TV Quote Weekends

"Doctor says I may not even have diabetes. Says I just look like somebody who might have it."

Heather Locklear, Moonlighting Actress

In the 1980's, there was no harder working actress than Heather Locklear. Ms. Locklear starred in two hit television shows on ABC- Dynasty and TJ Hooker.

Aaron Spelling produced both shows and cast Heather Locklear in a temporary role on Dynasty. Happy to see that the audience embraced her character, shown here wearing an alluring table cloth:

Mr. Spelling cast her in season two of his ABC show TJ Hooker as a sexy police officer. 

The Dynasty audience, however, had gotten accustomed to seeing Ms. Locklear on that show and clamored for her return. Lucky for Mr. Spelling, both ABC and Heather Locklear were amenable to her doing double duty. She went full time on TJ Hooker and part time on Dynasty. When Hooker was canceled, Heather returned to Dynasty full time until it went off the air.

Perry Mason and the Future Starfleet Captain

Long before he explored the galaxy on the Starship Enterprise, Leonard Nimoy tried to match wits with famed lawyer Perry Mason in The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe. 

Missing jewels and a suspicious death sends Perry Mason on a quest to clear his client's aunt of thievery and her husband of murder. In the end, he does both, proving that the murderer was a shifty con artist played by Mr. Nimoy.

BANNED From SNL: Louise Lasser

Not a well known name these days, Louise Lasser holds the dubious distinction of being the first person ever banned from Saturday Night Live. At the time, she was starring on the loopy soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, no doubt believing herself to be at the pinnacle of Hollywood success. 

While her behavior behind the scenes played a huge part in her banning, anyone viewing the actual episode wouldn't be too shocked to discover she had been banned. In front of the camera, she looks stoned and disinterested. Behind the scenes, she insisted that she would only work with Chevy Chase. As a further insult to the cast, the only other co-star she worked with was a dog. Since it was all downhill for her career from that point, it wasn't hard for the show to ignore her.

Mr. TV: Art Linkletter

One of the earliest American television legends was not actually American. Art Linkletter was born Gordon Arthur Kelly in Canada. He was abandoned by his birth parents and was adopted by Jane and Fulton Linkletter who renamed their son and moved to San Diego, California.

Mr. Linkletter got his start on radio, but quickly transitioned to television, making friends in Hollywood and becoming a trusted pitchman.

Mr. Linkletter's most famous television show was the classic Kids Say the Darnedest Things. Art had a knack for putting children at ease enough to reveal things that they'd never tell another stranger. Embarrassing and hilarious things.

Mr. Linkletter parlayed his fame into various enterprises, including a stake in Milton Bradley's Game of Life. He also had the foresight to purchase the camera and film concession  at DISNEYLAND, helping his good friend Walt Disney finance his dream.

After a lifetime on television, Mr. Linkletter passed away in 2010 at the age of 97.

Square One Television

In the mid-1980's there was a perceived crisis in math ability among American schoolchildren. It was believed that new methods could be used to bridge the mathematics gap. Enter PBS and Children's Television Workshop. Using production methods that were familiar to viewers of MTV or Saturday Night Live, they planned an ambitious production that would get children watching because they wanted to watch; not because they were being forced.

Square One was unlike anything else seen on educational television. It featured music videos, funny sketches and top quality production values to get students interested in math. A casual viewer might have suspected that this program was just like any other- entertaining but not educational, but each segment was designed to introduce mathematical concepts in an entertaining way.

In addition to high end production values, the series even enlisted big name talent- like James Earl Jones, who starred as the captain in the show's Mathnet segments.

By all accounts, the show was extremely successful, pleasing PBS and the show's non-profit sponsors. However, the show ran into the same problems that bedeviled CTW's earlier science show 321-Contact. Television productions of this type require a ton of money to keep going. Fees from PBS stations and grants from non-profit foundations were not enough to fully cover the show's costs. CTW is able to make up the difference on Sesame Street through toy and merchandise licensing. Those opportunities didn't exist for Square One, however. CTW was unable to find companies that were willing to license merchandise based on the show and could no longer keep the show afloat. It was prematurely canceled after just a few seasons.

TV Quote Weekends

"Religion and science intertwined. Aliens live inside of our minds. A billion year contract we have signed. It all makes sense to me!"

If You Ever Wondered...

It's an all too familiar sight on network television- a show that is loved by the critics and gets a small but stable following ends up canceled. The network expresses its regrets that the show just never seemed to find a following despite its best efforts. Most of the time the fans blame the network for not promoting the show or moving it around the schedule so much that it could never get n audience. The network typically just shrugs and it's left to others to argue the cause. Except for the case of WKRP in Cincinnati.

