What do you think?
Rate this book
Up the Tube: Prime-Time TV in the Silverman Years, Like It or Not
An inside look at the television industry discusses the networks, the corporate executives, the high-stakes battles for profits and prestige, the ratings war, and the meteoric career of Fred Silverman.
- GenresTv
313 pages, Hardcover
First published September 23, 1981
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 21, 2024
I enjoyed this look at 1970s television programming, despite the dreadful title, and recommend it for the five people who are into this sort of thing (actually, just an interest in the history of TV may be all you need). The book’s main focus is on Fred Silverman, of course, whose runs at all three networks lead him to be one of TV’s most influential people ever. Up the Tube (yeesh with that name) was published in 1981, right at the end of Silverman’s shortened reign at NBC, so there’s no mention of that here. There’s a whiff of Silverman hagiography at the start, but that’s certainly gone by the end. Histories like this often benefit from years of hindsight, but Bedell brings a welcome immediacy to the subject. (For context, Happy Days, The Jeffersons, and Little House on The Prairie were still in production; Tales of the Gold Monkey, Cutter to Houston, and Manimal were around the corner.)
September 10, 2023
My, what a difference 40 years' perspective can make! I first read this book in the early 1980s and thought it was brilliant, but of course back then there was little written on the history of TV programming and we couldn't use Google to fact check. Fast forward to 2023 and in reading it again I now see that it is filled with mistakes, factual errors, incomplete information, and the author's often incorrect spin on what shows worked and what didn't.
This was Sally Bedell's first book and it shows her lack of understanding about how television works. She has so many things wrong in it it's shocking. The author had access to all the major players and focuses on the incredible Fred Silverman. Thankfully this book memorializes the man who had the single biggest impact on the history of television, but with all the information crammed in she still manages to not quite capture his incredible success.
I won't go into a list here of her many flubs but just take this one paragraph in the spinoffs chapter: "The Danny Thomas Show spawned The Andy Griffith Show, which in turn produced two of its own spinoffs: Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and The Don Knotts Show. Similarly, the character Pearl in The Beverly Hillbillies started her own successful series Petticoat Junction." Obviously the writer doesn't understand what a spinoff is.
Don Knotts played Barney Fife on sitcom Andy Griffith Show, left the CBS network in 1965 to do movies, then in 1970 got an offer from NBC to do his own variety show under his own name. His exodus from CBS after winning multiple Emmys playing Fife is one of the most famous bad career choices by an actor in TV history. That new show was NOT a spinoff of The Andy Griffith Show! It was on another network and the star wasn't playing the Barney character!
Pearl on Hillbillies was played by Bea Benaderet, an actress that producers took to an entirely new show set in a different location and cast her as a character named Kate. It was not a direct spinoff (though Hillbillies' Granny appeared in two Petticoat episodes) and the author's wrong that the "character" of Pearl was spun off to a new series.
The author does slam Silverman in spots, often unfairly. At one point Silverman proclaims that his Love Boat on ABC is the first hour-long comedy that mixes three different unrelated guest star storylines with a continuing cast of players. He was right. But Bedell adds: "In fact, an ABC hit of the early seventies, Love American Style, had taken a similar approach."
No, it hadn't! It had separate unrelated segments, one right after the other, with no continuing cast involved in the storylines, nor common timelines or set pieces. Love American Style was like three or four unique one-act plays that took place in different locations, separated by commercials with no common elements nor crossover segments. What made Love Boat special was its ability to mix the regulars with the guest stars in ways that made it appear they were all blended into the same time element and set.
And her greatest failure is to see Silverman as the man who created reality TV, with the writer demeaning him for creating shows like Real People. Sally Bedell simply blows it, again and again. These kinds of errors are sprinkled throughout the book and if you're using this as reference to study TV history, be very skeptical.
She also doesn't clarify what she considers a "hit." When the Dick Van Dyke Show leaves the air, Bedell fails to mention it was the number one show on television, simply calling it a hit. At another point she refers to a show that ranks 17th as a hit as well. Diff'rent Strokes peaked at #17 and that is called "moderate hit." Then when Tony Orlando and Dawn make the top 20 of the ratings, she calls those numbers "mediocre" and says guest stars "kept the show alive for a while...the network equivalent of kidney dialysis."
The book wraps up too quickly and unfortunately finishes before Silverman leaves NBC, so the ending is unsatisfying. Bedell wrote back then that broadcast networks were dying and would soon be gone--wrong! She briefly mentions CBS regaining numbers with a new show called Dallas but she fails to see the gigantic hit that would become as well as the NBC resurgence in 1984 with The Cosby Show. The author also barely mentions cable TV, which by the publication of this book had mushroomed into a great alternative. She was so quick to want to criticize much of what's on broadcast network prime time, predicting its doom, that she failed to see the future sitting right in front of her eyes.
