ABC, Part 2: Road to the ’70s

 

Tonight! In full color! The incredibly true story of America’s boldest TV network, brought to you as only ABC can! (Music theme of Wide World of Sports) In the battle of the balding billionaires, first they endured the Agony of Defeat. Then, in a blaze of shamelessly popular entertainment, they tasted the Thrill of Victory! It’s all here, the dreamers, the hustlers, the lawyers, the regulators, in the boardrooms and bedrooms of Hollywood and of Central Park West! (Wide World of Sports theme rounds the final turn and heads for home with a fanfare of trumpets), This…is part 2 of the story of the American Broadcasting Company! It’s headed your way, and it all begins…right now!

There’s an expression in show business, “Nothing’s as cheap as a hit.” One hit, if it’s big enough, can turn around a viewer’s impression of the channel it’s on. The Untouchables had been such a hit, a lurid, staccato crime thriller at the turn of the darkening Sixties. By the fall of 1965, ABC was poised to launch another influential hit show, Batman. They chose to make it a mid-season replacement, holding it back until early 1966. It was a wise move. The show’s timing was perfect, riding in on a wave of pop culture and comic-book-based pop art.

ABC wanted to sell itself to ITT, one of Wall Street’s most aggressive conglomerates, headed by Harold Geneen, one of the most famous tycoons of his day. It would be a stock swap, with ABC management retaining some seats on the merged board. The company badly wanted this deal to go through. Washington was their obstacle. Because it involved a broadcaster, it required signoffs from the Justice Department and the FCC. Senior staff of both companies devoted months of their time to the agreement. The legal work ran into tens of thousands of billable hours. And…

The government turned ABC down flat. There was a silver lining: Forced to finance its expansion with its own cash flow, the company discovered efficiencies that other broadcasters hadn’t been pushed to find. Dollar for dollar, they became the most profitable of the Big Three.

ABC was the last of them to embrace color television. All three networks’ costs of converting to color included higher payments to the studios who made TV shows, due to their own higher technical expenses for film, costumes, makeup, lighting, and sets. The ratings of ABC’s black-and-white shows weren’t suffering yet: Burke’s Law, Peyton Place, The Addams Family, The Patty Duke Show, 12 O’ Clock High, Combat. But by 1964, color TV sales were finally taking off, and ABC was forced to catch up.

In 1966-’67, Batman helped ABC in two ways: by giving the network the enormous advertising revenues attached to a surprise smash hit; and by giving other show producers (on rival networks) the fatal temptation to imitate Batman’s wacky, cartoonish style, above all its nodding-and-winking lack of belief in the show’s premise. It worked for Batman; it sank The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Batman was such a hit that ABC scheduled it twice a week, as they’d done with Peyton Place.

The network tried for a follow-up hit with The Green Hornet. They failed, but that show’s second lead ended up going somewhere—Bruce Lee. The color era brought ABC action shows—The Rat Patrol, Garrison’s Gorillas—and kept up ABC’s groove with middle-of-the-road family shows like The Big Valley, Marcus Welby M.D., and The FBI.

ABC did inventive things. They did occasional live prime-time dramas. Lacking their own hit spy show, they imported The Avengers from the UK. They wrung profits from daytime with soaps like General Hospital. They had a paranoid UFO show, The Invaders, three decades before The X-Files. They even filmed a TV movie, Shadow on the Land, that was going to lead to a weekly series about present-day America being run by a fascist government. Hard to picture that as competition for Bonanza or The Dean Martin Show.

Every network’s largest profit centers included their advertising-rich “O and Os,” their five owned-and-operated big city TV stations–in those days, the limit of what each network could outright own. The many hundreds of ABC’s other affiliated stations were, like those of the other two networks, bound to them by no ideology or sentiment but by short-term contracts. Affiliate relations were important to maintaining a tenuous and highly breakable loyalty, based on sharing advertising time and revenue. The most effective conservative protests of the classic TV network era weren’t mass movements of millions of viewers, but of hundreds of representatives of restless network affiliates, meeting several times a year, whose regions didn’t always like what was coming down the coaxial cable from New York.

For a few months, I’d get to see ABC up close.

