This week in TV Guide: August 16, 1969

Anew era in television begins this week, as Merv Griffin enters the late-night talk show fray with his debut on CBS. (Guests for that first show: Joe Namath, Woody Allen, Leslie Uggams.) Merv's hardly a stranger to the game, having helmed a daytime show on NBC as well as his syndicated chatfest for Group W, but as Neil Hickey writes, things are a little different now.

This is the first time ever that all three networks are programming simultaneous late-night talk shows, with Joey Bishop representing ABC's entry in the "Insomnialand Sweepstakes." And we're not talking about peanuts in this battle-to-the-death contest; Johnny Carson's Tonight Show earned about $15 million for NBC last year. For years, CBS's affiliates had survived on the network's inventory of old feature films, but with prices going up and inventory shrinking, change was in the air; when around 80 percent of CBS affiliates said they'd clear the show in the late-night timeslot, the game—or, in this case, the show—was on. As for the host...

According to Hickey, it was a call from the William Morris Agency to CBS's new late-night boss Mike Dunn that set things in motion. Among the Agency's many clients was one Merv Griffin, currently negotiating a new contract with Westinghouse, and the renewal was far from a done deal. The Agency asked if CBS would be interested in Griffin should he become available. Dunn replied that, yes, he'd be interested. When the Group W negotiations reached an impasse about three weeks later, Griffin's handlers called Dunn back. A couple of meetings later, the deal was set: two years, with an option for six more, and CBS had itself a ready-made show to take on Johnny and Joey.

Merv's not under any illusions about the magnitude of the challenge, but he's also excited. "The biggest drawback to the show which I've been doing for the last four years was its built-in lack of topicality, caused by the fact that it was aired, in some cases, as much as five weeks after we made it." When Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, he says, "we had to just sit there as though it hadn't happened." He wants his staff to "read the front page as well as the theater page," but doesn't want propagandizing. "The fewer personal causes I exploit on the air the better the show we'll have." It's the guests he's interested in, and their areas of expertise. "These shows should reflect the whole contemporary scene: comedy, ideas, music." He's not going to let himself worry about the competition, either. "If I let myself pay too much attention to the competition, I risk falling into a tererible trap. I can't let them affect how I do my own show."

There's a very interesting comment made near the end of the article by a CBS executive. "Nobody knows how long Carson is going to work," he says. "He shows signs of wanting to do something else. When he does quit, NBC—which has enjoyed this lush oasis for so long—will suddenly be in the same position we were. Griffin will get a large chunk of Carson's audience and some of Bishop's." The truth, as Hickey concludes, is that nobody knows. And ain't that the truth. Carson, of course, is not near quitting; he'll continue another 23 years, to 1992. By that time Bishop is long gone—he won't even make it out of 1969. Merv is absent the scene as well; as Griffin's comments suggest, he wanted a topical show with topical, and often controversial, guests, and soon chafes under the restrictions CBS attempts to put on his show. He secretly negotiates a deal with Metromedia to return to syndication as soon as CBS cancels his show, which happens in 1972. That edition of The Merv Griffin Show continues until 1986, when Merv finally hangs it up. Maybe he doesn't beat Carson, but he certainly leaves the scene unbowed.

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Speaking of the late-night wars, 1960s style, if you're into this kind of thing then this is your week! Not only do we have Johnny, Joey, and Merv slugging it out in the post-local news period, we also have Dick Cavett! Yes, in the timeframe between Cavett's morning show and his anointing as Joey Bishop's successor, during the summer of 1969, Cavett hosts a three-nights-a-week show for ABC. As such, on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday of this week, you have all four of my generation's late-night titans appearing on the same evening, three of them at the same time. It's really quite extraordinary when you think about it. And if you lived in the right market, you could also have seen Steve Allen's syndicated show. If only someone could have found a place for Jack Paar—wouldn't that have been a time!

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We spend a lot of time here looking at woman's fashions, so it's only fair that this week we get a glimpse at Hollywood's "wild" new look for men.

It grooves, doesn't it? Our models are, from left to right, Stan Freberg, Robert Wagner and Robert Culp, three men with reputations as being among the most stylish dresers in entertainment. Dick Hobson gathered the three of them, plus Sammy Davis Jr., to see how they feel about the new styles. Wagner admits to the truth of his publicist's statement that he has "the most impressive wardrobe on the tube"; Culp concurs, saying that Wagner "always looks elegant," but says Davis is "the only cat I'd call a style leader." Not surprisingly, Freberg bosts of the most flamboyant outfits, living up to his daughter's description of him as "a groovy daddy." The formula: "An Edwardian suit with a dragoon collar. Or my Cardin suit with a sculptured back—a real mindblower. I have a Bill Blass blazer with his initials monogramed all over the lining, which is a little ostentatious of him, don't you think, considering it's my coat." He does have his limits, though: "The bell-bottom is a little too faddish for me."

As for other favorite outfits: Davis is proud of "Two mink coats and a mink cape and three pairs of doeskin boot-pants." The boots and pants are all one piece? "Yeah, you put them on just like a regular pair of pants. The gas is to casually put your leg up and people say, 'You mean they're all one?" Wagner boasts of starting the Cassini Nehru look; when Culp suggested that Tony Randall actually ntroduced the Nehru to America on the Carson show, Davis interjects, "No, I brought it from Paris and it wasn't called the Nehru; it was called Mao jacket. Because of politics, you wouldn't use the word Mao so I said it was a Nehru." Davis adds that "I came back from London three years ago wearing beads, and people said, 'Beads?' Within six months everybody was wearing beads." Freberg says that at first he felt a little self-conscious; "A year and a half ago I went on the Tonight show wearing what I thought was a wild Eric Ross jacket until Tony Curtis came on with Edwardian lapels, a whole row of military medals and high knee boots. Everybody applauded."

