That Wacky Redhead

[phx1138]

Originally Posted by Brainbin

it really does cement the fact that the US and Canada are far, far more similar than we are different

I think we're much more different than most people realize. Taste in TV is only a tiny slice of it. Religiosity (rates & amounts of church attendance), "paternalism" (obedience to a father or father figure), obedience to & trust in government, to name just 3, are extremely different, & the gap has been widening... Also, have a look at the Top 10 songs in the U.S. & Canada. It's an extremely rare case where they have the same song in the same slot, & frequently, songs that bombed in the U.S. are big hits here. IDK why any of this is true, but it is.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

I watched all the time when it was on

Conceptually, I liked it, but the execution was awful. It also struck me a lot of the questions were very U.S. culture-specific. (Bad enough when "Jeopardy!" asks about who's on U.S. money, like nobody in Canada watches...)

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Fun fact: Canada attempted to create a local version of Millionaire during the height of the hype; the pilot special was filmed on the New York set, with journalist (now Senator) Pamela Wallin hosting

That really had me wondering what they were thinking. It wasn't like the original wasn't widely available to, IDK, everyone with a TV.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Or anywhere with a bureaucracy, really; we just seem to revel in it, for some reason (another proud legacy of our British Imperial heritage).

Which really amounts to anywhere with government...since IDK how you run a country without it.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Five-sixths programming, one-sixths advertising was the standard from the time that shows switched from direct sponsorship, throughout the Classical Era of Television, to the imposition of the modern, more familiar ratio of (approximately) three-quarters programming, one-quarter advertising.

Another point he got wrong.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

You are incorrect, sir!

I will bow to your superior knowledge. Many of those I do recall watching, but must have been too young to pay attention to the network.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Oh, phx, you are so predictably contrarian

What can I say?

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Well, Police Squad! aired in 1982 IOTL, which falls within my range... Perhaps I might have occasion to discuss it, or some alternate ZAZ production

If you can work a miracle & keep it on the air, you will have my undying admiration. (Not that you don't now.)

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Indeed, I too was thinking of Cold Squad as the exception that proves the rule.

I don't count it an exception any more than "Forever Knight": it wasn't better, only sooner.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Pardon me for assuming that the Juno was intended to award excellence, not promote people. Should we eliminate every British film that is nominated for Oscars from BAFTA consideration as well? What about Commonwealth authors who are shortlisted for the Nobel Prize? Should they then become ineligible to receive the Booker?

I invite you to take that up with Mr Lightfoot, not with me. IDK what his reasoning was, beyond what the WP page said about it.

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Here is where I agree with you, wholeheartedly. It's funny, but the most reliably good Canadian shows tend to be the ones for younger audiences

I wonder if that's not because the audience expects (even demands) faster pacing. I don't recall the show, now, but there was a series once that had what I found a really annoying habit of jump cutting between very short scenes. It reminded me of MTV... (No, I don't watch. Videos are a plague.)

Originally Posted by Brainbin

And the directing talent, of course.

That, I'm not so sure: isn't it the director who decides on the pacing...?

Originally Posted by Brainbin

Indeed, Finns seem to rival Swedes for their Anglophilia. Impressive, considering that the Finnish language is completely unrelated to English.

What I've read suggests it was, like Portugal, thanks to the Brits doing something beneficial to Finland many, many years ago, & in the meantime not screwing them over. (Evidently, in geopolitics, a little goodwill can go a very long way.)

Originally Posted by Brainbin

I needed a fast and easy comparison point

I suspected as much. I only mean, please don't limit yourself.

Originally Posted by LordInsane

As to cultural Anglophilia, it ...tends to be directed towards the United Kingdom specifically more than the Anglosphere in general.

That's my impression, too. That said, tho, there's a strong interest in translations of English-language mystery novels. (I can't speak to other languages, & this may be mystery novels in general.) It's so much so, a (translated) English-language mystery will often see stronger sales in Sweden & Finland than in Britain or the U.S.

[NCW8]

Originally Posted by Brainbin

You forget Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? from over a decade ago (another show I watched all the time when it was on, even the several days a week it appeared in primetime back in 1999-2000), a show that I understand was brought over more-or-less wholesale (since it had largely the same production crew, apart from subbing in Regis Philbin for Tarrant). And then there was the moderately successful The Weakest Link, again brought over largely as it was in the UK (this time including the British host, Anne Robinson).

