Weekend Videos – Inspiration Is Where You Find It

I have mostly restored my computer after reinstalling Vista (twice – I made a mistake in naming my primary account the first time I reinstalled and my files didn't go to the right place when I restored the back-up) but that doesn't explain why I'm posting this late Sunday-early Monday. No, for that you have to blame lack of inspiration. My first intention was to take inspiration from the song Video Killed The Radio Star; an examination of radio performers whose careers transitioned from what we now refer to as Old Time Radio, and a few who didn't (Fred Allen being the biggest name of all) but quite frankly it just didn't feel right. Next up was the idea of looking at the four Warner Brothers detective shows that debuted at the end of the 1950s – 77 Sunset Strip, Bourbon Street Beat, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside 6 – inspired by the news that one of the shows likely to be picked up next season is Law & Order LA, because of course law enforcement and prosecution in Los Angeles is so different from law enforcement and prosecution in New York. The idea was of course that this idea of putting basically the same show on with different locations is hardly original with Law & Order or even CSI. The problem was that there is a depressing lack of YouTube clips from most of the shows. There was only a short clip from 77 Sunset Strip that was shown here earlier, three clips from Surfside 6 that features none of the cast members, and a few seconds from Bourbon Street Beat in a compilation of 1959 TV show themes. The only thing that is available in relative abundance is clips from Hawaiian Eye. So that wasn't going to work out.

For a while I thought that I wasn't going to be able to do a video post but then, on Sunday afternoon I came upon this post from Mark Evanier. It references another post from The Mad Blog about an illustration that legendary comic book artist and illustrator Jack Davis had done for NBC to promote their1965 TV season in TV Guide. The work in question was a five part extravaganza (at least) pieced together by the person who posted the image (I have to say that it was badly put together, not only missing the Sunday night shows but also pushing some of the pages together so that it was bard if not impossible to read some of the entries, but that's not the point here). So the obvious answer to my problem was to find material related to the 1965 TV season... like one or more of those network preview shows that the networks always aired at the start of the season. Unfortunately none of those seems to exist. What does exist is the longer than normal for YouTube clip shown here, a preview of NBC's new entertainment shows done for NBC employees and advertising clients, hosted by Don Adams in character as Maxwell Smart. The show is rather funny, in spite of the laugh track, but you can see why it wouldn't be particularly attractive to as a way to introduce the new shows to the general public. It certainly wasn't shot on the best film stock available.

Adams makes a big deal of the fifteen new shows on NBC the most new shows on the network, as Adams puts it, since 1588. I'm not sure that this is something that they really ought to be bragging about since it's indicative of a major problem the season before. And I believe that this would be an accurate assessment. On most nights only one program from the previous season survived from the 1964-65 season. Still the 1965-66 season on NBC would be a turning point of sorts. While most of the shows that Adams enthused about would be gone by the end of the season, there were some stand-outs like Get Smart, The Dean Martin Show, I Dream Of Jeannie, and Run For Your Life. Other shows had long service in reruns. Laredo ran for a long time on the Lonestar cable channel in Canada practically from the beginning of the channel until after most of the other western content was abandoned and the station became Movietime. Even the most monumental failure was memorable, if not necessarily for the right reasons. My Mother the Car is generally regarded as one of the worst shows ever to air... but it ran a full season. In fact the only show that NBC started the 1965 season with that didn't last for a full season was the World War II naval adventure Convoy; it was the last NBC series shot in Black & White (to take advantage of World War II archival footage) and a number of network affiliates refused to air the show.

I have distinct memories of a number of these shows, including some of the more obscure shows that didn't necessarily show up often in syndication. Wackiest Ship In The Army, based on the movie of the same name was a show that I have vague memories of. Although it is generally regarded as a comedy, I remember it as having more than a little bit of a dramatic/adventure edge to it. Certainly it wasn't a "typical" service comedy. Please Don't Eat The Daisies is another show that I have vaguer memories of. I remember it as having been a fairly conventional domestic comedy in a sea of comedies that were filled with gimmicks, like girls who appeared in a puff of smoke. It was pleasant but I can't really say that I remember too much about it beyond the very large dog and the house. On the other hand I do remember Hank, the show about a teenager who was forced to try to support his younger sister through a series of – very – odd jobs but was still determined to get a higher education even if he wasn't registered (or paying) for college classes. For some reason I remember Hank airing as a summer series, but maybe that was how my local station chose to run the show. Whatever the truth was I remember the lengths to which Hank would go to attend classes. There was a warmth to the show as well.

I can't say that I've seen examples of most of the new NBC shows of 1965. I don't recall ever having seen an episode of Run For Your Life despite the fact that the show ran for three seasons. It is as much a mystery to me as the short-lived Convoy or Camp Runamuck. Of course I'm not sure that I've really missed anything by not seeing the TV version of Mister Roberts or The John Forsythe Show (particularly given the way that the show changed at mid-season from a comedy about a career officer inheriting a girls school, to a cut rate spy comedy). On the other hand a somewhat older version of me would have probably appreciated Juliet Prowse, so maybe not seeing Mona McClusky was a bit of a loss.

Anyway here's Don Adams with NBC's 1965 programs.

Update: Here is a much better version of the original Jack Davis artwork that inspire this, complete with the missing Sunday shows.

A Small Warning

Just so that you know, I might not get anything posted this weekend. I do want to write about the new CBS series Miami Medical and of course there's my "Weekend Videos" - though I haven't got anything in mind for this weekend - that should be done, but there are a couple of problems.

First up, I seem to have come down with a spring cold. It's not too bad, but it is slowing me down a bit.

Next - and I promise you this is bigger - I pretty much have to back up everything and reinstall Windows Vista. About ten days to two weeks ago when I was trying to downlod some Windows Updates something went wrong. It said that the download had been successful but when it restarted afterwards the computer wouldn't start. System Startup Repair "fixed" the supposed error - a corrupted file called ntoskrnl.exe. Except that the "fix" only lasted until the next time that the Update - which failed to be properly installed - tried to download... the next day! When I contemplated simply ignoring the problem by upgrading to Windows 7 I was informed that the computer hadn't downloaded SP1, and oh by the way, Microsoft will no longer support copies of Windows Vista that had not had SP1 or SP2 installed. Insert heartily frustrated sigh here!

Anyway this weekend is going to be given over to backing up my data - which I should have been doing more frequently anyway - to my new 1 Terabyte Drive, and then reinstalling Windows. I do not anticipate this being a happy experience.

Oh, and by the way, my brother Greg is getting married this weekend in Wetaskiwin Alberta. I won't be attending - someone has to look after the dog - but our mother is.

Suffice it to say that I probably won't be doing much writing this weekend. I will probably be reserving much of my vocabulary for my other activities this weekend.

Update #1: (12:18 CST/MDT) Backup finished at Midnight local time. It took about eight hours to complete! Not going to do the Windows reinstall until the morning. Fortunately Dell includes an image file of the system as it left the factory so that might make it easier than going completely from scratch. I hope I hope I hope.

For Linda: Truth Is I've never really had problems with Vista except for a few teathing pains, like programs that didn't work with it and for which the manufacturers steadfastly refuse to provide patches. A full Windows 7 Home Premium disk would set me back about $225 Canadian here, and I would still have had to buy the backup drive so reinstalling Vista is the better decision financially (particularly when you check the relative values of our two currencies; why such a huge difference?!).

Update #2: Well, I'm back - still not up to 100%; more like 60% - and there were a few things that went wrong. I had to reinstall a second time on Monday but that was because I screwed up when I set things up the first time. Still need to get the drivers for my monitor, printer, wireless mouse, and a couple of other peripherals installed, and then various programs installed - mostly games on disks, and applications to be downloaded, but it's better than it was before the reinstall.

Sunday Videos – A Sunday In 1957

We lost John Forsythe on Thursday at age 92. That was one hell of a rotten April Fools Joke.