In March 1970, I registered for the draft, on the morning of my 18th birthday. From 1967 on, cities and college campuses all over the country had been wracked with demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The very next morning, a block and a half from my NYU dorm at 55 East 10th Street, a building at 18 West 11th Street was reduced to rubble when three radical bomb-makers accidentally blew themselves up. By May, even schools without riots canceled classes a month early. This national crisis was screwing up my plans of making some money over the summer. Fortunately, a distant relative got me an interview at ABC, and I was hired for a mailroom temp job. It paid $1.50 an hour; not bad.

ABC’s Manhattan headquarters was a new skyscraper that had just recently joined “broadcaster’s row” on 6th Avenue. NBC was (and still is) in its original, Depression-era home in Rockefeller Center near 50th Street. CBS was in an elegant Eero Saarinen-designed headquarters, nicknamed Black Rock, at 6th Avenue and 53rd Street. ABC was at 6th and 54th. In those pre-cable, pre-internet days, that’s a lot of media power concentrated in four city blocks. The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Hearst company, the Time-Life magazine empire, the head offices of MGM, United Artists, Columbia, and Paramount studios, and many of the ad agencies of Madison Avenue, were a ten-minute walk from ABC’s front door.

I worked noon till 8. The end of the day was busy for send outs, peaking from 4 to 6. After that, volume usually slowed, slacking off after 7. Almost every night ended with a couple of us preparing a case of memos and documents to go air courier overnight to ABC’s offices in Los Angeles, rushed to La Guardia and JFK by ABC News motorcycle messengers, who otherwise spent their days bringing unprocessed news film from airport tarmacs right to the door of the developing labs.

Getting out of work at 8 pm wasn’t always ideal, but it was summertime. My girlfriend often rode into the city to surprise me, waiting in the lobby when I left work. I instinctively knew I’d never take that for granted. We’d make a plan on the spot and go out, to one of midtown’s countless movies or restaurants. Even on the hottest of days, it was usually cooling off by 8.

I rarely saw famous actors at headquarters. British singer Tom Jones walked in. He had a show on the network. Local ABC 7 worked out of studios on the west side, so we rarely saw the Eyewitness News team. But we did see a lot of athletes when they came through New York. ABC Sports frequently did talent signings and press conferences in front of corporate backdrops and symbols. Sports had done far more than their share in making ABC profitable, so much so that Sports division supremo Roone Arledge would later be given a reward he coveted: a controversial promotion to be head of ABC News.

One time, my girlfriend entered the lobby ahead of a pair of men. One had a distinctive voice so loud it boomed off the marble-clad walls. She turned and saw a tall, vague-looking middle-aged man. “Young lady,” he demanded, “Do you know who I am?” My gal had the courtesy not to say, “Why don’t you ask the receptionist? She’ll know.” Instead, she said, no doubt politely, “No, but your voice sounds familiar.”

“I’m Howard Cosell!” he harrumphed before walking away.

Even as ABC entertainment ratings soared, ABC News stayed mired in third place. News Division had its bright spots, like space and science reporter Jules Bergmann, a favorite of the astronauts. The Nixon White House felt the network was the only one of the three that even tried to be fair, and Nixon granted a rare one-on-one interview to ABC anchor Howard K. Smith.

To a greater degree (at the time) than the other networks, ABC ran their TV programming and production out of semi-autonomous offices on the Coast. Chairman Leonard Goldenson didn’t see himself as ABC’s showman, but as its wise man, the dealmaker. The New York headquarters was mostly unglamorous business: ad sales, billing, banking and payroll, government and legal affairs, public relations, and affiliate relations. HQ was impressive, all shiny and new, but functional, not fancy. The whole building understood The ABC Way: keep an eye on costs. Even network VPs kept long-distance calls short. Mail went first class, but not certified or registered.

One useful life lesson to a teenager: to my surprise, the offices of the top bosses were often the last ones to leave the building each night. What do you know; the big boys didn’t always have it as easy as I thought. An open memo was sent to network vice presidents, including big shots like Fred Pierce, Elton Rule, and Martin Starger, reminding them that Goldenson personally insisted that complaints raised by affiliates get an immediate response. Another open memo to a small group of executives noted that everyone, even the chairman, flew economy class, and expense reports should reflect that.

Sometimes, after much of the staff left for the day, a mail room worker was dispatched to the corner newsstand to buy a copy of the New York Post, an evening tabloid, and bring it to Mr. Goldenson’s secretary, up on the umpteenth floor, so he could read it on his ride home. It seemed like an odd little thing for a teenage kid to be in on, being privileged to see the common man touch in the quietest of TV’s founders. You could never picture, say, CBS’s Bill Paley ending his workday reading anything like the New York Post. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that by 1970 ABC was a respected competitor coast to coast, entering a decade when it would finally reach the top.

