(Here, from the start, is my book-in-progress, “Television, and How It Got That Way.” I’ll continue to post new chapters separately under “Stories.” After that, however, I’ll move each to its spot here.
This is Section One – “The Good Old Days (sometimes)” – and Chapter One.
To see how far TV has come, let’s step back a bit.
We’ll go to 1952 in Clintonville, a Wisconsin town of 4,600, known for big, tough trucks and (back then) big, tough football players.
I’m in the living room with my sister, our parents, a grandmother and a grandfather. Stationed a reasonable distance from the TV set, we are watching … well, a man playing records.
The man says what record he’s playing and starts it. Sometimes, the camera shows the record going around; sometimes it shows the man watching the record go around.
When I recall this, people sometimes ask: “Why were you watching?”
The answer is simple enough: Because it was on TV. And it was happening live. And it was in our living room.
And why didn’t we switch the channel? Mainly because there was nothing to switch to. We could only get one station (WBAY in Green Bay), but if there were others in our part of the world, they would have similar shows.
By 1952, TV had already found glimmers of greatness. It had “I Love Lucy,” Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason and live dramas. Ed Sullivan was there, introducing us to marvels we would have never known, including Broadway stars and African-American entertainers.
But those were the high points. That year, prime time was also giving us “Youth on the March,” “Johns Hopkins Science Review,””Balance Your Budget” and lots of men fighting. Each week, there were three boxing shows and two wrestling ones, plus “Famous Fights” and “Greatest Fights.”
And that was primetime; at first, networks ignored the rest. “Today” arrived in 1952, “Tonight” in ‘54; soap operas were only 15 minutes long until 1956.
That left vast stretches when stations went off the air or made-do.
In big cities, they could figure out something. In 1949, a Los Angeles station filled its daytime with a talk-and-music show co-hosted by a DJ and newcomer Betty White. The show kept growing.
“’Hollywood on Television’ was now on the air 33 hours a week …. It was us or the test pattern,” White wrote in “Here We Go Again” (Scribner, 1995).
Even commercials were live and (mostly) done by the hosts, she wrote. “Our all-time record for a single day eventually stood at 58 live commercials.”
This makeshift show was for the elite, big-city market. Now imagine what was left for the rest of us.
Some stations filled the holes with whatever was free. “Industry on Parade” simply showed industrial films.
Some had some old movies. And some had men playing records. Hey, it was happening live … and it came right to our living room in Clintonville.
(Now Chapter Two, eyeing early bursts of optimism)
In his busy life, Pat Weaver was involved in many fine creations. They included “Today,” “Tonight,” the Sid Caesar (shown here) comedies and Sigourney Weaver, his daughter.
(There’s a bit more on her at the end of this chapter.)
But he also fell far short of one goal. Television, he once said, could be “the shining center of the home.”
Weaver was a prime force at NBC, including its president from 1953-’55.
“NBC wants America to see operas in English, the NBC Symphony, great theater performances (and) Sadler’s Wells Ballet,” he said in a speech. He also wanted to present “the issues of our times with enough showmanship so that most people will be eager to watch.”
In 1956, he was ousted. Television added a talking horse in ‘61 and a talking car in ‘65. It strayed from the “shining center.”
But for a time, this talk seemed reasonable. TV was young and ambitious.
At CBS and NBC, it was the golden age of live drama. Paddy Chayefsky’s “Marty” debuted in 1953, Reginald Rose’s “Twelve Angry Men” in ‘54, Rod Serling’s “Requiem For a Heavyweight” in ‘56. JP Miller’s “Days of Wine and Roses” in ‘58.
Each draw praise and became a successful movie. So did others.
And Weaver wanted to give variety shows more … well, variety. “I intended to insert an occasional aria or a scene from a popular ballet like ‘Swan Lake’ into high-quality variety reviews,” he wrote in “The Best Seat in the House” (Knopf, 1994).
He even launched “Operation Frontal Lobes.” The idea, he wrote, was to “enrich, inspire and enlighten viewers.”
Amd occasionally, it happened. As Marc Robinson pointed out in “Brought to You in Living Color” (Wiley, 1999): A Margot Fonteyn/Royal Ballet production of “Sleeping Beauty” drew 30 million viewers. The 1951 debut of the Gian Carlo Menotti opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors” did so well that it was repeated every December for 16 year.
“Amahl” was sponsored by Hallmark, which promptly created the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Its next three shows were Shakespeare dramas.
There would be many classy writers, Mark Quigley wrote in “Hallmark Hall of Fame: The First 50 Years” (UCLA, 2001): “Willa Cather, William Faulkner. Graham Greene, Arthur Miller, Rosamunde Pilcher, George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson are writers whose work has been adapted by Hall of Fame.”
Today, you won’t find much Shakespeare (or Shaw or Miller or …) on the Hallmark Channel or NBC. What changed?
One clue might come from Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” which debuted in 1950. Soon, it was doing 90 live minutes a week, with manic wit and no cue cards.
“The show was brilliantly funny,” Robinson wrote. “And it’s pressure-cooker atmosphere produced some of the mot engaging and vividly memorable moments of the Golden Age.”
It started hot – No. 4 in the Nielsen ratings in its first season. Then it was No. 8 its second, No. 19 its third. After that, Imogene Coca (shown here) left, the show changed its name and fell out of the top-30.
Why the drop? There are plenty of explanations, but one involves the expansion of the TV universe.
In 1950, when Caesar started, there were only 6 million TV sets in the U.S. Most were in bo cities, where his humor – a gleeful blends of international accents – clicked. Most were in upper-income homes, where his parodies worked.
By 1955, there were 39 million sets. The broader audience had different tastes; “The $64,000 Question” was No. 1.
That history was repeated in the start of cable.
Some of the early channels were Bravo in 1980, CBS Cable in ‘81 and Arts & Entertainment in ‘84. Each propelled fine-arts shows
CBS even did an analysis, saying there would only be 10 surviving cable channels, one of them CBS Cable. It missed on both counts: There sometimes seem to be 10,000 cable channels … but CBS Cable barely lasted a year.
The cable world had simply broadened. At the peak, it reached 60 per cent of U.S. homes. As it did, the narrow focus on the arts faded.
Bravo became the home of “Real Housewives” and such. Arts & Entertainment simply became A&E, then ignored the “A” … in the same way that The Learning Channel became TLC and ignored the “L.”
Such changes are frequent … but not inevitable. On the premium-cable side, HBO and Showtime have stuck to their quality-TV approach; many of the streaming networks have done the same.
But regular TV or basic-cable? It seems to have missed Pat Weaver’s goal.
On that note, we should add something: Yes, Weaver propelled huge changes in TV, from “Today” and “Tonight” to a crucial step: Advertisers simply bought commercial spots, instead of creating the entire show. But he did not come up with his daughter’s cool name.
For her first 13 years, she was merely a “Susan.” That’s when she adopted the name “Sigourney,” from a minor character in “The Great Gatsby.”
This turned out to be an ideal name for an actress who has received three Oscar nominations, four Emmy nominations and much praise. It propelled her career … usually.
In “Disney In-Between” (Old Mill Press, 2024), Stephen Anderson quotes Gary Nelson, the “Black Hole” director: “One idea I had was Sigourney Weaver and (the head of casting) said, ‘What kind of a name is that? That’s not a Disney name.’”
She wasn’t cast. And Disney, back then, wasn’t a shining center of our homes.
(Now Chapter Three, re-visiting TV’s earliest days)
When it comes to naming the first TV star, choices vary.
Some people might choose the American president (Franklin Roosevelt) or the British postmaster general. Some could say Elma Farnsworth or Betty White or Adele Dixon or Gertrude Lawrence or (shown here) folks at the 1939 World’s Fair. They could also say David Sarnoff; he would.
But for now, we’ll say Felix the Cat.
Back in 1928, General Electric engineers were scrambling to develop a TV system. For two years, Marc Robinson wrote, “a small Felix the Cat figurine was used as the subject. The lighting was too hot for a human to tolerate.”
Overseas, things happened in 1936. In the summer, Germans televised parts of the Olympics; on Nov. 2, BBC Television debuted. It had a talk by the postmaster general, a showing of Movietone News and then a very short variety show – Adele Dixon singing, the Buck and Bubbles duo playing stride piano and tap-dancing (thus launching Black TV) and the BBC Television Orchestra.
