This week in TV Guide: September 8, 1979

It's always a bit hard for me to decide how to write about TV Guide's famous Fall Preview edition, which is one of the reasons why I don't do them often.*  They're so big, so sprawling, it's often hard to know where to start, and how much time one should spend covering them.  We'll see how it goes this week; the complaint box will be open as usual.

*The other reason being I don't have very many of them.

***

One way to do this is to look at what's new this fall.  And that's quite an interesting exercise.  See how many of these series, new for 1979, you recognize:

ABC
Hart to Hart (romantic mystery; Robert Wagner and Stefanie **sigh** Powers)
Out of the Blue (sitcom; James Brogan)
A New Kind of Family (sitcom; Eileen Brennan, Gwynne Gilford* and Rob Lowe)
The Associates (legal comedy; Wilfrid Hyde-White and Martin Short)
240-Robert (police drama; Mark Harmon, Joanna Cassidy and John Bennett Perry)
The Lazarus Syndrome (medical drama; Louis Gossett Jr. and Ronald Hunter)
Benson (sitcom; Robert Guillaume)

*Not to be confused with Glynn Griffing, former quarterback for the New York Football Giants, or Gwyn Griffin, author of An Operational Necessity.  Or Fred Gwynne, for that matter.

CBS
Working Stiffs (sitcom; Michael Keaton and Jim Belushi)
Big Shamus, Little Shamus (family detectives; Brian Dennehy and Doug McKeon)
Paris (crime drama; James Earl Jones)
Trapper John, M.D. (medical drama; Pernell Roberts and Gregory Harrison)
California Fever (sitcom; Lorenzo Lamas, Jimmy McNichol and Marc McClure)
The Last Resort (sitcom; Robert Costanz and a large ensemble)
Struck by Lightning (sitcom; Jack Elam and Jeffrey Kramer)

NBC
A Man Called Sloane (spy thriller; Robert Conrad)
The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo (police comedy; Claude Akins)
From Here to Eternity (war drama; William Devane, Don Johnson, Barbara Hershey and Roy Thinnes)
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (sci-fi; Gil Gerard and Erin Gray)
Shirley (sitcom; Shirley Jones, Tracey Gold and Rosanna Arquette)
Eischied (crime drama; Joe Don Baker)

Now, the sad thing is that I remember most of those shows.  Not all of them, mind you, but this was the second year back in civilization for me after having spent six years in the world's worst town, and I suppose I was gorging myself with television, good and bad.

SOURCE FOR ALL: HADLEY TV GUIDES

To be fair, there are a few hits in this list; Hart to Hart and Benson spent a good amount of time on ABC's schedule, as did Trapper John on CBS, and Buck Rogers lasted a couple of seasons on NBC.  But, if we're being honest with ourselves, there's not a whole lot to like about this schedule, is there?  Paris and Lazarus were notable in that they were among the first drama series to feature black actors in the lead roles; neither of them did well.*  Sloane gave Robert Conrad a chance to add to his collection of failed series; he probably only trailed McLean Stevenson at that point, with Robert Urich coming on strong.  Lobo, which to be fair also ran for two years, was a spin-off from B.J. and the Bear, which means that the character was with us for even longer.  Eischeid seems like MLT3K material.  And in 240-Robert Mark Harmon smiles.  How realistic is that?

*The Lazarus Syndrome tried to sell us the idea that a man (Hunter) recovering from heart surgery would, in his effort to give his life meaning, take on a job as a hospital administrator.  No stress in that, right?

I don't know how this season ranks in television's panoply; I suspect there have been worse, but I doubt that this one went into the Television Hall of Fame.

***

The miniseries is still all the rage, and the networks are lined up to give 'em to you.  Unlike the days of Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man, however, the focus is on shorter, more concentrated stories, running for no more than two or three nights.*  ABC gives us The French Atlantic Affair (which wasn't quite as bad as you might think, considering it featured Telly Savalas and Chad Everett) and Masada (with Peter Strauss and Peter O'Toole, which was quite good), while CBS gives us six hours' worth of Judith Kranz' Scruples.  NBC, which was a pioneer in turning the miniseries into a weekly series, gives us The Gangster Chronicles, The Martian Chronicles, and The Convertible Chronicles.  Wait, I got carried away with that one; it's actually The Last Convertible.

*The two-night ones used to be called "two-part movies."

It's too bad about the miniseries, a genre which in general I quite liked.  Look at Rich Man, Poor Man, Roots and Holocaust - all memorable, ground-breaking series.  But, as was the case with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, you invariably reach a saturation point where your lust for the dollar causes you to push things a little too far, and for the miniseries that might well have come when ABC did Washington: Behind Closed Doors in 1977.  I don't think it's a coincidence that, two years after than series ran, the miniseries was on its way to becoming much, much shorter.

