The DVD release of The Defenders continues to spark some of the most interesting conversation we've seen regarding classic television. Terry Teachout has a very good column on it over at The Wall Street Journal, in which he reminds us that TV for grownups isn't something that just happened a few years ago.
On the same topic, the TV on DVD message board at Home Theater Forum has a fascinating (and quite literate) discussion going as to whether or not the political agenda espoused in the series affects a viewer's ability to enjoy the program. (TL:DRL: maybe.) As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out; I've only had time to watch a couple of episodes, and I've got to admit I haven't been bowled over. Yes, it's literate; yes, it's intelligent television programming. Perhaps it's my knowledge of the ideological agenda that's colored the perception for me, that I watch these episodes just waiting to be offended. And yet, one writer points out that Naked City, one of my favorite series, had a bleeding-heart detective as the star, yet that's never affected my enjoyment of the show, nor my appreciation of Paul Burke as Adam Flint, the aforementioned bleeding-heart. Methinks I'll have to explore this subject further, when I'm not detracting from the purpose of going around the dial.
The Secret Sanctum of Captain Video has been looking at one of the Batman-inspired series of the '60s, The Green Hornet, and today it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the series' first episode, while Television Obscurities commemorates the 50th anniversary of another series, the infamous Tammy Grimes Show - infamous for it's shockingly short run of just four episodes, unprecedented back in the day. I here there's a golden anniversary of some sci-fi show as well, but you've probably heard about that.
Speaking as we have been of episode reviews, Recap Retro looks at what fans consider a "boring and terrible" episode of Bonanza, featuring the great character actor Jack Carson. Is the episode's reputation justified? You'll have to read and find out.
If you're like me (and God help you if you are), you probably fast-forward through commercials on shows you've recorded, and mute them on shows you're watching live. Why, then, do classic TV fans have such affection for old commercials that we own DVD collections of them? Comfort TV suggests it's because they were profoundly better than commercials are today, in ways that go beyond mere quality.
Right now I'm working on next week's TV Guide piece, and that 1979 issue has a lot of ads for made-for-TV movies, which put me in mind for Made for TV Mayhem's review of the 1987 telefilm Family Sins, starring James Farentino and Jill Eikenberry as the parents of a troubled family. It's well worth reading Amanda's take on this complex story.
The Horn Section has a wonderful tribute to classic-TV director Leslie H. Martinson, prolific director of classics from Maverick to the big-screen version of the original Batman, who died at the age of 101. RIP to a well-played career, sir.
A couple of weeks ago, at the conclusion of the panel discussion on sitcoms in which I participated, the question came up as to the future of the sitcom. Remember, prior to the appearance of The Cosby Show, the sitcom was thought to be an art form that was dead and buried. The ratings were dominated by hour-long dramas, and there was a serious question as to whether or not the format could rebound. It did, of course; in the wake of the renaissance triggered by Cosby, it seemed as if every stand-up comedian who'd ever gone to an open-mic night had his or her own sitcom.
Now, however, the pendulum has swung back again. There are maybe three sitcoms in the top 25; the genre once again has been overshadowed by scripted dramas and reality programs, and while the networks haven't stopped trying, many of today's sitcoms are crude, unfunny, or both. New sitcoms have found a home on cable, where the demands are lower and the number of episodes fewer, but the question remains: does the sitcom need to evolve in order to remain a viable television genre?
I addressed this at the very end of the program, and I don't blame you if you didn't sit through the entire show to get to it. You should; it's a very good program, with three intelligent, literate participants plus me, but I understand that it's also a long program, and you might not have time to make it all the way to the end. So I'll paraphrase what I said, and also expand on it a bit.
The long and short of it is that the television sitcom absolutely needs to change if it is going to survive. In discussing the -com part of sitcom, it's often easy to overlook the sit- part of the equation. And if we want to contemplate the future of the sitcom, its ability to attract and retain an audience, that is where we must begin.
The point I made in the program is that sitcoms have always been built around the interactions that occur within groups of people; over time, the groups may have changed, but the situations themselves remain. In the early days of television, those groups were often built along either ethnic (The Goldbergs) or economic (The Honeymooners) demographics. As the baby-boom continued, the relevant group became the family, almost always a family with children (Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show). The mother stayed at home in these families, and though the father had a job, that was seldom if ever shown.
That would change when the focus of the sitcom incorporated the workplace as well as (or instead of) home, first with The Phil Silvers Show, which was set on a military base, but most famously with The Dick Van Dyke Show, where Rob Petrie's co-workers were as important to the plot as Laura and Richie. This would continue in series from Barney Miller, where the office was a precinct house, to Hogan's Heroes, where it was a prisoner-of-war camp, to Room 222, where it was a school. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was built around a television station, but with a twist; as single women became more prevalent in the workplace, and as the birthrate shrank, we saw that a single woman and her single friends could form the basis of a situation, as could a married couple with no children (The Bob Newhart Show).