Still, Americans might point to Felix in ‘28. Or to the moment Philo Farnsworth transmitted an image of his wife in 1929. Or to 1938, when RCA showed Gertrude Lawrence in scenes from Broadway’s “Susan and God.”
The next year, two fresh graduates from Beverly Hills High, Betty White and Harry Bennett, were asked to sing a mini-version of “The Merry Widow,” for an experimental broadcast in Los Angeles.
“I wore my graduation dress,” White wrote, “a fluffy white number held up by a sapphire blue velvet ribbon halter, which I fervently hoped would be enchanting …. The lights were excruciatingly hot. The beads of perspiration served to give us luster.”
It was a success, apparently – but the only people who saw it were the teens’ parents and a few others, all watching a monitor six floors away. It would be another decade before Los Angeles got its first TV station.
A few weeks before that, however, TV had its first big moment. The New York World’s fair, drawing 45 million people, had television exhibits from RCA and General Electric.
Roosevelt gave a TV address at the opening day of the fair. Ten days earlier, Sarnoff (the RCA chairman) had his own televised announcement.
This would be, he said, “the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in a troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind.”
Mankind would have mixed feelings about that “torch of hope.” But TV was here to stay.
The first two stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission were RCA’s WNBT and CBS’ WCBW. That was on July 1, 1941; WNBT promptly offered a newscast with Lowell Thomas, a baseball game (Dodgers-Phillies) and a simulcast of the radio quiz show “Truth or Consequences.”
Five months later, Pearl Harbor came and the TV world paused. Throughout the war, WNBT was limited to four hours a week.
But as the war ended in 1945, the station was back:
— On Aug. 14, it aired 15 hours of victory celebrations. The signal linked to the GE station in Schenectady and the Philco one in Philadelphia, creating a sort of network.
— On Dec. 10, the station started airing six days a week.
— And the next Feb. 12, it linked with three nearby stations, to form NBC.
TV was ready to soar … sort of. The line-up, Robinson wrote, was “generally amateurish, populated with cooking shows, B movies and watch-the-artist-paint kinds of programming.”
The evening line-up was no improvement. As Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh pointed out in “The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable Shows” (Ballantine, 2007):
“Boxing was an institution in early television for several reasons: It was easy to produce, the camera-coverage area was limited … and it had tremendous appeal to the first purchasers of television sets in the late 1940s – bars.”
Also, it paused every three minutes, leaving room for razor-blade commercials. In the fall of 1946, NBC listed only eight hours of prime time; over half went to boxing – four hours of “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports” and 15 minutes of “Fight Film Filler.”
NBC did have one variety hour (called “Hour Glass”) and a half-hour “Television Screen Magazine.” At first, Brooks and Marsh wrote of the latter, guests were “seemingly anyone who could be lured into the studio. NBC employee Walter Law and his stamp collection were an early favorite.”
Other shows were only 15 minutes, twice a week (“Esso Newsreel”) or once:
— “Face to Face.” An artist tried to draw someone, strictly from descriptions.
— “Geographically Speaking.” This had travel films narrated by Mrs. Carveth Wells, Brooks and Marsh wrote. “It ended when she ran out of film.”
— Also, “I Like to Eat,” “You Are an Artist” and (with short documentaries) “Voice of Firestone” and “The World in Your Home.”
That sounds unimpressive – except the only competing network (Dumont, with two stations) had only three hours a week. There was a short cowboy movie, plus two quiz shows (“Cash and Carry” and “Play the Game”), some education (“Serving Through Science”) and “Faraway Hill,” the first grasp at bringing soap-operas to TV.
Those didn’t incite a rush to the stores. In 1945, the median income for non-farm families was just under $50 a week; an RCA TV set cost $385.
The ‘47 line-ups didn’t create much more of a rush.
DuMont still had its cowboy movie. Now it added four half-hours a week of the sweet-spirited “Small Fry Club,” plus a few other half-hours (“Doorway to Fame,” “Birthday Party,” “Charade Quiz”) and a 15-minute comedy with the married duo of Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns.
NBC still had its four hours of boxing, plus “You Are the Artist,” “The World in Your Home” and a couple newsreels. It had dropped the variety hour, but added a half-hour “Musical Merry-Go-Round.” It also added “Americana” (a history game show), “Eye Witness” (a show about TV itself), “Campus Hoopla” and (really) “In the Kelvinator Kitchen.”
Still, NBC had two signs of better times ahead – specials on Sundays and “Kraft Television Theatre” on Wednesdays.
The latter was a drama anthology, with top writers and actors. A year later, there were two more anthologies.
That year (1948) was when CBS and ABC arrived. So did Ed Sullivan, Arthur Godfrey and Milton Berle. TV would sort of be worth watching.
(Here’s Chapter Four, with a sudden surprise – the first Golden Age of drama.)
Imagine scriptwriters losing all of their favorite moves.
No car chases, no foot races. No bursts, blasts, infernos or explosions; hardly any zombies, vampires or space ships.
With such deprivation, writers would have to resort to wit and character and nuance and such. That’s how the first golden age of TV drama began.
Shows were done in small spaces with large cameras. They were done live; there was no room for error … or for second-guessing.
“We had technical freedom, creative freedom, financial freedom,” director Fielder Cook told journalist Gordon Sander, adding: “Nobody could come and take it away from us, because nobody knew how to do it but us.”
That was in the early 1950s, when the odds against them were steep, Marc Robinson wrote. “The studios were tiny, the lights were brutally hot and the tension was often unbearable.”
Yes, some shows failed. As director Buzz Kulik told Sander in “Serling” (Dutton, 1992): “There was a lot of crap around and there was a lot of stuff being badly done. But there was a kind of electricity and energy, a great kind of vitality.”
By some views, that era vanished vanished quickly. By others (more on that later), the era keeps being reborn.
It started in 1947, with the Kraft Television Theatre. Over the next 11-and-a-half years (before switching to music shows), Kraft did 650 plays (none of them cheesy), adapting Shakespeare, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and beyond.
In 1948, “Philco Television Playhouse” arrived, with a producer (Fred Coe) who knew what he wanted. “He felt the writer was the center of the universe,” writer Horton Foote once said. “Writers like to hear that.”
He also went with rising talent, Robinson wrote:
“Coe and other anthology-show producers relied on untested new directors such as Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn and Sidney Lumet. And on hungry young actors such as Grace Kelly, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward, Steve McQueen, Eva Marie Saint, Jason Robards and Walter Matthau
“When James Dean died a week before starting work on Hemingway’s ‘The Battler,’ Coe replaced him with Paul Newman. Another star was born.”
That happened to be the perfect time to find such people in New York. The Actors Studio had formed in 1947, creating a style that was subtle, not Shakespearean.
“What was then emerging was a distinct New York acting style,” Arthur Penn told Sander. “That’s why live TV was able to function, because these were theater actors, not actors who needed four takes.”
These were eager people, Roddy McDowall told Sander. “All of us were just a bunch of young kids throwing our hats in the air, with nothing to lose. So we were able to commit without fear.”
The resources were limited, Brooks and Marsh wrote. The first Kraft hour had a budget of $3,000. The entire studio was half the size of the space used to produce the commercials a decade later.
Given the limits, the emphasis was on tight tales. Reginald Rose’s 1954 “Twelve Angry Men” was all the better for being confined to a jury room.
Rose’s story was adapted into a play in 1955 and a movie — nominated for three Oscars, including best picture – in ‘57. Other movie versions were made in India, Russia and China; a cable remake was in 1997,
Not everything was tight, though. In 1956, George Roy Hill directed “A Night to Remember,” with 106 actors and the sinking of the Titanic.
But most golden-age dramas emphasized compact stories and complex characters. It was a springboard for Rose, Rod Serling (“Requiem For a Heavyweight”), Paddy Chayevsky (“Marty,” shown here in its movie version) and more. Gore Vidal alone wrote 70 dramas.
The one-hour drama anthologies peppered the NBC and CBS schedules, bearing the tames of their sponsors. In fall of 1956, there was Alcoa, Armstrong, Aluminum, Goodyear, Kraft and Lux.
“It was a vital young industry about which no one knew a great deal,” producer Jerome Hellman told Sander. “It was really dominated by creative people, to whom New York City represented a kind of creative Mecca.”
Alas, a change was coming in both geography and approach.