Back in 1979, the slack in network miniseries was being picked up by PBS, which still enthralled viewers with mammoth productions on Masterpiece Theater - Poldark (13 parts), Love of Lydia (12 parts) and The Duchess of Duke Street (15 parts) were the headliners.  Alas, even PBS has given up the miniseries ghost nowadays, but that's not all it's missing.

***

For some time, Wall Street Journal critic and blogger Terry Teachout has been critical of PBS' negligence of the arts. Even though PBS executives have admitted that they fall short in this area, those same executives have acknowledged, through their programming decisions, that they don't intend to do anything about it.  As he recently noted, the network's 2014-15 fall schedule "includes no ballet or modern dance, no classic theater, no real jazz, no opera save for “Porgy [and Bess]” and no classical music of any kind."  Such was not always the case, however, for the organization whose original mandate is "to enrich man's spirit."  For the 1979-80 season, PBS's Great Performances show includes "a back-to-back production of Jean Cocteau's "The Human Voice" and a film of the Poulenc opera [La voix humaine] based on the play," a film version of Carmen directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Live From Lincoln Center performances by Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, Metropolitan Opera productions from Verdi's Otello to Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny, and anthology programs based on American short stories, including those of author John Cheever.  Finding words to describe what has happened to PBS over the past 35 years that are also appropriate to a family blog escape me, but as culture has dumbed down, we see only too obviously how the nation's preeminent cultural medium has followed suit.

***

But what we've lost in culture, we've more than made up for in football.

The NFL rolls out its new season, with what we today would call a "limited schedule."  I mean, there are only 20 games scheduled in prime-time - the 16 Monday night games, plus four Sunday night specials that ABC plans to carry.  Contrast that with this year's schedule, which includes games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday night virtually every week of the season - 50 games by my count.  And to think - the Sunday night ratings in 1979 were poor enough that some people actually thought there was too much football on TV.  Suckers.

Then, there's ABC's college football schedule.  ABC was the only network to offer regular season games in 1979, and their schedule includes 13 national and 45 regional games.  Today, between ABC, CBS, Fox, the ESPNs, CBS College, Fox Sports 1 and 2, and the regional networks, you can see practically that many games every week.  They were all played on Saturday, too, except for Labor Day night and the odd Thursday/Friday games of Thanksgiving weekend.   There were little more than a dozen bowl games, all but a handful being shown on the networks.  (The remainder were broadcast on the late, great Mizlou network.)

Let's not overlook college basketball in the mix, though.  Besides the NCAA tournament (expanding to an incredible 48 teams, not to be confused with the 68 that take part today), NBC offers 90 national and regional broadcasts starting on January 5.  Would that the television season waited until then today - I daresay the average basketball fan has probably had access to that many games during the the season's first month.  It was about then, as I recall, that the Big Ten Conference (which at the time only had ten teams) voted down a proposal to create a nationally televised Wednesday night Game of the Week.  Big Ten teams only played on Thursday and Saturday (barring the rare Sunday afternoon game), the powers that be dictated.  And anyway, who would want to see that much basketball?

Well, you get the point.  I like sports as much as many people, and I like having a choice of which game to watch - but as Captain Kirk once said, "too much of anything, even love, isn't necessarily a good thing."

***

We've often discussed movies, and how the really big theatrical ones have more or less disappeared from over-the-air television.  That trend, of course, had not yet appeared in 1979, and TV Guide critic Judith Crist brings us a hint of what we can look forward to: Annie Hall, Jaws, Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Benji on ABC, Coming Home, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Dog Day Afternoon on NBC, and Bound for Glory, House Calls, Silver Streak and Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown headlining the premieres on CBS.

Oddly enough, I think that Josey Wales is the only one of these movies I've actually seen, but I feel fairly confident suggesting that with the exception of Benji and Charlie Brown, all of these movies would have been edited, some more heavily than others, for both time and content.  They all would have included frequent interruptions for commercials.

And that's one reason why, despite my occasional yearning for the bygone days of weekend matinee double-features on local stations, the trend away from theatrical movies on OTA television is a good thing.  People (me included) want to see movies run intact, without cuts for one reason or another, and we want them uninterrupted.  It's true that you can catch movies on the basic cable stations that offer neither of the above, but others - from TCM to the pay stations - give you everything you want, which is the way you want it.

So I'm not always a curmudgeon when it comes to television.

