This week in TV Guide: February 26, 1977

If you require any evidence that it's never too early to start thinking about the new Fall Season, look no further than this week's co-cover story by Bill Davidson, who explains that what you see in the fall may depend on what you watch in the spring.

Last spring, ABC had what it felt was a promising new series in development, called Family. Were it to be handled in the conventional manner, with a pilot thrown into the usual March "selling season" to compete with cop dramas and sitcom pilots, it probably would have been lost in the shuffle, relegated to that category of new series marked for "early elimination." Instead, ABC programming head Fred Silverman suggested making just six episodes, and starting the series in that March period. Some of his colleagues thought the idea was crazy; usually, early tryouts come in the summer, and then only with comedy and variety shows, not dramas. But Family was an immediate hit with critics, and slowly built up an audience that guaranteed it a spot in the fall schedule. "The public," Davidson says, "had helped make the programming decision."

The other networks noticed this, and so this March you, the viewer, will be treated to a number of new shows receiving a limited tryout to see what they're made of. ABC, having pioneered the technique, has several in mind, including three episodes of How the West Was Won, marking the return of James Arness to series television; Eight Is Enough, based on the best-seller by columnist Tom Braden; Westside Medical, a "throwback" to Marcus Welby and Medical Center; and Future Cop, with Ernest Borgnine and John Amos. Well, two out of four ain't bad. NBC and CBS plan to follow suit. The upshot for September: "A lot of old junk in the new shows—and some quality." 

Expect the miniseries to contine as a TV staple. ABC, the network that popularized the genre, is placing big hopes on Washington: Behind Closed Doors, based "loosely" on John Erlichman's novel; ABC hopes to develop it into a permanent series. CBS plans to counter with Adolf Hitler, based on John Toland's massive (and excellent, I might add) biography, and NBC has A Man Called Intrepid and Boys and Girls Together* in the planning stage.

*Although NBC announced the project, Boys and Girls Together never made it past the talking stage.

As for more conventional fare, NBC plans a revival of Laugh-In, and has high hopes for The Richard Pryor Show, starring "one of the funniest men alive." (We all know how that turned out.) ABC has its own variety show in the works starring former Sanford and Son star Redd Foxx. The network, smarting over having turned down Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, also has its own soap spoof, called, appropriately enough, Soap. CBS is betting you'll like Ed Asner enough to follow him to the coast in a drama about a big-city newspaper editor, Lou Grant. And NBC hopes that some of the magic from The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman will rub off on its own sci-fi spectacular, The Man from Atlantis.

As for how all this turns out, Davidson says that the audience can help make the final decision. You'll get more of the same "if you don't exercise your prerogative and turn in the higher-qualoity material that appears in the tryout season that lies just ahead."

l  l  l

On weeks when we can, we'll match up two of the biggest rock shows of the era, NBC's The Midnight Special and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner: Performers include the Staples, Donna Summer, the Group with No Name, the comedy team of Jim Samuels and Marty Cohen, and comics Tim Thomerson and Gary Muledeer. Selections include "Love Me, Love Me, Love Me," "Pass It On" (Staples); "Come with Me," "Could It Be Magic?" (Donna); "Baby Love," "It's a Wonder" (Group with No Name). 

Special: Guest hosts K.C. and the Sunshine Band are joined by Gordon Lightfoot, Heart, ABBA, Jose Feliciano and comic Andy Kaufman. Highlights: "Shake Your Booty" (K.C., Sunshine Band); "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (Gordon); "Magic Man" (Heart); "Dancing Queen" (ABBA).

There's no question about this week, at least in my mind. Regardless of what one's personal tastes might be, The Midnight Special has some of the biggest names of the era; if you want to know what the late 1970s were all about, you can do a lot worse than K.C., Lightfoot, Heart, and ABBA. (By the way, have you ever heard the interview that Minneapolis-St. Paul radio host TD Mischke did with an Edmund Fitzgerald expert, where Mischke sang every question to the tune of Lightfoot's song? Here it is.) And even though I'm no fan of Andy Kaufman, he was definitely a conversation piece back then. It's a resounding win for The Special.

l  l  l

"Trashsport" is loosely defined as "An event designed to entertain television viewers that is supposedly a sport but has no real sporting content." No decade did trashsports better than the 1970s, and in the lull between football and baseball, we get some prime examples of it, starting on Sunday with Superteams (1:00 p.m., ABC), as members of the Minnesota Vikings and Oakland Raiders face off in a series of athletic competitions such as Hawaiian rowing, the obstacle course, and the always popular Tug-of-War. Superteams was a spin-off of Superstars, a competition that actually did have a purpose, of sorts: to determine who was the best all-around athlete from among a group of the world's top athletes competing in events other than their own. According to TV Guide, this week the Vikings "get another shot at their Super Bowl XI vanquishers," but somehow, I don't think winning this competition would have really made up for losing the Super Bowl, do you?

On opposite Superteams is another example of the genre, Challenge of the Sexes (1:00 p.m., CBS), in which top athletes from around the world—yes, male vs. female, you've got it—compete in their own sports. This week, former Davis Cup and U.S. champion Pancho Gonzales takes on former Wimbledon champion Althea Gibson, while Olympic gold medealist Shiela Young races against Erhard Keller in speed skating. You can argue that these are, at least, legitimate sporting competitions, but the "battle of the sexes" component reeks of gimmickry. 

