Around the Dial

I've always been a fan of Raymond Chandler, arguably the greatest of American detective novelists, so it's no surprise that I like Rick's piece at Classic Film and TV Cafe giving us the "Seven Things to Know About Raymond Chandler (in his own words)."   I find his comments about The Big Sleep particularly interesting; I enjoy the movie a lot, but not nearly as much as the book, nor Bogart's other great detective movie, The Maltese Falcon.

David at Comfort TV links to a piece I did last week, touting MeTV's growth among national cable networks, and offers three compelling reasons why this is so.  I like them all, and absolutely agree with #3 - the window to a long-past culture is something I've always valued in classic television.  Route 66 and Naked City, thanks to their location shooting, are the best of numerous examples of how America has evolved over the years.  There's no better - nor more entertaining - travelogue around.

Cult TV Blog continues with his series on the use of allegory in The Prisoner.  There's some really good stuff in this analysis, and I suspect it will make both fans and first-timers of The Prisoner want to check the episodes out.  It should also make you ask why today's television, in its supposed Golden Age, can't do something like this.

Stephen Bowie, who blogs at Classic TV History Blog, has a very good piece at The Onion's AV Club on The Andy Griffith Show, and why it developed into, along with The Dick Van Dyke Show, "the essential sitcom of the early ’60s."  I have to confess that though I watched this show faithfully as a kid, it hasn't worn well with me, and I don't see it much today.  I know a lot of people who still love it, though, and its place in TV history is undeniable.

I mention in the upcoming TV Guide review that there wasn't a whole lot on television that was specifically connected to the 4th of July, and Television Obscurities' review of TV schedules on the Fourth generally reinforces that.  I'd agree that your best bet for holiday-themed entertainment back then probably came from the variety shows of the day, such as Lawrence Welk, but for a few years NBC carried the Stars and Stripes show from Oklahoma City.  Nowadays, since the Boston Pops are no longer regulars on the tube, you're pretty much left with PBS' A Capital Fourth.

I referenced Naked City earlier, and Television's New Frontier: the 1960s has a very good review of that series, including its history and a look at the stars that made it one of the best serious cop shows of the time.  It took a few episodes for Naked City to grow on me (Sterling Sillilphant can have that effect on anyone), but I've come to greatly appreciate the show's portrayal of secondary characters and guest stars, without overlooking the police work that always brings the story together.

Finally, "Christmas in July" continues at Christmas TV History.  I won't link to any specific entry, but they're all wonderful, presenting a real cross-section of Christmas TV memories that have made the time very special for a lot of people.

That's all for today - see you back for another trip to the TV Guide archives on Saturday! TV  

The book on the news: Eddie Barker takes us through the glorious past of TV news

Eddie Barker's Notebook: Stories That Made the News, and Some Better Ones That Didn't!
by Eddie Barker and John Mark Dempsey
(John M. Hardy Publishing, 254 pages, available through used booksellers or at the Sixth Floor Museum)

Before I moved to Dallas, all I knew about Eddie Barker was that he was news director of KRLD, the CBS affiliate in DFW, and that he’d covered the JFK assassination from the Trade Mart, announcing the President’s death based on information from a good source.  Now, that’s quite a lot to be known for right there, and if that was all there was to the Eddie Barker story, he still would have accomplished more than most of us.

Fortunately, there’s a lot more to the story than that, and a few years before his death Barker set it down in the wonderfully anecdotal Eddie Barker’s Notebook.  Its subheading says it all: “Stories that made the news, and some better ones that didn't!”  Staring with the teen-aged Barker’s intro to radio at San Antonio’s KMAC-AM in 1943, and through a career that included broadcasting Southwestern Conference football, being news director (and on-air talent) for both KRLD-AM and TV, and on to the challenges of public relations work and the joys of small-town radio, Barker and co-author John Mark Dempsey give us insight into not only a remarkable broadcasting career, but a look at how the industry and the country itself have changed over the course of the last 60 years or so.

