Sometimes A Crude Word Is The Right Word

A few days ago I got two comments on an older article that I wrote. Normally any comment about an older article indicates Comment Spam. The two comments I received on the older article were exactly the same and from the same person, which is usually a bad sign, however when I get a Blogger notification on something like that I at least read the notification before I delete the comment as Spam. But then I read the comment.

It came from a woman with the username Cindybin (and since I’m using her comment I think it’s only fair that I link to her site) and here’s what she had to say about the title of my Dick van Dyke Show Blogathon entry, In Praise Of Laura Petrie’s Ass:

It is terrible you used the a-word in the title of your article! how crude and offensive. I won't even read it now. And what gets me is that people are PRAISING you?? They don't even chastise you for using this crude language

Now normally I’d run the comment and because it is an older article no one would acknowledge its existence. But it’s been a bit quiet around here; my current Flash game obsession is getting a little stale, and I finally got that pesky leaky tub faucet in my bathroom fixed, so I was in the right place to take on something. And the topic of crude language is one I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I will grant that “the a-word” is a crude term, though I hesitate to say that it is an offensive one to the bulk of my readers. “Ass” has certainly ceased to be regarded as offensive by TV writers and producers, and indeed TV censors. The word is used in both contexts; as a reference to a person’s buttocks and as a contraction of the word that you can’t use on TV, which is created with the addition of the word “hole.” Oh yes, and as a contraction of Jackass, although that has nothing to do with what we're discussing.

Here’s the thing though. In this case “ass” is the right word to use, and probably the only appropriate one. I am writing an article on the (apparently unintended) sexual attractiveness of a TV character – and I make it clear in the article that Cindybin refused to read that I don’t feel the same way about the actress who played the character. The key to Laura Petrie’s sexual attractiveness was Mary Tyler Moore’s body shape, which I describe as a dancer’s body, lean and tautly muscular. Her body shape was emphasised by the snugly fitted clothing she wore, and in particular the Capri Pants that became her trademark in the role, as well as the dancer’s tights she occasionally wore when the character was dancing “professionally.” And guess what part of the body those clothes emphasized.

Yes, to be sure there are words that could have been used instead of “ass;” buttocks, butt, bum, booty, tush, fanny (though that one can get you into trouble in Britain; its a slang term for a woman’s vulva). They’re all “good” words (well I’m actually not that fond of “booty” but that’s just me) but they just don’t carry the same sort of sexual connotation that “ass” does. And since my post was about what I find to be sexually attractive about Laura Petrie – something that I was also emphasizing by deliberately adapting the title of Stephen Vizincey’s novel In Praise of Older Women for what I think should be fairly obvious reasons given what I was writing – a word with sexual connotations is the right word.

Words have value. It’s something that Robert Heinlein pointed out in his short novel If This Goes On---. The character Zeb Jones is working on using language in a way that will inflame people to revolt. He gives an example to the lead character, John Lyle (about Lyle’s paternity) that has Lyle ready to throttle his friend even though it is entirely accurate. It’s literally not just what you say, it’s the way that you say it. In this case the word “ass” has the right value for what I wanted to say. It’s the right word because it is vaguely crude without being truly indecent. I stand by my quite deliberate choice of that word and wouldn’t change it to satisfy anyone even if I could.

Update: Cindybin has responded:

Oh it figures. Instead of feeling guilty and embarrassed that you used crude language, you write a BLOG about it and make me out to be the one in the wrong, and then you say that you wouldn't even change a word of it. This only makes me angrier and more determined to speak up. I plan to write a ton of blogs about how people use profanity online. 

Right. First of all, I don`t think that I made her out to be the one in the wrong, except maybe for the part where I mentioned "the article that she refused to read." I feel that I defended my position on why I used the word I did. I stand by that defense. I would have been happy if Cindybin had offered a well thought out defense of her position that would have been the basis for a debate. She didn't. Instead she sent me something that was the equivalent of "you didn't repent; I intend to speak out against you and your kind."

Let me just reiterate. I chose the word I used quite deliberately because I felt and still feel that it was the best word to express what I wanted to put across. I did not use it off-handedly or gratuitously. Therefore I do not have any feelings of guilt or embarrassment over using it. I didn't even use it to shock; titilate maybe but not to shock or provoke in the way that a site like the Parents Television Council routinely does. And if that provokes Cindybin to write "a ton of blogs about how people use profanity online," well that's fine. I'll defend to the death her right to do so. Just don't expect me to agree or publicize it.

With that I am finished responding to Cindybin publicly.

A Response

I got the following comment the other day – last Tuesday – that raised my blood pressure. I’m pretty much responding to his “dare” at the end; it’s the old “you guys are so liberal that you won’t dare/don’t have the guts to print my letter/run my comment” which inevitably gets people to run the comments. But I’m going to issue two warnings before I get to the meat of this thing. First: daring me to run something or accept a comment; if it’s a good comment or if it raises my blood pressure I will certainly accept the comment and might even run it in a post so I can rebut what you’re saying but don’t count on it. Second: This is most likely the last Anonymous comment that will ever be run as a post in this Blog; be a man (or a woman) and take responsibility for what you’re writing. If you’re on Blogger this will at least give me a chance me see where you’re coming from. In this sort of situation anonymity is usually the refuge of the coward.

I found this comment to be rather bizarre because the post it was written in response to is this one on a PTC attempt to get the FCC to fine FOX for airing an episode of Family Guy, which also included a response to PTC attacks on several outlets who defended Family Guy and Seth McFarlane. The biggest thing to remember here is that this article was written over three years ago! With that in mind, here’s the comment:

If the PTC's description of the episode of "Family Guy" is accurate, I understand completely why it should be censored. You might find that kind of stuff funny, but let me ask you something. Would you want your kids watching something like that? Would you watch it with your mother in the room? There are those of us who don't want to see that kind of thing at any time of day. Since you are so concerned about things being "fair," I'll be interested to see if my comment makes it onto your website. It works both ways.

Well Anonymous, that’s the fairness aspect taken care of. This has not only been accepted as a comment but it has been given a place in the main blog. Now let’s turn to the meat of the comment.

You state that “If the PTC's description of the episode of "Family Guy" is accurate, I understand completely why it should be censored.” Well that’s the big thing, and the reason why I wrote the piece in the first place. The PTC had, and still has I suppose (I gave up on regularly reading their site a long time ago), a tendency to exaggeration, hyperbole and rabble rousing rhetoric in their posts, particularly when attempting to get their supposed 1.3 million members to send complaints to the FCC – complaints which the PTC provides for them in the form of pre-written forms. (By the way I say their supposed 1.3 million members because there is some controversy about that. In 2009 former PTC Vice President for Development Patrick W. Salazar claimed that based on people who contribute to annual fundraising appeals is closer to 12,000, and that t the 1.3 million figure is a count of everyone who has every signed a petition for them or ever given the organization money.) Reports of people who actually watched the episode and who weren’t invested in trying to generate complaints for the FCC, including the other person to comment on this post stated that the episode may have been gross but the things that the PTC was outraged about were either implied rather than shown or weren’t at all what the organization claimed.

You make the statement that: “You might find that kind of stuff funny, but let me ask you something. Would you want your kids watching something like that? Would you watch it with your mother in the room?” If you had read my post without your reading comprehension skills being affected by your apparent agenda you would have read where I said that, “I am not a fan of The Family Guy. I don't watch the show and frankly some of the things that are described by both mainstream critics and bloggers were enough to persuade me that this show isn't for me.” Whether I would watch the show with my mother “in the room” is therefore a moot point, although I should note that she has a rather high tolerance for “rude and crude” humour, a by-product of living with my younger brother during his rude and crude period. She has had no trouble with the nudity and swearing in Boardwalk Empire for instance.

You asked, “Would you want your kids watching something like that?” There are two ways I can answer that as I’ve never had children of my own. I am nearly 56 years old so in theory I could reasonably have children anywhere between the ages of 1 and 40 so my facetious answer would be that the one year-old couldn’t but that the 40 year-old could watch whatever he damned well he wanted. To put things more on the grounds that you are obviously trying to lead me into, I have a 9 year-old nephew who sometimes comes over for a few hours when his dad and step-mom have things they have to do, usually involving work. And no, I wouldn’t want him to watch any episode of Family Guy, and more to the point I wouldn’t let him watch any episodes of Family Guy. On the other hand I don’t want the fact that I have a 9 year-old nephew who I don’t want exposed to Family Guy to prevent other adults or even teenagers from watching Family Guy if they want. And the truth which you, and the PTC and just about every advocacy group that is pushing for tighter restrictions on TV shows either doesn’t realize, doesn’t accept or wilfully chooses to ignore is that the mechanisms are readily available for you to avoid what you don’t want your children to see or what you don’t want yourself exposed to. The most important of these mechanisms is to take some responsibility about what you kids see by watching TV with them and not plopping them down in front of the TV and leaving them there.