When it first came out, I watched the German version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, which Gunter Jauch did an excellent job of presenting. There was also a German version of The Weakest Link, but I don't think that lasted more than a season. In the one episode I saw, the host was far tamer than Anne Robinson.

Originally Posted by Thande

Millionaire is an interesting one because it was produced by Celador, the production company of my favourite comedian, Jasper Carrott. I'm a bit cross that it was so successful because it made him £10 million and that meant he retired from frontline comedy...

I first saw Jasper when he appeared with Chris Tarrent on Tiswas, which I loved as a kid. I even bought his single, Funky Moped, although (like most people) that was mainly because of the B-Side (his version of Magic Roundabout).

Originally Posted by Thande

BTW, hope you don't mind these digressions, I trust that they are ultimately helping you with your project by giving you ideas about different media paths in other countries and so on.

I'll second that. You've done a great job of going down memory lane and showing us some of the alternate byways.

Cheers,
Nigel.

[LordInsane]

Originally Posted by phx1138

That's my impression, too. That said, tho, there's a strong interest in translations of English-language mystery novels. (I can't speak to other languages, & this may be mystery novels in general.) It's so much so, a (translated) English-language mystery will often see stronger sales in Sweden & Finland than in Britain or the U.S.

To at least some degree, that is mystery novels in general - there is a fairly healthy internal production of them in Scandinavia, and seeing a translated German krimi on the shelves is not all that uncommon an occurence.

[The Professor]

Originally Posted by stevep

Guys

As a Brit call me culturally blinkered but I automatically thought of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Rogers_%28comedian%29

but guessing you're all referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Samuel_Rogers or possibly his son http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Rogers_III. That seems a hell of a dynasty there.

Steve

Me too. I kept thinking those memorials were all bin-shaped

[THE OBSERVER]

Is the next update ready yet Brainbin?

[Thande]

Originally Posted by phx1138

I think we're much more different than most people realize. Taste in TV is only a tiny slice of it. Religiosity (rates & amounts of church attendance), "paternalism" (obedience to a father or father figure), obedience to & trust in government, to name just 3, are extremely different, & the gap has been widening... Also, have a look at the Top 10 songs in the U.S. & Canada. It's an extremely rare case where they have the same song in the same slot, & frequently, songs that bombed in the U.S. are big hits here. IDK why any of this is true, but it is.

It's a general rule that what looks like a yawning cultural chasm to you between you and your neighbour will be an indiscernible hairline crack to anyone from further away. Most people in the UK and especially Europe cannot tell Canadian and American accents apart, for instance. I usually can, but that's because I've been to Canada many times since I was a kid (the way I explain it to people is that "Canadian = American + 5% Scotland and Helium"). This is also true in reverse, of course. I am from Yorkshire, and we have a deep and abiding rivalry with Lancashire, yet people from the South of England (never mind foreigners) cannot tell our accents apart, which we immediately can of course. It's a matter of perspective.

[naraht]

Originally Posted by Thande

It's a general rule that what looks like a yawning cultural chasm to you between you and your neighbour will be an indiscernible hairline crack to anyone from further away. Most people in the UK and especially Europe cannot tell Canadian and American accents apart, for instance. I usually can, but that's because I've been to Canada many times since I was a kid (the way I explain it to people is that "Canadian = American + 5% Scotland and Helium"). This is also true in reverse, of course. I am from Yorkshire, and we have a deep and abiding rivalry with Lancashire, yet people from the South of England (never mind foreigners) cannot tell our accents apart, which we immediately can of course. It's a matter of perspective.

Part of it may be that the United States and Canada both have areas larger than Britain, France and Germany put together with accents that are indistinguishable even by the people who live there.

Remember, the Canadian accent is Inverse Brooklynese. Brooklynese starts everything with "Aay" and the Canadians end everything with it.

[The Blue-Eyed Infidel]

Originally Posted by Thande

It's a general rule that what looks like a yawning cultural chasm to you between you and your neighbour will be an indiscernible hairline crack to anyone from further away. Most people in the UK and especially Europe cannot tell Canadian and American accents apart, for instance. I usually can, but that's because I've been to Canada many times since I was a kid (the way I explain it to people is that "Canadian = American + 5% Scotland and Helium"). This is also true in reverse, of course. I am from Yorkshire, and we have a deep and abiding rivalry with Lancashire, yet people from the South of England (never mind foreigners) cannot tell our accents apart, which we immediately can of course. It's a matter of perspective.

