What's on TV? Tuesday, August 8, 1967

I don't believe I've ever before used this combination of channels from the Twin Cities edition.  As I've said in the past, this is one of the few editions where I don't go through all the stations; there are just too many of them.  I like to give a general overview of the situation, though, and I think these are a pretty fair representation of what was on this week. 

This week in TV Guide: August 5, 1967

It's another "second-look" week; this issue was first perused here a couple of years ago.  But in case you're thinking of giving today a pass, don't: I promise it's all-new material, never before seen by the eyes of you dear readers.  Unless, that is, you've got the issue as well.

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When I was flipping through the pages, looking for something of note, the first thing I noticed was the number of ads for local news programs.  Some of them are quite professional; others have a charming homemade quality about them.  Let's start there.

First, there's the vertical ad at the rightfrom KGLO for Tom Anthony's sports show.  Unlike the other stations in the area, KGLO's 10pm news runs 40 minutes, and Anthony's ten-minute wrap-up is the capper to the nighttime news.

One of the biggest changes in the social media area concerns sports, and for people who've been raised in this era, it may be hard to believe how much a part of the local news sports used to be.  It was the viewer's source for the latest in scores and highlights, not only from a local standpoint but nationally as well.  Some local sportscasters were very good, others - well, we'll leave it at that.  Don't think I've ever seen Tom Anthony, so I'm not going to comment on him.

Next there's an ad for the ABC affiliate in Duluth, WDIO.  This definitely falls under the "charming, homemade" category.  Local news takes itself so seriously, even when it's trying to be folksy, it's hard to imagine something like this today.

On the other end of the spectrum, Rochester's KIRO features their lead newscaster Bob Warren, looking very much like the young, very serious Peter Jennings, even though KROC is an NBC affiliate.  No nonsense here, though.

When I was growing up, the traditional local news times were noon, six and ten.*  I don't even know if most local stations continue to have noon news programs, but this series of three ads from KSTP in Minneapolis (one shown each day) shows how seriously they took their local news.  You'll notice viewers are reminded this news is in color.

*Not to be confused with Dr. Pepper's 10-2-4 slogan.

KMSP, the ABC affiliate in the Twin Cities, is one of the first to go with co-anchors on the local news.  Their ad is small but makes up for it in quantity, running several times in the pages.  They also emphasize the hard-news approach as well as the colorcast.

KAUS in Albert Lea gives you good cause (pun intended) to check out their news.  It's also cutting-edge -  I mean, they have their fingers on the pulse of the news, and it looks so high-tech!

My old home station, KCMT in Alexandria, offers this serious take on the weather.  Living in that part of Minnesota, weather is a very important quantity - from blizzards in the winter to tornadoes in the summer, it pays to have someone dedicated to bringing you the latest information.  And Bob Hines assures you the weather's no laughing matter!

Here's this week's obligatory ad for TV Guide; kids (no longer limited to boys) delivering TV Guide to your home are now called TV Guide Young Merchants!

And here's the ad that appeared in the center of TV Guide.  It was always on stiff paper, with a perforated reply coupon that you could send in for records, books, model rockets and the like.  I always ripped it out first thing so the pages would lay flat (still do that with magazines), but thankfully the original owner of this issue left it intact.  It's for one of those infamous Time-Life book sets.

No ad for WCCO, the news leader in the Twin Cities.  Possibly because they didn't need it, they were so far ahead in the ratings?  Or were they preparing a new ad campaign for The Scene Tonight, which would debut early the next year?

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Bad news for ABC: they've just moved into a glossy new headquarters in anticipation of government approval for their proposed merger with ITT.  However, the Justice Department's just moved to block the merger, and eventually the whole thing falls apart.  One possible victim of the cost-cutting that's suddenly taken hold at ABC: gavel-to-gavel coverage of next year's Republican and Democratic conventions.  Instead, the network will go with a nightly highlights package.  This accomplished two things: first, it made possible the memorable series of debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal; two, it set the model for the condensed coverage that continues to this day.  Let us now hoist a glass in honor of ITT, which helped make this reduction possible.