These, however, rank as elite athletic events when compared to the ultimate in trashsports, Challenge of the Network Stars (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC). Howard Cosell does nothing to enhance his reputation in hosting this collection of all-star competitors including Jacyln Smith, Sonny Bono, Kevin Dobson, Karen Grassle, Dan Haggarty, Penny Marshall, and more, representing their respective networks in relay races, baseball throwing, a nearest-to-the-pin golf tournament, volleyball, and, of course, the ubiquitous tug-of-war. Most mentions of Network Stars events tend to focus on the female participants, especially the ones wearing tight-fitting uniforms. 

l  l  l

This is the edition I have   

And now for some real sports: Lawrence Ritter, in one of those great "Background" articles that TV Guide used to publish, shares the story behind the writing of The Glory of Their Times, his acclaimed book on the early days of baseball, made into a documentary that premieres next week on PBS. (And you thought PBS only discovered baseball thanks to Ken Burns.) The project, to capture the memories of men who played the game in the big leagues 60, 70, even 80 years ago, was not an easy one. 

"I was searching for a few remaining old men who had been forgotten for years by virtually everyone except a rapidly dwindling number of other old men—who, as kids in short pants, had watched in awe and delight as the men I now sought performed on distant summer afternoons in rickety ballparks," Ritter writes. With little in the way of resources to consult—many of them had no Social Security records, there were no pensions, and even the Baseball Hall of Fame failed to reply to Ritter's inquiries—Ritter resorted to the public library, looking through phone books from the towns where the players had been born, reasoning that many of them may have returned home, or might have relatives still living there. And, surprisingly, it often worked. 

That doesn't mean everything was easy, though; Ritter recounts the adventures that he encountered attempting to track down Sam Crawford, an outfield for the Detroit Tigers who played with, and was compared to, Ty Cobb. Lead after lead failed him, until he found himself in Baywood Park, California, sitting in the laundromat watching the clothes spin. "Seated next to me was a tall, elderly gentleman reading a frayed paperback. Idly, I asked if he had ever heard of Sam Crawford, the old ballplayer. "Well, I should certainly hope so," he said, "bein' as I'm him."

The Glory of Their Times is now considered a classic of baseball literature, in print virtually uninterrupted since its publication in 1966. Ritter, who travelled 75,000 miles between 1962 and 1966 to interview his subjects, paid royalties well into the 1980s to the 22 men profiled in the book. The documentary, which was produced by Ritter and Bud Greenspan, was rejected for years before premiering on PBS. The Glory of Their Times, both book and movie, tell of a magic time, both in sports and in America, one we're not likely to ever see again. 

l  l  l

Usually, it's the national movie week that takes center stage, but a couple of local flicks take the prize this week, beginning on Saturday with The Hospital (4:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., KTTV in Los Angeles), Paddy Chayefsky's blistering satire that does for the medical profession what Network will later do for television. George C. Scott is outstanding as a hospital administrator confronted with striking doctors, dying patients, and incompetence all the way around; his performance is so good that the Motion Picture Acadamy had to nominate him for Best Actor, one year after he'd declined the award for Patton; Diana Rigg is her usual winsome self as the daughter of a comatose patient. For something a little more tame, try Mary Tyler Moore (8:00 p.m., CBS), where Lou, Murray, and Ted, down in their cups, each wonder what it would be like married to Mary.

On Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the same RFK Jr. who's been in the headlines just a bit lately—helps rehabilitate a young golden eagle on The American Sportsman (2:30 p.m., ABC). Also on today's show: golfer Lee Trevino and journalist Grits Gresham fish for big-mouth bass in Sonora, Mexico. Late night, it's Sammy and Company (11:30 p.m., KNBC), Sammy Davis Jr.'s variety show, with the Lennon Sisters, Della Reese, Gary Muledeer, singer Walter Jackson, and the Rev. Bob Harrington, "the 'Chaplain of Bourbon Street'." Even later, it's Once upon a Dead Man (11:40 p.m., KNXT), the pilot for McMillian and Wife, with, of course, Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James.

Monday gives us the second big local movie presentation, Battle of the Bulge (8:00 p.m., KTLA), the epic depiction of the famed World War II battle, with an all-star cast (and I'm not kidding), including Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, Dana Andrews, George Montgomery, Charles Bronson, and James MacArthur. I remember seeing this in the theater when it came out, which would have made me five; I also have a book about the battle that I got specifically because of my interest in the movie. What kid wouldn't be fascinated by a battle fought in the snow?

I know Police Woman has a lot of fans. I watched it back in the day, but I always had a hard time taking it seriously as a "crime drama," and Tuesday's episode (9:00 p.m., NBC) is one reason why: "Pepper assumes the role of a porn queen following the murder of an actress who played in hard-core films." I fully realize that these kinds of undercover investigations do occur, but am I being too cynical in thinking that there's more than a little titilation factor involved in this episode? It's followed by a Police Story episode featuring Gabe Kaplan (!) as a narc officer "whose bizarre work habits—which include the use of a female mannequin on stakeouts—convince his stuffy lieutenant that he is genuinely insane." (10:00 p.m., NBC) That the "stuffy lieutenant" is played by Norman Fell makes this idea work, but this, too, sounds a little gimmicky. Meanwhile, over on CBS, a 1975 episode of Kojak features Sylvester Stallone as a young cop being investigated for an on-the-job shooting. (10:00 p.m,. CBS) The success of Rocky had nothing, I'm sure, to do with deciding to rerun a two-year-old episode.

Wednesday is a night of specials on ABC, beginning at 8:00 p.m., as America's latest skating sweetheart, Dorothy Hamill, parlays her gold metal into a prime-time variety special, with Beau Bridges, ballet star Edwards Villella, and the Carpenters. That's fofllowed at 9:00 p.m. by the John Denver Special, Thank God I'm a Country Boy, a country-themed hour featuring Glen Campbell, Roger Miller, Mary Kay Place, and Johnny Cash. And to top it off at 10:00 p.m., it's the Barry Manilow Special, with the emphasis on Manilow's greatest hits, plus Penny Marshall and Barry's backup trio, Lady Flash. I tell you, nothing says more about the 1970s and its stars than this lineup. A more interesting choice might be the Mobil Showcase presentation Minstrel Man (9:00 p.m., CBS), a made-for-TV movie that looks at ragtime, black vaudeville, and the challenges met by black entertainers at the turn of the century. Judith Crist calls it "engrossing and entertaining," offering "first-rate" performances.

An ad for Thursday's 6th Annual Las Vegas Entertainment Awards (10:00 p.m., NBC) led me on a brief search that reveals the event still exists, at least in name. (Note to organizers: if this event is as big a deal as you make out, it might be a good idea for your website to include a tab on, you know, its history. I guess it's true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.) Gabe Kabplan, Barbara Eden, and Wayne Newton are the hosts, while Bobbie Gentrie and Sammy Davis Jr. are among the entertainers; there are also highlights from the Vegas shows "Folies Bergere" and "Bare Touch of Vegas."

Remember how I said that Wednesday night's specials represented the 1970s in a nutshell? Well, we have another contender for that honor: The Brady Bunch Hour (Friday, 9:00 p.m., ABC), the inconceivable attempt to turn the much-loved half-hour sitcom into an hour-long variety show. I don't suppose I should pick on it, if that's what I was doing; it did last nine episodes, after all. (Including a different episode that aired on Sunday!) And who among us wouldn't give up a successful career as an architect for a chance to star in a genre that was already in trouble? With Rip Taylor as a next-door neighbor? Vincent Price and puppets H.R. Pufinstuf and Kiki Bird are the guests. (The show's produced by Sid and Marty Krofft.) Fortunately, you can opt instead for the aformementioned The Man from Atlantis (9:00 p.m., NBC), starring Patrick Duffy and Belinda J. Montgomery. It's the first of four movies to air this spring, leading to a 13-episode run in the fall. There are many people who still think of this show first when they think of Patrick Duffy.

l  l  l

MST3K alert: Agent for H.A.R.M. (English; 1966) A creeping blob from outer space transforms human flesh into fungus. Mark Richman, Wendell Corey, Carl Esmond. (Sunday, 1:55 a.m., KNXT in Los Angeles) Peter Mark Richman, Wendell Corey: what are you doing here? H.A.R.M. was, apparently, initially supposed to serve as a pilot for a new series, but wound up in theatrical release instead. My favorite review comes from The New York Times, which called it an "anemic James Bond imitation." I don't believe this is currently part of the MST3K episodes that run on TV; all-in-all, probably a good thing.  TV 

Around the dial

Now that's my kind of car!

We lead off the week at Comfort TV, where David reviews the TV career of the late Tony Roberts, who first came to my attention as one-half of the legal series Rosetti and Ryan, co-starring with Squire Fridell; I was a captive viewer from back in the days of the one-station in the World's Worst Town™. 

RealWeegieMidget is back on the TV-movie circuit with the 1984 teleflick Obsessive Love, which stars Yvette Mimieux and Simon MacCorkindale and carries with it more than a whiff of Fatal Attraction. It's part of the "So Bad It's Good" Blogathon, which perhaps tells you all you need to know. 

At bare•bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues apace with the seventh-season story "The Children of Alda Nuova," Robert Wallsten's adaptation of his own short story, with Jack Carson starring as a criminal who makes a wrong turn into a wrong town.

Let's continue with crime, as John wraps up his "Private Detective Season" at Cult TV Blog with 1967's The Big M, with all the requisite sleaze that P.I.s thrive on. John also looks at some additional series, including the very good Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, with Powers Boothe.

At The Saturday Evening Post, Bob Sassone's "News of the Week" includes two pertinent questions about the TV ratings system: is it accurate, and does it even matter? Read the story, and stick around for this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.

Travalanche has an excellent look back at the ubiquitqious John Charles Daly, urbane moderator of What's My Line?, anchor of ABC's evening news program, and one of my absolute favorite television persons ever. I may be coming up on 65, but I still say that I want to be like him when I grow up.

It's only tangentially related to classic TV, but unless you've been under a rock for the last couple of years, you know about the disintegration of cable television. Variety has an in-depth look at the future of Comcast, including USA Network (which produced many an original show in the day), and what it may bode for the industry as a whole.

Speaking of, it looks as if the long relationship between ESPN and Major League Baseball is over at the end of the upcoming season. Did MLB undervalue its product? And what could this mean for a new television partner? Sports Media Watch has all the details, including what happens to ESPN.

Wrapping things up with The View from the Junkyard, Roger continues his episode-by-episode review of The New Avengers, with "The Tale of the Big Why," an example of how the series handles comedy with a deft touch—unlike, perhaps, the original. TV  

When giants ruled the news

I couldn't help but notice this factoid the other day, regarding the amount of trust Americans have in the way the mass media reports the news. As you can see from the chart below, the number who think that the media reports the news "fully, accurately and fairly" is pretty much at an all-time low, while the corresponding number who have no trust and confidence in the media is at an all-time high. 

It's a measure of how far we've come from the days when Walter Cronkite was the "most trusted man in America." The peak of American trust in the news media occurs in the mid-1970s—in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War—when over 70 percent had a "great deal/fair amount" of trust in what they saw on television news, heard on the radio, or read in newspapers; today, it's less than 40 percent.

