What's on TV? Wednesday, October 8, 1980

If you've paid attention to these Minnesota State Editions, you'll notice the ways they've changed over the years. A half-dozen or so channels have changed call letters since the statewide editions of the early 1960s, and WXOW in LaCrosse doesn't even come on the scene until 1970; meanwhile, in thenew  in the Twin Cities, three stations change their affiliations. There are also several PBS affiliates from around the state, but I didn't include them because their programming was mostly redundant. I did, however, share what you'd be seeing on Superstation WGN.

What's on TV? Thursday, September 30, 1965

This is one of those days that demonstrates the accuracy of NBC's claim to be "The Full Color Network." CBS boasts of only two prime time colorcasts (My Three Sons and Gilligan's Island), while ABC's curious choice is O.K. Crackerby, co-creator Cleveland Amory's failed sitcom (17 episodes), starring Burl Ives. Who knows why—it would take someone like Dick Tracy to find out, and hopefully that's a big-enough hint to you regarding something contained in today's listings, which, as you might have figured, are from the Minnesota State Edition. And be warned: there's a bonus article on today's listings coming on Wednesday, so don't miss it!

What's on TV? Thursday, September 4, 1980

We've talked about half-hour shows, hour shows, 90-minute shows, and even 45-minute shows, but here we see an example of the 70-minute show. What's that, you say? You don't remember 70-minute programs? Of course not, because there aren't any. In reality, they're nothing more than hour-long shows with ten extra minutes of commercials! As if some of these shows weren't already long enough, the late-night timeslot has become dominated by bonus commercials. Look at WCCO and KMSP, for example, or the ABC affiliates, in the 10:30 p.m. timeslot. All of a sudden, instead of programs starting on the hour or half-hour, they begin at 11:40 or 12:10. Yes, just what we need: more commercials. Well, never mind me; enjoy these listings from the Minnesota State Edition. Meanwhile, I have to tell some kids to get off my lawn.

What's on TV? Tuesday, August 25, 1959

Let's see: what do we have this week? Well, you might notice that the anchor of the CBS evening news this week is Ron Cochran, and if you're an eagle-eyed reader, you'll probably recognize him more for his time as anchor of the ABC evening news. He's with CBS until 1963, and in fact he'll be the host of the network's Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1961 and 1962, as was Douglas Edwards before him. See, network anchors have to find a way to make ends meet, just like the rest of us.

The rest of the day is pretty ordinary, but I'm sure you'll find your favorites anyway. The listings come from the Minnesota State Edition.

What's on TV? Thursday, August 21, 1969

In Saturday's write-up, I spent some time on the late-night talk show wars, now fully joined with the addition of Merv Griffin to the continuing battle between Johnny Carson and Joey Bishop. We've got a second sighting of Merv tonight, with an appearance on WCCO at 7:00 p.m.; since Arthur Treacher, Merv's sidekick, is on the show, it looks like an episode of his old syndicated show. Doesn't hurt the hype, though. Speaking of which, you notice that WCCO is showing Wednesday's show on Thursday; good old Channel 4, tape-delaying it a night because the news runs until 10:45 p.m. And while Dick Cavett isn't on tonight, Hugh Hefner is—and Steve Allen's on in the morning. What a deal! These listings are from the Minnesota State Edition.

What's on TV? Tuesday,

All this week on NBC's You Don't Say!, it's the battle of the doctors, as Dr. Joyce Brothers takes on Dr. Frank Baxter. Who is Dr. Frank Baxter? Well, in 1965 you would have recognized him. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, "Baxter is best remembered for his appearances from 1956–1962 as 'Dr. Research' in The Bell Laboratory Science Series of television specials. These films became a staple in American classrooms from the 1960s through the 1980s. The Bell series combined scientific footage, live actors and animation to convey scientific concepts and history in a lively, entertaining way; and the bald, bespectacled and affable Baxter served as narrator, lecturer and host. These films made Baxter (who was not a scientist) something of a scientific icon among baby boomers. 

"Several of Baxter's science films have been released on DVD. Baxter also appeared (as himself) in a prologue to the 1956 film The Mole People, in which he gave a brief history of theories of life beneath the surface of the earth. 

"In 1966, Baxter hosted a popular TV series called The Four Winds to Adventure, featuring filmmakers exploring little-known areas of the world, whether across continents, oceans, or local people and animals in a particular region."

And now you know the rest of the story. Let's go to the Minnesota State Edition.