In 1952, CBS had opened Television City in Los Angeles, designed for live shows. For four years (1956-60), its “Playhouse 90” created classics — “The Miracle Worker,” “Judgment at Nuremberg,” Serling’s “In the Presence of Mine Enemies” – and more.
Later, Television City would range from Serling’s “Twilight Zone” to “All in the Family” and “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” With a few exceptions, TV was moving west.
ABC – which mostly missed the golden age — had tried to accelerate that move.
“I went out to Hollywood and made the rounds of the major studios,” Leonard Goldenson, an ABC founder, wrote in “Beating the Odds” (Scribner’s, 1991). “I was trying to sell television as an opportunity to rejuvenate the movie business. Nobody was buying. Television was the enemy.”
At Warner Brothers, Goldenson wrote, Jack Warner – who used to make some films for double-features – was adamant about no TV, saying: “I made those quickies 30 years ago and I’m not going to make ‘em again.”
One exception, he wrote, was Walt Disney, who was desperate to finance a theme park. “ABC was really Disney’s last hope. He’d gone to the banks and when he tried to explain what he wanted to build, they just couldn’t grasp the concept.”
So ABC helped finance Disneyland; in return, Disney began making shows for it. That started in 1954; soon, TV had Davy Crockett and Zorro and lots of Mouseketeers.
Other Hollywood people also relented. In ‘56, the Golden Age was still going strong, but ABC was adding cowboy shows – Wyatt Earp, Jim Bowie, Lone Ranger, “Cheyenne,” “Broken Arrow.”
Soon, most TV production was at the movie studios or at CBS’ sites. Even Serling moved west.
“The golden age of television was essentially over,” Sander wrote. “Video had left New York …. Hollywood had won the battle.”
By 1960, only a couple golden-age survivors remained. And yet, the notion of quality drama never totally vanished:
— “Hallmark Hall of Fame” kept lofty standards. It started in 1951 with an opera (“Amahl and the Night Visitors”), followed with three Shakespeare dramas and more. In 1960, it was still doing Shakespeare and a musical adaptation of “Shangri-La”; in ‘86, Quigley wrote, “Promise” became “the most-honored dramatic special in television history.”
— PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre” opened in 1971. Its first project (“The Churchills”) was no masterpiece, Alistaire Cooke (the host) granted in a 1991 overview of the series. Then things perked up with “dramatizations of Henry James, Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Hardy, Tolstoy and Stella Gibbons, pausing for a three-month bout of rattling costume drama, … before reverting to the Masterpiece form.” It’s a form that continues today, through “Downton Abbey,” “Wolf Hall” and beyond.
— In ‘72, PBS added “Great Performances.” It would eventually focus mainly on music and dance, but at first it had drama in the golden-age tradition.
— Then came the new era. NBC’s “The West Wing” and HBO’s “The Sopranos” both arrived in 1999, forever dueling for Emmys and other honors. Cable channels kept adding more, led by “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”
TV dramas were entering what critic David Bianculli dubbed “The Platinum Age.” That would fade a bit, but remind us of TV’s once-golden past.
(Here’s Chapter Five, viewing the rise and fall of variety shows, which were once the core of TV.)
Variety shows seemed to fit cozily into the new TV world.
They were simple and straight-forward. People looked at a camera and sang or told jokes; occasionally, they danced. Little could go wrong.
And still …
Some of the biggest stars had variety shows that sputtered. Frank Sinatra went two seasons and 62 episodes; Eddie Fisher went two and 27. There was only one season for Judy Garland (26 episodes), Sammy Davis Jr. (14), Jerry Lewis (11) and Mary Tyler Moore (also 11).
All of those at least topped “The Paula Poundstone Show,” which lasted two episodes. As it turns out, variety shows are easy to do, but hard to do right.
Ironically, TV was finally getting the hang of it, when it quit making them. More on that in a bit.
The first regular variety show, “Hour Glass,” arrived in May of 1946,Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh wrote. The competition that night was light – a cartoonist, a news show and “Famous Jury Trials.” So was the potential; only a few thousand TV sets had been sold.
Still, that first episode tried a lot – two songs by Evelyn Knight, two comedy sketches, a stand-up comedian, a film about South American dancing and some coffee commercials … one which ran for four-and-a-half minutes.
In the weeks that followed, the show had guest stars – Peggy Lee, Dennis Day, Jerry Colonna, Bert Lahr, Edgar Bergen – and even a chorus line.
It ran for 30 weeks and showed what might work on TV. In 1948, variety shows found a foothold:
The “Texaco Star Theatre” didn’t start with hints of grandeur. Four guys in gas station uniforms sang: “Oh, we’re the men from Texaco/We work from Maine to Mexico.”
Then came the show’s alternating hosts, mostly comedians of the vaudeville era – Henny Youngman, Morey Amsterdam, Jack Carter and more … including a semi-known chap named Milton Berle.
By the end of the summer, Berle had become the permanent host, getting broader, goofier and more successful.
“The Berle phenomenon was unbelievable,” Pat Weaver wrote. “During his first two years, there were ratings periods when the pollsters found that virtually everyone watching television was watching him.”
Weaver feared that CBS would lure him away – as it did with Jack Benny and others in the radio day.
“We were so alarmed at the possibility of losing Milton that my whole staff romanced him,” Weaver wrote. “I talked to him backstage at every opportunity and even gave him what I called a ‘lifetime contract.’”
It wasn’t really for a lifetime, but Berle did eight seasons on NBC, paused for two years and did one more, nudging TV through its early years.
Ed Sullivan was the opposite of Berle in every way – no silly costumes, no old jokes, no … well, anything.
He will go down as possibly the worst host in TV history, but also one of the best producers.
Sullivan fit the general view that newspaper columnists should never be on TV. Stiff and somber, he simply pointed to his next act.
But they were an amazing collection of acts. The first night (June 20, 1948) included two opposite duos –Martin and Lewis, Rodgers and Hammerstein. It also had another comedy duo, a singing fireman, another singer, a ballerina and classical pianist Eugene List.
This led to Sullivan’s three big strengths:
— His big-tent approach expanded the viewers’ world. In smalltown Wisconsin, for instance, I could see opera singers, scenes from Broadway musicals … and Black people. There were no Blacks in Clintonville, but I knew Louis Armstrong and Peg Leg Bates were stars.
— He insisted on actual singing. At a time when some shows would settle for lip-syncing, Sullivan gave us the real thing.
— And he was open to rock ‘n’ roll. On Feb. 9, 1964, Sullivan had acrobats, a magician, an impressionist, a comedy duo, and singer Tessie O’Shea, who was sometimes fondly dubbed Two Ton Tessie. But it also had the Beatles; 73 million people watched.
The Beatles did five more Sullivan shows; the Dave Clark Five did 12. Sullivan helped transform pop culture.
In the second year of the Nielsen ratings (1951-2), a typical Berle hour was seen by more than half the homes that had TV’s.
Still, that only put it at No. 2. Arthur Godfrey was No. 1 … and No. 6 … and tops in radio.
On Mondays, his “Talent Scouts” introduced such unknowns as Tony Bennett, Patsy Cline, Roy Clark, Leslie Uggams and an accordian-playing Connie Francis. (Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly failed in auditions.)
On Wednesdays, “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends” had regular duty for some “Talent Scout” winners (Pat Boone, Carmel Quinn, the Chordettes, the McGuire Sisters) and others.
And mornings had Godfrey’s CBS Radio show. At one point, Robert Metz wrote in “Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye” (Playboy Press, 1975), Godfrey accounted for 12 per cent of all CBS income.
“It was strange,” Metz wrote, “that a man so without talent – except as a ukulele plucker – should become a superstar …. He played passably and sang about as well.” One of Godfrey’s writers, he said, called him “the dumbest genius I ever met.” And one executive, Metz wrote, was considered “the vice-president in charge of Arthur Godfrey.”
There was a lot to keep charge of, peaking when Godfrey told singer Julius LaRosa – live, on the air – that he was fired. The kind-old-uncle image faded; “Talent Scouts” remained quite strong, but by 1955-56, “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends” had fallen out of the top 30.
And LaRosa? For three years, he had summer replacement shows – a 15-minute one on CBS, then an hour one on NBC.
In the ‘50s, there were some variety shows that reached the top-30 – Berle, Sullivan, Godfrey, Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Red Buttons, Red Skelton, Perry Como, George Gobel, Phil Silvers, a few others.
