Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The PTC Will Hate This

I came across this on Mark Evanier's brilliant blog News From Me and thought that it was absolutely brilliant, not to mention hilarious. The background, as provided by the original poster on YouTube – Videoholic50sthru70s – is this. The bit was shot in 1975 when the Family Viewing Hour was instituted by the FCC. This forced All In The Family to be moved to Monday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern from its previous Saturday at 8 p.m. time slot. As Videoholic50sthru70s puts it in his write-up on YouTube, "The cast of All in the Family did a little in-house "tribute" to the Family Viewing our, with their new "1975 version" of the show's opening theme song...and here it is!" It's a great take on TV in 1975, particularly the way Rob and Sally are dressed. It's almost like they're FCC commissioners! You can see the puckish gleam in Carroll O'Connor's eye as he does this.

Given that the Parents Television council clings to the belief that the Family Viewing Hour still exists and indeed should be expanded to cover every hour of the day on every television delivery system that exists or can be imagined, and given that some (if not all) of the people who work for the FCC believe that All In The Family marked the slide of Television from innocent, family friendly entertainment medium to cesspool of depravity, I'm sure that they'll just hate this. Me? I think it's bloody brilliant.

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