The replacement for theatrical movies is the made-for-TV movie, and the much-derided vehicle is still a few years away from the respectability it now holds (save the disease-of-the-week genre, which sadly has outlived the diseases it portrays).  One of the sadder notations included in the schedule of coming features is CBS' All Quiet on the Western Front - not because it was a bad movie, per se, but because its presentation on the Hallmark Hall of Fame signals that series' permanent move away from the taped stageplay format which had served it for so well over the years.  All Quiet on the Western Front, which starred Richard Thomas, was actually pretty good; would that everything which followed it was as good.

Otherwise, we have more goodies to look forward to: Ira Angustain in a highly-praised performance as Freddie Prinze in Can You Hear the Laughter? on CBS this week; the same network will also have Lesley Ann Warren as the "stripper with a heart of gold" in Portrait of a Stripper, Scott Baio and Lance Kerwin in The Boy Who Drank Too Much, David Janssen and Susannah York as a policeman and nun finding love and murder in The Golden Gate Murders, Ed Asner and Meredith Baxter in the adultery drama The Family Man, and Tom Berenger in an adaptation of Pete Hamill's Flesh and Blood, as a boxer having an incestuous affair with his mother (Suzanne Pleshette).  It's heavily edited from the book, although I doubt it would be today.  Not to encourage that kind of thing, but if she was playing your mom, well...

NBC has O.J. Simpson in Goldie and the Boxer, and I don't know how I missed that one, nor do I understand why I didn't see Gary Coleman in The Kid from Left Field, Eric Braeden and Melinda Fee in The Aliens are Coming, Lee Meriweather, Loretta Swit and Janet Leigh in the plastic surgery drama Mirror, Mirror or Raquel Welsh in The Legend of Walks Far Woman.

ABC touts S.O.S. Titanic, which I did see (and forgot as quickly as possible), with the aforementioned David Janssen as John Jacob Astor, Valentine, with Mary Martin and Jack Albertson in senior citizen love, The New Season starring John Ritter as a track coach mentoring street kids, Cheryl Ladd as a child abuser in A New Start, and Tony Lo Bianco in a biopic of heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano.

I make fun of many of these (and even more I didn't list) because their very descriptions sound putrid.  Some of them, such as Ladd's child abuser turn, sound like obvious Emmy bait.  There might have been some good ones in there, but when you can't get past the title, it's kind of hard to find out, insn't it?  Maybe some of you have seen them, and you'll be able to set me straight.

***

Finally, some notes from, you know, actual programming.

Saturday night is the Miss America pageant, live from Atlantic City on NBC.  As is customary back then, the broadcast starts at 9pm CT, running for two hours.  The redoubtable Bert Parks is the host, former Miss Americas Mary Ann Mobley, Dorothy Benham and Susan Perkins are the television hosts, and the winner is Cheryl Prewitt of Mississippi.  According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, her husband's brother-in-law is televangelist Richard Roberts, who's father is the famed Oral Roberts.  You can't make this stuff up.  The Emmys air on Sunday night, hosted by Cheryl Ladd and Henry Winkley (and even without looking at the page I could tell you it had to be on ABC) and the big winners were Taxi, Lou Grant, Roots: The Next Generation, Carroll O'Conner, Ruth Gordon, Ron Leibman and Mariette Hartley.

Monday night features part one of the rerun of NBC's Holocaust, up against the season kickoff of Monday Night Football with the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles.  On Tuesday, it's the season premieres of ABC's sitcom superstars: Happy Days (with a cameo appearance by Laverne and Shirley), Angie, Three's Company and Taxi.  Wednesday features an absolutely dreadful crossover movie on ABC - Charlie's Angels on The Love Boat (there's never an iceberg around when you need one).  Thursday's edition of ABC's 20/20 asks the burning question: what really killed Elvis.  At least they didn't ask who.  And on Friday CBS' Late Night Movie (which, thanks to Channel 4's insistence on running local movies, appears on the independent Channel 9, and is joined in progress after 30 minutes) has Darren McGavin's wonderful The Night Stalker, the ad for which has perhaps the best headline I've seen in quite some time: "Satanic Forces Hold Senate Election in Death Grip!"  Talk about being ahead of your time.

So that's the kickoff of the 1979-80 television season.  Loyal readers know in general my low opinion of this era of TV, which I think is best summed up in a pair of Letters to the Editor.  Elaine J. Johnson of Wickenburg, Arizona says the thought of Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, The Love Boat and shows like them taking the high ratings makes her wonder "if we will be deluged with more of this type of show next season," and asks the networks to "serve up fewer giggle shows and more informative, family-type entertainment."  Meanwhile, Judith S. Felton of Marietta, Georgia reminds us of Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" quote and wishes the networks "would realize that there are some adults out here who don't use TV as a baby sitter and who would like a little something to entertain us."  Ladies, from 35 years in the future, I feel your pain. TV  

Summer reruns: when government was "the good guys"

PETER BRECK (CENTER) WITH THE MESSAGE: "DON'T MESS WITH THE GOVERNMENT, DAMN IT."