John Forsythe, was born John Freund, in Brooklyn New York, the son of a Wall Street broker. He graduated from high school at age 16 and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At age 18 he became the public address announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the suggestion of his father he began an acting career and had some bit parts in films before he joined the Army Air Force in 1943. He appeared in the Army Air Corps show Winged Victory and worked with soldiers who had developed speech problems during their military service. After leaving the service Forsythe became a member of The Actors Studio where members of his class included Marlon Brando and Julie Harris. He also appeared in several Broadway plays including Teahouse Of The August Moon. He appeared in a number of anthology TV shows, and larger roles in movies. He was cast in the lead role of Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry, the first of two appearances in Hitchcock films (the other was 1969's Topaz). The Trouble with Harry was a commercial failure and led to his first TV series, Bachelor Father, which had the distinction of appearing on all three commercial networks in the course of its five year career. In 1965 he appeared in The John Forsythe Show which ran for a single, rather schizophrenic, season (it started as a show about an Army Major who inherits a girls' school, and turned into a comedy spy series along the lines of I Spy). This was followed by a two year run in To Rome With Love. In the 1970s he appeared – or rather didn't appear – in Charlie's Angels as the never seen Charlie Townsend, the boss of Townsend Investigations. Beginning in 1981 he starred in Dynasty as Blake Carrington opposite Linda Evans as his wife Krystle. A dark haired Evans had previously appeared on an episode of Bachelor Father as a high school friend of the niece of Forsythe's character, Bentley Gregg, who had a serious crush on him. In 1992 Forsythe played a US senator in a short lived comedy for NBC called The Powers That Be produced by Norman Lear. While the series lasted less than a year it did feature an outstanding cast including Holland Taylor, Peter McNichol, David Hyde Pierce, and John Gordon-Levitt. Thus Forsythe is one of the few actors who had series in five decades.

While the easy way out would be to put up either clips or scenes from the various series that Forsythe starred in, I thought I'd try something different. One idea that I have been playing with in these Video segments is to take one night in one year and try to put together clips from TV shows on the three networks on that particular night. So, for example, I might pick Tuesday nights in 1966 and find clips for the shows from all three networks on Tuesdays in 1966. I thought I'd use the death of John Forsythe as a jumping off point. There's a bit of a problem with that; while it is easy to find clips of Charlie's Angels and Dynasty, some of the other shows have very little material available to them. I've decided to go with Bachelor Father, as Forsythe's first show. But this has a major problem. The only clip I've been able to find for the show has a couple of serious flaws. First, the only clip I can find comes from a commercial outfit selling DVDs of PD TV shows. The clip cuts off Forsythe's name and despite having a stated running time of 2 minutes suddenly stops showing anything new at about the 0:45 second mark.

Still Sunday nights in 1957 was a dream year for TV. Just look at the CBS line-up. The network started the night with Lassie. Next came The Jack Benny Program which alternated with Bachelor Father (the Benny clip here probably comes from before 1957 but it's a classic). That was followed by The Ed Sullivan Show, which featured a young singer named Presley. This clip was probably ripped from a commercial DVD or video tape but I wanted to actually include a clip from 1957 with Sullivan in it. Next up was GE Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan. This clip is from a 1956 show featuring Judy Garland (the one clip I managed to find from 1957 had the commercials cut out). Following GE Theater was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This clip is from the first part of the second season and aired in October 1956. Alfred Hitchcock was followed by a spin-off from a game show. The $64,000 Challenge took winners from The $64,000 Question and had them face challengers in their fields. If one of the contestants failed to answer a question at a specific level was eliminated while the other contestant carried on until they were eliminated. The show ran from 1956-1958 and was killed by the game show scandal. Winding up Sunday night on CBS was one of my favourite panel shows (it's really not fair to call it a game show or a quiz show), What's My Line? hosted by the erudite John Daly and an equally erudite and witty panel. They don't make shows that are this intelligent any more.

For the most part Sunday was variety night for NBC. First up, opposite Lassie, was The Original Amateur Hour featuring Ted Mack. The show was considerably less polished than the closest modern equivalent, America's Got Talent, but that may be part of whatever charm it has. Following The Original Amateur Hour, was an extremely obscure situation comedy called Sally as a department store sales girl who becomes the "lady's companion" of a somewhat daffy wealthy woman on a world tour. Sally was played by Joan Caulfield, while Myrtle Bascomb was played by Marion Lorne. A format change at midseason changed the setting to a department store and added the always dependable Gale Gordon as store manager and co-owner Bascomb Beacher Sr. and Arte Johnson as his bashful son Bascomb Jr. There do not appear to be any clips of Sally available on-line (okay Toby, prove me wrong!). After Sally NBC rolled out the big guns. The Steve Allen Show was the prime time show that Steve Allen did after he left the Tonight Show. Well that's not entirely accurate since when the show started Steve had not yet left the late night show, but was working on cut-back hours. By 1957 he had left late night however and was working his hardest to be NBC answer to Ed Sullivan (literally since Steve was on opposite Sullivan). These two clips are fairly typical of Allen's prime time efforts and features Tom Poston as the straight-laced host, Pat Harrington as the "hipster Lawrence Welk." Louis Nye, and Steve himself. After Steve Allen came the Dinah Shore Chevy Show. The show was a typical variety show with singing and comedy bits. This particular clip doesn't feature Dinah singing "See the USA in a Chevrolet" but it does feature a comedy bit starring Shore and her husband George Montgomery, Ernie Kovacs and his wife Edie Adams, and band leader Louis Prima and his wife, singer Keely Smith. The fast cuts between the three couples is almost as hilarious as Louis losing track of the word play. Finally we have the Loretta Young Show, an anthology drama series hosted by Hollywood star Loretta young. Originally titled Letter To Loretta the original "gimmick" of Young reading a fan letter as a way of introducing the episode's half hour play was dropped after about 13 episodes of the show's first season. What wasn't dropped was Loretta's sweeping, twirling entry through the doors of "her home" in those glamourous – and vaguely preposterous – dresses. The only extensive clips from the show (which show the actual acting) on YouTube are from the 1953 season, so we'll have to content ourselves with a Loretta Young entrance from the 1954-55 season.

ABC was "the third network" and their Sunday line-up showed it. There were only two shows of real note. Leading up opposite Lassie was the show that you would have to describe as the "original reality show," You Asked For It. The format of the show was amazingly simple. Viewers would write in to the show asking to see some sort of action or event and the show would present it. I have a memory of seeing this show as a child, with the show's second host, Smilin' Jack Smith. The clip here isn't dated but it is probably before 1957, which was the original host Art Baker's last year on the show. I picked it because it represented the sort of thing that I remembered the sort of thing that I remember the show doing, although apparently Baker liked to get show business people on the show. You Asked For It was followed by another show that I have very real memories of Maverick. This extended clip features Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick rather than the more popular James Garner. The clip also includes a number of stars from other Warner Brothers series that may or may not have been on ABC. Wait till you see what Edd Byrnes is doing with his comb in this one! The rest of ABC's line-up was a show called Bowling Stars (opposite the last halves of The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show, a public affairs show called Open Hearing up against GE Theater and the first half of the Dinah Shore Chevrolet Show and the half hour All American Football Game Of The Week against Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the second half of Dinah Shore.

Please let me know what you think of this idea. It probably won't be the only way that these Video segments could go but I confess that it's an idea that I'm warming up to.

Beat The Clock – 2010 Style

If you're as old as I am – somewhat younger than dirt but older than some of the hills, at least in my neighbourhood – you will probably remember an old TV game show called Beat The Clock. The premise of Beat The Clock was incredibly simple. Contestants had to perform a simple task or a stunt within a certain time limit. Of course the task always involved a twist, like you had to stuff ten balloons into a pair of oversized pants, but you had to do it while wearing boxing gloves. If you succeeded you won some money. It wasn't a lot of money – usually around $100 or $200 – but the major thing was being on TV. When I was watching Beat The Clock it was as old as the hills; the original version of the show debuted in 1950, and while the first version ended in 1961 a second version, made in Montreal debuted in 1969. I bring up Beat The Clock because 60 years after that show debuted a new series called Minute To Win It has debuted on NBC in which people perform an assortment of party games for money.