You said, “There are those of us who don't want to see that kind of thing at any time of day,” and my answer to that is that you don’t have to. No TV that I’ve ever seen has not been equipped with an On/Off switch or some form of device to change channels. Modern TVs come equipped with the V-Chip that works with on-screen ratings to prevent shows that are too explicit in some way that you define from being seen on your TV. My cable box – and presumably other company’s cable and satellite boxes – includes a feature where I can block specific TV shows and I believe entire channels that I don’t want to see or I don’t want my nephew to see (not that I too much to worry about there; when he comes to visit all he wants to do is watch cartoons from my Looney Toons Golden Collection DVD sets; he won’t even let me watch a hockey game in piece). You have the freedom to turn the TV off, to change the channel to find something that you enjoy. The networks aren’t going to stop you from setting content standards for your own household using the V-Chip, and the cable company isn’t going to knock down your door if you use their blocking software to keep every episode of Family Guy from being seen on your TV. No one is holding a gun to your head or to my head to make us watch a show that you object to or that I just don’t want to see.

The point of all this, and the point of everything I’ve written about the PTC in the past is in defense of freedom of choice. It is your choice not to watch Family Guy; in fact I make the same choice although probably not for the same reasons as you do. But should you be able to say to people who do watch Family Guy that, because you object to the show’s content they can’t watch it? Should I be able to say that in order to protect my 9 year-old nephew all TV shows – or even all TV shows running up to a certain hour – should be suitable for my nephew to watch? That’s what the PTC wants. They want to restrict everybody’s freedom to choose what they want to watch and restrict the available shows to what they think is suitable for children or families to watch. They want to threaten advertisers who sponsor shows they object to with boycotts, and to accuse critics and writers who don’t agree with their positions of at best being out of touch with “the American public” and at worst benefiting from their support of those shows. The people who are trying to force you to watch what they want you watch are groups like the PTC.

Poll Results–The Biggest Disappointments of 2011-12

When I started the poll of the “Biggest Disappointments of the 2011-12 TV season” I originally didn’t have a shutdown date for the poll. I thought I might let it run until the Emmy Nominations came out and I’d then launch my famous Emmy Polls. More recently I was leaning towards July 1st because it seemed to me that most of the people who were going to vote had voted. I am now pulling the plug effective immediately….because there is news.

In one of the greatest turnouts in the history of the polls I’ve run, 30 votes were cast in this poll. The following options received no votes:

• “Working It getting on the air”
• “2 Broke Girls having stereotyped secondary characters”
• “The Secret Circle being cancelled while lower rated CW shows were renewed”
• “Missing being cancelled”

These options received one vote (3%) each:

• “Ringer not being a better show”
• “The X-Factor not delivering the audience that Simon Cowell (and various “experts”) expected”

“GCB not living up to the hype” got two votes (7%).

“NYC 22 not being as good as the people associated with it” and “Terra Nova delivering neither value or quality for the money spent on it” each received three votes (10%).

The big – overewhelming really – winner was “Unforgettable being cancelled despite the ratings” which picked up twenty (20!) votes or 67% of the votes cast. And just for the record, I don’t vote in my polls but if I had, I’d probably have been the 21st vote. Based on virtually every standard (except maybe the almighty demographic and even that wasn’t clear-cut) this was a show that shouldn’t have been dropped.

Which brings us to the news, and why I decided to pull the poll. On Friday CBS announced that they will give Unforgettable a second season. This preempts negotiations with the TNT and Lifetime cable channels to revive the show. Admittedly the circumstances aren’t the best. The renewal is for a 13 episode run, and the plan is that the show will air in the summer of 2013 but it’s a start, and I have a suspicion that we might be seeing this show sooner rather than later if some of the CBS line-up fails to perform as well as the network expects. After all Nina Tassler said that the big problem for Unforgettable wasn’t “what went wrong” with the show but rather “what went right with the new pilots.” If those pilots turn out not to have been so “right” after all, I hope that the network will be willing to swallow their pride and push the revival of unforgettable forward into the second half of the regular season. (I just wouldn’t bet the farm on it).

I had a couple of comments on the original poll so I might as well finish up with them. Todd Mason corrected me on the name of the creator of NYC 22 (Richard not Robert Price) and added this:

… NYC 22, which (as I've noted on my own blog) managed to be more feckless and lifeless than ROOKIE BLUE (which I hadn't noted never quite admits it's set in Toronto, so obvious is that fact...it's even more blatant than HILL STREET BLUES being set in Chicago).

Being blatant isn’t the same as outright stating the fact, and to the the best of my knowledge (not that I watch the show) Rookie Blue has never admitted that it’s set in Toronto. Then again neither has Flashpoint, though on Flashpoint the crowns and Canadian flags on the uniforms suggest it.

Sadly, TWO BROKE GIRLS was created by Michael Patrick King, the hack behind the hack that is Darren Star, and the comedian Whitney Cummings, who is clever but is willing to go for the easiest imaginable joke, particularly in a sitcom context (hence the quick exhaustion of her other sitcom, WHITNEY... where we had the unusual result that her performance, rather than the writing of a comedian's sitcom, was what saving grace there was).

The thing for me about 2 Broke Girls is that I basically like the show, and am only vaguely bothered by the supporting characters because I’m focused on the leads. Or maybe I’m just an old fart who doesn’t see the racism in most of this.

pattinasse (abbott) wrote:

I would add ALCATRAZ and AWAKE, which both seemed promising. ALCATRAZ was too wedded to its central idea and AWAKE, not enough.

I definitely should have added Alcatraz, probably replacing Working It. Alcatraz was a show I really loved and was ready to review…right up to the moment when I saw the ratings for either the first or second week and knew that it was doomed. Too bad, because it was a fun show, and I’m a sucker for just about anything that Sam Neill does. Awake was a show that intrigued me and I was going to watch it, but then I missed recording the second or third episode and then lost most of what I had when the PVR expander died. I guess I should have also made mention of another show I didn’t watch but which some people felt disappointed about losing: Harry’s Law. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Upfronts–Responses to Comments

To finally wind up the Upfront discussion I want to respond to some of the comments that were left in the various articles. The Upfront articles usually yield a number of comments here on the blog anyway, and some of them are pretty good, so let’s take a look.

NBC


Todd Mason wrote:

Well, thank goodness we have no fewer than two series imitating DEXTER coming this season (at least)...this one and SLICING AND DICING KEVIN BACON on Fox.

I know what you mean Todd. The only link I really see to Dexter is that the three shows all have serial killers, but I doubt that either of the two network shows would be on the air if it weren’t for Dexter so it’s less imitation than Network Weasel logic: it did okay on cable so it’s time to put it on broadcast. For the record, I think the FOX Kevin Bacon series – The Following – is likely to be the more successful one (assuming that either one is going to be successful, which I doubt). NBC’s mistake in my view is to tie their show to the Hannibal Lecter character. I think there’s a greater opportunity if the serial killer character isn’t known until he makes his first kill, which shouldn’t come in the first episode. We know what to expect from Hannibal Lecter from the beginning so the shock value of that first kill is minimized.

The Kevin Bacon series reminds me more of Criminal Minds but with an overriding mytharc aspect. The other difference is that while the characters on Criminal Minds operate as a team, the characters on The Following are more antagonistic to each other, or at least to the Kevin Bacon character. Let’s just say that Criminal Minds is the DC Comics version of the concept while The Following is the Marvel Comics version.

Next Roger Owen Green wrote:

I figured Who Do You Think You Are would stick. It's the one show I watch with my 8 y.o.

I really hoped that Who Do You Think You Are would stick as well. Initially I didn’t think it was a show that an American commercial network would embrace, and that it really wasn’t suited to commercial TV. Still I think that it’s loss, combined with the “quality” of the reality shows that NBC is offering, is a bit of a black eye for the network.

Todd Mason responded to Roger’s comment:

Well, WHO DO YOU THINK is pretty much the same series as PBS's Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr....which I hope Canadians might have access to, even if mostly on border stations (haven't doublechecked to see if CBC or anyone else has picked it up, or if TV Ontario and/or SCN will be carrying it if they haven't yet).

The PBS show might be available in some areas but I don’t think it was seen where I live. It doesn’t appear on the list of shows on the two PBS stations available from Shaw Cable – WTVS in Detroit and KSPS in Spokane – but those lists might be out of date. In recent years I haven’t been watching that much on PBS in part because of the interminable Pledge Weeks where the programming more closely resembled an all infomercial/self-help channel than educational television.

SCN is more than a bit of a sore subject with me. In 2010 the provincial government decided to shut down SCN – the Saskatchewan Communications Network – because of “low ratings,” and to save money (in a booming resource economy). A private company called Bluepoint Investments bought the network at the eleventh hour. The new owners planned to offer commercial programming in the prime time period and include advertising. They even got simsub rights for their programming that are only granted to broadcast stations. Earlier this year Bluepoint announced the sale of SCN to Rogers Communications, the owner of Citytv. The station will be rebranded as “Citytv Saskatchewan” and while Rogers claims they won’t seek alteration in the current license, which included a commercial free educational block from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. I’m willing to bet that won’t last that long. The only real educational networks left in Canada are TV Ontario and the Knowledge Network in BC.