One of the goals of this blog is to analyze how television interacts with American culture - the ways in which it forms it, and the ways in which it reflects it.  This is one of those times when we look at the later.

It's all prompted by the death earlier this month of the actor Peter Breck, who was probably best known for playing Nick Barkley in the 60s western series The Big Valley.  But prior to that, on November 4, 1963, Breck starred in an episode of The Outer Limits entitled "O.B.I.T." The opening narration presents the premise:

In this room, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, security personnel at the Defense Department Cyprus Hill's Research Center keep constant watch on its scientists through O.B.I.T., a mysterious electronic device whose very existence was carefully kept from the public at large. And so it would have remained but for the facts you are about to witness…

And there's a very good reason why O.B.I.T. is kept secret: the machine "allows the observation of anyone, anywhere, at any time."  Breck enters the story as U.S. Senator Jeremiah Orville, whose committee is on the scene to investigate the murder of the center's administrator.  During the course of the investigation, Orville uncovers the truth about O.B.I.T. - that the machine is in reality controlled by "imperialistic inhabitants" of another planet, who are using their human pawns (as aliens from other planets so often do) to gain control of the planet.


Now, what I find interesting about this story - and it's the point I'm trying to make here, although I may not be doing it very well - is that there is no question about Orville being the protagonist of the story, as the dogged senator determined to get to the bottom of things and find out the truth about the strange goings-on at the facility.  His presence presents the clear message that one doesn't screw around with the United States Government.  At the end of the episode, the government smashes the conspiracy, and we are assured that "Agents of the Justice Department are rounding up the machines now."  There is, in fact, something charming about this idea - that a U.S. Senator, and the government in general, are "the good guys."  Today it's far more likely that the government itself would be portrayed as instigating the development of such an all-pervasive surveilance machine, and that the senator (or the military, at the very least) would more likely than not be involved in a cover-up of the whole thing.

That's what I like about "O.B.I.T." - it's taken for granted that the government is there to find out the truth, and once accomplished they'll see to it that the threat is destroyed.*  The assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and a host of other events have yet to occur, and the general cynicism with which the government is observed today has not yet become all-encompassing.  In fact, as author James Pierson notes in his book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, in the early 60s the government enjoyed a high approval rating from the public, who also had a great confidence that the government knew what it was doing.

*Author Mark Holcomb, in his excellent summaries of Outer Limits episodes, points out the McCarthy-era subtext in the story, which certainly isn't intended to show the government in the best light.  However, he also notes the evolution of Orville "from publicity-seeking sham to deeply concerned crusader."  This is, in fact, quite a nuanced episode in many respects, but I think the larger point remains: that Orville is from the government and is here to help.

And it's through this lens that one has to view this episode.  It reminds me a great deal of one of my favorite series, The FBI.  If you remember that show, you might recall that each week the series opened with the mission of the FBI.: "[T]o protect the innocent and identify the enemies of the Government of the United States."  That, combined with the images used in the opening (the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and Treasury buildings) was enough to make any red-blooded American race out and sign up to be an FBI agent, even though it was Sunday evening and the offices were closed.

Today, we'd probably see the show for what it was, in part - a piece of Hoover-era propaganda designed to put the Bureau in the best possible light.  Just as we'd expect O.B.I.T. to be a product of a conspiracy involving the government and the military.  If anyone was to uncover it, it would probably either be an intrepid newspaper reporter, an intrepid group of high school civics students, or perhaps both.

We're right to be suspicious of government, for in many respects it has evolved into something the Founding Fathers would scarcely recognize, an invasive, intrusive, often malignant presence in the lives of Americans.  However, for better or worse we didn't always feel that way.  This episode of The Outer Limits, I think, accurately reflects how we saw the government back then - as a force for good, protecting us from threats to life and limb.  It's hard to imagine we could see an episode quite like this today.

Originally published February 27, 2012

Around the dial - post-vacation edition

One of the great things about technology is that it enables you, in a way, to be in two places at the same time.  I was on vacation last week, but you might not have known it since new pieces continued to pop up on the blog.  Way back in the earlier days of Blogger, when I started the other blog, you weren't able to do that, at least not easily.  On a trip to Boston, I recall, I had to rely on a friend to go into the blog and publish a piece that I'd written but wasn't able to postdate.

