Top Ten #306: Special "Shout out to the dads!" Edition

1) Father's Day: As Ralph Kiner might say, "To all the fathers out there, happy birthday!"

2) School's out for summer: Congratulations to all the new graduates, and really, congrats to everyone who made it through another year. And if you think this is an excuse to post a clip from High School U.S.A. again, well, you were paying attention in school!

3) The Baseball Bunch: As I posted a while back,I posted a while back, I enjoyed seeing a few "new to me" uploads of the show on The Johnny Bench Archives YT channelThe Bench Archives YT channel. The Baseball Bunch helped countless viewers learn about things like baserunning, bunts, and base hitting. It's not to be confused, of course, with The Bouton Bunch, which taught about boozing, broads, and beaver shooting. 

4) The Tony Awards: The latest installment of the annual salute to the best of theater airs tonight. We have it on good authority that it's the only awards show Tony Danza remembers to watch each year.

5) Hostess Wacky TV Shows: The Retroist substack published a cool article published a cool article about the trading cards from 1978 that featured the likes of Brawl in the Family and Starchy and Hush.

6) Not in Front of the Kids: 40 years ago tonight, NBC aired this pilot with Don Ameche and Katherine Helmond as grandparents who must take custody of the kids. Of course this was just before The Golden Girls made it OK to watch old people in prime-time TV again.

7) Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Pluto TV has launched a 24/7 channel for the series and also made scores of episodes available on demand. It's good the show is on streaming so that everyone can see it with the original adult language, extreme violence, and mature themes intact.

 8) The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley: In about a week and a half, Me-TV Toons launches with a host of familiar cartoons--not that it's a bad thing. One of the lesser-shown programs that makes the initial schedule is this 1988 series. Really, even if the show is not that familiar, the character is; don't we all have an Ed Grimley somewhere in our extended family?

9) Boot Camp Match: 40 years ago tonight, in an event aired live on MSG Network, Sgt. Slaughter fought The Iron Sheik in a Boot Camp Match that would go down as one of the best of the decade.

10) R.I.P. Tony Lo Bianco: Somehow, he never won a Tony (but he was nominated).

This Day in TV History: The King of Comedy becomes the King of Late Night?

Well, that's what the ad campaign said when Metromedia stations gave The Jerry Lewis Show a weeklong test run in the timeslot occupied by Thick of the Night. 40 years ago tonight, Lewis kicked off the week with guests Frank Sinatra and Suzanne Somers in the debut of his new talk show.

By all accounts, Lewis did not supplant Johnny Carson to become the King of Late Night. In fact, he didn't even supplant Alan Thicke. You can judge for yourself how the show went by watching the above clip.

Collectible Corner: Hightower in animated form in toy form!

 I picked up this little number for a few bucks last week even though I don't remember ever watching Police Academy: The Animated Series.

If I have an opportunity to add Bubba Smith (AKA Hightower) to my toy collection, I am seizing it.

I do know that this series from which the toy comes should not be confused with the Police Academy movie series nor with Police Academy: The Series, a live-action Nineties syndicated sitcom.

If you are interested in checking out the show, it will be part of the weekday lineup when MeTV Toons launches June 25, airing each morning at 6:30 Eastern.

Top Ten #305: Special June 9 Edition

1) Paramount: It was another week of chaos at the fabled studio as it prepared for (we think) the finalization of the long-in-development sell-off. I really do not want to make light of a perilous situation for the many employees whose careers hang in the balance.

But I do hope that somehow this all ends to me being able to see Blansky's Beauties.

2) Donald Duck: Happy 90th birthday to one of my personal heroes, a man I always rooted for against his nephews, chipmunks, his own inner demons, etc.

3) Pat Sajak: The guy stepped down as host of Wheel of Fortune after umpteen years, freeing up another slot for Ryan Seacrest. You might expect us to make a comment involving missing letters or The Pat Sajak Show, but let's just give the guy credit for a 40+-year run on an iconic game show.

4) National Earl Day: You are encouraged to celebrate both Big Earl and Little Earl today!

5) Michael J. Fox: Happy birthday to another Eighties icon, Is it just me or are we finding a way to get High School U.S.A. in this space each week?

6) National Spelling Bee Finals: 50 years ago tonight, many PBS stations aired a first-ever broadcast (on tape delay) of the event. Jean Shepherd hosted and winced as the winner spelled "O...v...a...l...t...i..."

7) The French Open: It was just announced that NBC lost the rights to the historic tennis tourney to Warner Discovery next year after a 40+-year run (almost as impressive as Pat Sajak!). 40 years ago today, the final saw Martina Navratilova crush Chris Evert. Martina crushed a lot of players that year.

(The next day, Ivan Lendl came from behind to spoil the best chance John McEnroe, who came into the match on an epic winning streak, had to win the French.)

8) Dick Van Dyke: Congratulations to the 98-year-old legend, who became the oldest ever to win a Daytime Emmy this week. In a gracious speech, he said his biggest accomplishment was hanging around to see Pat Sajak's entire run.

9) Martin Lawrence: Congratulations to the star of What's Happening Now!! for finally resurfacing with a successful movie opening this week.

10) R.I.P. Janis Paige, Tom Bower:

This Day in TV History: June 6, 1984: A great NBA game doesn't do so well

We hear each day about the value of live sports on broadcast TV and how sporting events are one of the only reliable audience draws left for the networks. The NBA is poised to announce a huge media rights deal which is based in large part on getting increased exposure on over-the-air TV.

Yet 40 years ago, June 6, 1984, an attractive NBA Finals match-up pitted the Lakers against the Celtics, Magic against Bird, Kareem against Parish, etc. in Game 4. The game started at 9PM EST and went into overtime, with Boston winning at The Forum to head back home with the series tied rather than being down 3-1. it featured memorable moments like some notable blunders by Magic Johnson and a hard foul by Kevin McHale that floored Kurt Rambis and nearly led to a riot.

Sounds like a ratings winner, with superstars and high-profile teams in a dramatic and hard-fought battle. According to TV Tango, which sometimes posts ratings numbers with its historical listings, the game finished third for the timeslot!

The winner was the execrable 1978 movie Moment by Moment, an ill-advised pairing of John Travolta and Lily Tomlin that somehow was the highest-rated program this Wednesday night. ABC showed it at 9:00 after a Fall Guy repeat.

NBC also beat the NBA game with a Facts of Life rerun and a new Duck Factory before ratings dipped a bit for a St. Elsewhere rerun. A D-Day anniversary special began the night.

In this pre-cable (mostly) and pre-streaming world, the country was more captivated by a Facts of Life rerun than the start of an NBA Finals game between Los Angeles and Boston.

CBS had an acclaimed nature documentary, Lions of Etosha, leading into the game. Today, of course, you would have a pregame special or at least something a little more compatible. In 1984, CBS didn't bother building its whole night around the NBA game, and while 40 years later we can see that it was a key series for the popularity of the league and this was the key game, it wasn't a blockbuster.

What we watched: The Baseball Bunch...WITH MUSIC!

When Mike and I talked about The Baseball Bunch a few seasons back, we found some great episodes but had trouble finding the original theme song. Well, I recently discovered a great YouTube account called the Johnny Bench Archives, and whaddya know, it posted a great episode complete with theme song and original music. 

Not only do you get the full theme song, but you get a great montage of baseballers arguing with umpires to the tune of Dave Mason's "We Just Disagree." Guest Ron Luciano, an animated ump who wrote several popular books like The Umpire Strikes Back, is a tremendous addition to the show. He provides a perspective not often seen on the program, and more importantly, he gets to throw out the Chicken.

Looks like this account posted at least one other full episode a while back, so I am going to check that out, too. For now I am happy just to be able to play that theme song...again and again. 

And, oh, by the way, there is also this:

Top Ten #304: Special Summer Is Here Edition

1)  Summer: Apologies to those who don't like crippling heat and humidity, but this happens to be my favorite time of the year. Remember when they used to have Summer replacement series on broadcast TV? This one started out as such:

2) Welcome to the Fun Zone: 40 years ago tonight, NBC used its SNL timeslot to air this variety special/pilot featuring comedy from the likes of Weird Al and John Candy and music from Carlos Santana and the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

3) Atari buys Intellivision: I somehow missed this news story last week, maybe because it is 2024, but I can't help but feel something when I see those two names together. Maybe they can get Reggie Jackson to do some new ads.

Hey, you know, I could have sworn Reggie did ads for Intellivision, but his own baseball video game was actually for Sega:

4) Jerry Mathers: Happy birthday to the star of High School U.S.A.!

5) Barnaby Jones: 50 years ago, CBS ran "The Black Art of Dying," a Barnaby featuring Genius guest Robert Pine!

6) National Rotisserie Chicken Day: I don't remember the word "rotisserie" being much of a thing except in fantasy baseball until Kenny Rogers Roasters came along in the Nineties.

7) ATX TV Festival: The event going on in Austin this weekend features events like a Suits retrospective. I think we ought to start a BOTNS Festival and do an Associates retrospective.

8) The Fenn Street Gang: This 1973 follow-up to Britcom Please, Sir has made its way to various streamers, including Tubi and Prime. I gotta admit, I had no idea Please, Sir was on Prime until after I discovered this spinoff was!

9) Milo O'Shea: Let;s give a shout to the late actor on what would have been his 98th birthday. He played the eyebrow-raising (and eyebrow-sporting) grandpa on the episode of Jennifer Slept Here that we admired so much on the pod last season.

10) R.I.P. Al Ruddy, Elizabeth McRae, Darryl Hickman