What's on TV? Friday, July 27, 1973

There's not much to add here that I didn't discuss on Saturday. You see above the notice about the Watergate hearings; there were none scheduled for this Friday, and none were held, leaving the night open for the College All-Star Game at 8:30 p.m. What interests me is this movie at midnight on KMSP: War Hunt. "In Korea, Pvt. Raymond Endore wins the high regard of his captain for his one-man night patrols—killing silently with a stiletto—but the new man in the squad thinks Endore's killer instinct has grown to psychotic proportions." It sounds like a cross between Seven and The Manchurian Candidate, doesn't it? John Saxon is Endore, his captain is Charles Aidman, and Robert Redford plays the "new man." Additionally, the movie features Sydney Pollack, Gavin McLeod and Tom Skerritt, and, as a truck driver, Francis Ford Coppola. Better throw Apocalypse Now in that mix for good measure. The listings are from the Minnesota State Edition.

What's on TV? Friday, June 18, 1965

Wou know that summer is on the way when you see notices for programs like Vacation Playhouse, which will be filling in for Gomer Pyle starting next week. Reruns dominate the rest of the night, except for that special on gambling that I mentioned on Friday. But I think the Minnesota Twins game on WTCN looks very attractive, especially since this is the year the Twins go to the World Series. At least that's what I was probably watching, since this TV Guide is from the Twin Cities. Y

What's on TV: Friday, March 25, 1960

Ahe highlight of today's programming, as we saw on Saturday, is the TV Guide Awards show at 7:30 p.m., but there are other things of interest as well. For example, let's take a look at CBS this afternoon, with For Better or Worse at 1:00 p.m., followed by Art Linkletter's House Party at 1:30, where Art's guest is marriage counselor Dr. James A. Peterson—the host of For Better or Worse. I tell you, if there's an award for self -promotion, that takes the prize. The listings are, as you probably already know, from the Minnesota State Edition.

Around the dial

t Cult TV Blog, John continues his "Tony Wright Season " by looking at two episodes of the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion-Crawford as Watson. It's a fun series, and the two episodes in which Wright appears are no exception.

David is up to Wednesdays in 1977 in his review of 1970s primetime television at Comfort TV. It's another dominant night for ABC, with a new hit in Eight is Enough and a returning one in Charlie's Angels; let's see what the other networks have to offer in competition.

Television presenter Robert Symes was a well-known personality on the BBC when he hosted The Model World of Robert Symes, a series dealing with his love of various types of models, which he would build and operate. Read all about it this week at Silver Scenes. 

If you watched any kind of variety show in the Sixties and Seventies, you probably saw Neil Sedaka performing at some point. Sedaka died last week at the age of 86, and Terence looks back on his legendary career at A Shroud of Thoughts. 

"The Island" is the latest episode of The A-Team to come Roger's way at The View from the Junkyard, and Face is the face of this episode, in which our heroes battle the bad guys, a drug gang trying to control a, you guessed it, island.

I've written before about Clellan Card, who played Axel, the beloved kids' show host of Twin Cities television, and Minnesota KidVid continues its look at his work, concentrating on the period 1953 to 1960. They don't make 'em like Axel anymore!

At Cult TV Lounge, it's a look at the 1999-2002 series The Lost World, based on the sci-fi adventure novel of the same name by the man responsible for the stories in the series that kicked off this trip around the dial: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A great way to wrap up the week! TV

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

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

What's on TV? Saturday, August 19, 1972

In a week dominated by the Republican Convention, I thought it only fair to give you a look at one of the four days of the week with somewhat regular programming. Not for the last time, we look at the CBS lineup and remember that people used to stay at home watching television on Saturdays, or watching it with their friends. We're also  reminded that a lot of those Saturday morning cartoons of the early 1970s were pretty awful, but that there were still a few classic ones around. We're in the Twin Cities this week, with a note that the PBS stations, KTCA and KTCI, don't broadcast on Saturdays in the Summer.

This week in TV Guide: May 20, 1961

This week begins with a rare full-page editorial on the front page of the programming section, covering the recent speech by FCC chairman Newton Minow to the broadcasters' convention. This is, I believe, the "vast wasteland" speech that's become famous over the years, although that phrase doesn't appear anywhere in the editorial. 