But there were plenty that didn’t. Some were hosted by major stars of the past or future – Steve Allen, Ray Bolger, Pat Boone, Johnny Carson, Dick Clark, Imogene Coca, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Fisher, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dave Garroway, Betty Hutton, Patti Page, Mickey Rooney and Ed Wynn.
And others? Well, in the fall primetime schedules during the ‘50s, there were variety shows hosted by Jack Carter, Paul Dixon, Dotty Mack, Gisele MacKenzie, Tony Martin, Don McNeil, Vaughn Monroe, Patrice Munsel, Dell O’Dell, Peter Potter and Martha Wright. And that’s not to mention “The Arthur Murray Dance Party,” “Circus Time” and “It’s Polka Time.”
Variety shows – with or without big stars – vanished quickly. There are many explanations, but I’ll offer one theory: Many of them weren’t very good.
They often fell into a steady pattern – star sings, guest sings, some easy-to-ignore patter, star and guest sing together.
There were stand-up comedians, but many of them reflected the days before the fresh perspectives of Bob Newhart or Joan Rivers. There was music, but it was often in the narrow confines of what was called “popular music” – music that, in the rock era, became increasingly unpopular.
The rock song “Hound Dog”? Como tried to sing it as a mid-temp pop tune; it was not a pleasant experience. Allen let Elvis Presley sing it … but only to a solemn-faced basset hound that was wearing a top hat.
(Allen later said he sometimes bought a Rolling Stones record, just so he could turn it off. And when he hosted “I’ve Got a Secret,” he had panelists do a dramatic reading. None guessed the secret – that they had just read the words to “Leader of the Pack,” the No. 1 song in America.)
At times, bands were treated with disinterest by the directors. A camera might be on the bass during a lead-guitar riff, on the singer during a drum burst.
Even the Sullivan show, with its big-tent approach, had its limits. It asked Mick Jagger to change “I want to spend the night with you” to “I want to spend some time with you”; it asked Jim Morrison to drop the line “Girl, we can’t get much higher.” Jagger assented, Morrison didn’t … and was never booked again.
As variety shows kept seeming older and stiffer, there was a handy accident.
In 1967, CBS moved “The Garry Moore Show” to its 9 p.m. Sunday slot. That sort of made sense; this was a long-running variety show, plunked into the spot behind Sullivan. But it no longer had Carol Burnett and now it was facing “Bonanza,” the No. 1 show on television.
Mike Dann, CBS’ programming chief, needed a replacement in a hurry. The only quick-fix idea he heard was to hire the Smothers Brothers.
“Everybody was saying it took a lot of courage to do it,” Dann said in David Bianculli’s “Dangerously Funny” (Simon & Schuster, 2009). “It didn’t take a lot of courage. They were the only show I could get ready.”
Much later, the brothers would be remembered for battling CBS censors. At first, there were no hints of that. “We wanted traditional stuff,” Dick Smothers told Bianculli. They wanted dancers and back-up singers. There was even a marching band, with bass drum, for the opening credits.
“Nothing at all in that first hour was topical,” Bianculli wrote, “much less controversial.”
That would come later: Pete Seeger singing a metaphor for slogging into an unending war … David Steinberg delivering a sermonette that included grabbing someone “by the Old Testaments” … Pat Paulsen delivering a gun-rights editorial (“If you’re old enough to get arrested, you’re old enough to carry a gun”) that pointed out: “A gun is a necessity. Who knows, if you’re walking down a street you’ll spot a moose.”
But even if none of that had happened, the show would have been revolutionary. It simply had fresh ways of doing everything.
Paulsen’s first piece on the show had nothing to do with issues. He merely looked official and mumbled in an incoherent – and hilarious – fashion.
The comedy kept getting sharper. After starting with veteran writers, Tom Smothers added a fresh layer of young ones – Steve Martin, Rob Reiner. McLean Stevenson, songwriter John Hartford and Bob Einstein, the future “Super Dave Osborne.” It was, Bianculli points out, “the best bullpen of young writers” since Sid Caesar had Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner (Rob’s dad) and, later, Woody Allen.
The comedy was sharp and the music was presented in fresh ways. For one piece, Mason Williams performed all the instruments; the camera darted between cut-outs of him at every spot in the orchestra. For another, there were “topless dancers” – chorus girls’ legs (with everything else blacked out) cavorting behind the singer.
“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” kept showing how good a variety show can be. Then, due to censorship battles, it was canceled.
In the half-century since then, there have been several “variety shows” that were basically comedy ones with a token bit of music. Some have been brilliant – “Laugh-In,” Carol Burnett, “Saturday Night Live,” “In Living Color.” But with the rare exception (“The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,” for instance), none has been a true variety show.
Much of that involves the stratification of music tastes. Comedy can still gather large audiences, but no music genre seems to do that.
The latenight shows even set hard rules: No music guest – not even a Garth Brooks or Whitney Houston – would sing in the middle of a show. Music is only for the final segment, because some viewers will scatter.
These days, music rarely shows up in prime time unless there are awards or – just like in Godfrey’s day – a talent contest.
Over the years, there have been TV specials that showed just how good TV music can be. They’ve included “Color Me Barbra” (1966), “Movin’ With Nancy” (1967), the stunning “Liza With a Z” (1972) and “Adele: One Night Only” (2021).
The latter was produced by Ben Winston, the next great hope for variety TV. He’s an Englishman who came here with James Corden, but don’t expect all their fellow countrymen to be equally clever.
In 2009, the Fox network launched what was going to be the next new variety show, “Osbournes Reloaded.” One example of its humor was to blindfold an audience member and have him kiss an elderly woman.
Mercifully, the show was canceled after one episode, but the point was clear:
Primetime TV had once reached the Caesar/Smothers/Living Color peaks; now it was into kissing-old-ladies humor. We may have to wait a while for the
(And now Chapter Six, concluding the “Good Old Days (?) section. It , viewing TV’s leap from forgettable comedies to “I Love Lucy.”)
As the 1951 season began, TV had a split personality.
Yes, there were promising signs from Sid Caesar, Ed Sullivan and lots of live dramas But there were also remnants of TV’s primitive start.
Look around prime time that fall and you’d find wrestling (twice) and boxing (twice). You’d find the “Georgetown University Forum” and “Johns Hopkins Science Review”; “Youth on the March” and “American Youth Forum.” You’d find “Marshall Plan in Action,” “Film Filler” and “Lessons in Safety.”
And into that shaky field – on Oct. 15, 1951 – “I Love Lucy” (shown here) debuted. It instantly fulfilled “every promise of the often harassed new medium,” a Hollywood Reporter critic wrote, adding: “It should bounce to the top of the rating heap in no time.“
It did. On a typical Monday that first season, more than half of all TV homes watched “Lucy”; the second year, more than two-thirds did. The night Lucy had her baby, that hit 71.7 percent.
This was a variation of a character Lucille Ball had done on radio – the wide-eyed innocent, forever floating dreams and schemes. It fit her immense range, Jess Oppenheimer (who produced her radio comedy and “I Love Lucy”) wrote in “Laughs, Luck … and Lucy” (Syracuse University Press. 1996):
“Unexpected qualities appeared out of nowhere. Little, human, ordinary, recognizable values. Inflections that were exactly what your sister or your mother or the lady busdriver used. She was the everywoman.”
She had done that on radio; now she was moving to TV, with the same writers (Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr.) and the bonus of sight gags.
There was one catch: Radio was done with a studio audience; at this point, TV situation comedies weren’t.
“Lucy was dreadful without an audience,” CBS executive Harry Ackerman once said. “She absolutely bloomed in front of an audience.”
She insisted that “I Love Lucy” have one. A legend persisted that Desi Arnaz (her co-star, producer and husband) had invented the method of shooting a sitcom before an audience.
“No particular person came up with the idea,” Oppenheimer said in 1973. “It developed in conferences and was dictated by necessity.” In his memoir, he offered details.
Lots of shows were shown live on connected stations on the East Coast. The rest of the country would get a so-so kinescope copy.
But Ball wanted to do the opposite – perform on the West Coast, then send kinescopes east. Back then, that meant 85 percent of viewers would get a bad copy.
The sponsor objected; Ball insisted on LA. Arnaz and others found a compromise — using four cameras, each loaded with film so no one would have to settle for kinescope.