The aftermath for me: Working at ABC was a great summer job for an 18-year-old. In the fall, I went back to film school. What about that girl who waited for me so many summers ago, like the one in the lyrics of Five O’ Clock World? She’s sitting across the table smiling while I type this.

The aftermath for ABC: The Seventies would be a golden age for ABC’s golden coffers. Love, American Style begat Happy Days, which led to Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy. Starsky & Hutch were no ratings slouches either. CBS programming phenom Fred Silverman came to ABC in 1975. By the time Silverman left in 1978, ABC was #1, thanks to shows like Charlie’s Angels. Was there schlock on TV? Of course; there always will be. But there were also moments of pop culture greatness.

ABC’s broadcast of Roots was the surprise hit of 1977, a genuine phenomenon. Its reputation and adherence to history look tarnished today, but give some credit to what Roots was in its time. For people old enough to remember those broadcasts, it may be one of the few, fairly-well agreed-on high notes of the vanished age when three networks ruled the commanding heights of television.

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  1. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Gary McVey: There’s a lot of criticism of Roots from contemporary black activist writers…

    And they got a more “contemporary” version in 2016. Shown on History, A&E and Lifetime, the remake was about one-third the length of ABC’s 1977 version and delivered about 18% of the original audience. 

    You really have to appreciate what producer David Wolper accomplished back then. 32 Million viewers are Super Bowl Numbers.

    • #31
  2. Dotorimuk Coolidge
    Dotorimuk
    @Dotorimuk

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Ditto Susan’s remarks, especially about the girl!

    If “Roots” was filmed today, I suspect the cast of those playing at being slaves would have to wear designer clothing, so that they wouldn’t feel slighted.

    Or maybe they would have to play at being the plantation owners with whites as the slaves, due to the need for “reparations.”

    Why not, since they can wishcast Alexander Hamilton as black. I notice it only works one way though.

    • #32
  3. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    EJHill (View Comment):
    32 Million viewers are Super Bowl Numbers.

    For a game that lasted for a week.

    • #33
  4. Dotorimuk Coolidge
    Dotorimuk
    @Dotorimuk

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Les Crane was unique in his day. For its first quarter century or so, ABC didn’t have a lot of luck in late night. Crane was a provocative talk show host with a populist edge. That shotgun microphone was his symbol: he was pointing it into the audience and asking them to do some of the talking.

    BTW, shotgun mikes don’t work as magically as they fictionally do in spy and cop shows. At the time, people thought they were telescopes for sound, which is an exaggeration. But the symbolism was important. Les Crane was sort of a cross between Glenn Beck and Phil Donahue. Eventually, he faded and more brazen talkers lasted a while in syndication, like Joe Pyne.

    ABC did have some minor success with Dick Cavett, who came across as a Johnny Carson for intellectuals, or a liberal William F. Buckley. In retrospect Cavett wasn’t all that bad. He was a skilled interviewer when his ego didn’t get in the way. But he got too smarmy and ended up on PBS, where he belonged.

    Loved watching some of Cavett’s old bits, particularly with Groucho. And I seem to remember Cavett saying one of his guests died DURING the show, so it never aired.

    • #34
  5. Headedwest Coolidge
    Headedwest
    @Headedwest

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Ditto Susan’s remarks, especially about the girl!

    If “Roots” was filmed today, I suspect the cast of those playing at being slaves would have to wear designer clothing, so that they wouldn’t feel slighted.

    Or maybe they would have to play at being the plantation owners with whites as the slaves, due to the need for “reparations.”

    There’s a lot of criticism of Roots from contemporary black activist writers, pretty much what I’d expect: the show is too toned down, too timid, too many whites involved on the creative side, etc…but it’s hard to remember how different 1977 was.

    There is also the fact that part of Roots was plagiarized

     

    • #35
  6. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    ABC was big on the mini-series concept. Roots was one of its much-heralded triumphs.  

    Since the Sixties, networks had been filling whole evenings with feature films. In an age before cable or VHS, it was the main secondary market for recent films. It was where two year old hits showed up, on their way to late night and afternoon time slots. Gone With the Wind was one of the rare films so special that it would “never be on television”, so when it finally got a network airing in 1976, it was regarded as a historic moment for TV. In some obvious ways, Roots, the following year, was regarded as an equivalent TV moment, the other side of Gone With the Wind

     

    • #36
  7. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Dotorimuk: And I seem to remember Cavett saying one of his guests died DURING the show, so it never aired.