Yes, boys and girls, this is what the state of men's fashion looked like at the end of the Sixties. But there are some more traditional styles that the men admire: Wagner likes Cary Grant ("He never had to bother with an expensive wardrobe because he wears clothes so well that the suit that looked well on him in 1939 still looks well on him."), Culp admires Johnny Carson (he "has a fabulous influence, though nobody has ever accused John of being adventurous."), Davis loves Fred Astaire ("Tails on Astaire look as comfortable as tennis shoes, Levi's and a T-shirt."), and they all agree that while Sinatra has loosened up from his investment banker look, Davis tells of how he once kidded the Chairman that "You're dressing like you're known all over the world," to which Sinatra replied, "Well?"

I love clothes myself; I never went for ascots and Nehru jackets, although I'll admit to a couple of leisure jackets in the day, but I've always been most comfortable in a nice three-piece suit or double-breasted jacket with dress boots, and I only wear a white shirt to weddings and funerals. My one regret is that I've never had the opportunity to wear a tuxedo; they say a tux looks good on every man, and at this stage in my life I'll probably never get the chance to find out. But a classic wardrobe is still timeless—I'll let you decide if the outfits above fill the bill.

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As far as TV goes, summertime is reruntime, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a blockbuster. That's the case on Sunday, when NBC repeats Elvis Presley's historic comeback concert (8:00 p.m. CT), first shown the previous December. It was the King's first television appearance in eight years, and it's proven to not only be one of the definitive moments in Presley's career, but a riviting hour of television. In the rerun vein, Saturday night's Jackie Gleason Show (6:30 p.m., CBS) shows how far the Honeymooners have come from their half-hour roots; in this hour-long musical-comedy episode, "The Honeymooners visit sunny Spain, where Ralph rushes to the rescue of a lovely senorita—and finds himself entangled in a blackmail plot." It's part of the story arc in which the Kramdens and Nortons have won a trip around the world; the elements are there, in that it would be typical for Ralph to get in over his head with some complicated scheme. But it seems a long way from that New York tenament, doesn't it?

On Saturday and Sunday (4:00 p.m.), ABC presents third- and final-round coverage of the golf season's final major, the PGA Championship, from National Cash Register Country Club in Dayton, Ohio. (Yep, you read that right.) The tournament "offers a mouth-watering $175,000" in total prize money (2019's total purse: $11 million). and Ray Floyd holds on, despite a final round 74, to defeat Gary Player. Proving that political controversy is no stranger to sports, civil rights and antiwar protestors disrupt the third round, throwing a cup of water in Player's face and trying to grab Jack Nicklaus's ball off the green. "The tournament continued in a sinister cloak-and-dagger atmosphere," according to the Associated Press. "Small groups of long-haired characters in hippie attire were seen congregating at various places. Police milled through the crowd." Player double-bogeyed the hole where the water was thrown at him; he lost by one shot. Rounding out the weekend sports scene, WTCN is the flagship for Minnesota Twins baseball, as the Twinkies take on the Washington Senators (noon both days) from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, which just last year was known as D.C. Stadium.

Liberace is back on network TV with his own summer replacement show (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., CBS) and his guests are Eve Arden, Mary Hopkin, Matt Monro, and ventriloquist Ray Alan with his dummy Lord Charles. That's on opposite It Takes a Thief (7:30 p.m., ABC), in which we get to see Robert Wagner and his fabulous wardrobe accompanied by a cast of unlikely guest stars: Joey Heatherton, Paul Lukas and Barry Williams. And at 8:00 p.m., "A black district attorney and a white cop are men at odds" in the TV-movie Deadlock, which winds up as "The Protectors" segment of The Bold Ones. We also get part two of a CBS News Special on the generation gap (9:00 p.m.); last week's first segment was called "Fathers and Sons," this week's follow-up is "Mothers and Daughters." The producers express the hope that viewers will watch the troubled families and take consolation in knowing they're not alone; executive producer Ernest Leiser says, "The only way to bridge the gap is with mutual compassion."  Thursday's episode of Ironside (7:30 p.m., NBC) strikes me as a prescient one. "Ironside is caught in a racist crossfire when he's ordered to prove the innocence of a Negro militant accused of a riot murder. White extremists want to set an example; black extremists claim it's a frame." I wouldn't want to be the Chief in this one.

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This week's starlet is 22-year old French pop singer Mireille Mathieu, the girl who none other than Maurice Chevalier calls "A little queen [who] has come out of the peoplpe, to be workshiped by those who like French songs." Having made it big first in France and then the rest of Europe, she's now in the process of making it in the United States, doing the circuit with Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Danny Kaye. Her agent, Johnny Stark, places her in high company, along with such French icons as Chevalier and Edith Pief, but to do so she will need to become both a singer (which she is) and an artist (an area in which she continues to evolve). And she has to be accepted in the U.S. as she is elsewhere.

Back in the day, it was possible to charm an audience by singing in a foreign language; after all, Piaf herself did it with "La Vie en Rose." But, Mathieu tells Robert Musel, she is determined to master the English language. "I cannot sing in English with the emotion I feel in French because the words do not mean as much to me. This makes me dissatisfied because I want the Americans to hear me at my best." She plans to remain in England after the end of her television series with John Davidson (Fridays, 7:00 p.m., ABC) "until I learn English really well." "When I talk with John on the show, I have to read the English from cards phonetically."

Music styles change; in the years since, the type of song Mireille Mathieu sings has waned in popularity. She never really became big with English-language songs, and never reached the heights of Chevalier or Piaf, but she's remained popular in France, Germany, and Russia, among other countries. And the 75 albums she's recorded, most recently in 2015, are 75 more than I've managed.

