Category: Television & Radio

Was it just me, or was Law & Order: Trial By Jury fairly disappointing? Nothing had time to really develop it seemed. Shallow.

Today’s New York Times profiles the new Law & Order franchise Trial by Jury. Jerry Orbach fans will particularly appreciate this article.

The show debuts March 3rd.

Is it just me or is watching the Grammy Awards telecast a lot like listening to Top 40 radio? One song, one award, eleventeen commercials and station breaks.

From 1977 interview —

Q: What would you like your epitaph to be?

CARSON [after pause for thought]: I’ll be right back.

This and the item below from a lengthy February 1978 article about Johnny Carson by Kenneth Tynan in The New Yorker.

Functional Ambivalent has a good take on Johnny Carson —

The thing that made Carson Carson was that he never went too far.

Whatever it is in a comic’s brain that conjurs jokes instantly…the dare-devil part that starts speaking the front of the joke before the back of the joke has even been formulated…the part that synthesises personality and context and culture into a singular, funny whole…that thing, in Carson, never, ever went over the line. In 30 years on the air — much of it live — Carson jabbed hilariously at his guests without drawing blood. There were no backstage tears at The Tonight Show.

A gentleman, Oscar Wilde once said, is someone who never insults anyone unintentionally. Johnny Carson was a very, very funny gentleman.

There was no person alive during my lifetime that I admired more or that I would rather have met than Johnny Carson.

Damn cigarettes.

(Carson died this morning, reportedly of emphysema.)

The 12-hour mini-series Roots premiered on this date in 1977. According to the Encyclopedia of Television:

Roots remains one of television’s landmark programs….For eight consecutive nights it riveted the country. ABC executives initially feared that the historical saga about slavery would be a ratings disaster. Instead, Roots scored higher ratings than any previous entertainment program in history. It averaged a 44.9 rating and a 66 audience share for the length of its run. The seven episodes that followed the opener earned the top seven spots in the ratings for their week. The final night held the single-episode ratings record until 1983, when the finale of M*A*S*H aired on CBS.

… Apprehensions that Roots would flop shaped the way that ABC presented the show. Familiar television actors like Lorne Greene were chosen for the white, secondary roles, to reassure audiences. The white actors were featured disproportionately in network previews. For the first episode, the writers created a conscience-stricken slave captain (Ed Asner), a figure who did not appear in Haley’s novel but was intended to make white audiences feel better about their historical role in the slave trade. Even the show’s consecutive-night format allegedly resulted from network apprehensions. ABC programming chief Fred Silverman hoped that the unusual schedule would cut his network’s imminent losses–and get Roots off the air before sweeps week.

Silverman, of course, need not have worried. Roots garnered phenomenal audiences. On average, 80 million people watched each of the last seven episodes. 100 million viewers, almost half the country, saw the final episode, which still claims one of the highest Nielsen ratings ever recorded, a 51.1 with a 71 share. A stunning 85% of all television homes saw all or part of the mini-series….Today, the show’s social effects may appear more ephemeral, but at the time they seemed widespread. Over 250 colleges and universities planned courses on the saga, and during the broadcast, over 30 cities declared “Roots” weeks.

NewMexiKen co-directed a symposium at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1979, that included Alex Haley, the author of Roots. Haley, who also wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was a very self-possessed and self-assured speaker, confident yet pleasant and informal. He spoke for some time without notes, telling the story about the story — that is, how he learned about his family. Along with the Archivist of the U.S. and Professor Wesley Johnson, I sat on the stage behind Haley as he spoke and could see the rapture on the faces of his listeners. To an audience of genealogists this was the Sermon on the Mount.

According to news reports, American Idol was the most watched television program of the season when it began again on Tuesday. 33.5 million people tuned in.

That means, of course, that approximately 200 million other Americans over the age of 12 did NOT tune in.

A new study reported on at The Onion: Watching Fewer Than Four Hours Of TV A Day Impairs Ability To Ridicule Pop Culture.

From The Washington Post:

Fox felt it had to pixelate the bare bottom of animated tot Stewie in an episode of “Family Guy” that aired a couple of weeks ago.

Makes me proud to be an American.

The number one rated television program Christmas morning in New York City was the log shown burning on Channel 11.

From USATODAY.com —

A year after Janet Jackson’s breast brought a crackdown on indecency, Fox has rejected an ad for the Super Bowl offering a rare view of another celeb: Mickey Rooney’s backside.

In the spot for Airborne, a natural cold remedy, the 84-year-old star of such 1940s staples as National Velvet and the Andy Hardy films is in a sauna when someone behind him coughs. He overreacts, jumps up, screams and heads for the door. In his rush, his towel drops, baring his buns for about two seconds.

From interview with Dora’s creators at Nick Jr.:

How did you come up with the idea for Dora the Explorer?