CBS

Linda wrote:

When they advertised they were doing an American version of Sherlock I said, "I bet Watson is a woman." Bingo! Of course this isn't a new concept; They Might Be Giants and The Return of the World's Greatest Detective both used the idea. And wasn't there a children's book takeoff on Holmes where the main boy character's "Watson" was a girl?

There probably was, though I’m not enough of a Holmes aficionado to know the title or the details. Making Watson a woman is something an American network, and particularly CBS, would do to create “unresolved sexual tension” (UST). There was a reporter in a Canadian newspaper who claimed that most CBS procedurals had a male-female relationship that could be seen as UST. It wasn’t well-developed and some of the cases of UST were fairly absurd (he mentioned Mac Taylor and Jo Danville on CSI: New York which was something I never saw until he stated it, and don’t see it as being particularly obvious since he mentioned it).

At the time I commented on Linda’s comment and mentioned that the network was also attempting to avoid any charges that the Holmes-male Watson relationship might be seen by some as being a sexual one. Todd Mason jumped on this statement of mine:

Well, of course, today in the Real US and environs, increasingly we see extended-period same-gender roommates...and, increasingly among the young, less worry about homosexuality. (Hell, I live platonically with a woman who owns the house.)

And tell me Todd, do you feel any Unresolved Sexual Tension? Because Television tells us both of you should be expected to be filled to the brim with UST. Obviously you’re right about it being common in real life but these are Network Weasels we’re talking about here, and as a group I think they tend to be conservative on a thing like that, trying as much as possible to avoid controversy. I recently heard Gary Marshall taking about The Odd Couple, and the network weasels of the day were constantly sending him notes telling him (demanding really) to assert the character’s heterosexuality by having more women on the show in a romantic context. I also know that the Doyle Estate sent a letter to Guy Ritchie ordering him not to have anything in his second (and presumably subsequent) Holmes film that would suggest a homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson. It wasn’t an issue for Doyle or for a couple of generations of stage film and TV producers, but the Doyle Estate made it an issue. I can definitely see the network weasels at CBS saying “why borrow trouble. Changing Watson’s gender avoids any implications and gives us unresolved sexual tension. It’s a win-win answer.”

Todd continues:

Even going back to the '60s, Keith Robertson's YA novels about Henry Reed and Midge Glass employed a male-female Holmes/Watson dynamic (and essentially a platonic one), even though Reed and Glass were more evenly matched (as has also been the post-Doyle tendency...at very least, the latter-day Watson tends to be the one to pull the Holmes's iron out of some fires he's too unconventional/unconcerned to care about).

Well the Robertson novels aren’t specifically Holmes and Watson. Inspiration is different from keeping the characters but changing their genders. The relationship may be similar but the characters aren’t them. House and Wilson were inspired by Holmes and Watson, but they weren’t the characters in the same way that the characters in Elementary are clearly intended to be.
The male-female Holmes dynamic where it’s not actually Sherlock Holmes and Joan H. Watson seems to be quite common. I actually think that the relationship between Patrick Jane and Theresa Lisbon on The Mentalist is a Holmes and Watson style relationship with a man and a woman as lead characters. And yes, I am detecting UST showing up increasingly in that relationship, particularly in the season finale. (One day I’m going to do a post on the comparisons between the Holmes canon and The Mentalist,)

The Season Night By Night

Ben wrote:

I can see why you'd call Revolution a "dead show walking." It looks very reminiscent of shows like The Event and FlashForward, shows that wanted to be the next Lost but made the mistake of jumping right into conspiracies without building interest in the characters.

Well my assessment of Revolution as a “dead show walking” wasn’t entirely based on the premise though that was a contributing factor. Among the factors is the fact that it’s going up against two established shows – Castle and Hawaii Five-0 – and the fact that of the three Revolution has possibly the weakest lead-in with The Voice. Then you can add on the nature of the show itself; a future world without electricity, a place largely reduced if not to the stone age then to an agrarian society far less advanced than it was the last time we didn’t use electricity around 1850 (the first practical electric motors were developed in the 1850s). I’m not convinced that the mass audience is ready for that kind of a world even if they take the time, and don’t jump into the conspiracies right away – which I suspect they will. The public didn’t buy into a show like Kings (which I actually grew to like over time, so much so that I bought the DVDs) or Jericho. I’m not convinced that when given the choice between this show and Castle’s “cop and writer solving crimes in a serio-comic romantic manner” or Hawaii Five-0’s “elite cops in paradise” storylines that they’ll take the time to let Revolution build.

I'd hesitate to write it off, though. One of the creators is JJ Abrams, who co-created Lost itself, even though he left it for others to flesh out. And the other creator is Eric Kripke, who's kept Supernatural going for years. If both of them do what they do well on this show, and if they hire writers who can create a good hour of TV, and if the network gives them space to do all this, then the show has a fighting chance. Granted, that's a lot of ifs, but I'm withholding judgment until the show debuts.

It is a lot of ifs. Your really need to look at the track record, as my relative who handicaps horses would say. Eric Kripke’s only real success has been Supernatural, and that’s a series that probably wouldn’t have received a second season on a network that wasn’t The CW. On the other hand he was also responsible for the failed attempt to make a series of Tarzan, which performed so dismally that even the old WB wouldn’t keep it on the air. And while I’m a bit more charitable about JJ Abrams than Todd Mason (see the next response), I would like to point out that his most recent series. Alcatraz, was largely a failure, and that most networks would have ended Fringe a couple of years ago. And we probably shouldn’t mention Undercovers. By most network standards, most of what Abrams has done would be regarded as failures. Of the “ifs” that you mention maybe the biggest is “if the network gives them space to do this.” Even dealing with NBC – a network that seems increasingly desperate and/or resigned to their fate – I’m not sure the network will be willing to “give them the space” if the standards that they use to measure success or failure (the ratings and particularly the 18-49 ratings) aren’t met. After looking at the clips I think the show looks intriguing but that it probably isn’t the sort of thing mainstream, broadcast TV viewers would go to en masse. It would find a niche on SyFy or maybe the USA Network but I don’t see it working on a broadcast network.

Todd Mason responded to Ben:

I really don't like Abrams's work, and it should be noted that he's had exactly one sustained television success, that in collaboration with a number of folks out of Chris Carter and Joss Whedon's productions (guys who may have had only one or two sustained series respectively, but they were frankly much better series for at least most of their runs, and the Carter and Whedon productions strangled in their cribs were also more interesting than the Abrams misfires...or than SUPERNATURAL).

Well as I said to Ben, I’m a bit more charitable about JJ Abrams than you are. After all, before Lost he was also the the Executive Producer and writer behind Felicity, and Alias, and he’s currently got a second season for Person Of Interest on CBS. Of course he was also the man behind What About Brian, and Six Degrees and Undercovers and Alcatraz And then there’s Fringe (of which I’m a huge fan) which seems to have survived as long as it has because apparently Kevin Reilly loves the show (or Rupert Murdoch wants to keep his ex-wife’s namesake niece employed – that would be Anna Torv). I do tend to agree with you as regards the “failures” of Carter and Whedon – the shows you describe as having been “strangled in their cribs.” A Millenium or a Firefly is more interesting to me than most of Abrams’ failures and some of his successes.

The Video Trailers

Zoey wrote:

I have to say there isn't too much on television that I look forward to these days. I've been watching for a new favorite show but just haven't had that hit yet.

I have favourite, or at least preferred, shows on most night, but I’m pretty easy to please. Don’t put me asleep, don’t give me a headache, and for heavens sake don’t be a talent show and I’ll give you a try – if I like what I see I’ll stick like a barnacle. That’s how I was with The Amazing Race and despite stumbles I’m still the show’s biggest fan. Well at least one of them.

Turning to the list of the coming season’s shows, there aren’t that many that really reach out and grab me the way that The Amazing Race did eleven years ago, or CSI and The West Wing did a few years before that. I don’t see anything on this year’s slate from ABC that will grab me like Revenge or Once Upon A Time did last season. CBS has one show that I’m really looking forward to (Vegas), two shows that have the potential to hold my interest (Partners and Elementary), and Made In New Jersey that doesn’t do a thing for me. What I’ve seen from FOX, in terms of clips, doesn’t work for me. On NBC, out of the huge roster that they put out there, the only shows that do anything for me are The New Normal and Chicago Fire. And right now the only thing that really did anything for me on The CW is Arrow. I don’t know what that says about the shows or me. Maybe my attraction to shows like Vegas, Chicago Fire and Arrow says more about me and my impending geezerhood (I’ll be 56 in August) than it does about the shows. I want someone in the hierarchy of the networks to take the sort of risks that gave us CSI, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, and yes Survivor. Unfortunately I don’t think the networks as a group feel secure enough to try something truly radical and daring.

---

I’ve got a couple of other things to take care of in the next week or so – including working up a poll, and then I’m going to try another set of summer recaps – because my attempt to recap Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip last summer went so well. This year’s recap will be of a show that will probably divide my readers. It will be…….

revealed to you when I write the first post.

TV Guide Fall Preview 1972 – The Comments

First up some comments from Todd Mason:

Actually, the bitter Serling line about NIGHT GALLERY was that it was "MANNIX in a shroud."

Me: I grabbed the Serling "Mannix in a cemetery" quote from Wikipedia (naturally). I should have expected Serling to come up with something better.

Leaving aside social pressures on the brass at CBS, the rationale for dumping BRIDGET LOVES BERNIE was presumably the amount of the audience BLB was losing from ALL IN THE FAMILY, a consideration that would, for example, later doom any number of NBC sitcoms on Thursday nights in the '80s into the '90s, good, bad and indifferent.

Me: I'd accept that point – which I think was the point that Mike Dann was trying to make – except for a couple of things. First of course is that Dann was wrong about the show hammocking because it did finish the year with a higher rating than Mary Tyler Moore. If you cancel Bridget Loves Bernie wouldn't you cancel MTM following the same logic? The second thing is probably a bit more important. The show finished in fifth place for the year, ahead of MTM and every other show on CBS except Maude and Hawaii Five-0. Even if you think that the show can't stand on its own without the lead-in of All In The Family, surely it seems too highly rated to not at least try to keep it in the line-up by moving it to another night (a modern example was CBS's decision to move Shark out of the post CSI timeslot on Thursday night to Sunday night; it had strong ratings on Thursday but died on Sunday, but at least the network tried). And given the fate of CBS's new comedies launched on Friday nights in September 1973 – Calucci's Department which was cancelled after 12 episodes and Roll Out! which lasted 13 – I think it's fair to say that a relocated Bridget Loves Bernie couldn't have done worse. So why wasn't it tried unless there was pressure on CBS to dump the show.

(Of course, any reason to dump David Birney is usually a good one, as ST. ELSEWHERE would later discover.)

Me: Not to mention Meredith Baxter

Serling had his own side project at about this time...his radio serial ZERO HOUR.

Me: Serling's writing would be perfect for radio.

Certainly, my Saturday nights didn't improve after the move of M*A*S*H back out of the 8:30 slot till 1975, when I was able to watch AITF, the placeholder CBS put in behind AITF, MTM, BOB NEWHART, BURNETT, MONTY PYTHON on the local PBS affiliate, and over to NBC for the first season of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE or, every fourth week, WEEKEND. As a kid, a great if marathon night.

Me: That show at the start of the 1974-75 show would have been Paul Sand In Friends And Lovers. Not a show I ever warmed to, mostly because I couldn't stand Sand. It was replaced in the time slot by the All In The Family spin-off, The Jeffersons. Then the next season – 1975-76 – the FCC regulation on "The Family Hour" forced All In The Family to move to Monday nights at 9 p.m., which was deemed a "suitable" time for the show.

Todd caught this before I had a chance to post on the subject:

funny how memory goes. By the time SNL debuted in 1975, ALL IN THE FAMILY would've been moved to its Family-Friendly Monday slot, so it would've been an hour of relatively bland CBS programming, which I would still watch, before the MTM/BOB NEWHART/BURNETT/PYTHON/SNL (or WEEKEND) marathon for me.

Me: The thing about what I've dubbed as one of the greatest TV line-ups ever is that it only lasted for the 1973-74 season before the "broke up the Yankees" so to speak. The 1975-76 CBS Saturday schedule started with The Jeffersons, followed by Doc (starring Barnard Hughes), and then MTM, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett. Speaking of SNL there were actually two shows of that name in the Fall of 1975; the NBC late night show that everyone knows, and a primetime ABC variety show opposite The Jeffersons and Doc hosted by none other than Howard Cosell! I'm enough of a masochist to want to know what that show was like!

The attempt to humanize the M*A*S*H characters killed the comedy, as far as I was concerned. Sharp satire became often bland cuteness.

Me: Or worse, pretentious dramedy.
It's safe to say that the show changed significantly when Wayne Rogers and MacLean Stevenson left. Potter and BJ were interesting characters to be sure but they had what could probably be described as a more realistic quality. They also made Major Houlihan more human – more Margaret and less Hot Lips you might say – so that increasingly Frank Burns seemed out of place; like Yosemite Sam in a live action movie. Winchester was his "human" replacement. I'm not saying that he show didn't work with these changes because quite patently it did, but it was hugely changed (beyond effectively becoming the Alan Alda Show). However you are right that the sharp satire was gone. Maybe for satire to work it has to be largely populated with cartoon characters like the largely incompetent middle management bureaucratic (Colonel Blake), the hyper-efficient "secretary" (Radar), the by the book professional (Major Houlihan),and the gung-ho type with a little power and slightly less intelligence (Frank Burns), that the one or two "humans" (Hawkeye and Trapper) have to do battle with.

Next up more from "Mr. Television" Mike Doran:

The NBC replacement on Tuesday ... surprise, surprise - a movie! NBC had the biggest backlog of theatrical fims , and its long-standing sweetheart deal with MCA-Universal for TV movies, so when two hours opened up anywhere on the schedule, what could be easier? On other fronts, I was a liitle surprised that you didn't mention BANYON's replacement: Bobby Darin's variety show, brought back from the previous summer. The show fared badly and was dropped, and Darin's death followed not long thereafter (but I don't believe there was a connection). One other quick point: if you're wondering why there was so little about Robert Conrad's third of THE MEN, ASSIGNMENT: VIENNA, as opposed to the other two shows, that's because Conrad was a last-minute replacement for Roy Scheider, whose price went up dramatically when FRENCH CONNECTION became a huge boxoffice hit. It was probably still being retooled while ABC was putting the promo together. Back to the vaults now to await your next installment...

Me: Figures that NBC went with movies. Why bother to produce new shows when you can just slot in movies and probably get great ratings with them. And of course any new movies could be potential pilots for next year. Still, it kind of helps to explain why so much of NBC's product in the 1970s was – how should I put it – rather dismal.

The Bobby Darrin Show didn't get a mention because I really haven't been mentioning these short lived shows that often. I probably would have written more about it if I had remembered that he had died so soon after the show ended (about eight months later). And no, the TV work didn't have a connection to his death; it was a series of events starting with forgetting to take prescribe medication after dental work which led to blood poisoning, which led to damage to one of his heart valves which led to his eventual death.

I was wondering about the lack of material for Assignment: Vienna in the ABC preview show. The other two shows were given a lot of time in the show, and Jigsaw in particular looked interesting. Interesting to find this out about Roy Scheider. Twenty years later he wasn't so choosy about TV work (Seaquest DSV of course, a show which I'm sorry to say got progressively worse the longer it ran). It reminds me of the story of the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. The actor originally cast in the role of Timber Tom, James Doohan, wanted more money than the CBC was prepared to pay, so he had to be replaced. The eventual replacement wasn't available for the first week or so of the show so they brought in a temporary replacement named Ranger Bob...played by William Shatner.

And now a little conversation between Mike and Todd:

Mike: In the early to mid 70's ABC aired a program which was similar to Laugh In. It was so over the top it only lasted one episode. I sort of remember watching it. Do you have any idea what it was called?

Todd:
Mike, that was TURN ON. Only ott by the standards of a nervous ABC, but it was they who mattered.

Me: Turn-On was 1969 and Tim Conway, who was the guest host on the one and only episode, has dined out on this story ever since. He has always claimed that the show was cancelled midway through the episode. Not true, well not totally true. ABC officially dropped the show two days after it aired, but there were two local affiliates, in Cleveland and Denver, went to the first commercial break and didn't go back to the show, while some stations outside the Eastern Time zone simply refused to run the show at all while some stations that aired it told the network that they wouldn't be back the next week. To be fair to ABC (Me? Being fair to a network? Well bite my tongue!) this represented a mutiny by affiliates which makes the current business with NBC's Boston affiliate refusing to air the prime time Jay Leno show look minor by comparison. At the time station ownership was restricted to five stations per owner, so no network could afford to have stations dropping one of its shows so publicly. They could stand on principle and air a full 13 episode season on a dwindling network, or they could knuckle under and dump the show. Guess which one they chose? Turn-On was replaced by the squeaky clean King Family Show.

Turn-On was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, who had also created Laugh-In. They had previously offered the show to NBC and CBS, both of which rejected it. A CBS executive reportedly stated that, "It was so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it." This may be a reference to Photsensitive Epilepsy. In 1977 Schlatter went on to do a revival of Laugh-In, sans Rowan and Martin. It too ran for one episode, largely on the strength of one of the cast members, Robin Williams, who between the time that the show was made and the episode was shown had became a superstar thanks to a little show called Mork & Mindy.

And now, some show themes. First up we have a persona favourite of mine, with music by Patrick Williams. Note the first guest star.

Next up, since we talked so much about it, here's the first couple of minutes of the very first episode of Bridget Loves Bernie. If nothing else, it's a pretty damned good cast. By the way, the pilot episode can be found, in three parts on YouTube.

Next week (or so) 1973. It wasn't the year 1972 was, but it wasn't too bad.

