Battle of the Network Shows

Thursday, January 8, 2026

Show Notes and Video Playlist: Episode 13-10: Amazing Spider-Man

*Thank you for listening to your favorite friendly neighborhood podcast! We hope you enjoy this week's look at a series that is officially unavailable for some reason but is very available unofficially!

*Amazing Spider-Man aired on CBS 1977-1979 in a variety of time slots for a total of 13 episodes.

*We talk about Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends here and Spider-Woman here.

*29 episodes (short segments) of Spidey Super Stories aired on PBS' Electric Company from 1974-1977. A children-focused Marvel comic series of the same name ran from 1974 to 1982 for 57 issues.

*The 1982 Incredible Hulk cartoon remains unavailable for official viewing.

*The Challenge of the Super Friends is the third season of Super Friends, premiering in 1978. In it, the Legion of Doom, a collection of villains, challenges the heroes.

*The second-season theme song is credited to Dana Kaproff.

*The episode with Joanna Cameron is the two-parter "The Deadly Dust."

*We talk about Darkroom in our eighth season.

*Vince Howard was active from 1963 to 1993. He was a regular on Emergency!

*I wondered about the sporadic scheduling of this series, and tomorrow I'll post some more info on how CBS handled it!

*Please enjoy our video playlist for this episode with promos, intros, commercials, and more! Click below to go right to it, or you can always visit our official YouTube page for all of our past episodes and similar lists for each one of them!

Episode 13-10: The Amazing Spider-Man

At a time when Superman made us believe a man could fly, the Hulk rampaged across American TVs, Wonder Woman dazzled audiences, and even Doctor Strange and Captain America starred in TV movies, one of comics' greatest heroes also swung his way onto the airwaves--Spider-Man! In a short-lived, often rescheduled TV series, Nicholas Hammond starred as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and while the translation lacks in many areas, it has a certain charm. The season one episode "Night of the Clones" comes closest to capturing elements from the comics from a grumpy J. Jonah Jameson to weird science and Spidey facing off with Spidey!

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Check out this episode!

Wednesday, January 7, 2026

Tomorrow on Battle of the Network Shows...

Live action Spider-Man punches live action Spider-Man

Sunday, January 4, 2026

Top Ten #387: Special 2026 Edition!

1) Home Box Office: This week on the podcast, we talked about the early days of the preeminent premium cable service of the era! It was so popular, many people actually paid for it!

2) Holiday season: And now, with some reluctance, I say farewell to the so-called holiday season. We hope everyone has a fantastic 2026! And though many of you are boxing up the decorations (I still have my tree up), remember it's never a bad time to watch A Family Circus Christmas:

3) Not Necessarily the News: If you kids think the political satire you see today is a recent thing, well, just remember, it wasn't invented in this century. It was invented by Steve Allen.

4) Dick Cavett: One of the things I miss most about HBO is that Dick Cavett is no longer "the face of the network," but it's cool that he still had high-profile documentaries with them as recently as 2020 (Ali and Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes).

5) Superman: The Motion Picture: This HBO staple aired on broadcast TV 40 years ago tonight on, of course...CBS? Hey, CBS showed it, too? I always remember watching it on ABC. This kind of shatters me, to be honest. Next you're gonna tell me The Wizard of Oz was on ABC one year.

6) The Neighbors: Boy, oh, boy, you gotta see this short-lived Regis Philbin game show in which a pair of neighbors compete to guess which of their other neighbors said the catty remarks about each other. It seems in good fun, but...really? They should have filmed the next day's mah jongg game so we could see the aftermath.

7) Collision Course: Truman vs. MacArthur: NBC premiered this event 50 years ago tonight. You decide! Was it:

A prestige TV movie from David Wolper dramatizing the conflict between the former president (E.G. Marshall) and the General of the Army (Henry Fonda).

A live event featuring actors portraying those two historical figures in a 10-round boxing match promoted by Bob Arum with commentary by Marv Albert, a young Sugar Ray Leonard, and Joe Garagiola.

8) Sony TV shows: If you like 1970s and 1980s Sony library shows, Roku has delivered. A lot of programs kind of rotate in and out on here, so if there's something you want to see, get to it! We're talking T.J. Hooker, What's Happenin'!!, The Rookies, and many more. One that I think may not have been there already: Silver Spoons.

9) Free Country: Gilmore Box posted an episode of this unsuccessful Rob Reiner sitcom. It's an interesting rarity (This recording was from the old HA! network).

10) R.I.P.: Melanie Watson, John Mulrooney:

Saturday, January 3, 2026

YouTube Spotlight: "The Terry Fox Story" was on a lot!

On this week's HBO podcast, I note that while The Terry Fox Story was the first original HBO movie to air on the channel, Right of Way was produced first. That movie stars Jimmy Stewart and Bette Davis, and I don't know if many people remember it today. The full film is available online, but here is part 1 if you want a taste:

I had no memory of this before working on the podcast, but I did remember The Terry Fox Story. I didn't remember the movie itself so much as it being on or at least promoted all the time. This promo from our YT playlist for the episode is from 1985, a full two years after the premiere, and HBO is still running (no pun intended) the thing:

Was it really on ALL the time? No. Was it on a lot? Well, let's take a look! The YT channel and website HBO Database posted a countdown of the 50 most-aired movies on HBO in the Eighties, Here is the full video:

I love that this uses data and gives the number of screenings and the screening dates!

Spoiler alert if you haven't watched the clip yet:

The Terry Fox Story is "only" third, with 54 screenings from 1983-1987, but it ties with #2, so I am counting it as second!

The other number two, The Cannonball Run, surprises me; and number one surprise me--number two because I associate it with network TV, and number one because it's a concert movie (Hint: It stars The Cos).

Right of Way was on 44 times! I guess I just never took notice of it.

There are some other ones that make total sense. The Man from Snowy River was another HBO original, so of course they are gonna play the heck out of it. I associate Superman: The Motion Picture with ABC, but as a Warner Brothers movie, it makes sense it got heavy airplay here.

The Four Seasons? Yep, that was on all the time. I'm actually stunned that The Incredible Shrinking Woman was on only 40-some times. 9 to 5 and Finnegan Begin Again--Yes, absolutely.

Then there are the ones that surprise a bit more, mostly forgotten theatricals from the early part of the decade: Dirty Tricks? Threshold? St. Helens?

Thursday, January 1, 2026

Show Notes and Video Playlist: Episode 13-9: HBO

*We hope you enjoy our look at the earlier days of Home Box Office! And by the way, I miss when it was referred to as Home Box Office! Happy 2026 as well!

*Books we reference in this episode: Tinderbox by James Andrew Miller and It's Not TV by Felix Gillette and John Kobin.

*HBO went live in 1972 (November 8; New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks, NHL game) and is still going...for now. Showtime launched July 1, 1976.

*The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton/Hazelton TV market, where HBO launched, was ranked as the 59th biggest in the most recent Nielsen list.

*Foreman-Frazier I is indeed the "Down goes Frazier!" fight. Howard Cosell made that call when George knocked out Joe in the second round.

*Here is the Mental Floss article on HBO. Item 10 mentions Ghostbusters.

*Not Necessarily the News aired 1982-1990, debuting as a special before becoming a regular series.

*Vintage HBO program guides are available on ebay, but they seem quite expensive--at least, the asking prices are high!

*"Heart Attack" by Olivia Newton-John peaked at #3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

*Rollover (1981) is an Alan Pakula thriller that opened at number one but was considered a commercial and critical flop.

*Four Friends (1981) is directed by Arthur Penn and earned good reviews but didn't do well at the box office.

*Some Call Them...Freaks (1981) is remembered by many who saw it, but there isn't a lot of information about it. It's director Greg Stanton's sole IMDB credit and writer Frederick Drimmer's sole IMDB credit.

I did find this listing on the great HBO database site: HBO ran a sequel in 1982, P.T. Barnum & His Human Oddities, narrated again by Richard Kiley. Did the same team produce it? I don't know. It doesn't appear on IMDB. Here is the description from the original HBO program guide:

Special. In this sequel to “Some Call Them Freaks,” Richard Kiley hosts an account of the career of showman PT Barnum—and the wide assortment of human oddities he collected. Meet Anna Swan, the 7’5½” tall woman; the minuscule: 25” Tom Thumb; Madame Clofullia, the bearded lady, and Albert Sprague, the thinnest man.

*Click here for the 20th anniversary special that premiered on CBS.

*Please enjoy our video playlist for this episode with promos, clips, and I think just about everything we cover on the podcast! Click below to go right to it, or you can always visit our official YouTube page for all of our past episodes and similar lists for each one of them!

Episode 13-9: HBO

This week, we take a special look at the early days of Home Box Office, better known as HBO. Long before The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and all those other shows, Home Box Office started as a gamble during the fledgling days of the cable TV industry with a smattering of movies, hockey, basketball, comedy specials, concerts, and polka competitions. As it expanded, the movies got better, boxing and Wimbledon became their go-to sports, the comedians and concerts grew bigger, and polka danced away. We follow the timeline to around 1985 and give special attention to HBO originals like Not Necessarily the News, HBO Magazine, and Yesteryear, as well as the documentary Some Call Them...Freaks.