Mitchell Hadley's Blog: It's About TV!, page 14

The It's About TV Interview: Alan Hayes, co-author of Escapades—An Exploration of Avengers Curiosities

It's been awhile since we've done an interview here, and I can't think of anyone better to rectify than my friend Alan Hayes. I first met Alan through his late, lamented website The Avengers Declassified, but now I'm happy to bring him back as the co-author of the new book Escapades—An Exploration of Avengers Curiosities, which, true to its title, delves into various offshoots of the series, including stage, radio and comic book adaptations. It's so new, in fact, it was just published this past Monday.
For some reason which I still can't quite fathom, Alan agreed to be the latest victim—that is, subject—of the "It's About TV Interview." I think—no, I know—you'll enjoy our conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
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It's About TV: What was your introduction to The Avengers?

 

Alan Hayes: Somehow, despite being born in the 1960s, I didn't learnabout The Avengers until the color Emma Peel episodes screened on the UKTV station Channel 4 in the early 1980s. Perhaps bizarrely though, I hadwatched The New Avengers—its sequel—on first transmission in 1976and 1977 and absolutely adored it. I wanted to be Mike Gambit but I was a bitof a nerd and about as convincing a Gambit as Woody Allen would have been! Myunquestioning nature didn't lead me to think "Why is this called TheNEW Avengers?"—it never occurred to me that there was a previousincarnation of the show. The penny dropped with those Channel 4 showings.

 

I quickly came to enjoy those earlier adventures too and itgrew into a favourite series, particularly when I met and eventually married ayoung woman who was just as enthusiastic about The Avengers and othershows I loved as I was. We both found it an incredibly enjoyable, witty andinteresting show, and along with Doctor Who, The Prisoner, The Persuaders!,Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Dark Shadows, it became an integralpart of our lives.

 

At some point, though, your appreciation of the showwent beyond that of simply being a fan, right? How did that happen?

 

It started when I went on to produce a series of websitesabout The Avengers, normally about leftfield aspects of the show—thelost first season, the South African radio series (much of which my wife and Irecovered and restored, though much of it remains lost), the doomed 1971 Birmingham/Londonstage show... the list goes on. These were all ultimately brought together intoone, monster-big website, The Avengers Declassified, which you canprobably find now via Wayback Machine! So, the Avengers websites are allgone, but I thought, "What can I do with all that great content?" Theanswer was go back to it, undertake further research, improve, expand it, andtake it to the next level—and to a publisher!

 

Although I’d set up The Avengers Declassified as anall-encompassing Avengers resource, it didn't really develop along those linesas I found writing about things that others had either ignored or barelytouched upon far more rewarding. That's why Richard McGinlay and I investigatedthe lost first season and ended up writing a book about it rather than goingin-depth about, for instance, the color Emma Peel shows which were covered sowell elsewhere. I'd already produced a website about the radio series, and Declassifiedfollowed its lead, checking out things that Avengers fans probably hadn't eventhought of looking for. In a way, that's what Escapades is about—proving that while the series is more than sixty years old now, there are stillplenty of fun things to explore, about it and the pop culture it influenced.

 

Escapades isn’t your first book about The Avengers,though. Tell us a little about your other books.

 

Yes, happy to. Avengerworld: The Avengers in Our Liveswas a fan anthology which I edited, comprising essays written by forty Avengersfans in which they revealed how the series had touched their lives and led themto do amazing and interesting things. The book was published in aid of acharity supporting a primary school in Southern Tanzania and proceeds paid fora water harvesting system to be installed there. Just thinking of that makes mesmile. I later co-edited a similar book about ITC spy series—Playboys,Spies and Private Eyes: Inspired by ITC—and this is available from QuoitMedia, with proceeds going to Born Free.

 

I've also co-written two books with Richard McGinlay, oneabout the first season of The Avengers, Two Against the Underworld—TheCollected Unauthorised Guide to The Avengers Series 1, and the other aboutthe series that inspired The Avengers, Police Surgeon. Entitled DrBrent's Casebook—An Unauthorised Guide to Police Surgeon, this exploresin depth the short-lived series that today is almost entirely lost. These andother books are available via www.hiddentiger.culttv.uk

 

But Escapades is a little different from thesebooks, and from other books and websites about The Avengers.  

 

I have to be honest and say that there are many Avengersbooks and websites out there and I'd happily recommend a great many of them butthe last thing I've ever wanted to do is just present my twist on the episodeguide or the location tour; I've always been keen to explore the less wellwalked paths—and in JZ Ferguson I found a great co-author who was interestedin doing the same.

 

JZ and I have looked at aspects of the series that simplyhaven't been covered elsewhere—at least beyond Declassified, where some ofthe chapters began their lives, but even those have been expanded and improved.There are chapters about the Brian Clemens Avengers revivals, plusothers that look at the Diana Rigg 8mm films made in Germany and Spain in thelate 1960s, the South African radio series, the Avengers stage play,unmade television scripts for the Emma Peel colour season and The NewAvengers, and even a Mexican 'luchadoras' wrestling movie featuring barelydisguised Cybernauts! The chapters and others go in depth about one particular'curiosity' and uncover much about these often unusual parts of The Avengersstory.

 

You mentioned your co-author, JZ. As a writer myself,I’m always interested in how collaborations work; how did yours develop?

 

JZ’d written a couple of pieces for The AvengersDeclassified that focused on Brian Clemens' attempts to revive the seriesin the 1980s and initially I asked if she'd mind if I used them in the book Iwas beginning to put together. JZ was happy for them to be included on theproviso that I would allow her to revisit the text and rewrite where she feltnecessary, which of course I was pleased to agree to.

 

As we discussed the book and its possibilities, I quickly realisedI'd found the perfect co-author for the project (which I'm pleased to say wasexactly the case in practice). The collaboration was such that, with JZ'sinput, the book developed considerably from what was effectively "the bestof a dead website" into something with much more of an identity of itsown.

 

In terms of how the work was divided up, we each tackledsubjects that particularly interested us, wrote those chapters individually,and then each fed back on the other's work, taking on board the comments andideas of the other. Hopefully JZ thinks the same, but I have no qualms insaying that my own chapters were greatly improved thanks to her valued input.

 

Were there things you discovered that surprised you,as a fan of the show?

 

It's actually been a fascinating process. Several of thesubjects chosen have long intrigued me as a fan of the series and have alwaysbeen more than a bit mysterious. What inspired Diana Rigg to make those 8mmmovies? Why was the stage play considered a flop? What could The Avengers havebeen like if it had been revived on TV or the silver screen in the decade afterThe New Avengers? It's been thrilling to have been able to explore many suchquestions in great depth, particularly regarding productions that other booksand websites have touched upon but only in passing, as—quite rightly—theywere not their main focus.

 

Was there any type of information out there thatserved as a kind of Holy Grail for you, that you thought you might not everdiscover?

 Getting an interview with the director of the Minikillers8mm film would qualify in that respect, though when I spoke to Wolfgang vonChmielewski in 2009, it didn't occur to me just how lucky I was. I think mydiscussions with him represent the only interview he gave on the subject, andsadly he passed away in 2021. Likewise, two other important contributors havealso passed since I spoke to them for the research that led into the book—Donald Monat (the radio Steed) and Simon Oates (Steed in the stage play). It'sgood to include their voices in this book, and Escapades is dedicated tothe memory of these three fabulous gentlemen.

 What do you think readers will discover in the bookthat they weren't aware of, or that might surprise them? That "Wow, Ididn't know that!" moment?

 

JZ and I hope the answer to that is "Lots and lotsof things"—but I think all the chapters abound with new and interestingmaterial. We've certainly learned plenty about The Avengers in writingEscapades and hopefully even the most ardent fans of the series will come awayfrom reading the book with a deeper understanding of the productions wediscuss.

 

Is there anything out there that you're continuing tolook for, that would really cap off your research?

 

I'd be delighted if further episodes of the Avengersradio series were recovered, but since I was involved in the recovery andrestoration of the surviving 19-and-a-bit serials many years ago, nothingfurther has come to light. But there's always hope...

 Looking at The Avengers as a whole, where doyou think it fits into the television pantheon, especially in England?

 I don't think the impact of The Avengers can beunderstated. It was on the scene before the James Bond films truly launched thespy boom in the early 1960s. It blazed the trail for the representation ofwomen as strong characters in television, showed that they could be the equalof or better than their male equivalents in TV drama. It was one of the fewBritish TV series that broke into the America networks and became a globalphenomenon.

 

I suppose you've been asked this many times, but doyou have a favorite episode? A favorite companion for Steed?

 I do get asked that a lot and I'm always very boring andsay that I don't really. There are many episodes that I adore, but if Inominated a favourite it'd be a different one next week and again the weekafter! I'm particularly fond of the very early episodes from the videotapedera, particularly the Ian Hendry episodes I know I will likely never see asthey are lost, the monochrome Emma Peel season (favourites among that one wouldbe 'A Surfeit of H2O', 'Too Many Christmas Trees' and 'The Hour That NeverWas') and The New Avengers (from that 'Target!', 'Cat Amongst thePigeons' and 'Sleeper'). And I adore the radio series beyond my capability forwords—which is an awful admission from a writer!

 

As for a favourite partner for Steed, I'd take two: Purdeyand Gambit, both of whom are peerless to my mind, and with Steed make a greatteam.

 

Alan HayesSupposing that you could reboot The Avengerstoday, a la Doctor Who, would it work? How would the series change? Andwho would you have playing the leads?

 

I'm not sure The Avengers really could be broughtback without seeming to be a copy of so many other things that in many ways itoriginally inspired. I think the 1998 movie signalled that you couldn't put iton the big screen without it trying to emulate James Bond—which is somethingit never was—and Doctor Who seems unable to escape the idea that ithas to compete with big screen blockbusters albeit on a paltry budget to thepoint where it compromises what made the series successful in the first place.I'd be sad to see The Avengers twisted to the point that it wasn'treally The Avengers any more. I'd prefer the Emma Peels, Tara Kings and TheNew Avengers to be restored in 4K, released, rebroadcast and find a newgeneration of fans that way. But I'm probably hugely naive!

 

What’s next for Alan Hayes?

 

My focus these last couple of years has been heavily onthe Escapades book, so I'm taking the opportunity for a breather—justpottering around on my Randall and Hopkirk (Declassified)website, which covers a British series that US TV fans might remember better asMy Partner the Ghost. Since we completed Escapades, JZ has beenwriting for a book about children's television with Rodney Marshall (son of TheAvengers writer Roger Marshall), and I'm waiting until inspiration for mynext writing project presents itself. If Escapades ends up being thelast book I write—which is quite possible—then it's one that I'm very proudof and which was a thoroughly enjoyable collaboration with a fabulous writerand friend. I think together we've shown that it's possible to write somethingfresh and new about a television series that debuted in 1961 and has been muchstudied. I'll take that!

 

Escapades—An Exploration of Avengers Curiosities waspublished in the United Kingdom in paperback on Monday March 10 2025. USpurchasers are advised to purchase via ebay soon after the publication date asthis will ease the journey through Customs. Otherwise, purchases and enquiriescan be made at quoitmedia.co.uk. TV  

What's on TV? Saturday, March 8, 1969

We've got a light schedule today, given that the educational stations in the Bay Area don't program on Saturday (which explains why some familiar stations might be missing), but that doesn't mean there isn't something worth watching. Remember Roller Derby? It's no surprise to see it on in this Northern California edition, given that the San Francisco Bay Bombers are one of the signature teams in Roller Derby. But almost every market we look at in the late 1960s has a station carrying it, usually on Saturday afternoons. I was so taken with it that I sent in a postcard to get on their mailing list, and I almost never did that kind of thing when I was a kid. And then, for numerous reasons, it disappeared. It exists today in a different format, and with not nearly the following it once had, but if you want to relive those days, there's a nifty documentary set available on DVD. Or you can just check it out on YouTube . Ah, those were the days.
  -2- KTVU (BAY AREA) (IND.)

  Morning       8:25

NEWS   COLOR        8:30

EXISTENCE—Agriculture   COLOR        9:00

MOVIE—Western   COLOR  “Fort Massacre” (1958)

    10:30

MOVIE—Western

“Dual in Durango” (1957)

  Afternoon

    12:00

ROLLER DERBY   COLOR        1:00

MOVIE—Adventure   COLOR  “The Tartar Invasion” (Italian-French; 1960)

      2:30

COLLEGE BASKETBALL   COLOR  Oregon State vs. Oregon

Time approximate

      4:30

CHAMPIONSHIP BOWLING   COLOR  Don Carter and Dave Soutar vs. Harry Johnson and Bill Lillard

      5:00

ALL-STAR WRESTLING

  Evening       6:00

DEATH VALLEY DAYS—Drama   COLOR        6:30

GRAND OLE OPRY—Music

Guests: Bob Luman, Bill Anderson, Margie Bowes, Stringbean, the Rhodes Sisters

      7:00

MOVIE—Comedy   COLOR  “What a Way to Go!” (1964)

      9:00

WAGON TRAIN—Western   COLOR      10:30

JACK CARNEY—Variety   COLOR  Guest: Maura McGiveney

    12:00

BURKE’S LAW—Mystery

 

 

  -3- KCRA (SACRAMENTO) (NBC)

  Morning       7:00

ACROSS THE FENCE   COLOR        7:30

SUPER HEROES   COLOR        8:00

SUPER 6—Children   COLOR        8:30

TOP CAT   COLOR        9:00

MOVIE—Cartoon   COLOR  “Magoo: Man of Mystery” (1967)

    10:30

UNDERDOG   COLOR      11:00

NCAA BASKETBALL—Doubleheader   SPECIAL    COLOR  NCAA Tournament First Round

Regular programming is pre-empted

  Afternoon       3:00

FLINTSTONES   COLOR        3:30

BANANA SPLITS—Children   COLOR        4:30

MOVIE—Science Fiction   COLOR  “Mars Needs Women” (1964)

  Evening       6:30

NEWS—Vic Biondi   COLOR        7:30

ADAM-12—Crime Drama   COLOR        8:00

GET SMART—Comedy   COLOR        8:30

GHOST AND MRS. MUIR   COLOR        9:00

MOVIE—Drama   COLOR  “The Birds” (1963)

    11:30

NEWS   COLOR      12:00

MOVIE—Thriller   COLOR  “Year 2889” (1968)

      1:30

SECRET AGENT—Drama

 

 

  -4- KRON (BAY AREA) (NBC)

  Morning       6:25

NEWS   COLOR        6:30

ACROSS THE FENCE   COLOR        7:00

MICHIGAN—Education   COLOR        7:30

CARTOONS—Children   COLOR        8:00

SUPER 6—Children   COLOR        8:30

TOP CAT   COLOR        9:00

FLINTSTONES   COLOR        9:30

BANANA SPLITS   COLOR      10:30

UNDERDOG   COLOR      11:00

NCAA BASKETBALL—Doubleheader   SPECIAL    COLOR  NCAA Tournament First Round

Regular programming is pre-empted

  Afternoon       3:00

FASHION SHOW   COLOR        4:00

JEAN-CLAUDE KILLY   COLOR        4:30

SKIPPY—Adventure   COLOR        5:00

LOST IN SPACE—Adventure

  Evening       6:00

NEWS—Wilson   COLOR        6:30

NEWS—Chet Huntley, David Brinkley   COLOR        7:00

WIDE WONDERFUL WORLD—Travel   COLOR        7:30

ADAM-12—Crime Drama   COLOR        8:00

GET SMART—Comedy   COLOR        8:30

GHOST AND MRS. MUIR   COLOR        9:00

MOVIE—Drama   COLOR  “The Birds” (1963)

    11:30

NEWS   COLOR      12:00

SUSPENSE THEATRE—Drama   COLOR        1:00

HONEY WEST—Mystery

      1:30

NEWS—Dave Valentine   COLOR 

 

 

  -5- KPIX (BAY AREA) (CBS)

  Morning       6:00

AGRICULTURAL FILM   COLOR        6:30

SUNRISE SEMESTER   COLOR  French Literature: Cocteau’s “The Infernal Machine”

      7:00

MOBY DICK—Children   COLOR        7:30

LONE RANGER—Children   COLOR        8:00

GO-GO GOPHERS—Children   COLOR        8:30

BUGS BUNNY/ROAD RUNNER—Children   COLOR        9:30

WACKY RACES   COLOR      10:00

ARCHIE—Children   COLOR      10:30

BATMAN/SUPERMAN—Children   COLOR      11:30

HERCULOIDS   COLOR    Afternoon     12:00

SHAZZAN!   COLOR      12:30

JONNY QUEST   COLOR        1:00

READ YOUR WAY UP   COLOR        1:30

HAVE GUN—WILL TRAVEL

      2:00

CBS GOLF CLASSIC   COLOR  Julius Boros and Don January vs. Kermit arley and Tommy Aaron

      3:00

SKI BREED   COLOR        3:30

PERRY MASON—Mystery

      4:30

MERV GRIFFIN—Variety   COLOR  Guests: Raquel Welch, Joey Villa, Milton Luchon

  Evening       6:00

NEWS   COLOR        6:30

NEWS—Roger Mudd   COLOR        7:00

SAN FRANCISCO BEAT—Drama

      7:30

JACKIE GLEASON   COLOR  Guests: Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Jackie Vernon, Nipsey Russell

      8:30

MY THREE SONS—Comedy   COLOR        9:00

HOGAN’S HEROES   COLOR        9:30

PETTICOAT JUNCTION   COLOR      10:00

MANNIX—Crime Drama   COLOR      11:00

NEWS   COLOR      11:30

MOVIE—Drama   COLOR  “Captain Newman, M.D.” (1964)

      1:45

MOVIE—Drama

“Pickup on South Street” (1953)

 

 

  -7- KGO (BAY AREA) (ABC)

  Morning       7:00

EXPEDITION CALIFORNIA

      7:30

BROTHER BUZZ   COLOR        8:00

CASPER—Children   COLOR        8:30

ADVENTURES OF GULLIVER—Children   COLOR        9:00

SPIDER-MAN   COLOR        9:30

FANTASTIC VOYAGE   COLOR      10:00

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH—Children   COLOR      10:30

FANTASTIC FOUR   COLOR      11:00

GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE—Children   COLOR      11:30

AMERICAN BANDSTAND   COLOR  Guests: Brenton Wood, the Mod Squad

  Afternoon     12:30

COLLEGE BASKETBALL   COLOR  San Francisco at Pacific

      2:30

HAPPENING—Variety   COLOR  Guests: the Raiders, Joe South, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Judges: Merrilee Rush, Tommy Roe, Dennis Cole

      3:00

SPORTS WORLD   COLOR        3:30

PRO BOWLERS TOUR   COLOR  Miller High Life Open, from Milwaukee

      5:00

WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS   COLOR  1. Daytona 500, taped Feb. 23 2. Two-Man Bobsled Championships

  Evening       6:30

CANDID CAMERA   COLOR        7:00

ANNIVERSARY GAME   COLOR        7:30

DATING GAME   COLOR  Celebrity guest: Jill Haworth. Host: Jim Lange

      8:00

NEWLYWED GAME   COLOR        8:30

LAWRENCE WELK   COLOR        9:30

HOLLYWOOD PALACE   COLOR  Hosts: Diana Ross and the Supremes. Guests: Ethel Waters, Stevie Wonder, Soupy Sales, Sammy Shore, Donald McKayle, Saddri Dancers

    10:30

OH, MY WORD—Game   COLOR      11:00

NEWS—Bob Marshall   COLOR      11:30

MOVIE—Drama   COLOR  “Diane” (1955)

      1:00

MOVIE—Western   COLOR  “Border River” (1954)

 

 

  -7- KRCR (REDDING) (ABC, NBC)

  Morning       8:00

CASPER—Children   COLOR        8:30

TOP CAT   COLOR        9:00

FLINTSTONES   COLOR        9:30

BANANA SPLITS   COLOR      10:30

DEATH VALLEY DAYS   COLOR      11:00

NCAA BASKETBALL—Doubleheader   SPECIAL    COLOR  NCAA Tournament First Round

Regular programming is pre-empted

  Afternoon       3:00

PASSPORT TO TRAVEL   COLOR  Time approximate

      3:30

PRO BOWLERS TOUR   COLOR  Miller High Life Open, from Milwaukee

      5:00

WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS   COLOR  1. Daytona 500, taped Feb. 23 2. Two-Man Bobsled Championships

  Evening       6:30

NEWS—Chet Huntley, David Brinkley   COLOR        7:00

HERE COME THE BRIDES   COLOR        8:00

NEWLYWED GAME   COLOR        8:30

LAWRENCE WELK   COLOR        9:30

HOLLYWOOD PALACE   COLOR  Hosts: Diana Ross and the Supremes. Guests: Ethel Waters, Stevie Wonder, Soupy Sales, Sammy Shore, Donald McKayle, Saddri Dancers

    10:30

MOVIE—Drama   COLOR  “The Agony and The Ecstasy” (1965)

      1:00

NEWS   COLOR 

 

 

  10 KXTV (SACRAMENTO) (CBS)

  Morning       7:00

SUNRISE SEMESTER   COLOR  French Literature: Cocteau’s “The Infernal Machine”

      7:30

KALEIDOSCOPE   COLOR        8:00

GO-GO GOPHERS—Children   COLOR        8:30

BUGS BUNNY/ROAD RUNNER—Children   COLOR        9:30

WACKY RACES   COLOR      10:00

ARCHIE—Children   COLOR      10:30

BATMAN/SUPERMAN—Children   COLOR      11:30

HERCULOIDS   COLOR    Afternoon     12:00

SHAZZAN!   COLOR      12:30

JONNY QUEST   COLOR        1:00

MOBY DICK—Children   COLOR        1:30

LONE RANGER—Children   COLOR        2:00

McHALE’S NAVY—Comedy

      2:30

COLLEGE BASKETBALL   COLOR  Oregon State vs. Oregon

Time approximate

      4:10

MOVIE—Mystery   COLOR  Time approximate. “Fame is the Name of the Game” (1966)

  Evening       6:00

NEWS   COLOR        6:30

NEWS—Roger Mudd   COLOR        7:00

DEATH VALLEY DAYS—Drama   COLOR        7:30

JACKIE GLEASON   COLOR  Guests: Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Jackie Vernon, Nipsey Russell

      8:30

MY THREE SONS—Comedy   COLOR        9:00

HOGAN’S HEROES   COLOR        9:30

PETTICOAT JUNCTION   COLOR      10:00

MANNIX—Crime Drama   COLOR      11:00

NEWS   COLOR      11:10

MOVIE—Drama   COLOR  “Back Street” (1961)

      1:15

JOAN RIVERS   COLOR 

 

 

     

12 KHSL (CHICO) (ABC, CBS)

  Morning       7:25

SOIL CONSERVATION

      7:30

BIG PICTURE—Army   COLOR        8:00

GO-GO GOPHERS—Children   COLOR        8:30

BUGS BUNNY/ROAD RUNNER—Children   COLOR        9:30

WACKY RACES   COLOR      10:00

ARCHIE—Children   COLOR      10:30

BATMAN/SUPERMAN—Children   COLOR      11:30

HERCULOIDS   COLOR    Afternoon     12:00

SHAZZAN!   COLOR      12:30

COLLEGE BASKETBALL   COLOR  San Francisco at Pacific

      2:30

COLLEGE BASKETBALL   COLOR  Oregon State vs. Oregon

Time approximate

      4:00

CBS GOLF CLASSIC   COLOR  Julius Boros and Don January vs. Kermit arley and Tommy Aaron

Time approximate

      5:00

JEAN-CLAUDE KILLY   COLOR        5:30

GLEN CAMPBELL   COLOR  Guests: Joey Bishop, Judy Carne, Bobby Goldsboro, Joe South

  Evening       6:30

NEWS—Roger Mudd   COLOR        7:00

ADAM-12—Crime Drama   COLOR        7:30

JACKIE GLEASON   COLOR  Guests: Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Jackie Vernon, Nipsey Russell

      8:30

MY THREE SONS—Comedy   COLOR        9:00

HOGAN’S HEROES   COLOR        9:30

PETTICOAT JUNCTION   COLOR      10:00

MANNIX—Crime Drama   COLOR      11:00

MOVIE—Comedy   COLOR  “Mary Mary” (1963)

 

 

     

13 KOVR (SACRAMENTO) (ABC)

  Morning       6:00

NEWS   COLOR        6:30

VOICE OF AGRICULTURE—Farming   COLOR        7:00

CAP’N DELTA—Children   COLOR        7:45

ADVENTURES OF GULLIVER

      8:15

CAP’N DELTA—Children   COLOR        8:30

FOCUS ON EDUCATION   COLOR        9:00

CREDIT COURSE—Davis   COLOR        9:30

FOCUS ON EDUCATION   COLOR      10:00

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH—Children   COLOR      10:30

FANTASTIC FOUR   COLOR      11:00

GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE—Children   COLOR      11:30

AMERICAN BANDSTAND   COLOR  Guests: Brenton Wood, the Mod Squad

  Afternoon     12:30

HAPPENING—Variety   COLOR  Guests: the Raiders, Joe South, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Judges: Merrilee Rush, Tommy Roe, Dennis Cole