I could go page-by-page through this and disagree with not only her data and incorrect context but also her opinions, which reflect an eastern elitist snub to anything beneath her. No wonder she went on to write a book about CBS founder William Paley, a total snob who Bedell must have identified with, as well as recent books she has written on the royal family.
Why she felt qualified to write about the TV industry I'll never know, but other than being the historical record of the amazing Fred Silverman, this mistake-filled book should be tossed down the tube.
This was Sally Bedell's first book and it shows her lack of understanding about how television works. She has so many things wrong in it it's shocking. The author had access to all the major players and focuses on the incredible Fred Silverman. Thankfully this book memorializes the man who had the single biggest impact on the history of television, but with all the information crammed in she still manages to not quite capture his incredible success.
I won't go into a list here of her many flubs but just take this one paragraph in the spinoffs chapter: "The Danny Thomas Show spawned The Andy Griffith Show, which in turn produced two of its own spinoffs: Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and The Don Knotts Show. Similarly, the character Pearl in The Beverly Hillbillies started her own successful series Petticoat Junction." Obviously the writer doesn't understand what a spinoff is.
Don Knotts played Barney Fife on sitcom Andy Griffith Show, left the CBS network in 1965 to do movies, then in 1970 got an offer from NBC to do his own variety show under his own name. His exodus from CBS after winning multiple Emmys playing Fife is one of the most famous bad career choices by an actor in TV history. That new show was NOT a spinoff of The Andy Griffith Show! It was on another network and the star wasn't playing the Barney character!
Pearl on Hillbillies was played by Bea Benaderet, an actress that producers took to an entirely new show set in a different location and cast her as a character named Kate. It was not a direct spinoff (though Hillbillies' Granny appeared in two Petticoat episodes) and the author's wrong that the "character" of Pearl was spun off to a new series.
The author does slam Silverman in spots, often unfairly. At one point Silverman proclaims that his Love Boat on ABC is the first hour-long comedy that mixes three different unrelated guest star storylines with a continuing cast of players. He was right. But Bedell adds: "In fact, an ABC hit of the early seventies, Love American Style, had taken a similar approach."
No, it hadn't! It had separate unrelated segments, one right after the other, with no continuing cast involved in the storylines, nor common timelines or set pieces. Love American Style was like three or four unique one-act plays that took place in different locations, separated by commercials with no common elements nor crossover segments. What made Love Boat special was its ability to mix the regulars with the guest stars in ways that made it appear they were all blended into the same time element and set.
And her greatest failure is to see Silverman as the man who created reality TV, with the writer demeaning him for creating shows like Real People. Sally Bedell simply blows it, again and again. These kinds of errors are sprinkled throughout the book and if you're using this as reference to study TV history, be very skeptical.
She also doesn't clarify what she considers a "hit." When the Dick Van Dyke Show leaves the air, Bedell fails to mention it was the number one show on television, simply calling it a hit. At another point she refers to a show that ranks 17th as a hit as well. Diff'rent Strokes peaked at #17 and that is called "moderate hit." Then when Tony Orlando and Dawn make the top 20 of the ratings, she calls those numbers "mediocre" and says guest stars "kept the show alive for a while...the network equivalent of kidney dialysis."
The book wraps up too quickly and unfortunately finishes before Silverman leaves NBC, so the ending is unsatisfying. Bedell wrote back then that broadcast networks were dying and would soon be gone--wrong! She briefly mentions CBS regaining numbers with a new show called Dallas but she fails to see the gigantic hit that would become as well as the NBC resurgence in 1984 with The Cosby Show. The author also barely mentions cable TV, which by the publication of this book had mushroomed into a great alternative. She was so quick to want to criticize much of what's on broadcast network prime time, predicting its doom, that she failed to see the future sitting right in front of her eyes.
I could go page-by-page through this and disagree with not only her data and incorrect context but also her opinions, which reflect an eastern elitist snub to anything beneath her. No wonder she went on to write a book about CBS founder William Paley, a total snob who Bedell must have identified with, as well as recent books she has written on the royal family.
Why she felt qualified to write about the TV industry I'll never know, but other than being the historical record of the amazing Fred Silverman, this mistake-filled book should be tossed down the tube.
August 13, 2023
Fun overview of the competition in TV programming among the early-days Big 3.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews