Top Ten #371

1) The Emmy Awards: Tonight is the umpteenth edition as the venerable awards ceremony, in a world with the Battys, makes a desperate to stay relevant by honoring current programming.

2) The Golden Girls: The gals debuted 40 years ago tonight on NBC, and the "senior" demo became hot for a while! Then of course people of all ages embraced the series, and it became a huge cultural institution. I mean, there are MAD LIBS!

3) 227: Hey, don't forget the other sitcom that debuted on this night in 1985. It hasn't had quite the cachet that Golden Girls has--still waiting for my Hal Williams Funko--but it did have, on one glorious night, Batty winner Franklin Cover.

4) Late Night with David Letterman: A new FAST channel on Samsung TVs devoted to Dave will offer 1,800 episodes of the show! That's more episodes than humans should be allowed to have.

5) Miss America: The 32nd titleholder, Susan Akin, was crowned on NBC 40 years ago tonight. Quick, name your top 32 favorite Miss Americas!

6) Paul Linke: I dedicate this item to my co-conspirator Mike: Guess who's on Ian Talks Comedy this week! Well, I gave it away, but it's Paul Linke, AKA Grossie from CHiPs! What a career he has had apart from that role, though.

7) Three for the Road: This road-trip show from MTM Enterprises teamed Alex Rocco with Vincent Van Patten and Leif Garrett as his sons. It ended up as the lowest-rated show of the season.

8) Joey Heatherton: Happy birthday to the iconic sex symbol. Who knows, maybe we'll see her in the BOTNSverse someday...

9) The Wuzzles: The cute and cuddly gang premiered in their own Saturday morning cartoon on CBS this day in 1985. It's funny that there are now infinitely more Golden Girls toys than there are Wuzzles toys.

10) R.I.P. Polly Holliday:

RetroFan Review: Issue 38 features BOTNS-era TV

It's been a while since I looked at my favorite mag, TwoMorrows' RetroFan, here on the site. Well, for a while I didn't get any issues because distribution issues caused by distributor Diamond's bankruptcy led to a bottleneck. So later, I got 3 issues in what seemed like rapid succession! I am now catching up and will share my thoughts over the next week or so. Spoiler: I love the magazine.

Longtime Editor in Chief Michael Eury has retired, and while I have seen some copy editing errors pop up in this mag and in Back Issue (the other publication Eury helmed), the direction of RetroFan is steady as she goes, and I haven't noticed any changes in direction. There are a few new contributors lately, and that's probably unrelated, but I enjoy the new writers being added to the mix.

There are two BOTNS-era TV subjects on the cover of issue 38, which devotes space to a variety of topics rather than spotlighting one. My favorite contributor may be Andy Mangels, and he delivers another epic animation history here, this one a look at Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Many articles in the magazine rely on past interviews and previously published material, but Mangels conducted a handful of new interviews with animators like Larry Houston, and he synthesizes that material well with other sources. It's a tremendous look at the series, a piece that I wish were around when Mike and I discussed it on the podcast.

Will Murray's story on The Mod Squad, a series we have not covered on BOTNS, is another winner. This series doesn't get a lot of attention today, so it's nice to see an in-depth treatment of it. Murray doesn't discuss a lot of individual episodes in detail--he mentions some notable ones but doesn't focus much on that--but he covers the entire production history, ratings rising and falling, and reunion/revival attempts. It certainly makes me more curious about exploring a series I haven't seen much. Aspire TV showed reruns a while ago, and it is on DVD, so at least it's out there.

One other cartoon we love around here is The Flintstones, and Scott Shaw! looks at the various animators and writers who worked on the original series. I enjoyed the array of capsule biographies, but it may be more than many need. It's well done, just surprisingly lengthy.

One hidden gem of the Sixties is Julie Newmar's sitcom My Living Doll, and Lee Weinsten tells us about it in this June issue. I was glad to snap up the DVD set that came out in 2012. It was called, with optimism, "Volume 1," but it appears half of the series is still lost. Anything with Newmar is welcome in this or any other magazine!

I laughed out loud reading Scott Saadevra's history of Mr. Potato Head, and Mark Voger's offbeat profile of Jesus Christ Superstar is another compelling piece. Issue 38 is a well-rounded, entertaining effort as usual, but the highlight by far is Spidey.

Top Ten #370: Special "Are you ready for or already tired of football" Edition!

1) The Love Boat: This week's Fun for All Ages podcast features a discussion of the show with Jill Whelan and (author of a forthcoming book about the series) Jim Colucci. There were some funny and bawdy stories told, but I think my big takeaway was that Whelan is tight with Glenn Scarpelli.

2) Police Squad!: Laurie and I started watching the original series this week. I think it will benefit from doing one a week instead of burning through all 6! The show holds up very well and feels like a "gone too soon" effort. It might have worked better as a summer replacement show each year than a full season, though.

3) Ironside: In our Facebook group this week, our friend John recommended Season 5 episode "Bubble, Bubble, Toil, and Murder" partly because of an amazing guest cast, including a Genius winner. I had a great time seeing it last night, and I suggest you check it out!

4) Junkyard Dog: WWE, via its YouTube account, has finally released original episodes of Hulk Hogan's Rock and Wrestling, its 1980s cartoon on CBS, and who should star in the first one but the guy who was my favorite in 1985, the Dog.

5) Shark...Terror, Death, Truth: Before Peter Jennings became big dog (not Junkyard Dog; that was David Brinkley's role) at ABC News, he had to host stuff like this Jaws cash-in that aired 50 years ago tonight.

6) Super Powers: Galactic Guardians: This version of Super Friends premiered September 7, 1985 on ABC. I think it may have had something to do with toys.

