I Got Sooo Sick Of.....

[azumanga]

.....NBC's brutally unwatchable late 70s prime time programming;

How were they, as compared to NBC today?

(Other than "Supertrain", which was just bad.)

 

[LKellerIII]

.....NBC's brutally unwatchable late 70s prime time programming;

How were they, as compared to NBC today?

(Other than "Supertrain", which was just bad.)

Pink Lady and Jeff, Waverly Wonders, Real People, Hello Larry... it was pretty awful. I always want to lump Manimal in with that period, but that show actually came along in the early 80s, when NBC programming was otherwise getting much better.

IMO, they have a few good shows on their schedule now. Perhaps nobody's watching them, but that's a different problem.

 

[Bob1370]

"The thing about "Perry Mason" I always noticed was that virtually every one of his clients seemed to have plenty of money. It was almost like watching an old soaper."

The CBS Perry Mason series of 1957-66 actually was first cousin of a genuine daytime soaper. The original radio version of Perry Mason starting right after World War II WAS pretty much a soap opera, and it was brought to TV with renamed show title and character names as "The Edge of Night." That show stayed on daytime TV on CBS from 1956 to 1975 and ABC from 1975 to 1984. Gardner was always credited as co-creator although he had little to do with the TV soap and forced the issue of the character renaming and show title change because he thought the people at sponsor Proctor and Gamble wanted to make major plot changes he disapproved of, in characters for which he owned the rights (including a storyline with a romance between Perry and Della Street).

The CBS prime time TV show with Raymond Burr did follow Gardner's lead on character and storyline more faithfully.

 

[Carmine5]

[
Oh, and why would a private eye like Drake run around in that loud sport coat?

Hey I love Paul Drake's (William Hopper) Don Loper sports jackets. That was an era when men's fashions really meant something. Not like today's young man who carefully tries to cultivate a look of having just got out of bed wearing the clothes he slept in.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of commercials (like the Wrightnows from NetFlix) that continually depict caucasians as crazed morons. Not only is it insulting but it's racial pandering at it's most crass. How about some equal opportunity craziness. We're all capable of it.

c5

 

[BRNout]

Frankly, I'm getting tired of commercials (like the Wrightnows from NetFlix) that continually depict caucasians as crazed morons. Not only is it insulting but it's racial pandering at it's most crass. How about some equal opportunity craziness. We're all capable of it.

c5

Right on c5 - that's a peeve of mine too! It's something that's almost impossible to outlaw, yet we all know it's there. However, it's more intricate than you have implied. There's a scientifically designed hierarchy of TV commercial character intellect:

Blacks and Latinos are smarter than Whites;
Women are smarter than Men;
Asians can be portrayed either way and are treated as a wild card.

Where it gets interesting is when you have a mix of the above. But, if you watch closely, national advertisers almost never seem to vary from the formula. By the way, always at the bottom of the boat as far as "intelligence" is concerned is the White guy. He's the dunce in each and every ad. And yes, it IS annoying - yet nobody dares to mention it publicly.

 

[LKellerIII]

The "women are smarter than men" commercials have been on TV for probably 50 years - even pre-feminism, when a greater majority of women were housewives.

If you have a product that you're trying to get a woman to buy, it probably makes sense to portray the 'husband' as inept and totally unable to care for himself without the intervention of his capable 'wife.' It appeals to the narcissism of their target demo - that's why they do it.

 

[Carmine5]

Frankly, I'm getting tired of commercials (like the Wrightnows from NetFlix) that continually depict caucasians as crazed morons. Not only is it insulting but it's racial pandering at it's most crass. How about some equal opportunity craziness. We're all capable of it.

c5

Right on c5 - that's a peeve of mine too! It's something that's almost impossible to outlaw, yet we all know it's there. However, it's more intricate than you have implied. There's a scientifically designed hierarchy of TV commercial character intellect:

Blacks and Latinos are smarter than Whites;
Women are smarter than Men;
Asians can be portrayed either way and are treated as a wild card.