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The original logo for PBS, using the colors
of its predecessor, NET

What's in a name? We're not sure, but The Doan Report tells us that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, about to begin its first full season of broadcasting, is haggling over just what the new network is going to be called. The preferred name—Public Broadcasting System—is thought by some to sound too corporate, too "centralized," which is just what they don't want to employ, since much of the network's content will be provided by local stations for local stations. ("Besides," says one official, "it may sound too much like CBS." Would that they could get CBS's ratings, though.) Then there's the Public Broadcasting Network, but "the word 'network' is thought to be anathema these days to many congressmen." As we all know, they never did come up with a good alternative, and PBS it is, to this day. And still without CBS's ratings.

NBC, meanwhile, has announced plans for 100, count 'em, 100 specials for the 1969-70 season. There are so many, in fact, that Doan acknowledges the risk that the frequent preemptions may run the risk of antagonizing fans of NBC's hits, such as Laugh-In and Bonanza. I'm not getting too worked up about the specials, though; we're talking about things such as Christmas specials from Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby (plus a repeat of The Little Drummer Boy), standards like the Miss America Pageant, and an all-star circus with Tony Curtis, who can do a few acrobatic stunts himself. In other words, fun, maybe, but not too many "special" specials. Your mileage may vary, though, depending on how much you like the stars.

And the Teletype reports that "A specially set up network will carry Jerry Lewis's annual Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day telethon for 22 hours on Aug. 31. Last year, Lewis, who has been national chairman of the charitable organization for 18 years, raised $1,400,000 on the telethon." The all-time record, set in 2008, is $65,031,393.

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Last but not least, for all you youngsters out there, one of the catchphrases of the post-Apollo 11 era was, "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't," followed by your favorite description of some worthy but insurmountable task, e.g. "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't figure out how to feed the hungry." Subconsciously, it was not so much a complaint about things that needed to be done (although it was certainly that), as it was a reminder of how monumental the moon landing was, and how unthinkable it had been for so long. I don't know what its equivalent would be today, since continuous technological achievement is more or less taken for granted, but you get the point. So did Susan Biles of Waterbury, Connecticut, who, in this week's Letters section, reminds us of something else we take for granted nowadays. "I can watch the fantastic live transmission of the moon walk," she writes, "but I cannot receive a local channel 24 miles away. Ah, the inconsistencies of life!" Indeed, Ms. Biles, and were it so that this could be our biggest complaint today. TV

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The charm of "Monsterpiece Theatre"

With everything that's happened in the first half of the first month of the year, I think we could do with a little bit of whimsy today, so let's put aside the serious subjects today and look at something really important, one of the most charming of the regular features on Sesame Street: "Monsterpiece Theatre."

Regardless of what you might think about the educational merits of Sesame Street, one of the strengths of the longtime children's series has been its ability to deal in humor that appeals to children and adults alike, often on two completely different levels. "Monsterpiece Theatre," introduced by "Alistair Cookie" (Cookie Monster), is one of the best examples of this. It's obviously a parody of Masterpiece Theatre, right down to the meticulously detailed opening sequence (including pictures from previous "Monsterpiece" episodes, and spines of books adapted for the show, such as "The 39 Stairs."*)

*A parody, of course, on John Buchan's famous thriller The 39 Steps.

This segment spoofs Spading Gray's "Monster in a Box." The title is the same, but the story is much different.


As usual, the introduction by Cookie Monster is very funny, particularly his perpetual problem with pronouns. "Me digress," he says at one point, though I doubt children would know what the word "digress" means.I particularly appreciate his sly throwaway comment when, referring to how the story is written by Spalding Monster and stars Spalding Monster, he remarks "No ego problem there."* It also features something that, to the best of my knowledge, never happened with Alistair Cooke on the original, when Cookie Monster becomes directly involved with the story, as he has to show the dimwitted Spalding what "inside" means. A bit of a thin plot, though.

*Lest this be seen as a shot at Spalding Gray, I had the opportunity to see him in person once, at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, when he was performing "Gray's Anatomy." It was terrific, as were most of his other monologues.

What would "Monsterpiece Theatre" be without the most famous of the Masterpiece Theatre plays, though? Here's the appropriately-named "Me Claudius," (a "classy drama") complete with new opening credits.


I can guarantee you no child is going to get those opening titles. I also have to think that the writer of this scene saw Spartacus at one point, don't you? (I don't think I ever saw Alistair Cooke eat his pipe after the broadcast.)

Here's a brilliant take on "Waiting for Godot," called "Waiting for Elmo," a "contemporary classic," which means nobody can understand it, "Not even Alistair." After the absurdist drama plays out, Cookie astutely comments, "That deep, deep stuff,"


Finally, what would any classy show be without the touching and heartwarming "Conversations With My Father"? After all, the only thing better than one Cookie Monster is two Cookie Monsters.


There are other funny take-offs out there, of everything from "West Side Story" to "Lethal Weapon." As I mentioned, you can argue about whether or not Sesame Street has done a good job of educational television. However, there's no doubt that skits like this show how the program has always had the knack of appealing to adults without contaminating, if you will, the effect it has on kids. As evidence, I'll leave you with a non-Cookie Monster skit, the famous Ernie & Bert bit about "Bert's Brother Bart." Unless you have a very precocious child, I don't think he'll get that "I'm aghast" joke.

TV  

This week in TV Guide: July 8, 1967

ohn Edgar Hoover likes The F.B.I. I mean, he really likes The F.B.I. The longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been a staunch supporter of the ABC series ever since its debut in 1965. Testifying before a House subcommittee, Hoover says that "I have received hundreds of letters from people saying that the inspector on the FBI series portrayed what they thought an FBI agent should portray." He added, "I want our agents to live up to that image."

The inspector in question is Lewis Erskine, portrayed by Efrem Zimbalist Jr., formerly of 77 Sunset Strip, and the subject of this week's unbylined cover story. Hoover is also a big fan of Zimbalist; he says that the actor "has captured the esprit de corps of the FBI and what it is like to be an FBI agent . . . He has helped to depict the dedication of law enforcement officers to duty, integrity, and law and order."

Zimbalist is in Washington. D.C. to film some background shots for the upcoming season of The F.B.I., and he receives a hero's welcome from the Bureau's agents, three of whom provide Zimbalist with an escort as he and a camera crew drive past the city's landmarks, establishing the proper atmosphere for the series. Following filming, Zimbalist will be ushered in to a brief private meeting with Hoover, as he has several times during the run of the series. Hoover calls Zimbalist "one of the team."

I've often spoken of my fondness for The F.B.I., particularly the opening credits from the series' first few seasons. Besides the memorable theme music, the opening provides a montage of Washington's most revered symbols: the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the Supreme Court, and the Department of Justice building, the original home of the FBI. I swear, it makes you want to run out there and sign up. 

The F.B.I. was more than a propaganda piece, though it certainly portrayed the Bureau in an exceptional light. At the time the FBI was indeed a highly respected department—referred to be CBS during a report on the JFK assassination as "almost never doubted"—with agents that were thought by the public to be incorruptible. (That may not have reflected the reality then, and almost certainly doesn't now, but that was in fact the image, and we all know what wins out when perception clashes with reality.) But the series succeeded on its own merits, portraying hard-working law enforcement agents who rarely had the improbable flashes of brilliance and technological miracles of today's police procedural. Instead, they depended on the science of the day, combined with good, exhaustive investigative work. In place of quirky, stereotypical characters, the emphasis was on plot and detection, and the unquenchable thirst for justice.

My favorite story about The F.B.I. concerns a pair of columns written by the political satirist Art Buchwald. One mentions an FBI agent named Efrem Zumgard; the other tells the story of the first wiretap, when Hoover himself personally bugged the first phone call made by Alexander Graham Bell. ("When he said, 'Mr. Watson, come here—I want to see you,' the Bureau had the tape in 30 minutes.") Buchwald has Hoover registering in the hotel under the name of Zimbalist. Still makes me smile.

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For the first time in history, baseball's All-Star Game is being televised in prime-time. It's being played at the four-year-old Anaheim Stadium, home of the California Angels, and NBC is taking advantage of the time difference to start the game at 7:15 p.m. Eastern time, 4:15 p.m. on the West Coast.

Unfortunately, starting the game at that hour produces some unintended side-effects, chief among which is that the late-afternoon sun is right in the batter's eye for much of the game. The National League scores in the top of the second, the American League ties it up in the bottom of the sixth, and there it remains for awhile. Quite awhile, in fact. It isn't until Tony Perez' home run in the top of the 15th inning, almost four hours later, that the National League wins the snoozer, 2-1. The game sets records for most strikeouts (30, as every one of the game's twelve pitchers records at least one strikeout) and innings played, and is the first All-Star game in which every run is scored via home run. Had the game simply started at the usual time for a game being played in the Pacific time zone, it would have made it into prime time in the East anyway.

This year's game is the middle edition in a troika of dismal Midsummer "Classics"; last year's affair, played in the afternoon in St. Louis, featured a game-time temperature of 105° (turning the stadium, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, into a "torture chamber"), while the 1968 contest, another prime-time game played in the air-conditioned comfort of the Houston Astrodome (where the angle of the sun won't make a difference) will be yet another dull clash, won by the National League 1-0 via a first inning run scored on a double play. Except for 1969, when the game is played on Wednesday afternoon due to rain, the game will remain in prime-time thereon.

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Radziwill with Farley Granger in Laura

There's a note in the Doan Report that David Susskind has lined up a blockbuster for one of his two-hour ABC dramas next month: Princess Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy, will star in The Voice of the Turtle, John Van Druten's Broadway hit, adapted by Truman Capote. Now, as far as I can tell, "The Voice of the Turtle" never made it to television, and the story behind that might be interesting. What did make it to TV the next season was a disastrous adaptation of the mystery classic Laura, starring Radziwill (billed as Lee Bouvier, her maiden name), and adapted by Capote. To say that it was panned doesn't quite do it justice; it was absolutely trashed. "Slow moving," "Awkward material," "The wardrobe alone emerges unscathed," were some of the kinder comments.

Now that I think of it, I'm sure the story of how The Voice of the Turtle became Laura would be more interesting. I do know that Capote, a longtime friend of Radziwill, was the one who encouraged her to get into acting, talked Susskind into casting her, and wrote the script for her. Ironically, a repeat broadcast of Laura in June 1968 will postponed due to the assassination of Lee Radziwill's brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy.

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Doan also reports on high hopes that the bill authorizing creation of the Public Broadcasting Corporation, currently in Congress, will pass. It does, although not without some fireworks, and by 1969 we'll see the debut of PBS' most lasting legacy, Sesame Street.*

*Note: this is not the famous hearing in which Fred Rogers swayed Senator John Pastore's mind on funding for PBS; that happens in 1969.

Not everyone is a fan of government funding for education, however. California Governor Ronald Reagan, himself a former actor, comes out against the government entering into "direct competition with private television," and says that educational TV should be developed through closed-circuit systems, aka cable-TV. To this day, there's more than one TV critic, including yours truly, wondering what PBS offers today that can't be found elsewhere in the cable or streaming universe. Supporters of public broadcasting counter that, without government funding, the network has to rely on programming that attracts viewers, just like commercial networks, rather than providing the kind of niche programs that its supporters envisioned. 

