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My Journey Through 1970s TV: Tuesday Night, 1972
I’m not sure if this was always true, but I remember Tuesday as being a good television night in the 1970s. Let’s see if the network’s offerings in 1972 back up that belief – and if my quest to watch...
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Ann Margrock and “The Littlest Lamb”
Life continues to interfere with my already (admittedly) sporadic posting regimen, so until things calm down here’s something that will be familiar to classic TV fans – a summer rerun. This piece...
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Terrible Shows I (Would Have) Liked: Dick Tracy (1967)
Batman was a surprise sensation in 1966, offering a bold, colorful, tongue-in-cheek take on DC’s caped crusader that remains a fan favorite 50 years later. So it’s not surprising that producer...
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My Journey Through 1970s TV: Wednesday Night, 1972
If you experience déjà vu while reading this, it’s because the Wednesday schedule for NBC was erroneously posted in my previous piece about Tuesday nights in 1972. That piece has since been...
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Here’s to Good Friends – And Great Commercials
This entire piece pays homage to one 30-second commercial from 1977. It’s not a famous commercial, like the one with Mikey enjoying Life Cereal, or one that introduced a catchphrase like “ring...
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When Ted Baxter Outsmarted Lou Grant - Or, Nobody Loses All the Time
One of the reasons I’ve never embraced Gilligan’s Island like so many fellow classic TV fans is that the end of every story is clear before the episode begins. That’s fine if you just enjoy spending...
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My Journey Through 1970s TV: Thursday Night, 1972
On we go in my quest to watch at least one episode from every network prime time series in the 1970s. Hopefully these pieces are bringing back some happy memories of shows that became classics, as...
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Random Facts, Opinions and Observations About Classic TV
If you’re old enough to remember the shows we talk about here, you’re also old enough to remember when Larry King had a column in USA Today in which he shared random thoughts on whatever was on his...
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TV’s Worst Decisions (According to Rolling Stone and Me)
The once-respected music mag Rolling Stone is once again dabbling into areas where it has no business, this time compiling a list of the 50 Worst Decisions in TV History. Yeah, I couldn’t resist...
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My Journey Through 1970s TV: Friday Night, 1972
At the end of a busy work week in 1972, what kind of shows were families sitting down together to watch? Time to take a look at the Friday night prime time lineups and, as always, find out whether my...
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Wanted: The Electric Company
Years ago if you had asked me what TV show not on DVD I’d most like to own, I would have answered The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. But before this month is over I will have all 14 seasons sitting...
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Integrity
What does it mean when we say a television character has “integrity”? According to an online dictionary, it could mean “The quality of being honest and having principles that you refuse to change.”...
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My Journey Through 1970s TV: Saturday Night, 1972
If you’ve noticed what the networks are serving up on Saturday these days, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they’re not even trying anymore. But in the 1970s competition for viewers was as...
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Top TV Moments: David McCallum
We’ve all seen the social media posts mourning the passing of actor David McCallum, and it was easy to surmise the age of the poster by whether McCallum was associated with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or...
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The Haunted Houses of Classic TV
Before We Begin… Today’s blog is about Halloween scares from the classic TV era. But after the atrocities committed last weekend in Israel, all of us received a sobering reminder about what genuine...
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My Journey Through 1970s TV: Sunday and Monday Nights, 1973
As we’ve sometimes done before in this series, I’m covering two nights instead of one here because of the high volume of returned shows already discussed in previous pieces. But it’s still always fun...
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The Ampersands of Comfort TV
The word “ampersand” seems needlessly stuffy for the simple “&” symbol it describes. But that’s neither here nor there, and really I don’t want to get too deep on this. It’s just a fun little...
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Fill ‘Er Up at the Comfort TV Service Station
“Oh, we're the men of Texaco; We work from Maine to Mexico. There's nothing like this Texaco of ours! Tonight we may be showmenTomorrow, we'll be servicing your cars!” I was born in 1964 so I’m not...
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My Journey Through 1970s TV; Tuesday Nights, 1973
Two out of three networks were confident enough to bring back their previous year’s Tuesday lineups for 1973. For CBS that made sense, with returning hit shows that continued to dominate in the...
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My 50 Favorite Classic TV Characters: Hayden Rorke as Dr. Alfred Bellows
This will be a new occasional feature here – a closer look at single characters from classic shows, and what makes them special. The choice to inaugurate this series with Dr. Alfred Bellows from I...
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