IMO, there are four basic Canadian accents (among Canadians with English as a first language): Newfoundland, Maritimes, Central Canada, Rural Prairies; Central Canadian is fairly difficult to distinguish from "Broadcaster" American English if (like me) you have problems hearing the "aboot" dipthong; Rural Prairies is strikingly similar to the American Midwestern accent (Corb Lund is perhaps the highest-profile (for some value of high profile) exemplar of this accent).

So it is easy to see why people from outside North America have difficulty distinguishing between the American & Canadian accents.

TB-EI

[Thande]

Originally Posted by naraht

Part of it may be that the United States and Canada both have areas larger than Britain, France and Germany put together with accents that are indistinguishable even by the people who live there.

People in the USA and Canada are convinced that they have a great deal of cultural diversity within a large area, but this is an example of what I was talking about: to the rest of the world, there really isn't that much difference either across one country or across the border.

Although this is somewhat subjective, linguists have claimed that the UK and Ireland have more accent and dialect variations within them than the entire North American continent; of course a longer history and geographic reasons (isolation within valleys) play a role there.

[naraht]

Originally Posted by Thande

People in the USA and Canada are convinced that they have a great deal of cultural diversity within a large area, but this is an example of what I was talking about: to the rest of the world, there really isn't that much difference either across one country or across the border.

Although this is somewhat subjective, linguists have claimed that the UK and Ireland have more accent and dialect variations within them than the entire North American continent; of course a longer history and geographic reasons (isolation within valleys) play a role there.

Well, in all of North America, if you count Spanish as one of the dialects we have more.

[Thande]

Originally Posted by naraht

Well, in all of North America, if you count Spanish as one of the dialects we have more.

That's not what I meant. Spanish is a language, not a dialect. I was mainly talking about English dialects and accents, though there are obviously variations within Irish Gaelic and so on as well.

Not to derail Brainbin's thread although I suppose this is tangenitally related (like, for example, until Game of Thrones I would not have believed that an American TV studio would produce something that used so many northern English accented actors).

[naraht]

Originally Posted by Thande

That's not what I meant. Spanish is a language, not a dialect. I was mainly talking about English dialects and accents, though there are obviously variations within Irish Gaelic and so on as well.

Not to derail Brainbin's thread although I suppose this is tangenitally related (like, for example, until Game of Thrones I would not have believed that an American TV studio would produce something that used so many northern English accented actors).

Well, in most of the United States and Canada, go back 4-6 generations and your ancestors were from somewhere else (probably *multiple "somewhere"s else*). How do you get a Las Vegasan (Las Vegasite?) accent when 75%+ of the population wasn't born within 100 miles. (just pulling numbers out of thin air).

My two favorite comments on English (especially from my wife who was a French major).
1) English has all of the Purity of a Dockhouse Whore
2) English will follow other languages down dark alleys hit them over the head and rifle through their pockets for vocabulary.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by naraht

Well, in most of the United States and Canada, go back 4-6 generations and your ancestors were from somewhere else (probably *multiple "somewhere"s else*). How do you get a Las Vegasan (Las Vegasite?) accent when 75%+ of the population wasn't born within 100 miles. (just pulling numbers out of thin air).

My two favorite comments on English (especially from my wife who was a French major).
1) English has all of the Purity of a Dockhouse Whore
2) English will follow other languages down dark alleys hit them over the head and rifle through their pockets for vocabulary.

And THIS is what makes English the greatest language EVER!!!

[stevep]

Originally Posted by Glen

And THIS is what makes English the greatest language EVER!!!

My thoughts as well.

Steve

[Glen]

Originally Posted by stevep

My thoughts as well.

Steve

What can I say? Greatly corrupted minds think alike!

[Brainbin]

April 9, 1975

It was high noon at Desilu Productions, and several of the company’s top executives were having a discussion in the office of their studio chief.

“Why do they always have to have the Oscars in the middle of the week, anyway? You sit in those chairs for hours on end, and then you have a late dinner at the after-party, and you’re up half the night… and then it’s right back to work the next morning!”

“Sometimes you gotta live a little,” Lucille Ball said in response to her VP Production, Robert H. Justman. “I think it’s a lot of fun.”

“You worked in the movies, Lucy,” Herbert F. Solow, SEVP and COO, gently reminded her. “You know these people. And you got to wear a nice dress, and walk the red carpet, and you even got up during the ceremony to present an award. Those chairs make you pretty stiff if you have to sit perfectly still in them for that long.”

“I still don’t know why they had me make that crack about an Academy Award for Hairdressing, though. They really need better writers for these award ceremonies.”

“The hoary jokes must be part of the alleged charm,” Justman groused.

There was a knock at the door of Ball’s office, and without waiting for a response, in walked Gary Morton, EVP and CFO, and Husband to the Studio Chief (an unofficial title). “Who’s hungry?” he asked, carrying a rather large brown paper bag with foreign characters written all over it. “I brought Chinese!”

Solow rolled his eyes. “Chinatown wins for Picture and you decide to buy us Chinese for lunch. You’re living proof of subliminal messaging, Gar.” However, he did not protest when Morton shoved some dishes into his hands. He had been so bloated from dinner last night that he had skipped breakfast – a decision he now sorely regretted.

“That’s sweet of you, hon, and nice that you’re doing something marginally useful for once, but we do have a lovely commissary downstairs.”

“Why not mix it up a little?” Morton said, in response to his wife, serenely ignoring her thinly-veiled insult.

Later, after all the plates had been distributed and the four were digging into their meals (some more vociferously than others), Ball, her mind at work despite the companionate silence around her, spoke up. “You know that Desilu is going to be twenty-five years old this year? Twenty-five. That’s a quarter-century.” Arousing no substantive response from her three dining companions, she continued. “Desi and I started it up to sell my old radio show My Favorite Husband to CBS. Then Desi bought back the Lucy shows, and with the money from the reruns, we bought this studio space from RKO. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

“And how is Desi?” Morton asked, diplomatically, though he could not quite conceal the frown that had reflexively formed.

“Oh, he’s just fine,” Ball said, casually.

“It’s all a lot to celebrate, Lucy,” said Solow, between mouthfuls of Chop Suey. “We’re doing better than ever. Better than most movie studios.” At this point, he couldn’t hide his grin, his eyes glancing out the window as he gestured to the studio next door. “Better than Paramount.”

“Y’know, I was thinking. Maybe we could do a TV special about it. The history of Desilu, on its 25th Anniversary. Maybe use some kind of pun for the title, since it’s the silver anniversary. The silver studio run by the redhead. We can have that woman with the funny voice from the Today Show host it, too. She’s nuts about me.”

“It needs an adjective,” Justman chimed in. “Silver studio and just redhead? It needs something else.”

“Enterprising redhead, maybe?” Morton said.

“No, that won’t work,” Justman immediately replied, rather more because of his distaste for Morton as opposed to the merit of his suggestion.

“It really doesn’t matter what kind of redhead she is,” Solow said, firmly but gently. “Lucy, I really don’t think the networks would be interested in that. It’s something that has limited and strictly internal appeal, like the goodie reels. We could commission a short promo film, and then show it at the Christmas party, maybe.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.

They sat silently, once again, continuing to enjoy their lunch, until…

“Wait a minute. You created Desilu for I Love Lucy, which started in 1951, which is twenty-five years ago next year. So why not have a 25th Anniversary Special for that?”

Ball immediately beamed. “This is why you’re my secret weapon, Herbie,” she said. “I like it – we can have an hour-long retrospective, have all of the cast and crew talk about their favourite moments, maybe show clips, reconstruct the original living room set on one of our soundstages…”

“It would have to air on CBS,” Justman said, ever the ballast to the high-flying ideas of his two immediate superiors. “And we need to contact the surviving stars.”

“Oh, Desi would love to do it!”

“I’m sure he would,” Morton sardonically replied. “But what about the others?”

“Would Viv be up to it?” Solow asked, as delicately as possible. “Because I know she’s not been… feeling all that well…” [1]

“Viv’ll be fine.”

“What about the kid? Little Ricky?”

“Keith? Desi stays in touch with him,” Ball replied. “I’d be more worried about him than Viv, actually. He’s had a lot of… personal problems. But Desi has a magic touch. He kept Bill Frawley off the bottle, I’m sure he can keep Keith away from the bong.”

“And what about Bill Frawley? What are we going to do about him?”

“We can all talk about him, I guess. Except for Viv. She hated him.” [2]

The conversation abruptly ceased at that slightly awkward note, leading Solow to decide to break the silence. “Well then, how about I get started and make a few calls?” he suggested, already rising from his chair (as he had completed his plate of Chinese). “We’ve got a year to plan – I think we can work something out.”

Justman, though he wasn’t quite finished with his lunch, sighed and rose from his chair as well. “I guess that means I have budgeting to do,” he said sullenly, and the two left without another word. Morton had already begun gathering their plates and the assorted servings of dishes together.

“Well, I’ll go put the leftovers in the fridge, then,” he announced, before he too departed, leaving Ball alone to her own devices.

“Twenty-five years,” she mused to herself, staring into space for a moment. Then she grinned, and began humming to herself.

“I’m just breezing along with the breeze…” [3]

---

It was, as ever, a time of change for Desilu – but also a time for reflection. The studio celebrated its silver anniversary in 1975, making it young by Hollywood standards but old by those of television. The two oldest shows produced by Desilu – Mannix and Night Gallery – would both see their runs end at the conclusion of the 1974-75 season. Mannix, after a run of eight seasons, had become the longest-running dramatic series in studio history; Night Gallery, on the other hand, had worked well as a tonic to early 1970s optimism, but the macabre proved too suffocating in these much gloomier recessionary times, and ratings (never very good) had finally declined beyond repair. This, coupled with Rod Serling’s desire to move on, sealed its fate. In addition to Mannix, all four of their extant series (The Way of the Warrior, Rock Around the Clock, The Questor Tapes, and The Muppet Show) cleared the Top 30, which meant that Desilu was responsible for one-sixth of the programs on that roster, the highest representation of any studio.

This season saw numerous breakout hits: not surprising, considering that it was the first full production season that followed the Oil Crisis and ensuing recession, allowing for pitches and story ideas to reflect the new situation in which society found itself (the previous season having been far more transitional in that regard). Many of these new shows, therefore, struck a chord with audiences. The biggest hit of the new season was Chico and the Man, which followed lead-in Sanford and Son. Both shows were set in urban Los Angeles, featuring elderly, working-class protagonists, and their younger, filial foils. Milton Berle capped his latter-day comeback (spurred by his 1968 appearance on an episode of Star Trek) by appearing as Ed Brown, the titular “Man” [4]; his alleged (illegitimate and unacknowledged) son, James Komack, had created the series. The begrudging paternal relationship that developed between its two central characters was widely considered an allegory of the one that emerged between Berle and Komack.

The one-two punch of Sanford and the Man, Friday nights from 8:00 to 9:00 PM, led the ratings that season. Sanford, which had been #2 for the past two seasons, finally dethroned Those Were the Days and became the first top-rated series with a primarily African-American cast in television history. Chico, the new #2 (which obviously marked the highest debut for a season replete with impressive numbers for rookie shows), brought new representation for Latin-American actors unseen since the days of I Love Lucy. It was reflective of the increasing racial diversity affecting all levels of society at this time; worth noting was that both Sanford and Chico had multi-ethnic casts, as opposed to the monochromatic ones predominant during the Classical Age of Television. Indeed, NBC had been so bolstered by the diversity and popularity of their (and the) two top-rated shows that it gave them cover to cancel both Flip Wilson and Bill Cosby, whose stars continuously provided headaches for the network, despite bringing in decent ratings.