7) Scooby's Mystery Funhouse: Also on this day in 1985, ABC debuted this repackaging of Scooby and Scrappy reruns. As far as invigorating veteran franchises goes, I'll take Firestorm and Cyborg over Scrappy.

8) ABC Weekend Special: Con Sawyer and Hucklemary Finn: This special with Drew Barrymore premiered 40 years ago today. Of course, 3 days before it aired, scores of angry viewers rushed down to their local general stores and protested the gender swapping.

9) The National Football League: Pro football is back this weekend, but I think the CBS studio show gets a little too much attention, so here's a bit of NBC from back in the day.

10) R.I.P. Giorgio Armani (I don't know anything about fashion, but I like Miami Vice!), Graham Greene, Frank Price (head of Universal TV):

Top Ten #369

1) Labor Day weekend: I am confident saying that all of you reading this deserve a day off, and I hope you have at least one of them this weekend!

2) Summer: At the same time, we must say goodbye to Emotional Summer, and I'm not quite ready to let go.

3) The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon: One of the biggest annual traditions on TV in the BOTNS era!

4) Gunsmoke: Me-TV is celebrating the series' 70th anniversary (And I think it aired for half of those years) this month.

5) Hearts Island: 40 years ago tonight, NBC ran this unsold pilot from David Duclon starring Dorothy Lyman as a widowed mom of two making ends meet--barely--in Louisiana. Things take a turn when she meets an ex-con played by...Patrick Simmons!

No, wait, it's Gary Sandy!

6) Siskel and Ebert: Also 40 years ago this weekend, the duo devoted an episode to the worst films of the summer. The episode is available online, so I won't spoil anything, but one selection is from a certain long-long-long-running iconic franchise.

7) Buddy Hackett: The comedian would have been 100 today. I struggle with picturing a 100-year-old Buddy Hackett.

8) TV Guide's TV Teletype: I love the tidbits in the 8/20/55 issue we spotlighted the last couple weeks. Here are a few more:

"Horses come into their own this fall." Writer Bob Stahl notes Fury and My Friend Flicka start soon, and Gene Autry is developing a show about his horse Champion.

BBC starts its version of People Are Funny in September. CBS plans a series called Wanted profiling notable fugitives, and it took out an insurance policy protecting in case one of them is caught before the episode airs.

9) Major League Baseball: OK, I know everyone is about to be consumed by football. Let me just mark the deal MLB made with NBC/Peacock to bring games back to the network. It puts me in a nostalgic mood (Like I'm ever not in one) thinking about the old Game of the Week. Also, MLB's official Vault channel posted a cool episode of This Week in Baseball this week (Many more have been uploaded on less-official channels lately, too).

10) R.I.P. Jerry Adler: The veteran character actor didn't really get into TV until the nineties, but he was a stage manager on Santa Barbara! 

Inside the Guide: 8/20/55 Part 10: News and Info

The 1955 TV Guide has a good deal of news and gossip, including a page of local tidbits that has this note about Fred Rogers:

In the back of the mag, Sheila Graham has a page of brief items. We're told Earl Wilson will have the space next week. Among Graham's scoops: Liberace's show will return next season with a bigger budget, bigger sets, and more extravagance in general. Eve Arden has taken an apartment in town near the studio where Our Miss Brooks is filmed. Gary Cooper is on the hunt for a TV project.

"The Jack Webbs are building a big, beautiful home in the Valley, despite rumors of discord." 

Anita Ekberg, then starring in Warner Brothers Presents: Casablanca, "held up production when her toy poodle came down with heat prostration. Finally, even the director was applying ice packs to the pup--and to himself."

The TV Teletype feature includes nuggets like this: Four Star Productions wants to make Grand Motel as a TV series and a movie, and it wants BOTNS fave George Gobel to star in the movie. Playhouse of Stars was just "renewed for its fourth straight year of 52 films, no repeats."

Joseph Cotten will be host of General Electric's upcoming hourlong 20th Century Fox Show. ABC is scheduling its licensed J. Arthur Rank films 30 minutes before Toast of the Town and Colgate Variety Hour to try to topple those two.

NBC is boosting its color shows by about 500% this season, showing Davis Cup matches this week and doing color broadcasts of college football and the World Series. Max Liebman is producing a big series of Saturday night spectaculars for the same network, opening with Heidi on October 1 and featuring musicals like Jerome Kern's The Cat and the Fiddle.

The opening editorial is an interesting slant; the magazine criticizes the increasing practice of giving Hollywood studios free publicity. It cites Ed Sullivan as pioneering the idea of giving a studio an hour of his show to promote an upcoming release.

Inside the Guide: 8/20/55 Part 9: August 20-26: More features

 TV Guide is not just a trove of listings. It's filled with features and reviews! Here  is a look at a few in the back of the August 20, 1955 edition.

Reviews include Caesar Presents and an early Johnny Carson show:

I like this piece about syndicated "film" programs. It name-checks a lot of interesting shows from syndicators like Ziv and more. There's a special shout-out for Guild Films' Liberace, which WPIX in New York (one of 200 stations that carries it) broadcasts twice a day, five days a week.

Inside the Guide: 8/20/55 Part 8: Friday, August 26, 1955

We close out our look at the listings of 70 years ago today with a post about Friday, August 26, 1955.

I like that a single sponsor took out an ad listing the various programs it was responsible for:

One of the interesting syndicated daily programs that runs this week is Tele-Comics, AKA NBC Comics.

 It's considered the first network animated program, with the word "animated" being used loosely! The 15-mintue series featured limited movement of various rotating segments. Here's an example:

You don't expect live sports on a random Friday afternoon, but Channel 7 has tennis, live and in color!

Here's a snapshot of early primetime, with a good array of programs:

Finally, here's a cool ad for Swing Shift Theater, a lineup of movies for people who are up late: