...But wait. Maybe we don't all know that. After all, if you're under, say, 40, you've probably never known any other Super Bowl than what we have today. And if that's the case, then this one TV Guide is going to tell you everything about what the Super Bowl is by showing you what it was, and what it wasn't.
What it wasn't, first of all, was a ratings monster. How do we know that? Easy: the game started in the afternoon (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS), with only a half-hour pregame show. It's true that nothing big was scheduled against it*; G-E College Bowl, Issues and Answers, some local movies and syndicated series, but in the days before saturation sports on TV, that was pretty standard fare.
*The following season, when NBC has the Super Bowl, CBS would even schedule an NHL game directly opposite it.
It was about the game, not the commercials. It was the final matchup between the American and National Football Leagues, a rivalry as bitter as anything in sports; with Kansas City's victory over Minnesota, the final Super Bowl tally between the two leagues ends at 2-2. People watched it for what happened on the field, and complained that the first Super Bowls were generally boring and uncompetitive, unlike what they saw during the regular season. There were no special commercials back then: the commercials were standard edition and annoying. And anyway, the game's only allocated three-and-a-half hours of airtime, and you have to figure that last half hour is reserved for the trophy presentation. (When the commercials* are the most important thing about the broadcast, I can promise the game and the trophy presentation aren't going to get done in that amount of time.)
*And the halftime "concert." In perhaps the first example of a Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, Al Hirt was the headliner of a Mardi Gras celebration.
There's no special section in TV Guide, by the way, dealing with the game. No sidebar on "memorable moments" (such as last year's shocking upset win by the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts), no "gameday recipes" for your Super Bowl party. Just a two-page article by TV Guide's resident sports expert Melvin Durslag, writing about the general surprise that this year's game was being played in New Orleans instead of making Miami the permanent home (as many had expected), and wondering about how long football would continue to remain America's top sport (I think they're pretty safe in that regard).
Don't misunderstand me; there's no question that the 1970 the Super Bowl is a big deal. It's one of the biggest sporting events of the year. But that's all it was, and sometimes it helps to have a reminder of when, unlike today, that was the case.
During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..Sullivan: Tiny Tim and his bride Miss Vicki are the headliners, offering a medley of love songs through the ages. Scheduled guests: Flip Wilson, Peter Gennaro, Stiller and Meara, country singer Sonny James, and songstress Karen Wyman. (The actual show was headlined by the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, and included sword balancer Vino Venito and Adagio dance duo Carter & Lynn; the rest of the lineup is the same except for Tim being backed up by the Enchanted Forest, an all-girl band.)
Palace: Bacharach tunes predominate as hosts Burt Bacharach and his wife Angie Dickinson present jockey Bill Shoemaker (singing and dancing in his show business debut), comic Scoey Mitchell, and singers Dusty Springfield and Sam and Dave.
This is a strange week, isn't it? I know that Tiny Tim was big stuff back then; I even remember watching his marriage to Miss Vicki on Carson's show. Even if they weren't the headliners (and Ike and Tina elevate the lineup considerably), it still points to a certain lack of, shall we say, gravitas. Burt Bacharach is scheduled to do several of his own songs tonight, with the Ray Charles singers (not that Ray Charles), and while he's not a particularly good singer, he's written some wonderful songs that should make for a very good show, especially when someone else like Dusty Springfield is singing songs like "The Look of Love." Angie could probably just stand there and look good, and it wouldn't hurt the show one bit. Tonight, Palace has the look of a winner.
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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
Jim Nabors is one of those rarities in show business. He left a hit series, Gomer Pyle, USMC, at the height of its popularity, in order to star in his own variety show. According to Cleveland Amory, Nabors prefers his new series because (1) he likes to sing, and (2) the hours on this show are better. There's only one problem with this, says Amory: "a lot of us are learning, the hard way, the rigors of listening to Mr. Nabors sing. It's not that he's a bad singer—he's not. But he's just not a singer. He's a comedian." And what that means, for viewers of The Jim Nabors Hour, is that "every time he sings a serious song we (1) can't get out of our head that album of the New York Mets singing and (2) have an almost uncontrollable urge to grab Mr. Nabors, say 'Terrific game, Jim,' pour champagne on his head and push him into the showers."
