cities channels. (The listings even give the locations from which each station will be broadcasting.) The parade begins at the State Capitol and runs for two hours and 1.3 miles before ending at the St. Paul Auditorium, with 60 bands and 35 floats.* There are stars aplenty as well, including Jimmy Dean, Ronnie Burns (son of George), Arnold Stang, and George Montgomery.

*In the post-WWII period, over 250,000 lined the streets to watch the parade.

Jimmy's doing his CBS morning variety show from the Carnival all week; he'll be broadcasting from the Auditorium Tuesday and Friday, the skating plaza on Wednesday, and the toboggan slides on Thursday. The future sausage king isn't the only one who's brought his cameras to St. Paul, though: on Saturday following the parade, George Montgomery stops in to visit the teens on KSTP's Hi-Five Time (4:30 p.m.), and Wednesday, ABC's Wednesday Night Fights comes to you live from the Auditorium, as local favorite Del Flanagan takes on Ralph Dupas in a welterweight bout, with Carnival dignitaries taking part in the pre-fight ceremonies. One of the big events of the Carnival is the crowning of the Carnival Queen of the Snows, and KMSP's matinee movie hostess Mary Jo Tierney will be interviewing the candidates during the movie intermissions Monday and Tuesday. There won't be live coverage of the actual pageant and crowning, but the winner will be making the rounds of the local shows for the rest of the week.

As you can tell if you followed the link above, the St. Paul Winter Carnival continues to this day - this year the dates have been altered to coincide with the Super Bowl festival. Television stars aren't sent by sponsors to be part of the festivities, and in fact I'm not sure how much attention local TV even pays to it anymore. But there are concerts, ice sculpture contests, a triathlon and a parade; and even as we speak, the giant ice castle is under construction. In fact, it's kind of like television itself; it may have changed over the years, but it's still alive and kicking.

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What's Erle Stanley Gardner have to say about television? Since it's featured on the cover, we'd better take a look.

Not surprisingly considering the existence of a TV series based on Gardner's most famous literary character, the author of Perry Mason is positive about the medium. Right off the bat Gardner concedes television is a factor in juvenile delinquency - just one factor, though. "I think that where impressionable young people see violence on television, when they see wrongs being righted by means of the blazing six gun, they are tremendously impressed."

That's only 1% of America's young people, though; what about the other 99%? According to Gardner, these same forces "are at work today producing an overwhelming majority of outstanding young individuals who are the best weapons democracy has in its arsenal." For them, television serves as "a stimulant to constructive imagination," learning everything from analytical thinking to problem solving. As an example, he tells the story of a nine-year-old who recently submitted a script for a Perry Mason episode; while it reflected what Gardner calls "a juvenile turn of mind," it also indicated a remarkable understanding of plotting a complicated mystery show. "The swing and rhythm of plot development were there, the clue sequence, the motivation." It was so impressive that Gardner's publisher decided to put the script in print. "That couldn't have happened before the days of television," Gardner writes, and not just because television scripts didn't exist. "It couldn't have happened because a nine-year-old child wouldn't have developed that amount of constructive imagination."

Science, astronomy, even the field of law: all will be major beneficiaries of the constructive imagination developed as a result of television. "We learn as we are interested," Gardner writes. "The individual who watches a mystery story unfolding on television and is pitting his wits against those of the detective, is engaged in study." Great scientific discoveries, the understanding of the very solar system, come "because of detective ability, a shrewd reasoning from clues." Concludes Gardner, "[I]f anyone doesn't think this person is learning at a great pace, let him talk with some of the youthful fans who watch the mystery television shows today."

I have a great deal of respect for Gardner's analysis; television served much that function in my own youth. I think even today's television can provide the stimulation needed to develop the imagination, to teach the young to think outside the box, to give them knowledge about various aspects of history, science, and culture. It may not do it as well as it used to, but we should never underestimate the power of television to provide such stimulus - nor should we be afraid to use it more often.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents a filmed repeat of his show of June 29, 1958 when the entire program was devoted to a performance by the Moiseyev Dance Company.

Allen: Steve's guests are comedienne Martha Raye, magician Mr. Ballantine, singer Danny Staton, and jazz musicians Eddie Condon, Woody Herman and Gerry Mulligan.