Most of us who are of a certain age will remember Barker’s dramatic reporting from the Trade Mart, including the shocking announcement of Kennedy’s death at a time when much of the country was reeling from continuous bulletins and still trying to grasp the enormity of the shooting.  Though the initial news was very bad, there was enough uncertainty regarding Kennedy’s condition (and enough confusion surrounding the news stories pouring in) that one could still retain a glimmer of hope that JFK would pull through.  That lasted until an acquaintance of Barker’s who also happened to be a staff doctor at Parkland Hospital made a phone call and talked to a fellow doctor at the hospital.  After hanging up he approached Barker and gave him the news: “Eddie, he’s dead.”  Barker was so stunned that he couldn't even remember his friend’s name  - which was fine as it turned out, since the doctor didn't want attribution.

SOURCE: DALLAS MORNING NEWS

While it’s always interesting to read the behind-the-scenes account of a historic moment such as that, Barker offers us much more: the lead-up to the President’s visit, the around-the-clock work (much of it brilliant) done by KRLD following the assassination, the story of how Barker threw Dan Rather and his CBS crew out of KRLD’s newsroom (you’ll have to read the book to find out why), the coverage of Lee Oswald’s murder at the hands of Jack Ruby, and Ruby’s subsequent trial and conviction.  I don't want you to get hung up on the JFK angle, though.  Barker, a true raconteur, does indeed deliver on his promise to share not only those stories that made the news, but the ones that didn't.  Throughout his career he came into contact with people as diverse as Humphrey Bogart, H.R. Hunt, Richard Nixon, Dizzy Dean, Lucille Ball, Joseph McCarthy and Linus Pauling.  As befits a man who seemed to know everyone, colorful stories of colorful characters come alive on almost every page, from the man accused of blowing up an airliner in order to fake his own death to the successful businessman whom Barker accompanied on a private plane to prison, where the businessman was to start serving a sentence for drug smuggling.  It's a fact: everything, including the true stories, is bigger in Texas.

Through it all, one thing stands out: the power of personal contact.  We’ve become used to the impersonal nowadays; we get our internet news from people we never see, we make decisions based on the recommendations of perfect strangers, we live our own lives in a cocoon into which very few people have access.  But Barker became indispensable to CBS throughout the Kennedy story because of his personal connections.  He knew how to open doors.  Many people talked to him simply because they recognized him from television and trusted him, and they wound up telling him things they probably wouldn't have dreamed of sharing with anyone else.*  It seemed many times as if, in Walter Cronkite's words, "he knows every cop, fire fighter, emergency room doctor, and ambulance attendant in Dallas . . . besides the city, county, state, and federal officials whom he taps for information when required," but in the few cases where he didn't, he likely knew the people that did, and again the doors would open.

*An anecdote: at Jack Ruby's trial, Ruby's sister told Barker how much his presence at the trial meant to Jack, since "he's always considered you to be one of his best friends"; Barker had never met him before the trial.

Now, there are many people who know how to open doors, or how to get someone else to open them; it's another thing entirely to know what to do once you've walked through them.  Barker was first and foremost a newsman; he knew the value of speed, the importance of trustworthy sources, when to ask a question and when to remain silent, when to prod and when to sit back.  He delivered more than one "beat" (scoop) for the network, and the number of CBS personnel who recognized him as a friend and colleague (Cronkite, Rather, Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, Don Hewitt and Mike Wallace among them) testifies to the respect in which he was held.

The other thing that struck me, again and again, was how informal the news business was back then, and how well it served us.  Somebody once said that corporate America began its slide when it replaced “Personnel” departments with the more antiseptic “Human Resources,” and Barker’s book goes far to bear this out.  Barker himself was hired as a teenager because he walked into a radio station and asked for a job.  He had no experience, had none of the qualifications that HR departments would look for today – but he’d listened to the radio, he’d practiced reading wire copy, he knew how names were pronounced and what inflections to use, and he wasn’t afraid of hard work.  He read some sample copy for the program director, who told him, “I think we can find a place for you.”  Just like that, his career had started.