This isn't any great surprise to those who've been paying attention over the last few years. Indeed, in many of the classic television groups I belong to, people lament the state of today's news and long for the days of the giants, names like Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, Brokaw, Jennings, Reynolds, and others. Back then, so the story goes, they gave us the news "they way it was" in an era of "honest, true media reporting," when news anchors "didn’t give their opinion of the news" and could be counted on to give us reporting that was neutral, unbiased, straightforward, and true. 

Of course, we ought to know better than this. As someone once observed, one of the interesting things about nostalgia is being old enough to remember how things were received at the time. And at that time—the Sixties, let's say, into the early Seventies—there was plenty of controversy about the news media. Remember Vice President Agnew's speech on the "Nattering Nabobs of Negativism"? That comment, and the positive response to it by many in America—the "Silent Majority," they were called—should remind us that at the time, the talking heads of the news, the anchor men, were seen as anything but neutral, unbiased, or straightforward. Granted, subsequent events, and the widespread cynicism that was borne from them, appeared to justify much of the news coverage in the 1960s, leading to the high approval rating that we see in the first years of the chart.

The accusation most frequently leveled against network newscasters was that they were presenting personal commentary, not identified as such, under the guise of reporting. It was enough to get Frank Reynolds sacked from the ABC Evening News; Reynolds, a passionate man about whom it could be said that at times he wore his heart on his sleeve, answered that "I think your program has to reflect what your basic feelings are. I'll plead guilty to that."* ABC came to be known during the Vietnam years, sardonically, as the "Administration Broadcasting Company," due in large part to Howard K. Smith's staunch support for the War. This was, mind you, the same Howard K. Smith who had been sacked at CBS after a documentary on the civil rights riots in Birmingham that he had sought (and failed) to conclude with Smith quoting Edmund Burke that, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," 

*Listen to Reynolds opining on the need for gun control during ABC's coverage of Robert F. Kennedy's shooting; no matter how you feel about the issue, you have to wince a little at interjecting this kind of commentary into a breaking news situation.

NBC, anchored by the team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, was often thought to be the most liberal of the three networks. Brinkley, answering the charge that his reporting lacked objectivity, countered, "If I were objective, or if you were objective, or if anyone was, we would have to be put away in an institution because we'd be some kind of vegetable. Objectivity is impossible to a human being." Huntley, who had to backtrack from unflattering comments he'd made about Richard Nixon during an interview, insisted that he "never allowed his opinions to influence newscasts." His greatest controversy, perhaps, came after delivering a commentary in which he said that "the nation’s meat industry was 'sick' and that one of the consumer's greatest problems was 'too much fat in our beef' "; at the same time, he promoted "Chet Huntley’s Nature Fed Beef," which touted "quality and flavor, plus low fat and high protein." NBC ordered Huntley to "trim his name and face" from the product. 

And Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, found himself in the eye of the storm throughout the decade, from his controversial 1968 commentary following the Tet Offensive in which he pronounced the Vietnam War a "stalemate" and called for the United States to negotiate a way out*, to his tête-à-tête with Chicago's mayor Richard Daley during the 1968 Democratic Convention, when Cronkite called Daley's police force "a bunch of thugs," only to be accused of going soft on Daley in their interview the following night in an attempt to paper things over—a moment which Brinkley would refer to as "the low-water mark" of Cronkite’s career. Following that Tet commentary, Cronkite's critics would call him a traitor, and worse; his longetivity and avuncular nature would burnish his reputation over the years, but for a significant segment of the viewing audience, he would always remain a picture of liberal bias. And lest we forget, CBS's Daniel Schorr and Marvin Kalb were both on the list of Nixon's political opponents.

*According to this article, Cronkite's importance in the rise of public opposition to the war has been greatly overstated through the years. It should also be noted that Eric Sevareid, Cronkite's CBS colleague and commentator, had come to much the same conclusion about Vietnam in 1966, two years earlier. Nonetheless, LBJ was moved to pronounce that Cronkite was "out to get" him.

Now, my point in all this isn't to dump on these news giants. I grew up watching them give the evening news. Chet and David are still my favorite anchor team; I have the greatest admiration for Frank Reynolds, even though I frequently disagree with him; and Cronkite never came across as confused or misinformed. Harry Reasoner and Howard K. Smith were steady and authoritative, the closest team to Huntley and Brinkley. Peter Jennings was an excellent anchor, but you also respected him as, first and foremost, a reporter; he wasn't likely to make a statement such as free speech being a catalyst for the Holocaust, for example. As were so many others who gave the network news its credbility through the years: Frank McGee, Bill Ryan, John Chancellor, Jules Bergman, Robert MacNeil, Hughes Rudd, Liz Trotta, Marlene Sanders, and oftentimes Dan Rather. And don't forget Jim McKay; his work during the Munich Olympic Massacre in 1972 was as good as anything any reporter has ever done on live television.

You have to keep in mind, however, that no matter what you read, no matter what people remember when they talk about Cronkite, Brokaw, Jennings, et al, the news media has never not been controversial, never not subjected to accusations of bias. But what these news giants all had in common is that they did their jobs with a gravitas and professionalism that presumed a knowledge and command of events; their broadcasts presented hard news, done with a sense of authority, even elegance. One recalls Huntley, while giving a report on the Profumo affair in England in the 1960s, referring to Christine Keeler, not as a prostitute, but as a trollop; you got the idea that using the word "prostitute" was too common, beneath Huntley's dignity as a newsman. 

