FOX Turns 25

[nomadcowatbk]

By the way.. Fox says they'll re-air the pilot episode of "Married...With Children" at 7/6c on April 22nd. At 7:30/6:30c they'll re-air the 500th episode of The Simpsons. After that will be the 2 hour 25th anniversary special.

Will they re-air Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That ’80s Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, Freakylinks, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The $treet, American Embassy, Cedric the Entertainer, The Tick, Louie or Greg the Bunny? ;D

or Kitchen Confidential, The Wedding Bells, Happy Hour, The War at Home, Drive, The Winner, Life on a Stick, The Loop, Head Cases, Standoff, Vanished, followed Free Ride, Method and Red, Tru Calling, Quintuplets, Stacked, Justice, North Shore?

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

By the way.. Fox says they'll re-air the pilot episode of "Married...With Children" at 7/6c on April 22nd. At 7:30/6:30c they'll re-air the 500th episode of The Simpsons. After that will be the 2 hour 25th anniversary special.

Will they re-air Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That ’80s Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, Freakylinks, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The $treet, American Embassy, Cedric the Entertainer, The Tick, Louie or Greg the Bunny? ;D

or Kitchen Confidential, The Wedding Bells, Happy Hour, The War at Home, Drive, The Winner, Life on a Stick, The Loop, Head Cases, Standoff, Vanished, followed Free Ride, Method and Red, Tru Calling, Quintuplets, Stacked, Justice, North Shore?

Or what about the entirety of those Malcolm, King of the Hill, Futurama, etc. episodes that from about 2004-2006 were "joined in progess" after NFL games (15-20 minutes or so after the actual game ended and also after 5-10 minutes worth of commercials)?

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

As was "Top Cat" on NBC

Close friends got to call him TC...

 

[easttxtv]

By the way.. Fox says they'll re-air the pilot episode of "Married...With Children" at 7/6c on April 22nd. At 7:30/6:30c they'll re-air the 500th episode of The Simpsons. After that will be the 2 hour 25th anniversary special.

Will they re-air Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That ’80s Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, Freakylinks, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The $treet, American Embassy, Cedric the Entertainer, The Tick, Louie or Greg the Bunny? ;D

or Kitchen Confidential, The Wedding Bells, Happy Hour, The War at Home, Drive, The Winner, Life on a Stick, The Loop, Head Cases, Standoff, Vanished, followed Free Ride, Method and Red, Tru Calling, Quintuplets, Stacked, Justice, North Shore?

Or what about the entirety of those Malcolm, King of the Hill, Futurama, etc. episodes that from about 2004-2006 were "joined in progess" after NFL games (15-20 minutes or so after the actual game ended and also after 5-10 minutes worth of commercials)?

And the daytimer known as Fox After Breakfast ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGL1LWdYxuI ) that brought a pre-Dancing with the Stars Tom Bergeron to national attention, as well as co-host Laurie Hibberd (and her Hibberd Head Cold), and a puppet named Bob. I guess the show had promise at some point, but with lovely moments like a disastrous live interview with Lauren Bacall, the experiment didn't last, yet it morphed into a daily talk show for Vicki Lawrence--which itself didn't last.

Should be interesting to see what DOES make the cut for the anniversary special.

 

[nomadcowatbk]

By the way.. Fox says they'll re-air the pilot episode of "Married...With Children" at 7/6c on April 22nd. At 7:30/6:30c they'll re-air the 500th episode of The Simpsons. After that will be the 2 hour 25th anniversary special.

Will they re-air Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That ’80s Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, Freakylinks, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The $treet, American Embassy, Cedric the Entertainer, The Tick, Louie or Greg the Bunny? ;D

or Kitchen Confidential, The Wedding Bells, Happy Hour, The War at Home, Drive, The Winner, Life on a Stick, The Loop, Head Cases, Standoff, Vanished, followed Free Ride, Method and Red, Tru Calling, Quintuplets, Stacked, Justice, North Shore?

Or what about the entirety of those Malcolm, King of the Hill, Futurama, etc. episodes that from about 2004-2006 were "joined in progess" after NFL games (15-20 minutes or so after the actual game ended and also after 5-10 minutes worth of commercials)?

And the daytimer known as Fox After Breakfast ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGL1LWdYxuI ) that brought a pre-Dancing with the Stars Tom Bergeron to national attention, as well as co-host Laurie Hibberd (and her Hibberd Head Cold), and a puppet named Bob. I guess the show had promise at some point, but with lovely moments like a disastrous live interview with Lauren Bacall, the experiment didn't last, yet it morphed into a daily talk show for Vicki Lawrence--which itself didn't last.

Should be interesting to see what DOES make the cut for the anniversary special.

Not a lot from the late 70s-early 80s made the cut for NBC's anniversary specials.

 

[desertv]

FOX actually began as "FBC" (Fox Broadcasting Company) with the debut of Joan Rivers' latenight show.

 

[bpatrick]

- "American Idol" has changed the music industry by finding several stars from total unknowns.

You can thank a guy named Edward Bowes for doing that, beginning in 1934. After all, what is the real difference between American Idol and Major Bowes', and later Ted Mack's, Original Amateur Hour, which spent 18 years on radio and another 23 on television - on all four networks? There were others as well, most notably one hosted by Arthur Godfrey.