Barker didn't forget that, and once he became news director at KRLD he demonstrated the same willingness to take a chance, to use his newsman’s gut instinct to make a call.  When asked by Bob Phillips, who as an junior college student heard Barker speak and then worked up the nerve to ask him for a job, why Barker had hired him, an 18-year-old kid, Eddie's reply was succinct: he figured if Phillips "had the guts to ask for a job, [he] just might have enough guts to do that job."  Just like that, another career was started.  When he made Judy Jordan the first female news anchor in Dallas-Fort Worth, he didn’t even tell his superiors about it – he “snuck her on” the air so nobody could object to her without having first seen her talent.  She, like so many of Barker’s associates, went on to become a local legend.

It was easier to do things like that back then, I suppose.  It was a time, as Barker writes, when television was brand new, without a playbook for success.  There were no focus groups to provide feedback, no consultants to offer insight; in other words, no clichés to fall back on.  People made things up as they went along, keeping what worked and getting rid of what didn't.  Everybody did everything; on-air reporters were expected to know how to shoot news film, and KRLD’s weatherman and sportscaster were both news reporters who covered breaking stories when bodies were needed in the field.*  News is more corporate now, more homogenized, more specialized.  But is it any better?

*Another anecdote: in the fall of 1963, shortly before JFK’s visit, UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson was attacked by a woman with a picket sign after making a speech in Dallas.  It was one of the events that caused many to suggest that Kennedy forego the Dallas part of the trip.  Anyway, the reason KRLD had the film of Stevenson being wacked with the sign was because Wes Wise, the station's weatherman (and future mayor of Dallas), and Jim Underwood, the sportscaster, were there covering the speech.  As the time for the 10:00 news approached, they had to decide: get back to the studio for the newscast, or remain at the speech in case something happened.  Wise said he'd head back for his weathercast, and if Underwood wasn't back in time Wise would cover the sports as well. When the attack happened, Underwood caught it all on film, and KRLD had another story.

There are plenty of stories to go around in Eddie Barker's Notebook, and for me to share any more would be a disservice; you need to read the book.  But just when you think you've read it all, don't miss out on the final chapter, in which Barker recounts his post-retirement days as host of a local call-in show in his hometown of Paris, Texas.  If you're of the impression that you have to work for a big organization in a big market in order to make a difference, think again.  And if the internet and its "online community" ultimately fails in its goal of uniting people, this closing story - of the power that the human voice has to bring people together and change lives - will stand as Exhibit A.  For while technology is a great thing, it will never replace the common humanity that links us all together, for better or worse.  In Eddie Barker's hands, it was usually the former.

This week in TV Guide: July 3, 1965

I loved watching The Jimmy Dean Show when I was a kid.  I didn't know anything about country music, or the demographics that would doom shows from Hee Haw and Green Acres to The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction.  If Jimmy Dean's sausage had been available back then, I wouldn't even have known about that.  All I knew was that I liked Jimmy Dean, and I liked his sidekick, Rowlf.

Rowlf was the first Muppet I remember seeing; I don't think I'd ever seen Kermit at that point.  There was something about this dopey puppet that I thought was hilarious, and as I write this I suspect that maybe I liked Rowlf even more than I did Jimmy.  The banter between the two was easy; Jimmy always called Rowlf "my old buddy," and Rowlf in turn displayed the typical Muppet humor that would endear them to so many people over the years.

In fact, according to Richard Gehman's profile of Dean in this week's issue, Rowlf's popularity has at times threatened to overshadow that of the boss.  During a location shoot, delighted crowds swarmed over Jim Henson to the point that Dean was overheard muttering, not entirely approvingly, "Next thing you know, they'll be calling the dog the star of this here ol' show."  If it happens, though, it will only be through Dean's sufferage, because Jimmy Dean is in fact the boss of his show.  He knows his audience, he knows himself, he knows what the viewers would buy.  In the show's first season, when the network had tried to pass him off as urbane and sophisticated, the show teetered on the edge of cancellation until Dean put his foot down.  "Lemme do it mah way," he told the suits, and the ratings took off.