Yes, they had their biases; yes, there were probably too many times when they crossed the line between reporting and commentary. But for the most part, you didn't get the feeling that they were intentionally misrepresenting the news, distorting the truth, fabricating the stories, or simply suffering from incompetence. Whatever one might have thought of their opinionating, they couldn't be accused of disguising their motives or misleading the public as to where they stood.

Compare this to what we see too often on what passes for the news today. You get the impression, watching them emote, leading with their feelings, openly manipulating the facts by the very nature of the stories they choose, redefining news itself as "human interest." Granted, the way in which we get our news has changed irreversably; between social media and 24/7 news channels, the evening news can never be what it once was, a half hour roundup of the day's headlines. But there's just this sense that the people giving us the news, whether on the networks or cable, are not, for the most part, serious people. Instead, they give the impression of having gotten their jobs based on their looks, their smile, the way they dress, how they read off a teleprompter, or to fill in the blanks on a diversity checklist. Many critics suggest that the news anchors of the past would be appalled by the state of today's news, and I don't doubt this for a minute.

No, the point of this, and, I can assure you, there is a point, is that we don't have to pretend that the Cronkites, the Brinkleys, the Jenningses, were beyond reproach, that they never made mistakes, that they always and everywhere toed the line in an impartial, neutral manner. As reporters, they would insist that we present them as they were, not as we might want them to be. It is enough to say that they were giants, that they represented a time that seems long ago, and that we probably will never see their likes again. TV  

What's on TV? Wednesday, February 23, 1955

Tonight's highlight is the Kraft Television Theatre presentation "The Emperor Jones" (9:00 p.m., NBC), Eugene O'Neill's 1920 tragedy about a Pullman porter who winds up being dictator of an island in the Carribbean. Ossie Davis stars in the title role, with Evelyn Ellis and Curtis James making up part of the predominently black cast; Everett Sloane costars as a white trader who appears at the beginning and end of the play. It would have been unusual for a television drama in 1955 to feature an almost entirelly black cast, let alone one with a black actor in the starring role (and believe me, Jones dominates the play); I wonder if there were stations in the South that refused to show it? That wasn't a problem in this Philadelphia edition.

What's on TV? February 19, 1955

At this point in time, television, as we know it, has been around for less than a decade. TV Guide, the arbiter of such things, published its first national issue less than two years ago. So when the topic of global television is brought up, it's an understandably awesome concept. And yet, as Herman Lowe points out this week, it might be closer to happening than you think.

The exciting prospect of television being beamed across the Atlantic via a series of microwave relay stations is thought to be four to ten years away. It won't be easy, nor will it be cheap; construction costs are estimated at a minimum of $75 to $100 million. AT&T's Ultra High Frequency microwave, which could cast signals as far as 300 miles, could expedite things, in terms both of cost and time. (Of course, the Early Bird satellite is still ten years away, and it is this satellite technology that revolutionizes the industry and makes live worldwide broadcasts possible. Given that Sputnik itself is two years in the future, it's no surprise that satellites don't enter the discussion.) Assuming that the technology works, Lowe wonders just what pieces need to be filled in to make global television a reality.

Western Europe has made great strides with its eight-nation Eurovision network, which has transmitted several simultaneous transmissions to Britain, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Switzerland. There are hopes that Sweden and Spain will be able to join before the end of the year, and as soon as Luxembourg and the Saar get up and running, they should be easy to add as well. The Soviet Union has, it is believed, seven stations, and they've enquired about joining Eurovision; Poland, with one station, and Czechoslovakia, which hopes to be on the air before next year, could join them. French Morocco has started a television operation at Casablanca, and it would be easy enough to connect North Africa to the continent via coax cable or microwave; Egypt and South Africa are expected to have operational stations sometime this year. See how easy it is?

In the Western Hemisphere, last year's World Series was broadcast to Cuba via microwave, with the signal being extended via a relay facility on a DC-3—a forecast of satellite technology, in a way; experiments are continuing to see if regular service can be supplied without benefit of the relay. (I wonder what difference that might have made in terms of Castro and the Cuban revolution.) The U.S. is already linked with Canada, and a link that runs from Dallas to Mexico City would connect up stations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. The Philippines and Thailand each have a station, and Japan is expected to join them shortly; discussions are already in progress to link Japan and the Philippines. India, Turkey, and Australia expect to be on the air later this year.

Nowadays we'd call this the Global Community, and what I find interesting about all this is how far along it already is, and how fast it seems to be progressing. I'm old enough to remember the awe inspired by Early Bird, and the sporting events that came to us Live via Early Bird Satellite. Believe me, it made any event special, and in the 1960s, there were a lot of them—not just sports but news, town hall meetings, cultural events, and more. I suppose it must seem terribly ho-hum to those who have grown up with the internet and cell phones, but in reading this article, one can sense that the anticipation is palpable, that the possibilities from such technology are unlimited. It may well be that technology will yet turn out to be the instrument of our destruction, either literally or figuratively, but back in 1955 the sky was the limit.

l  l  l

Also on the cover this week is the reigning king of comedy, Sid Caesar. After catapulting to fame with Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris on Your Show of Shows, he's now moved on to a show of his own, Caesar's Hour, along with Reiner and Morris; Coca's place has been filled by comedienne Nanette Fabray. But what's it like now that Sid is his own boss?

The cast of Caesar's Hour

For one thing, says Kathy Pedell, an $85,000 a week budget has allowed him to indulge some of his whims, such as sharing a stage with Benny Goodman, which he accomplished earlier this season. Music has always been a passion of his; growing up, friends recall him as being somewhat morose, with only two real interests in life: astronomy and music. Back then, he studied at Julliard for six months and aspired to play the clarinet in a symphony orchestra, but most of his professional experience came playing the sax for Charlie Spivak, Shep Fields, and Claude Thornhill. Things changed during World War II when he met composer Vernon Duke, who urged him to accept a part in his musical review—not as a musician, but as a comedian. You know the rest.