The multi-camera idea “had been around since the late 1920s” in Hollywood, Oppenheimer wrote. It reached TV in the late ‘40s, Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert wrote in “Desilu” (Morrow, 1993). It was used on “Public Prosecutor,” “Silver Theater,” “Truth or Consequences” and “Amos and Andy.”
But that last one was the only sitcom and it had a makeshift approach: It shot each episode with three cameras, but no audience. Then an audience was brought in to laugh at the result.
That missed the key part, Oppenheimer said — reacting to the audience. “There is that quality, that response, that comes only from a live experience. And the American audience had learned to expect this, after 25 years of listening to studio audiences laughing on radio.”
Now “I Love Lucy” wanted to do it all – four cameras, each rolling with film, yet not getting in the way of the studio audience. There were adjustments – an overall lighting system … long-lens cameras … and financial moves.
This new system was adding to the budget, CBS said; the stars would have to take a pay cut. Arnaz agreed – but only if he and Ball owned the shows after they aired.
For most shows, that would have been useless. Even Caesar’s comedies or the golden-age dramas had little value as shaky kinescopes.
But these “Lucy” episodes were different – crisp, black-and-white film, shot in Hollywood. “Desi had, in effect, invented the rerun market,” Sanders and Gilbert wrote.
The episodes eventually reran on CBS daytime … and on individual stations … and even in a few colorized primetime specials. They were worth millions and were the basis for what followed.
Buoyed by profits from reruns, the Desilu company bought RKO Studios, eventually expanding to 33 sound stages. It produced “The Untouchables” and (after Arnaz left in 1962) “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Mannix” and more.
After running the company for five years, Ball sold it to Paramount’s parent company in ‘67. The old Desilu shows fueled Paramount’s movie business, with “Star Trek,” “Untouchables” and Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” empire. Then “Star Trek” became the key piece of the Paramount+ streamer.
There was also an irony: Six weeks before “I Love Lucy” debuted, CBS completed a link that connected its stations. If they knew that was coming, the “Lucy” people might have skipped the idea of using film and owning reruns
But they didn’t, Oppenheimer wrote. They created “the technical innovations that would contribute so much to the success of ‘I Love Lucy,’ the growth of the Desilu empire, and the eventual shift of the center of television production from New York to Hollywood.”
In the years that followed, many sitcoms would use the “Lucy” techniques and some would shoot on the old Desilu stages. By accident or not, some had rhythms and characters that were similar to the “Lucy” ones.
Some of those shows would be awful, but others fueled two comedy golden ages. TV was going far away from “Film Filler” and “Lessons in Safety.”
(Here’s the start of the second section, “How Many Choices: Was three really enough?” It starts with this re-numbered Chapter Seven, viewing the first stabs at a fourth network.)
We’ve always assumed that three is the logical number for anything.
It’s the number of strikes, outs, Stooges, little pigs, blind mice and little kittens that lost their mittens. But is it the ideal number of over-the-air, commercial TV networks?
It seemed that way. Early efforts at a fourth network sputtered, despite such stars as Jackie Gleason (shown here), Ernie Kovacs, boxers and a bishop. Other tries failed. For 30 years, it was ABC, CBS and NBC.
And then it all changed. There were four networks … then six … then seven … and then it went down to five plus some slivers.
We’re talking here about true networks – ones that must assemble stations around the country. Eventually, high-tech methods – cable, satellite, streaming – made it possible to skip all of that.
But before tech took over, the stabs at a fourth network were intriguing. Let’s look at the first tries:
ABC
Yes, there was a stretch when ABC was No. 4.
“DuMont, the third network, had slightly more coverage than ABC,” Leonard Goldenson, ABC’s founder, wrote in “Beating the Odds” (Scribner’s, 1991).
The earliest networks were from companies that made TV sets – NBC (owned by RCA) and DuMont. They were allowed to do limited programming during World War II.
Afterward, two radio networks could put up their first nightly TV schedules. It was a mismatch:
— By 1948, CBS already had Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan and the “Studio One” dramas.
— ABC? It included “Quizzing the News,” “Critic at Large,” “Fashion Story,” “Teenage Book Club” and – six times a week – “Film Shorts.”
Short on cash, ABC was merging with the Paramount theater chain. The government worried about a monopoly and hesitated. For 18 months, ABC was barred from going after new affiliates.
When that was finally settled, Goldenson wrote:
— ABC had just 14 stations, counting the five it owned. NBC had 71; CBS had 74. For commercials, “one hour of CBS programming brought in about five times as much as an hour on ABC.”
— The Chicago station was in good shape, but the others were in shambles. “In Detroit, all the equipment was sitting around some hallway they’d leased. The San Francisco property had been an Elks Club; there was still sawdust on the floor.” The Los Angeles station was a long-vacant movie studio. “It was falling apart; rats scampered across the rafters and piles of droppings were everywhere.”
— And the New York hub was a former riding stable. “The scent of equine manure still permeated the establishment.”
At first, ABC’s only notable shows were radio transplants — “Ozzie & Harriet” and “The Lone Ranger.” It scrambled to land some stars.
“One of the people they desperately wanted was Ray Bolger, a proven talent on Broadway and as a TV guest star,” Danny Thomas wrote in “Make Room For Danny” (Putnam’s, 1991). Bolger’s agent said yes … if ABC also had a show for Thomas.
It was an unusual choice at the time, Thomas once wrote. “It was the day of the White Protestant American United States, and a guy like me wasn’t exactly family fare.”
He was the former Amos Jacobs and, before that, Muzyad Yakhoob. With his Lebanese background, he didn’t seem like the other TV stars. But his show – sharply written and played – was a crisp, funny look at the life of an overstretched family man.
It won the Emmy for best new show and proved ABC could create shows from scratch. After four years (twice as long as Bolger), Thomas jumped to CBS in 1957 — leaping to No. 2 in the Nielsen ratings.
Mostly, however, ABC’s strategy was to lean toward Hollywood. Its Disney show was a quick success … but, for a time, nothing else was.
For its first two seasons (1954 and ‘55), “Disneyland” was the only ABC show in the Nielsen top-20. Soon, it was joined by westerns – Wyatt Earp, “Cheyenne,” “Sugarfoot,” “The Rifleman,” “The Lawman,” Disney’s “Zorro” and more. ABC moved to No. 3; DuMont was fourth and wobbling.
The DuMont Network
There was a lot of potential to DuMont, even as it slipped from No. 2 to 3 to 4 and then to oblivion.
Allen DuMont was considered a genius. His labs ranged from creating the first long-lasting TV tube to helping the U.S. develop radar. His company reportedly sold the first consumer TV set, in 1938.
Eventually, its sets were in many places … including upstate New York in 1956. In his memoir, Brandon Tartikoff (the NBC chief during its prime) recalled being “a seven-year-old boy, sitting nose-to-screen in front of a seven-inch DuMont television set, mesmerized by everything.”
That happened to be just after the time when the DuMont network went out of business. Two years later, its TV-manufacturing would do the same.
But at first, this had a key role, alongside NBC, as the first networks.
DuMont set up headquarters in a former department store in Manhattan, then leased a theater for shows. Early efforts included:
— The first network soap opera. “Faraway Hill” ran for 12 episodes in 1946.
— One of the first situation comedies. “Mary Kay and Johnny” was written by Johnny Stearns, who starred with his wife. It debuted in 1947 on DuMont, then moved to NBC, to CBS and back to NBC.
— “The Morey Amsterdam Show,” which started on CBS, then moved to DuMont in ‘49. It was set in a fictional nightclub and its only three regulars went on to bigger things – Amsterdam on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” … Art Carney (who played a doorman and waiter) as Gleason’s sidekick … and Jacqueline Susann (who played the gorgeous cigarette girl) as author of “Valley of the Dolls.”
— “Cavalcade of Stars.” It arrived in 1949, as a standard variety show with a comedian as host. First was Jack Carter, then Jerry Lester … and then Gleason, with his rich array of characters. (Even the classic “Honeymooners” began there.) Gleason would stay on the show for two seasons. Then, like Thomas, he jumped to CBS and saw his show reach No. 2 in the ratings.
— Other key people. Kovacs had a short-lived show. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen gave a weekly talk, winning the Emmy for best TV personality. Ted Mack had “The Original Amateur Hour,” an early ratings success that then jumped to other networks.