Though he is undeniably in charge, there is an easy camaraderie between Dean and the crew, and his producer acknowledges that nine times out of ten Dean's suggestions for changes wind up improving the finished product.  Unlike, say, Andy Griffith's character in A Face in the Crowd, the Dean you see in front of the camera is in essence the same as the one off-camera.  Sure, the accent is maybe a bit put on (his wife acknowledges that in real life he "really doesn't have much of an accent."  And for all the down-home cornpone humor, he's quite a bit more sophisticated than that.  If you have any doubts, check out this clip from his just-cancelled daytime series that aired in 1959:


Believe me, behind that aw-shucks country boy was a shrewd businessman who know exactly what he was doing.  The Dean show ends in 1966, and three years later Jimmy Dean sausage hits the shelves.  The old country boy didn't do too badly, did he?

Here's a clip of Jimmy and Rowlf doing a typical bit, the only part of each week's show that would be precisely scripted - everything else was pretty much seat-of-Jimmy's-pants.

***

During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Palace:  Bette Davis hosts this rerun from February, with guests Bert Lahr; singer Julius LaRosa; comedian Jan Murray; dancer Barrie Chase; the Nerveless Nocks, acrobats; Australian comic juggler Rob Murray; and Les Cinci, a Parisian couple.

Sullivan:  In this first rerun of the season, Ed welcomes singer-dancer Juliet Prowse, singer Connie Francis, comics Allen and Rossi, French pop singer Jean Paul Vignon, the Harlem Globetrotters, comedianne Jean Carroll, Country and Western singer Roy Orbison, and the Youngs, a teeterboard act.

Off the top of my head, I don't think I've reviewed either of these shows before, which saves me the possible embarrassment of recommending a show that I'd trashed earlier.  So what do we have here?  A couple of pretty strong lineups, but in the end I think the Palace earns the nod.  Bette Davis is a legend, Bert Lahr a talented man, Barrie Chase both talented and a babe, Jan Murray a very funny comedian, and Julius LaRosa a pretty fair singer.  Ed has Juliet Prowse, who's not quite in the same league as Chase, Jean Carroll, who's not nearly as funny as Murray, and Connie Francis, who's not quite as good a singer as Julius LaRosa.  Only the legendary Roy Orbison could elevate Ed, but it's too much for just one man.  The Palace earns the decision this week.

***

Throughout the '60s TV Guide prided itself on its serious coverage of the business of television.  This week, Edith Efron chats with FCC commissioner Lee Loevinger, author of the choice words that appear on the cover.  Loevinger, a former justice on the Minnesota State Supreme Court, is something of a libertarian when it comes to Federal control over the airwaves, setting him apart from his colleagues on the Commission.  For instance, Loevinger believes that the separation of church and state (which, we know, never appears in the Constitution) would seem to render moot the FCC's authority to mandate religious programming on local broadcasters.

Lee Loevinger

For that matter, Loevinger seems skeptical that the FCC has much of any authority over broadcasters, saying that the Commission's charter requiring stations to operate "in the public interest," combined with the FCC's authority to determine just what that public interest is, amounts to an infringement on the First Amendment rights of broadcasters.  Loevinger cites the relevant section of the Communications Act, which explicitly states that "nothing in the statues 'shall be understood or construed to give the Commission the power of censorship over broadcasting.'"  According to Loevinger's reading of the First Amendment, "The plain truth is that we have no damn business getting involved in programming at all."  His strongly-held beliefs lead him to oppose the Fairness Doctrine that requires equal time be offered to any controversial issue, and extends as far as the realm of dramatic programming, about which he says that "You can't constitutionally compel people to read good books, or watch good plays, even on the assumption that you know what good art is, and that is a perilous assumption."  Of former chairman Newton "Vast Wasteland" Minow, he says, "The Minow view, that it is the FCC's duty to elevate the level and quality of broadcasting, is legally and morally wrong," and uses words such as "ill-considered ... illogical ... silliness ... nopnsense ... contradictions ... essential error" to describe Minow's famous speech.