Friends say he's more relaxed since splitting with Coca and producer Max Liebman to go on his own; although the ratings were beginning to slide, he says that what made the split inevitable was "the indicision that tied me in knots." That relaxation doesn't seem to extend to his home life, though; he works from 10 a.m. to midnight, and when he gets home, he's so tired that "I won’t walk from here to there. Not unless I can calculate what it’s worth and am sure it’s worth it."

Throughtout his life, Caesar has been an astute observer of fhuman behavior, which he has translated to his skits. He generally relies on physical humor—gestures and grunts—to convey comedic situations, but he's also a master of doublespeak, able to mimic the sounds of a foreign language after hearing it for as little as 15 minutes and make it sound convincingly like actual words. But for all his success (Pedell describes it as "enough statuettes, ribbons, scrolls and citations to stock a dozen mantelpieces."), he still seems driven, immune to the pleasures which that success should have brought him. Says a former associate, "You know, he’s the kind of a guy who sits in the back of his chauffeur-driven limousine and says, 'Gee, I wish I had a hot dog.' The funny thing is—he really means it."

l  l  l

On the Teletype, reports that CBS's Father Knows Best was slated for a March cancellation appear to be uncertain; the report is that the series "may get another chance." The series survives due to a new  sponsor, Scott Paper, and resumes in the fall on a new network, NBC; it runs for another five seasons, and finishes up back where it started, on CBS. 

NBC says Groucho Marx will be appearing in one of the spectaculars produced by the aforementioned Max Liebman in April, but if that ever happened, there's no record of it in the files of the series Max Liebman Presents. What's that they say about the best-laid plans?

In Washington, House Speaker Sam Rayburn remains adamant that there will be no television coverage of House sessions or committee hearings. He believes that cameras would be a distraction to members of the House, and perhaps for good reason: during last month's telecast of President Eisenhower's State of the Union address, cameras picked up "a foreign Ambassador obviously sleeping during the message, another of the dignified Speaker scratching his nose, and still others of Senators talking together during the speech." (Your tax dollars at work.) Ironically, when C-SPAN comes along with gavel-to-gave coverage of Congress, it's the Senate, not the House, that initially balks. Eventually, the Senate goes along, on C-SPAN2.  

l  l  l

You may recall that Lincoln's Birthday was celebrated in last week's issue; this week, it's George Washington's turn. The Father of Our Country is feted on The Christophers (Saturday 9:30 a.m., WFIL), as John Daly, Fred Allen, Ella Raines, and Thelma Ritter provide dramatic readings using Washington's own words. If that's too early in the morning for you, stick around for Texaco Star Theater (9:30 p.m., NBC), as host Donald O'Connor welcomes Boris Karloff—song-and-dance man. 

The WFIL studio is taken over by cars on Sunday for the third annual Auto Show (2:00 p.m.), showcasing "America's smartest cars, along with sleek European cars" such as Jaguar, Volkswagen, Hillman Minx, Triumph, Sunbean, and Porsche, are on display during the two-and-a-half broadcast. Wouldn't you like to see some of those old beauties? Later in the afternoon, the George Washington tributes continue with Hallmark Hall of Fame's presentation, "Martha Custis Washington" (5:00 p.m., NBC), which tells the story of the young widow and mother of two who becomes America's first First Lady.

Colgate Comedy Hour comes to us from New Orleans this week (8:00 p.m., NBC), with host Gordon MacRae celebrating Marti Gras with Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, and comedian Gene Sheldon. Meanwhile, on Toast of the Town (8:00 p.m., CBS), Ed Sullivan is in London to host a tribute to the great English actress and musical comedy performer, the late Gertrude Lawrence, with an all-star lineup including  Helen Hayes, Metropolitan Opera star Lily Pons, actress Judith Anderson, actress Sarah Churchill, and others. 

One thing I don't think you can argue about is that early morning television was much more interesting, not to mention more fun, back in the 1950s Take Monday morning, for example; our cover star, Sid Caesar, is one of Dave Garroway's guests on Today (7:00 a.m., NBC), while Johnny Desmond and Edie Adams are the vocalists on Jack Paar's Morning Show (7:00 a.m., CBS). I'd take that over today's morning shows anytime.

We're back on the early morning beat Tuesday, as Today honors Washington's Birthday with its annual trip to Mount Vernon, Virginia. (I've been there myself; terrific place to visit.)  In primetime, Boris Karloff makes his second appearance of the week in the comedy-mystery "A Sting of Death" on the anthology series The Elgin Hour (9:30 p.m., ABC). In his review of the season's drama anthologies, Robert Stahl calls Elgin "one of the brighter series" of the season, with an "adventuresome spirit." (By the by, Stahl rates Philco Television Playhouse as television's top anthology series; Philco, in its final season after a seven-year run, can boast Paddy Chayefsky's original version of "Marty" and the Broadway productions of Horton Foote's "Trip to Bountiful" and N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" as successes.

Wednesday's highlight comes courtesy of Disneyland (7:30 p.m., ABC). It's "Davy Crockett at the Alamo," the third of five Crockett adventures made by Disney between 1954 and 1955. Fess Parker stars as the great frontiersman, with Buddy Ebsen as his sidekick George Russel, and Kenneth Tobey as James Bowie. "Davy Crockett at the Alamo" is, appropriately, the final segment of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, the theatrical movie made from the first three Crockett stories. And opera star Robert Merrill, who appeared on The Milton Berle Show on NBC Tuesday night, spans nights and networks to play the celebrity with the secret on I've Got a Secret (9:30 p.m., CBS). 