The editorial take on Minow's speech is quite positive, with a mixture of hope thrown in; hope that as a result of the speech programming will improve, with less violence, fewer "formula comedies about totally unbelievable families," fewer commercials with "screaming, cajoling and offending," less boredom. "We need imagination in programming, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimetation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity." I know, I know—this sounds less like hope and more like a recitation of pipe dreams. But there was reason to be hopeful from Minow's declarations, such as his promise that "renewal of station licenses in the future will depend largely upon whether a station maintains programming balance." "Stations which offer no local public service shows, or which substitute old movies for network public service shows, will be in trouble." Look at local programming today, which consists largely of a continuous cycle of sitcom reruns, infomercials, and endless news that isn't really news; Minow was right.

He goes on to talk about public ownership of the airwaves; "For every hour that the people give you—you owe them something. I entend to see that your debt is paid with service." The editors urge Minow to move quickly on implementing these practices; "There has been enough procrastination." He then excoriated the industry for its overreliance on ratings ("If parents, teachers and ministers conducted their responsibilities by following the ratings, children would have a steady diet of ice cream, school holidays and no Sunday school.")

The editors approve heartily of Minow's call for more choice in programming, and hope that this extends to ABC getting affiliates in more well-populated areas to compete with CBS and NBC—"with the assumption that ABC's programming. . . will achieve at least basic balance." And they urge him to visit Hollywood "and make it clear to producers there that diversity of programming cannot be achieved without their co-operation. Indeed, isn't it time for Hollywood to abandon its defensive attitude—'We just manufacture to New York's specifications'—and assume more leadership?"

I doubt that anyone looking at the state of television over the last 60 years would say that Minow's (and the editors') hopes have been fulfilled. Despite talk of television's new golden age of prestige programming, I think the medium has, for the most part, failed to fulfill its initial promise. But, hey—a fella can dream, can't he?

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One of the most interesting Teletypes we've seen in quite a while begins with this note that a previous movie commitment will probably prevent Marilyn Monroe from doing an NBC adaptation of Somerset Maugham's play "Rain," costarring Frederic March, directed by Oscar winner George Roy Hill and adapted by Rod Serling.

Now, a little online research suggests there might have been a little bit more to it than that; everything from conflicts between Hill and Monroe's acting coach Lee Strasberg to Monroe's supposed mental unstability have been cited as complications that eventually scuttled the production. The thought continues to intrigue, though; Keith Badman, author of The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story suggested that "Rain" "would have shown Monroe’s capabilities as a serious actress."

The real reason this bit attracted my interest, however, is that we've become so accustomed to thinking of Marilyn Monroe in the past tense—a legend, someone who lived and died tragically—that it's sometimes jarring to read an article in which Monroe appears in the present tense, alive and well, with a television project in the works. I don't know, perhaps that just makes me old. I was alive when Monroe lived, and when she died, although her name meant nothing to me at the time. But think about it: if you read an article discussing a very famous someone, very much alive at the time, whom you knew only as one who had lived and died long before your own lifetime, wouldn't that attract your attention as well?

On a somewhat cheerier note, there's also ABC's plan for a future Wide World of Sports episode featuring "an experimental baseball game" incorporating many of the suggestions made over the years by baseball maverick Bill Veeck. Veeck was one of baseball's great characters, former owner of the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns, and, at the time of this issue, the present owner of the Chicago White Sox, a team which he will once again own in the 1970s. In his autobiography Veeck—As in Wreck, he had written of how baseball was being bogged down by its slow pace: "There would be nothing wrong with the now standard three-hour game if we were presenting two-and-a-half hours of action. We aren't."*

*He wrote this in 1962.  You could write the same thing, word for word, today.

Veeck planned to let fans vote on team's next move.

Among the ideas Veeck has proposed: widening the plate by 25%, thus making the strike zone larger; changing the definition of a walk from four balls to three, and a strikeout from three strikes to two; reducing the time between pitches and between innings; and making the intentional walk automatic, i.e. rather than throwing four pitches wide of the plate, just tell the batter to take his base.*

*Veeck also advocated interleague play.  Oh well, we can't always be right.

In his book, Veeck mentions his plans for the Wide World telecast, which would have been an exhibition game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the White Sox. "It was only because of my physical condition," he writes, "that the game wasn't played. Better not to do it at all, I decided, than to go ahead and do a lousy job." Too bad; I would have enjoyed seeing how it came out.

You want more from the Teletype? Okay" here's a note on "the new CBS comedy series" Double Trouble, with Dick Van Dyke and Morey Amsterdam already signed up, and adding Rose Marie to the cast. The series they're talking about, of course, is The Dick Van Dyke Show. I wonder when Mary Tyler Moore comes on the scene? Ah, but I know someone out there has the answer.