One wonders what exactly Loevinger thinks the FCC ought to be doing.  Mostly, he says, granting broadcast licenses, which is what the Commission was created to do in the first place.  But it was that license-granting authority which originally gave the FCC the foothold into regulation of programming, and the problem of how to separate the two - how the FCC can still grant licenses without making subjective judgments regarding the merits of the applicants and their proposed programming.  There are no standards for judging, Loevinger complains, which makes the separation between licensure and regulation almost impossible to maintain.

It's no surprise that Loevinger has few friends on the Commission, and most experts remain puzzled as to why the late President Kennedy appointed him to take Minow's place on the Commission.  He remains at the FCC until 1968, fighting the lonely fight, his most lasting accomplishment being to encourage AT&T to establish a uniform emergency phone number - 911.

***

Seeing as how we're only a couple of weeks removed from Michelle Wie's victory at the U.S. Women's Open golf championship, it's probably appropriate to mention that Sunday, July 4 marks the first time the Women's Open has ever been telecast on network television.  NBC's cameras are present at the Atlantic City Country Club to cover the challenging last three holes of the tournament's final round, as future Hall of Famer Carol Mann shoots an even par 72 to win by two strokes over Kathy Cornelius.

Across the aisle at CBS, it's the final round of the Western Open from Tam O'Shanter Country Club in Chicago.  The Western Open the third oldest tournament on the PGA tour, trailing only the U.S. and British Opens, and in 1965 it's still one of the most prestigious, tournaments on the tour, dating back to 1899.  Billy Casper wins the first of two consecutive Western Opens, joining a list of winners that includes Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson and Walter Hagen.   It's now called the BMW Championship, it's no longer played every year in Chicago, and it's played in the fall rather than the summer, a victim to the World Golf Championship tournaments that have mostly served to make golfers richer and more selective in the tournaments they play.

In baseball, the Twins are on over the weekend (versus the Kansas City Athletics)  and Friday (against the New York Yankees in a rare home broadcast, one of three or so that Channel 11 would do each season).  The Twins, of course, will take the American League pennant in 1965.  Saturday's ABC Game of the Week gives us the Yankees and Red Sox in Boston, which goes to show that even back then, the networks never passed up an opportunity to show the Yanks and Sox, and the network also presents a rare Monday matinee between the Yankees and Tigers from Detroit, which makes perfect sense when you figure that most people would have had the day off - after all, the 4th of July was on a Sunday.

And if you're interested in the cinematic treatment of sports, NBC's Wednesday Night at the Movies presents Fear Strikes Out, the (mostly) true story of baseball player Jimmy Piersall (Anthony Perkins, right) and his struggle with mental illness, while the Thursday matinee on Channel 4 is The All American, the story of a college football player (Tony Curtis) who gives up the game after his parents are killed in an accident while travelling to see him play.  Sounds a little soapy to me.

***

Random notes to round out the week:

Fourth of July!  There's not much in the way of special programming (aside from the baseball game tomorrow), but two fairly interesting programs airing against each other Sunday afternoon at 12:30pm.  First, on Duluth's KDAL, Ronald Reagan narriates a documentary studying the effects of Communist brain-washing on American POW's.  I sense a patriotic motive here.  Opposite it, ABC's Issues and Answers, displaying something of a sadistic humor, presents an interview with Great Britain's ambassador to the United States, on the 189th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Pretentious alert: On CBS' Look Up and Live that same morning, William Stringfellow documents his four years living in Harlem and working for the civil rights movement, and through the use of photographs telling the story of a white attorney defending the black ghetto.  "To illustrate the dehumanizing experience of ghetto life, members of the Open Theatre Workshop read excerpts from the poetry of Bertolt Brecht, Federica Garcia Lorca and Richard Wright.  I should add here that Look Up and Live was part of the network's block of religious and cultural programming on Sundays (seldom ever seen on Channel 4 in Minneapolis, where the accent was on Bowery Boys movies), and as such it was probably of a pretty high quality.  Which means it still could have been pretentious.

Celebrity watch:  This week's game shows are chock full of celebrities: Buddy Greco and Molly Bee on NBC's What's This Song?; Rita Moreno and Les Crane on the same network's Call My Bluff; Ann Jeffries and Alan Young on CBS' Password, followed by Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, Tom Poston and Kitty Carlisle on To Tell the Truth; and a pair of NBC shows rounding out the day, Dwayne Hickman and Emmaline Henry on You Don't Say!, and Gisele MacKenzie and Bobby Vinton* on The Match Game.  And don't forget Steve Lawrence on Sunday night's What's My Line?, joining the stage with regulars Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf and Dorothy Kilgallen.

*Bobby Vinton was a well-known and loved Polish-American singer, perhaps the most famous Polish-American of the time, and I remember Johnny Carson joking about the election of Pope John Paul II, saying that everyone knew something was up when the smoke coming out of the Sistine Chapel spelled out "Bobby Vinton."  Polish jokes really died out not long after JPII became pope.

Perhaps more interesting, or at least unique: on the nighttime version of Password Thursday night, the guests are Woody Allen and Nancy Sinatra.  The following year Nancy's father, Frank, would marry Mia Farrow.  That marriage wouldn't last, but eventually Farrow would hook up with - Woody Allen.  Apparently the connection between Frank and Mia wasn't entirely dead though, based on her suggestion that son Ronan might belong to Frank.  It's enough to make the head spin.

And that kind of tidbit is why I keep reading old TV Guides. TV  

MeTV outperforms CNN, and other news from "Around the Dial"

You like that headline? It comes from the body of this story, covered at Television Obscurities a couple of weeks ago, talking about the rise of classic TV digital networks.  According to the source, TVNewsCheck, MeTV ranks "19th among all national cable networks in adults 25-54, outperforming brands like CNN, TLC, Bravo and 79 other outlets, per Nielsen data.ranks."  This does not surprise me at all.

Over at Christmas TV History, Joanna is once again giving us Christmas in July, this year consisting of TV bloggers sharing their Christmas favorites.  Yours truly will be on the docket later this month (don't worry, I'll let you know when), but don't wait for me - make it a point to check out a new memory every day.

Besides giving me a kind shout-out, there's a very good reason you should be reading Cult TV Blog this week - an introduction to the use of allegory in The Prisoner.  If I can borrow a bit of Brit-speak, this should be an absolutely cracking discussion, and I can't wait to see what the Prisoner heresy is!

Here's another story that a nerd like me would appreciate - a history of NBC logos, as linked to at the University of Maryland's Special Collection.  We're in a really static age of network logos nowadays - except for embellishments, I don't think that either CBS, ABC or Fox have changed in a long time, and NBC has been fairly stable lately.  I loved that "snake" logo of theirs; it's what I grew up with.  And the old color peacock was terrific - much better than the stylized one they use nowadays.

I greatly enjoy Kliph Nesteroff's interviews with classic entertainment stars, and he's back at Classic Television Showbiz with another one this week - part two of his fascinating chat with Orson Bean.  (You can read part one here.)  I've always liked Bean, even before he did such a great job as the voice of Bilbo (and later Frodo) in the animated Hobbit stories - which, personal opinion, is better than the overblown movie version.

My friend Andrew Lee Fielding at Lucky Strike Papers mentions his recent radio interview with author Julian David Stone, and links to Stone's novel about early television, The Strange Birth, Short Life, and Sudden Death of Justice Girl.  Now, a book with a title like that has to be read, but even more so with Andrew's recommendation, so it's going on my list.

And that's about it for this week.  If you're reading this life, I hope you have a safe and happy Fourth of July tomorrow; if you're reading later over the weekend, I trust that your Fourth was indeed a good one! I'll be back on Saturday, as usual, with another great TV Guide.

TV  

The dirty dozen things I hate about TV today

It occurs to me that I haven't gone off on a good toot for a while, and if you're not in the mood for one now, I'll see you back here later.  You might like this one, though; I have no way of knowing until I put it out there and wait for responses.

I've been spending a fair amount of time lately thinking about some of the reasons why I don't like most of today's TV shows. There are some very annoying cliches out there, ones that have long-since worn out their welcome on television, the kind that make you mutter, "Give me a break" - or words to that effect.

So in no particular order here's my advice, freely given, on what today's television shows can do without. And as I said, if you're not in the mood for bitter ravings of a curmudgeonly TV critic, feel free to come back on Saturday for another TV Guide story.

#1: Slow motion.  There are several different uses of slow-mo in television today: the "cataclysmic event," when everything slows down while the bullets fly or the bodies fall or the buildings explode, accompanied by muffled cries, poignantly exchanged glances, and desperate attempts to reach someone before it's too late; the "attitude walk," when the protagonists walk, side-by-side-by-side down the street after having solved yet another case, just daring someone to try and get between them*; the "blast and strut," which combines the worst of the previous two, where people walk away from the scene of the explosion, fire billowing and shrapnel flying through the air, without even flinching, their very demeanor that this could happen to you too if you don't watch out.  I don't care who you are, when bombs explode fifty feet behind you, you're going to flinch.

*Also used by local news teams in terrible commercials.

What all of these have in common is that the scenes unfold at a speed that gives the viewer time to bake a peach cobbler, do their taxes, and take a nap before our protagonists get to where they're going.  The use of slow-mo, in addition to being unnecessary and overdone, is terribly pretentious.

#2: Cops who need a good shrink.  Is there anyone out there who joined the police force simply to try and keep the public safe?  Watch today's police procedurals and you'll see, as one online commentator notes, "every cop being 'rogue,' 'on the edge' or only on the job because he/she is attempting to avenge the murder/disappearance of a spouse/parent/sibling from years ago. Or it's a manic-depressive/bipolar/insert your favorite psychological disorder FBI or CIA agent.”  Nowadays everyone has to have a backstory, often a tragic one, that motivates them in the direction their life has taken.  Does anyone know why The FBI's Inspector Lewis Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) became a Fed?  Or, aside from a brief mention in the pilot, how he became a widower or why he's never remarried?*  Apparently they were able to come up with enough stories back then that they didn't have to use the "out of the past" trope.

*And if you ever get a chance, ask Lynn Loring what happened to Erskine's daughter.

#3: The latest pop single.  Remember how it used to be said that "a picture tells a thousand words"?  That was supposed to be the magic of television, that it could show us things.  Radio, with only sound to fall back on, could never compete with that, could they?  And yet you can hardly find a popular show today that doesn't contain a scene (often at the end of an episode) in which the characters take time to look introspectively at what's happened their lives, all accompanied by the latest pop single from someone who sounds a lot like Norah Jones, with lyrics that describe the travails of the hero(s) in words far more meaningful than any dialog that the writers could come up with.  An added bonus is that the artist will be able to sell many downloads of that song to the fans of the show, who will look around their homes meaningfully while listening to it on their laptops.  This can be used to good effect, but most of the time it's lazy and overused.  

#4: Romance.  Is it at all possible for co-workers of the opposite sex to work together without enough undercurrents of sexual attraction to make an office feel like a electrical way station?  If it's not, then every argument ever made against having women in the workplace can just go right out the window.  Along with the idea of us all being adults.  But then, what would fans have left to them if they weren't able to combine the names of the cute couple into one adorable hybrid that speaks to how they were destined to be soul partners from before they were born.  (Yes, NCIS, I'm talking to you.)

#5: Uninterrupted (and often pretentious) speeches.  As befits this one, I'll keep it short.  Gilmore Girls. As my friend Jim once said, "I don't know about you, but every time I'm in an argument, I always get the chance to make long impassioned speeches without ever being interrupted, and then let the other person do the same."

#6: Fake season-ending cliffhangers.  I wouldn't know this from personal experience, but apparently Richard Castle, the star character in the eponymously-named series, was involved in a crash of some sort on the way to his wedding to the woman he's worked with all these seasons.  (See #4.)  Will he survive or won't he?  Gee, since the name of the series is Castle, and his name is Castle, I wonder how it all turns out?  I can't stand these fake cliffhangers - we all know that things work out in the end, unless we're industry-savvy enough that we've kept appraised on the contract disputes that the stars are having with the series producers.  If your favorite character hasn't reached an agreement yet, or is said to be a pain in the ass on set, watch out.  Otherwise, put in a wake-up call about halfway through the next season's opener.  This particular devise turned me against Leverage, a show I once enjoyed, as much as anything ever did, although it also suffered from #4, and a share of #5 as well.