TV Guide Fall Preview 1970 – The Comments

First up we have Mike Doran, helping to fill in some of the holes that I had in the ABC and CBS line-ups:

I can't call NBC's midseason moves to mind readily (I'll look them up when I get home), but here are the others: CBS replaced Tim Conway's hour with Jackie Gleason repeats from the few years before - most if not all Honeymooners. As for ABC, Lawrence Welk moved up an hour, and Pearl Bailey came in to take his old spot. With the other spots you mention, ABC decided to get a jump on the Prime Time Access Rule by leaving those timeslots open - giving the stations an hour on Sunday and 90 minutes on Saturday.

The Gleason repeats were all hour long Honeymooners from episodes he did in the late 1960s. These colour Honeymooners are nowhere near as well known as the half-hour episodes from the 1950s although the episodes are available on DVD from MPI Home Video and air on American Life TV in the US. I couldn't imagine colour working very well with The Honeymooners but that's probably because the shows I remember are the "classic 39" and the addition of colour makes the Kramden's apartment look somehow less squalid and depressing.

These days it is difficult to imagine a network not programming time that they had a right to, even if it is with reruns. The networks hold onto Saturday nights with a death grip in just this fashion, so it is a bit surprising that ABC would actually give the affiliates two and a half hours even with the Prime Time Access Rule coming into force. Then again that was ABC we're talking about, and not at the height of the network's popularity.

I would like to put in a word for THE MOST DEADLY GAME, which may have been the most snakebitten show in recent TV history. The original female lead was supposed to be Inger Stevens, but her unexpected death knocked things off the rails. Yvette Mimieux came on at literally the last minute to try to keep it going, but the premiere had to be delayed to late October, by which time GAME never had a chance.

I think that snakebitten is an accurate description, although whether it would have lasted longer than it did if everything had gone according to plan is questionable; it was going up against Mary Tyler Moore and the first half-hour of Mannix on CBS and the Saturday Night Movie on NBC. The show had a reasonably strong cast with Ralph Bellamy and George Maharis. Arguably Mimieux might have been more famous than Inger Stevens (although Stevens had been in some pretty good movies after she left her first TV series, The Farmer's Daughter, including Hang 'em High, Five Card Stud, and Madigan) which has to be considered an asset for the series.

One thing that I find interesting is the reluctance of TV to take a failed idea and try to tweak it and remake it into something better; in other words recycling their failures. This is a prime example of a show that could be tweaked a bit and be made into something that works. One could make "Mr. Arcane" (the Ralph Bellamy character) very mysterious – really living up to his name – while his ward (Mimieux's character) and her origins would be only slightly less mysterious. That would leave the Maharis character as an "ordinary" guy who splits his time between working on the cases that are brought to them – possibly cases touching on the "unexplained" or supernatural – and trying to discover the truth about his partners. But of course that's just the bare bones of a concept and there are probably plenty of reasons why it wouldn't work.

In a second comment Mike added:

I finally got around to looking up those NBC replacements, and the pattern set by the other two nets holds. CBS used Gleason reruns, already in house; ABC gave large chunks of time back to the local stations; and NBC simply started their Saturday night movie a half-hour earlier - all in anticipation of the Prime-Time Access Rule , which didn't officially kick in until fall (also known as the coward's way out). Meanwhile, BRACKEN'S WORLD gave way to STRANGE REPORT, a Sir Lew Grade product that had been sitting on NBC's shelf for a couple of years. STRANGE was a detective show starring Sir Anthony Quayle as a scientific sleuth in London. By 1971, Quayle was starring on Broadway in SLEUTH, appropriately enough, which might have been a factor in NBC's decision to finally put it on.

Strange Report had as one of its co-stars Anneke Wills, who dedicated Doctor Who fans might remember as Polly, one of The Doctor's companions. She debuted in The War Machines during Hartnell's time as The Doctor, and left in the first year of the Patrick Troughton's run in the role. Most of her episodes are missing but she once described her take on Polly was that she'd react to any threat by doing the sensible thing and running away. Wills was married to Michael Gough (today best known as Alfred in the Tim Burton-Joel Schumacher Batman movies), who worked with Anthony Quayle in Sarabande For Dead Lovers and QB VII.

The basic hook of Bracken's World – a show which I vaguely remember today – was that one never actually saw Bracken but his orders were generally filtered through the medium of his secretary, played by triple Oscar nominee Eleanor Parker. When the show debuted for its second season this conceit – and Parker – was gone and Bracken was seen, played by Leslie Nielsen. It probably wasn't what killed the show but it certainly didn't help it.

One question: are you moving forward or backward or both in this series? My strongest period for this knowledge is the early-to-mid 60s; my resources start to thin out around 1976.

Forward. 1969 was the earliest Fall Preview issue that I still have (there were earlier ones but in the nature of such ephemera were too damaged to retain). I'm going to run into some troubles the closer I get to modern times. I was never a subscriber to the magazine and towards the end of the Canadian edition's publication history the stores never seemed to get many copies of the Fall Preview issues, and they seemed to disappear from the stores almost as soon as they were put out. Maybe someday I'll get the opportunity to fill in and improve my collection.

And here's a comment from our old friend Sam Johnson:

I am diggin' on these TV guide recaps, Brent. I've always wanted to do a breakdown of Saturday morning cartoons from 1960 up until around the early Ninties kind of like this in some type of form. Still, free time keeps me away from the good times, but I digress.

TVSquad.com has been doing something along that line (the one I've linked to is part of a series but as is typical with TVSquad it isn't easy to locate them all). Still there's always room for more - and probably better – writing on the subject.

I know nothing much of the schedule, but a few of the shows I do remember. I recalled that Arnie had Arlene Gonkola as The Harried wife. The only reason for that was the name was just so weird to me as a kid.

Arlene Golonka (on the left here) didn't play the wife on Arnie; that was Sue Ane Langdon (on the right – this is the correct spelling, though you do see it as Sue Anne and Sue Ann). Arlene Golonka was on TV at this time, co-starring on Mayberry RFD as the love interest for Ken Berry's character Sam. It is not a particularly surprising mistake, since the ladies did bear a strong resemblance to each other. Sue Ane – who played Alice Kramden on Jackie Gleason's variety show for less than a year around 1962 – was a pretty hot number in the 1960s. A Google Image search under Sue Ann Langdon yields a couple of "interesting" photos she did for Playboy around 1966 in connection with a movie she did with Sean Connery called A Fine Madness.

I was just starting to read then and began to remember names of TV shows easier. But in my house, the name "Flip Wilson" was the easiest. Before then, it was Bill Cosby, Leslie Uggams, or Lou Rawls with shows (I think Miss Uggams and Mr. Rawls had Summer replacement shows), but seeing Flip with his own show made my family rush to the set to watch what he'd do that week. All I know is that the show brought a lot of pride to my family along with a lot of laughs.

As I pointed out last week, the Leslie Uggams Show debuted in September 1969 and ran for twelve or thirteen episodes before being cancelled. I believe that she was the first African-American woman – and maybe one of the first African-Americans of either sex – to have a variety series. Nat King Cole had a short lived series in the 1950s but that was exclusively a music show, with none of the extras (comedy, dancers) that made for a true variety show. I was a big fan of The Flip Wilson Show as well, but obviously it didn't have the same impact on a skinny white kid from Saskatchewan that it would for you. I suspect that it's in the nature of broad-casting that because it has to appeal to the mass audience it generally reflects, albeit with some delay, the direction that society is proceeding in.

Cappy writes:

The end of The Jackie Gleason Show and the start of Mary Tyler Moore marks the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization.

Interesting opinion. If meant humorously, funny; if meant seriously, it requires at least some explanation.

And now, a couple of themes from the 1970-71 season. First up, one that everyone knows. No, not that one, the other one that everybody knows.

And now for a really obscure one, from a replacement series.

Coming up next weekend 1972!

TV Guide Fall Preview 1969 – The Comments

I was really rather happy with the way that my first post on the TV Guide Fall Previews was received in terms of comments, and the second post did almost as well. One of the things I've been able to do is fill in the holes in the schedule that opened up with the first cancellations. One of the weaknesses of Wikipedia is that it doesn't show the replacement shows for most of the early seasons – all that is shown is the original fall schedule. With that said, let's turn to those comments, starting first with the response to my request for help in filling in the holes in the 1969 line-up.

From Mike Doran:
ABC Wednesday at 10 (9 central): THE ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK SHOW, from Sir Lew Grade (in an attempt to make Tom Jones's lightning strike twice; it didn't). Hope this helps.

Mike, it certainly did help. I had vague memories of the Humperdinck show from my youth but could never remember – or didn't know – if it was a syndicated show or a network program. And yeah, the idea that Humperdinck would equal Tom Jones in popularity on TV – or just about any other medium – was a vain one. He had and has an excellent voice, but he certainly has none of the dynamism of the Welshman. Then or now. Of course, as Mike pointed out in another post, being up against Hawaii Five-0 in the time slot didn't help either Humperdinck or the NBC show in the time slot, Then Came Bronson.