The basic elements of Beat The Clock are found in Minute To Win It. Contestants are given stunts to perform within a given time limit. While the time limit in Beat The Clock often varied, on Minute To Win It the time is obvious – one minute. But the stunts are pretty much the same. On Sunday's episode one contestant had to move three cotton balls from a bowl full of cotton balls... using only his nose. He first had to dip his nose into some Vaseline and then putting his nose into the pile of cotton balls to pick one up. Too little Vaseline on his nose could let the cotton ball drop off before he reached the other side of the stage, while too much would make it extremely difficult to get the cotton ball off of his nose.

There a some significant differences from Beat The Clock of course. Most are made to conform to the modern vision of game shows. Instead of contestants having to complete a single task for a set amount of money (in the old show it was about $100, and in some versions there was the option for the most successful players of the day to come back for another task for more money) there is a "ladder" system by which a contestant who completes a task for a sum of money can either take that money and leave or do another, more complex task for a higher amount of money. In theory at least a player can win $1 million, although the highest I've seen is $125,000. And while a contestant on Beat The Clock had only one chance to complete his task, contestants on Minute To Win It have three "mulligans" or "do-overs" (in this game called "lives") over the period of the game to do tasks. So, if a contestant fails to stack three golf balls on top of each other without any sort of mechanical aid (which a contestant on Sunday was able to do – I've only been able to do two) the first time he gets another chance (and if he has the lives left, another and another). Contestants who fail to complete their tasks and run out of lives go down to base levels. If they haven't reached the $50,000 level they get nothing; if they're above the $50,000 level when they use up their last life they win $50,000. And of course they have the opportunity to quit and take their money, but not if they've tried and failed and still have lives left.

Minute To Win It has done a very interesting thing with their games. All of the games use common household items – coin, ping pong balls, cookies, golf balls, and so on – and the producers have posted video instructions for the games online so that viewers can try the games. They are encouraging viewers to submit videos of them performing the various stunts. In addition to open casting calls for people in the Los Angeles area, and e-mails to the casting department, the show is accepting those video submissions as a way to audition for the show.

Minute To Win It is hosted by LA restaurateur and Food Network star Guy Fieri. He's hosted several shows for that network, most notable Diners Drive-Ins And Dives. Minute To Win It is a major departure for him, but his energy and personality make it work. He's a bit off the wall but this sort of show needs someone who is personable and energetic. It wouldn't work with a host like Howie Mandel (Deal Or No Deal) or Regis Philbin (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?). The show isn't a static production where a host can stand or sit behind a table or desk. Fieri talks to contestants wherever they are in the playing area, but then usually has to back off while they are performing the task. He does manage to keep a high energy doing commentary for the various tasks and keeping the viewers interested.

A major difference between the old Beat The Clock and Minute To Win It is in production values. I'm not sure that the change is for the better. The set for the show is what you might want to call a generic "game show modern." The playing area is a circle in the center of the set which is set up in a faux theatre in the round style, so that we always see the audience. Everything is done in black except the railings around the playing area which are in chrome, or something resembling chrome, and underlit with blue neon lights. There are big projections screens above the audience which sometimes convey information but more often are used to create the impression that there is a second tier to the audience. The player receives his instructions, called the blueprint for the stunt because it is drawn rather than photographed or shown in video, on a large screen. The blueprint is presented by a female, apparently British voice, which seems at time to be mimicking a computerized voice rather than a real woman. The whole thing is more than a bit overproduced.

One area where there is a problem is in resetting the stage. Frequently, when a task is completed the playing area is more than a bit messy. And because of the theatre in the round style of the set there is no moving to a different area of the set while the one that was most recently used is being set up for a future task. Consequently there are times when Fieri introduces the blueprint for the next task amidst the detritus of the task that has just been completed, and when the blueprint is completed the set is miraculously cleaned up and set up for the next task, a chore that obviously could not be completed in the time that it took the blueprint to run. The result is sometimes rather unsettling, particularly when they set up the new stunt and then break for commercial before the contestant starts the next task. For me this makes the editing more than a bit choppy and it can come across as a bit amateurish.

Minute To Win It is not doing well in the ratings with the episode on March 21^st drawing 5.16 million viewers and a 1.8/5 rating in the 18-49 demographic. That put it into fourth place for the first half hour and third place for the second when it beat the animated Cleveland Show on Fox. It did not beat time slot winner The Amazing Race or the more than somewhat cloying Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I certainly can't disagree with the results. While the show has more than a few fun moments, and the challenges are something everyone can try, they don't hold a candle to the scenery and experiences on The Amazing Race or the deliberately heart-tugging stories that make up Extreme Makeover Home Edition. While I scarcely regard Minute To Win It as original or compelling TV, I have seen worse game shows – remember The Singing Bee, or that series that Shatner hosted Show Me The Money – and even worse scripted shows. This show just doesn't seem like a real contender for the Sunday night time slot and totally doesn't fit with either its lead-in, the news magazine Dateline or the show that follows it Celebrity Apprentice. I'm afraid that the show would do well in the sink hole that Friday night has become on every network except CBS, but maybe a better alternative would be for the show to enter syndication as a daytime game show. The show is pleasant enough, has the right type of host, and I think if it could find the right audience it would do reasonably well. The problem is that it isn't going to find that audience in the Sunday night time slot it now occupies.

Here's a clip of one of the blueprints for a stunt on the show.

Saturday Videos – Spy Show Themes

We lost another favourite actor from my 1960s childhood. Robert Culp died this past week at age 79. He apparently collapsed and struck his head on the sidewalk outside his home. For those who grew up in the 1980s he may be best remembered for playing the hard bitten, sardonic FBI agent Bill Maxwell in Greatest American Hero with William Katt and Connie Sellecca – of the three he was undoubtedly the best actor. More recently he had a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond playing Ray's father-in-law Warren, opposite Katherine Helmond. His first series was the 1957 CBS western Trackdown, in which he played Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. The series featured a number of noted directors and guest stars including directors Richard Donner and Sam Peckinpaugh, and Oscar winning actors James Coburn and Rita Moreno. The series may be best known for an episode that introduced bounty hunter Josh Randall, played by Steve McQueen. The Randall character was spun off into a series the next year, called Wanted Dead Or Alive which is generally credited with being McQueen's breakout role. However, for people like me, who grew up in the 1960s, Robert Culp is best known for playing CIA agent Kelly Robinson opposite Bill Cosby as Alexander Scott. Rhodes Scholar Scott was the brains of the team while Culp's Robinson was the athletic playboy. Culp not only starred in the show but wrote seven episodes including the first episode to be broadcast (So Long, Patrick Henry) and directed one of the episodes. The series spawned a lifelong friendship between Culp and Cosby, who later teamed up again in the theatrical movie Hickey And Boggs, which Culp directed, and Culp appeared in single episodes of both The Cosby Show (playing a character called "Scott Kelly" – taken from the names of their two characters in I Spy) and Cosby, where he reprised the character of Kelly Robinson in a dream sequence (with Cosby's name being replaced in the show credits with the name of his character in the show, Hilton Lucas). As Mark Evanier explained in his obituary, Culp was very active in union work, both with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild.

It would be very easy to do this Saturday videos segment using just the themes of I Spy and Greatest American Hero, and maybe trying to find a few clips from both. The one really good clip that I've found of I Spy features a great deal of Walter Koenig (just before he was tapped to play Chekov in Star Trek and very little Cosby and Culp. However in an interesting turn, the first five episodes of I Spy are available in their complete form on YouTube, courtesy of Image Entertainment which has the home video rights to the show. This includes So Long, Patrick Henry.). But just playing those two themes seems a bit pedestrian. In that mid-Sixties period there were a number of series based around spies and espionage on American TV – by 1966 there were a dozen such shows on the American networks. Many of them were done with a varying amount of tongue in cheek humour, ranging from I Spy through Man From U.N.C.L.E. all the way to Get Smart. There was even an odd blending of genres with Wild Wild West, a series that blended the Western with spies. In fact, about the only people who took the espionage genre the slightest bit seriously were the British. Two British series, Danger Man – renamed Secret Agent when it came to CBS – and The Avengers were bought by American networks. The decade ended with one of my personal favourites, It Takes A Thief.