It's a special Sullivan show this week, an entire hour with the famed Russian dance troupe during last year's historic tour of the United States, the first cultural offering by the Soviet Union in an exchange program with the U.S. I like Russian dancing, and ordinarily I'd say that this would be good enough to carry the week. On the other hand, Steverino has a top-flight show of his own, and Condon, Herman and Mulligan - not just jazz musicians, but greats (with Allen probably joining in) - is very, very hard to beat. Too hard, I'm afraid; for the second week running, it's Heigh-Ho Steverino.

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It isn't often that we have one television show that was the subject of a book, but such is the case this week, with Sunday afternoon's Omnibus broadcast of "Abraham Lincoln: The Early Years." (4:00 p.m., NBC) The story of this program actually goes back to 1952, the inaugural season of Omnibus, and a series of five films entitled "Mr. Lincoln," written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Agee and directed by the renowned Norman Lloyd. The series was a huge success; one critic called it "the most beautiful writing ever done for television," and another classifies it as "among the finest - perhaps the finest - film about Abraham Lincoln ever made."But as William Hughes' book James Agee, Omnibus, and Mr. Lincoln: The Culture of Liberalism and the Challenge of Television 1952-1953 details, Agee's presentation of Lincoln and the Civil War is not simply a presentation of history; rather, it is an interpretation that was heavily influenced by the times, in particular the Cold War, not to mention Agee's strong personal identification with Lincoln.

As just one example. Hughes examines Agee's treatment of the alleged romance between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, one of the pivotal stories in the series.. As Agee's Lincoln embarks on his political career, serving in the Illinois legislature, he grows ambivalent about his relationship with Rutledge; in one of their final meetings he "asserts his need for independence," According to Agee, Lincoln has begun to "realize the size of his vocation and the size of his responsibility toward it." In other words, as Hughes puts it, "The gifted must give priority to their gifts," and Lincoln realizes he must "redirect his misplaced love for Ann back onto the people he would serve."*

*As Hughes points out, "Given the writer's powerful identification with his hero, and the conflict between love and vocation in his own life, Agee's reworking of the Ann Rutledge story was a projection that owed as much to his personal story as to Lincoln's."

On the other hand, writes Hughes, the culture of Cold War liberals, prevalent particularly in the TV-Radio Workshop of the Ford Foundation, the underwriter of Omnibus, "were wary of the masses, with their immaturity, their volatility, and their potential susceptibility to totalitarianism," and Agee himself was scornful of what he called "common-man sentimentalists." How to reconcile this attitude with Lincoln's seeming self-sacrifice in order to serve those very people, whom Lincoln calls his "one great concern" and "his surest support"? It can be done only by looking at the environment in existence during the Cold War, and the vision of the heroic leader, the single-combat warrior. It is, after all, a distinctly American tendency, to elevate a single individual to the heights of national savior, the "Leader of the Free World," whether it be Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy.

Lincoln, therefore, serves as a surrogate for this necessary Cold War leader, and in seeing his growth from small town lawyer in New Salem to something more, Lincoln's words - or, rather, Agee's, since we don't really know how accurate they are - suggest the need for the public to understand the role they must play, that "the common people are capable of collective wisdom, but only when they recognize, nurture, and stand by those uncommonly gifted individuals who emerge in their midst." Perhaps we aren't meant to be moved by Lincoln's words about those who supported him during his formative years, but instead we congratulate those people for realizing Lincoln's nascent greatness and doing what is necessary to nurture it for future greatness. Whew.

What we see this Sunday is a segment of "Mr. Lincoln" entitled "The Early Years," with Royal Dano (St. Peter in King of Kings) as Lincoln and the young Joanne Woodward as Ann Rutledge, narrated by Martin Gabel, which presumably deals heavily with this relationship. Agee's portrayal was controversial even at the time, (host Alistair Cooke read one letter from a viewer that chastised Agee for treating the relationship "as gospel rather than gossip."* In a 1953 episode of Omnibus, Cooke broaches the subject in a debate between Agee (who died in 1955) and Civil War historian Allen Nevins, who said of Agee's characterization of the Lincoln-Rutledge relationship, "Our count against him is simply this: That he has tampered with the truth."

*Of course, we can guess that Agee's real purpose was to use the relationship as a metaphor for his view on Cold War leadership.

In addition to the book, the movie-length, condensed edit of Agee's film is now available on DVD, with one of the extras being the Omnibus debate between Agee and Nevins. As an example of how television's storytelling fits into the large picture of the political, economic, and cultural forces of the time*, this is incomparable.

*On Sunday alone, the topic on Religious Town Hall is "Democracy," and that afternoon Channel 5 has a special called For God and Country, produced by the American Legion.