Mentioning Mr. Humperdinck I reminds me of something I heard a few weeks ago. Someone in the media – a younger person, though I can't remember if it was on radio TV or a podcast – mentioned Englebert Humperdinck in some context and made a comment about why someone would make up such an absurd name. All of which made me despair, yet again, of the education of American youth, particularly in music. For as anyone with even a little knowledge of classical music would know, Engelbert Humperdinck (the original) was a classical composer and contemporary of Richard Wagner. In fact he taught music to Wagner's son Siegfried. His most famous composition is the opera Hansel und Gretel. As for the name Engelbert Humperdinck, he took it at the suggestion of his manager Gordon Mills who thought that Arnold Dorsey (the singer's real name) wasn't "arresting" enough. Mills also renamed a singer called Tom Woodward after the title character of a then popular movie: Tom Jones.

Mike Doran supplies the name of the second ABC show I was having trouble locating: When ABC dropped THE SURVIVORS in midseason, George Hamilton apparently had a pay-or-play with the studio or the network or somebody, so he went right into PARIS 7000, which got IT TAKES A THIEF's slot on Thursday. This was a by-the-numbers adventure show from the Universal mill, which everybody forgot about as soon as it aired.

You're not kidding about people forgetting it; there isn't even a mention of the show in Wikipedia. There were only ten episodes of the show, which featured Hamilton as a State Department trouble shooter in Paris, who worked with an aide played by screen veteran Gene Raymond and a contact in the gendarmes, played by Jacques Aubuchon (who despite the name was born in Fitchburg Massachusetts).

Also from Mike Doran:
A couple of points: as far as ABC was concerned THE GHOST & MRS. MUIR was new – for them (its first season was on NBC). Alos interesting to see the push for Joey Bishop's late night show - which Bishop quit cold in a matter of weeks, paving the way for Dick Cavett at the turn of the year. Oh, and that was William Schallert doing the v.o. on that promo piece, right?

It certainly sounds like Schallert. Not surprising really; Schallert has been doing voice-over work for most of his career.

Being a Canadian I either didn't remember or (more likely) was only vaguely aware that The Ghost & Mrs. Muir debuted on NBC before going over to ABC. I do have extremely fond memories of the series. There was definite chemistry between Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare, and the acting was just as strong as might be expected from actors of their calibre.

And still more from Mike:
Finally, I believe the credit for the famous/notorious "CBS Rural Purge" of 1970 correctly goes not to Fred Silverman but to his nominal boss at the network, President Robert Wood. The details are in Les Brown's book TELEVISION: THE BUSINESS BEHIND THE BOX, which I read when it first came out years ago. Here's the digest version: Wood was one of the first TV execs to buy into demographics in a big way. He was convinced that to forge ahead in the ratings, CBS needed to lose the shows and stars who appealed to older audiences (harder to sell to ad agencies). This was a surprisingly easy sell to CBS's supreme commander, William Paley, who, it turns out, was a snob who was always somewhat embarrassed by the corny rural comedies (remember, it was Paley who ordered the cancellation of the still-popular GILLIGAN'S ISLAND to keep GUNSMOKE on). Wood then forced the de-corning, along with the cashiering of Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton, on CBS's programming chief Mike Dann, who then quit, making way for Silverman (I'm oversimpifying here, but you get the idea). That's all I've got right now ("Isn't that enough?"), which means I'll probably think of something else as soon as I hit Publish.

As it happens I am currently re-reading, yet again, Robert Metz's Reflections In A Bloodshot Eye (it's what I currently take to the bathroom when I'm going to be there for a while). The book isn't one of my favourites; it has plenty of errors and even more interpretations – usually second guessing CBS and Bill Paley – and its picture of Frank Stanton as a poor executive doesn't seem to jibe with current thought on the subject. That said, he certainly does credit Robert Wood with the important aspects of "the rural purge," starting with the end of the Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason shows – losing Petticoat Junction was inevitable following Bea Benaderet's death though they worked mightily to resuscitate it – and gives him the credit for "de-cornifying" the network. Meanwhile Silverman – who Metz usually referred to using the diminutive "Freddy" (which Silverman hates) – is barely mentioned, and not at all in connection with many of the shows he is described in most sources as "masterminding." In her biography of Paley, In All His Glory, Sally Bedel Smith gives a little more credit to Silverman, describing him as "the prime architect of the schedule, along with wood..." Still Wood is credited with making the initial moves to "Get the wrinkles out of the face of the network without eroding our popularity," while Mike Dann was still in charge of programming and therefore while Silverman wasn't in that strong a position to accomplish much.

The interesting thing about Silverman as an advocate of demographics is of course that when he was head of his own production company, his shows skewed older; shows like Jake & The Fatman, The Father Dowling Mysteries, In The Heat Of The Night, Diagnosis Murder, the Perry Mason TV movies with Raymond Burr, and of course Abe Simpson's favourite show, Matlock.

That Paley was a snob, despite his birth in the Chicago neighbourhood known as "Back of the Yards," isn't any secret; his famous "golden gut" once failed him over a period piece about a wealthy family – he couldn't get his mind around the fact that it's hard to sell a show about people with a lot of servants. Still I think that if Mike Dann's 1970-71 line-up had been more successful – if he hadn't been forced to rely on gimmicks and "hiding" shows that weren't working (like Tim Conway's variety show) behind big events in order to beat NBC in the yearly ratings – Paley would probably have been willing to running with Dann's vision at least for a little while longer. Or maybe not; this was William Paley we're talking about after all. Paley was notoriously fickle when it came to executives. He'd have favourites for a while and then find something wanting and dispose of him (always a him) – not unlike the way he behaved with his women.

Next up, a comment from my friend The Real Sam Johnson:
I really wanted to comment about your first TV Guide post. However, I've had major time constraints lately which take me away from everything. What I wanted to say for that one was the fact that I actually remember having that issue as a kid. It was interesting to see how the magazine would as always describe the show, but never really did any handicapping or critiquing of the show. If we were to go by how bad some of the shows were, Survivors would have been gone sooner than later.

That's a major thing about TV Guide, particularly in this period. The magazine's focus was promotional rather than critical at least in the Fall Previews. TV Guide did have critics available, most notably Cleveland Amory, and they did do reviews, but not in the preview issues. I suppose that in the days before VCRs became more available outside of the industry, it might not have been very easy to review shows before they aired. One of the huge advantages that (professional) critics today have over their counterparts forty years ago is that they are being actively courted by producers and the networks in this increasingly competitive marketplace, and that technology in the form of the DVD screener makes that increasingly feasible (doesn't do me much good though – they don't court me).

In later years there seemed to have been a greater critical aspect to the fall previews. At least that was the case in the Canadian editions of the magazine, although they often shared little more than the title with the American magazine. By the last Canadian editions they included "what works" and "what doesn't work" in the previews of shows. Of course by the time of those last Canadian editions, the pictures were very large and the writing was very small...and I'm not talking about the size of the print.

Finishing up, I'm including a couple of YouTube clips of themes from the 1969-70 season. I really like doing these where I have the material, and would like to include a well known show and then something that is pretty obscure from each season. First off is one that is fairly well known, from a show that had a good run, Room 222.

And then there's this relative obscurity (really used only because the real obscurities I wanted to usehad their embedding disabled) The Bill Cosby Show. Proof - if any were really needed as to why Bill Cosby shouldn't be allowed to sing, even if the music is by Quincy Jones. Especially if the music is by Quincy Jones.

1971 TV Guide Fall Preview – The Comments

I don't really know what I had planned for these retrospective pieces about the TV Guide Fall Previews but this one at least drew a sufficient number of comments that I thought I could wring a second posting out of responding to the comments so here goes.

First up we have this from my good friend Ivan G. Shreve:

The New Dick Van Dyke Show managed to hang on for three seasons. In its last season, Van Dyke's character got a gig on a soap opera and with the exception of Lange, the supporting cast were pretty much scrapped and replaced with new faces.

As tragic as this may seem, I also remember being a fan of The Chicago Teddy Bears. You're right about John Banner, he was the best thing on it.

Me: You're right about The New Dick Van Dyke Show. It did in fact run for three years rather than two. My memory problem on this show stems from the radical change in the show between the second and third seasons. As a result, in my mind – after 38 years of not really thinking about the show – the first and second seasons were condensed into a single season. The change in the show was really quite radical after all, going from a local talk show host in Phoenix to a soap opera actor in Los Angeles. What I do recall is that the Los Angeles season was far less enjoyable, for me at least, than the first two.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on the show, after writing the article I discovered a number of interesting things about things behind the scenes at the show. The show had drawn good ratings in the first season where it followed The Mary Tyler Moore Show but they were apparently lower than other shows on the night so the network moved it to Sunday night where it was placed between the revived Sandy Duncan Show and Mannix. The other shows on the night were Anna And The King with Samantha Eggar and Yul Brynner, and a little show called M*A*S*H. It wasn't exactly a strong night for CBS and ratings for The New Dick Van Dyke Show were worse than the previous season, low enough that under normal circumstances the show would have been cancelled. However, in order to lure Dick Van Dyke back to TV, CBS had given him a guaranteed three year contract, so instead of cancelling the show CBS totally recast the show except for Van Dyke, Hope Lange and Angela Powell (who played their daughter). Reportedly the ratings for the third season improved, but there was tension on the set. Carl Reiner, who had been reunited with Van Dyke as one of the writers on the show wrote an episode in which the daughter entered her parent's bedroom to find them making love. The network decided that such a story line was "incompatible with Van Dyke's family-friendly image." Reiner cried hypocrisy – after all CBS was airing All In The Family (starring Reiner's son Rob of course) – and vowed never to work for CBS again. The network was willing to renew the show but between Reiner quitting the show and his desire to get away from Los Angeles and back to Arizona, Dick Van Dyke refused to do a fourth season.