Another item: "Who Killed Julie Greer?", the opening episode of Dick Powell's new anthology series, is being filmed. That episode, starring Powell and featuring appearances by Ronald Reagan, Mickey Rooney, Ralph Bellamy and others, will serve as a pilot for one of my favorite shows of the '60s: Burke's Law. Powell, of course, also played private detective Richard Diamond on the radio; when the show came to television, the lead was taken over by David Janssen, who had, at his answering service, a sultry contact named Sam. The actress playing Sam? Come on, you know the answer.

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The week's sports highlight comes on Saturday, as Kentucky Derby winner Carry Back addes to his collection with victory in the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes (3:30 p.m. CT, cbs). The horse will be a heavy favorite to take that Crown, but he'll falter in the Belmont in three weeks' time (possibly due to an injury) and finishes a distant seventh.

On Sunday, Ed Sullivan takes his show to Las Vegas (7:00 p.m., CBS), where his show comes from the Stardust, and his guests are a mixture of headliners and Vegas lounge acts: Jerry Lewis, Phil Harris, the Kim Sisters, singer Sandy Stewart, Freddy Bell and the Bellboys, comic magician Mac Ronay, juggler Rudy Cardenas, and aerilists Michele and Michael, who perform while suspended from a helicopter. Later, on ABC's documentary series Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (9:30 p.m., ABC), we come to Yalta, 1945: the fateful meeting between Churchill, Stalin, and the dying FDR in which they plan for the future of Europe and the structure of the United Nations. 

We were talking about Dick Powell a few paragraphs ago, and on Monday, Mrs. Dick Powell, also known as June Allyson, presents a story with a twist on her eponomyous dramatic anthology series (9:30 p.m., CBS). It seems that Howard Moon (Lew Ayres), a conviced thief, is being released from prison, with the best of intentions of living on the straight and narrow. Of course, we always know how vows like that turn out. But the surprise here? It's his wife who wants him to return to his thieving ways.

Sometimes the handwriting is on the wall, and you can certainly see in in Tuesday's NBC White Paper on "Railroads: End of the Line?" (9:00 p.m.) Host Chet Huntley takes a look at the plight of the nation's railroad system, including the decline in passenger travel (due to both the increasing popularity of air travel and the interstate road system) which eventually results in the formation of Amtrak. I can remember back in 1963 when my family took Great Northern's Empire Builder from the Twin Cities to Montana; it was a great way to see the country, and while I'm no fan of government bailouts, it is a shame that passenger service has become such a thing of the past. I know; I could take Amtrak even today, but I'd be about as likely to do that as I would be to fly, which I haven't done since 2019 and have no plans to restart. (And why should I? We're retired; we can take as long as we want to drive somewhere!)

I don't often find myself perusing the daytime listings to see what's on KTCA, the educational station in the Twin Cities, but I'm making a grim exception on Wednesday for Survival Preparedness (12:30 p.m.), which, from the looks of it, may well be a regular program. Today's topic: "Distribution of Fallout." Nuclear fallout, that is. Well, I did warn you that it was a grim program. For something much happier, Perry Como has taken his Kraft Music Hall on the road again, and tonight, cast and crew find themselves in Chicago at McCormick Place Auditorium, where Perry welcomes guests Martha Raye, George Gobel, Paul Lynde, and Johnny Puleo. (8:00 p.m., NBC) 

Thursday's highlight is a rerun of The Ford Show (8:30 p.m., NBC) featuring the 1959 broadcast of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado, with host Tennessee Ernie Ford playing both the title character and Ko-Ko. "Obviously, we'd never done anything like this before," Ernie would later say. "It was an experiment we all knew could blow up in our faces. . . we were fooling with our own success [the show was the highest-rated half-hour variety show on the air at the time] and we knew we could hurt ourselves." Ford even went to the trouble of covering every dollar over The Ford Show's usual expenses. Still, there was apprehension—until the show started. Ford and his supporting singers, The Top 20, were more than up to the task (Ford himself had sung the role in music school), and the success would lead the show to attempt another Gilbert and Sullivan operetta the following year, H.M.S. Pinafore, with similar success.