WKRP captured the attention of critics, who heaped praise on the show. The problem was that audiences seemed to ignore it, so CBS helpfully moved the show around the schedule. It didn't seem to do very well in any of the 11 different time slots it was given. Fans of the show believed this was the problem; viewers were never sure when it would air. CBS decided that this meant the show would never fully catch on no matter where it was on the schedule. In 1982 they canceled the show after just four seasons.

Ironically, the show finally got a stable time slot as CBS burned off the last few episodes and its contracted rerun airings. Now that the show was in one place from week to week, its ratings exploded. The fans and critics were right- the show could succeed with a stable time slot.

The ratings were too good to ignore. CBS decided it would un-cancel the series. However, by the time CBS decided to renew the show, series stars Loni Anderson, Gary Sandy and Howard Hesseman had signed onto other projects. Unwilling to bring the show back without its biggest stars, CBS chose to keep the show canceled. Unfortunately, CBS didn't seem to learn any lessons from this situation.

Steptoe.... And Son?

The classic American sitcom Sanford and Son was actually based on a British classic called Steptoe and Son.

Much like its American counterpart, Steptoe and Son followed the hi jinks of a father/son scrap business in which a "dirty old man" tries to keep the family business afloat while dealing with his pretentious son who seeks to elevate himself above a junk yard job. 

Of course, the legendary Redd Foxx took on the role of the father in the American version and made it his own. Nobody could have done it any better.

The Wonders of Kinescope

In the early days of television, the available technology did not permit the recording of live broadcasts. Most television productions were lost to the ages because nobody believed that anyone would ever want to see them again. One of the first persons to see that television productions could live on was Desi Arnaz, who recorded I Love Lucy on film, preserving it for future generations.

For live productions, however, the only way to preserve the broadcast was with a kinescope. A kinescope was basically a film camera trained on a television that was showing the broadcast.

While the broadcast did get recorded, the footage was often poor or jittery. Many "lost" productions that were eventually found often were recorded in this manner. One such recording was the live broadcast of the opening of DISNEYLAND. Long thought to be lost, the footage was found in the 1990's and restored to as good as possible from the kinescope film.

W*A*L*T*E*R

We've discussed the sad attempt at keeping the iconic sitcom M*A*S*H alive with the less than stellar AfterM*A*S*H. As flawed as that show was, it sadly wasn't the worst attempt to cash in on the success of M*A*S*H. That dubious distinction goes to the little seen W*A*L*T*E*R which would have focused on the lovable Radar O'Reilly and his problematic return to peacetime. The show was not picked up by CBS, but it was made at a time when the networks would burn off unsold pilots in the summer months. CBS chose to air it on July 17th, 1984 as a special broadcast.

We're fortunate that it was a common practice to air unsold pilots in the summer back then, because otherwise who would have believed that CBS commissioned a show in which Radar O'Reilly fails at farming and his marriage and tries to commit suicide? Were it not for a pre-SNL, pre-insanity Victoria Jackson, he would have succeeded at just that. But she's such a nice pharmacy employee that she convinces him that life is worth living. By the end of the thirty minutes, Radar has a new job, new friends and a new lease on life. Will his new relationship with the creatively named "Victoria" go anywhere? What about his new job? Viewers were forced to use their imaginations, because this sitcom was D*O*A.

Rest in Peace, Ben Powers

Alton "Ben" Powers, who was best known for his role as Thelma Evans' husband during the final season of Good Times has passed away at age 64.

Mr. Powers was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in  Providence, Rhode Island. His first public performances were at church, where he sang in the choir. He headed for Hollywood to follow his acting dreams and got a role on a short lived Laugh-In revival.

It was his role as the down on his luck Keith Anderson that proved to be his big break. While he starred in a variety of roles in the years following Good Times, none were as high profile. He quietly retired from acting thirty years ago and had not starred in anything since.

The Cable Comedy Wars

In the 1980's, it seemed as though the sky was the limit when it came to cable television. About the only thing a successful cable operator needed to do was to be the first to do a particular genre and millions of dollars awaited them. Unfortunately for the comedy world, however, there were two channels vying to become THE comedy cable network- HA! Television and The Comedy Channel.

HA! would seek to use its parent company Viacom's huge catalog of classic sitcoms to launch itself as the place to go for comedy. 

The Comedy Channel, owned by TimeWarner's HBO, would attempt to produce new programming from a variety of sources to make up its programming day. Unfortunately, it was unable to afford much programming, so it would repeat its primary programming block three times each day.

After several years of competition, Neither network had made much headway in the cable industry. The decision was made to combine the two channels, rather than just continue a brutal competition that would probably just result in both channels going bankrupt. Comedy Central was formed.