David Niven, one of the four stars of Four Star Playhouse, plays author Robert Louis Stevenson in "Tusitala," the story of the author's life on Samoa. (Thursday, 9:30 p.m., CBS) "Tusitala" is Samoan for "teller of tales," which certainly describes Stevenson. And on WCAU's Late Show (11:30 p.m.), it's the 1937 movie You Only Live Once, directed by Fritz Lang, with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney. Only don't tell James Bond.

In the sports netherworld, between the end of football and the start of baseball, boxing dominates the scene, and on Friday the main event pits world featherweight champion Sandy Saddler*, making his first title defense in three years, against the number one contender, Teddy Davis, live from Madison Square Garden. (10:00 p.m., NBC) It's not that Saddler was inactive; he fought a a total of 163 times, winning 145 times. Most of his fights during his time as featherweight champion were 10-round non-title bouts, sometimes against fighters from other weight classes.

*Fun fact: Sandy Saddler's nephew is Grandmaster Flash.

l  l  l

Having looked at the King of Television Comedy earlier in this issue, it seems appropriate to wrap things up with the "Grand Old Lady of Television," Faye Emerson. Unlike Sid Caesar, who remains a legend in comedy circles even though he may have been forgotten by the general public, I'm not sure how many people know, or remember, Faye Emerson. The "Grand Old Lady" title comes honestly, though: she's been on television for more than five years, and, as she points out, "that's about the length of television's own career." During that time, she's been "a panelist, moderator, critic, interviewer, accessory and actress."

Emerson started out in show business when she was still in her teens, making her first movie appearance in 1941. Her transition "from actress to interviewer" came in 1948, while she was married to Elliott Roosevelt, son of FDR. (The two were brought together by Howard Hughes.) She was interviewed at the Democratic National Convention and found the questioning so banal that "As far as I could see, all you had to do was talk. So I figured this was for me." (She didn’t think of Eleanor Roosevelt as a mother-in-law, she said, but more as "a woman of the world who belonged to the world." She never gave up on acting, thought, with appearances on various dramatic anthologies and Broadway productions, as well as hosting her own interview shows. (She also found time to divorce Roosevelt and marry bandleader Skitch Henderson.) Last year, she added the title of columnist to her duties, writing a nationally syndicated column. She reads all the daily newspapers, a habit she got into when she was a panelist on the quiz show Who Said That? "But I’m no intellectual; just curious."  

These days, she's a regular panelist on I've Got a Secret. She has also, unexpectedly, turned up as something of an arbiter of women's fashion on TV. In those early days, she was known as "the girl with the plunging neckline," a label she vehemently rejects. "I wore my own clothes when I started on late evening shows, and they were clothes appropriate to that time of day. Evening clothes, of course, are cut low; but I also wore a lot of high necklines. And I never wore anything in bad taste." Unlike some of today's stars, she might have added; in one of her recent columns, she said that "TV isn't necessarily like a Turkish bath," and that "The less said, the better, about some things that go on after 10 P.M." It's an issue she'd rather stay out of, though, "because it is keeping alive what is distasteful to me. I can well remember the days when people said all a girl had to do was to 'cut her dresses low like Fayzie' and she was an actress." But would they have wound up as the Grand Old Lady of Television? TV  

Around the dial

A Happy Valentine's Day to one and all. In the spirit of the season, so to speak, the picture above personifies me spending quality time with my first love. And where has it gotten me, you ask? Of course, if you're reading these words, you already know the answer.

Onward to Cult TV Blog, where John continues "Private Detective Season" with the mid-80s British series Bulman, and the episode "Pandora's Many Boxes." Bulman's one of those maverick P.I.s who don't follow the rules, which is just fine with me, and it provides an excellent snapshot of its time, which the best shows always do.

Garry Berman returns with the third in a series of stars who've gone "from hits to flops," and there are more than you might think. Of course, you don't get to be a star unless you take chances, and some of them don't work out. How many of these failed series do you remember?

Roger continues his recap of The New Avengers at A View from the Junkyard with "To Catch a Rat," another quality episode in the series revival. In addition to being a thriller revolving around amnesia, it's a philosophical reminder of just how important one's memory is to their own identity.

There was a time when Susan Oliver seemed to be on just about every television show you tuned in to, and Travalanche looks back at her road to success, including some of her more memorable roles (including, of course, the "Green Chick" in Star Trek).

One of the great things about the Criterion Channel is the access it gives you to movies and genres you might never have known about, let alone watched. For me, the great revelation was Japanese Noir, and Maddy writes at Classic Film and TV Corner about one of the best, Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, with the great Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura.

On the subject of movies, at Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick looks at Buchanan Rides Alone, one of the six "Ranown Cycle" Westerns made by Randolph Scott, directed by Budd Boetticher, and written by Burt Kennedy. Merits of the movie aside, I'm reminded of the night of the 1992 New Hampshire Presidental Primary, when Pat Buchanan was running against Bush Sr. and the GOP establishment. TNT was airing this movie, and I wondered then if they appreciated the irony of the title. TV  

If I ran the network, part 6

When the idea first came into my head, there weren't a lot of series about serial-killers on television. (That there's even such a genre says something about our society, I think, but we'll save that for another day.) I was sure, however, that there was a place for the idea, if it were done correctly, in a manner that would confound those thinking they were getting something more conventional, more in line with what they were used to seeing.