Singing is one component of the three-legged variety show formula. The second leg is dancing, and Nabors is no dancer either. That leaves only the third leg, comedy. "And here let us say it does pass muster. Not only is Mr. Nabors a fairly funny fellow to begin with, he has a very funny way of making even unfunny stories come off funny." It helps that his former Pyle sidekick Frank Sutton is a regular on the show, and also that his guest stars, such as Carol Burnett, have been given very funny sketches to work in.
But then it comes back to singing, such as the duet he did with Kate Smith in which "Mr. Nabors deferred to Miss Smith so much that it was hardly a duet at all." Fortunately, this too was saved by what Amory refers to as "one of their typical unfunny funnies," to which Amory confesses, "well—OK. We laughed." A lot of people did when they were watching Jim Nabors, and plenty of people did like his singing, even if Cleve wasn't one of them. The Jim Nabors Hour survived on CBS for two seasons, and with its good ratings would probably have lasted longer were it not for the network's rural purge. Jim Nabors popularity, however, never waned.
WSBK's Saturday night movie is Koroshi (10:30 p.m.), starring Patrick McGoohan in his role as John Drake from Danger Man. The "movie" is actually a combination of two somewhat related episodes from the series, something that used to be quite popular in the movie world. (There were several Man from U.N.C.L.E. movies, as an example, using this technique; it was a way to make money off the international market.) What's interesting about this is that these are the only two color episodes of Danger Man, done before McGoohan decided to abandon the series in favor of his new brainchild, The Prisoner.
Monday ABC's failed Monday night lineup makes its final appearance. The network's experiment in 45-minute programming, The Music Scene (7:30 p.m.) and The New People (8:15 p.m.), as well as the serial drama Harold Robbins' the Survivors, all air their last episodes; next week, ABC's new lineup will consist of It Takes a Thief and the ABC Movie of the Week. A definite upgrade, in my opinion. It's also part one of the epic El Cid (9:00 p.m., NBC), starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren; part two airs at the same time tomorrow night.
Tuesday offers a few interesting viewing options, some of which you'll be reading about in the Monday piece. However, there's always something left over, in this case WGBH's live presentation of the Boston Symphony (7:30 p.m.), with the television debut of the orchestra's 25-year-old assistant conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, who would go on to be a familiar face on TV, taking over the Young People's Concerts from Leonard Bernstein, as well as doing some well-regarded music documentaries for public television. Always an interesting man. And music of a different kind features on The Red Skelton Hour (8:30 p.m., CBS), with Duke Ellington and his orchestra.
The final Christmas program of the season airs on Thursday, as Bob Hope shares highlights from his 15-day tour entertaining the troops in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Guam. (8:30 p.m., NBC) Accompanying Bob on his 24,000 mile tour: Connie Stevens, dancer Suzanne Charney, Miss World Eva Reuber-Staier, the Golddiggers, Romy Schneider, Teresa Graves, and Neil Armstrong (whom the troops were probably more excited to meet than anyone). And one of the oddest lineups you'll see on late-night television is on The Dick Cavett Show (11:30 p.m., ABC), with Dick's tentative guests, director Federico Fellini and musician John Sebastian.
Buried in The Doan Report this week is one of those quotes that convince us there's nothing new under the sun. The debate is whether or not network commentary should be labeled as "editorial opinion." It's an issue that's been raised by Vice President Agnew, who cites unlabeled commentaries as evidence of a liberal network bias. One major station-ownership group, Storer Broadcasting, is threatening to put its own superimpositions on screen, even if NBC and CBS refuse to do so. (ABC is currently the only network to clearly label commentary as such.)
Richard S. Salant, president of CBS News, is uncomfortable with the whole thing. "What a can of worms that opens up!" he says of the Storer threat. "The trouble these days is, everything somebody agrees with is fact, and anything they don't agree with is opinion. I wish I knew how they're going to define what is 'editorial'." Now, substitute "news" and "fake news" for "fact" and "opinion", and try that one on for size. With the proliferation of the internet and social media, I'd argue that things are even worse today than they were in Salant's time—but it hardly began yesterday.
Prinz was part of All My Children for six months, during which her name ran above the title, and she was the only cast member to have her picture in the opening credits. It was the first month for All My Children. Not a bad way to make a splash, hmm? TV
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