      1:00

FAVORITE PLAYHOUSE—Drama

      1:30

CISCO KID—Western   COLOR        2:00

AMERICAN SPORTSMAN 

  COLOR        3:00

OUTDOORSMAN—Jim Lange   COLOR        3:30

PRO BOWLERS TOUR   COLOR  Miller High Life Open, from Milwaukee

      5:00

WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS   COLOR  1. Daytona 500, taped Feb. 23 2. Two-Man Bobsled Championships

  Evening       6:30

MOVIE—Adventure   COLOR  “The Secret Invasion” (1964)

      8:00

NEWLYWED GAME   COLOR        8:30

LAWRENCE WELK   COLOR        9:30

HOLLYWOOD PALACE   COLOR  Hosts: Diana Ross and the Supremes. Guests: Ethel Waters, Stevie Wonder, Soupy Sales, Sammy Shore, Donald McKayle, Saddri Dancers

    10:30

MOVIE—Drama

“The Young Lions” (1958)

      1:30

MOVIE—Drama

“Siege of Fort Bismarck” (Japanese; 1965)

 

 

     

40 KTXL (SACRAMENTO) (IND.)

  Morning

    10:30

MOVIE—Western

“Badlands of Montana” (1957)

  Afternoon     12:00

MOVIE—Drama

“Sealed Cargo” (1951)

      2:00

LITTLE RASCALS

      3:00

UPBEAT—Variety   COLOR        4:00

TOMBSTONE TERRITORY

      4:30

HORSE RACE   COLOR  Santa Anita Handicap

      5:00

BAT MASTERSON—Western

      5:30

RAT PATROL—Adventure   COLOR    Evening

      6:00

WRESTLING   COLOR        7:00

OUTER LIMITS—Science Fiction

      8:00

LOS ANGELES BOXING   COLOR  Jose Moreno vs. Singsram Tepyotin

      9:30

SILENTS PLEASE—Movies

“Hoodoo Ann” (1916)

    10:00

LES CRANE—Discussion   COLOR  Civil rights

    11:00

MOVIE—Drama

“The Savage Eye” (1960)

 

TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 8, 1969

There have been, in my humble opinion, very few comedians funnier than Jonathan Winters. He's one of a select group who can make me laugh out loud while I'm watching television, which doesn't happen often; and he seems to have a limitless fount of creativity, from which he draws with reckless abandon. One thing he doesn't do, though, is talk about himself, about the creative process behind his many characterizations, and about what they mean to him. 
Until now, when he sits down with Edith Efron to gives readers a rare and intimate look inside the creative process that produces what you see on television and in nightclubs. "Art," Winters says, "is a way of hiding." Speaking of comedians, he says that "we express ourselves indirectly through art," and that, in his case, behind the laughter, his vast array of characters are saying something serious that Winters himself has been reluctant to voice. 
As an example, he speaks of his most famous character, Maude Frickert, whom he describes as grass-roots, "the Plymouth Rock, 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' Valley Forge—she's American history." "She's a fighter," he adds. "In a way, she's putting down a weaker generation. She's saying, 'Let's shape up.' She hates to miss out on anything, but she draws the line at the 'living-it-up' attitude: the acid, the grass. She's against that." In essence, she's saying to people, "What’s happening here? What's happened to the spirit of 76?"
The same can be said of Elwood P. Suggins, who, Winters says, "represents some kind of fundamental common sense—you're laughing at him, but with him at the same time. He’s a square—an innocent guy—a diamond in the rough." While he's not superficially like Granny (he "hasn't got the aggression Granny has. He's much more sentimental.") he's of the same type: "He's just as American as she is. He’s grass-roots. He’s '76."
And then there's Howard Ganglinger, who represents "a combination of Kiwanis, Masonic, Lions—all organizations wrapped into one." Winters does not have the same respect for him as he does for Granny and Suggins; "Basically he's a weak man. He's a conformist" who has given up on America. "This guy believes it's the fall of the Roman Empire. . .He feels that America has been sold out. That's it in a nutshell. He’s bitter and it shows. He’s constantly telling people what's wrong with the country." Maynard Tetlinger, another of his characters, is "just as much Americana as Suggins and Frickert and Ganglinger," "the type of guy that still gets up—as old as he is—at a baseball or a football game and sings 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' There’s still something that goes through him when the band passes on the Fourth of July."
Efron notes that "under all these disguises," it is obviously Winters himself speaking, and asks him what he's trying to say. "I'm expressing a deep love for my country. I’m an American all the way. When I saw the American flag being burned in New York and in San Francisco, I wrote to my senator, for the first time. I sat down and I wrote a long letter. I said in it: 'What’s happening? Why is this being allowed?' " Coming back to a theme that his characters voice of "something being lost," he quotes Theodore Roosevelt on the importance of the man "in the arena," of knowing that "if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that he’ll never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
Asked why he hasn't come out and said these things in his own voice, preferring instead to address it obliquely through his characters, he admits that he's worried about the effect his conservative words might have on his career. "It seems to me that I am outnumbered. I find as I look around me that I'm in a minority with my views. . . I've thought it could harm me professionally to speak out." He's telling Efron these things, in part, because she's asking him questions "that very few people in the press have ever asked me." His characters, he says, had become something of a crutch, but after having spent a great deal of time thinking about it, "I've suddenly decided: I'm through running scared. I don't have to run frightened, regardless of what happens in the country." And now is the time, he feels, to speak up: I see revolutionaries . . .I see freedom under attack, free enterprise under attack . . . I see people mixed up. They're coming to a stage where they're wondering: should we accept democracy or should we accept socialism; should we accept Communism?" 
This, he concludes, is the "real" Jonathan Winters. "The time has come to stand up and be counted, to get into the arena. . . .That's it. That's everything."
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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..
Sullivan: Tentatively scheduled guests: Carol Lawrence, comedian Norm Crosby, Greg Morris of Mission: Impossible, singer Jeannie C. Riley, the Association (singing "Goodby Columbus"), the American Legion drill team, and the novelty act of Valenti and Valento. (Actual lineup also includes Creedence Clearwater Revival, Mickey Mantle, and impressionist.)
Palace: Diana Ross and the Supremes introduce guests Ethel Waters, Stevie Wonder, comics Soupy Sales and Sammy Shore, dancer Donald McKayle and the comic Saddri Dancers. Diana and the Supremes perform "With a Song in My Heart," "Stranger in Paradise," "Without a Song"; and a medley including "Let's Get Away from It All," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Day After Day," "I’m Living in Shame."   
Ed had a very good lineup to start with, from Carol Lawrence to Greg Morris, and the addition of CCR and Mickey Mantle strengthens it. While the Palace lineup is good enough, I can't say that any of their guests really knock me over; as you probably know, while I don't hate the Supremes, I was never their biggest fan, and the same could be said for Stevie Wonder and Soupy Sales. What that does leave us with Mantle in the cleanup spot, and a home run for Sullivan.
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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau is, according to Cleveland Amory, perhaps the best dramatic show on television, with "more drama in it than half a dozen average series shows." I suppose that could be taken as a low bar for success, but there's a lot to be said for a program that can make the life cycle of the giant sea turtle, a topic I wouldn't ordinarily be particularly interested in, nothing less than fascinating.
The Undersea World may take place below the surface, but it succeeds on many levels. The underwater photography, as one would expect, is "remarkable," and it's matched by the narration by Cousteau and Rod Serling, as well as the stories themselves. It is, says Amory, "a truly rare combination of technical and scientific know-how mixed with humane and even poetic understanding." In addition to the saga of the sea turtle, there was another episode about whales, and a third on the raising as pets of two baby fur seals. With more such episodes on the way—includng one on archaeological exploration of Lake Titicaca in South America, and another discussing how to live underwater—there seems to be no fear that the program will stagnate any time soon. 
Given Amory's intense feelings regarding animal welfare, it's no surprise that such a series meets with his approval. Speaking of the show on turtles, he quotes the narration that "Only man is capable of killing without need," which still doesn't make animals more noble creatures than humans, but does make a point. It's also no surprise that he takes the opportunity to launch yet another not-so-veiled barb against one of his favorite whipping boys, ABC's The American Sportsman.* (ABC, he writes, "still has bloody hands in this field.") Comments like this generally provoke responses, both pro and con, in the letters mailbag; it'd be interesting to look two or three weeks down the road and see what readers have to say. 
*Ironically, or perhaps not, Melvin Durslag writes on The American Sportsman this week, highlighting an episode in which Phil Harris goes pheasant hunting with host Curt Gowdy. "By day’s end, both Phil and the pheasant had shois in them." Regarding criticism of the show, producer Lorne Hassan says that approximately eight percent of their feedback is negative. 
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Here's one of those conundrums that must seem almost incomprehensible to modern sensibilities (not to mention modern sports fans). The NCAA Basketball Tournament—it hadn't yet been branded "March Madness"—gets underway on Saturday with a first-round doubleheader (11:00 a.m. PT, NBC). Later in the day, we have a pair of regular-season games, with San Francisco taking on Pacific (12:30 p.m., KGO and KHSL) and Oregon State facing Oregon (2:30 p.m., KTVU, KXTV, and KHSL). In other words, the tournament starts before the regular season is even over. How can this be?
Well, you have to keep in mind that in 1969, there were only 25 teams in the tournament. There was no seeding involved; conference champions were automatically put in specific geographic regions (e.g. Atlantic Coast and Ivy League in the East, Big Ten and Southeastern in the Mideast, Big Eight and Southwestern in the Midwest, Pac-8 and Western Athletic in the West), and the champions from the biggest conferences received byes into the Round of 16. Furthermore, only one team from each conference made the tournament, and there were no conference tournaments (other than the Atlantic Coast). Therefore, all you had to do was plug in the appropriate namesin the right slot, and if the Big Ten and Pac-8 champions, for example, weren't going to play until next week anyway, there was no reason the tournament couldn't start before their seasons were done.
If this sounds confusing, it's partly because the tournament wasn't such a big deal back then; in fact, the National Invitation Tournament, which is virtually invisible nowadays, had a national television contract long before the NCAA tournament managed to do the same. There were no bracket pools, no saturation coverage everywhere you looked. The tournament setup did make for some awkward situations; there was no reason, for example, why the #1 and #2 teams in the nation couldn't wind up playing each other in a regional semifinal, and one of the reasons why UCLA was so dominant in the decade was that there were only five other teams in the West region. But you know what else? It was, it seems to me, a lot more interesting back then.
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It's another big week for big-screen movies, starting on Saturday with the second showing of Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic The Birds (9:00 p.m., NBC), starring Rod Taylor (as character named "Mitch"? Gotta love that!) and Tippi Hedren, looking dazzling with one of the most cosmopolitan wardrobes in modern movie history. Judith Crist calls it "dull and plotless" except for the terrifying titular characters, but when you have them as your hook, what more do you need?
Another kind of "bird" features on Sunday with the network television premiere of Otto Preminger's religious epic The Cardinal (9:00 p.m., ABC), combining the grandeur (and political intrigue) of the Catholic Church with sex, reform, civil rights, and the looming war. Tom Tryon stars as the young Bostonian headed for the red hat; among the all-star cast, John Huston stands out as the crusty Cardinal Glennon, a role which earned him a richly-deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination. Crist notes that the red-clad "birds" in this movie are, by far, outacted by their malevolent counterparts on Saturday night.
Despite The Cardinal's three-and-a-half hour running time, the movie's 9:00 start allows viewers to watch, in its entirety, the eleventh annual presentation of The Wizard of Oz (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., NBC), Unlike past years, this year's showing is free of a studio host (past hosts included Red Skelton and Danny Kaye), but with an iconic cast including Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaraet Hamilton, and Frank Morgan (not to mention the munchkins) and a memorable musical score, you'll be pleasantly entertained nonetheless.
On Monday, the highlight is 1959's The Last Angry Man (8:00 p.m., KLOC in Modesto), with David Wayne as a television executive trying to convince a ghetto doctor (Paul Muni) to appear on a a new show profiling Americans from around the world. Muni, in his final Oscar-nominated performance, is brilliant as the irascible doctor who's dedicated his life to helping the poor and destitute, while Wayne can't see beyond the potential for ratings. It provides an interesting look at the pressure cooker of 1950s television; it's been a few years since I've seen it, and I ought to watch it again for this site.
Tuesday's movie contribution comes not from the theaters, but is a made-for-TV World Premiere. It's The Whole World Is Watching (9:00 p.m., NBC), the pilot for "The Lawyers" segment of The Bold Ones. It's given a topical pertinence via its premise, with a student activist accused of killing a university policeman during a campus demonstration; its dramatic heft comes from Burl Ives, Joseph Campanella, and James Farentino as the trio of lawyers defending him. Hal Holbrook, Carrie Snodgress, Steve Ihnat, and Stephen McNally round out a strong supporting cast. 
We return to the local scene on Wednesday, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz's acclaimed 1953 adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (9:00 p.m., KOVR in Sacramento), with Marlon Brando in a surprisingly effectve, Oscar-nominated performance as Mark Antony, James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, and Louis Calhern as Caesar. Oh, and Edmond O'Brien, Greer Garson, and Deborah Kerr are part of the cast as well. 
Joanne Woodward stars as The Stripper (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), and it's disappointing to discover that a movie with as provocative a title as that turns out to be, as Crist says, a mishmash "as incredible as it is dull." You'd think you could do better than that, wouldn't you? It's a "sentimental" tale (which is a red light to begin with) of a relationship between Woodward's "down-at-her-heels dancer" and a mother-dominated teen, played by Richard Beymer. Claire Trevor is the mother, and Carol Lynley, Michael J. Pollard, Robert Webber, Louis Nye, and Gypsy Rose Lee support them. 
And what would a big movie week be without something from Elvis? In this case, the something is Harum Scarum (Friday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), with The King as a singer touring the Middle East who becomes involved in a plot to assassinate a potentate. I'll bet that happens all the time nowadays, don't you? Mary Ann Mobley is the princess with whom he also becomes involved (and I wonder how many princesses you'll find like her in the Middle East today), and Philip Reed as the aforementioned king, whose country is called "Lunarkand." Or, as Crist puts it, "Never-never land." 
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Throughout this week's issue are notices of possible programming pre-emptions due to the flight of Apollo 9, which launched on March 3 and is scheduled for splashdown on Thursday. Coming after the dramatic Apollo 8 trip around the moon last December, Apollo 9 represents the first test of the Lunar Module (in Earth orbit), and is essential for the success of the man-on-the-moon program. What's remarkable about this is the moon landing, on Apollo 11, comes up later this year. We've become so used to things taking a long time (which they always seem to do nowadays), it's still awesome to think that NASA could go from a first test of the LM to the actual landing in just over four months. 
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As a bookend to the Jonathan Winters interview, it seems appropriate to conclude with syndicated political columnist Max Lerner's* essay on television as having the potential for "The greatest force for democracy," the sixth in a series of such essays in defense of television. That potential, it could be said, comes with some conditions.
*Lerner was an interesting character, a New Deal Democrat and ACLU backer who was on Nixon's Enemies List, but was also a strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
"TV," Lerner says, "is a double-edged sword. It cuts you when you grasp it. But it can also cut away many of the obstacles that have impeded social advance in the past." It has broken down barriers: barries of distance, of time, of access. Although it sounds like a cliche, it truly has become a window to the world, especially for those who, until now, have lived in relative construction. This exposure is, in the abstract, a good thing. However, the flip side is that TV can also be seen as an instrument of social unrest. "By churning up the aspirations of the disinherited, TV has also increased their demands. for more equal access to the life possibilities; and when the demands have not been met, it has quickened their anger and resentment." This is not to say that television created this unrest; it was already present in society. But it is also true that it is "the visible medium by which the winds blow into every home in the Nation." 
Television's great power is its immediacy, its now, in the moment intimacy. "If done tolerably well it can do something to make the vast, unmanageable leviathan of society more compassable, less lonely, better-known to itself." There's a caviat, however, "the danger that as a Nation we will grow accustomed to the moment of action, and come to confuse action with truth." In other words, if we see what is happening, we may completely overlook the why. 
One of the limitations of television is that, being a visual medium, it has a predilection toward action. Action, in turn, tends to arouse a greater involvement in the viewer, who "gets so involved he reacts strongly and it shapes his attitudes and his actions." It is, therefore, imperative that television exercise its freedom wisely, for "you can't have an effective TV medium without its havin gan impact on the frame of freedom in the society, on the quality of democratic living and thinking, on the nature and pace of change in the society."
Whittaker Chambers, the former Soviet spy turned anti-communist, once said something to the effect that capitalism without a moral foundation was no different from any other -ism. In his conclusion, Lerner makes a similar point. It is true, he says, that "there can be no good TV without freedom. I add that there can be no real freedom in our fragile society unless there is a cement that holds the society together. The hardest task TV can take on, even harder than fighting against restraints on its freedom, is the task of helping to strengthen the cement of the society." Television has a responsibility to exercise its freedom in a way that strengthens, rather than unravels, democracy. Absent that responsibility, we will wind up with neither democracy nor freedom. And then where will we be? TV  