The point of all this is that one area that did fall short last week was our look around the classic TV blogosphere.  There would have been no end of dirty looks, not only from my wife but our hosts, had I excused myself to take an hour or so and compose a series of links.  Yes, loyal readers, even though I would do anything for you, I wouldn't do that.*

*I did, however, stop in an antique store and pick up a couple of additions to the TV Guide collection, which (owing to the dates) you'll probably be reading about next year.  So don't say I didn't get you something while I was on vacation.

With that, I've decided to move the look around the dial from Thursday to Tuesday, so let's see what's new and exciting out there.

Comfort TV gives us part two of a look at what happens when TV stars sing.*  There's a high potential for disaster with these kinds of projects, but not always - for every Star Trek and Laverne & Shirley, there's a David Soul (Starsky and Hutch) or Rick Springfield (General Hospital) producing #1 hits.  Now, I'll admit that I was drawn to this piece by the infamous Hogan's Heroes album, but David points out that it's actually pretty good - I'd kind of like to check it out.

*And yes, David, I did check out the cover of Cheryl Ladd's album.  Several times.

Keeping with the music theme, to people who laud John Williams' movie music I usually have one answer: listen to John Barry.  Barry's probably most famous for his James Bond soundtracks, but as  Classic Film and TV Cafe reminds us,  there were some other pretty memorable pieces out there as well.  A personal note regarding Barry's distinctive sound: many years ago I was forced to go to Dances With Wolves, a movie I generally hated.  There was one thing about it that resonated with me, though - the music.  Before I'd even known that Barry wrote it (I'd probably snoozed through the credits), I remarked to my wife how similar some of the music was to the Bond movie You Only Live Twice.  No wonder - Barry was responsible for them both.

One of the shows that keeps popping up in my old TV Guides is Love That Bob!, aka The Bob Cummings Show.  I've never seen an episode of it, which is due more to laziness than anything since I could find it online anytime, but thanks to The Horn Section I don't have to!  Seriously, Hal gives us a very good flavor for the show with his look at the 1958 episode "Bob Goes Birdwatching," and it encourages me to give it a try.  I've always liked Bob Cummings, oddly enough not for comedy but for his dramatic roles: a memorable turn in The Twilight Zone's second season opener "King Nine Will Not Return," and his equally memorable appearance in Studio One's "Twelve Angry Men." This was the original production of the play, not the movie version starring Henry Fonda that followed.  Cummings plays the Fonda role, and I have to tell you that I prefer Bob to Hank.  That won't get me shot, will it?

Let's segue to another bit about comedians playing serious roles.  Ever heard of the series Cain's Hundred?  It's a crime series from 1961-62 that starred Mark Richman, but despite a pretty good cast of writers and directors it only lasted that one season.  Kliph at Classic Television Showbiz gives us an episode from that show, featuring a most unlikely guest star - Don Rickles.  But then I'm reminded of something I read once - probably from Kliph himself - that Rickles was actually quite good in dramatic roles, respected by his peers for his acting ability.

Stephen Bowie at The Classic TV History Blog has a nice piece up on every male classic television buff's crush, Susan Oliver.  Seems there's a new documentary out on Oliver's career, called The Green Girl, and according to Stephen it's pretty good.  The title, of course, refers to her famous role in the Star Trek episode "The Menagerie," but there was a great deal more to her career than that.  Very good stuff.

Something very interesting starting this month at Television Obscurities - a week-by-week look at TV Guide throughout the entire 1964-65 season.  I don't think there's much of an overlap with what I do here; for one thing, I don't have an entire season's worth of TV Guides for any season, and for another, I think I'm probably looking for different things in these TV Guides.  Not better, just different.  Should be fun reading!

Finally, I can't remember whether or not I've mentioned this before, and I don't quite have the time to look back and check, but a recent addition to the links list on the sidebar is RerunCentury, which has a great storehouse of links to streaming episodes of classic television.  A lot of these shows can be hard to trackdown online if you don't know where to look, and Bob Poulsen's done us all a favor by putting this site together.

Oh, and as Columbo would say, one more thing.  It's About TV! is on Facebook, which I hope you'll like and follow.  When you have a minute - either on FB or by commenting here - please take the opportunity to let me know if there's anything you'd like to read about, any topics or shows or time periods that you'd like me to pay more attention to.  Although I get a great deal of personal pleasure from writing about classic television, this blog exists primarily for its readers.  True, much of this material also serves as a rough draft for a future book project or two, but then just think - you'll all appear in the acknowledgements page as well! TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 30, 1980

So just how smart are these televisions of 1981, anyway? Well, for starters, they've got computers! And keypads have replaced dials! Now you can use your TV's remote to tune your cable stations! And some models even offer stereo sound! Is there no end to this technology?

