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Strange names for TV shows...

Santa in Wanderland was a local kids show in Ft. Wayne during December
Yes...A half hour consisting pretty much of kids talking to Santa at the old Wolf & Dessauer department store in downtown FW. Guess I never considered how odd the title was till now.

Here's an odd (or just plain bad) title for ya..."Alan Keyes Is Making Sense".
 
kirkiefan said:
In the 1964-65 prime time season on NBC there was a 90 minute program block
entitled "90 Bristol Court"...I think it ran in the Tuesday evening time slots...
didn't survive one season...
Click to expand...

Monday at 7:30/6:30 Central.

Two of the three elements were canceled mid-season, Karen survived until the
end of the 64-65 season at 7:30/6:30.

Moving into the 8:00/7:00 hour was The Man From U.N.C.L.E. which had been
on Tuesday at 8:30/7:30. Legend is that the move helped the show to gain a
larger audience* and stay on the air for 3.5 seasons (the mostly "silly" 66-67
season episodes notwithstanding).


*: Along with its discovery by college students home for Christmas break,
prior to and/or after its timeslot switch in early January 1965.
 
Our local PBS station in Chapel Hill runs British sitcoms
after Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights, and a few of
them have strange names: "As Time Goes By," "Waiting
For God" (I think that one takes place in a nursing home),
and one I'm still working on: "Last Of The Summer Wine."

"Monty Python's Flying Circus" (as someone may have
mentioned) is a strange-enough name.

And for the person who asked about "The EDDDGGE Of
Night," the title referred both to its original late-afternoon
time slot (4:30 ET) and to the sense of foreboding which
permeated the show. You could say the same thing about
another late-afternoon soap, "Dark Shadows."
 
Corky Marlowe said:
Here's an odd (or just plain bad) title for ya..."Alan Keyes Is Making Sense".
Click to expand...

...that title was also, to quote Paddy Chayefsky from his Network screenplay, "shrill, shrieking fraud" ;D ...
 
bpatrick said:
Our local PBS station in Chapel Hill runs British sitcoms
after Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights, and a few of
them have strange names: "As Time Goes By," "Waiting
For God" (I think that one takes place in a nursing home),
and one I'm still working on: "Last Of The Summer Wine."
Click to expand...

Per wikipedia:

[Series creator Roy]Clarke chose the original title, The Last of the Summer Wine, to convey the idea that the characters are not in the autumn of their lives but the summer, even though it may be "the last of the summer".


Think also of the Sinatra song September of My Years, '...vintage wine from fine old kegs...'

The other titles(indeed most titles) are self-explanatory...but only if you've actually seen the shows.
A cover version of the 'Casablanca' tune is the theme song for 'As Time Goes By'...and since the premise is two former lovers reunited after years apart, it fits perfectly.
 
Newname said:
Think also of the Sinatra song September of My Years, '...vintage wine from fine old kegs...'
Click to expand...

...actually, the song is It Was a Very Good Year. September of My Years was the title song of the Frank Sinatra album it appeared on...
 
The Ken Berry "Wow" Show
The Late Summer Early Fall Bert Convy Show
The Ugliest Girl in Town
Married: The First Year
Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs
Stockard Channing in Just Friends
 
L.A.T.E.R. (The Life and Times of Eddie Roberts)
The Law & Mr. Jones
Topper
December Bride
The Dan Smoot Report
 
RicoGregg said:
L.A.T.E.R. (The Life and Times of Eddie Roberts)
The Law & Mr. Jones
Topper
December Bride
The Dan Smoot Report
Click to expand...

Wow - Dan Smoot - hadn't though of him in years. He was a right-wing nut member of the John Birch Society, and had his viewers looking under their beds and in the rose bushes for communists. Among the politiicans Smoot opposed for being too liberal were George Bush Sr (in his run for US Senate from Texas) and that left wing pinko Richard Nixon for President.

There were a number of these commentators - always right-wing for some reason - that had 15 minute shows on TV in the 1950s. Another was Dr. Harold Fishman who later became second banana to George Putnam,, then finally became kindly grandpa anchor Hal.
 
"T.H.E. Cat" was indeed about a cat burglar,
full name Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat (!).

"Nichols"/"James Garner As Nichols" lasted only
one season (1971-72). At first, he was a cowardly
sheriff in the Maverick mold; in order to try to save
the show, which was borderline in the ratings, NBC
had the original Nichols killed off and replaced by his
brother (IIRC), a more conventional Western lawman.
That's when the title change was made, but the ratings
didn't improve enough to warrant a renewal, and Garner
had to wait two years for his next big hit: "The Rockford
Files."

"Topper" isn't really so strange a name; he's Cosmo Topper
(Leo G. Carroll), who owns the house once inhabited by
George and Marion Kirby (Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys),
now ghosts, and only he can see them.

Likewise "December Bride" refers to a very eligible and
desirable (yes, older men are crazy about her) senior citizen,
Lily Ruskin (Spring Byington), who's always looking for a husband.
Watch for Harry Morgan as neighbor Pete Porter, who later got
a spinoff, "Pete And Gladys."

One I think is a little strange is "Lotsa Luck," with Dom DeLuise
as a bus driver who lives with his family. Since it's based on a
British sitcom, I'm not surprised.
 
...then there was The Summer Brothers Smothers Hour, which ran in the Sunday night slot that The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour usually appeared in between June and September 1968. It was a pilot run for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour...
 
Two that never made any sense to me were Picket Fences and Northern Exposure. Wild, Wild West would not lead you to believe it was a special agent with loads of Bond-like gadgets.
 
Ultimajock said:
...then there was The Summer Brothers Smothers Hour, which ran in the Sunday night slot that The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour usually appeared in between June and September 1968. It was a pilot run for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour...
Click to expand...

Those summer replacement shows were pretty common in those days, and some of them were odd. The Jackie Gleason Summer Show (or similar title) never featured an appearance by Gleason - it just carried his name because it was in his Saturday evening time slot. It featured comedy skits, odd clips and even early day music "videos" (probably shot on film). I remember seeing a music video on that show of a pretty woman riding around in the snow in a sleigh singing "Walking in a Winter Wonderland"...in German...in July...and she was riding, not walking. Very odd show.
 
ricksegers said:
Two that never made any sense to me were Picket Fences and Northern Exposure. Wild, Wild West would not lead you to believe it was a special agent with loads of Bond-like gadgets.
Click to expand...

Those all made sense to me:

Picket Fences took place in a small town, and small towns have lots of picket fences.

People often talk about whether their home has a northern or southern exposure...in the Northern hemisphere, you'll get more light if you have a southern exposure. Northern Exposure took place in Alaska which is very far north, as Sarah Palin could tell you.

Wild, Wild West was a play on words. Robert Conrad played James West, and it was a western of sorts, after all, even if it featured high tech gadgets that would have been science fiction in the 19th century.
 
Slightly off topic, but the local newspaper here always indicated Edge of Night in their TV listings as "Night Edge" throughout the 1960s.

Some CBC affiliates in Canada called their local newscast "Hour Glass" in the late 60s and early 70s. It doesn't seem like a newscast name.

There was "20 Minute Workout" in the 1980s. It was a half hour show.

On CKGN (now CKNY) in North Bay there was "Clock Watchers", the first TV morning show in Canada when it debuted in 1959. That sounds more like a game show to me, or a show where people just watch clocks.

Finally, not on TV but on radio, CBL in Toronto had a morning show called "Toast and Jamboree" for several decades, which evolved into the current Metro Morning in the 1970s. My father had his birthday mentioned on Toast and Jamboree when he was a kid.
 
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