Author Topic: Wide Wonderful World of Media - A Look Back At Television  (Read 33055 times)

Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Wide Wonderful World of Media - A Look Back At Television
« Reply #80 on: August 04, 2007, 10:03:15 pm »
And to open NBC shows:

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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Wide Wonderful World of Media - A Look Back At Television
« Reply #81 on: August 04, 2007, 10:05:07 pm »
And here are two quick ID's from DuMont:


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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Wide Wonderful World of Media - A Look Back At Television
« Reply #82 on: August 04, 2007, 10:29:24 pm »
And here is how CBS handled themselves.  Note the familiar CBS eye was not the original logo for CBS!



CBS TV Logo
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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Wide Wonderful World of Media - A Look Back At Television
« Reply #84 on: August 04, 2007, 10:34:52 pm »
And finally for this era, here is ABC:


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Offline Phillip Dampier

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NBC 1980: We're Gonna Run This Network In The Ground
« Reply #85 on: August 09, 2007, 11:10:47 pm »
Pardon the jumping around in time.  Instead of getting into a time rut, I thought it might be more interesting to visit different TV eras, even if somewhat out of place/time order.

The year 1980 was one that NBC wanted to forget.  Viewers already had forgotten - they spent their time with ABC in 1980.  Fred Silverman had been brought in as network president to try and pull NBC out of third place.  A new campaign was launched to brand the network - "NBC Proud as a Peacock."  There was little to be proud of in 1980, as most of their new shows utterly failed within weeks of premiering.

Outside of some returning favorites, like CHiPs and a few successful premieres, such as Facts of Life (a spinoff from Diff'rent Strokes), there wasn't much to see here, and viewers did move along.

Amusingly, the jingle company that recorded the campaign jingle for NBC had another version, which Don Imus of WNBC Radio got ahold of and promptly aired.  It ripped NBC and Silverman for completely blowing it in 1980.  Critics weren't happy either.  The 1970s was dubbed the decade of "T&A" by critics who just dealt with a decade of increasingly trashy programming, big on cleavage and very light on plotlines and quality.  But despite the crap, viewers still watched, whether it was Battle of the Network Stars or Charlie's Angels or Three's Company.

The most bizarre and spectacular failure for NBC in 1980 was the totally incomprehensible and impenetrable Pink Lady & Jeff.  Viewers had no idea what to make of a show featuring Jeff, who looked like a porn star, and "Pink Lady," two Japanese young ladies who spoke practically no English whatsoever.  It was one of those Plan 9 from Outer Space messes -- so bad it would be written up in TV history books.

Enjoy the NBC parody, an effort from WESH-TV Orlando to localize the Proud as a Peacock campaign with their own local staff, and a bunch of network promos.  Notice the gradual change to NBC's logo, which spent most of the 1970s as a big letter "N."  In 1980, the "N" was superimposed over the more familiar peacock logo that NBC first used back when color shows started on the network.  It wasn't more than a year before the "N" completely disappeared, leaving the peacock logo that NBC still uses to this day.

And yes, that is the voice of "Shaggy," Casey Kasem, who was the on-air announcer for the network promos in 1980!

NBC "We're Loud" Audio Parody - 1980
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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: NBC 1980 - Proud as a Peacock... sort of
« Reply #86 on: August 09, 2007, 11:16:20 pm »
See how many of these shows you can remember.  Don't worry if it's not too many - nobody else remembers them either!

Also notice how the "made for TV movie" was renamed, "Novels for Television."  That's from the school of putting lipstick on a pig.  And a Novel for Television about the holocaust made for a major popcorn viewing event I'm sure.  Yikes.

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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: NBC: We Hired Shaggy to Do Our Promos
« Reply #87 on: August 09, 2007, 11:20:35 pm »
More from Kasey Casem, including Boomer, the dog show that slid into cancellation, the premiere of Facts of Life (why don't I remember Molly at all), the incomprehensible Pink Lady & Jeff (they should drug test whoever green-lit this one).  Amazingly, Facts of Life was a midseason replacement for something else... and it was the show that would run for many, many seasons on NBC!

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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: NBC in 1980 - The Games People Play
« Reply #88 on: August 09, 2007, 11:24:41 pm »
Here is a promo without Shaggy - for Games People Play, one of those prime time game show/reality shows NBC used to love to air (anyone remember Real People?).  Networks used to roll out their new shows the week after school started for a lot of folks in September, but occasionally tossed new stuff into late August... especially these kinds of low budget things.


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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Hee-Haw... Oh God No...
« Reply #89 on: August 09, 2007, 11:38:37 pm »
Many local NBC affiliates got the rights to localize the NBC campaign theme and music to promote their own local programming.  The abomination that was Hee-Haw ran for well over 20 years (!) thanks to the concept of syndication.  It started in the late 1960s as a network show on CBS but was purged in 1971 during the great "Rural Purge of 71" when CBS canceled everything perceived as rural country programming, to be replaced with urban stuff like All in the Family.  The producers of Hee Haw kept it going in syndication by giving it away to local TV stations who got to air it for free, if they ran the advertising the syndicator sold and included on the tape.  The TV station got some time to sell their own local advertising, and that was pure gravy for them because the program cost them nothing.

Hee-Haw usually aired on most stations that carried it on Saturday nights usually somewhere between 5-8pm.  Hee-Haw's greatest enemy and biggest competitor was... wait for it... The Lawrence Welk Show, which also ran in syndication usually at the same time on another local channel.  It appealed to many of the same older viewers that Hee Haw did. 

Unlike the bubbly champagne music of Mr. Welk, feminists loathed Hee-Haw for the incredibly skimpy outfits most of the women wore on the show.  The skits were straight out of a cornfield.  It was really sort of a poor man's Ole Opry, a Benny Hill reset in rural Arkansas.  But the show was important for a lot of country artists who got plenty of exposure on the show and helped sell a lot of albums.  And folks like Roy Clark and "Grandpa" were an absolute staple for the show.

Hee Haw appealed to traditional country music fans and kept a very loyal audience until the early 1990s when producers decided to tamper with their formula for longevity and changed the format to spotlight contemporary country artists.  This completely alienated their regular viewers who fled in droves, and younger folks were never going to be turned on to a show their grandparents watched.  By the time producers realized their mistake, it was too late.  The final season of Hee Haw in 1993 was mostly a clip show of the "best of" performances from the last 20+ years.  It was time to shut the barn door for the last time.

Here is how Channel 7 in Miami, then an NBC affiliate, sold the corn-fed fun:


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