    Organic food guru Jerome Rodale. He died of a heart attack about 40 minutes into taping a 90-minute show. It never aired because the show was never completed. Supposedly Cavett still has the master tape.

    • #37
  8. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    It’s largely forgotten now, but in the early Sixties, due to growing public criticism of violent TV, the threat of Congressional action brought all three networks to heel. First, they each put on the sackcloth and ashes of low rated, public-spirited programming, at least for a little while: An American history anthology on CBS called The Great Adventure, NBC’s Exploring and Profiles in Courage, and ABC’s Discovery and F.D.R.

    Networks did increase the number of hours allotted to primetime documentaries and news programs. This modest level of civic piety didn’t really hurt the bottom line. By this point, not much could.

    • #38
  9. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    thelonious: Do you think Monday Night Football was the biggest T.V creation of the 70’s?

    It was and is. It is also a damn shame what happened to its creator. Before he bought the Cleveland Browns, Art Modell was a NY advertising executive. When he proposed taking the NFL away from Sunday afternoon and extending the week into Monday night his fellow owners thought he was nuts. So he volunteered his team to host the Jets in the first telecast.

    But because Modell abandoned Cleveland for Baltimore, and with the Hall of Fame being located in Northeast Ohio (Canton is 50 miles south of Cleveland) Modell has never been given his due. MNF and its offshoots has been worth billions to the league.

    Did it also spawn the creation of ESPN?

    That probably would have happened on its own. However, it was ABC’s purchase of ESPN that gave it the credibility and the finances to become the behemoth it did. Its previous owners, Getty Oil, were not broadcasters. The CapCities/ABC years gave the network the ability to capitalize on opportunities such as SCOTUS breaking the stranglehold on NCAA football and using re-trans to force cable providers to accept the launch of multiple channels.

    All one has to do is watch a sports opinion show to see the toxic influence Howard Cossell (sic) had on sports journalism. He practically invented the “hot take.”

    Cosell was countercultural. He was the bombastic liberal Jew in the side of a more conservative Waspy America. As much as he irritated people he had a champion in Roone Arledge who stuck with him through many, many controversies. Today, it is the conservative that is countercultural. But no matter who they peg as “the new Cosell” – be it Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, Paul Azinger or Curt Shilling – they always fail because they don’t have their own Arledge with the power and the guts not to back down.

    I think it only fair to also remember Julius Barnathan, head of ABC’s operations and engineering group. He had an unusual start to his career. Like CBS’s Frank Stanton, he was an early adopter of research methods that helped sell advertisers. Moving over to engineering is a rare lateral move, but “Julie” was a strong ally for Roone Arledge, indispensable back when moving smaller cameras closer to the action, picture inserts, replays and getting a quality live picture from obscure locations were new challenges for TV sports. Someone like Barnathan doesn’t appear in most histories partly because many writers are, let’s face it, technically illiterate. They not only don’t understand how important “mere” tech work is in television, but they are emotionally invested in the idea that truly smart people don’t have to know about it.

    Just like management.

    • #39
  10. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Jimmy Carter (View Comment):

    Patrick McClure (View Comment):

    At 14 and 15 I did a lot of babysitting. Saturday nights were Love Boat and Fantasy Island after I put the kids to bed.

    And Looney Tunes with Schoolhouse Rock Saturday mornings.

     

    ABC deserves credit for kicking off a mini-fad for prime time animated shows with The Flintstones in 1960, followed by The Jetsons in 1962. CBS had The Alvin Show. NBC had Bullwinkle.

    (There were also cartoon compilation shows in prime time; Warner Bros characters basically just introduced scenes from old theatrical cartoons, and NBC did a low budget Mr. Magoo clip show as well.)

    About ten years later, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was a last gasp of the original concept, adapting it to the age of All in the Family.

    “Rocky and Bullwinkle” for the win. Those shows are still funny.

    • #40
  11. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Gary McVey: News Division had its bright spots, like space and science reporter Jules Bergmann, a favorite of the astronauts.