Let's start off our tour of 1960's spy show themes with the one that got me to thinking about this topic, I Spy even though it debuted a year after The Man From U.N.C.L.E. All of these shows drew their inspiration from the James Bond films, particularly Goldfinger, but as we'll see, the title sequence for the first season of I Spy is practically grand theft intro rather than an homage. Subsequent seasons dispensed with this sequence and replaced it with clips from the episodes (and included the title "Emmy Winner Bill Cosby"). In this sequence the emphasis is definitely on Culp's character, who is the one seen in silhouette, but I swear that producer Sheldon Leonard gets the biggest credit of all.

Next up, here's an extended clip, including the opening theme to the British series Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan as John Drake. The series ran in Britain from 1960-1962 as a half hour show and then from 1964-1968 as an hour series. Thus, in its original incarnation it predated the James Bond phenomenon, while its revival was at least partially because of the James Bond phenomenon.

CBS had been involved in financing he show's first version , which they aired as a summer replacement for Wanted Dead Or Alive but pulled out after the first season. When the show was revived the network again acquired it, and replaced the original theme with its own sequence featuring Johnny Rivers singing Secret Agent Man. Here's the American version of the same episode with the original theme reduced to incidental music (so don't stop the player when the commercial starts).

The biggest of the American made spy series that at least tried to be semi-serious was Man From U.N.C.L.E. which starred Robert Vaughan as Napoleon Solo, Leo G Carroll as Alexander Waverly, and Robert McCallum as Ilya Kuriakin. The show was apparently based on an original concept created by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, and the original plan was to tie the show more closely to the Fleming name. The show itself got increasingly campy as the seasons went on for a variety of reasons, and the quality took a definite downward turn. The show's first season was done in Black & White while subsequent seasons were done in Colour, but while the slide of the show into camp may have coincided with the introduction of colour, the two states were entirely coincidental. The show had a variety of opening sequences during the four seasons it was on the air, but this sequence featuring the bullet proof glass is probably my favourite.

The other big British import was of course The Avengers. The show started in 1961 and actually starred two men – Ian Hendry had the lead role while Patrick Macnee was his partner but his role was secondary to the point where Steed didn't appea in some episodes. It soon became apparent that MacNee's character John Steed was popular and he increasingly became the co-lead. When Hendry quit to do movies after the show's first season Macnee took his place seamlessly. Steed had a number of partners, notably Honor Blackman as Connie Gale, before he started working with "talented amateur" Mrs. Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg. The two had a definite chemistry, even though Rigg was only on the series for three years. She was in turn replaced by Linda Thorson for the show's final two season... the less said about the better. This was actually the second theme for the series; the first was composed by John Dankworth and was used for the Hendry and Gale episodes. This version of the titles was for the Black & White Emma Peel episodes. The colour title sequence is probably better known but this one features Rigg in her iconic leather cat suit. Edit: Oops, the character played by Honor Blackman was Cathy Gale. There is a character in the current run of the Annie comic strip called Connie Gale and I mixed up the names.

Finally, here's the title sequence for one of my favourite shows of the genre. It Takes A Thief ran for three seasons and featured Robert Wagner as Alexander Mundy, a professional thief who was arrested and given the choice; he could go to prison or he could steal for the government – specifically an agency called the SIA, where his boss would be Noah Bain, played by Malachi Throne, who was replaced by Ed Binns as Wallie Powers in the show's third season. It's not clear when this version of the title is from – I was hoping for a clip from the third season which featured Fred Astaire in a recurring role as Alistair Mundy, Al's equally larcenous but more successful (he never got caught) father, but I can't seem to find one.

Update: This is in fact a third season episode, just not one with Astaire in it. The first two seasons featured the voice of Noah Bain saying, "Hey, look, Al, I'm not asking you to spy... I'm just asking you to steal!"

As I've said, there were a dozen spy shows on TV in 1966 alone. These clips have only scratched the surface of what's out there and I may revisit this area at a later date.

Saturday Video Clips

So I guess it was the other day, when I heard that Fess Parker had passed away, that I had the idea of doing some sort of YouTube video tribute to him. It was an idea that quickly morphed – because just about everyone else was doing just that – into an idea of doing a YouTube based post every weekend. The idea would be to find several TV related videos and posting them on Friday night-Saturday morning. These videos might be related to some news item, like casting for a new version of the Rockford Files, the death of a TV icon like Fess Parker, or just anything that tickled my fancy (or fancied my tickle – no, that doesn't work in this situation). Maybe this won't last long, or maybe it will – let's give it a try.

First up of course is Fess Parker, who passed away on March 18^th at age 85. Parker was born in San Angelo Texas, and after brief service in the Marines in World War II (he wanted to be a pilot but at 6' 6" he was too tall to fit into a cockpit or even serve as an aviation gunner in a bomber) he graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in History, and moved to California to get a Masters in theatre History at USC. He soon found himself too busy because of acting jobs. Initially under contract at Warner Brothers he was nominated for an Emmy in 1954 as "Outstanding New Personality" – he lost to "Lonesome" George Gobel. In December 1954 he debuted in the role that would shape his later career – Davy Crockett. Some people classify Davy Crockett as the first TV miniseries. In three episodes the series told the story (or a highlighted version) of the frontiersman, politician and soldier who died at the Alamo. The series was so popular that it is said to have revitalized part of the fur industry – there was a sudden need for racoon fur for coonskin caps. It also spawn two follow-up episodes – set before the Alamo or even Crockett's time in Congress – in which he was involved with legendary keel boat skipper Mike Fink. Parker was soon under contract with Disney, but the contract restricted the parts available to Parker – he was typecast in roles like Boone in movies for Disney while the studio refused to loan him out for roles outside that persona. Thus he missed parts in films like The Searchers with John Wayne and Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe. So first up we have the complete version of the Davy Crockett theme song. Unfortunately there are no clips of the show on YouTube but this clip includes the complete Davy Crockett Theme (more complete in fact than I can remember it being!).

In 1962 he appeared in the TV version of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington on ABC. The show isn't notable for much, but it did feature the final TV appearance of Harpo Marx. It lasted one full season but it did clear the way for Parker to do the other part for which he was famous, Daniel Boone which ran from 1965-1970. The series is a highly fictionalized version of the life of the legendary frontiersman who pioneered the settlement of Kentucky. The show was hardly historically accurate but as a kid in the 1960s I found it great fun. It was Parker's last hit. After Daniel Boone ended he turned down the role of Marshal Sam McCloud which went to Dennis Weaver he did a short lived sitcom called The Fess Parker Show for CBS before leaving acting to run a well respected vineyard, the Fess Parker Family Winery and Vineyards. Here's the theme from the first season of Daniel Boone with both the opening and end credits.

Casting continues for the new version of The Rockford Files, with Beau Bridges being cast as "Rocky" Rockford (originally played by the great character actor Noah Beery Jr.), Jim Rockford's father. He joins Dermot Mulroney in his first major TV role as Jim Rockford (the role immortalized by James Garner), and Alan Tudyk (best known for playing Wash on Firefly) as Jim's police contact Dennis Becker. Among the parts yet to be cast are the roles of Angel, Jim's slightly less than legitimate former cellmate, Beth Davenport, Jim's lawyer and occasional romantic interest, and Lt. Doug Chapman, Becker's boss who was constantly getting on Dennis's case for helping Rockford...and then taking credit for any arrests that resulted from the work that Dennis and Jim had done. This is being done as a pilot for NBC and while I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of remaking this absolute classic of a show, I have to admit that the casting looks extremely good. Here's the original Rockford Files Theme. I was hoping to find one of the opening segments with the answering machine but any of those that were posted appear to have been taken down at the "request" of NBC. This is a pretty good version of the theme though.