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You might remember that in last week's TV Guide we read about "The Lost Class of '59," which detailed the controversy around school desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia. This week the focus is on the Second Agony of Atlanta (Sunday, 5:00 p.m., NBC), and a strange law that mandates that if one school desegregates, all public schools in the city must be closed. Now, I've never heard of a law like that, but again, consider the times. Now, however, the people of Atlanta are faced with the choice between integrating and closing the schools. It's appropriate in some ways that this is following Omnibus, because this is the Civil War in practical terms. On the one hand you've got people looking at the Federal government coming in and overturning the laws they've made, the way of life they've lived; on the other, you've got people being discriminated against, feeling as if their own government sees them as the enemy, wondering if anyone will come and rescue them. Setting aside the human element of it for a moment, it strikes at the fundamental question regarding the founding of the United States: who has the power? Under whose rules do the citizens live? Who has the last word? Of course, it's the very human element that makes it all tragic.

This is one reason why by 1959 the relevance of "Mr. Lincoln" is not limited simply to the Cold War. As the debate around civil rights grows, as the Federal government takes a more active role in school desegregation (remember, Brown v. Board occurs only two years after the initial airing of "Mr. Lincoln), the idea of a prophet-leader such as found in Agee's vision of Lincoln takes on even greater social significance. Critics blame Richard Nixon for the creation of the "Imperial Presidency," but I wonder if the hagiography surrounding the life of Lincoln, playing off the larger-than-life presidency of FDR, doesn't have something to do with it as well.

Edward R. Murrow was the host of that Norfolk special; this week, back on Person to Person (Friday, 9:30 p.m, CBS), Murrow has one of the oddest combinations one could ever ask for: "Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and artist-illustrator Norman Rockwell." The anti-American and the all-American. Not at the same time, of course; that's not the way Person to Person worked, although it's interesting to think of Rockwell sketching an illustration of Castro during the show. Who could have imagined that in the next decade, Castro's Cuba would be the cause of a near-war and implicated in a presidential assassination, while Rockwell would be seen as the chronicler of an America that was old-fashioned and out of touch, one that had ceased to exist.

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"Television Diary," something of a predecessor to The Doan Report, tells us of a spat between, of all people, John Frankenheimer and Art Linkletter. Seems that one of the kids from the Linkletter show wandered on the set of a Playhouse 90 that Frankenheimer was working on, and the director chased him off. Linkletter responded, on-air, that Frankenheimer was "a young genius who takes himself too seriously," who which Frankenheimer replied that Linkletter is "one of the outstanding examples of TV's rush toward mediocrity." The "brickbats," apparently, are still flying. I've always enjoyed Frankenheimer's work, but judging from the defensiveness of his overheated retort, it sounds as if he does indeed take himself a bit too seriously.

And speaking of Playhouse 90, one of the last of the great dramatic anthology series, faces the ax at the end of the season. Finally Hubbell Robinson, speaking for CBS, says that the series will return for the 1959-60 season, but perhaps on a reduced schedule. In fact, the coming season will be the fourth and final for the series, and when it comes to an end so will an era. For now, though, this week's Playhouse 90 ("Child of Our Time") is up against NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame (Thursday, 8:30 p.m.) presentation of "Berkeley Square," based on the Broadway play and movie of the same name, starring John Kerr and Jeannie Carson; and "introducing" Janet Munro - who appeared in the MST3K fave "The Crawling Eye" and was once married to Ian Hendry, an early partner of Patrick Macnee's John Steed in The Avengers.

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Finally, in the "Late and Exclusive" section, a report that George Burns is doing his show live for the next four weeks, apparently to get over with his contractual commitment to doing six live shows for the season. The report adds that Burns "was 63 years old last Jan. 17." Could they have known then that Burns' career hasn't even reached its high point yet, and that he'll go on performing for another 37 years?  TV  

The write stuff

One of the great things benefits of having my own website is that I can pretty much write whatever I want, whenever I want. Well, that isn't strictly true; I've created a weekly schedule over the last six years that works pretty well, and while I'm not a prisoner to it, there are expectations from my adoring public that I have to deal with, so I don't want to disappoint you.

By and large, though, I have a freedom to pursue what's referred to nowadays as "long-form" writing, that is, a piece that might run for several pages were it in print rather than pixels. You've been remarkably generous in allocating your time to indulge me in this project, whether I'm nattering about some obscure aspect of an equally obscure program, or going off on some tangent or other than elevates a mere sitcom to something metaphysical, if not existential. It must be a labor of love, because I don't make any money off of it (yet; just wait until the book version of It's About TV comes out), but at the same time I'm very fortunate to have the time and ability to pursue it.