Around the dial

We start the week at RealWeegieMidget with Gill and hubby's monthly review of movies , including teleflicks with killer bees, Playboy bunnies, 80s aerobics instructors, murder mysteries, and fashionistas. What more could you ask for?
Over at The Horn Section, Hal appears on Dan Schneider's Cosmoetica podcast (home to yours truly's American TV history series) to discuss The White Shadow with Dan and Harv Aronson of Abstract Sports. Take a listen to an enjoyable hour.
David's journey through 1970s TV continues at Comfort TV, where we're up to Thursday nights in 1975 : The Waltons continues to dominate, NBC continues to fall short, and ABC gives us Barney Miller, The Streets of San Francisco, and Harry-O. Not bad at all.
At The Twilight Zone Vortex, Brian looks at " Ninety Years Without Slumbering ," starring Ed Wynn, written (partly) by George Clayton Johnson, with a score by Bernard Herrmann, and a backstory that's almost as interesting as what appears on the screen. 

The Hitchcock Project continues at bare•bones e-zine with Michael Hogan's story " The Safe Place ," starring the ubiquitous Robert H. Harris (you'd recognize him if you saw him) and Joanne Linville in a story of greed, murder, and a crook who's a little too clever for his own good.
At Cult TV Blog, John returns to his series on television "tales of unease" with "Superstitious Ignorance," a story of the house-hunting trip from Hell involving some very unpleasant people, and a sense of unease that increases throughout the episode.
Roger's episode-by-episode review of The New Avengers continues at The View from the Junkyard, with this week's story, " Gnaws ," which features a giant rat in the sewers of London, and—for better or worse—hearkens back to the fantastical stories of the original series.
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence marks the 40th anniversary of Moonlighting , one of the most ground-breaking and influential shows of the 1980s. It starred Cybill Shepherd, whom I don't like, and Bruce Willis, whom I do, and featured as much drama off-screen as it did on. TV  

And the loser is. . . the viewers

I hadn't planned on writing about the Academy Awards show I didn't watch on Sunday night; for one thing, I haven't seen an Oscarcast in probably twenty years, I don't like Conan O'Brien, I hadn't heard of any of the nominated movies nor most of the nominated performers (although I did my due dilligence and looked most of them up, so I knew what was what), I knew the nominated songs would be bad, they'd leave deserving people out of the In Memorium segment, and they'd tell too many political jokes that would just make me too angry to go to sleep afterward, and when all was said and done I'd have lost three hours that I'd never get back.
As I say, I hadn't planned on writing any of this. But (much to my surprise) the response I got to my essay last week on TV shows I don't watch received such positive feedback that it seemed maybe going negative two weeks in a row might work. So here we are. 
I think I've mentioned here before that I used to be a big fan of the Oscars. Over the years, I'd spend hours in the library going through back issues of TV Guide to look at the full-page close-ups with pictures of the nominees, I had my copy of Wiley and Bona's Inside Oscar book, and watched old clips of the show on YouTube. (One of the great favors the Academy has done, for both movie buffs and television historians, is upload hours of footage from those old shows, where we can not only appreciate the winners from years past, we can also study how the networks used to broadcast the show.) It was full of movie stars, it was glamorous, it was special. 
All that's changed, which is one reason I don't watch the Oscars anymore. Even last year, when I actually had a rooting interest in the winners (having seen two of the Best Picture nominees), I didn't bother. There was, therefore, no reason to even consider tuning in this year, but from what I understand, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised by what happened (although I didn't expect that Adrien Brody's acceptance speech would run almost as long as The Brutalist, the movie for which he won). Otherwise, it would seem to have been just as much of a turn-off as I'd have expected.
I don't know if the Oscars can be saved, and to be honest, I'm not sure that it's worth trying to figure out. The movie industry as a whole is on life support, and before too long we're going to have to try and figure out just what qualifies as a "movie," and whether or not it even has to appear in a theater in order to qualify for an Oscar. For all we know, we may see a day when the Motion Picture Academy and the Television Academy come up with some kind of hybrid definition that allows studios to produce movies that go directly to streaming but still count as far as the Academy Awards is concerned.*
*My point here is that the made-for-TV movie, in its heyday, was its own type of movie, a distinct genre from the movie that appears in a theater: its structure was constructed to allow for commercials, the subject matter was creative and frequently provocative, the casting frequently came from the television industry itself, and the storytelling was direct. Clint Eastwood's latest movie, Juror #2, was originally scheduled to go direct to streaming; would anyone really consider that a made-for-TV movie in the traditional sense?
Having said all that, if the Academy insists on continuing with the Oscars, I could make a few suggestions for how to come up with a better television presentation. (The most obvious — make and nominate better and more popular movies — is beyond my reach, but that doesn't mean there aren't still things that could be done.)
In no particular order:Hire Ricky Gervais as the emcee, and provide him with a copy of the Epstein guest list, if it hasn't already been released. Even I would tune in to see that.If you're going to insist on having talk-show hosts as emcees, put them in their natural environment. Sit them behind a desk, have the presenters join them, and when the winners are introduced, have them come sit on the couch.Speaking of the winners, limit their acceptance speeches to 30 seconds, after which the emcee says, "We'll be right back." It shouldn't take any longer for someone to say "Thank You," and if they want to talk longer, refer them to a Toastmasters meeting.Limit the red carpet segment to five minutes, tops. There aren't enough actual movie stars to justify wasting more time than that.Eliminate all the production numbers (if they still have them) and special tributes. All it does is remind viewers of how good the movies used to be, and how bad they are today.I understand that the Best Song nominees weren't performed this year. That might have been a bit radical; just have the movie's director cut a music video of the song and show that. (You remember music videos, don't you?)Get rid of the "In Memorium" segment and just show the most recent "TCM Remembers" instead. Don't be afraid to admit that those doing it now are in way over their heads.Set a goal of a running time of 90 minutes and no more. The awards show should not last longer than the average movie, and certainly not longer than Ben-Hur.The chances of having any of these suggetions accepted by the Academy are probably, to use a movie title, less than zero. But it's long past time for us to realize that the Academy Awards is no longer a show that's broadcast on TV; it's a TV show, pure and simple, and it ought to look and sound like one. And if that's beyond the ability of the industry, then maybe it's time to just call the whole thing off. TV  

What's on TV? Thursday, March 8, 1956

We're back in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex this week, and I'm looking at ABC's Star Tonight, the concept of which is to team "rising young actors and actresses in their first starring roles" with more established actors in supporting roles. I don't know how many of these "new stars" became established on television, but we have one tonight: Frank Overton, who went on to a long and successful career as a character actor, both in movies (To Kill a Mockingbird, Fail-Safe) and television (a regular on Twelve O'clock High, plus guest roles on just about every television show of the 1950s and '60s. He's one of those actors who makes just about everything he's in better because he's in it. There are a lot of stars with more recognizable names and bigger roles who can't make that claim.
  -4- KRLD (Dallas) (CBS)

  MORNING

       7:00

Good Morning!—Rogers

       7:55

Agricultural News

       8:00

Captain Kangaroo

       9:00

Garry Moore Show

       9:30

Arthur Godfrey Time

     10:30

Strike It Rich—Quiz

     11:00

Valliant Lady—Serial

     11:15

Love of Life—Serial

       

   11:30

Search for Tomorrow

     11:45

Guiding Light—Serial

  AFTERNOON

     12:00

NEWS

     12:05

The Council Calls—PTA

     12:15

Catholic Report

     12:30

Love Story—Interviews

       1:00

Adventures in Faith

       1:15

Robert Q. Lewis—Variety

       1:30

Art Linkletter’s Party

       2:00

Big Payoff—Quiz

       2:30

Bob Crosby—Music

       3:00

Brighter Day—Serial

       3:15

Secret Storm—Serial

       3:30

On Your Account

       4:00

Mary Carter’s Cookbook

       4:30

Variety Fair—G. Johnson

       5:05

Space Adventures—Kids

       5:45

NEWS—Douglas Edwards

  EVENING

       6:00

WEATHER, SPORTS, NEWS

       6:30

Sgt. Preston—Adventure

       7:00

BOB CUMMINGS SHOW

       7:30

CLIMAX!—Drama

“The Gay Illiterate”