Finally, Nikki Finke reports that there is going to be a big screen remake of 77 Sunset Strip coming from Warner Brothers. Normally the very idea of these things leaves me cold, and for the most part this one does the same. Of interest is that the studio, which produced the original series, will be giving it a period feel. This will presumably include references to the Dodger moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles (which happened at the end of the 1957 baseball season) and period movie stars. The series, based on several books written by Roy Huggins during the 1940s (and legally stolen from Huggins by Jack Warner who screened the pilot as a feature film in the Caribbean to "establish" that the series derived from a theatrical feature not Huggins's books), featured two former secret agents working as private detectives and "assisted" by hipster speaking Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, better known as "Kookie", who worked as a parking valet at the night club next to their offices – it was a real night club, Dino's, owned by Dean Martin. The original show starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Stu Bailey, Roger Smith as his partner Jeff Spencer, and Edd Byrnes as Kookie. Here's the intro to the series.

And here is a clip from the show in which Stu and Kookie "talk." Funny, I vaguely remember the series from my youth, but I don't recall Kookie smoking. The cars and his ever present comb I do remember.

Let's see what next week brings.

Shaking The Family Tree On Network TV

Last Friday night I saw a new NBC series called Who Do You Think You Are? It could I suppose be labelled under the catch-all soubriquet of "reality show" but that would be doing it a disservice. It is perhaps the most unusual show to appear on a commercial broadcast network since the early 1950s (there were some truly bizarre concepts that were tried back then including at least one series about toy trains!). That a show is unusual is not necessarily a good thing and the case of Who Do You Think You Are? is a perfect example. Who Do You Think You Are? is a non-fiction series about genealogy. When was the last time that any commercial broadcast network in North America has done a non-fiction series about genealogy? Frankly it is a poor fit for just about any commercial network. (Okay, I just checked; CBC in Canada did their version of Who Do You Think You Are? Back in 2007.)

I'm not saying that you can't make an interesting program out of genealogy. Alex Haley proved that fact with Roots. The series made from his quest to discover his family history dating back – somewhat improbably according to some experts – to the Kunta Kinte, the first member of his family to come to America as a slave made compelling television. But a non-fiction treatment? I honestly don't think that it will work on commercial broadcast network TV. Despite the fact that this is an import from Britain, where it has run for seven seasons, the format and the concept seem to be totally at odds with what a commercial network should be doing. Not that there isn't room for a show of this sort, but my feeling is that it is better suited to PBS than it is to NBC.

Not that the show is without merit. In the episode that I saw on March 12^th we followed former football player Emmitt Smith as he attempted to trace his family history back to "mother Africa." As is the case with most African-Americans he was unable to fully trace his history with historical records. He progress was not without some interesting revelations however. Starting with his father's mother he was able to trace his way back to a small town in Alabama; really just clutch of abandoned buildings and a small store, operated by a second cousin of Emmitt's, who gave him a clue about where to find more information about his grandmother. This led him to the country courthouse where he was able to find records of his family going back to the 1870 census, the first census after the Civil War and also the first in which African American names were recorded. This gave him further information, particularly related to the racial designation used at the time. His ancestors were classed as "mulatto" meaning of mixed race. It also led him to the white family that had owned his ancestors, the Puryears. He was finally able to trace his family back to Mecklemburg County in Virginia in 1815 and the identity of the probable white father of his ancestor Mariah, Samuel Puryear, who Smith and the local expert who was working with him assumes was a child of rape. It was there that the records apparently ended. However at the beginning of the episode Emmitt had taken a DNA test, the results of which were available at the end of the episode. This revealed that he was 7% Native American, 12% White and 81% African. According to the person explaining the report to him, this is an incredibly high percentage – this person has never seen an African-American who is 100% African. The DNA researcher also suggested that his family probably originated from the "slave coast" of West Africa, probably in the region of Benin. Smith's journey took him through a series of emotions. In visiting the part of Alabama where his family had lived, he was sad that while the grave of the white woman in whose will they have found the name of his ancestors was still in existence and visible, the graves of the slaves, presumably including some of his ancestors were unmarked and abandoned in the woods around the white cemetery. His disgust related to Samuel Puryear, who it was assumed had raped an unnamed ancestor and fathered Mariah, the earliest ancestor he could find, was also palpable.

Now I'm just guessing here, but I suspect – based on what little I've been able to see of the BBC show on YouTube – that Emmitt Smith himself hasn't done all, or even much, of the research on his family described in the show. I don't think that this is really a bad thing although in the British show it appears to be openly stated that the research on a participant's family tree has been previously researched by "professionals."

Who Do You Think You Are? is apparently doing well in the ratings, "well" being a relative term when it comes to Friday night programming on network TV. The second episode actually improved on the ratings for the first episode, which is unusual for any new series. The show finished second in its timeslot and apparently tied for first in the 18-34 demographic. This is surprising – amazing even – given the subject matter. And still I don't really think that the idea is well suited to commercial TV. Remember that the British series is done on BBC2, which is a popular but non-commercial network. Emmitt Smith's story was a compelling one but would the telling of that story have been more compelling if it hadn't been interrupted every ten minutes or whatever for a commercial from an insurance company or whoever was sponsoring the show? A more seamless retelling of the story would have been the result and perhaps we as an audience would have had a greater sense of the passage of time in Emmitt's search. This is the sort of programming that PBS does so well, and which commercial TV, because of its dependence on commercials and both the resulting demand for ratings and the necessary series of interruptions for commercials, has trouble doing well. As I've said, this show – in this episode at least, because of the subject matter – is relatively compelling and capable of holding viewer interest. I just don't think that it is as well done as it could have been were it not for the demands of commerce.

Five For Fighting

Usually it's a good thing when people say that something isn't as bad as they expected... but not always. Case in point, the new NBC show The Marriage Ref which was previewed on NBC on Sunday night after the Closing Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. And it wasn't as bad as I had expected. The problem was that I was expected an utter and total train wreck. Marriage Ref was not in fact a total and complete train wreck. Does that mean it was good though? Hell NO! It was bad if sometimes funny, and I'm convince that it will be even worse when it is expanded – or rather inflated – into its full hour long format to replace the prime time Jay Leno Show on Thursday night. It just wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be.

In part I blame Marc Berman's podcast for my extremely low expectations for this show. For the past two weeks Marc has been talking about the Olympics and about how NBC has been on an extreme high in terms of rating because of the Olympics – although not so great a high that they've were able to beat American Idol during the Games – but that the network had nothing to follow up their success with. Which is, of course, totally true. If I were in charge of the network I'd have a nearly completely new line-up in place after the Olympics. NBC has a couple of new shows, one of which is The Marriage Ref. And The Marriage Ref attracted much of Marc's scorn. He didn't like the concept of the show, he didn't like that it was created by Jerry Seinfeld, and he most assuredly didn't like the fact that Alec Baldwin, whose split from Kim Bassinger was one of the dirtiest and messiest divorces in recent Hollywood history, was doing a show that was "saving people's marriages." In short a train wreck that would be the equivalent of the 20^th Century Limited smashing into the Super Chief and then getting T-boned by the City of New Orleans. The problem is that, having seen the show, I have to acknowledge that it isn't quite that bad for a lot of reasons.

The big thing is that no one but no one is taking this thing seriously. The "Marriage Ref" is Tom Pappa, a stand-up comedian rather than a "relationship expert," who just happens to be a close friend of producer Jerry Seinfeld's and has been the opener for Seinfeld's stand-up act for years. On a set that looks as though it was borrowed from a late, late late talk show (like Carson Daily's maybe) he is joined by "experts" which in the show's definition is anyone who is married, has been married or has ever thought of getting married. This is why you can get Seinfeld (married), Kelly Ripa (famously married to her former All My Children co-star and on-screen husband Mark Consuelos), and of course Alec Baldwin as marriage experts. Also in the cast was Natlaie Morales of the Today Show as the "fact checker" – apparently this will be another "celebrity" role – and announcer Marv Albert who seemed embarrassed to be there rather than in Vancouver (and to my eyes at least didn't look particularly well; that may be because I haven't seen him in a while).