Most of the technological advances discussed in this issue have to do with refining color and adding inputs in the rear of the television for the discerning technophile's VCR or laserdisk.  I shouldn't really make fun of this; I was around in these days, and I remember being as impressed as anyone by these advances.  But what interests me most about this article is that there's no attempt at forecasting the future, envisioning television screens as large as walls, or anything like that.  It would have been fun, as always, to see just how close they came to predicting the future.

In the end, though, it's true that all of these advances have been incorporated into today's televisions as a fundamental part what makes TV work, and without them we probably wouldn't have what we enjoy today.

***

Herminio Traviesas tells us what it's like to be a network censor, or as the headline puts it, "the thankless task of cleaning up everyone else's act."  Traviesas is the former vice president of Broadcast Standards for NBC, which means one of the shows under his purview is Saturday Night Live, enough to give anyone a headache.

It's interesting getting a look at the SNL skits that Traviesas vetoed - for example, the one that made fun of the plight of the Iran hostages, proposed shortly after the militants seized the U.S. Embassy.  Or the skit in the wake of the Jim Jones massacre in Guyana, when the show wanted to use it as imagery to represent the large number of shows NBC had just cancelled.  That one might make it through today, but I think the hostage bit probably would never have a chance - it's fine to use the historical event in a movie such as Argo, but for humor?  Likely not.

Traviesas also tells of a line that he vetoed from the old Laugh-In show, belonging to Henry Gibson's meek pastor, who would have said, "I don't understand members of my flock who on Saturday sow their wild oats and on Sunday pray for crop failure."  That one definitely would make it today; in fact, even if Gibson's pastor was a Catholic priest, they'd probably let it go.

Lest you think Traviesas' job was limited to the series that one might expect to be pushing the envelope of good taste, he throws this one in, from The Dean Martin Show.  Seems that one year Dean's producer, Greg Garrison, wanted to open every show in a bar.  Traviesas explained to him why this couldn't be done - "community standards, the feminist movement, the plight of alcoholics," and so on.  That probably wouldn't be an issue today; you'd likely have to glamorize it in a setting other than that of a successful variety show headed by a man known for having a fondness for drink.  At any rate, Garrison wasn't having any of it, either.  "Last year," he told Traviesas, his voice rising, "you took away the braods.  Now you want to take away the booze.  What have I got left?"

The show that gave Traviesas the most problems?  None other than Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.  Johnny would, on occasion, throw out a word that he knew wouldn't make it past the censor, but he used it to get a rise out of the studio audience.  He was cool with it being bleeped out of the show.  His guests, however, weren't as understanding, as in the case of one who used a word which, interpolating the context of the story Traviesas relates, I would guess was "ass."  You hear a lot worse today on family shows, but this one got the boot.  (Kind of nice, when you think about it.)  Says Traviesas, tongue-in-cheek, "I just made another momentous policy decision for NBC."

***

That really bad artist's depiction on the cover (the colors are all wrong) can mean only one thing: time for Melvin Durslag to pick this year's NFL winners.  If I have the issue from a few weeks hence, we'll probably run across several letters critiquing Durslag's picks, using the most colorful imagery available to a family magazine.  However, we'll just have to make due with comparing his predictions to what really happens.

For instance, Durslag has as his three AFC division winners New England, Pittsburgh and San Diego.  That actually sounds as if it would be a good bet today as well, doesn't it?  In fact, however, of the three only the Chargers made it to the playoffs; both the Patriots and Steelers had winning records that would probably have gotten them into the playoffs nowadays, but back then there were only three divisions and two wild cards, so New England's 10-6 and Pittsburgh's 9-7 were just not good enough.

Over in the NFC, Durslag faired no better.  Of his division winners - Philadelphia, Chicago and New Orleans - only the Eagles came out on top (and they'll go all the way to the Super Bowl, before falling to the Oakland Raiders, whom Durslag had finishing third in the AFC West).  The Saints, who Durslag saw as a team possibly on the rise, finished with a record of 1-15 - the absolute worst in football.  They didn't call them the 'Aints for nothing.

Of interest is Durslag's commentary on ABC's Monday Night Football.  The franchise is still going strong, with Fran Tarkenton filling in for Don Meredith in nearly half the games.  But there are possible cracks in the foundation, mostly pointing back to Howard Cosell.  It's true that ad rates for MNF have risen from $65,000 a minute to $230,000 a minute today.*  But for the first time the ratings have slipped a little, and CBS Radio, also carrying the games, reported a record audience.  Stories are that people watch the picture on ABC but turn down the sound to favor CBS.  No such long-term worries, though - MNF (now seen on ESPN) and its progeny,  NBC's Sunday Night Football, continue to rule the ratings roost for their networks.