— Early nudges toward diversity. There were shows whose stars were Black (Hazel Scott), Jewish (Gertrude Berg) and Asian (Anna May Wong).
— And “Captain Video and His Video Rangers,” a micro-budget show that had a new episode (30 minutes for four years, 15 for two) each weekday.
“Captain Video” sounds like a trifle, but it was more.
You can take my word for it. (The scenes with Tobor the robot were a big hit in Clintonville.) Or you can take the word of Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh; in their guide to primetime TV (Ballantine, 2007), they wrote:
“’Captain Video’ was, in all, a splendid example of innovative programming that was perfect for the TV medium. Had DuMont been able to devise more such breakthroughs, the network might have survived longer than it did. As it was, ‘Captain Video and His Video Rangers’ lasted until the network itself crumbled away in 1955.”
But why did it crumble?
Many of its other shows never came close to the Gleason/”Captain Video” level of entertainment. DuMont’s primetime line-up included “Fashions on Parade,” “Photographic Horizons,” “Fishing and Hunting Club,” “Visit With the Armed Forces,” “Georgetown University Forum,” “Author Meets the Critics” and lots of boxing.
The network had ambition, but it also had built-in limitations.
Its competitors sprang from radio. They used radio stars (Jack Benny, Arthur Godfrey, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Ozzie & Harriet) and shows (“Our Miss Brooks,” “Gunsmoke,” “The Aldrich Family,” “Truth or Consequences” and many more). They could promote themselves on radio … and use radio profits to ease the start-up costs of TV.
DuMont had none of that. It also had other limits.
Strapped for cash, it had taken on the Paramount movie studio as a minority partner. Paramount didn’t provide any shows; it also started stations in Los Angeles and Chicago — rarely using any DuMont programs.
At first, the “network” owned only two stations, in New York and Washington. It added a strong one in Pittsburgh and prepared to get ones in Cleveland and Cincinnati; then …
The Federal Communications Commission said no; counting those two Paramount stations, DuMont already had its limit of five owned stations.
So it limped along with three real owned ones and some scattered affiliates – some of them UHF stations, at a time when most TV sets only got VHF.
(There were also “secondary affiliates” — stations that could grab a few DuMont shows, especially if they didn’t conflict with the main network. That left one important benefit to mankind: “Captain Video” ran at 7 p.m., 6 Central, weekdays, a time when CBS and NBC weren’t on the air. Thus, kids in Clintonville could savor Tobor the robot.)
The final DuMont broadcast (a boxing match) was aired just before the 1955 fall season began. TV was down to three networks, and would stay there – despite occasional pushes – for decades.
And the stations DuMont owned? The New York and Washington ones became part of Metromedia, a thriving station group that created successful shows – Merv Griffin, “Wonderama,” etc. — for syndication.
In 1985, the entire group was sold; the next year, that became the core of the new Fox network. TV finally had a fourth network that would last.
For 30 years, a fourth TV network seemed like mere myth.
That was after the death of DuMont and before the birth of Fox. There were several tries, all imploding quickly.
One such fizzle (a 1967 latenight show led by Bill Dana, shown here) was declared by Jack Gould, the New York Times TV critic, to seal things. It was “further evidence that expansion of commercial TV is little more than a pipe dream.”
Hey, weren’t three enough options? Just look at the choices in ‘67:.
— As primetime started on Wednesdays, you could choose between two cowboy shows (“Custer” and “The Virginian”) and “Lost in Space.” There was nothing set in this era on this planet.
— The next night, you could choose between two more westerns (“Daniel Boone” and “Cimarron Strip”) and “The Flying Nun.”
Surely, three choices would be enough. One network executive said viewers would simply choose “the least objectionable program.” Sometimes, we did.
Except later, it turned out that we really prefer having four choices … or seven … or, as the cable and streaming eras took hold, seemingly hundreds.
But at first, no one could get it right – especially Paramount.
As a studio, Paramount has done a splendid job of making movies (“Godfather,” “Titanic,” “Forrest Gump,” etc.). And TV? After a wobbly start, it bought the Desilu company from Lucille Ball, later adding top comedies from Garry Marshall (“Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “Mork and Mindy”) and beyond (“Cheers,” “Family Ties”).
But creating its own network? Paramount kept botching it:
— It could have nudged DuMont to success. It owned 40 percent of the network and had two things that would have helped – stations it owned in Los Angeles and Chicago, plus lots of films that could have been shown. Instead, it withheld both and watched DuMont die.
— At the same time, it tried the Paramount Television Service. That was sort of a syndicator (selling shows, station-by-station), with network aspirations.
A few programs were notable. “Time For Beany,” a children’s show, won a 1949 Emmy; Lawrence Welk was briefly at Paramount, before moving on.
And the rest? The world soon forgot “Hollywood Wrestling” or “The Spade Cooley Show” or “Frosty Frolics” or “Adventures in Music” – which, of course, centered on an organist.
— In 1977, it had a simple plan for Saturdays – a new “Star Trek” series at 8 p.m. and a movie at 9. That one might have worked, but never got started..
— A decade later, that series — “Star Trek: The Next Generation” — finally debuted. Syndicated to individual stations, it was beautifully crafted and a quick ratings success. That brought yet another network scheme: Combine three syndicated shows – the “Star Trek” one plus “She-Wolf” and “They Came From Outer Space” – with three new ones. That, too, was abandoned.
Other new-network plans kept surfacing, some from potent sources: There was Mutual, already big in radio … and Kaiser Broadcasting … and MGM … and a combination of three big station groups, Metromedia, Westinghouse and Hughes Television Network.
Even Pat Weaver, the early NBC mastermind, started a syndicator that could evolve into a network.”Within a year,” he wrote, “we had acquired ‘Ding Dong School’ … and had it widely sold, five mornings a week.” Also, “our nighttime programming showed promise.”
Alas, there’s a huge gulf between “Ding Dong School” and a new network. He never got close; neither did others, including a splashy one:
Daniel Overmyer was dubbed “the king of warehousing.” Expanding a business his father started, he had more than 350 warehouses.
Somehow, he considered that a fine background for starting a TV network. Fortunately, he knew enough to hire a pro.
Ollie Treyz had become ABC’s president in 1956, when he was only 38 and the network was only so-so. “He was brilliant,” Leonard Goldenson, the network co-founder, wrote. “Charismatic, ebullient, a born salesman.”
During his four years as president (and two as vice-president), Treyz molded ABC as an action network. He fostered cowboy shows (“Maverick,” “The Rifleman,” “Cheyenne”), plus “The Untouchables,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “77 Sunset Strip” and more.
When he took over, ABC had one show in the top-30; when he left (after controversy over violence in a “Bus Stop” episode), it had seven.
This was someone who knew TV: He linked with the Overmyer for a plan:
The new network would own seven small-ish stations (the limit at that time) and have affiliate agreements with others, including flagship stations in New York and Los Angeles.
And it would start ambitiously, with “The Las Vegas Show.”
Here was a two-hour show (90 minutes in some markets). It had a clever host (Bill Dana, a writer and comedian, known for the Jose Jimenez character), lots of sketch-comedy regulars (including Jo Anne Worley and Ann Elder, who both became “Laugh-In” regulars) and more.
Guests included comedians (Mort Sahl, Red Foxx, Milton Berle, Don Rickles), musicians (Sarah Vaughan, Della Reese, Liberace) and personalities (Hugh Hefner, John Wayne).
This was a latenight show. It faced Johnny Carson, but the rest of its competition was light. ABC was set to introduce the bland Joey Bishop show; CBS had no latenight, so some of its affiliates carried Overmyer’s show.
Except by then, this was no longer “The Overmyer Network.” Forever juggling finances (he was later sentenced to three years in prison), Overmyer ran out of money. A few weeks before the network opened, he sold it to investors. They changed its name to The United Network and closed its only show after four-and-a-half weeks.
“The Las Vegas Show” had big ambitions, plus flaws. There was no desk, no chairs; Dana and a guest would both be standing, with their conversation seeming stiff and forced.
Much later, the Fox network would also debut with a latenight show. That show also failed; the network didn’t. TV would finally have its fourth commercial, over-the-air network.
(This section will add about four more chapters, going through the expanded universe – Fox and Pax, the growing and shrinking WB and UPN, then the endless surge of cable and streaming. Those will be inserted here, after being posted separately. Stay tuned.)