The popularity of police procedurals continued into this season, with the success of Kojack inspiring a number of new hits. The Rockford Files was the biggest of these. Creator Stephen J. Cannell envisioned the program as a “modern-day Maverick”, a Western which had aired over a decade before. Its star, James Garner, was naturally chosen to play the protagonist, Jim Rockford; an ex-con private detective who nonetheless had a good heart, and did his best to avoid trouble. As had been the case on the big screen, obvious noir influences were percolating their way onto the tube. Other shows were somewhat more optimistic and morally resolute than Rockford, but without question, cop shows were the breakout genre of the season. Most were dramas, but one prominent example – Captain Miller [5] – was a slice-of-life sitcom, which found the humour in the humdrum at a run-down urban precinct overburdened by the high crime rate for which New York City had become so famous. Critically acclaimed, and beloved by actual cops, who would consistently describe it as the show that best depicted the reality of police life, it was only a marginal performer in terms of ratings success. The same was also true of the already-running Police Story, another realistic (though more sensational, given its dramatic as opposed to comedic format) anthology series. But on the whole, most established police series, even those long in decline, saw their ratings recover as a result of the trend. The aged Mannix even re-entered the Top 30 in this, its final season.

Although cop shows were in general the dominant genre of 1974-75, and Chico and the Man was the biggest new hit, the show with the most surprising impact on popular culture as a whole was Rhoda, spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore. As had been planned by Paramount (eager to cast off their anti-family reputation), the first season featured Rhoda, formerly dumpy and allegedly unappealing best friend of Mary Richards, meeting and engaging in a whirlwind romance with a handsome, divorced father of one. Their wedding – which happened midway through the season – smashed ratings records, becoming the second-most watched entertainment broadcast of the 1970s to date, behind only the series finale of Star Trek in 1971. The season finale attempted to top this extravagant wedding (in which many Mary Tyler Moore characters crossed over by flying from their native Minneapolis to New York City, the setting of Rhoda) by revealing that Rhoda had become pregnant. [6] It was a vindication for Paramount, who also saw benefit from the reconciliation of Lou and Edie Grant on the parent series; this despite the fact that, by 1975, the birth rate had resumed its previous 1960s-era decline.

The retro nostalgia trend continued to endure, with the popularity of Rock Around the Clock on a continuing upward climb: it became the first ABC series to reach the Top 10 since Marcus Welby in 1971-72, and the first Desilu series to do so since Star Trek in 1970-71. [7] By now, however, it was clear that retro nostalgia was not limited to rock-and-roll; Spencer’s Mountain had also cleared the Top 10 once again, as did another rookie show, Little House on the Prairie, based on the famous series of novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder. However, it was the success of Moonraker that had perhaps the most unexpected impact on television development during this period; as it proved that properties with science-fiction trappings had some enduring potential, even past the end of Moonshot Lunacy. It was also enough to coax network executives into thinking that maybe, just maybe, Star Trek was not the lightning in a bottle that everyone had thought. With that in mind, Glen A. Larson. after years of pitching, was finally commissioned by NBC (needing to replace Doctor Who, whose American run would come to an end in 1975) to create a pilot based on his Adama’s Ark idea.

Tandem Productions was seeing continued success, though not without some warning signs. They had widened their production output to four series: Moving On Up, a spinoff of Those Were The Days featuring the Bunkers’ (former) neighbours, the enterprising African-American Jefferson family, became the new kid on the block; it premiered at #5 for the season, the third-highest slot for a rookie series behind Chico and Rhoda. [8] However, Those Were The Days had been dethroned as #1 show (to another Tandem Production, Sanford and Son), whereas Maude found itself perilously close to the bottom threshold of the Top 30. [9] It taught an important lesson: shows about the working-class or the self-made man would continue to attract audiences; shows about largely insufferable patricians, on the other hand, were falling fast. But the entire Tandem lineup (four shows altogether: Those Were the Days, Sanford and Son, Maude, and now Moving On Up) were ensconced within the Top 30, a claim that only Desilu and Paramount could even come close to matching (as both were perfect but for one Achilles heel – Night Gallery and The Odd Couple respectively).

Those Were the Days completed its transition to largely character-based sitcom in this season. The Higgins family moved into the home vacated by the Jeffersons, with Richard accepting a teaching position at a local college. Meanwhile, Gloria (at the insistence of Penny Marshall) continued to work, accepting a promotion to head of the department at her store, making her the highest-ranking woman on staff (and consequently facing even more discrimination than she had before, as a lowly clerk). This meant that Archie and (primarily) Edith would constantly be watching Joey, adding a multigenerational parenting wrinkle to their interactions. However, the series would find themselves with an additional hurdle to climb in the coming season, with the institution of the Family Viewing Hour, the culmination of the attempts by media watchdogs to curb the “new freedom of the (small) screen”. Essentially, this would result in shows deemed unsuitable for “family audiences” being forbidden from airing between 8:00 and 9:00 PM, the first hour of primetime; in addition, the same restrictions were placed on the period from 7:00 to 8:00 PM (controlled by the affiliates, as opposed to the primary network feed). [10] Those Were the Days, which had long trumpeted itself as being suitable only for the mature audience, would therefore have to move from its comfortable 8:00 berth to 9:00 in the following season. Norman Lear was livid, and immediately filed suit to prevent such an occurrence, but his case was quickly dismissed.