I'm going to return to the field of sports for Friday's highlight, which comes to us from Washington, D.C., where the Minnesota Twins, who moved from Washington to Minnesota to start this season, take on the team that replaced them, the expansion Washington Senators. (6:00 p.m., WTCN) The Twins, when they played in Washington, were also known as the Senators, which would make this confusing enough. But while the Senators' new stadium (D.C. Stadium, later renamed after Robert F. Kennedy) is being constructed, they're playing their home games in old Griffith Stadium, named after Clark Griffith, former owner of the original Senators, now the Twins, who are owned by Griffith's nephew, Calvin. So in other words, the team that used to be called the Washington Senators is playing the team now called the Washington Senators, in a stadium named after the uncle of the man who now owns the team called the Minnesota Twins, but used to be the Washington Senators. Got all that?

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And now on to everybody's favorite summer replacement host, Andy Williams. Now, we all know The Andy Williams Show as one of television's favorite variety shows, hosted by one of America's most loved entertainers, but that's all in the future. At the moment, Andy's still "waiting for a regular show," despite considerable success over the last two summers filling in, first, for Pat Boone, and then the next year for Garry Moore. Combined with his regular appearances as a guest on other variety shows and his frequent specials (including this Sunday, when he hosts The Chevy Show with guests Gogi Grant, Jonathan Winters, and future wife Claudine Longet), and  he's primed for the big time. Says the author of this unbylined profile, "the fact that he was still performing in a night club and not singing regularly in television was still one of the medium's mysteries."

What's the story? Well, at the outset, Andy declined the projects that were being pitched to him, shows that would have been scheduled against ratings giants such as Gunsmoke. "I had enough offers," he says. "Why not wait?" Maybe it's not a sure thing that Williams will be a smash when the right offer does come along, but it's a pretty good bet; Steve Allen says, "I know of no one with higher standards or better musical taste," while Bing Crosby calls him "a fine singer whose scope is limitless. . . and an appealing person with a great deal of integrity." Jack Benny, of course, is a little more cautious: he doesn't think Williams is "the greatest thing since Seven-Up," but adds that he's maybe the next best.

In any event, when Andy does make the move the next year, he's pretty much the hit that everyone expects. Bing Crosby's words are true, and remain so for as long as Andy Williams is on TV.

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Gilbert Seldes

An interesting review of Bob Hope's latest TV appearances by Gilbert Seldes, himself an interesting man.  Seldes was one of the large figures in cultural criticism. As I've mentioned in the past, Gil Seldes wrote one of the influential books of the earlier part of the century, The Seven Lively Arts. As editor of The Dial magazine, he published one of the greatest poems of the Twentieth Century, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. He was one of the early advocates of  television as a cultural institution in its own right, worthy of review and criticism, and eventually made it to TV, where, as Director of Television Programming for CBS, one of his progeny was the all-time dramatic anthology Studio One.

But just as we weren't here to talk about Walter Brennan, we're not here to talk about Gil Seldes; rather, it's Bob Hope who's our subject. Seldes likes Hope, "a good comic actor who has been turned into a comedian, which is a different thing altogether."  And this, for Seldes, is the problem with Hope on television: that Hope is capable of more than he's showing. "The shows in which he appears have no special atmosphere or quality; except that Hope is in them, they are like a sampler of half a dozen other variety shows."

I've read this kind of criticism of Hope before. His early humor, particularly in his radio days, was sharp, edgy and occasionally suggestive—even, to some, blue. On television, however, he's fallen into a rut, "the old reliable who is always doing the same old things." Seldes doesn't use the word lazy, but others have. At some point Hope saw the laughs he could get with a golf club, a few wisecracks, and some attractive actresses standing on either side of him, and after that he stopped trying to do anything new. And while it makes for a successful career, it doesn't necessarily mean fulfilling what you're capable of.

There are always moments, as Seldes says; "A reference to the 1920's when Al Capone was playing The Untouchables live, or the mad idea tha tthe Moscow edition of TV Guide lists President Kennedy's appearance as The Millionaire—these have the sudden shock value of quick wit." Seldes says the best thing Hope's done this year was his Project 20 Will Rogers documentary voiceover, because it was something different, which he did "with confidence and modesty and skill. It reminded you that he really has talent, even if no one (and that includes himself) bothers to use it." Seldes, who confesses to a soft spot for Hope, concludes that Hope "has the talent. It needs only to be shown."

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One more to round out the week, and that's Walt Disney's plan to take his long-running show from ABC to NBC. At one time the struggling network, which helped finance Disneyland, was just grateful to have him on their lineup. He provided not only credibility, but ratings. But now, he complains, "I no longer had the freedom of action I enjoyed in those first three years." The network, pleased with the success of his Davy Crockett series, "kept insisting that I do more and more Westerns." One of the stories they rejected, he complains, was The Shaggy Dog. In the light of ABC's turndown, he made a theater movie out of it "and it grossed $9,000,000." In case you're wondering, that was a lot of money back then.