       8:30

FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE

“Red Wine”

       9:00

JOHNNY CARSON SHOW

       9:30

QUIZ KIDS—Clifton Fadiman

     10:00

FAVORITE STORY—Drama

“Strange Valley”

     10:30

MOVIE—Western

Movietime: “Frontier Revenge”

     12:15

NEWS FINAL

 

 

  -5- WBAP (Fort Worth) (NBC, ABC)

  MORNING

       6:50

Let’s Go Fishing

       7:00

Sunup—Variety

       8:00

Kitty’s Wonderland—Kids

       9:00

Ding Dong School—Kids

       9:30

Ernie Kovacs—Variety

     10:00

Home—Women’s News

     11:00

Texas Living   COLOR         

   11:30

The Jones Place   COLOR       11:45

Industry on Parade

  AFTERNOON

     12:00

News, Weather   COLOR       12:30

Ann Alden   COLOR       12:45

MOVIE—Crime

Movie Marquee: “Perilous Waters” (1948)

       2:00

Matinee Theater   COLOR  “The Shining Palace”

       3:00

Date with Life—Serial

       3:15

Modern Romance

       3:30

Queen for a Day

       4:00

NEWS, WEATHER

       4:15

Tricks and Treats—Kids

       5:00

Mickey Mouse Club

  EVENING

       6:00

Cisco Kid—Western

       6:30

Lone Ranger—Western

       7:00

GROUCHO MARX—Quiz

Special Guest: Liberace

       7:30

DRAGNET—Jack Webb

       8:00

PEOPLE’S CHOICE

       8:30

FORD THEATRE—Drama

“All for a Man”

       9:00

LUX VIDEO THEATRE

“The Criminal Code”

     10:00

NEWS, WEATHER

     10:30

COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

     11:00

Tonight—Steve Allen

 

 

  -6- KCEN (Temple) (NBC)

  MORNING

       6:55

Program Previews

       7:00

Today—Garroway

       9:00

Ding Dong School—Kids

       9:30

Ernie Kovacs—Variety

     10:00

Home—Women’s News

     11:00

Tennessee Ernie Ford

       

   11:30

Feather Your Nest

  AFTERNOON

     12:00

Religion in Life

     12:15

RFD No. 6—Farm News

     12:30

MOVIE—Melodrama

Movie Time: “Game of Danger” (English; 1955)

       1:30

Cathy’s Corner—Variety

       2:00

Matinee Theater

“The Shining Palace”

       3:00

Industry on Parade

       3:15

Modern Romance

       3:30

Queen for a Day

       4:00

Pinky Lee—Variety

       4:30

Howdy Doody

       5:00

MOVIE—Western

Tales of the West: “By Smoking Guns”

  EVENING

       6:00

NEWS, WEATHER

       6:15

Space Rangers—Adventure

       6:45

NEWS—John Cameron Swayze

       7:00

GROUCHO MARX—Quiz

Special Guest: Liberace

       7:30

DRAGNET—Jack Webb

       8:00

PEOPLE’S CHOICE

       8:30

FORD THEATRE—Drama

“All for a Man”

       9:00

LUX VIDEO THEATRE

“The Criminal Code”

     10:00

NEWS, WEATHER, SPORTS

     10:20

MOVIE—Drama

Late Date Theater: “The Fighter” (1952)

 

 

  -8- WFAA (Dallas) (NBC, ABC)

  MORNING

       6:55

Morning Devotional

       7:00

Today—Garroway

       9:00

Romper Room—Kids

       

   10:00

Julie Benell—Cooking

     11:00

Tennessee Ernie Ford

     11:30

Feather Your Nest

  AFTERNOON

     12:00

NEWS

     12:05

Magazine—Variety

     12:30

MOVIE—Drama

Showtime Matinee: “The Payoff”

       1:30

Trouble with Father

       2:00

Afternoon Film Festival

“Daybreak” (English) TV Debuy

       4:00

Pinky Lee—Variety

       4:30

Howdy Doody   COLOR         5:00

Kiddie Karnival—Kids

       5:30

Frontier Playhouse—Serial

  EVENING

       6:00

NEWS—Templeton

       6:10

WEATHER—Culbertson

       6:15

NEWS—John Daly

       6:30

Dinah Shore—Music   COLOR         6:45

NEWS—John Cameron Swayze

       7:00

BISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN

       7:30

STOP THE MUSIC—Quiz

       8:00

STAR TONIGHT—Drama

       8:30

DOWN YOU GO—Quiz

       9:00

CELEBRITY PLAYHOUSE

       9:30

WATERFRONT—Drama

     10:00

NEWS—Final Edition

     10:30

MYSTERY PLAYHOUSE

Follow That Man      11:00

Les Paul-Mary Ford

     12:15

MOVIE—Adventure

Channel 8 Theater: “Genghis Khan” (FIRST RUN) (Philippine, 1953)

 

 

  10 KWTX (Waco) (CBS, ABC)

  MORNING

       6:55

Tips on Ten—Previews

       7:00

Good Morning!—Rogers

       8:00

Captain Kangaroo

       9:00

Garry Moore Show

       9:30

Arthur Godfrey Time

     10:30

Strike It Rich—Quiz

     11:00

Valliant Lady—Serial      11:15

Love of Life—Serial

       

   11:30

Search for Tomorrow

     11:45

Guiding Light—Serial

  AFTERNOON

     12:00

Dinner Bell—Western Music

     12:15

Farms and Gardens

       1:00

Better Living—Variety

       1:30

Art Linkletter’s Party

       2:00

Big Payoff—Quiz

       2:30

Bob Crosby—Music

       3:00

Brighter Day—Serial

       3:15

Secret Storm—Serial

       3:30

On Your Account

       4:00

Uncle Elihu—Kids

       5:00

Mickey Mouse Club

  EVENING

       6:00

The Home Folks—Music

       6:15

NEWS—Douglas Edwards

       6:30

Susie—Comedy

       7:00

BOB CUMMINGS SHOW

       7:30

CLIMAX!—Drama

“The Gay Illiterate”

       8:30

HARLEY BERG—Animals

       8:45

PATTI PAGE SHOW

       9:00

LIBERACE—Music

       9:30

STAR SHOWCASE—Drama

“Mr. Bishop Swept Here”

     10:00

NEWS, WEATHER

     10:25

SPORTS—Frank Fallon

     10:30

STOP THE MUSIC—Quiz

     11:00

MOVIE—Drama

Million Dollar Movie: “Haunted House”

 

 

  11 KFJZ (Fort Worth) (Independent)

  AFTERNOON

       2:30

Date with Drama

“Papa Goes to the Ball”

       3:00

MOVIE—Comedy

Theater 11: “Highway 13”

       4:15

Looney Tunes—Cartoons

       4:30

MOVIE—Western

Gene Autry Theater: “Oh, Suzanna”

       5:30

Watch the Birdie—Quiz

       5:45

Looney Tunes—Cartoons

  EVENING

       6:00

Range Rider—Western

       6:30

NEWS, SPORTS, WEATHER

       7:00

LOONEY TUNES—Cartoons

       7:10

LITTLE RASCALS—Comedy

       7:30

MOVIE—Drama

Million Dollar Movie: “It’s a Pleasure”

       8:55

NEWS—Dan Allison

       9:00

LIBERACE—Music

       9:30

SHERLOCK HOLMES

     10:00

NEWS—Porter Randall

     10:15

WEATHER

     10:30

MOVIE—Crime

Starlight Theater: “Dual Alibi” (English)

 

TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 3, 1956

On the cover this week is a man who, once upon a time, was one of the most familiar faces on television: Hal March, host of the nation's top-rated program, The $64,000 Question, every Tuesday night at 9:00 pm CT on CBS. (Lynn Dollar, pictured next to March, is the show's "assistant.")

Hal March has that important quality that often makes the difference between a successful quiz show and one that comes and goes in a matter of weeks: likability. Contestants feel comfortable around him, and audiences like him because he's, well, human. One night he forgets to ask a contestant the $32,000 question, another time he accidentally gives the answer as well as the question, and then there was the time he almost forget the sponsor plug before signing off. . .

But, like Donald Trump in a completely different context, March doesn't seem to be hurt by these flubs. In fact, he's increasingly moving beyond quiz shows to other areas of entertainment. He's already appeared as himself on Perry Como's show, played a forger on Omnibus, acted opposite Maurice Evans and Vivian Blair on stage, and even made the big screen in the Warner Brothers movie It's Always Fair Weather. (We just saw him in an old Burke's Law episode last month, in which he played the killer.) The talk now is that March might be headed for Broadway, and more movies may be in store as well.

The scandals put all of that to an end, of course; although there's no evidence that March was involved in fixing games (if anything, the pressure to rig the show came not from the producers, as was the case with other quiz shows, but from Revlon, the sponsor), there's that taint of guilt by association, and with it March's opportunities begin to try up. There are the odd guest star bits here and there; he's good, not great, but very natural in his technique. By 1969, though, things seem to have turned a corner, and March signs up to host a game show called It's Your Bet. But only a few weeks into taping, tests show that March has lung cancer, and he dies in 1970, only 49 years old.

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If you've partaken in TV Guide's "As We See It" editorials over the years, then you know that one of their enthusiasms has always been for "quality" television; therefore, it's safe to say they're very enthusiastic about NBC's programming the next couple of weeks.

It begins this week with the network's telecast of George Bernard Shaw's witty "Caesar and Cleopatra," starring Claire Bloom and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Tuesday night on Producers' Showcase (7:00 p.m.), and continues next week with Laurence Olivier's big-screen version of Richard III* and Hallmark Hall of Fame's "The Taming of the Shrew." The programs face steep competition, especially "Caesar and Cleopatra," which has to deal with Burns & Allen, Arthur Godfrey and I Love Lucy on CBS. And while the editor, probably Merrill Panitt, points out that TV Guide "is far from a highbrow publication," he adds that they are "grateful for any sort of programming that tends to enlarge television's scope." How, for example, could one say that they don't like Shakespeare or The $64,000 Question unless they've seen them?
*For what it's worth, Richard III was the first three-hour telecast of a film ever in the United States; it was also the first time that a movie had ever aired on television (on a Sunday afternoon, so as not to affect the ratings) and opened in American theaters on the same day.

NBC should be thanked, Panitt concludes, "for gambling money and prestige on the theory that viewers want such fine fare." I suppose at some point they did, although even in the Golden Age documentaries suffered, and Voice of Firestone dragged down the ratings of every show on the network that night. Quality television has been said to have made a comeback on cable in the last few years, and indeed there is no doubt a high quality of drama available for viewing. But as for the classics, I don't think we'll be seeing them anytime soon. Not even on PBS.

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What else is on this week? Saturday night means one thing in many households: The Lawrence Welk Show (8:00 p.m., ABC), known at the time as The Dodge Dancing Party. Welk is the subject of an unbylined profile this week, and if you need any evidence of his popularity, consider this anecdote: Last year he and his orchestra played five nights a week at the Aragon Ballroom in Ocean Park, California grossed the maestro $100,000, which in today's dollars comes out to nearly $1.2 million. (Or "Ah-One point-Ah-Two" million, if you prefer.) Besides that, there's his income from his television show, and then the royalties from all those records he sells. So in other words, he's doing all right.
Now this is an interesting bit of counterprogramming. On Sunday's Famous Film Festival (6:30 p.m., ABC), it's the first of a two-part showing of the aforementioned G.B. Shaw's aforementioned Caesar and Cleopatra, made in 1945 and starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Raines. Now, let's think about this for a minute: if you've got a color TV, you can see NBC's Monday night production in color (the big-screen edition, although filmed in Technicolor, will be shown in black-and-white), and you won't have to wait until next week to find out how it ends. Even though the movie version airs one night earlier than its TV counterpart , I know which one I'd be watching. 
Monday is a fine day for music lovers, beginning with the premiere of The Gordon MacRae Show" (6:30 p.m., NBC). The star of Carousel and Oklahoma will host the 15-minute program (in color!) each Monday, as part of the half-hour block that includes John Cameron Swayze's Camel News Caravan. Meantime, young Roberta Peters is the guest soloist on Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., ABC). Peters, one of the greatest sopranos ever (as well as one of the most popular), is a frequent presence on television over the years, appearing on Ed Sullivan's show a record 65 times. 
On Tuesday, The Phil Silvers Show (7:00 p.m., CBS) presents one of the greatest episodes in sitcom history, "The Court Martial," in which Bilko winds up defending a chimp that's accidentally been inducted into the Army.  Silvers himself called it  "the funniest half-hour on television, unconditionally." Probably the funniest segment of this hilarious episode occurs during the court martial (which would have been funny anyway), when the chimp, given the name "Harry Speakup" by the induction center, begins acting up and Silvers, completely in character, ad-libs to the chimp's antics. You can see the other actors in the scene trying valiantly to keep from laughing, but Silvers never breaks stride. How wise they were to let the camera keep rolling. Unfortunately, the clip of this that used to be online has been taken down, but I'd be surprised if most of you haven't seen it.
Once Walt Disney made the decision to produce programming for television, it was just a matter of time before other studios followed suit, and we can see one early example of this on Wednesday with M-G-M Parade (7:30 p.m., ABC). The half-hour show, hosted for the final time this week by actor and future U.S. Senator George Murphy (next week, Walter Pidgeon takes over as host), is one of MGM's first ventures into television. They don't really get it, though, at least not with this series, which combines clips from vintage MGM movies of the past, and plugs for upcoming MGM releases. (This week, for example, Judy Garland sings in an excerpt from The Harvey Girls, and we see previews from the new movie Meet Me in Las Vegas, with Cyd Charisse and Dan Dailey.) Eventually, the studio succumbs to the show's bad reviews and adds more extensive, condensed versions of its classic movies. The series runs for another two months before fading from our screens.
For four seasons, the CBS anthology series Climax! presented various tales, mostly of the mystery type; it was later known as Climax Mystery Theater. However, this Thursday the show presents a real change of pace with "The Louella Parsons Story," based on her autobiography The Gay Illiterate. (7:30 p.m., CBS) Parsons, America's most influential (i.e. loved and/or feared) gossip columnist from the early '30s into the '60s, achieved a level of stardom as great as that of some of her subjects, and she maintained a feud with her hated rival Hedda Hopper for decades. What makes this show so unusual is not just the subject matter, but that following the story, there's a tribute from stars of the industry, emceed by Jack Benny and featuring Gene Autry, Charles Boyer, Rock Hudson, Susan Hayward and John Wayne, among others. An odd hybrid of genres, no?
It just didn't work out for Barry on Brooks. Friday on Our Miss Brooks (7:30 p.m., CBS), Connie (Eve Arden) tries to collect a $1,000 prize, despite the fact that the penalty for gambling is dismissal from the school. Our Miss Brooks is the subject of this week's review by Robert Stahl, who focuses on the changes to the show's format for this, the fourth and final season. Gone is the familiar public school, replaced by a tony private one; gone too is Mr. Boynton, Eve's long-time romantic interest, replaced by a physical education teacher (played by Gene Barry). And gone as well, says Stahl, is any subtlety the show might have had; "It would seem that Miss Arden and her writers don't have too much respect for their viewers' taste and intelligence," opting instead for unbelivable situations and slapstick humor. The changes have done nothng to improve the series, according to Stahl; while the producers, in an effort to rectify their mistake, have since brought back the Boynton character ("Barry has apparently read the writing on the blackboard because he has already fled the show"), it's a case of too little, too late. "Some of the situations might be funny if only the writers would lay off the slapstick." Instead, it's the show itself that gets laid off at the end of the season.
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According to the Teletype, Mister Peepers, which ends its three-season run in June, will be reborn as a weekday show, airing Monday through Friday afternoons. Wally Cox, of course, will return in the title role, but it's not certain how many other original cast members will join him. This never happens, for whatever reason, but I'm not surprised; the show had dropped in the ratings after Peepers had married his sweetheart (as shows often do), and it's difficult to imagine that it could have continued for long at a five-a-week pace. In reruns, maybe, but original episodes? On the other hand, it could have become television's first comedy soap. Think of the possibilities!
There's also an item about how sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease; ABC has fielded viewer complaints about the number of commercials in its Afternoon Film Festival, which interrupted the movie every five or six minutes. The new plan: limit the breaks to every ten or eleven minutes. There are also plans to have host Allyn Edwards give news headlines during some of the breaks. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Afternoon Film Festival also suffered from a lack of variety; ABC's deal with the J. Arthur Rank Company for 35 films meant that some titles were repeated every two or three weeks. 
And The Johnny Carson Show, which airs Thursday nights on CBS, will be wrapping things up at the end of the month. The sponsors have cancelled, and the show went through seven directors ("through no fault of Carson's") during its 39-week run. It returns as a daytime show through the summer, and later Carson will begin a five-year run as host of Who Do You Trust? before going on to even bigger and better things.
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Finally, we're always up for a good discussion on censorship, and this week we look at what gives a network censor headaches.  A similar article appeared in a 1980 issue , and though there's a vast difference between the shows of the mid '50s and early '80s, the censor's job is pretty much the same. The censor in question is Stockton Helffrich, Director of Continuity Acceptance for NBC, and he strongly believes that one of the jobs of a censor is not to censor. "We are not kill-joys, spoilsports, crape-hangers or wet blankets," and part of the philosophy is that "children should be able to reach adulthood as really mature people without prejudices." What that means is that much of their work deals with censoring "racial stereotypes, religious oversimplifications, unkindness toward the physically handicapped, ignorance regarding the emotionally disturbed."

However, censors also represent the interests of sponsors, which means if your favorite show is brought to you by Your Gas Company, you probably aren't going to see someone commit suicide by sticking their head in an oven. If the show is sponsored by a billiard company, the script can't suggest that pool halls are the exclusive domain of underworld characters and shady punks. While the sponsors' interests clearly need to be taken into account, Helffrich warns against "authors and producers [indulging] in fearful knuckling under." In other words, don't self-censor yourself - let the professionals decide what ought to be included.

Oh, there's the occasional "low neckline," but Helffrich says those are "an exception on current TV," and there's no discussion of profanity; I suppose that isn't even an issue in 1956. For Helffrich and his three dozen colleagues (and assistants working with them), it's a never-ending job, encouraged by the occasional constructive letter from a viewer that "has made us take pause and try to do better." TV  

Around the dial

Last week I was interviewed by Mark Atley, where we talked not only about what I write, but the writing process itself. It was a nice change of pace, to talk not just as a classic TV historian, but as a writer. You can read it here; by the way, I'd encourage you to subscribe to Mark's Substack while you're there.
There are many tributes to Gene Hackman, whose death (along with his wife and dog) was reported yesterday. Amongst our cohort here, you can find recollections from Maddy at Classic Film and TV Corner and Trav at Travalanche . 
Sportscaster Al Trautwig also died during the week, and while his primary fame may have been from his coverage of New York-based sports teams, he was also a familiar face on broadcast and cable TV as well, covering everything from the NHL to the Olympics, with a lot in-between. Inner Toob has an appropriate, typically quirky tribute .
At Cult TV Blog, John has a post on the Interlude films , short films that were presented as interludes during live drama broadcasts to give the actors a breather; they were also used to fill the time between the end of the time period between children's programming and adult broadcasting. It's a wonderful, eccentric little piece of TV history, as well as what the interludes say about how British television was run in the 1950s. (There's a little inside joke there.)
At Comfort TV, David has some thoughts on that Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary montage of skits that wouldn't be considered "acceptable" today . What does it say about the future of comedy when you're forced to justify it to future generations?
The View from the Junkyard returns to the world of The New Avengers, as Roger looks at the episode " Faces ," a thrilling story involving doppelgangers that puts our three heroes into a state of constant doubt, and overcomes any disbelief we might have in the concept to begin with.
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence offers a tribute to the 75th anniversary of Your Show of Shows , the legendary comedy variety show that made icons of Sid Casesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris, and continues to be considered one of the great shows of all time. TV  

Shows I just don't care about

I was going to call this, "Shows I don't give a s*** about," but decided against it at the last minute—this is a family website, after all. But the sentiment remains the same.
The idea came to me a few weeks ago on one of the Facebook classic TV groups, when someone quoted an unnamed "television legend." Since the quote wasn't familiar to me, I idly inquired as to who this legend was. "Michael O'Donoghue," the poster replied. My first thought was, "You mean the guy with the beard who's the lead singer for the Doobie Brothers, and you can never understand what he's singing? Since when did he become a television legend?" 
Of course, when he elaborated that O'Donoghue was one of the head writers for Saturday Night Live, I was able to figure things out. But the truth of the matter is that had that context not been provided, I wouldn't have had to work hard to find out who Michael O'Donoghue was. I'd seen SNL from time to time, but not for at least 30 years (not since Wayne's World, and that only because I was a hockey fan at the time); I read his entry at the always-reliable Wikipedia, and I couldn't find anything other than SNL that would have linked him to my circle of knowledge. And the question quickly became: Could someone legitimately be considered a "television legend" if a classic television historian—that's me, in case you're wondering*—doesn't know who he was?
*Perhaps I should start referring to this period as "vintage" rather than "classic," given that a classic could be 40 years ago (1985, which doesn't seem that long ago to me), or could even be an "instant classic" (the first episode of Twin Peaks, for instance). What do you think?
I don't say that to flatter myself, but this was a question worth asking, even though the answer could  potentially be a severe blow to my already-fragile ego. It's true that I've got a fairly vast knowledge of things other people don't know, but if I didn't recognize someone who was an important figure in the history of television, was all that knoweldge simply in vain, a vast assemblage of minutiae inhabiting space that could, and should, be put to more useful purposes? The very thought tempted me to hang up my keyboard in shame.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it—subsequent investigations convinced me that, while Michael O'Donoghue is quite well known within a certain sphere of television fandom, it was quite reasonable that even a dedicated television viewer might not travel in the same circles, and thus not be familiar with his output. A "legend"? To some, undoubtedly, but not in the same category as, say, Lucille Ball. Or Babe Ruth.
So it's perhaps understandable that I wouldn't immediately have recognized his name. But this, in turn, led to another question: given all the talk this week about Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary, almost all of which went straight over my head, what other shows are there that everyone seems to have seen but me? And does this mean I'm suffering from a televison pop culture deficiency syndrome? It seemed time to take stock of those shows, shows that I might be familiar with, but never had any interest in watching. The results were—well, I suppose some of you might consider this disturbing, or even disqualifying, but others might consider that I have discerning tastes, or that I'm countercultural. The way I look at it, there are only so many hours in a lifetime, and a man's got to make choices. I've already filled my dance card, and if you want to get on it, you're going to have to prove to me you're more worthwhile than a 30th rerun of Mystery Science Theater 3000. 
You already know about my top ten shows , so here's a much longer list of the shows I just don't care about. I'll let you be the judge.
Game of ThronesSuccessionBreaking BadBetter Call SaulMad MenThe SopranosParks and RecreationFriday Night LightsThe Office (either version)30 RockThe WireNCISLaw & OrderStephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel (especially!), Conan O'Brian, Jon Stewart, and Seth MyersThe AmericansArrested DevelopmentFriendsSeinfeldCheersFrazierHow I Met Your MotherThe Cosby ShowSurvivorThe Daily ShowAmerican IdolEllenBuffy the Vampire SlayerSpin CityEverybody Loves RaymondRoseanneHome ImprovementERSt. ElsewhereThe X-FilesAny version of Star Trek other than the original (and the animated series)All in the FamilyM*A*S*HSaturday Night Live (obviously)
This is just a partial list, but I think you get the idea.
Now, understand a few things. First, I'm not suggesting these are bad shows, nor am I critiquing anyone who does watch them. I suspect far fewer people watch the shows I watch—of course, that's your loss. (Iust kidding; I've always said that if you're a friend of TV, you're a friend of mine.) Nor does it mean that I'm completely ignorant* about these programs: to say that I don't watch them doesn't necessarily mean I've never seen an episode. I also read entertainment sites, I browse through episode recaps, I research shows I'm going to write about, and I try never to criticize a show without familarizing myself with the gist of things (see Law & Order and NCIS). I know who Walter White and Don Draper are, I know how The Sopranos and Succession ended, and I know that Sam didn't run off with Diane. It may not be my world but I do have to live in it, so it behooves me to keep track of it. 
*Although I'll be the first to fess up to my ignorance, which I have to do many, many times. 
The point of it all is that I'm quite out of step when it comes to contemporary pop culture, and, frankly, I'm glad. Still, as I remarked to a friend the other day, it's sobering to discover that one has outlived their time. TV  

What's on TV? Tuesday, March 1, 1977

We're used to seeing the listings from Northern California, but this week we take a look down south, to the Los Angeles Metropolitan edition. And in the days when Johnny Carson was not only the king of late night but its sole monarch, CBS and ABC carved out their own niche with movies, two of which stand out. First is CBS's How the West Was Won, a three-hour epic starring Jimmy Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Carroll Baker, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and a cast of hundreds; Spencer Tracy narrates. It is, it seems to me, a bold move to program a three-hour movie that starts at 11:30 p.m. on a weeknight. No less unusual is ABC's Crazy Joe, a violent crime drama, that actually carries one of those warnings that it "may not be suitable for all family members." At 11:30, I'd hope that "all family members" might be limited to adults. But then, I'm old fashioned that way.
  -2- KNXT (CBS)

  MORNING

      6:30

DIMENSIONS IN CULTURE

      7:00

CBS NEWS—Bruce Morton/Hughes Rudd

      8:00

CAPTAIN KANGAROO

      9:00

PRICE IS RIGHT—Game

    10:00

DOUBLE DARE—Game

    10:30

LOVE OF LIFE—Serial

    10:55

CBS NEWS—Douglas Edwards

    11:00

YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS—Serial

    11:30

SEARCH FOR TOMORROW—Serial

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

NOONTIME—Wina/Llewelyn

    12:25

KNXT EDITORIAL

    12:30

AS THE WORLD TURNS—Serial

      1:30

GUIDING LIGHT—Serial

      2:00

ALL IN THE FAMILY

      2:30

MATCH GAME

Richard Dawson, Dick Gautier, Jo Ann Pflug, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, Fannie Flagg

      3:00

TATTLETALES—Game

Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, Joe Hyams and Elke Sommer

      3:30

MIKE DOUGLAS

Co-host: Linda Lavin. Guests: Ken Stabler, Terry Bradshaw, Jo Jo Starbuck, Stan Kann

      5:00

NEWS

  EVENING

      6:00

CBS NEWS—Walter Cronkite

      6:30

DINAH!