At the Emmy Awards that year, The Muppet Show surprisingly won Outstanding Variety Series, the first win for Desilu in one of the three major categories since Star Trek in 1971. Mary Tyler Moore repeated for Outstanding Comedy Series; Valerie Harper, duly promoted from Supporting Actress to Lead Actress, won yet another Emmy as Rhoda, for Rhoda; and Milton Berle won Lead Actor for Chico and the Man (in his acceptance speech, he remarked “Well, my 30-year contract with NBC will be running out soon, but at least they're finally putting me to good use”, referring to when the Peacock Network had infamously signed him to such a contract in 1951). Police Story won Outstanding Dramatic Series, with cooler-than-ice Telly Savalas repeating for Lead Actor for Kojack. By this time, his hit single (titled “Who Loves Ya, Baby?”, as if it could possibly be called anything else) had hit the airwaves, and he obligingly sang a few verses at his Emmy statuette in appreciation. [11]

With regards to the networks, CBS and NBC were tied overall with twelve shows in the Top 30; CBS had five of the Top 10 to the four on NBC, but the Peacock Network had far more appealing demographics to compensate. ABC, meanwhile, continued to lag behind, with only six shows in the Top 30 (though with a Top 10 hit for the first time in three seasons, which was largely attributed to the magic touch of Desilu as opposed to any good judgement on the part of network executives). [12] They were in dire straits indeed, their overall situation continuing to deteriorate from years past (with only Rock Around the Clock keeping them viable). However, no one quite anticipated what their desperate, last-ditch effort to finally pull themselves out of their dismal third-place berth would entail: none other than Fred Silverman, the architect of the successful reinvention of CBS, was lured over to the Alphabet Network, as their new Head of Programming. Silverman always loved a good challenge: he had previously rejuvenated the already established #1 network, but now he had to bring the dead-last network all the way to the top, dethroning the long-reigning CBS while leapfrogging the fairly successful NBC in the process. His continuing penchant for radical revisions would quickly be in evidence…

---

[1] Vivian Vance was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1973 IOTL, which eventually took her life in 1979 (after it had spread to her bones). However, she appears to have been fairly robust until suffering a stroke in 1977, the same year she and That Wacky Redhead made their final onscreen appearance together. Therefore, by this time ITTL, it is clear that Vance is fighting cancer, but is in good enough health and spirits to participate in a retrospective reunion special.

[2] Upon learning of William Frawley's death in 1966, Vance is said to have announced “Champagne for everyone!” in celebration. By contrast, Desi Arnaz took out a full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter, saying “Buenas Noches, Amigo!”, meaning “Good night, friend!”, and served as pallbearer at his funeral; That Wacky Redhead issued a statement in which she described him as one of her dearest friends (he made his last television appearance shortly before his death in an episode of The Lucy Show).

[3] That Wacky Redhead is singing the opening lyrics of a song featured in The Long, Long Trailer, a 1953 film starring herself and Arnaz as thinly-veiled Lucy and Ricky Ricardo rip-offs. It was very successful, more or less representing the height of their onscreen fame and success (in conjunction with I Love Lucy, which was, of course, still in production at the time). You can see their performance of it here, and witness her real singing voice (before the chain-smoking got to her, that is).

[4] Cast as the “Man” IOTL was character actor Jack Albertson, who won an Oscar for The Subject Was Roses and is best-remembered (IOTL and ITTL) as Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Berle claimed (between the lines, as he never named names) that he was indeed approached IOTL for the part by Komack, but rebuffed him, only discovering their relationship later on, by which time Albertson had already been cast. Chosen as Chico IOTL (but not ITTL) was comedian Freddie Prinze, who sadly developed a drug problem and committed suicide at age 22, leaving behind his far less talented son, also named Freddie Prinze (Jr.)