Eventually, the family was redefined, as it was in American society, and in a show like Cheers the group of regulars at the bar became a sort of family of misfits, while Friends and Seinfeld showcased a group of, well, friends, that had willingly chosen to share their lives together. The families that remained were either blended ones (The Brady Bunch, Two-and-a-Half Men) or dysfunctional (Married...With Children). And, of course, there was overlap, as many series incorporated two or more of these situations into their premise.
My point here is not a recitation of the history of the sitcom; rather, what I'm saying here is that the situation in a sitcom depends on that group of people, and in the individualistic, social-media-dominated society in which we live today, actual groups of people are becoming less and less common. More people are working or going to school online, more and more our friends are the ones we have on Facebook and Twitter. We can watch and listen to whatever we want whenever we want, which means there are fewer and fewer shared experiences, hence fewer and fewer interactions within groups. And without groups, I'd contend, you can't have a sitcom.
Look at the most popular programs on television today: most of them are either police procedurals (and their spinoffs), where a face-to-face workplace is required, or reality programs, in which an artificial family - but a family nonetheless - is created. Even when computer and/or social media experts are involved, it's a group of them, which gives the viewing audience their traditional group.
The disappearance of these groups isn't complete; it hasn't all happened at once, nor will it. These trends are only going to continue, however, which means the sitcom is going to have to evolve to incorporate them. After all, a series based on a group that, in real life, is exceedingly uncommon, is going to be hard for an audience to identify with, especially when they're sitting alone in their apartments watching on their laptops or iPads.
Let's not forget that sitcoms exist to entertain. Even dramedies, a genre I'm not inclined to favor, still have to be funny occasionally. And I'm not sure how entertaining it's going to be to watch characters swap emoticons, or trade texts, or sit around sharing memories on Skype. Talk about a static form of television!* Does this mean that future sitcoms will be built less around groups of people, that the situations depicted are going to have to undergo a radical transformation? And if that is the case, what will the new situation be? How will the writers illustrate it? Or will it be the look that changes, as screens are divided to show five or six people at the same time, all participating from different places, with on-screen text co-existing with the spoken word? Could we see a truly interactive sitcom, in which several characters are fully scripted and fleshed out, but giving the viewer the choice of which characters' plots to follow? These are radical redefinitions of what the contemporary sitcom looks like, but some current shows (Broad Street) already incorporate aspects of it. Can the sitcom survive without such a redefinition?
*It is, ironically, a far better situation for books and graphic stories, which require what is supposed to be the dying art of reading; it's much easier to depict social media in a book than on a television screen.
The major point here is that television, no matter how much influence it has in society, is not going to be able to dictate the terms of the situation comedy of the future. It will only be able to react, as is usually the case. It will be society, and not television, that defines how people interact, and what kinds of groups are formed. The success of the sitcom future will depend entirely on how well television is able to capture the new reality of human interaction, and how successful it is at making that an entertainment that people will want to watch.
Happy Labor Day, everyone! On Saturday I joked about calling this Labour Day, since most of today's listings are from Canada. Be that as it may, it's certainly an interesting day of television we have, and while the commentary might be lighter than usual, I don't doubt but what we'll find something to write about!
You remember Newton Minow. When he was head of the FCC, he looked out at the television landscape and saw only a vast wasteland, and wound up having the marooned ship in Gilligan's Island named after him. Well, he did a lot more than that, actually, before leaving the FCC in June of 1963 to become executive vice president of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Now he's back, and in excerpts from his forthcoming book Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, he discusses the problems and potential of television.
One priority for Minow is eliminating interference from advertisers, something far more prevalent then than it is now. The Quiz Show Scandals, for instance, resulted in large part from sponsors exercising creative control over the shows they often developed and sold to television networks. Here's an example of what Minow's talking about:
Automobile sponsors do not like shows involving automobile accidents; or even stories that use "chase" scenes with cars driven at high speed to the sound of squealing brakes. Detective Michael Shayne might be an authority on cognac, but if he discusses this specialty, no beer company wants sponsorship.
Sherlock Holmes' love of the pipe rules out a cigaret company or a cigar maker for sponsorship. A coffee sponsor would not allow the comic scenes in Gunsmoke in which Chester makes such dreadful coffee for Marshal Matt Dillon. A company manufacturing shaving tools would never permit a bearded hero, and a soap company does not want a hero who wears dirty clothes.
Colorfully written, but I think it's essentially accurate. Of course, the Law of Unintended Consequences is bound to rear its ugly head here; an outgrowth of the Quiz Show fiasco was greater control by the networks over their programming. The downside to this, not surprisingly, is that networks become far more anxious over ratings; in order to placate sponsors leery of investing their money in a program over which they've had no control, they've had to make the investment as attractive as possible, and low ratings aren't a particular inducement to a company to spend their money. As we've seen throughout time, the rating system has come under heavy criticism from viewers and legislators concerned that "quality" television falls victim to a fickle public, and ultimately is sacrificed in the name of the financial bottom line.
Minow appears to have anticipated this, taking a long, hard look at the relationship between broadcasters and the FCC. He cites examples of FCC commissioners and their too-cozy relationship with the industry they're supposed to be regulating, and points out that commissioners, as governmental appointees, are likely to be opposed by powerful interest groups if they take too strong of a stand against the networks and/or their affiliates. The only way to counteract this is to open the FCC up more to public input, and as FCC chair he'd urged President Kennedy to streamline and reorganize the Commission. Rather than the regulated controlling the regulator, he feels that such an approach will set up healthy conflict: "the sight and sound of battle [between public and private interests] are the public's best evidence that their rights are being protected."
And there will be battle, for as Minow writes, there is and will be that eternal conflict between public and private interests. One the one hand, he readily recognizes that broadcasters have "a vested and narrow interest in achieving and preserving profits." On the other, however, the FCC exists to guarantee that the public's interest is being served by those who hold the special and precious privilege of owning a broadcasting license. Broadcasters have come to view this not as a privilege but as a right - but, as Minow points out, "a 'right' cannot be regulated. It is part of the power the people refuse to give to a government. Only a privilege can be regulated."
This is an important concept and a huge conflict, one that resonates through our political system today despite the fact that Minow's statement can trace its roots all the way back to the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson's assertion that the "unalienable Rights" which mankind enjoys come not from the government, but from "their Creator," and that government exists not to bestow but to secure those rights. When privileges become rights, when the government seeks to grant obfuscate the difference and then grant something over which it has no natural authority, then the entire concept of the governor and the governed falls under suspicion.
This, invariably, leads to a discussion of politics and political advertising, an emerging point of import for Minow's FCC. Again, he takes the industry to task for thinking that their granting of free time to candidates is a gift from them to the candidate; in fact, Minow contends, the gift is in actuality from the public, which has allowed the broadcaster the right to use the public airwaves. It is, therefore, the obligation of the broadcaster to treat this time with care, and not to look at it as yet another opportunity to make a profit: "Television's soaring costs have created a monumental danger that a dollar wall will be stretched across ready access to the public air waves. This wall can create obstacles to the most able candidates - while helping the election of the most obligated candidates. Such an event would be a catastrophe."
Minow's answer is for broadcasters to be obligated to make "minimal amounts of free political time an explicit responsibility of those privileged to hold a broadcast license." He then makes the prescient observation, true even from the early days of television, that "Some politicians believe that television sells candidates as well as soap. But we cannot stack the deck in favor of the candidate able to buy the most time."
What a kettle of fish this discussion has opened! For the power in Minow's arguments is that they strike at the heart of how our system of government functions. Television and radio broadcasting can't, and shouldn't, be treated as something above and beyond the established system, and if that system can't handle something like this, if an activity as vital as broadcasting cannot fit in or conform to those sensibilities, then the question must be asked: can anything? Minow seems confident at the end of these excerpts, as long as "each of us insists that those involved in broadcasting - in industry and government alike - ceaselessly go to the people." It has become apparent, with over fifty years to reflect on it, that neither industry nor government any longer feels such a need or obligation. We are starting to see the fruits of such behavior ripen; what the future portends is anyone's guess.
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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.. Sullivan: Ed's guests are the Kim Sisters, Italian recording stars Rita Pavone and Enzo Stuardi, and one of America's favorite clowns, Bert Lahr. The tap-dancing Stepp Brothers perform and the Two Carmenas present their head-to-head balancing act. Other guests are child saxophonist Attila Galamb, and comedians London Lee and Pat Buttram.
Palace: Host Louis Jourdan introduces songstress Anna Maria Alberghetti; the singing King Sisters; comedian Henny Youngman; tap dancer John Bubbles; ventriloquist Russ Lewis; comics Lewis and Christy; juggler Johnny Broadway; and Olympic gymnasts Muriel and Abe Grossfeld, Armando Vega and NCAA champion gymnast Ron Barak.
An interesting comparison this week, as Ed presents a rerun from earlier in 1964, while the Palace is into its new season. Both shows are into the vaudeville look, with jugglers, tap-dancers, singers and comedians. It's not particularly an inspired choice, but dapper French actor and singer Louis Jourdan's (Gigi) picture appears next to "suave" in the dictionary, Anna Maria Alberghetti is lovely to look at and delightful to listen to, and when he's on Henny "Take my wife, please" Youngman* is as funny as anyone. Perhaps Bert Lahr should have been singing "If I only had some help," because the choice is The Palace by a comfortable, if unimpressive, margin.
*Whose first name is spelled "Henry" in the issue. The proof reader must not have been a fan.
There is, by the way, an article in this week's issue on how The Hollywood Palace has made vaudeville work in the same time spot where Jerry Lewis failed so spectacularly.
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You know you're in an election year when the week's TV review is of the networks' convention coverage. And - surprise, surprise - it's not all that different from what we're used to today. "To a large degree," writes Samuel Grafton, "[the networks] have made themselves the show, instead of the meetings they are supposed to be covering." In the process, he asserts, they missed important stories at both conventions.
For example, they were so fired-up to see Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton as a serious challenger to Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater - a challenge that was always hopeless - they missed the bigger story, that of how Goldwater took over the Republican party in the first place. Seems to me it's not unlike their confusion as to how Donald Trump took over the Republicans this year. (Oh well, I guess some things never change.) At least, he notes, ABC kept their cameras trained on the podium, unlike NBC and CBS, who "constantly cut away from Senator Dirksen's nominating speech, to tell us what they thought about what Dirksen was saying, instead of letting him say it." David Brinkley's humor, however, was in good form, part of the reason why NBC thrashed CBS in the ratings (leading the network to sack Walter Cronkite for the Democratic convention in favor of the "team" of Robert Trout and Roger Mudd). ABC's own team of Howard K. Smith and Edward P. Morgan worked hard, but "lost out in the ratings because they did not show enough of the special qualities - the glint, the jokesmithing - that these broadcasters' Olympics now seem to call for."
The Democratic convention wasn't much better for the networks, as they again missed the big story - once again preferring conflict (in this case, delegate challenges in Alabama and Mississippi) to the more significant fact that Southern delegates, by-and-large, stood by their party rather than walking out because of LBJ's civil rights legislation. No matter how hard they tried, the floor reporters were unable to convince delegates that it was in their best interests - the networks' best interests, that is - to make trouble.
In the end, concludes Grafton concludes, viewers were frequently treated to scenes that looked more like a "convention of reporters" rather than delegates. Even when they were forced off the floor during the demonstration for Johnson's nomination, they wound up cutting away to show Johnson's arrival in Atlantic City. It makes one pine for the old days "when television was only a camera reporting the news, and modestly keeping itself off the screen."
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And now a word about this week's issue. For one of the few times, we're going north of the boarder, with the St. Lawrence edition covering Montreal, Ottawa and Sherbrooke, in addition to stations in upper New York, Vermont, and Poland Spring, Maine. Many of the programs are similar (you'll see CBC programming in Monday's piece) - except when it comes to sports, specifically football. Although the NFL, AFL and colleges haven't kicked off yet, the Canadian Football League is in full swing, having started in July.
On Labor Day (or Labour Day, I suppose we should say) CTV carries the matchup between the Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders from Regina, while a Friday doubleheader pairs the Alouettes and the Edmonton Eskimos, followed by the Ottawa Rough Riders (no relation to the Saskatchewan Roughriders) against the British Columbia Lions (taped Tuesday). If you've not seen the Canadian version of football, you should catch it sometime when it's on one of the ESPN networks; it's similar to our version - just different.
As far as American sports, there's plenty of that as well. The New York stations have the Mets, playing the Dodgers in New York on Sunday, the Houston Colt 45s* on Labor Day, and the Dodgers again on Friday, this time in Los Angeles. And on ABC's final Friday Fight of the Week, former and future Middleweight Champion Dick Tiger takes on Rocky Rivero in Cleveland.
*Known today as the Houston Astros.
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Finally, a quick look at the rest of the news.
The front section of the magazine takes note that on August 27, Gracie Allen died of a heart attack at age 58.* Her widower, George Burns, debuts on Friday night with his new ABC series, Wendy and Me, co-starring Connie Stevens in the dumb blonde role.
*Or 69, as the case may be; her birth records were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. Her actual birth year remains a mystery.
Actress Maureen O'Sullivan is leaving her role as the "Today Girl" after four months. She's headed back to acting, having called her role on Today "asinine." She explains, "It's not enough to sit ther and smile every day with nothing to do. . . The show is simply no place for a woman." Her successor is Barbara Walters.