Chris: We wanted to create a show that teaches little kids problem-solving skills. Preschoolers are our least powerful citizens. They can’t reach the light switch; they have trouble pouring the milk on their cereal. They’re faced with obstacles throughout their day and it can get pretty discouraging. Problem-solving strategies like stopping to think, asking for help, and using what you know are modeled in every Dora show.

A collection of Briscoe one-liners.

Link via dangerousmeta!

Orbach said he didn’t know “where I stop and Lennie starts, really.”

Jerry Orbach died yesterday of prostate cancer at age 69.

FunctionalAmbivalent explains the group behind 98-99 percent of the complaints to the FCC.

While the PTC is ostensibly non-partisan, Bozell is decidedly not. He was head of fundraising for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Presidential campaign and President of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), which funneled millions of dollars to Republican candidates and nothing to Democrats.

Among his allies in his campaign to dictate what other people should not be able to watch on TV is a celebrity advisory board that reads like a nightmarish dinner theater cast: Tim Conway, Pat Boone, Dean Jones and Billy Ray Cyrus, along with moral exemplar/recovering gambling addict William Bennett and former pro football player Jim “Is He Still Alive?” Otto.

Read Tom’s report, but see the background at MediaWeek.com as well.

The most popular television program in America for the week ending November 28th was Desperate Housewives. According to Nielsen, 27 million Americans watched the program Sunday.

That means that 268 million Americans didn’t watch it.

Popular is a relative term.

David Pogue notes that 60 Minutes can’t even get it right when it comes to child prodigies:

I was a little disappointed with the voice-over line, “Talented composers might write five or six symphonies in a lifetime. [12-year-old Juilliard student] Jay’s written five at the age of twelve.” As a quick Google check could have ascertained, Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, Mozart wrote 41, Haydn wrote 104, Dittersdorf wrote 120, and so on.

What do you think? Who will have gotten higher ratings? Tom Brokaw in his last appearance as anchor of the NBC Nightly News after 21 years or Ken Jennings in his last appearance on Jeopardy! after 75 shows?

But for the next few months, he plans to spend lots of time at home, where he will continue to read obsessively, speed through crossword puzzles and do most of the things he has always done. Except, of course, his own taxes. “H & R Block got hold of me and they’ve offered me free financial services for life,” he said, grinning as if he had just nailed a question on medieval horticulture. “So that I never forget their name again.”

From article about his loss in The New York Times

From “The TV Column” in Tuesday’s Washington Post, which discusses today’s Jeopardy!:

Interestingly, however, Jennings is scheduled to be a guest on tonight’s “Late Show With David Letterman,” which airs on CBS, which is owned by Viacom, which also owns King World.

And, in another of those incredible coincidences, “Nightline” — which airs on ABC, many of whose stations carry “Jeopardy!” — will this very night devote its entire broadcast to that show. ABC News correspondent Judy Muller will interview Jennings and show creator Merv Griffin, a “Nightline” rep told The Washington Post’s TV Team, while emphasizing that the show is about “a day in the life of ‘Jeopardy!,’ ” as opposed to, say, a show about Ken Jennings losing. Because they want to make sure we get word to you that Jennings is on “Nightline” tonight, but they don’t want to be accused of letting the cat out of the bag about Jennings losing. I’m just guessing here that the “Nightline” folks do not even realize the episode is going to air during the November sweeps.

Link via Kottke, who has updated his info.

Today’s Jeopardy! is reportedly the show where Ken Jennings loses. Kottke had the audio of the decisive moment but he reports that Sony asked him to remove it.

The Final Jeopardy answer that does Ken in —

Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white collar employees work only four months a year.

Fred Kaplan likes what he sees on VOOM:

VOOM offers 37 high-definition channels—four times as many as any other single satellite or cable company. Its competitors both offer HBO, Showtime, ESPN, and Discovery Theater in high-definition. VOOM has all of those, plus an additional HBO HD channel, an additional Showtime HD channel, two Starz HD channels, two Cinemax HD channels, and HD versions of The Movie Channel, Bravo, and Encore. It also has 21 unique HD channels, including 10 movie channels, two concert channels, and separate channels for news, world sports, extreme sports, fashion, and classic cartoons.

As noted here sometime ago, Ken Jennings finally loses on Jeaopary! in the show that airs Tuesday (November 30). The Final Jeopardy answer that defeats him:

Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white collar employees work only four months a year.

Answer in comments.

Thanks to Kottke for all this. He has an audio recording of the actual moment.

[When posted here in September the answer omitted “seasonal” and the number was 17,000 rather than 70,000.]

That’s Chip Douglas of My Three Sons, the sixties television show; Stanley Livingston in real life. Fifty-four!

Chip was the youngest brother initially, but became the middle brother between Robbie and Ernie after the original oldest brother Mike (Tim Considine) left the show. Ernie was played by Stanley’s brother Barry; Robbie by Don Grady.