And the "problems" that Pappa and the celebrities had to resolve are scarcely the stuff of Dr. Phil or even Jerry Springer. The first episode featured two couples with stupid/funny problems. The first couple was from an obviously affluent part of Long Island. The cause of stress in their marriage was his dog Fonzie. Or rather his late dog Fonzie. Fonzie, a Boston Bull Terrier, was pining for the fiords – or in his case probably pining for the bleachers at Fenway – and the husband decided to have the dog stuffed by a taxidermist and located in a place of honour, a shrine if you will, in the family living room. The wife, who didn't like the dog when it was alive (because as the celebrity fact checker informed us, it bit her more than once and had a habit of peeing on guests) certainly didn't want it in the house dead. The panel, in a session filled with quips and funny comments that included questioning what the husband might do with his wife when she died if he was willing to stuff his dog, decided that the whole idea of keeping the stuffed dog around, particularly in the designated "shrine area" was utterly creepy and he shouldn't do it. Pappa then rendered his decision to the couple, who were shown "live" in their home in front of the "shrine" with the stuffed dog enshrined (and looking worse than the first time we saw it in the video presentation of the family problem). Pappa said that the man could keep his dog but had to put it in the "open air attic," where part of the episode was shot.

The second problem was a man from Atlanta who wanted to put a stripper pole in the family bedroom for his wife to "work" on. His wife, who wasn't exactly stripper material in the weight department (a little heavy thanks to giving birth to at least two kids) told him that there was no way in Hell that that was going to be in her bedroom. In the course of the presentation and analysis of the problem by the panel, we learned that the man had bought his wife something like 60 thongs, and that working a stripper pole can burn about 200 calories, and is considered good exercise. In fact the husband in this case went from saying that they could put the pole in the garage and tell people that it was a fishing pole (what kind of fish does this guy go out for!) to saying that it wasn't a stripper pole, it was an exercise pole. Alec Baldwin pointed out that even if they did put the pole in the bedroom, she'd never be happy using it and that who wanted to be danced for by an angry resentful and disinterested stripper. Kelly thought that it was just plain creepy, but Jerry Seinfeld thought it was a great idea. When Pappa rendered his decision he told the man that he couldn't have his stripper pole.

The Marriage Ref is a rather obvious satire of the pretentious nature of a lot of afternoon talk shows, in particular Dr. Phil's show. Viewed in that way I think that it works well enough, but I can think of better ways to work something like that. I don't think that the show was entirely without merit. There were some very funny moments, but several of those came from the "civilians" rather than the celebrity panellists. Selection of "problems" for this series has to be key. It stops being valid if there is even a hint that the problems are really big enough to cause these people to come anywhere close to divorce or any real emotional distress. Fighting over whether or not to put up a stripper pole hardly qualifies. That said, I think that the premise is rather thin and the longer you string it out, either in episode length or in the number of episodes in an order the more threadbare it's going to appear. I think that the premise would work brilliantly as an entirely scripted regular segment on a show like Saturday Night Live. As it was presented on Sunday night, with two problems in one half hour it works adequately. One couple in a half hour episode would have spent too much time on either of the problems that these people had. Basically the problems should have been "no-brainers" for anyone anyway. My opinion is that taking this show to an hour format, whether they look at four problems or even three problems is stretching things to the breaking point, though I can see people getting bored with it at that length. If they are foolish enough to try to do just two problems in an hour, well they'll soon discover that some things just won't stretch that far. NBC should keep this show at a half hour, find something else to fill the other half of the old Leno slot on Thursday nights and hope and pray that it gets an audience. I just don't think that an hour of this is going to fly; a half-hour was testing my patience.

The Poker Conundrum

So the other night I fired up the DVR to watch something other than the Olympics. Yes it's true. Olympics junkie though I may be, there are times when I just have to watch something other than the Olympics. It usually happens when the "Olympics Broadcasting Consortium" (meaning CTV and its cable networks TSN and TSN2 aswell as Rogers Sportsnet) are showing tape of events I've already seen – or some figure skating – but that's beside the point. On this particular night I decided to catch up on an episode of The Big Bang Theory whichis one of the few sitcoms that I can not only sit through but actually enjoy. I was rewarded with the episode in which Sheldon – the character who elevates the show to another level – encounters his mortal enemy Wil Wheaton.

The reason why Wil Wheaton is Sheldon's mortal enemy is complicated but when is anything with Sheldon not complicated. Essentially Sheldon's favourite character on Star Trek: The Next Generation was Wesley Crusher – well you knew there had to be one – and when the opportunity to see Wil Wheaton at a Star Trek convention and to have him autograph a collectible action figure came up, Sheldon travelled nine hours by bus (twice violating his personal rule going to the bathroom on a moving vehicle – I have the same rule for busses and so do most people who have travelled by bus; gross!) to attend a Star Trek Con in Jackson Mississippi only to discover that Wil Wheaton wasn't going to be there. Finally Sheldon's chance for vengeance comes when he discovers that Wil Wheaton will be competing in a collectible card game that sounds like Magic: the Gathering...but isn't for copyright reasons. It is also a tournament that Raj has been begging Sheldon to enter – Raj wants the money – but that Sheldon has been dismissive of...until he learns that Wil Wheaton is playing in it. Inevitably Sheldon and Raj triumph over all opponents on the back of Sheldon's eidetic memory which allows not only to remember what cards have already been played but to deduce with incredible clarity what cards each of his opponents has. It's something that, in his smugly arrogant manner, he delights in telling them. Eventually he comes face to face with Wil Wheaton. And it is Sheldon's delight in explaining things to his opponents that proves to be his eventual downfall. He explains to Wil Wheaton why he is so hostile, and Wheaton explains that he missed the con because his grandmother died. Suddenly Sheldon, who is devoted to his Meemaw, melts and much to Raj's consternation throws the match to Wil Wheaton, who after winning informs Sheldon that his Grandmother will probably be very pleased that he won the money in the tournament – she's still alive.

The episode contains some elements of truth. Wil Wheaton is well known as a gamer, particularly a Dungeons & Dragons player. What's also fairly well known is that Wheaton is a competitive Poker player. How good is he? Well I've outlasted him in a couple of tournaments but that occurred in large part because I never played a hand against him. He's a solid recreational player who would have cleaned out the game on the USS Enterprise (those of you who remember Star Trek: The Next Generation will recall that a number of episodes centered around a Poker game featuring Riker, Worf, Data, Geordi, Dr. Crusher, and Counsellor Troi; like all TV poker players they played Draw Poker, a version of the game that is largely extinct in the casinos). This connection got me to thinking about how Sheldon would do as a Poker player. It's not really idle speculation on my part, rather it stems from a couple of things that's I've observed about Poker and what non-Poker players think about the game. One is that the most successful Poker players tend to be highly intelligent. Several of the top players either have PhDs or (in the case of Annie Duke) were close to getting the post-graduate degrees. Several were involved in high tech companies. We are also confronted by people who insist that poker isn't a game of skill but rather all about the luck of the draw.

If you believe that Poker is about the luck of the draw, which a recent "gamble responsibly" ad around here stated (not even suggested) then Sheldon would be an excellent Poker player. He's capable of calculating odds almost instantaneously, and obviously he'd know the relative values of various hands. His Eidetic Memory would be a tremendous asset in any of the games based around Seven Card Stud because he'd remember every card that had been played including the ones that had gone into the muck and been able to tell what each of his opponents had. It would be like the scene in Rounders where Matt Damon's character tells each of the players in the "Judges Game" what they had. That of course is what the situation would be if poker were entirely about the "luck of the draw."

In fact Sheldon would be a lousy Poker player just as Wesley Crusher, admitted into his mother's game, would be a terrible poker player (but not as bad as Sheldon; in this Sheldon would be more like Data). Sheldon would be easy to bluff because he wouldn't understand why someone would lie in that sort of situation or would always expect an opponent to bluff once a bluff is exposed. He'd only play good to great hands rather than the marginal hands that turn into something. As a result, when he does collect pots they wouldn't be as big as they might be. Big pots are usually pulled in when a player has a hand that develops into something greater than the losers expect them to be. With Sheldon playing only strong hands opponents would know that when he bets he has a very strong hand. In being a winner in the luck of the draw he would lose in the game of taking ships from opponents. Sheldon would be a disaster playing a Seven Card Stud style game because of his tendency to gloat when he wins, or more accurately when he knows he's going to win and sets out to explain why his opponents will lose while the hand is playing out. This is a breach of poker etiquette which in tournament play would probably result in penalties from the organizers and in standard "ring" games would probably result in a player being thrown out of the card room.

Sheldon's greatest weakness as a poker player is that he doesn't relate to people. In Poker playing the person is often a bigger thing than playing the cards, which is why Poker is a game of skill. An experienced poker player will be able to read his opponents, even online, and know when one of those opponents has a good hand and when they don't. They know when to bluff with a weak – or at least a not very strong – hand and when to fold their cards and wait for a better hand. It's about knowing when the other player is bluffing and when that player really is strong. It's about knowing the right time to apply pressure. It's about adopting different personas and styles of play during a tournament based on the skills and actions of opponents. Poker is about being one person at one table and a different person at another. It's knowing the right time to be loose and aggressive and when to be tight and conservative. They say that great comedy is all about timing. So is great Poker playing..Great comedy is about understanding people, at least in so far as it involves knowing what they'll laugh at. The key to great Poker is also understanding people and how they think. Sheldon would never get any of that – you can see that from the way he interacts (if you can call it that) with other people not to mention what he allegedly describes as his sense of humour – and more to the point he would care that he didn't get it. Sheldon's Eidetic memory would make him a great Blackjack player (at least until the casinos banned him and put him in "The Black Book") and his skills as a physicist would turn him into a wonder at the Roulette table, calculating orbital mechanics in his head, but when it comes to Poker, he'd be a disaster.

Now his roommate Leonard might have potential....

A New Beginning

I've finally switched over to the new, more customizable layout for Blogger, after a considerable amount of resistance. The reason for the change is that the blog commenting service that I was using - Haloscan has been shut down because the hardware and software were failing. They were prepared to switch me over to their new product Echo, but Echo costs $12 a year. Sorry no sale.

Unfortunately it was nearly impossible for me to remove the old Haloscan commenting system and regain the Blogger commenting system, so I bit the bullet and switched. Rigth now I'm mostly happy. I've migrated most of the stuff I had on the old blog and dropped a number of links that I didn't need. I am not pleased with the new location of the top Adsense ad but as far as I can tell I can't put it where I want it, which is above the title.

I'll probably make a few changes in the foreseeable future but for now this is what I've been able to come up with.

Man Undercover

There's one word that sums up the new CBS series Undercover Boss – "Meh!" In fact to paraphrase Lucy Van Pelt of all the "Meh" shows out there, Undercover Boss may be the "Meh-iest." I'm not saying that it's a bad show, but it's not a good show. It is probably a better fit for Friday nights on most networks and for the summer on all networks.

Undercover Boss, based on a British series of the same name, debuted after Sunday night's Super Bowl game and as a result had good ratings. But the problem is that while the premise seems sound the execution left me with a ton of questions, and the whole thing seemed flat.

The first episode of Undercover Boss followed Lawrence O'Donnell III, President and COO of Waste Management, which is one of the two largest waste disposal companies in North America. And here is where the problems start for me. The introduction to the show – before we met O'Donnell – made a big thing about out of touch CEOs that didn't care about the little guy and how it hurt in this time of economic troubles. The problem is that Waste Management is generally describes as one of the best companies in terms of corporate ethics. In 2008 and 2009 the company was named by business magazine Ethisphere as one of the most ethical companies in the world. And for his part O'Donnell comes across as pretty level-headed and likable sort of guy. He has an attractive but age-appropriate wife, a son and a daughter. O'Donnell's daughter suffered a Brain Injury as a child as a result of a doctor who failed to follow proper procedures; as a result he is a stickler for doing things the proper way in his business. In terms of safety it is not a particularly bad attitude to take.

When O'Donnell first notified the members of his executive team that he was going undercover to work for the company at what amounted to entry level positions there was a certain amount of surprise not to mention an attitude that amounted to "Is he serious?" Indeed he was. Going undercover as "Randy Lawrence" an unemployed construction worker who is being followed by a documentary film crew as he starts a new career in the waste management industry, O'Donnell gets a first-hand look at what's going on at his company at various locations. His first working day is at a recycling plant in Syracuse, New York where he's put onto a line to separate cardboard and trash from paper on a conveyor belt. Almost immediately he has difficulties getting all of the unwanted material off of the belt which to him seems to be moving impossibly quickly. Sandy, the woman who is training him informs him that this is the slowest line in the plant. But the real revelation comes when a piece of cardboard that "Randy" apparently missed jams a machine and they are forced to take their half hour lunch break early. "Randy" is shocked when Sandy suddenly bolts for the door in the middle of a conversation. The machine breakdown is lasting longer than the 30 minutes of their break and she has to clock in so as not to clock in late. The local plant manager has instituted a policy that docks an employee two minutes pay for every minute they are late clocking in.

The next working Day, "Randy" is relocated to Pompano Beach Florida where he works picking up trash that's blowing around at a landfill. His boss there is Walter, a man has little patience for able bodied workers who can't measure up to his standards – in this case filling a bag with scrap paper every ten minutes. At lunch "Randy" learns that Walter is on dialysis but is still able to do his job. Randy hadn't been able to measure up before lunch and isn't able to after lunch. Walter Fires him, which according to O'Donnell is the first time anyone has ever fired him from a job.

And so it goes. One day "Randy" is in Rochester, New York meeting Jaclyn, a woman who has one official job and several other posts that she's unofficially filling and is still in danger of losing her house. The next day he's cleaning portable toilets at a fair in Houston (where Waste Management's corporate headquarters is located) with Fred, a man who is extremely cheerful in his work despite the nature of the job.

Maybe the most eye-opening event for "Randy" comes on the final day when he works on a garbage collection truck with Janice, again in Syracuse. She has a bit of a grudge with "corporate" because of productivity targets that O'Donnell himself had put in place. The implementation of these policies includes supervisors who check up on how fast the collection trucks accomplish the requirement of collecting from 300 homes per day. Feeling under pressure to complete the requirements which she feels doesn't take her gender into account she resorts to peeing in a tin can rather than taking normal restroom breaks. Still, she manages to develop relationships with various customers along the route. Most touching for O'Donnell is when he meets a mentally challenged woman who has written a poem for Janice.

At the end of the week, O'Donnell retires the "Randy Lawrence" identity and reveals himself to the people that he worked with, who have no idea why they have been brought to Houston. There are no really big changes that O'Donnell makes from his time in the field although the show tries to make it seem like there are. He personally takes the manager of the plant in Syracuse to task for the docking policy that had Sandy so worried, and he arranges for Walter to have extra time off so that he can work with other dialysis patients. Indeed it is later revealed that Walter has become a health mentor within the company. He compliments Fred on his attitude and arranges for him to address senior managers He makes Jacklyn a supervisor – her first task is to hire two people to fill the jobs that she previously held, and arranged for her to be given salary status and eligibility for bonuses. Finally he explains to Janice that he empathises with her concerns over the productivity quotas and promises to work with her to help improve conditions for female workers within the company. Most of this is still ongoing, although Fred has left Waste Management to work in a hospital.

I have a lot of problems with this show. For example I don't know why the various plants in different parts of the country were chosen for this show. Was it because the producers pre-screened the various facilities within the company – which is not only across the United States but is very important within Canada – for various conflicts, or did they follow the idea that you can find a story anywhere. What would have happened if everywhere that O'Donnell had gone was full of happy employees who loved their jobs just the way they were without any complaints at all? Obviously that wasn't going to happen simply because the concepts put forward by corporate headquarters are put into real terms by the local managers like the guy in Syracuse who decided that clocking in a minute late would mean being docked two minutes pay. (Indeed the Syracuse operation seems to have huge problems with management since that was the same operation where Janice was concerned about supervisors following her truck to make sure she accomplished the productivity goals.)