There's an article about Sigrid Valdis, also known as Helga on Hogan's Heroes.  She's grateful for the work, but a little frustrated as well; her typical line consists of "Herr Kommandant, Colonel Hogan to see you."  She'd like something a little more challenging, and indirectly she'll find it in her often-stormy eight-year marriage to Hogan himself, Bob Crane.

Finally, there's a profile of Roger Moore, formerly of Maverick, currently in The Saint, and the future James Bond.  In a few weeks I'll be writing about The Saint as part of the Friday night viewing lineup, but what makes The Saint work is Roger Moore, and what makes Moore work is his unusually self-deprecating assessment of his own talent.  He's had a significant career, he allows, "if there is any significance to mediocrity."  Lest you think he might be talking about the shows he's starred in, he continues, "I'm probably not a very good actor."  Of his time in Hollywood, he says, "My luck held out, too, until the studios found out I couldn't act very well."  His humility about his talent extends even to being humble about being humble; while a friend says he truly lacks vanity, he says it's more a case of lacking confidence.

Whatever the reason, what marks Moore's time as The Saint, and later on James Bond, is his refusal to take it all so seriously, combined with the underlying sense of menace often demonstrated by his characters, one that tells you this is a man not to be fooled around with.  The twinkle in the eye along with the steel in the backbone mark Roger Moore as a truly remarkable actor, one who has parlayed his supposed lack of talent into a very long, very successful career, leaving in his wake a legion of very happy fans.  And that's not a bad career, is it? TV  

TV you can hold in your hand!

This Sony ad says their is the television of the '70s, and we have no reason to doubt it.  Thinking back to the huge consoles that were typical in the early days, followed by the sensation of the "portable" television,the idea that you could hold a TV in your hand must have been unthinkable.

Imagine now that you had been told you would have a device that you could literally hold in the palm of your hand, not much bigger than a wallet.  You could watch TV on it, but you could also use it as a calendar or a map.  You could control things like the lights in your house, even if you were miles away.  You could look up things on it, as if it were a very small "computer."  You could even use it as a telephone!

How much farther can the future go?  There's the Apple Watch.  There's Google Glass.   What's next?

In the '60s, seeing the technology of the '70s was to behold the awe and wonder of technology.  The technology of the early 21st Century was something for cartoons like The Jetsons.  Considering how exponentially we've advanced since then - what will make us look back at the inventions of today and laugh?

TV

Sitcoms with a message

The Sitcom Class Wars: The 20th Century, by Ray Starman, The Troy Book Makers, 208 pages, $15.95

In the long history of television, the preferred method of communicating social change is and always has been the sitcom.  From the Cold War era, when shows from The Honeymooners to The Goldbergs were used to demonstrate how America was indeed the land of opportunity, to All in the Family and The Jeffersons, programs that conveyed messages of racial and social equality, to contemporary series that deal with issues ranging from homosexuality to divorce, from death to disabilities, from the strength of the American household to the disintegration of the nuclear family, and spanning the economic divide from the wealthiest professionals to the earthiest blue-collar couples, it is the situation comedy that has best dealt with those most serious topics.

This is one constant.  The second is that the sitcom thrives on conflict, allowing these opposing viewpoints (whether taken seriously or not) to be aired out, often loudly and with great emotion, but also subtly and with regret.  The conflict is often generational, occurring within a family, but it can also be within an office, in a neighborhood, or in the middle of a WWII prisoner-of-war camp.  The venue of conflict adds an extra dimension, one of strata, pitting the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the employer and the employee, the conformist and the rebel.  It is, one way or another, a class war.