Where it gets interesting is when you have a mix of the above. But, if you watch closely, national advertisers almost never seem to vary from the formula. By the way, always at the bottom of the boat as far as "intelligence" is concerned is the White guy. He's the dunce in each and every ad. And yes, it IS annoying - yet nobody dares to mention it publicly.

Gee, I thought I was the lone voice in the desert on this issue. You've made some very good observations, BRNout (and LKeller). If someone were to stand up in a crowded subway and shout that intelligence is based entirely on race and gender, I doubt that person would escape in one piece and rightly so.

And yet in the name of entertainment, television says it all the time with impunity (but only if the target is the right race and gender). It's disgusting.

c5

 

[Corky Marlowe]

The original radio version of Perry Mason starting right after World War II WAS pretty much a soap opera, and it was brought to TV with renamed show title and character names as "The Edge of Night."

Add to that the fact that John Larkin, who played Perry on radio, was the first guy to play the central character on "Edge", DA Mike Karr.

 

[nightfly61]

when Lucy Ricardo cried.
Shirley Phoenie's high pitch squealie whining.
James Rockford always getting the raw end of the deal...even by his police sgt. friend who was always bitter!
Quincy's boss always telling him there weren't enough funds to do something.
The Hulk or the A-Team NEVER killing anyone!!!
How mean Mr. Whipple was...then got tired even quicker of the new "nice" version of Mr. Whipple.
Tweety always getting the best of Sylvester & Jerry always getting the best of Tom.
Watching WKRP jocks & Les on the air never wearing headphones.
the Latka era on Taxi. Not funny to me.
(and still am sick of) EVERY channel having their logo icon down in the lower right hand corner.
Alice's apron & the entire Brady house being spotless.
All the misunderstandings on Three's Company. (Never got tired of the girls though!)
Squealing & "Woo-Wooh-ing" teenage audience girls on Saved By The Bell.
Hooting & wolf whistles from Kelly Bundy's audience & Tiffany's audience on Unhappily Ever After.
Cutsie Pooh child actors like the Olson Twins saying a stupid joke & got laughter just because they were runts.

 

[EZway2go]

By the way, always at the bottom of the boat as far as "intelligence" is concerned is the White guy. He's the dunce in each and every ad.

And one notch below the bottom of that boat is the guy who's either a father or a boss.

 

[EZway2go]

(1) Mopey kids who think they know more than their parents.

(2) NCIS is a good show, but I get annoyed every time Tony, Ziva, and McGee are in the middle of a conversation when, out of nowhere, in walks Gibbs or the Director at just the right moment with the answer they were looking for.

 

[LKellerIII]

NCIS is a good show, but I get annoyed every time Tony, Ziva, and McGee are in the middle of a conversation when, out of nowhere, in walks Gibbs or the Director at just the right moment with the answer they were looking for.

It's called trying to wrap up an detail-rich story in an hour - 48 minutes when you subtract the commercials. The Good Wife is a well written show, but the plots are complex...and they like to add twists. So the law firm's client is saved in the last 3 minutes because somebody (usually Kalinda, their investigator) just happens to stumble on to the previously hidden evidence that exonerates the client.

Really, modern police procedural plots are intricate enough that these shows could run 90 minutes, but I guess that format died a couple of decades ago.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

(and still am sick of) EVERY channel having their logo icon down in the lower right hand corner.

I tolerate that because most newer TV's don't have channel displays. Helps me keep track of what channel I'm watching.

I'll see you mopey kids who think they know more than their parents and raise you kids who tell me to recycle, buy curlicue light bulbs, and unplug my phone charger. Go to your rooms, ya little brats ya!

 

[ricksegers]

Silly advertisers who attempt to show how much they love diversity and really start looking like idiots. There was an ad that ran over the holidays (Christmas) for some food item. It showed a huge multi-generational caucasian family sitting down for the big holiday meal. In the group was a lone African American child who seemed most uncomfortable and had no speaking role. He was just background in their portrait. You see it frequently but that was the one that seemed most out of place.

 

[Stanislav]

(and still am sick of) EVERY channel having their logo icon down in the lower right hand corner.

