Awareness, I suppose. One quick shot panning the audience would have been fine, but not 3 or 4. What do you expect from today's media. Just like that dumb reporter grilling Bode Miller over his bronze medal performance, to eventual tears. Over the top!
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Beatles - 50th Anniversary
- Thread starter oldies76
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Awareness, I suppose. One quick shot panning the audience would have been fine, but not 3 or 4. What do you expect from today's media. Just like that dumb reporter grilling Bode Miller over his bronze medal performance, to eventual tears. Over the top!
But once again, the show was mainly the stars of today singing 50 year old songs. The Beatles themselves were known to sing in the style of vaudeville, 30 years later. For example: "When I'm 64." It's one things to have today's stars sing yesterday's music. It would have been far less commercial had it been a two-hour documentary set 50 years ago.
Annie Lennox does that all the time. in fact, she wore that shirt at a special from the Rock & Roll HOF several years ago.
I believe it is for awareness.
Hey, radioman, I was looking at cbs.com early last week (before I found out about the repeat last Wednesday evening) and I read a comment from a viewer on that site that suggested that CBS might make a DVD of the show. Anything to make (more) money, right?
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Thomps2525
Guest
When my father first saw the Beatles on television, he didn't say anything about their music. His only comment was: "What funny-looking haircuts!" I think a lot of "grown-ups" in the mid-1960s were somewhat approving of the Beatles because the Beatles were milder and less threatening than the Who and the Rolling Stones. After all, the Beatles had recorded such adult standards as Ain't She Sweet, My Bonnie and Till There Was You---they just couldn't be all that bad! Well...at least not until 1967. 
It was a Grammy show. They would be the ones who would release it as a DVD. Perhaps as a fundraiser?
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Thomps2525
Guest
Mister firepoint, a Los Angeles Times story detailed what was cut for the tv broadcast of the Beatles special: Paul and the band's performance of Magical Mystery Tour, several minutes of Hey Jude, and appearances by Jeff Bridges and Eric Idle. Columnist Randy Lewis speculated that "perhaps they’ll be included as bonus material on a DVD/Blu-ray release of the show." Yeah, I imagine that the CBS executives have been planning on a DVD release since before the special was even taped!
http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...merica-20140210,0,4330017.story#ixzz2to6eJdvC
http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...merica-20140210,0,4330017.story#ixzz2to6eJdvC
Obviously the audience was carefully screened. I'm sure that there were other "awareness" causes that would have liked national TV exposure. Why only that one? I'm sure Paul McCartney would have liked to seen something on animal rights. Personally, I would like to have seen a tee shirt that read "PRACTICE SAFE SEX"
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I knew that Big A would be all over that comment. Mention "money" and he shows up! I say release TWO DVDs: one, of Paul's and Ringo's performances, including whatever was cut from the broadcast, and the other, of all the cover versions by "contemporary artists" and see which one actually sells. There's your "demographic" right there!
Ringo did quite a few cover versions, especially during the group's early years, before Lennon and McCartney started writing songs specifically for him, and before he started writing songs, himself. I halfway expected Ringo and Paul to sing "Act Naturally," since Ringo originally sang lead on that one, with Paul doing harmony vocals.
Agree with you about Annie Lennox. Totally unnecessary.
Well I look forward to seeing it sometime in the future.
LARadioRewind;5950300 A then-record 73 said:
There are three factors on why the Grammy salute to the Beatles only got 14,000,000 viewers as compared to 73,000,000 viewers for the 1964 Ed Sullivan appearance that you have overlooked.
1) They were going up against the Winter Olympics on NBC. Other than the Sunday Night airing of the Beatles special and "Criminal Minds" and "CSI" last night, CBS has AIRED NOTHING BUT REPEATS for the past two weeks, as have ABC and Fox, for the most part. I bet if you look at the overall numbers over the last week and a half or so, you will probably find that a lot of the shows that do fairly well are down a little because of the Winter Olympics.
2) Another reason could be all of the burn-out from the 50th Aniversary of the Beatles coming to America. I know of several die-hard Beatle fans that choose not to watch it just because they were tired of all the Hype, Build-up and Hoopla leading up to the Beatles special. They stated they way the show was being hyped, they could be anything but disappointed once they saw the special.
3) 1964, most homes in the US only had access to three television stations, CBS, NBC and ABC. There was NO CABLE, NO SATTELITE TV, NO AT HOME MOVIE SREVICES, NO INTERNET and NO VCRS/DVD PLAYERS. If you wanted to watch tv on a Sunday night, you either watched Ed Sullivan on CBS, Bonanza on NBC and what ever was on ABC. And if you wanted to see it, you had to watch it live, not catch it later in the week when it was repeated on the same channel or a cable channel, On-Demand or DVRed like you can today.
I watched the special and thoroughly enjoyed it, for the most part. I was only two years old in 1964, so of course I wouldn't remember the original broadcasts.
I have indeed been frustrated by the very HIGH number of reruns on all the other networks EXCEPT NBC! I fail to understand why the other nets did not even TRY to counterprogram the Olympics! This ain't the Super Bowl, guys!
I am a Beatles fan myself, but I was out celebrating with a live performance by the Wannabeatles that Sunday evening, so I did not see the special in its entirety until the Wednesday evening repeat. I did not see all the "hype" leading up to it, but then again, I was not parked in front of the TV all that time. My main gripe (other than the lame cover versions) was that the special was just too LONG! Since Ed Sullivan was only an hour, I expected this special to be only an hour, especially since it was airing in Sullivan's old time slot (and that WAS hyped). What they should have done was aired Paul's and Ringo's performances (including what was left out, so that would have totaled about an hour) and just scuttle everything else. Two and a half hours was WAY too long for such a special. Because NO ONE was counterprogramming the Olympics, I can only guess that it was designed to be largely fluff and filler. Especially so for the reair.
The Beatles on Sullivan was an EVENT. One of those "where were you" type moments. This special clearly was not such an event, maybe only an attempt to recapture or commemorate such an event. And I was only a few months old in '64, so I, too, have no actual recollections of the original airing. But we have it on DVD.
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Thomps2525
Guest
jwk, that 14,000,000 audience was for the Sunday night broadcast only. By the way, from 8 to 9 pm on Sundays in February 1964 when Sullivan was on CBS, NBC aired the last half of Walt Disney's Wonderful World Of Color, followed by Imogene Coca's Grindl. ABC aired the last half of The Travels Of Jamie McPheeters, a Western about a 12-year-old boy on a wagon train, and the first half-hour of the 90-minute crime drama Arrest & Trial. It's interesting that neither NBC or ABC scheduled a one-hour program to run in the 8 pm hour. Sullivan was obviously quite formidable.
A few years earlier in the 60s didn't Maverick compete pretty well with Sullivan?
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Avid Listener
Guest
I suspect that is less and less true as time passes by. With so many radio stations playing vintage music, modern listeners get to hear both old and new music so intertwined that it no longer matters as much as it used to whether a song is new or old or somewhere in between. Back in the 60's, 30 year old recordings (mono 78's) sounded pretty bad. Nowadays, a 50 year old recording sounds as technically good as a brand new one. The result? It's the song that matters, not the date it was recorded. I had the chance to play guitar in my church's praise band alongside some kids who were still in high school. They knew the modern artists, but they also listened to the classic rock station and the oldies station, and they knew ALL the music. The bass player was only 15, but considered Paul McCartney his main musical influence. When my grandson's friends come over to visit, they head for my old vinyl collection to find old classic cuts to burn onto CDs, especially songs that they never heard on the radio. My niece, who's in her 20's, is a major swing music fan and listens to CD copies of old big band 78's, alongside newer recordings by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies or the Squirrel Nut Zippers. My mother, in her 80's, likes almost everything Rod Stewart has ever recorded.
I think the important thing is that music no longer defines generations, not like in the 50's, 60's, or 70's. It's accurate to say that every PERSON has his favorite music, but you can no longer make accurate assumptions what someone is going to like based on when he was born. I think most radio station programmers would be amazed to learn how much people who aren't part of the 60's/70's/80's classic hits generation who still love that music, and who love the album cuts or singles that were never hits just as much as the ones what got lots of airplay several decades ago.
Except that when it came time for younger audiences to watch this TV special built around 50 year old music, a very small number of them chose to tune in, when compared to more contemporary music programs like the Grammy Awards. So clearly, this current generation has spoken about its music. They also demonstrate their preferences in the music they choose to download and stream. So while everything you say about quality and presentation may be correct, this generation is behaving pretty much like previous generations.
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Avid Listener
Guest
Sorry, but there are WAY too many broad, sweeping generalities in there for what you said to have any relevant meaning. For one thing, the TV ratings do a very, very poor job of measuring who is actually plunked down in front of the TV set when it's turned on. For example, I had the show on in my house, but it was in the background as I was on the computer doing some work. When I heard an artist I wanted to hear come on, I turned towards the set and paid attention. Otherwise, it was background noise. From what I gather from other people, of all ages, that's pretty typical. And, as someone else pointed out, there were lots of other good TV shows on other channels. Given that there are hundreds of other channels, not to mention OnDemand and other such sources, plus Netflix and other streaming sources, it's a wonder that any one show gets many viewers. As for the Grammys, I think more people watch them hoping to catch a wardrobe malfunction or a word slip past the "bleeper".
Besides, the specifics of this one program don't disprove my statement that it no longer matters AS MUCH as it used to whether a song is new or old or inbetween. Please note the two words in bold. Back in the 1970's, it mattered a lot. No more than a tiny handful of teenagers or 20-somethings in 1974 would have tuned in a music show that was a tribute to some band from the 1930's. Most teenagers in 1974 wouldn't watch a tribute show to the music of Buddy Holly, who had died less than 20 years earlier. Now, even though the Beatles tribute didn't get monster ratings, it still did much, much better at attracting younger viewers than a similar show in 1974 would have. That's because to modern audiences, the era that a song came from doesn't matter AS MUCH as it used to. It matters a lot less nowadays.
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