When ABC axed Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, it was the last straw. He's been approached by NBC to come on over when his ABC contract expires later this year, and he has jumped at the chance. Says a friend, "I never saw such an overnight change in a man." The freedom from ABC, not to mention the prospect of working in color, has so energized him that he's started working on programs "that can't possibly be shown until 1963." One idea after another keeps coming from him, making him positively giddy. "Oh boy! Color—and no Westerns. I can do whatever I want. Do you hear me? I can do whatever I want." TV  

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

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

What's on TV? Monday, January 19, 1959

Even NBC, the color network, has very few color shows in 1959, though two of the three color broadcasts today are for daytime quiz shows. That probably had a lot to do with the ability of various studios to handle color broadcasts; non-color studios will continue to be converted throughout the early and mid '60s. It's also been said that daytime color broadcasts allowed shoppers to see demonstrations of them in department stores, thus encouraging purchases. On the other hand, CBS has but one colorcast, Lowell Thomas' special High Adventure, seen at 9:00 p.m. on three of the four CBS affiliates in this issue. That will end as the network becomes convinced of its viability (and also gets over losing the initial color technology battle to NBC). The listings today are in living black-and-white from the Minnesota State Edition.

What's on TV? Thursday, January 2, 1964

Something we didn't cover Saturday that you might not have noticed: on Password, announcer Jack Clark takes over hosting duties for the week so the regular emcee, Allen Ludden, can join his wife Betty White as one of the players. If you've ever wondered how well Allen would actually have done playing the game, now's your chance. Meanwhile, the evening edition proceeds apace, with Betsy Palmer and Frank Gifford as the players. You can also see Betsy on I've Got a Secret Monday nights on the same network. Neat how that works, isn't it? The listings for the new year are from the Minneapolis-St. Paul edition.

What's on TV? Tuesday, October 6, 1959

Today's listings show us what would have been on NBC's afternoon schedule were it not for the World Series, but as fate (and the delayed start to the Series) would have it, the Dodgers and White Sox are facing off in Game 5 this afternoon from Los Angeles. 

	2:30	-5- -6-  8  10 13 WORLD SERIES WARMUP   SPECIAL    COLOR
	2:45	-5- -6-  8  10 13 WORLD SERIES   SPECIAL    COLOR

The game took a cool 2:28 to play (Chicago 1, Los Angeles 0, which means Game 6 on Wednesday), so regular programming should have resumed by 5:30 p.m. Not bad, hmm? This game, as well as the rest of the day's listings, is brought to you by the Minnesota edition.

What's on TV? Wednesday, July 28, 1965

I don't know if The Today Show uses guest hosts anymore; if they do, they're probably one of the last shows to do so. But back in 1965, when Hugh Downs was the host, they did, and this week's guest hosts are most unusual: puppeteer Burr Tillstrom and the Kuklapolitan Players, featuring Kukla and Ollie. It's an inspired choice, given the popularity of the characters with adults as well as children. This isn't the first time we've seen puppets on one of the morning programs, either; remember Bil and Cora Baird's marionettes with Walter Cronkite on CBS's The Morning Show back in the 1950s. So the next time you think your newscasters are all puppets, you just might be right. This week's listings are from the Minneapolis-St. Paul edition.

What's on TV? Tuesday, June 19, 1962

The Andy Griffith Show isn't on Tuesday nights, but that doesn't stop this from being a good day for the show's co-star, Don Knotts. He does double duty on CBS, appearing first on The Red Skelton Show, and then, after a half-hour break, on The Garry Moore Show. An aside after the description for the Skelton show mentions that he plays Barney on the Griffith show; that's not repeated after the description for Garry Moore. I guess they figure we must have gotten the message by then. Be that as it may, this week's listings come from the Minneapolis-St. Pal Edition. 

What's on TV? Wednesday, May 29, 1968

Wait, we're back in the Twin Cities again this week. How did that happen? Well, never mind. One of the guests on The Mike Douglas Show is Lt. General Lew Walt, who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, ultimately winding up as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps and a four-star general. He was considered one of the more successful generals in South Vietnam, securing and protecting a substantial number of villages, and working to win over the "hearts and minds" of Vietnamese citizens. He returned to the United States in 1967, and I'd imagine his appearance with Douglas was to give his views on how the war was going and what the future strategy should be.