      8:00

WHO’S WHO

      9:00

M*A*S*H

      9:30

ONE DAY AT A TIME

    10:00

KOJAK—Crime Drama

    11:00

NEWS

    11:25

KNXT EDITORIAL

 

  11:30

MOVIE—Western

“How the West Was Won” (1962)

      2:30

NEWS

      3:00

KNXT EDITORIAL

      3:05

MOVIE—Biography

“Prince of Players” (1954)

      5:05

NOONTIME—Wina/Llewelyn

 

 

  -3- KEYT (SANTA BARBARA) (ABC)

  MORNING

      6:00

PTL CLUB—Religion

      7:00

GOOD MORNING AMERICA—David Hartman

      9:00

PTL CLUB—Religion

    10:00

SCHOOL PROFILE—Discussion

    10:30

HAPPY DAYS

    11:00

DON HO—Variety

    11:30

FAMILY FEUD—Game

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

$20,000 PYRAMID—Game

Tony Randall, Debralee Scott

    12:30

ALL MY CHILDREN—Serial

      1:00

RYAN’S HOPE—Serial

      1:30

ONE LIFE TO LIVE—Serial

      2:15

GENERAL HOSPITAL—Serial

      3:00

EDGE OF NIGHT—Serial

      3:30

MARCUS WELBY, M.D.—Drama

      4:30

IRONSIDE—Crime Drama

      5:30

ADAM-12—Crime Drama

  EVENING

      6:00

ABC NEWS—Harry Reasoner/Barbara Walters

      6:30

NEWS

      7:00

EMERGENCY ONE!—Drama

      8:00

HAPPY DAYS

      8:30

LAVERNE & SHIRLEY

      9:00

FAMILY—Drama

    10:00

RICH MAN, POOR MAN

    11:00

NEWS

 

  11:30

MOVIE—Crime Drama

“Crazy Joe” (1974)

[ABC plans an announcement warning that the movie may not be suitable for all family members.]

      1:35

NEWS

 

 

  -4- KNBC (NBC)

  MORNING

      5:55

KNOWLEDGE

      6:25

NOT FOR WOMEN ONLY

      6:55

NEWS

      7:00

TODAY—Tom Brokaw

      9:00

SANFORD AND SON

      9:30

HOLLYWOOD SQUARES—Game

Darleen Carr, George Gobel. Florence Henderson, Earl Holliman, James Carrol Jordan, Paul Lynde, Steve Martin, Robert Reed, Karen Valentine

    10:00

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

    10:30

SHOOT FOR THE STARS

William Shatner, Barbara Feldon

    11:00

NAME THAT TUNE—Game

    11:30

LOVERS AND FRIENDS—Serial

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

THAT GIRL—Comedy

    12:30

DAYS OF OUR LIVES—Serial

      1:30

DOCTORS—Serial

      2:00

ANOTHER WORLD—Serial

      3:00

GONG SHOW—Game

      3:30

MEDICAL CENTER—Drama

      4:30

TO TELL THE TRUTH

Gene Rayburn, Peggy Cass, Nipsey Russell, Kitty Carlisle

      5:00

NEWS

  EVENING

      6:00

NEWS

      7:00

NBC NEWS—John Chancellor/David Brinkley

      7:30

CANDID CAMERA

      8:00

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP—Adventure

      9:00

POLICE WOMAN—Crime Drama

    10:00

POLICE STORY—Crime Drama

    11:00

NEWS

 

  11:30

JOHNNY CARSON

Scheduled: Charles Nelson Reilly, Phyllis Newman, Eubie Blake

      1:00

TOMORROW—Tom Snyder

Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Mills

      2:00

NEWS

 

 

  -5- KTLA (Ind.)

  MORNING

      5:55

NEWS

      6:00

GALE STORM BW        6:30

VILLA ALEGRE—Children

      7:00

700 CLUB—Religion

      8:30

PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING—Religion

      9:00

GALLERY—Johnny Grant

      9:30

MOVIE—Musical

“Call Me Madam” (1953)

    11:30

MAYBERRY R.F.D.—Comedy

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

DICK VAN DYKE—Comedy BW      12:30

OZZIE AND HARRIET

      1:00

MOVIE—Adventure BW  “Lost Continent” (1951)

      2:30

RIFLEMAN—Western BW        3:00

BIG VALLEY—Western

      4:00

LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE

      4:30

LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE

      5:00

BONANZA—Western

  EVENING

      6:00

NBA BASKETBALL

Los Angeles Lakers at Atlanta Hawks

      8:30

MOVIE—Drama

“The Daredevil” (1971)

    10:00

NEWS

    11:00

LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE

 

  11:30

LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE

    12:00

BEST OF GROUCHO—Game BW      12:30

MOVIE—Comedy BW  “Operation Warhead” (English; 1961)

      2:30

NEWS

      3:00

MOVIE—Drama BW  “The Tiger Attacks” (French; 1959)

      4:55

NEWS

      5:00

MOVIE—Thriller BW  “The Raven” (1935)

 

 

  -7- KABC (ABC)

  MORNING

      6:00

EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS

      6:30

MICHAEL JACKSON—Discussion

      7:00

GOOD MORNING AMERICA—David Hartman

      9:00

A.M. LOS ANGELES

    10:30

HAPPY DAYS

    11:00

DON HO—Variety

    11:30

FAMILY FEUD—Game

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

$20,000 PYRAMID—Game

Tony Randall, Debralee Scott

    12:30

ALL MY CHILDREN—Serial

      1:00

RYAN’S HOPE—Serial

      1:30

ONE LIFE TO LIVE—Serial

      2:15

GENERAL HOSPITAL—Serial

      3:00

EDGE OF NIGHT—Serial

      3:30

MOVIE—Drama

“The Arrangement” (1969)

      5:00

NEWS

  EVENING

      6:00

NEWS

      7:00

ABC NEWS—Harry Reasoner/Barbara Walters

      7:30

HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

      8:00

HAPPY DAYS

      8:30

LAVERNE & SHIRLEY

      9:00

RICH MAN, POOR MAN

    10:00

FAMILY

    11:00

NEWS

 

  11:30

MOVIE—Crime Drama

“Crazy Joe” (1974)

[ABC plans an announcement warning that the movie may not be suitable for all family members.]

      1:35

NEWS

 

 

  -9- KHJ (Inc.)

  MORNING

      6:00

COMMUNITY FEEDBACK—Discussion

      6:30

OPERATION EMERGENCY—Fernando Del Rio

      7:00

WOMAN’S TOUCH—Mary Walker

      7:30

LASSIE—Drama

      8:00

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO BW        8:30

JACK LA LANNE

      9:00

NINE IN THE MORNING

    11:00

PHIL DONAHUE

Guests: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

DIVORCE COURT

    12:30

NEWS—Chris Harris

      1:00

MOVIE—Comedy

“The Court Jester” (1956)

      3:00

MOVIE—Adventure

“Canyon Passage” (1946)

      5:00

WILD WILD WEST—Adventure

  EVENING

      6:00

GUNSMOKE—Western

      7:00

CONCENTRATION—Game

      7:30

JOKER’S WILD—Game

      8:00

MOVIE—Thriller

“Rider on the Rain” (French; 1969)

    10:00

NEWS

    10:30

INSIDE STORY

    11:00

MAVERICK—Western BW      12:00

MOVIE—Drama

“Child Under a Leaf” (Canadian; 1974)

      1:45

MOVIE—Thriller

“Panic in the City” (1968)

      3:45

MOVIE—Drama BW  “The Raging Tide” (1951)

      5:30

WANTED—DEAD OR ALIVE BW 

 

 

  11 KTTV (Ind.)

  MORNING

      6:00

VIEWPOINT ON NUTRITION

      6:30

PORKY PIG—Cartoon

      7:00

BUGS AND HIS BUDDIES

      7:30

BUGS AND HIS BUDDIES

      8:00

FLINTSTONES—Cartoon

      8:30

BULLWINKLE—Cartoon

      9:00

I LOVE LUCY—Comedy BW        9:30

GREEN ACRES--Comedy

    10:00

HOGAN’S HEROES—Comedy

    10:30

GOOD DAY!

    11:00

METRONEWS, METRONEWS

    11:30

LET’S RAP—Discussion

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

MOVIE—Biography

“Valentino” (1951)

      2:20

BEN HUNTER—Interview

      2:30

BOZO’S BIG TOP—Cartoon

      3:00

JETSONS—Cartoon

      3:30

BUGS AND HIS BUDDIES—Cartoon

      4:00

BUGS AND HIS BUDDIES—Cartoon

      4:30

ARCHIES—Cartoon

      5:00

NEW MICKEY MOUSE CLUB

      5:30

BEWITCHED—Comedy

  EVENING

      6:00

PARTRIDGE FAMILY—Comedy

      6:30

FAMILY AFFAIR—Comedy

      7:00

I LOVE LUCY—Comedy BW        7:30

BRADY BUNCH—Comedy

      8:00

LAST OF THE WILD

      8:30

CROSS-WITS—Game

Jaye P. Morgan, Ronnie Schell

      9:00

MERV GRIFFIN

Guests: Jack Jones, Lonnie Shorr, Debralee Scott, Vivian Reed, Sander Vanocur

    10:30

NEWS

    11:00

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN

 

  11:30

METRONEWS, METRONEWS

    12:00

MOVIE—Comedy BW  “Together Again” (1944)

      2:00

MOVIE—Drama BW  “The Saxon Charm” (1948)

      4:30

MOVIE—Drama BW  “Front Page Story” (English; 1954)

 

 

  12 KCOY (SANTA MARIA) (CBS)

  MORNING

      7:00

CBS NEWS—Bruce Morton/Hughes Rudd

      8:00

CAPTAIN KANGAROO

      9:00

PRICE IS RIGHT—Game

    10:00

DOUBLE DARE—Game

    10:30

LOVE OF LIFE—Serial

    10:55

CBS NEWS—Douglas Edwards

    11:00

YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS—Serial

    11:30

SEARCH FOR TOMORROW—Serial

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

GALLOPING GOURMET

    12:30

AS THE WORLD TURNS—Serial

      1:30

GUIDING LIGHT—Serial

      2:00

ALL IN THE FAMILY

      2:30

MATCH GAME

Richard Dawson, Dick Gautier, Jo Ann Pflug, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, Fannie Flagg

      3:00

TATTLETALES—Game

Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, Joe Hyams and Elke Sommer,

      3:30

NOT FOR WOMEN ONLY

      4:00

BONANZA—Western

      5:00

STAR TREK—Science Fiction

  EVENING

      6:00

CBS NEWS—Walter Cronkite

      6:30

NEWS

      7:00

PHIL DONAHUE

      8:00

WHO’S WHO

      9:00

M*A*S*H

      9:30

ONE DAY AT A TIME

    10:00

KOJAK—Crime Drama

    11:00

NEWS

 

  11:30

MOVIE—Western

“How the West Was Won” (1962)

 

 