(And now we start the third section, “Fun Times – or not – at the networks. This re-numbered Chapter 13 views TV’s first Golden Age of comedy.)
In a logical world, “I Love Lucy” would have launched a revolution in clever comedies.
TV, of course, lacks logic. It would be a couple decades before Mary Tyler Moore, Archie Bunker and others propelled the first golden age of comedy.
During the “Lucy” years, networks mostly had minor comedies, often bearing characters’ names. There was “Stanley” and “Sally,” “Willy” and “Meet Millie.” There was “Hey Jeannie” and “It’s Always Jan,” “Dear Phoebe” and “Honestly Celeste,” “Leave It to Larry” and “Meet Mr. McNutley.” And that’s not to mention “Colonel Humphrey Flack” and “Adventures of Hiram Hoke.”
Many lasted for a year or two; most were soon forgotten.
Certainly, there were some clever folks then. Danny Thomas had a situation comedy; so did George Burns and Gracie Allen. Others – Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, etc. — had sitcom elements inside variety shows.
But things were sputtering … and hit a detour with James Aubrey.
Aubrey had boosted ABC with a surge of cowboy shows. Then he became CBS’ president in 1959.
Tall and handsome, he was a former Princeton football player with a nature that was variously described as decisive and arrogant. The good news was he knew what he wanted; the bad news was he just wanted quick ratings.
His formula was described by writer Andrew Grossman as “broads, bosoms and fun.” His soul was described by writer David Halberstam as a “huckster’s huckster.” His persona was described by many people as “the smiling cobra.”
His approach was big on profits, not prestige, Metz wrote. “Under Aubrey’s aegis, CBS attracted the biggest audiences and banked the highest profits in TV history.”
For the 1963-64 season, it had 14 of the 15 top-rated shows. (NBC’s “Bonanza” was the only exception.) But that was built on rural shows and on gimmick ones: “Beverly Hillbillies” was No. 1, “My Favorite Martian” was No. 10. “Mr. Ed” (the talking horse) was also around.
Some of these shows had catchy gimmicks that soared quickly. But, as John Rich (a director of “All in the Family” and other shows) pointed out: “Quick starters tend to be quick finishers.”
Amid all that, Metz wrote: “There were exceptions to the usual pap Aubrey fed the public. The Dick Van Dyke series is still regarded as a landmark.”
Carl Reiner, one of the key people in Caesar’s show, had written and produced a comedy that jumped between Rob Petrie’s two worlds – at home with his wife and son and at work as a comedy writer.
The pilot was rejected, but then Sheldon Leonard – yes, the namesake for Sheldon and Leonard on “The Big Bang Theory” – intervened.
Leonard was already producing comedies built around Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith. This script was good, he said, but Rob needed to be recast
This didn’t please Reiner, because he was playing Rob. He agreed, and instead played (occasionally) the boss.
Van Dyke, fresh from a Broadway musical, became the new Rob. Playing his wife was Mary Tyler Moore … best-known for playing a receptionist – with only her legs on camera – on “Richard Diamond, Private Detective.” This new version was a hit … eventually.
The first season, misplaced behind the half-hour version of “Gunsmoke,” sputtered. Aubrey decided to cancel it.
“CBS was guilty of a network sin that is still being committed today,” Grant Tinker wrote in “Tinker in Television” (Simon & Schuster, 1994). “Lackluster, first-year ratings results were given greater weight than overwhelmingly positive critical reaction” and potential.
Leonard was convinced of the potential. A commanding presence – as an actor, he was best at playing gangsters – he made personal pitches to executives at Procter & Gamble and P. Lorillard.
Both agreed to take a half-sponsorship of the show. Aubrey – wary of offending two big advertisers – relented.
He also nestled the show into a new spot behind “Beverly Hillbillies.” In its second season, the Van Dyke show leaped to No. 3 in the Nielsen ratings. It also won the Emmy for best comedy series … and continued to win it for the rest of its five-year run.
That lesson – if a show has potential, stick with it – was soon ignored by many people, but not by Tinker.
During the Van Dyke years, he was merely a spectator, married to Moore. Later, he became the NBC president and showed the sort of patience that others had lacked.
When “Cheers” started slowly, NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff reportedly suggested it be canceled. Tinker’s reply: “Do you have anything better?”
He didn’t, of course. “Cheers” stayed.
“Throughout its first season, ‘Cheers; ranked near the bottom of Nielsen’s prime-time list, some weeks finishing dead last,” Tinker wrote. The solution: “staying with ‘Cheers’ until the audience found out how wonderful it was.”
In its third year – with “The Cosby Show” starting the night, “Cheers” was No. 12. It would spend the next eight years in the top-five, finishing No. 1 in its ninth season. It was nominated for best comedy series every year, winning in its first two seasons and three more times.
But that was later, during the second comedy golden age. First was a key question: Would “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (like “I Love Lucy”) be a mere anomaly, followed by mediocrity? Or would other worthy comedies follow?
Tinker worked out a deal: CBS would give him a 13-week commitment — no pilot film needed — for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” The MTM company was born.
There were network objections, Tinker recalled. The pilot did poorly with test audiences. After meeting the show’s writer-producers (Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, fresh from ABC’s “Room 222”), a network programmer told him: “Hire someone else, someone we can deal with.”
He didn’t and the show clicked when it debuted in 1970. In each of its seven seasons, it was nominated for best comedy series; for the final three, it won. It spent three seasons in the Nielsen top-10 and three more in the top-22.
And it kept spawning spin-offs – “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” even “Lou Grant” … a comedy character spinning off into a drama. By 1977, MTM had shows starring Bob Newhart, Tony Randall and Betty White.
It “had a growing reputation as a place where quality counted …. We were simultaneously beloved by Nielsen and by the critics,” Tinker wrote.
MTM molded TV’s first golden age of comedy … or, actually, half of it.
Two years before “The Mary Tyler Moore” show debuted, Norman Lear read about a British comedy in which a bigoted dad spouted about his family and the world. To Lear, that was a lot like his own father. “I loved him,” he once said, “but I didn’t always like him.”
Lear bought the rights and prepared to Americanize it. The wife would become much more lovable; so would her husband, Archie Bunker.
“It was very important to me that Archie have a likable face,” Lear wrote in “Even This I Get to Experience” (Penguin Press, 2014). “The point of the character was to show that if bigotry and intolerance didn’t exist in the hearts and minds of the good people, the average people, it would not be the endemic problem it is …. I rarely saw a bigot I didn’t have some reason to like. They were all the relatives and friends.”
So he cast Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton as Archie and Edith. Lear shot one pilot in October of 1968, recast the daughter and son-in-law and did another four months later. The rest was up to ABC, then led by Elton Rule and Leonard Goldenson.
“Elton and I knew ‘All in the Family’ was funny,” Goldenson wrote in “Beating the Odds” (Scribner’s, 1991), “but felt it would antagonize certain ethnic groups. We also had serious doubts that advertisers would support the show.”
There was another factor, which Michael Eisner – then an ABC clerk, later the head of Disney – recalled in Goldenson’s book.
In an attempt to reach young audiences, ABC had scheduled “Turn On,” a comedy show from “Laugh-In” producer George Schlatter.
The result bombed instantly and was canceled after one episode. (“Not even one,” Schlatter once said, sort of gleefully. “One station owner stopped it at the commercial break.”)
“Everybody was still shell-shocked from ‘Turn On,’” Eisner wrote. “I think if it hadn’t been for that, they would have put the show on the air.”
So “All in the Family” was ditched and Lear was ready to sign a three-picture deal as a movie writer/producer. Then he got a call from Bob Wood, the new CBS president, who said he’d just seen “the Archie pilot.”
Bud Yorkin, Lear’s business partner, had visited CBS on another matter, when one of the people mentioned “All in the Family.” Yorkin promptly brought out a tape and laughter ensued.
CBS ordered one more pilot – the third – this time with Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner as the daughter and son-in-law. Then “All in the Family” debuted on Jan. 12, 1971, just four months after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
At first, it was in a mismatch behind “Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres” and “Hee Haw.” The next fall, it moved to 8 p.m. Saturdays and soared. For five years, it was No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings, sometimes by large margins.
The effect was huge, Lear wrote. “Five years later, we had seven series on the air and Mike Wallace was introducing me on ‘60 Minutes’ as the man whose shows were viewed by more than 120 million people each week.”