The format of the sitcom is perfect for such discussion: non-threatening, short enough (at 22 minutes) to keep an individual story from becoming too complicated, with a likable individual or family at the center, and leavened with humor to keep from becoming overly proselytizing.  This is not to say that dramas have ignored social issues or conflict.  The risk inherent,  however, was obvious - dramas too easily can wind up as depressing, sanctimonious, prone to very low ratings and very strong pressure from advertisers, or some combination of all four.  Is it any wonder, then, that the sitcom has become the lens through which America's class wars are observed?

Which is why a book such as Ray Starman's latest, The Sitcom Class Wars: The 20th Century is such a valuable asset to anyone interested in following the evolution of such discussions.  Taking an brief, objective look at sitcoms from the earliest post-World War II era to the present day, The Sitcom Class Wars explains how each of these shows captured the feel of a particular part of American social culture, portraying various aspects of the American experience, and how the class wars of the day played out within the show itself.  For example, in The Goldbergs, one of the earliest ethnic sitcoms, we see the glories of assimilation, as a Jewish family struggles (in a gentle, humorous way) with children casting off the old customs in favor of a new, uniquely American way of life.  We  also see firsthand how life in the city shapes the family (Starman points out that this was one of the first shows to specifically feature an urban, rather than suburban or rural, lifestyle), and how they deal with the new and unique challenges of the post-war era.  This gives us a vital understanding of post-war culture, and shows us the blueprint for family sitcoms of the future.

Starman makes some very astute observations as he surveys the sitcom landscape, often giving an additional level of gravitas to shows that today are taken more for nostalgic or sentimental value.  He calls Leave It to Beaver "smarter than it looked" in the way it took the two children, Wally and the Beaver, through the maze of adolescence and into the minefield of adult expectations, knowing what was expected of them but not quite understanding why.  Lost in the criticism of the show as corny or cute is that the dialogue was often witty and clever.  In The Dick Van Dyke Show, Starman illustrates the double-edged sword that was upper-middle class Rob Petrie's life.  Rob's next-door neighbor Jerry, a dentist, can afford to lose a patient or two without seriously endangering his practice; Rob, on the other hand, risks being out of work for a week or a year if The Alan Brady Show goes off the air.  While the Petries live the upper-middle-class lifestyle, complete with ranch house and mid-furnishings in the suburbs, his position - and their status in that class - is far more vulnerable than some.

By the time we get to The Jeffersons, we see the various American class wars played out in all their messy, glorious  variety.  There is the racial divide, obviously, with George Jefferson still trying to prove himself after all these years; though he has become a successful businessman, with a home filled with expensive objects meant to send the message that "I've made it," he still carries a chip on his shoulder, still with something to prove to others or himself, without any real ability to appreciate the very objects he's accumulated.  He has a son with a completely different outlook on life, a maid who shows him no respect whatsoever, a wife taller (and more level-headed than he is), and for all his success remains, as Starman says, "a stranger in a strange land."

The last entry in Starman's book is The King of Queens, and by that time we've had a full survey of the sitcom landscape, with the various inner conflicts from each show representing America in a microcosm.  The good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the successes and the failures; they're all here to see, each one of them telling multiple stories from their own little worlds that unite to present the larger story of the nation as a whole.

This book can be read either from cover to cover, allowing the reader to look at the evolution over time of the class wars and their place in the national discussion, or as a reference guide that can be used to check out your favorite shows or eras.  There will be different ways in which one can interpret Starman's examples and theses as well; should you read this book, you might look at it in an entirely different way than I have, and challenge my assertions as to what Starman is trying to say.  But however you choose to do it, The Sitcom Class Wars is a book that belongs in your library if you're interested in how the sitcom serves as the mirror that America holds up to itself. TV

What's on TV? Sunday, July 29, 1962

Back home again in Indiana this week, with stops in Champaign, Fort Wayne, Terre Haute, Muncie and Lafayette augmenting the main listings from Indianapolis.  One thing I noticed is that many of the programs that pop up on public TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul during these days are seen on commercial TV in this issue, since at this point there aren't any public stations in the viewing area.  You'll see more of what I mean as we get into it.