I tolerate that because most newer TV's don't have channel displays. Helps me keep track of what channel I'm watching.

Most modern TVs and set-top boxes have an "info" button or other function that will briefly display the channel number and, often, the name/calls/slogan of the channel on-screen. If I get so addled and befuddled that I forget what channel I'm watching, I can use this -- I don't need to have a permanent, ugly, distracting "bug" to constantly remind me.

 

[Stanislav]

NCIS is a good show, but I get annoyed every time Tony, Ziva, and McGee are in the middle of a conversation when, out of nowhere, in walks Gibbs or the Director at just the right moment with the answer they were looking for.

It's called trying to wrap up an detail-rich story in an hour - 48 minutes when you subtract the commercials.

One of the consistent tropes on NCIS is the contrast between the technologically-savvy younger agents and the "old school" Gibbs, who is not only far less adept with such things, but views them with suspicion and a dubious attitude as sometimes being more complicating rather than helpful. There are many instances where Tony, McGee, and Ziva spend lots of time combing databases and hacking systems to come up with some key piece of info, only to find that Gibbs has already glommed onto the same clue through more "analog" means. Happens with Abby sometimes, too, when she'll be proudly busting at the seams to present Gibbs with some aspect of the case that she has painstakingly worked out in the lab, only to have Gibbs cut her off because he's already figured it out through more tried and true methods of deduction.

 

[BobbyNBC10]

From 1981-83 stations dropping The Joker's Wild and Tic Tac Dough from many lineups, resulting in the shows not being available in many markets thanks to ET, PM Magazine and reruns like MASH or even expanded newscasts . It resulted in both shows which I liked being axed from many markets like Lansing,Toledo and Fort Wayne. Family Feud managed to hang on, but in Fall 1983 game shows came back in syndication thanks to Wheel Of Fortune and in some respects, Love Connection,and the next season Jeopardy!, and a new version of Let's Make A Deal. Other game shows were not in many markets in Fall 1981,like Pitfall with Alex Trebek, which was axed as a result of the syndicator going belly-up, a revival of Treasure Hunt with Geoff Edwards, and the last season for the daily syndicated Match Game,which in my area,Battle Creek went from WKZO to WOTV

When TTD,TJW and Bullseye disappeared from WILX Lansing before Fall 1981, I went to Radio Shack in Battle Creek, and I got an A/B switch to hook to my cable so I managed to get WJRT from FLint to see the fresh new TJW and TTD eps. WKZO in Kalamazoo was a year behind on TTD, showing the 1980-81 eps.including when Lt. Thom McKee won $312,700. In Fall 1980, I saw the eps. on WILX who had just gotten TTD from WLNS when it was WJIM. But this was before satellites changed syndication, episodes of shows were bicycled to stations by the Postal Service or UPS or Greyhound Bus. In January 1982, WKZo got TJW, from WZZM-Grand Rapids who dropped TJW before Fall 1981, and KZO aired it at noon after The Price Is Right and right smack against Family Feud daytime on ABC and WOTV,whne it was WUHQ.

If we had the internet in 1981 and 1982 we would have been telling TV stations to drop ET<PM Magazine and MASH to bring back WInk Martindale, Jack Barry and Gene Rayburn and get rid of ET and other shows or move them to late nights like after Carson,Letterman or something.

 

[RicoGregg]

I got soooo sick of PM Magazine the first time I saw it, on it's debut on KTTV in Los Angeles. That was it. That was all I needed. I never watched it again. It was unwatchable to me.

Talk about leaving a bad first impression.

 

[BobbyNBC10]

RicoGregg, PM Magazine getting old and tired, was the contributing factor to game shows like Wheel and Jeopardy! taking off in the ratings in the 1980's.

 

[ixnay]

I've never been keen on "The Simpsons"' Rev. Lovejoy's fetish for toy trains. I always thought adults' admiration of model railroading was rather immature. Matt Groening must have that fetish. Heck, I myself wasn't much into toy trains even as a child for some reason (always preferring the "real thing"), which may be why I have this attitude today.

ixnay