Some of Lear’s shows – “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” – shared the “All in the Family” knack for stirring controversy. Some – “Sanford and Sons,” “Diff’rent Strokes” – were just silly fun. At least one, “All That Glitters,” failed instantly with critics and viewers.
But mostly, these were smart, sharp shows, as were the MTM ones.
The two comedy factories were opposites in some ways: Lear’s shows were more topical and more diverse.
But they were similar in the important ways: They were funny, distinctive and mostly immune to network meddling.
Combined with a few other shows – especially “MASH,” which started in 1972 – they gave TV it’s first golden age of comedy.
(Here’s the re-numbered Chapter 14, viewing the modern rise of NBC. More will follow.)
For TV people, some lessons are learned, unlearned and learned anew.
Flash back to Pat Weaver, who ran NBC from 1953-55.
“Once you’ve chosen the creative people and put them to work, you leave them alone,” he wrote later. “You wouldn’t tell Milton Berle what jokes to use. You wouldn’t tell a producer like Fred Coe how to climax a dramatic story for ‘Television Playhouse.’ At least I never did.”
That’s the same notion Grant Tinker had during his two turns at NBC – first (1961-67) as West Coast programming chief, later (1981-86) as network president. “The mission,” Tinker wrote later, “was to get good producers and let them produce.”
In the in-between years, that mission vanished. Networks swarmed with bureaucracy, Tinker wrote, little of it helpful. “Heaven only knows how many potentially successful television shows have gone down the tubes because their producers were obliged to act on bad network advice.”
He had used his formula – hire clever people and leave them alone – to spark the first comedy gold. His MTM company produced “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its spin-offs, plus the Bob Newhart and Tony Randall shows and “WKRP in Cincinnati.” Then came two changes:
— MTM showed it could also do great drama – first with “Lou Grant,” then with “Hill Street Blues.”
— At the same time, NBC was crumbling.
In the second half of the ‘70s, “Little House on the Prairie” was often the only NBC show (movies excluded) in the Nielsen top-30. In ‘78, the network hired Fred Silverman to fix things.
Silverman had already been dubbed by Time magazine as “the man with the golden gut.” As CBS’ programming chief (1970-75) he brought in the golden-age comedies – “All In the Family,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “MASH,” more. At ABC (‘75 to ‘78), he led a youth makeover; by the time he left, the network had the four most-watched shows – “Laverne & Shirley,” “Three’s Company,” “Mork & Mindy” and “Happy Days.”
Then he went from the top to the bottom.
In the next three years, some of NBC’s shows were bland (“Shirley,” “Hello, Larry”) or just bad. The network did succeed with “Real People” and “Diff’rent Strokes,” but few people were impressed by “Games People Play” or “BJ and the Bear” (the bear, of course, being a chimp) or its “Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo” spin-off
“Fred Silverman was justly renowned for the programming wonders he had previously performed at both CBS and ABC,” Tinker wrote. “But as president of NBC, … he was in a frantic, almost manic, period …. Everything he tried went wrong and NBC was sinking fast.”
Brandon Tartikoff had a close-up view of that. He worked at NBC and, at 31, was promoted by Silverman to be the programming chief.
“Failure hung over him like a fog,” Tartikoff wrote of Silverman in “The Last Great Ride” (Random House, 1992). “Fred’s style in those days was to scream a lot, pound his fist on his desk – and constantly take his programming off in different directions.”
Maybe the low point came with:
— “Pink Lady and Jeff,” linking comedian Jeff Altman with a Japanese pop-star duo that looked and sounded great. Tartikoff recalled meeting them:
“They look at me with frozen smiles, then run to get their manager, who says, ‘Brandon, you’ll have to excuse us., but the girls don’t speak English yet.’”
— Or “Speak Up America,” an attempt to discuss serious issues via comments onstage and from the studio audience. One hour involved Madelyn Murray O’Hair, an outspoken atheist. When it was the audience’s turn, a folksy old Irish sea captain said it’s hard to be an atheist amid a raging sea storm.
The audience applauded, of course. Later, people may have wondered how a folksy old Irish sea captain happened to wander into a Hollywood studio.
— Or, perhaps, “Supertrain.”
Desperate for a hit, Silverman ordered a show about a luxury train and its passengers. That concept has worked for ABC, with “The Love Boat, “Hotel” and “Doctor Odyssey” – but this one was being done quickly.
“It managed to look cheap, despite costing over one million dollars an episode – twice what a normal show was costing at the time,” Tartikoff wrote. “The acting was some of the worst I’ve ever witnessed outside of ‘Divorce Court.’”
There were more troubles – and then the turnaround in 1981. First, NBC launched Tinker’s “Hill Street Blues,” and stuck with it amid high praise and (at first) low ratings. Then it put Tinker in charge, ending Silverman’s three-year run.
From the moment he arrived, Tartikoff wrote “Grant Tinker had been gracious and generous in the way he handled power .”
They were a one-two punch – Tinker in New York, keeping the meddlers away, Tartikoff in Los Angeles, stirring the programs.
The tone was obvious at the semi-annual Television Critics Association sessions. Other network people had a dark suit-and-tie look and a stern manner; Tinker was tan sportcoats, no ties and straightforward. Others sometimes had prepared remarks; Tinker and Tartikoff would wing it.
Tartikoff was frank with reporters. He was quick to admit that:
— “Highway to Heaven,” with Michael Landon as a tanned and well-coiffed angel, was dubbed by NBC executives as “Jesus of Malibu.”
— He had one dreadful season, when all nine new shows failed.
— He had opposed the casting of Michael J. Fox on “Family Ties” (arguing that was not someone you would see on a lunchbox) and Don Johnson in “Miami Vice.”
Both got the roles and became stars; their shows sparked an NBC revival.
All of this was hit-or-miss. Tartikoff premiered “The A-Team” after the 1983 Super Bowl and got huge ratings; it spent the next three years in the top-10. The next year, he proclaimed that “Mr. Smith” – a talking-chimp show – would be “the ‘A-Team’ of comedy.” It flopped … as talking-chimp shows are prone to do.
Tartikoff scored with one fantasy adventure – “Knight Rider” – but failed with “The Powers of Matthew Star,” “Manimal” (a guy turns into animals), “Jennifer Slept Here” (a glamorous ghost) and “Misfits of Science.”
That last one included a telekinetic teenager, a rock star who transmitted electric jolts through his fingers and a giant who could shrink to six inches. (Since TV often lies about things, the show cast a 7-foot-2 actor and said he was 7-4.) Tartikoff also suggested, futily, there be a flying robot dog.
There were other failures, but NBC also had an eye for quality.
Dramas? Tartikoff moved “Hill Street Blues” to Thursdays and kept it there. It won four straight Emmys for best drama.
The next year, he added “St. Elsewhere,” which Tinker dubbed “Hill Street in a Hospital.” Others included such sleek, smart shows as “Remington Steele,” “Miami Vice” and “LA Law.”
And comedies? “Cheers” and “Family Ties” arrived in 1982 – good shows, waiting to catch on. Two years latter, “The Cosby” show arrived.
(ABC briefly had a chance to land Cosby, but hesitated. Later, the situation reversed; Tartikoff passed on “Roseanne,” which became a huge ABC hit.)
“The Cosby Show” debuted in 1984 and ignited other NBC comedies. For the season, it was No. 3 in the Nielsen ratings; “Family Ties” was No, 5; “Cheers,” No. 12; “Night Court,” No. 20.
The next year, “Cosby” was dominant. It had one-third more viewers than any non-NBC show. And that was the year (1985) when “Golden Girls” took over, ruling Saturdays.
By ‘86, the Tinker/Tartikoff team was in full control: “Cosby,” “Family Ties” and “Cheers” were 1-2-3, with “Golden Girls” at 5 and “Night Court” at 7. (The only shows in-between were CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” and “60 Minutes.) “L.A. Law” and “Miami Vice” were 21 and 26.
Even some merely adequate shows – “Amen,” “227,” “Matlock” – were in the top-15. NBC was in its can’t-miss phase.
Tinker left then, completing his plan to stay five years. Tartikoff stayed five more. He had ups and downs, but shortly before he left in 1991, he reverted to his usual joy, introducing Will Smith and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
That same year, he scheduled a modest show originally called “The Seinfeld Chronicles.” Three years later, it would be the core of TV’s second golden age of comedy.