#7: Quirky characters.  You all know them - the goths, the nerds, the studs, the brainy sex symbols, the attitudes - it seems that every ensemble today has to be carefully comprised of characters who are just caricatures.  In fact, you can hardly find a normal person on TV today.  I blame this on lazy writing; in lieu of giving a character real depth (without the annoying backstory), it's much easier to just make them quirky.  Frankly, more than half of the characters you see on series TV today would have been locked up back in the day.

#8: Endless backstories.  Continued from above.  Do we really have to learn all about a character's life in drips and drops, spread out over several seasons, culminating in the revelation that often explains the attitude found in #2?  A little of this can be a good thing, and when used correctly it can be a great thing.*  But again, it just seems as if it gives the writers an excuse to come up with a "very special episode."

*And then there's Danger Man, the entire run of which could be seen as the backstory to The Prisoner if you really believe that John Drake is Number 6.

#9: Ensemble casts.  Not new, but nowadays virtually the only thing you get on dramatic television.  Can you imaging Columbo as an ensemble?  Neither can I.*    Of course, there's a good explanation for this: the salaries of TV stars.  Considering how much the leads already get paid per episode, can you imagine how much it would cost to have a star that was in almost every scene, clearly dominating the show?  (Aside from Orphan Black, that is.)  It also gives the writers more people who can be exploited via #8.)

*And his quirkiness (#7) was not contrived, but was an integral part of his character - not to mention, in the opinions of many, something of a ruse.

#10: Limp dick commercials.  All right, this is kind of crude, and it isn't a trope of TV drama, but it irritates me all the same.  You can't watch more than about fifteen minutes of a golf tournament or programming on one of the cable niche stations without being bombarded with "male enhancement" commercials.  Sometimes they're cast as commercials for low-T.  Whatever they're selling, sex is never far from the surface.  The limp dick commercial features plenty of romance (#4), and montage scenes that almost cross the line into slow-mo (#1).  I know there have always been stupid commercials, but they didn't used to be so offensive.  What bothers me the most is that they're shown when children could be watching, and it's really not the kind of thing they should be exposed to (no pun intended).  My friend Gary expressed his disgust succinctly, saying that he didn't want to be watching golf with his son and have him ask, "Daddy, what's an erection?"

#11: Mockumentaries.  I don't watch any of them, although I readily admit to enjoying the Christopher Guest versions on the big screen.  But a little cleverness goes a long way, and while The Office might have been fresh once, by the time we get to Almost Royal, it's long since past almost too much.

#12: Police state wet-dreams.  Not to be confused with #2, #4 and/or #10.  I wrote an entire article on this one time, which means you should go read that instead.  The prime examples are pretty much every police procedural on television today.

I'm sure you can add cliches of your own to this list, but the one thing that most of them have in common is that they're unique to today's television.  OK, there's always been romance on TV (The Farmer's Daughter), and it wouldn't have been any more palatable to me then than it is now.  Pretentious speeches have been around since before Sterling Silliphant wrote his first script.  And slow motion would have been a difficult concept to introduce into live television.  But cliffhangers were much less common before television became so serialized, and prior to the advent of Miami Vice popular music was seldom used in television to the extent it is today.  Police officers were usually men who believed in helping the community, and the ones trying to settle a grudge or work out a past trauma were generally portrayed as the bad apples in the bunch, the renegades who give other cops a bad name.  As for Viagra - well, never mind.

This is also not to say that classic television was perfect - as a matter of fact, one of the message boards I read is in the midst of a lively discussion about TV cliches of the '50s and '60s.  But when someone asks me why I don't watch much current TV, I don't usually have to go far outside the lines of this list to explain why. Maybe this is a controversial list, maybe not - if you have any thoughts, let's hear them.