Top Ten #267

1) TV Guide: The magazine gives us fodder for yet another bonus episode this week. We hope you enjoy our attempt to craft a game of sorts out of a cool set of cards that Friend of the Show Dann provided. Just wait till we do TV Guide Charades on an audio-only podcast!

2) Chet Lemon: In case you missed it, yesterday I talked about author Joe Posnanski giving BOTNS vet (via The Baseball Bunch) a shout in his Substack. Here's a cool promo featuring the former White Sox/Tigers OF:

3) Peanuts Anthology: You have to admire Apple Plus' commitment to the world of Peanuts. This weekend it adds a slew of vintage animated specials, some of them ones I don't even remember.

4) National Punctuation Day: And let us celebrate by saluting one of the great commas in television history: The one after Murder and preceding She Wrote. Of course, some folks made it more of an ellipsis.

5) Merv Griffin Show: Check out Merv's guest list on this day 50 years ago: Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, and Buddy Hackett!

6) Vanna White: Congrats to the TV legend for signing a new deal to stay on Wheel of Fortune. Those letters don't turn themselves, you know. Wait, maybe they do. I haven't seen the show in a while.

7) Groundstar Conspiracy: On this night in 1973, this 1972 spy thriller with George Peppard premiered on NBC.

8) John J. O'Connor: The New York Times' TV critic/resident grump wrote an interesting article that appeared in print 50 years ago today. In it, he looked at a recent Saturday morning TV lineup and complained about the amount and nature of the commercials, itemizing what he saw during a stretch of NBC's Emergency +4.

He did note that CBS had its What's in the News segments, and he also gave props to this new develoment:
"And, also each hour, the American Broadcasting Company has clever animations combining music and lessons in multiplication and grammar. These crumbs of quality are tasty but, given the whole menu, hardly sufficient."

9) Fall: BOTNS listeners know that Emotional Summer ended several weeks ago, but the official end is this weekend.

10) R.I.P. Phil Hartman: He would have been 75 years old today.