BOTNS Top Ten #48

It's that transition week between Christmas and New Year's Day, and I am still in a holiday mood, so this list will reflect that.  Happy 2020, everyone!

1) Paul Williams: I was listening to an Audible Original about Christmas music, and Williams was being all humble about having failed to write a hit holiday-themed song. Hey, Paul, hold your head up! You wrote the music for Emmett Otter!




2) Eddie Murphy: The icon's return to SNL was a critical and popular success and actually made me want to see the show for once.

3) Jack Palance: I was at the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum and saw all kinds of astonishing and remarkable things, but you know what I didn't see? Any trace of the one true TV Ripley host (other than Robert Ripley himself, of course).




4) Mary Tyler Moore: Happy birthday to the late TV legend!




5) Ted Danson: It's pretty cool that two TV performers on the level of Danson and MTM share the same birthday.




6) Quincy Magoo: No, Magoo, I didn't get to your definitive take on Scrooge this year, but I vow that I will next year!




7) Benson: I don't remember having seen the Benson Christmas episode, but I want to! From author Joanna Wilson:

But Benson wows the audience with an elegant yet powerful rendition of “O Holy Night.”  This reverent moment comes to us not from Benson, the sarcastic, dry-witted member of the Governor’s staff, but from Robert Guillaume himself, the Tony-nominated Broadway singer and actor who has amazing skills beyond his many TV sitcom roles.  This musical moment is followed by the cast of Benson breaking the fourth wall as each delivers his and her own individual holiday greeting to viewers."

8) What's Happening!!: I just want to post these pics again:






9) Father Dowling Mysteries: Decades ran a marathon of this show last weekend, and for an alarmingly long moment, I was envious of people who had Decades.

10) Fruitful Bran cereal: For you young'uns who thought super-high-fiber breakfast started with Colon Blow:

Next Week on Battle of the Network Shows...

Merry Christmas from BOTNS and the crew of the Pacific Princess!

Merry Christmas from BOTNS and the California Highway Patrol!

Merry Christmas from BOTNS and the gang!

BOTNS Top Ten #47

Happy Sunday before Christmas, friends! Happy holidays! Happy Even, even!

This week I am in the mood to celebrate the best in holiday television...or at least holiday television.

1) A Charlie Brown Christmas: The definitive Christmas cartoon deserves the top spot this week and probably every week as well.





2) Yogi Bear's All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper: Have you enjoyed our holiday special installment of the podcast yet? If not, better get cracking.  I hope you're not also behind on your Even shopping.

3) Good Times: The Norman Lear sitcom got the In Front of a Live Studio Audience treatment on ABC. Or is it Live in Front of a Studio Audience? or Audience Lives...oh, Merry Christmas, everyone. It SHOULD be Live BEFORE a Studio Audience, anyway.

4) A Family Circus Christmas: The timeless holiday classic covered on the show here performed a Christmas miracle this year: Its Sarah Vaughan song Dreamer dislodged Ed McMahon's performance of Thanksgiving Day from my head for the first time in 4 weeks.




5) Bing Crosby: Get-TV will have a marathon of Der Bingle's holiday specials on Christmas Eve, and it should remind everyone that Bing was more than just this (though it is by far the best rendition of that song ever recorded):




6) Bob Hope: I have been watching the Christmas specials of Bob "Left my wallet in the Ban Gioc waterfall" Hope on Prime Video, but mainly I just like the idea of putting him behind Crosby yet again.




7) Frosty the Snowman: Yes, it premiered outside our time frame, but we all watched it every year...and I still do!




8) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The only reason this one isn't higher is because I haven't seen it yet, and the only reason I haven't seen it yet is because I am saving it because it's one of the all-time best!





9) The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold: We also covered this on the podcast, and if we encouraged just one listener to put it in the annual rotation, we did our jobs!


10) All in the Family: It shared an hour with Good Times, but it loses points for being, well, a rerun considering we saw the same cast last year. Besides, how many Christmas episodes did All in the Family do, huh?

Oh, wait, they did at least 7, and then did more on Archie Bunker's Place. Never mind!

Show Notes: Season 7 Holiday Special: Yogi Bear's All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper

*Yogi Bear's All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper premiered December 21, 1982 on CBS, following a re-air of perennial fave Frosty the Snowman and preceding the Mickster starring in Bill, a rebroadcast of the 1981 TV-ovie also starring Dennis Quaid. Bill: On His Own was on CBS in 1983.

ABC went with a rerun of John Denver and the Muppets, the comedy pair of Three's Company and 9 to 5, and a Christmas episode of Hart to Hart. NBC countered with Father Murphy, an episode of short-lived Gavilan, and St. Elsewhere.

*The article we mention from Mark Evanier's fantastic blog is right here. He writes to commemorate the 2010 DVD release of the special.

*Before this special, Hanna Barbera produced a film, Yogi's First Christmas, that aired in first run syndication in 1980. And before that, NBC aired Casper's First Christmas in 1979, a special that also co-starred Yogi and his pals.

*Yogi's Jellystone Park is not a real place, but there is a chain of Jellystone Park campground resorts reaching throughout the USA!

*In Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!, Yogi is sent to San Diego and Cindy Bear to St. Louis, and we hear the song St. Louis performed on the train.

*Macy's (not Gacy's) was founded in 1858. Rival Gimbels was formed in 1887 and clsoed in 1987, but IT was the department store featured in the classic Miracle on 34th Street.

*Super Snooper (a cat) and Blabber (a mouse) premiered on Quick Draw McGraw's show in 1959. Snooper was voiced by Daws Butler, like half of the other characters in this special!

*Yakky Doodle appeared in several H-B cartoons but first got his own segment on The Yogi Bear Show.

*Breezly and Sneezly appeared on Peter Potamus and Magilla Gorilla. The polar bear/seal combo frequently ran afoul of John Stephenson's Colonel Fuzzby.

*Top Cat is arguably the biggest character missing from this series if you don't count the Jetsons, who are years in the future.  I mean, a cameo from the distant future would be way more ridiculous than a cameo from the distant past (Flintstones), right?

*A very Merry Even to all of our listeners! Now...exit stage left!