Oh, by the way, although The Voice of the Turtle never made it as a TV play, it was made into a movie by Hollywood. One of its stars? None other than Ronald Reagan. But, as far as I know, the movie has never been shown on a PBS station.

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Alan Kogosowski today

No "Sullivan vs. The Palace" this week; Piccadilly Palace, Hollywood's summer replacement, is itself pre-empted on Saturday night by the Coaches' All-America all-star college football game, (6:30 p.m. PT, ABC). Ed's around, though (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), with a rerun featuring Tony Bennett, Nancy Sinatra, Count Basie and his orchestra, dancer-choreographer Peter Gennaro, comedienne Totie Fields and the comedy team of Hendra and Ullet, 13-year-old classical pianist Alan Kogosowski, and the acrobatic Mecners.

Neither my wife nor I were familiar with Alan Kogosowski, and between us we're pretty savvy when it comes to classical music. Naturally I wondered if this 13-year-old had ever amounted to anything, so of course I looked him up on the always-reliable Wikipedia. His story turns out to be quite interesting: he did indeed achieve some fame as a concert pianist, particularly in performing the works of Chopin, but perhaps more significant has been his work researching and treating carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive strain injury. Who knew?

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Every year, we run into the staple of the summer television season, a collection of unsold pilots that have been packaged into a series that would run for 13 or so weeks. Monday night features Vacation Playhouse (8:00 p.m., CBS), a charming title which hides the faint odor of failure. Tonight's episode (from 1963!) stars Ethel Merman as Maggie Brown, the owner of a restaurant near a U.S. Navy base.  My recollection of these playhouse-type episodes is that it was easy to see why none of the pilots ever made it as regular series. Speaking of vacations, on The Tonight Show, Bob Newhart begins a three-week stint as guest host for Johnny Carson. (11:30 p.m., NBC) Must be nice.

One of the week's original programs is Spotlight (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), a British import hosted by comedian Shelly Berman and singer Shani Wallis (and, for a couple of weeks, Benny Hill!) that serves as the replacement for The Red Skelton Hour. (Tom Jones also has a turn as host during the series' run, which would lead in turn to This Is Tom Jones a couple of years later.) Tonight's special guest is Englebert Humperdinck; it might be worth a watch, especially if you're trying to stay awake after that All-Star game. 

One of the week's few original programs is The Steve Allen Comedy Hour (Wednesday, 10:00 p.m., CBS), the summer replacement for The Danny Kaye Show, with Steve's wife Jayne Meadows, and guests Tim Conway, Lou Rawls, and Stiller and Meara. Interesting note is that the sketches are directed by Harvey Korman. As for the reruns, Otto Preminger plays Mr. Freeze in Batman (7:30 p.m., ABC), and country stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs (who recorded "The Ballad of Jed Clampett") play themselves in a Beverly Hillbilles episode that involves the Clampetts filming a soap commercial (8:30 p.m., CBS). And speaking of Batman, Yvonne Craig is one of the guests on The Joey Bishop Show (11:30 p.m., ABC). You're welcome.

Thursday's highlight, at least for me, is the ABC documentary series Summer Focus, a collection of reruns from the various ABC docuseries. Tonight's episode is "I Am a Soldier," originally shown in 1965 on the network's Saga of Western Man series. The program's focus is on Captain Theodore S. Danielsen, a company commander with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam, who completed his second tour a year ago. As was the case with Alan Kogosowski I was curious about Capt. Danielsen; whenever I see one of these Vietnam documentaries, I always wonder what happened to the soldiers they profiled. In other words, did they make it back home? I'm happy to report that, in this case, he did, retiring from the U.S. Army as Lt. Colonel Danielsen, after 27 years of service, during which time he was the recipient of the Silver Star and three Bronze Stars with Valor. He died in 2011, aged 75,  survived by his wife of 46 years, two children, and many relatives, and highly respected by the men who served with and under him. Not to mention a grateful nation.

The Green Hornet goes off the air on Friday with a repeat of the conclusion to a two-part episode involving the operator of a crooked health-club (7:30 p.m., ABC). As I think I've mentioned before, The Green Hornet had trouble in balancing expectations: was it a campy superhero series, a la Batman? After all, it had the same producer, Bill Dozier, and there was even a crossover story between the two series. On the other hand, Hornet lacked the eccentric villains and big-name guest stars of Batman, and had a decidedly straighter tone to it. Regardless, I'm sorry it only lasted one season; having watched the complete series a couple of years ago, I thought it was a lot of fun. Could have used more Bruce Lee, though. A lot more.

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Joseph Finnigan has a wry article on the Golden Globes, which he calls "the tongue-in-cheek awards," based on their longtime reputation for awarding performances based on suspicious criteria. For example, at this point very few nominees appeared for the show, and those who did were invariably the winners, which led more than one person to suspect that the only way to induce stars to show up was to promise they would win. The show has had a successful run for several years as part of The Andy Williams Show, but its reputation would catch up with it in 1968, when the FCC ruled that this practice constituted "mis[leading] the public as to how the winners were determined," which in turn led NBC to drop coverage of the show until 1975. Sounds vaguely familiar, don't you think?

The strange thing about this article, though, is that the Golden Globes were held on February 15, nearly five months before this article ran, and the 1968 show wouldn't be broadcast at all due to the FCC ruling. Usually you want some kind of a hook when your piece is going to run—and I can't imagine why anyone would have been interested in reading about the Golden Globes in July. Can you?

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MST3K alert: 12 to the Moon (1960) Moon beings fear that earthmen on their first manned spaceship are bringing greed and destruction to their world. They plan to retaliate. Ken Clark, Michi Kobi. (Saturday, 3:30 p.m., KCRA in Sacramento.) This ponderous space/soap opera isn't nearly as weird as Design for Dreaming, the short accompanying it on the MST3K broadcast. Masked people dancing to the future in the middle of the General Motors Autorama? Now, tell me that isn't weird. Almost as weird as Mr. B Natural, right? TV  

Around the dial

Xt bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues with the second te,leplay from the team of Albert E. Lewin and Burt Styler, "Craig's Will," a rare Hitchcock comedy, with a fitting cast including Dick Van Dyke and Stella Stevens. 

If you've been reading along, you know that David's been going through prime-timebib television of the 1970s at Comfort TV, to see "if it's possible to watch at least one episode" from every series. Well, you can cross off another series, with the discovery of an episode from The Chicago Teddy Bears. Remember that series?

At Realweegiemidget, Gill looks at that rare breed of TV-movie that acts as an anthology, with separate segments (think Trilogy of Terror for example). Rex Harrison Presents Stories of Love was a pilot for an unsold TV series, with a cast including Agnes Moorehead, Bill Bixby, Leonard Nimoy, and Juliet Mills.

John returns to the British anthology series Armchair Theatre (I always enjoy typing that name), and the offbeat "A Bit of a Lift," deeply flawed but still worth watching (isn't that the way with most TV, though?), and including casual sex, rape, thoughts of suicide, and more. What else do you need?

Combine the words "retro" and "TV," and you're likely to get my attention. That's what happens at Silver Scenes, where the Metzingers report on the new FAST channel PBS Retro, featuring 1970s, 80s, and 90s shows, mostly from the network's inventory of children's programming.

I've long-ago given up on the new version of Doctor Who, but I'm still a fan of the original. (Why else would I have shelled out big bucks recently for personally autographed pictures of Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy?), So you'll want to read Mike's review at A View from the Junkyard, aof the new colorized version of "The Daleks."

As good as Alex Trebek was, Art Fleming has always been my host of Jeopardy!, and if that makes me old, bite me! On this 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth, Travanche looks back on Fleming's career, and how it lead to the Jeopardy! podium.

One of these days I'll get back to watching Maverick (I've only made it through season one so far), but at Television's New Frontier: The 1960s, we're up to 1962, the fifth and final season of the show, with Jack Kelly carrying on as the sole Maverick brother.

Martin Grams has an interesting little article on the "lost" Batman episode featuring the villain Two-Face, which was written by Harlan Ellison and would have been part of the show's third season until it was cancelled; reportedly, Two-Face would have been played by Clint Eastwood. 

I've written about Lawrence Welk several times, including just a couple of years ago, and that's also Paul's subject at Drunk TV. Paul calls himself "a born-again Welk-oholic," and looks at how the show offers a glimpse into a long-gone past.

I've had some really interesting comments the last week or two, and if you've left one of them and you're hoping I'm not ignoring you, I'm not—it's just that between a busy schedule and a bout of lethargy, I've fallen behind again. Hang on, I'll get to you! TV  

This week in TV Guide: June 10, 1978

In the decade-plus that I've been writing this feature, we've dealt with many topics: politics, sex, sports, drugs, nihilism, and on occasion even television. Never before, as far as I can recall (unless it had to do with The Invaders), have we delved into the mystery of Unidentified Flying Objects. Until now.

The cover story of this week's issue, written by Dick Russell (and, by the way, isn't that a terrific illustration on the cover? It's by the great John Berkey), is sparked by the new Jack Webb series Project U.F.O., which premiered in February 1978 and, as Russell points, is "television's first attempt to dramatize the isse in some sort of authentic fashion." Just as Webb's police dramas Dragnet and Adam-12 come from authentic police files, the incidents in Project U.F.O. come from the Air Force's Project Blue Book, which investigated UFO reports for 22 years. Roughly 70 percent of the cases from Blue Book were, according to Webb, "Natural phenomenia like balloons or clouds." Other reports were hoaxes. "But about 12 to 15 per cent are true unknowns." Webb's producer is retired Air Force colonel WIlliam Coleman, who headed Blue Book in the early 1960s. Coleman says he's seen several UFOs himself, all of which were eventually identified as natural phenomenia, except one. When Coleman became head of the project, he found that his report on the 1954 incident was missing, which sounds about right the way the government does business.

Examinations of the mysterious appearances continues; the United Nations has recently started its own debate, and the United States budget contains about $21 million over the next seven years for a project called "Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence," designed to detect "artificially generated radio signals possibly being beamed toward our solar system from distant planets." The project's manager, Robert Edelson, doesn't think the answer lies in little green men, or aliens of any color. "What's involved is either an absolutely incredible energy expenditure or an extremely long travel time, and probably both," noting that a round trip journey to the nearest star, traveling at seven-tenths the spead of light, would require "about 500,000 times the annual electrical output of the entire U.S." And that's without any recharging stations on the way. 

Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek is convinced that there's more to this. He's convinced that "there's an intelligence connected with this. I don't know whether this intelligence is from very far off, or whether it is metaterrestrial . . . or whether it will finally turn out to be from inner space, some strange manifestation of our own psychic energy." It could even be a parallel dimension. Then again, as Isaac Asimov says, it could be a lot of baloney. "Eyewitness reports of actual spaceships and actual extraterrestials are, in themselves, totally unreliable." He puts them in the same league as ghosts, angels, levitation, zombies, and werewolves. Whatever the case, apparently there were not enough people interested in it to make Project U.F.O. a success, as it exits these mortal coils after 22 episodes.

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One flying object that's anything but unidentified is the satellite. Not that long ago, we saw the dramatic impact introduced by the Early Bird communications satellite, and now, says Don Kowet, the satellite is having a "startling" impact on the pay-TV industry. 

Our story begins on November 8, 1972, when HBO's microwave antenna on the Pan Am Building in New York was toppled by a sudden storm. It was hoisted back up just in time, and the programming went on as scheduled. Critics warned that this was an omen, that HBO's project was doomed to failure. Instead, six years later, HBO's subscrption base has increased from 365 to over a million, on 500 cable systems in 46 states and Puerto Rico. It controls about 80 percent of the pay-cable industry, now worth $14.2 million monthly. And with Showtime joining an increasing number of packages, the future looks rosy. "Within 10 years," one network official says, "cable will be generating annual revenues of $2.5 billion." With assets like this, he says, "the best shows on TV will end up on pay." 

The secret to cable's success lies in the satellite. The costs of transmission via satellite as opposd to traditional land lines is less than half, and it costs just as much to broadcast to thousands of receivers as it does just one. "Before the satellite," says HBO chairman Gerald Levin, "there were an isolated 3500 cable systems across the country. Immediately, with the satellite, we had the potential of a national network, with millions of homes across the country available." 

A second break for the cable companies came with a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in 1977 that ended prohibitions on what kind of movies systems were allowed to show (previously, they'd been prevented from showing any movie between three and 10 years old), and the amount of sporting content they could carry. Says Levin, the decision "gave us the freedom not to be artificially denied a particular film merely because it was a certain age." 

The remaining obstacle to cable's success is the peneration of major metropolitan markets. While cable is a hit in rural areas and places where getting a clear signal can be difficult, basic cable reaches only 5.7 percent of homes in the top-50 core cities. Levin sees those rates going up, with disconnect rates going down. The introduction of lightweight "optical fibers" might aid in expansion as well. William Donnelly, a vice president at Young & Rubicam advertising agency, says he expects a 30 percent penetration by Christmas 1981, at which time advertisers will be very interested. But as Viacom's Ralph Baruch says, "I don't believe the American public is ready to have pay cable and, in addition, be besieged by commercials." Baruch is also doubtful about things like pay-per-view; "How do you persuade the viewer to pay $2 to $3 a program above the basic cable fee, when he was paying $8 to $10 a month above the basic cable fee for a whole lot of programming?"

Times change. That network official who predicted the best programming would wind up on pay-TV has been proven right. As for the delivery method, though—just the other day, I read the latest article projecting the upcoming death of cable, as cord-cutting continues to increase; the eventual move of ESPN to an over-the-top service could be the final straw. One analyst predicted that an over-the-top ESPN could cost $50 or more per month, and that a sports fan who wanted to see all his favorite teams compete in various sports conceivably could wind up paying $500 a month to see them all. The exponential increase in prices for both cable and streaming have led many people to give up on television altogether, or to go with ad-supported free channels such as Roku and Pluto. Services such as Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, and Max are doubling down on Baruch's analysis, asking people to pay more per month to avoid commercials. In short, television has passed through an entire phase, going from broadcast to cable to streaming to cord-cutting. The future did come true, though, even though it was for a relatively short time.

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

Kirshner: The performers are Patti Labelle, Gary Wright, Robert Gordon with Link Wray, Ricci Martin, and comic Ellis Levinson. Songs: "Isn't It a Shame?" "Funky Music," "You Are my Friend" (Patti).minneapomin

Special: Host Mac Davis, Rod Stewart, Todd Rundgren, Andrew Gold, Johnny Paycheck and George Benson. Highlights: "You Put Music in My Life," "You Are" (Mac); "Can We Still Be Friends?" (Todd).

As you know, I'm frequently ambivalent about this feature; it can sometimes be difficult to tell a real difference between the lineups. Not this week: I must admit, probably to my shame, that other than Patti Labelle I don't recognize anyone from Kirshner, although I might recognize the music. On the other hand, I may not like country music, but there's no denying Mac Davis is a star, as are Todd Rundgren and Johnny Paycheck, and I am a George Benson fan (Benson and Earl Klugh; good times back in the day). So this week Special wins in a song.

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This week's issue contains more than just a documentation of what was on TV in St. Louis, Missouri the week of June 10, 1978; it contains, in a way, a little piece of the life of the owner of this issue. Paging through the listings, we see programs circled and notes made, indicating what he or she (or they) watched that week. We've seen this kind of thing before in the issues we look at; it makes the issue more alive to me —more personal, more like a document that tells a human story. Did they watch highbrow drama or lowbrow comedy? Were movies their thing, and if so, who were their favorite stars? Were they, like I was at this time in my life, a sports fan who'd watch anything with a stick, a ball, or a tire? Let's find out, complete with the program descriptions that helped attract their attention.

Our viewer begins Saturday with the movie The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (noon, KPLR), producer Stanley Kramer's fascinating excursion into childhood fantasy, starring Hans Conried and Tommy Rettig. A 1977 made-for-TV movie captures primetime viewing: Sharon: Portrait of a Mistress (8:00 p.m., NBC), stars Trish Van Devere as a career woman with a history of compulsive affairs with married men, who has become involved with an impetuous single man. However, Fantasy Island (9:00 p.m., ABC) is also circled, perhaps in case Sharon isn't that captivating. (After all, Judith Crist did say that "affairs with married men do a lady little good.") The two fantasies for tonight feature Maureen McCormick as the daughter of a former glamour queen itching to win a beauty contest; and three adventurers who want to find the lost treasure of a nororious pirate. 