The Chicago Teddy Bears married a terrible idea with what mass of badly miscast actors. I mean really – Dean Jones as the owner of a speakeasy? John Banner as the uncle of both Jones and Art Metrano? The show was just barely funny even if you were just into your teens. I can hardly imagine an adult watching this – even a nostalgic adult almost forty years later.

Next up we have this snippet from Todd, who did a blog with the American TV Guide website until they discontinued those:

Gunsmoke and Bonanza were not the "only westerns left". Alias Smith and Jones was entering its second season.

Me: You're right of course. In my own defense, Alias Smith and Jones never aired in my (one station) part of Canada, so I've never actually seen the show, and the only time I think it ever came to my notice during the time it was running was when Peter Duel committed suicide. Now that's pretty morbid.

Next up this from Jeff Kingston Pierce, who is the publisher of The Rap Sheet blog:

What an absolutely fabulous idea! My own TV Guide collection begins in 1972, and I periodically feel the need to revisit some of my favorite old shows. 1971 was the year before I really became interested in U.S. network television (I was a bit young before that), but I remember fondly the NBC Mystery Movie, Longstreet, and Nichols (all the episodes of which I managed to acquire last year). I very much look forward to further installments of your blog series.

Me: First, let me just say how much I envy you the complete collection of Nichols. Like I said, my first big "TV crush" was on Margot Kidder in the low cut blouses that she wore from time to time on that show. Dare I say that those blouses made a lot out of a little?

One of the things that I dislike about the subsequent repackagings of the shows from the NBC Mystery Theater is the fact that they cut the Henry Mancini created theme. It was one of two that Mancini did that season – the other being the theme from Cade's County. In fact I have both on an album that Manicini released about that time. (You haven't lived till you've heard Mancini's instrumental version of the theme from Shaft!) Both themes were heavily reliant on Mancini fiddling around with an early model Moog synthesizer. I have a special fondness for the Cade's County theme myself (to the point where I'll probably embed a YouTube video of the theme music at the end of this post, and the Mystery Movie theme as well) as well as for the series. While it tended to be a bit pedestrian in terms of the sort of crimes being dealt with, the setting is unique and I suspect that our mutual friend Bill Crider might appreciate at least the concept.

With regard to the Mystery Movie format, each of the series had its own charms, whether it was the breezy sexy relationship between Stuart and Sally Macmillan that was reminiscent of Nick & Nora Charles, the fish out of water antics of Sam McCloud always accompanied by the hot-headed reactions of Chief Clifford (particularly when McCloud saves the day), or the apparently bumbling but actually brilliant Lieutenant Columbo. I think my favourite was always the MacMillan & Wife episodes because of the playfully sexy relationship between husband and wife, but really I loved them all.

Longstreet is another series that I have very fond although mostly vague memories of. The idea of a blind detective may seem a bit absurd today – after all look at the reaction to Blind Justice, the Stephen Bochco series that replaced NYPD Blue but didn't last too long. Back in 1971 when you had detectives combating various infirmities it seemed less absurd. The show was a cut above much of what was on the air at the time but had the bad fortune to be on ABC and the equally bad fortune to be running against Nichols and the CBS Tuesday Night Movie. It's not too surprising that about the only clips from the series I can find online are related to the appearances of Bruce Lee on the series, particularly the episode The Way Of The Intercepting Fist. For that reason – and probably that reason alone – the show is probably more likely to get a DVD release than most of the class of 1971. In fact there are DVDs out there; an authorized Japanese set and a rather expensive Region 0 set of "dubious" provenance. In fact, maybe they're the same disks – oh Ivan!

Next a brief comment from our friend Linda, who does the Yet Another Journal blog and a whole lot of others:

I'm surprised you didn't mention the Prime Time Access Rule, which began that year.

Me: I sort of, kind of did in a roundabout sort of way. I wrote, "In the United States the FCC required the networks to give an hour of what had previously been defined as primetime back to the local stations. The intention had been for the local stations to do their own local programming but what really happened was the birth of the syndication market – and not coincidentally a boost for the Canadian producers." That would be the Prime Time Access Rule, and as I said, for a time it represented a boon for Canadian producers and Canada's CTV network, who were able to defray the costs of shows that were classified as Canadian by selling them as part of syndication packages. The problem that I had was that while I was aware that the rule existed, the 1971 TV Guide didn't actually name it. Here's what the editorial from that issue says: "Perhaps the most important factor shaping the new season is the FCC rule cutting networks from three-and-a-half to three hours of prime-time programming each evening. This rule has sent stations scurrying to find material to fill the gap – and many of the shows they found are brand-new." There's no explanation of the actual name of the rule, although the impact is eminently clear. Incidentally, the Prime Time Access Rule was dropped in 1995, but the networks have not tried to reclaim the time, perhaps knowing that the stations that they don't actually owned themselves would laugh in their faces if they tried. This should serve as a cautionary note to any network boss (say Jeff Zucker) who even contemplates the idea of giving an hour a night or even a full day back to the affiliates – once you lose it you aren't going to get it back.

Finally we have the following from Mike Doran:

I have at least one copy of every TV GUIDE Fall Preview from the first one in 1953 up to the present day (Chicago editions mostly). They didn't start doing write-ups for individual shows until about 1959 or 60 - I'll have to go home and check for sure. Anyway, this is a whiz-bang idea; I'm looking forward to more.

Me: I envy you that collection. I'd love to see some of those early issues, particularly from the 1960s. I also envy the fact that you aren't surrounded by people saying "That's old, get rid of it," or "You don't use that anymore, get rid of it," or "The dog's tail tore the cover off of that one? Well throw it away." I just heard the last one about twenty minutes ago. And heaven forbid that they find out how much some copies sell for on eBay – it's all "Well why don't you sell it and get rid of it." People, at least the one's around me, understand collecting stamps or coins but apparently not collecting – or just keeping – old TV Guides.

My collection is hardly in the best shape. In fact I did have to throw away my first TV Guide – the 1966 edition with The Green Hornet, The Time Tunnels, Mission Impossible, Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Monkees, and a little show called Star Trek (Spock was described as having "Beatle bangs") – simply because it was far too damaged from repeated reading, being looked at, general abuse in storage, and just being on the sort of paper that these magazines were printed on. Several of my issues don't have covers. And a number of them suffer from being in the hands of someone wasn't collecting when he (I) got them and did things like marking off shows that had been cancelled.

This problem of damage is a major reason why I am scanning the issues and burning them to DVD. Even though the OCR software that came with my All-In-One printer can provide some really funky results, it's still going to cut down on the number of times I'm going to open up those old magazines and make it much easier for me to find specific commentary from specific years. Right now I'm thinking about scanning and writing about one issue every two weeks, with (hopefully) a post like this one in the alternating weeks. That should make this a year-long project. A couple of disclaimers though. First, there are a few issues that I'm missing because I wasn't able to get the issue before they disappeared from the stores (I was never a subscriber). Second, after 1977 I'm dealing with the Canadian version of the magazine. That was the year that Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications was forced by the Canadian government to sell the magazine or include more Canadian content – Annenberg sold. Initially there wasn't much difference between the US and Canadian versions beyond some Canadian shows and schedules showing up in the main part of the magazine. By the 1990s though there seems to be a total disconnect between the two magazines to the point where nothing in the two magazines was the same, even the actual format. The Canadian edition of TV Guide ceased publication in October 2006.

Next week: 1969, the year of Marcus Welby, The Brady Bunch, and a little known show that was about twenty years before its time.

Meanwhile here's Henry Mancini's Cade's County theme from what appears to be a French dub of the show (which is titled Sam Cade for the French audience).

And here's Mancini's NBC Mystery Movie theme from the second season, when Universal decided to expand the rotation to four sets of characters and added Hec Ramsey (with Richard Boone). When I get to 1972 I have some rather interesting thoughts on Hec Ramsey.

Comment Round-up

I'm writing this on Friday. Saturday I'll be heading out to the Dakota Dunes Casino to watch my first live Poker Tournament – watch, not play in because my personal circumstances (I don't drive) makes it impossible for me to get out there and more importantly get back in keeping with the times they'll be starting and ending. I blame the people of Saskatoon for voting against a casino in the city not once but twice – idiots (I voted for it, not once but twice). And Sunday is the Grey Cup and my beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders are favoured to win. It's an infection and I'll tell you about it before the game.