Thus was born "Jack the Ripper: The Series." 

That wouldn't have been the final title, of course. For one thing, I wasn't interested in doing a period piece, at least not that period. I also wasn't interested in a series set in England. And anyway, what more is there to say about the real Jack the Ripper that hasn' t already been said? I mean, if the idea that the Ripper might have been a member of the royal family doesn't shock you, then what's the use? It made for a good working title, though, and as far as explaining the concept goes, it'd be a great elevator pitch. So it stays as a place-holder.

In rejecting a period piece, I also rejected setting it in a contemporary timeframe, when so much of modern investigative and forensic work is conducted in the lab, online, or through psychological profiling. No, what I wanted to see was good, old-fashioned police work, where pavements are pounded and shoe leather is worn out, where informants are consulted and every lead has to be followed up. As for the location, probably a nameless American city with a population of several million people, as opposed to a small town where the character pool would be relatively limited and the focus of the investigation would narrow rapidly. Both of these were details to be determined later.

The series would work something like this: in the pilot (a two-hour special), we'd meet three or four characters, people from various walks of life. We'd learn about them: what they did, what their lives were like, what they did at home and on the job, and how those factors might possibly bring them within the circle of a serial killer. At first, as each one is murdered, the crimes are investigated as unrelated killings, but by the end of the pilot, the police realize they're dealing with a serial killer. For however many epsodes the series runs, we'd see the investigation progress, through the eyes of the task force formed to coordinate the strategy, the detectives looking for clues, the reporters covering the story, or some other aspect of the case. 

In the meantime, the killings continue, usually at the rate of one per episode, but never more than two. Each week we'd be introduced to two or three potential Ripper victims. As in the pilot, they'd be the focus of the episode, similar to character-driven dramas like The Untouchables, Naked City and The FBI. Sometimes their activities would be shown simultaneously on split-screens (a la 24), other times we'd switch between their stories and the progress of the investigation. Throughout the episode, viewers would be left wondering what threat might be waiting around the corner, at a dark bus stop, or in the shadows next to the garage. 

As for the identity of the Ripper, it could be male or female, one person or two—we wouldn't know until the final episode, although sharp-eyed viewers would pick up clues after every murder that would allow them to play along with the detectives in creating a profile that would suggest various suspects. Along the way there will be false leads, red herrings, and brick walls encountered. It could be that one of the guest stars, one we feared might be a victim, becomes a suspect instead. It could be the delivery person who brings coffee or donuts to the detectives, one of the reporters, or even one of the detectives. We might receive glimpses of the killer in various episodes without realizing it, and we might have some parts of the story seen through the eyes of the killer, without revealing their identity. 

As the murders continue, the detectives would begin to establish a pattern, that would produce a list of suspects; that list would be added to or narrowed down over the course of the series. Some suspects might reappear in multiple episodes, while others come and go in the course of an hour. There could be cliffhanger endings in which the detectives pursue a suspect who eludes them; that suspect might be cleared later, or remain on the list. In one of those episodes where we see things through the eyes of the killer, we might see him come close to being captured, have the intended victim escape, or have the plan inadvertently thwarted, with the intended never knowing how close he or she came to becoming a statistic.

There'd also be room for some episodes that break the mold. For instance, there might be an episode in which, with the killer not having struck for several months, the case appears to be on the verge of going cold. There could be a story in which a psychic is brought in to try and identify who might be behind the crimes. We could see a reporter working on a trap that would catch the killer; and there'd probably be one illustrating the pressure mounting on the department to capture the Ripper, with that pressure being passed down to the detectives. Speaking of which, since in real life these crimes often take place over extended periods of time, we'll probably see three or four years pass over the course of the series, during which time new detectives come on the case while others are transferred, get killed on the job, retire, or otherwise move on.

Admittedly, there are some ideas that have to be worked out before we can go into production. For one thing, we'd have to give the viewers characters they can care about, to keep them tuning in each week; therefore, the potential victims have to be compelling, fully-formed charcters, with viewers becoming invested in their stories (some of them might be real SOBs, people you'd want to be victims). And there'd have to be characters among the detectives that would be the main protagonists, people the viewers would be rooting for. Unlike The Killer, under no circumstances would the Ripper ever be considered the protagonist, even if he did wind up killing someone who deserved it.

To be sure, "Jack the Ripper: The Series" is a long way from being a polished idea, although that never stopped a network from greelighting a series. There are some things about it that I really liked, though: the way it combined serial storytelling, with the arc continuing through the whole series, and episodic television, with a new victim being killed each week. And while we've seen serial killers come and go on TV in the years since, I don't know how many Rippers have carried that series without being the lead character—or, for that matter, without even being identified. And how many series have carried such a serial killer investigation through an entire season, with the killings continuing each week?

It might not be an idea a network would pick up today, but there would always be a place for it on HBC. No matter what it was called. TV  

What's on TV? Monday, February 7, 1972

One of Edwin Newman's guests on this morning's Today is former British politican Sir Oswald Mosley, promoting his autobiography My Life, a man whose life would make a terrific miniseries. He was, over the years, a member of Parliament; leader of the British Fascist movement (for which he spent time in prison); married Diana Mitford, sister of writer Jessica Mitford (their 1936 marriage was held in Joseph Goebbels' home in Berlin); was an early proponent of European nationalism; and was father to Max Mosley, the future head of the governing body for Formula 1 auto racing, who himself became involved in a Nazi-themed sex scandal in 2008. How could that interview have fit into a ten-minute segment? The listings come from the Eastern New England edition.