  13 KCOP (Ind.)

  MORNING

      6:15

DAYBREAK—Scott Ellsworth

      6:30

SPEED RACER—Cartoon

      7:00

TERRYTOONS

      7:30

FELIX THE CAT—Cartoon

      8:00

SUPERMAN, AQUAMAN, BATMAN—Cartoon

      8:30

MIGHTY HERCULES—Cartoon

      9:00

I DREAM OF JEANNIE—Comedy

      9:30

ROMPER ROOM—Children

    10:00

COLLAGE

    10:30

WILDLIFE ADVENTURE

    11:00

GOMER PYLE, USMC—Comedy

    11:30

NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

I DREAM OF JEANNIE

    12:30

COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER

      1:00

MAJOR ADAMS, TRAILMASTER—Western BW        2:00

NEWS

      2:30

MUNSTERS—Comedy

      3:00

GILLIGAN’S ISLAND—Comedy

      3:30

SUPERMAN, AQUAMAN, BATMAN—Cartoon

      4:00

FELIX THE CAT—Cartoon

      4:30

CARTOONS

      5:00

BATMAN—Adventure

Guest villain: Cesar Romero (The Joker)

      5:30

SUPERMAN—Adventure

  EVENING

      6:00

ADAM-12—Crime Drama

      6:30

ADAM-12—Crime Drama

      7:00

FBI—Crime Drama

      8:00

PERRY MASON BW        9:00

VIRGINIAN—Western

    10:30

NEWS

    11:00

HONEYMOONERS—Comedy BW   

  11:30

SERGEANT BILKO—Comedy BW      12:00

MOVIE—Drama BW  “The Other Woman” (1954)

      2:00

NEWS

 

 

  22 KWHY (Ind.)

  MORNING

      7:00

STOCK MARKET OPENING

      7:30

MARKET COVERAGE

      8:00

ASK THE OPTIONS EXXPERT

      8:30

COMMUDITY LINE

      9:00

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

      9:30

EXECUTIVE REPORT

    10:00

NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

    10:15

PLANNING YOUR FUTURE

    10:30

MARKET COVERAGE

    10:45

INDUSTRY SPEAKS

    11:00

MARKET UPDATE

    11:15

OPTIONS

    11:30

MARKET COVERAGE

    11:45

MARKET UPDATE

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

CONCEPTS IN COMMODITIES

    12:15

MARKET UPDATE

    12:30

MARKET COVERAGE

    12:45

COMMODITY REPORT

      1:00

MARKET CLOSING ACTIVITIES

      1:15

DOW 30

      1:30

CHARTING THE MARKET

      5:00

PELICULA—Sera Anunciado

  EVENING

      6:50

LOS ASTROS TE GUIAN

      7:00

AMERICAN-ISRAEL JEWISH HOUR—Linda Tallen

      8:00

NEWS—Chinese

      8:30

CHINESE TELEVISION SERVICE

      9:00

CHINESE MUSICAL VARIETY

      9:30

JUDGE PAO CHIN TIEN—Drama

 

 

  24 KVCR (SAN BERNARDINO) (PBS)

  MORNING

      8:30

LOWELL THOMAS REMEMBERS

      9:00

SESAME STREET—Children

    10:00

PREVIN AND THE PITTSBURGH—Music

Debut

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

SESAME STREET—Children

      2:30

LILAS, YOGA AND YOU

      3:00

ZOOM—Children

      3:30

VILLA ALEGRE—Children

      4:00

SESAME STREET—Children

      5:00

MISTER ROGERS—Children

      5:30

LILAS, YOGA AND YOU

  EVENING

      6:00

GUPPIES TO GROUPERS

      6:30

DIMENSIONS IN CULTURES

      7:00

MUSIC IN WESTERN CULTURE

      7:30

LOWELL THOMAS REMEMBERS

      8:00

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Special

      9:00

THREE ARTISTS IN THE NORTHWEST—Documentary

      9:30

SECOND ENDING

    10:00

NOVA

    11:00

LATINO CONSORTIUM

 

  11:30

ABC NEWS—Harry Reasoner/Barbara Walters

Captioned for the hearing-impaired

 

 

  28 KCET (PBS)

  MORNING

      7:00

YOGA FOR HEALTH

      7:30

MISTER ROGERS—Children

      8:00

ZOOM—Children

      8:30

CARRASCOLENDAS—Children

      9:00

SESAME STREET—Children

    11:00

ELECTRIC COMPANY—Children

    11:30

SESAME STREET—Children

  AFTERNOON

      3:00

DIMENSIONS IN CULTURES

      3:30

NEW DIRECTIONS IN COMMUNITY CARE

      4:00

VILLA ALEGRE—Children

      4:30

MISTER ROGERS—Children

      5:00

SESAME STREET—Children

  EVENING

      6:00

ELECTRIC COMPANY—Children

      6:30

ZOOM—Children

      7:00

MacNEIL/LEHRER REPORT

      7:30

28 TONIGHT

      8:00

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Special

      9:00

THREE ARTISTS IN THE NORTHWEST—Documentary

      9:30

OASIS IN SPACE—Documentary

    10:00

DOCUMENTARY SHOWCASE

    11:00

LATINO CONSORTIUM

 

 

  30 KHOF (GLENDALE) (Ind.)

  AFTERNOON

      1:15

NEWS

      1:30

SONRISE: FESTIVAL OF FAITH

      3:30

P.T.L. CLUB—Religion

      5:30

LIVING WORD—Religion

  EVENING

      6:00

DAVEY AND GOLIATH—Children

      6:30

FAMILY COME TOGETHER

      7:00

SONRISE: FESTIVAL OF FAITH

      9:00

VOICE OF FAITH—Dr. Gene Scott

    10:00

P.T.L. CLUB—Religion

 

 

  34 KMEX (Ind.)

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

NEWS

    12:10

AHORA LOS ANGELES—Public Service

      1:00

SAL Y PIMIENTA—Variety

      2:00

EL PROFESSOR PARTICULAR

      3:00

PICHIMAHUIDA

      4:00

MUNDO DE JUGETE—Drama

      4:30

PEQUENCES

      5:30

NOTICIERO

  EVENING

      6:00

EL HIJO DE ANGELA MARIA

      7:00

24 HORAS

      8:00

VAMAS A CANTAR

      8:30

EDUARDO II—Comedy

      9:30

ESPECTACULAR ‘77

    10:00

EL BIEN AMADO

    10:30

NOTICIERO

    11:00

EL DIOS DE BARRO

 

  11:30

PELICULA

 

 

  36 KMIR (PALM SPRINGS) (NBC)

  MORNING

      7:00

TODAY—Tom Brokaw

      9:00

SANFORD AND SON

      9:30

HOLLYWOOD SQUARES—Game

Darleen Carr, George Gobel. Florence Henderson, Earl Holliman, James Carrol Jordan, Paul Lynde, Steve Martin, Robert Reed, Karen Valentine

    10:00

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

    10:30

SHOOT FOR THE STARS

William Shatner, Barbara Feldon

    11:00

NAME THAT TUNE—Game

    11:30

LOVERS AND FRIENDS—Serial

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

GOOD DAY!

    12:30

DAYS OF OUR LIVES—Serial

      1:30

DOCTORS—Serial

      2:00

ANOTHER WORLD—Serial

      3:00

GONG SHOW—Game

      3:30

MIKE DOUGLAS

Co-host: Linda Lavin. Guests: Ken Stabler, Terry Bradshaw, Jo Jo Starbuck, Stan Kann

      5:00

DINAH!

Guests: Monty Hall, Dick Haymes, the Pointer Sisters, Lonnie Shorr, Brick

  EVENING

      6:00

NEWS

      6:30

TOWN TALK—John Conte

      7:00

NBC NEWS—John Chancellor/David Brinkley

      7:30

HOLLYWOOD SQUARES—Game

Gary Burghoff, John Byner

      8:00

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP—Adventure

      9:00

POLICE WOMAN—Crime Drama

    10:00

POLICE STORY—Crime Drama

    11:00

NEWS

 

  11:30

JOHNNY CARSON

Scheduled: Charles Nelson Reilly, Phyllis Newman, Eubie Blake

      1:00

TOMORROW—Tom Snyder

Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Mills

 

 

  40 KLXA (Ind.)

  MORNING

      9:30

THE WORD—Religion

      9:40

DAY BY DAY—Dick Miles

      9:45

BEHIND THE SCENES

    10:00

ONE WAY GAME—Children

    10:30

PRAISE THE LORD!—Religion

  AFTERNOON

    12:30

TODAY IN BIBLE PROPHECY—Dr. Charles Taylor

      1:00

IN THE BEGINNING . . . GOD

      1:30

INSIDE ISRAEL

      2:00

WONDER OF THE WORLD—Religion

      2:30

ENJOYING MARRIAGE

      3:00

PRAISE THE LORD!—Religion

      5:00

CAPTAIN ANDY—Children

      5:30

BEHIND THE SCENES

      5:45

THE WORD—Religion

      5:55

DAY BY DAY—Dick Mills

  EVENING

      6:00

WONDER OF THE WORLD—Religion

      6:30

INSIDE ISRAEL

      7:00

IN THE BEGINNING . . . GOD

      7:30

SPIRIT SONG—Variety

      8:00

MAN IN THE ARENA—Interview

      8:30

GOOD NEWS—Interview

      9:00

PRAISE THE LORD!—Religion

 

  11:30

BEHIND THE SCENES

    11:45

DAY BY DAY—Dick Mills

    11:50

THE WORD—Religion

 

 

  42 KPLM (PALM SPRINGS) (ABC)

  MORNING

      7:00

GOOD MORNING AMERICA—David Hartman

      9:00

I SPY—Adventure

    10:00

MORNING REPORT

    10:10

PANORAMA DEL VALLE—Spanish

    10:30

HAPPY DAYS

    11:00

DON HO—Variety

    11:30

FAMILY FEUD—Game

  AFTERNOON

    12:00

$20,000 PYRAMID—Game

Tony Randall, Debralee Scott

    12:30

ALL MY CHILDREN—Serial

      1:00

RYAN’S HOPE—Serial

      1:30

ONE LIFE TO LIVE—Serial

      2:15

GENERAL HOSPITAL—Serial

      3:00

EDGE OF NIGHT—Serial

      3:30

LASSIE—Drama

      4:00

MOVIE—Drama BW  “Twelve O’clock High” (1949)

  EVENING

      6:00

NEWS

      6:30

NOT FOR WOMEN ONLY

      7:00

ABC NEWS—Harry Reasoner/Barbara Walters

      7:30

GET SMART—Comedy

      8:00

HAPPY DAYS

      8:30

LAVERNE & SHIRLEY

      9:00

RICH MAN, POOR MAN

    10:00

FAMILY

    11:00

NEWS

 

  11:30

P.T.L. CLUB—Religion

 

 

  50 KOCE (HUNTINGTON BEACH) (PBS)

  AFTERNOON

      5:00

MISTER ROGERS—Children

      5:30

INFINITY FACTORY—Children

  EVENING

      6:00

VOTER’S PIPELINE

      6:30

DIMENSIONS IN CULTURES

      7:00

HOME GARDENER

      7:30

FORUM

      8:30

WORLD PRESS

      9:00

MASTERPIECE THEATRE

"Upstairs, Downstairs" Part 7     10:00

PREVIN AND THE PITTSBURGH—Music

Debut

 

 

  52 KBSC (Ind.)

  AFTERNOON

      3:00

KIMBA—Cartoon

      3:30

BANANA SPLITS AND FRIENDS--Cartoon

      4:00

ULTRA MAN

      4:30

SPIDERMAN—Cartoon

      5:00

ADDAMS FAMILY—Comedy BW        5:30

LEAVE IT TO BEAVER BW    EVENING

      6:00

LITTLE RASCALS—Comedy BW        6:30

LITTLE RASCALS—Comedy BW        7:00

McHALE’S NAVY—Comedy BW        7:30

F TROOP—Comedy BW        8:00

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: THE WORLD BEYOND

      9:00

WRESTLING

    10:00

DR. JAGGERS AND MISS VELMA

 

 

  58 KLCS (PBS)

  MORNING

    10:00

STUDIO SEE—Children

    11:00

CLASSIC THEATRE PREVIEW

    11:30

AMERICAN INDIAN ARTISTS—Documentary

  AFTERNOON

      3:00

DEALING WITH VALUES AND MORAL CONFLICT

      3:30

SAMPLER 58

      4:00

ELEMENTARY SCIENCE

      4:30

OPEN MATH

      5:00

VILLA ALEGRE—Children

      5:30

DRAWING—Instruction

  EVENING

      6:00

VEGETABLE SOUP

      6:30

GENERAL EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

      7:00

AMERICAN HISTORY

      7:30

LOWELL THOMAS REMEMBERS

      8:00

THIS FAR BY FAITH—Documentary

Special

 

TV