Right now, let's look at the poll on the Writers' Strike and the comments elicited on that subject and others. So far there have been ten voters. Eight said they were with the writers 110%, one said "Mostly with the writers but AMPTP has some points on their side," and one voted for "I don't give a good God damn. With global warming, war, poverty, and corruption why are you wasting your time writing about TV and striking writers," I think I know who that may have come from. The poll is still up of course and if you haven't voted and expressed an opinion yet please do so, and if you want to comment, put something down here. I may renew the on a monthly basis if necessary in part to try to track changes in attitude as events progress (and yes I fear I may have to renew it at least once if not more often). But now for comments, not just on the strike but on other matters.

First up (but second to comment on the strike poll) is our good buddy Toby who wrote:

The longer the Big Six stay away from the bargaining table, the worse off it will be for them in the long run. Public opinion was already against them anyway, but taking this hard line will give pro-WGA bloggers more time in which to steer readers to that online video showing Murdoch, Redstone and the others chortling over how much money they'll make from the Internet.

I'm just sickened by these people who are taking that hatefuly attitude towards the writers. Obviously they don't understand the full issue and they never will take the time to learn; they're just pissed off the time is coming when they'll be forced off from the tele-teat.

Hey, if I'm willing to go without the scripted shows, they should be able to survive as well!

This is what I mean about the WGA winning the propaganda war. AMPTP's worst enemies are themselves in terms of their public statements both before and after the strike was called. Some of Counter's statements have been laughable, like the one about how it is true that the writers don't get paid residuals for "promotions" that carry advertising because the producers don't get paid for them – that money goes to the Networks not the Producers (okay, so why is Les Moonves at the table again?). It also came across as the height of arrogance for AMPTP to end what they laughingly referred to as negotiations – which amounted to we'll give you a little somethin' somethin' in return for you giving us something worth more than what we're giving you.

I'm with you about those people who are against the Writers Guild. I know where they're coming from – the whole "unions are unnecessary and worse" neo-con crap – and it's repugnant to me. Unions give workers a "big stick" (in the sense that Teddy Roosevelt referred to when he said "Walk softly and carry a big stick") which an individual worker, no matter what field they're working in, doesn't have. People collectively have more power than they do as individuals, in much the same way that 13 colonies united were stronger than 13 individual colonies. And don't kid yourself into believing that employers – any employers including AMPTP – won't take advantage when they can. I've seen too many examples of employers doing just that.

Next up we have this comment from my old pal Richard Goranson. Richard and I go back to the days when blogging wasn't even a glimmer in anyone's eyes. We both ran Diplomacy zines back in the days before the game moved almost exclusively online. And we were good (or at least I was, I think – circumstances kept Richard from making as big an impact as he might have). Anyway, here's what he wrote:

The best things that can possibly come of the strike and its inevitable aftermath:

1) The overwhelming majority of people will finally realize that Leno, Letterman and virtually all talk-show hosts really aren't funny unless they're spoon-fed their material (Unfortunately, hardly anyone will notice).

2) The shows that absolutely depend on superlative writing and already acknowledge their writers as being the driving force on the show (like BSG) will see their demand go through the roof once the strike ends.

3) People will finally see just how scripted so-called "reality TV" really is and if the strike goes on for a very long time it will likely kill the format.

4) Sports viewership will go up and networks will work harder to accommodate athletic formats that do not rely on pre-determined outcomes (so the WWE and the New England Patriots are shot to hell).

Okay Rich, let's go through these one by one. First, most people already realise that Leno and the rest are dependent on their writers. The strike hasn't changed that, largely because all of the talk-show hosts – with only a few exceptions (Regis & Kelly and The View, neither of which claim to have writers, and Ellen which does) – stopped being broadcast when the strike began. Letterman in particular knows very well that he needs the writers; he tried to go on without them in 1988 and even at the time he knew that without the monologue and other things created by the writers the show wasn't very good. There are people who would not only be able to work without writers but thrive; sadly they aren't on TV anymore. Tom Snyder or Dick Cavett come to mind as people whose abilities as interviewers and conversationalists would be ideally suited for this situation but instead the networks have comedians, and while Letterman has developed into a solid interviewer he still needs to do the monologue and the Top 10 list and the rest, and knows that he can't do it without his writers.

I'm not sure that shows that depend on superlative writing are going to see any change in demand sadly. In fact there are rumours that the strike could kill Battlestar Galactica because of demands that the producers are putting on the actors in the form of exercising the "force majeur clause" in their contracts.

The problem with your scenario about reality TV is that the reality shows will go ticking right along because they don't have "writers." More accurately they don't have writers that are members of the WGA or are actually called "writers." The only writing credits listed for Survivor – just as an example – are for Charlie Parsons who created the show, and Jeff Probst. What Survivor does have are segment producers, associate editors, "loggers" and "transcribers." IMDB credits Jennifer Bassa, Elise Doganieri, Bill Pruitt, and Bert Van Munster as writers for my beloved Amazing Race but otherwise it's producers, associate producers, field producers, assistant editors, productions assistants, loggers and transcribers, but no writers. Big Brother credits six writers (who probably write for Mrs. Moonves, aka Julie Chen) but a veritable host of production assistants, story editors, story assistants and loggers. This is one of the lesser issues that the WGA is fighting over.

You might be right about at least part of the sports thing (I saw what the Patriots did to your Bills – grade A ugly). The problem is that whether people are willing to accept an increase in sports or if the networks are willing to make the long term commitment that most sports operations require if it's only to outlast this strike.

In summation, I think that the networks think they have a plan for surviving the strike. Sadly, it involves more reality shows with most of the untried ones being pretty bad, and finding product from other sources, whether it's their cable production or overseas programming (there are reports that the four major networks are looking at Canada's own Corner Gas).

Finally we've got this from Andrew about my PTC piece:

PTC's ignorance is really fattenin' up those Short Takes, huh? This new content forking was a good thing...

Now my views regarding this week's stupidities at the PTC. You said that the PTC doesn't know about the Gossip Girl books. That's sort of correct, except PTC did mention that the series was "based on a series of popular novels by Cecily Von Ziegesar", without noting the controversy and ALA awards. And in their Oct. 26 "Weekly Wrap", they were extremely paranoid...

This month, PTC has pretty much finished all the ratings for the new '07-'08 shows. Gossip girl got red, as did "K-Ville", "Back to You", "Dirty Sexy Money", "Big Shots", "Women's Murder Club", "Bionic Woman", and "Aliens in America". "Chuck" and "Samantha Who" got yellow, and "Life is Wild" was the only new show to have gotten green. Yikes, there seems a lot of radioactivity out of these airwaves, huh?

I'm probably going to make having the PTC stuff separate from the Short Takes posts a permanent thing; 4,000+ word posts aren't really my thing, and they do tend to delay things beyond the weekend.

The Gossip Girl books aren't mentioned in the Worst of the Week post that I was writing about though it is mentioned in the show's red light earning review page which contains more than a few hoots itself: "Both the drugs and drinking are presented as glamorous, easy to obtain, and part of their everyday life. There is no identification of how young teens are able to obtain all the alcohol or the illegal drugs." It's been nearly 35 years since I was in high school (and public high school at that) and I didn't drink, smoked or use recreational pharmaceuticals, but trust me when I say that had I wanted to I wouldn't have any trouble getting any of it. I knew my fair share of kids who came to class either drunk or wasted or both. I couldn't get the PTC's email alerts to load for me so I can't comment on the paranoia. It may be time for me to use one of my spam trap email addresses to sign up.

What surprises me about the PTC's ratings of new shows? Not much really. Maybe Aliens in America getting a red light while Samantha Who? "earned" a yellow. I suppose it's the same reason that they used to like My Name Is Earl, because Samantha is supposedly trying to reform and the fact that the show "regularly features adult themes and situations such as alcoholism and infidelity," while the teenage boys on Aliens In America have "the generally positive message of cultural understanding and responsibly charting one's teenaged years is consistently drowned out by the sexual content featured in each episode." The Gander ain't getting the same sauce as the Goose here. None of it is surprising of course, although the review for Bionic Woman contains an element similar to their review of Studio 60 last year: "Sex and language were not a major issue in the first few episodes but should not be ruled out for future episodes for a show of this nature," although this time they at least gave the show a yellow light. (Studio 60 got a red light for sex because, "Sex has not been an issue at this point in the series, but as relationships progress, sex scenes can be expected;" the closest the show ever came to a sex scene were a couple of implied instances of guys seeing a topless Harriet by accident.) It's about the same amount of consistency one can expect from a group the calls Brothers And Sisters "comparatively clean" while the show's rating site says that "The sexual content is not necessarily graphic, but it is recurring and frequent all in the same. Regular references to sex and sexual innuendo are present in each episode, both in a hetero- and homosexual context. There is some harsh language, with frequent use of words such as "ass," "hell," and "damn," and gives the show a Red Light. For the most part the only thing I agree with them about is Life is Wild, which is a worthy show, exactly the sort of thing that the PTC and parents who claim to want family friendly content have been pushing for for years – and which is getting some of the worst ratings of anything on TV (maybe because it's on opposite Sunday Night Football, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and The Amazing Race). However, when I checked just a minute ago there is no PTC rating for the show. Are they changing it? Has even this show become too raunchy for the PTC? We shall see.