Setting aside that however are two concerns. First of all Lawrence O'Donnell seems like an essentially good guy who is concerned with his company and his employees. There are things that are wrong with the company but it's not so much that O'Donnell is deliberately creating a hostile work environment so much as the fact that the policies are sound ideas that are being applied locally in a way that isn't sensitive to either the employees or what corporate headquarters is trying to implement. O'Donnell isn't the sort of guy that the voice-over that introduces the show is talking about. It might be interested in seeing a boss who really isn't so concerned with what's going on down the line within his company seeing how their policies were affecting employees, but of course such a CEO would never appear on a show like this. The other major thing I was hoping to see was O'Donnell making sweeping changes within his company; that seeing up close the sort of things that were going on would lead to big changes within Waste Management's corporate culture. That didn't happen. With respect to the people who were "Randy's" bosses, the changes that O'Donnell implemented were to a large degree very personal to them. It was great that Jacklyn was put on salary and given a better position in Syracuse but it doesn't do a lot for some man or woman in a different plant who is filling a number of jobs "unofficially" and is only being paid for their "official" job. The only areas where there are opportunities for real change come in Sandy and Janice's stories, both of which seem to reflect some of the worst attributes of efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's time and motion studies. In the case of Sandy's story it is apparent that there is a need to clarify policy regarding docking pay for clocking in late since the one manager took it in a different direction than O'Donnell intended for them to go. In the case of Janice, her story is more far reaching if it does change the way that the productivity goals are implemented and perhaps makes things better for lower level female workers.

In the end Undercover Boss lacks many of the qualities that I would like to see in this sort of reality show. There is little in the way of conflict; far less than on shows like Supernanny, Wife Swap or even Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (okay, I only watch the last of these). At the same time, in O'Donnell at least you have a boss who wants to change what is wrong, but the changes that this experience allows him to make are at best minor and "local" rather than "global." For the most part change for specific individuals that he met while he was "Randy" rather changes to the way that the company works overall. Add onto that some questions about the way that locations and people that he would be working with were selected and the show becomes less than a success for me. It certainly didn't deserve the post-Super Bowl slot (I'd have put the first episode of the new season of The Amazing Race but by now you know that The Race is my favourite reality show and high on the list of my TV shows overall, so I'm a bit prejudiced). The show was competently done for what it was, but between the lack of real conflict and the absence of real, significant change this show really doesn't do it for me. Instead of running it on Sundays after The Amazing Race CBS should have saved it for the summer. It earns too much of a "Meh" from me to be on at such an important time on Sunday nights.

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On The First Day Of Christmas...

On the first day of Christmas my true love – television – gave to me... One Epic Fail.

And surprisingly it wasn't my total failure to write anything for the past how many months?! It was close but... well actually no, it wasn't. Because the epic fail I refer to in this article was the attempt to move Jay Leno into a five night a week prime time series. Whatever they were smoking at NBC when they came up with that one was not just illegal but dangerous to the health. The problem was that it was dangerous to the health of one of the four major television networks, and if you look back to the days of radio, the company that spawned the idea of bringing a string of stations together and forming a more powerful union called a network.

I'm not saying that the prime time Jay Leno show is a failure compared to the hype surrounding the show. It would in fact be difficult for what Leno is doing to live up to the hype. The hype was over the top. If you remember when the show was announced, well before the upfronts, the brain trust at NBC – which at the time was Jeffrey Zucker and Ben Silverman if I'm not mistaken – was saying that this one show with this great host would change the face of television. Other networks would waste their time and considerable amounts of money producing dramatic series while NBC would prosper with equal or slightly lower rating because Leno's show wouldn't be that expensive to do... and this is even factoring in the amount of money they would be paying to keep Leno and his cars in the style to which they have become accustomed. And when you consider that the media en masse bought into the NBC hype – to the point where there were articles in big media (and we're talking Time Magazine here) were pubishing articles about how Leno moving to prime time would change the face of television – it would be nearly impossible to live up to the hype. And it didn't.

The problem with the Leno show is that it hasn't even lived up to NBC's normal standards. Fact one: the show routinely finishes third in its time slot in the ratings each and every week night. Fact two: the show routinely finishes third in the 18-49 year-old demographic each and every night of the week, including on Wednesday night when ABC had been airing the now cancelled Eastwick and Tuesdays when ABC airs the "hanging on by the skin of Jerry Bruckheimer's teeth" The Forgotten. Fact three: the show is not providing as good a lead-in to the local newscasts on NBC's affiliates as just about everyone had hoped. And since the late local news is a profit center for the affiliates they are not happy, to the point where there have been preliminary rumblings that they'll stop carrying the show which in turn will affect audience and advertising revenues for NBC. Fact four: increasingly the quality of guests that Leno is able to attract seems to be in decline. It's not a radical decline but it does seem to be trending down. Fact five: Leno's ratings have not improved when the show was up against reruns. This is a big one; it was always stated by NBC in their packages about Leno that while his show might not win the time slot against new dramatic shows it would perform better against reruns because 46 out of 52 weeks would be new shows. If that's not happening, and it certainly looks as though Leno is only improving slightly against reruns and CBS reruns are winning every night Leno's new shows. We know that hasn't happened when the CBS shows were running up against NBC dramas like the Law & Order franchise and ER. Which brings us to...Fact Six: Running Leno in the third hour of primetime has forced NBC to run their more adult programming – such as the Law & Order series – in the second hour at a time when either the content has to be dialled down or it is totally unsuitable. Or, in the case of the extremely gritty police series Southland they were forced to scrap the series entirely. Southland, which has fortunately found a home on TNT, was deemed to be too extreme for the Friday second hour time slot that it was originally slated to appear in and was cancelled by NBC.

Look, I can see the machinations that were going on at NBC with the whole Leno-Conan O'Brien thing. In simple terms the network had two cakes and wasn't willing to set down either one to safely deliver one of them. When they announced Jar's retirement from the Tonight Show in 2004, the network was undoubtedly worried that they couldn't keep the popular O'Brien in the second late night slot indefinitely and if they didn't move him to the Tonight Show they'd lose him to ABC. And Jay's statement at the time, "You can do these things until they carry you out on a stretcher, or you can get out when you're still doing good," seems to indicate that he may have thought the time had come to go. If that was the case, then the transition would have been smooth, but for many people – even those who thought that if Leno wasn't, "still doing good" – thought that the workaholic Leno would come to regret deciding to step down. And of course he did, which left NBC on the horns of a dilemma. Should they break their promise to O'Brien and keep Leno on the Tonight Show for as long as he wanted to stay, in which case Conan would be out the door and over at ABC or FOX. Or should they hold Leno to his agreement, in which case Jay would have been on ABC or FOX or even the Tribune stations and presumably demolishing Conan O'Brien. So they gave Jay Leno his prime time show and hyped it to make it appear as if it were the second coming of television...which it wasn't. The net result has been bad for Jay Leno – his show is not a good fit for primetime – bad for Conan O'Brien – there's the constant feeling that he's still under Jay's shadow – and good for one man, David Letterman. Since Conan has taken over the Tonight Show ratings for Letterman's Late Show have surpassed the Tonight Show not just overall but in the major 18-49 and 18-35 demographics. And not even the revelation that Dave had, before his marriage, slept with female members of his staff had an effect on that.

I can't fault Jay Leno for the Jay Leno show as much as I probably should. The decision to put the show on the air was after all NBC's. The network was the organization that wanted to keep Jay around at any cost and given Jeff Zucker's frequent musings on abandoning the third hour of primetime putting Leno on there must has seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, if there was anyone left at NBC who had an institutional memory that extended beyond Knight Rider and Bionic Woman they might have hearkened back to the first two hosts of the Tonight Show and what they did after leaving the late night grind. Both Steve Allen and Jack Paar had primetime series on NBC after they completed their runs on the Tonight Show, although Allen's series, which was on opposite The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights, started while he was doing the late night Tonight Show. Allen's NBC primetime show ran for four years from 1956-1960 while Paar's show ran from 1963-1965 (Paar pulled the plug on the show himself). The thing about these shows is that they were both hour long shows, one night a week. While it is entirely possible that the modern television industry would not accept a live hour-long talk and comedy series one night a week they way they did – at least for a while – in the 1950s and '60s, but it would have presented an opportunity for NBC to keep Leno and give Jay a real opportunity to do superior. Just about anyone who has seen even a few minutes of Jay's current primetime show will tell you that what he's delivering isn't the quality of comedy that he's capable of.