What brings this sweeping reflection to mind is an article from a few weeks ago in which The Ringer's Bryan Curtis noted the recent layoff of FoxSports.com's entire writing and editorial staff, in favor of going to an all-video format. (Read: pimping from the network's own video content.) This comes on the heels of several other high-profile cutbacks, including one at MTV.*

*Imagine, a network built on video going back to video. But, as you'll see from the article, we're talking about a different kind of video.

I think one of the sadder takes on the whole tend came from Sports Illustrated's Andy Gray, who, while expressing regret for those who lost their jobs, added on Twitter that “I’ve been in digital media for 12 years. One thing I’ve learned is that nobody wants to read anything over 1,000 words. MTV is more proof.” Of course, as more than one person pointed out, SI's motto is “longform since 1954.” Despite the ridicule that Gray received for the comment, the fact remains: people, so the storyline goes, don't want to take the time to read all about it. If you can't summarize what you have to say in a few choice soundbites, forget about it. Often, a website uses video to do just that; Curtis notes that "I often get a paragraph or two into a Sports Illustrated story only to find Madelyn Burke in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, giving me a summary of the sentences I’m already reading."

Now, you may wonder what all this has to do with classic television, and the answer is this: directly, nothing; but if you think about it indirectly, you'll find that it could mean a great deal. In a way, it sounds funny to suggest that the future of television depends on the written word; after all, TV was one of those forms of entertainment that was supposed to kill reading. And yet the continued appreciation of classic television often depends on people reading about it; I’ve got shelves lined with books about television history, television genres, specific television programs, and so on. My laptop is filled with bookmarks of various websites that exist to share information about various aspects of television. The loss of these sites would be another example of our culture dumbing itself down for the sake of sexy soundbites and video bursts that cannot possibly be a substitute for the written word:

1. Television is history, and history doesn’t lend itself very well either to soundbites or snapshots. In fact, it’s twofold history: not just the history of the medium itself, but the history of the culture through its depiction on screen. History doesn’t have to be dry and monotonous, but you can’t tell the story of Western Civilization in Twitter-sized bits either. To explain and understand it, you need both room and time.


2. Television is meaningful, and the meaning isn’t always apparent in a clip or a screenshot. To understand what a television show is saying (either overtly or subconsciously), you occasionally need to spread it out in front of you and go through it one step at a time. Long-form writing is, as I hope I’ve shown, one of the best ways to accomplish this.


3. Television is entertainment, and entertainment doesn’t always come right out and bite you on the nose. Sometimes you need to dig for it – I can’t count the number of times I’ve learned about a television series by reading an article about it, either through an old issue of TV Guide or by reading about it on one of the blogs, and in cases like this, a headline or soundbite often won’t do.

This last point, I think, bears further elaboration. Classic television has developed a kind of oral history through the years, a history that was initially passed on from people who’d seen old programs when they originally aired, to people who obtained copies of these shows through traders and other “brown market” sources, to people who purchased the shows on VHS or DVD when they were released by studios. In each case, the audience for this oral history was often comprised of people who had no first-hand knowledge of the program, other than perhaps a few vague memories from when they were a child, or something they’d briefly heard about or seen mentioned in an article.

As the internet grew, these oral histories were set down in writing, either in message boards or through websites dedicated to preserving the memories of particular programs or entertainers. These histories did indeed keep classic television alive, beyond the familiar programs (I Love Lucy, Perry Mason, Gilligan’s Island, and others) that made the rounds of syndicated reruns. This is how people learned of truly obscure programs that hadn’t seen the light of day since their original broadcast, or had faded from view after garnering initial publicity. Oftentimes people were intrigued, even captivated, as they learned of these shows, and sought them out as blind buys, based on nothing more than what they’d read in a long-form article. In other instances programs were made available because of the demand harnessed by the sharing of these memories. In either case, were it not for written communication, many of these programs would have gone unwatched, and the lives of their viewers would have had that much less enjoyment in them.

I doubt I’ll be starting a podcast anytime soon; for one thing, I don’t have time, and for another I don’t really have anyone close by that I can talk with about these things. And while podcasts can be both entertaining and educational, they’re not always a substitute for writing. That’s why I’ll keep at this, in one way or another, for as long as there’s something for me to write about, whether it runs 1,000 words or not. For if we don’t continue this oral history that has now become written, there soon won’t be any history to talk about at all.