Sharon was circled, while Fantasy Island had a box around its title, but our viewer must really have wanted to watch FDR (11:30 p.m., KETC), because it's both circled and starred! Anyway, FDR was a half-hour series broadcast on ABC in 1965, running for 26 episodes, covering the Roosevelt presidency. Tonight's episode, "The Hundred Days," covers FDR's inaugural speech and the first months of his Presidency when Congress passed 15 New Deal bills.

Either our viewer isn't a sports fan, or is just planning to surf around Sunday afternoon's schedule, which includes boxing, tennis, women's golf, and auto racing. Instead, we cut to another starred program at 7:00 p.m., an ABC News Special entitled "1968: A Crack in Time," hosted by Cliff Robertson and Frank Reynolds, which provides a retrospective on major news stories of that year. Film clips are scheduled to review the Presidential campaigns, the Tet offensive in South Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the capture of the Pueblo, student riots in New York and Paris, the stormy Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and Apollo 8 orbiting the moon. There are also scenes from the topical Laugh-In and memorable moments in sports: the summer and winter Olympics, and Joe Namath's Super Bowl win (even though that actually happened in January 1969). People who lived through that must have marveled that it was already (or only?) ten years ago; frankly, I'm surprised they were able to cover it all in an hour.

There are big stars next to two Tuesday movies, so unless there's a VCR in the house, something's got to give for this viewer: at 8:00 p.m., it's CBS's repeat of the Woody Allen hit Play It Again, Sam, starring Allen as Allen Felix, an insecure writer whose love life hits bottom when his wife walks out on him; coming to his aid is the ghost of his movie idol, Humphrey Bogart, who offers some hard-boiled advice. Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Susan Anspach, and Jerry Lacy co-star. However, at 9:00 p.m. on NBC, it's the final hour of the three-hour Raid on Entebbe (joined in progress following St. Louis Cardinals baseball), the story of the June 1976 terrorist skyjacking, and the ordeal and rescue of the Israeli hostages at Uganda's Entebbe airport. There are more stars in this movie than there is time to show them, but Peter Finsh, Charles Bronson, and Yaphet Kotto are, in Crist's words, "outstanding."

There's another program starred at 9:00 p.m., though: Six American Families, a PBS documentary about the Burks, a family of 12 from rural Georgia. (This viewer was a real fan of documentaries!) In their isolated hollow, Arlon Burk, 65, and his wife Grace, 56, have $128-a-month social security to compensate for a lifetime of demeaning jobs, boredom, alcoholism an dalienation. Yet the Burks also have a spirit of survival, and are stoic about their plight.

Wednesday's star belongs to Great Performances (7:00 p.m., PBS), and the San Francisco Ballet's performance of Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet," acclaimed for its "vigor and energy" by dance critic Clive Barnes. "I was struck by the speed and brilliance of [choreographer and comp;any codirector Michael] Smuin's conception," he wrote. "His images of love and death have an instant appeal." The TV stays tuned to PBS on Thursday for The Ascent of Man (8:00 p.m.), Jacob Bronowski's acclaimed 13-part series on the development of human society through its understanding of science. Tonight's part two traces the change from nomad to village agriculture. Bronowski follows Iran's Bakhtiari tribe, which migrates as it did 10,000 years ago. And Friday wraps up with yet another documentary, Treasure Galleon (8:00 p.m., KDNL), the 1973 story about the recovery of treasure from a Spanish ship sunk in a 1715 hurricane.

So what do we know about this real-life viewer? Well, he or she (or they) liked documentaries and PBS specials. They didn't watch much sports, or at least didn't make a point of blocking out time to watch it. The movies they watched tended to be more serious, with the exception of  The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T , and the only non-documentary weekly series they watched was Fantasy Island. Perhaps most important, they were people who don't appear to have planned their lives around television; I like to think that they spent their time reading, doing things outside, or getting together with friends. We'll probably never know for sure, but it's interesting to speculate, isn't it?

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And what didn't they watch? For one thing, the Belmont Stakes (Saturday, 4:00 p.m., CBS), with Affirmed going for—and winning—the Triple Crown over Alydar, who finished second in all three races. Saturday night, ABC has the movie Vanishing Point (8:00 p.m.), with Barry Newman; Judith Crist found it without virtue, but it's gone on to attain cult status in the years since. Remember Circus of the Stars? It's on Sunday night (7:00 p.m., CBS), with Lucille Ball, Telly Savalas, Cindy Williams, and Michael York as ringmasters, and you won't want to miss Peter Fonda motorcycling on the high wire!  The Carol Burnett Show returns for summer reruns (Wednesday, 7:00 p.m., CBS), and tonight's guest is Rock Hudson. Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) goes undercover on Hawaii Five-O (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), and who's going to believe that? Ann-Margret's a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (Friday, 10:30 p.m., NBC), and Michael Caine stars in the heist classic The Italian Job (Friday, 12:50 a.m., KMOX).

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Last (but certainly not least), PBS has released a first draft of their upcoming fall and winter schedule. It's a mixture of old and new; among the returning favorites are Masterpiece Theatre, Wall $treet Week, and The MacNeil/Lehrer Report. Julia Child returns with a new series, Julia Child and Company, that promises "new menus and culinary techniques." The Long Search will be an indepth look at world religions, similar to Civilisation and the aforementioned Ascent of Man. Cinema Showcase will present ten critically acclaimed international movies, with titles such as Seven Beauties, Pumping Iron, and Harlan County, U.S.A.

And speaking of movies, there's one other program mentioned; not too many details included, but it's described as a "consumer guide to movies," showing clips from new releases. It's called Sneak Previews, and though there's no word on who the host or hosts will be, I'm sure they'll come up with someone who'll earn a thumbs-up from viewers. TV