*The prorated figure today is nearly $1.2 million, by contrast.

***

It's Labor Day Weekend, which back in the day meant only one thing: the Jerry Lewis Telethon.  If I can digress for a moment and give a personal opinion, I'm still offended by the way in which the Muscular Dystrophy Association gave Lewis the heave-ho after so many decades of service, making a heretofore unknown disease into one of America's Charities (if that isn't too crass a way of putting it; it isn't meant to be).  The MDA Telethon was an institution, and now it's little more than an infomercial.  The failure of MDA to disclose the reasons for the change don't say much for the organization's definition of transparency either, enough so that we've stopped giving to them.  For all the criticism Jerry Lewis took over the years, there was never a shred of evidence of any financial impropriety, a rarity for any charity nowadays, and given MDA's tight-lipped response, it would cause one to wonder how reputable the agency is in handling its donations with Lewis gone.  The sad part of this is that it's the kids, as always, that suffer.  I know they're still taking in a lot of money (although I've heard that the conversation rates on pledges is much lower than previously; whether that's an urban myth or not I don't know), but they're not getting any of ours.

Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the show's quality declined over the years, which isn't surprising given the shift in entertainment, away from variety shows and toward Vegas entertainers that no longer carry the cache in mainstream America that they once did.  The 1980 lineup features some big names, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Liza Minnelli, John and Patty Duke Astin, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, and more.  Now, there was an actors strike that year, so it's possible not everyone appeared, but it's still a pretty good lineup.  I'm fairly sure I watched the Telethon that year - it might have been one of the last times I decided to make a go of it and watch the whole 21+ hours without sleep.  I could do that back in my younger days, you know.  The haul that year was $31,103,787.

***
I realize I've gotten this far, and I really haven't talked a bit about what's on television.  Hmm.

Saturday:  Not a program, but one of those "Vital Statistics" that TV Guide used to insert into the programming guide to fill space.  According to the Screen Actor's Guild, "Although they are a full one-third of this Nation's population, people under the age of 19 make up only one-tenth of television's fictional population."  I wonder if that's still true today - it sure seems as if there are more youngsters, or adults playing teens, than there used to be.  At least as far as the IQ of today's shows, we can rest assured that teens are well-represented.

Sunday:  For a minute I thought I was in PBS Pledge Week territory, but no - this program appears on WEAU, the NBC affiliate in Eau Claire.  It's called The Neal Sedaka Touch, a special starring the early '60s pop singer whose career underwent a renaissance in the '70s, but who's now on the downslide of that comeback.  He's joined by Andy GIbb and the Captain and Tennille, and Neil's daughter Dara, with whom he recorded one of his big comeback hits, "Should've Never Let You Go."  I was never a big fan of Sedaka, but never had anything against him, either.  WEAU aired this essentially as a warm-up for the Telethon.

Also on Sunday, an episode of William F. Buckley Jr.'s Firing Line on PBS features Buckley's tribute to liberal activist Allard Lowenstein, who'd been murdered five months earlier.  I include this because it shows how much politics has changed since the '80s; Lowenstein and Buckley were about as far apart politically as could be.  Buckley was the author of the nation's conservative movement, while Lowenstein was a former congressman and head of Americans for Democratic Action.  Yet he was also a frequent guest on Firing Line, and the two men maintained a mutual respect despite their political differences.  According to Buckley, Lowenstein "spent a praiseworthy and highly unusual amount of time listening to his constituents' complaints and trying to redress their grievances and injustices one-to-one, face-to-face."  That, Buckley said, was a reason why he endorsed Lowenstein's reelection effort.  Buckley was one of the eulogists at Lowenstein's funeral; here's a clip from the episode of Firing Line in question.


I wonder how many on either the right or left are like Buckley and Lowenstein today?

Monday:  It's Labor Day, which means regular programming is subject to change.  The Telethon continues on many channels, both independent and network affiliate.  The CBS stations are covering the start of the second week of the U.S. Open tennis championship, with the broadcast starting at 11:30am CT and continuing through to 5:30, although WCCO bails out at 3pm to present The Joker's Wild followed by The John Davidson Show.  Until I started rereading the early '80s issues, I'd completely forgotten that John Davidson had taken over for Mike Douglas on the Group W stations.  He had the whole format down, from the 90-minute timespot to the celebrity co-host.  John didn't have Mike's easy charm or appeal, though, and the show ended after two seasons.  I never really liked John Davidson, by the way; nothing against him personally, but something about him always rubbed me the wrong way.

Labor Day sports include a matinee between the Cubs and Braves, tying up both WGN and WTBS for the afternoon, and a live broadcast of the All American Futurity quarter horse race from Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico.  It was billed as the richest event in horse racing, and was broadcast at 7pm on KMSP, Channel 9.  I always coupled the Futurity with the Telethon back in the day; I didn't consider my marathon TV watching complete unless I was able to make it through the race as well.*

*I was so disappointed the first time I saw the race; it was the first time I'd ever seen a quarter horse race, and I wasn't expecting the even shorter-than-usual event.  All this for a million bucks? I thought.

Tuesday:  It occurs to me that I've neglected to give you the biggest television story of the week, the continuing actors strike, which has indefinitely postponed the start of the new television season.  As such, we're stuck with reruns, bad television movies, and reruns of bad television movies.  Tonight we get part 1 of the massive war epic Midway on NBC, the disease-of-the-week drama "Echoes of a Summer Night" on CBS (salvaged by a cast including Richard Harris, Lois Nettleton and Jodie Foster), and reruns of staples like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo.  And you wonder why I don't spend much time on television of the '80s?

Wednesday:  An NBC White Paper looks at the influence of Fidel Castro, "the spiritual godfather of every leftist revolution in Latin America."  Back then, the U.S. still fought against Communist insurgents, particularly in this hemisphere.  On the flip side, a coterie of stations present night two of telecasts from Billy Graham's crusade in Edmonton.

Thursday:  PBS' afternoon talk-show lineup features a couple of episodes worth watching; Hugh Downs' interview with Peter Pan herself, Mary Martin, and her son, Dallas' own Larry Hagman.  Following that, Dick Cavett's show talks with the great opera baritone Sherrill Milnes, and there were few better than him.

Friday:  The action's all on late-night this time: Bob Hope is Johnny's guest on The Tonight Show, while CBS' late night features a classic Steed-Mrs. Peel episode of The Avengers, followed by part 1 of the Charlton Heston-Sophia Loren epic El Cid.  And if that isn't enough for you, the classic sci-fi movie The Incredible Shrinking Man airs on WGN.  In a week of reruns, it proves that the classics can still be the best thing on TV. TV  

Summer reruns: What's in a name?

When people find out I write about television, especially from the era of the 50s and 60s, I’m inevitably asked whether or not I’ve ever seen Mad Men. The truth of it is: I haven’t. I’m not really sure why; I did see an episode early on, but for whatever reason I decided I wasn’t going to make it appointment television, the way I have, say, Top Gear.

There was another reason as well; I've always been apprehensive about programs (or books or movies) that attempt to recreate a period from the past while applying the conventions or mores of the present.  From what I've read, this does happen from time to time, which may or may not affect your enjoyment of the program, depending on your perspective.

I've always thought that if you wanted to see how things were in the '50s, the best way to do it was from the media of that time.  A television show, or magazine article, or newspaper advertisement, from that era, is as likely to tell you something significant about the time as anything we can contribute now.  That doesn't mean there isn't room for historical analysis, as it were - often, we can't gain perspective on a given period until we've had a certain passage of time.  But, and I think this is crucial, we need to apply our modern sensibilities to our understanding of it, not our portrayal.

In other words, we know that society's treatment of women and minorities was often lacking in this time period.  We know this because of a certain enlightenment, a deeper understanding of human rights, the examples set by others.  But if the screenwriter is to accurately portray these events, he cannot allow that knowledge to inhabit the minds of his characters.  Otherwise, he runs the risk of allowing the portrayal to become not insightful, but ironic.  And you often wind up not with a snapshot of a moment in time, but an allegory.  Nevertheless, I can appreciate what I've heard and read about the quality of Mad Men, and I've kept up with the talk about it enough to have a somewhat good idea of what it's about and where the various storylines go, so I'll probably rent it at some point and watch it from the start.

But I have to admit that my appetite has been whetted a bit by this wonderful post from the always-interesting Stephen Bowie, who speculates on how one would have cast Mad Men if it were being made in the same time period in which it takes place.  It's great fun looking at the names Stephen and his readers come up with (be sure and read the combox!) - some of them major stars, others character actors who pop up in small but crucial roles in so many of the series of that time - and by imagining how they'd play the role, it gives us a pretty good idea of what these Mad Men characters are like, even if we haven't seen the show.

We can, and should, do this with other shows as well, but in reverse: imagine who would play Lucy and Desi, or Colonel Hogan, or The FBI's Lew Erskine, or Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt.  The list, and the fun, is endless.  Be sure and check Stephen out, and then be prepared to check out Mad Men as well - maybe you, too, will find yourself doing it earlier than you'd planned.