On Wednesday, CBS's Robert Pierpoint interviews Mrs. Barry Goldwater at the family home outside Phoenix. Apropos of the times, the listing never gives us her first name, Margaret. I hardly think the viewers would have confused her with some other Mrs. Goldwater...
Also on Friday, Jack Paar's prime time program has Muhammad Ali and Liberace as guests, and the two team up for a memorable duet.
And finally, the final program of the week also makes for a great exit line. It's the biographical film "I Aim at the Stars," the story of the brilliant rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who designed the Saturn V booster that helped land Americans on the moon. The British, who remembered von Braun as the man who developed the V2 rockets that rained terror on England, had a different name for the movie. According to Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, they called it "I Aim at the Stars - But Sometimes hit London." TV
This week offers a surprising number of links coming from non-classic TV sites, which is always good in the sense that you can't have too many people writing about it, even if they don't always show the kind of understanding of the genre we're used to seeing through our own blogs. And speaking of which, don't worry - you'll still find links to the best from our favorite sites. Let's get started!
Stephen Battaglio, author of the fine biography of David Susskind, has a nice piece in the Los Angeles Times about the DVD release of The Defenders, and helps place the series in its perper historical context. When the chapter is written explaining how TV's vast potential seemed to fade away, one hopes we'll find out how CBS, the Tiffany Network, was turned into the network of “broads, bosoms and fun” by James Aubery. Strike that; I'm not sure I want to know.
I've made reference in the past to the "big game voice" of the great sportscasters (mostly when writing their obituaries, alas), but the AV Club gives us some food for thought by discussing what makes a sports announcer great. A very good list; sometimes there's just that intangible - the timbre of a voice, the sense of the dramatic - that puts an announcer in that class. Many of the Premier League announcers, who are British, have it; as Jon Champion once said, "I was taught very early on that the picture is so powerful, you can’t hope to compete with it." On a related note, at The Ringer Bryan Curtis takes a closer look at one of those big-time voices, the retiring Verne Lundquist.
Also at The Ringer, it's an excerpt from the new book TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time, by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, which purports to give us the top ten American TV shows ever. I'm always leery of books like this, because they seem overly-slanted toward contemporary shows, which often contain the type of "innovative" storytelling that I don't think is always necessary to tell a good story. I do take some hope in the comments of the authors that they want to be able to shed some light on series that readers might not be familiar with, but I suspect that their top ten and mine aren't going to look much alike.
One of my favorite political thrillers is the novel Seven Days in May, which was made into a movie starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, directed by TV veteran John Frankenheimer, and with a screenplay by Rod Serling (often taking dialog verbatim from the book). Author John Kenneth Muirreflects on the movie, which according to me is something of a compromise; Serling jettisoned some of the book's soap opera elements, which was good, but also wrote a more traditional ending, featuring a showdown between Lancaster and Douglas, that loses some of the book's subtle observation on power and self-doubt. I also think that it's a bit of a stretch to suggest, as Muir does, that the story parallel's today's political scene as closely as he thinks.
At Comfort TV, David has a very, very good essay on "looking back vs. looking forward'; in other words, not just what classic television we watch but how we watch it. In particular, the "forward-looking" viewer "is content with the agendas that dictate how television shows are now put together. They’re pleased when CBS is chastised for scheduling too many shows about white men on this fall’s roster – and even happier when the network quickly goes into self-flagellation mode, desperately apologizing and vowing to do better. [...] Are the shows good or not? No mention of that." I can't do it justice in a paragraph - go read it. I'll wait.
If it's Friday, then that means Ken Levine is answering questions, and right off the bat the first one is especially apropos, given my participation in the recent panel discussion on sitcoms and a companion piece I'll have up this coming Wednesday: does the addition of streaming video channels increase the odds of getting better sitcoms?
The Hitchcock Project is back at bare-bones e-zine, with another look at a seventh season episode, this time the crime drama "The Big Score." Likewise, Lincoln X-ray Ida reviews the fourth season Adam-12 episode Truant, and British TV Detectives gives us the lowdown on the amateur-detective series Grantchester, and Cult TV Blog looks across the pond at the legendary Sesame Street, which seemed to the author to be coming from a foreign country - literally.
Finally, Classic TV Sports recalls the 1974 college football season, when ABC experimented with the idea of using active head coaches as guest analystson its games. I must confess that, although I would have watched as much football as anyone at the time (given the limitations coming from living in the World's Worst Town™), I have no memory of this experiment. Did it work? What do you think?
Hope this worked for you, though. Come back tomorrow, we'll talk about an old TV Guide and a new televisions season. TV