BTW, one of the future stars discovered by Bowes was some guy named Sinatra. If anyone "changed the music industry," it was him. Pat Boone, Gladys Knight, Irene Cara, and Ann-Margaret were other unknowns that first garnered attention on the TV version of Amateur Hour.

There's nothing whatsoever original about American Idol. It's just another talent show, and they've been broadcast nationwide for almost 80 years.

Interesting point. Bowes had the gong which he used to get a bad act off the stage (and which would resurface under the auspices of Chuck Barris). Mack thought the gong too cruel, but in an interview in TV Guide in 1968 he admitted that it "made the show."

So as not to have to do a separate posting I'll mention an article in my local paper about Fox's 25th anniversary that ran this morning. Written by Chuck Barney of the Contra Costa Times, it praises Fox for pushing the creative envelope and named ten shows which he feels did just that:

1. Married...With Children: he feels it brought new life to the sitcom, as the Bundys said and did things ABC, CBS, and NBC would not have allowed, and made Fox the place to go for offbeat programming.

2. The Simpsons: He thinks its initial "subversive" attitude waned and it became one of the best comedies, animated or live-action, period.

3. In Living Color: "The humor was broad, sometimes crass, but never vicious." Plus it introduced America to the Wayans brothers, Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Lopez.

4. Beverly Hills 90210: He likes the way it dealt with such matters as date rape, suicide, drunken driving, abortion, and AIDS.

5. The X-Files: "Intelligent, well-crafted science fiction," he calls it, with its conspiracy theories, paranoia, alien invasions, really bad juju (whatever that is, I'm getting old), and the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully.

6. Ally McBeal: It gave us unisex bathrooms, dancing babies, wattle fetishes, and debates over proper skirt length in the office and feminism in general.

7. 24: "Touched a nerve by tapping into our post-9/11 anxieties and serving as a flash point in the national debate about wartime torture tactics."

8. American Idol: Singles out Simon Cowell; it was "refreshing" to hear him "cut deluded wannabes down to size." Barney likes the notion that a nobody could become a somebody, but we already know that was going on as far back as Major Bowes on radio.

9. House: Hugh Laurie as a "sardonic, misanthropic, pill-popping narcissist. Marcus Welby would have been appalled, but viewers were mesmerized."

10. Glee: "Huge musical numbers and weekly lessons about the joys (and pains) of being different." (Didn't "Freaks and Geeks" do something similar on that second point?) Generated a concert tour and "more Billboard hits than the Beatles."

Unfortunately, except for the fact that I named a cat after Bart Simpson, none of these shows has impacted me; as the other networks have tried to follow suit, I find myself watching practically nothing in primetime.

 

[bpatrick]

'McKeever and the Colonel' was a short-lived NBC show in '62-'63

...McKeever & The Colonel was a live-action sitcom; the animated series referenced earlier was Calvin & The Colonel, which was essentially a retread of the Amos Brown and George "Kingfish" Stevens characters from Amos 'n' Andy as a gullible bear and a scheming fox, with the creators of Amos 'n' Andy, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, voicing the lead characters. Calvin & The Colonel was run in first-run prime time on ABC during the 1961-62 season (The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall, with the title characters essentially as disc jockeys, had left CBS Radio the previous November, just a handful of days after John F. Kennedy was elected President); its beginning time slot was 8:30/7:30 Central on Tuesdays, with Bugs Bunny starting one hour earlier; Top Cat was seen at 8:30/7:30 Central on Wednesdays, and The Flintstones had the same time slot on Fridays...

In fact, ABC had five animated shows in primetime in the 1961-62 season: Bugs Bunny and "Calvin And The Colonel" (Tuesdays), "Top Cat" (Wednesdays), "The Flintstones" (Fridays), and "Matty's Funday Funnies" (later "Beany And Cecil," Saturdays). "Calvin And The Colonel" was apparently an instant disaster; ABC pulled it just over a month after its debut in October 1961, although it did resurface on Saturday nights at 7:30, following "Beany And Cecil" at 7, in January 1962 as part of a lineup that sounds like a forerunner of TGIF: two animated shows followed by the kid-oriented sitcoms "Room For One More" (8) and "Leave It To Beaver" (8:30). All times are Eastern, and the block started so early because Lawrence Welk and a completely different audience came on at 9.

I know that Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll were trying to avoid a potentially-touchy racial situation by making Calvin and the Colonel animals (a bear and a fox), but I wonder how many viewers saw through the plan and realized they were watching "Amos 'n' Andy" in a different environment? Regardless, the "Amos 'n" Andy" connection aside, "Calvin" was funny, and as for the other four, there's nothing I can add about Bugs Bunny, maybe the greatest cartoon character of them all; "Beany And Cecil," funny because of the slightly-warped mind of Bob Clampett (who came from Warner Brothers); "Top Cat" (my pick, just ahead of "Jonny Quest," as Hanna-Barbera's best primetime show, with some great voices including Arnold Stang and his dead-on Phil Silvers impression, and Maurice Gosfield recreating Private Doberman as Benny the Ball); and "The Flintstones," just because it became an institution (although never as funny to me as its source, "The Honeymooners").