[5] Known IOTL as Barney Miller, which premiered mid-season. ITTL, the original pilot (The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller) was picked up instead of burned off as part of a summer anthology series. Of the OTL cast, only Hal Linden (as Capt. Barney Miller), Jack Soo (as Det. Nick Yemana; Yamamoto ITTL), and the ageless, possibly immortal character actor Abe Vigoda (as Sgt. Fish; Fishman ITTL), who was until then best known as Tessio in The Godfather, appear in the series ITTL.

[6] Rhoda did not become pregnant IOTL, nor did Lou and Edie reconcile; ITTL, these are palpable demonstrations of the more potent reactions against the singletons so prominent in Paramount shows (and note that Paramount is far more sensitive to viewer complaints, as opposed to the desires of creators, than MTM was IOTL).

[7] The ratings for Happy Days, which were very good during its first season, were suppressed by some hot competition which, ITTL, does not exist: Good Times (co-created by Mike Evans, who does not play Lionel Jefferson ITTL, and thus never gets the chance to make his pitch to Norman Lear).

[8] Moving On Up was, of course, known IOTL as The Jeffersons. In all, five of the Top 10 shows in the 1974-75 season ITTL had newly premiered: Chico and the Man, Rhoda, Moving On Up, The Rockford Files, and Little House on the Prairie. IOTL, there were only three: Chico at #3, The Jeffersons at #4, and Rhoda at #6.

[9] IOTL, All In The Family remained at #1 for the fourth consecutive season (tying the record set by Gunsmoke), and Maude remained in the Top 10 at #9 overall.

[10] The Family Viewing Hour was also implemented for the 1975-76 season IOTL, though it was done in such a way that the FCC technically exceeded their mandate in order to achieve it, which resulted in it being overturned in court two years later (Lear also filed a suit IOTL, which also went nowhere). ITTL, on the other hand, there is stronger, more cohesive political support for such regulations, due to a variety of reasons; this means that, absent legislation to overturn it (unlikely, as even many Democrats supported the restrictions), the Family Viewing Hour (analogous to the “watershed” found in many other countries) will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

[11] IOTL, Upstairs, Downstairs (which, you will recall, is a comedy program called Behind the Green Baize Door ITTL) repeated for Drama Series; The Carol Burnett Show repeated for Variety Series; Tony Randall won Lead Actor, Comedy for The Odd Couple; and Robert Blake won Lead Actor, Drama for Baretta (butterflied away ITTL).

[12] In the 1974-75 season IOTL, CBS aired nineteen of the Top 30 shows on television, including eight of the Top 10. NBC aired eight of the Top 30, though only two of these were in the Top 10. ABC aired a mere three shows in the Top 30, the highest-rated of which was midseason replacement S.W.A.T. at #16 overall (in other words, they failed to score a single show in the top half of the Top 30). And yes, they lured Silverman over to their camp IOTL, as well; they needed him even more so than ITTL.

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Bet you're all looking forward to the 1975-76 season now, aren’t you?

I hope that you all enjoyed the short narrative scene that opened this update. I thought it made for a nice change of pace, and gives you some insight into how I imagine the personalities and dynamics at Desilu. Please let me know what you thought of it, as there might be more where that came from if reader reaction is sufficiently receptive

[Thande]

Cool update. I assume Adama's Ark is proto-alt-Battlestar Galactica. I wonder how different that show would be if its style was conceived more in the wake of more successful Star Trek than a TV imitation of Star Wars like OTL. Of course the core concept is very different from either, but I mean the aesthetics and the framing (and how TV executives would pitch it).

[Glen]

Like the idea for the 15th anniversary thing.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by Thande

Cool update. I assume Adama's Ark is proto-alt-Battlestar Galactica. I wonder how different that show would be if its style was conceived more in the wake of more successful Star Trek than a TV imitation of Star Wars like OTL. Of course the core concept is very different from either, but I mean the aesthetics and the framing (and how TV executives would pitch it).

Wish it was going to be a better title than Adama's Ark....

[NCW8]

Originally Posted by Glen

Wish it was going to be a better title than Adama's Ark....

That's the working title of the pilot. If it's picked up as a series, it might get a better name.

Cheers,
Nigel.