    Not sure how true that “favorite of the astronauts” was, at least by the late ’70s. When I arrived a JSC in 1979 I made the mistake of speaking of my admiration of Bergmann in front of some of the Apollo hands who were then working on the Shuttle program. They blistered me over him, especially one of the Shuttle cockpit simulator hands who called Bergmann a vulture. Apparently Bergmann had spent time there with a film crew going over each possible way the Orbiter could crash to keep as canned footage in the event it happened on the first flight.  It was not appreciated, by the sim team or the astronauts.

    • #41
  12. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Seawriter (View Comment):

    Gary McVey: News Division had its bright spots, like space and science reporter Jules Bergmann, a favorite of the astronauts.

    Not sure how true that “favorite of the astronauts” was, at least by the late ’70s. When I arrived a JSC in 1979 I made the mistake of speaking of my admiration of Bergmann in front of some of the Apollo hands who were then working on the Shuttle program. They blistered me over him, especially one of the Shuttle cockpit simulator hands who called Bergmann a vulture. Apparently Bergmann had spent time there with a film crew going over each possible way the Orbiter could crash to keep as canned footage in the event it happened on the first flight. It was not appreciated, by the sim team or the astronauts.

    For decades, and I don’t know why, it was widely assumed that Walter Cronkite, “Uncle Walter”, was the nation’s space anchor. IIRC it was James Lovell’s Lost Moon, the source material of Apollo 13, that said it was actually Bergman, largely because of his unvarnished bluntness. So both stories could be true.

    EDIT: One too many N’s in Bergman. I’ve always had it wrong. Thanks, EJ.

    • #42
  13. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Seawriter: It was not appreciated, by the sim team or the astronauts.

    In other words, Bergman did his job as a journalist.

    • #43
  14. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Ditto Susan’s remarks, especially about the girl!

    If “Roots” was filmed today, I suspect the cast of those playing at being slaves would have to wear designer clothing, so that they wouldn’t feel slighted.

    Or maybe they would have to play at being the plantation owners with whites as the slaves, due to the need for “reparations.”

    There’s a lot of criticism of Roots from contemporary black activist writers, pretty much what I’d expect: the show is too toned down, too timid, too many whites involved on the creative side, etc…but it’s hard to remember how different 1977 was.

    The Seventies are chronologically closer than we are to postwar America, to that Father Knows Best world that sometimes seems like the polar opposite of our own times. But they were also much closer to the first Woke Era, of the race riots and bombings that dwarf anything we saw in 2020. No one would call Roots conservative, but in some ways it aimed to be a constructive alternative to the violent Blaxploitation that was then the only black-driven entertainment. At the time Roots seemed to be closing a book on the past in a way that blacks found satisfactory. They didn’t anticipate that nearly a half century later, every other film about or for blacks would still be about slavery.

    Magnificent comment.  That’s a post right there.

    • #44
  15. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    ABC did have some minor success with Dick Cavett, who came across as a Johnny Carson for intellectuals, or a liberal William F. Buckley.  In retrospect Cavett wasn’t all that bad. He was a skilled interviewer when his ego didn’t get in the way. But he got too smarmy and ended up on PBS, where he belonged. 

    Cavett had a great interview with Richard Burton on PBS. Well, Burton was great. Cavett was there.

    • #45
  16. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Percival (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    ABC did have some minor success with Dick Cavett, who came across as a Johnny Carson for intellectuals, or a liberal William F. Buckley. In retrospect Cavett wasn’t all that bad. He was a skilled interviewer when his ego didn’t get in the way. But he got too smarmy and ended up on PBS, where he belonged.

    Cavett had a great interview with Richard Burton on PBS. Well, Burton was great. Cavett was there.

    Jay Leno is, IMHO, a greatly underrated interviewer–just thought I’d throw that in–and Cavett was good, but what made his show stand out weren’t his abilities, but his superior choice of guests. 

    Readers who didn’t grow up in New York probably don’t know the name Joe Franklin, WOR’s late night host, who was sort of the Joe Biden of talk hosts. Babbling, rambling, and outdated, Joe on channel 9 was the opposite of Cavett on ABC. 

    • #46
  17. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    We’ve come back full circle to the mini series. Most streaming shows are now mini series with 8-12 episodes…

    I remember the mini series fad, Winds of War, Shogun… (I tried to read that one – its a doozy) I think the real thing that the mini series brought, was cinematic film making to a TV project… They were essentially pricing 10 -12 hours of TV that a regular series would be expected to deliver 26 episodes for… Making for Event TV that boosted ad rates and viewer interest…

    I think the fad faded as TV execs began to push the concept too far and cut corners… SO these things lost a lot of their quality.

    I think CBS also has a very interesting story, because of its early entanglements with Westinghouse, no?

    • #47
  18. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    OccupantCDN (View Comment):

    We’ve come back full circle to the mini series. Most streaming shows are now mini series with 8-12 episodes…

    I remember the mini series fad, Winds of War, Shogun… (I tried to read that one – its a doozy) I think the real thing that the mini series brought, was cinematic film making to a TV project… They were essentially pricing 10 -12 hours of TV that a regular series would be expected to deliver 26 episodes for… Making for Event TV that boosted ad rates and viewer interest…

    I think the fad faded as TV execs began to push the concept too far and cut corners… SO these things lost a lot of their quality.

    I think CBS also has a very interesting story, because of its early entanglements with Westinghouse, no?

    You may be right; I don’t know about CBS and Westinghouse before they merged in the 90s. Westinghouse was a major advertiser on early TV. Its location in Pittsburgh was a problem for its major shows, because until 1955 the embattled Du Mont network had a virtual monopoly on local TV. Since other networks couldn’t get Westinghouse to sponsor shows that couldn’t be seen in its home city, that meant the three major networks had to go hat in hand to Du Mont to pay extortionate rates to “clear” individual shows to Pittsburgh.  

    This is mainly a film and TV history series, but there’s a whole business side that I’m leaving out, for brevity but also because most of it doesn’t directly impact the cultural/political/social side of things that Ricochet is about. Selling advertising time on network television had become an extraordinarily profitable business, so much so that broadcasting companies began seeing themselves as financial masters-of-the-Universe. Holding companies have existed for centuries, of course. They exist today. But sixty years ago, they were suddenly repackaged as a hot new buzzword: “conglomerates”. NBC already was one, a network born as part of the far larger Radio Corporation of America, a manufacturing and technical behemoth. CBS wanted to become one, buying and selling controlling shares in businesses from TV manufacturers to TV dinners to the New York Yankees.

    All three big networks had, for example, connections with record companies and book publishers. All of them invested in real estate operations. CBS built Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica in a failed attempt to compete with Disneyland. Earlier, they opened the elegant Television City studios in Los Angeles in 1952. ABC bought a water park in Florida and co-built the ABC Entertainment Center, their offices in Century City, on the former backlot of 20th Century Fox. 

    • #48
  19. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Ah, memories.  Pacific Ocean Park had been finally eliminated 3-4 years before I moved back to Southern California and moved into my father’s Ocean Park apartment as I enrolled at UCLA.  Since we had sailed offshore before it’s demolition, I noted its passing.

    Harry’s Bar in the ABC Entertainment Center was a favorite lunch stop when I was doing work at 20th Century Fox.  I never did go to the Playboy Club there.  I saw Cats in the big theater there.  Now it’s Creative Artists Agency or CAA.

    It might be a good post to catalog all the failed big corporation ownerships of studios, from Great Western and Paramount and Columbia and Coca-Cola (Sony Pictures kept the free Coke products perc until about 2005).  Also GE and Universal.  I’m sure there are more. 

    • #49
  20. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    The inability of anyone to copy the success of  Batman – and the way that phenom flamed out – is a fascinating story. As for its imitators, well: HE’S A GOOD COP

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edF_b-Fc0bI

    • #50
  21. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    The inability of anyone to copy the success of Batman – and the way that phenom flamed out – is a fascinating story. As for its imitators, well: HE’S A GOOD COP

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edF_b-Fc0bI

    Wow. I’d have said that Bill Dozier and Greenway Productions fell a long way, really quickly…but nah, by the end of Green Hornet, it wasn’t such a long fall, creatively. Though, sure–in terms of impact and importance, going from producing TV’s biggest sensation to producing an unknown flop.

    • #51
  22. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Ah, memories. Pacific Ocean Park had been finally eliminated 3-4 years before I moved back to Southern California and moved into my father’s Ocean Park apartment as I enrolled at UCLA. Since we had sailed offshore before it’s demolition, I noted its passing.

    Harry’s Bar in the ABC Entertainment Center was a favorite lunch stop when I was doing work at 20th Century Fox. I never did go to the Playboy Club there. I saw Cats in the big theater there. Now it’s Creative Artists Agency or CAA.

    It might be a good post to catalog all the failed big corporation ownerships of studios, from Great Western and Paramount and Columbia and Coca-Cola (Sony Pictures kept the free Coke products perc until about 2005). Also GE and Universal. I’m sure there are more.

    Harry’s Bar was the place of refuge for tired film festival workers when Filmex was in Century City. I recall, nearly forty years ago, that I was shocked that a glass of wine was five dollars. Five dollars! 

    The Playboy Club became some other bar for a while–I forget the name–and we did a couple of receptions there. 

    • #52
  23. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Dotorimuk: And I seem to remember Cavett saying one of his guests died DURING the show, so it never aired.

    Organic food guru Jerome Rodale. He died of a heart attack about 40 minutes into taping a 90-minute show. It never aired because the show was never completed. Supposedly Cavett still has the master tape.

    Dang. I did not know that. The only on-set deaths in a TV series I was aware of were Jack Soo and Red Foxx.

    • #53
  24. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Percival (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Jimmy Carter (View Comment):

    Patrick McClure (View Comment):

    At 14 and 15 I did a lot of babysitting. Saturday nights were Love Boat and Fantasy Island after I put the kids to bed.

    And Looney Tunes with Schoolhouse Rock Saturday mornings.

     

    ABC deserves credit for kicking off a mini-fad for prime time animated shows with The Flintstones in 1960, followed by The Jetsons in 1962. CBS had The Alvin Show. NBC had Bullwinkle.

    (There were also cartoon compilation shows in prime time; Warner Bros characters basically just introduced scenes from old theatrical cartoons, and NBC did a low budget Mr. Magoo clip show as well.)

    About ten years later, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was a last gasp of the original concept, adapting it to the age of All in the Family.

    “Rocky and Bullwinkle” for the win. Those shows are still funny.

    “We´re going to protest Normal Mailer at the Student Union”- just thinking about that line cracks me up. It´s in the Bullwinkle-as-college-football-hero episode.

     

    • #54
  25. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Ditto Susan’s remarks, especially about the girl!

    If “Roots” was filmed today, I suspect the cast of those playing at being slaves would have to wear designer clothing, so that they wouldn’t feel slighted.

    Or maybe they would have to play at being the plantation owners with whites as the slaves, due to the need for “reparations.”

    There’s a lot of criticism of Roots from contemporary black activist writers, pretty much what I’d expect: the show is too toned down, too timid, too many whites involved on the creative side, etc…but it’s hard to remember how different 1977 was.

    The Seventies are chronologically closer than we are to postwar America, to that Father Knows Best world that sometimes seems like the polar opposite of our own times. But they were also much closer to the first Woke Era, of the race riots and bombings that dwarf anything we saw in 2020. No one would call Roots conservative, but in some ways it aimed to be a constructive alternative to the violent Blaxploitation that was then the only black-driven entertainment. At the time Roots seemed to be closing a book on the past in a way that blacks found satisfactory. They didn’t anticipate that nearly a half century later, every other film about or for blacks would still be about slavery.

    It´s as if nobody took Robert Townsend´s point in The Hollywood Shuffle to heart.

    • #55
  26. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    The inability of anyone to copy the success of Batman – and the way that phenom flamed out – is a fascinating story. As for its imitators, well: HE’S A GOOD COP

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edF_b-Fc0bI

    Wow. I’d have said that Bill Dozier and Greenway Productions fell a long way, really quickly…but nah, by the end of Green Hornet, it wasn’t such a long fall, creatively. Though, sure–in terms of impact and importance, going from producing TV’s biggest sensation to producing an unknown flop.

    Hey, GH wasn’t that bad. The problem was mostly that the Hornet’s backstory was a little sparse. Van Williams was a bit of a plank, even to a seven-year-old.

    They gave it a good try though.

    • #56
  27. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Jimmy Carter (View Comment):

    Patrick McClure (View Comment):

    At 14 and 15 I did a lot of babysitting. Saturday nights were Love Boat and Fantasy Island after I put the kids to bed.

    And Looney Tunes with Schoolhouse Rock Saturday mornings.

     

    ABC deserves credit for kicking off a mini-fad for prime time animated shows with The Flintstones in 1960, followed by The Jetsons in 1962. CBS had The Alvin Show. NBC had Bullwinkle.

    (There were also cartoon compilation shows in prime time; Warner Bros characters basically just introduced scenes from old theatrical cartoons, and NBC did a low budget Mr. Magoo clip show as well.)

    About ten years later, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was a last gasp of the original concept, adapting it to the age of All in the Family.

    “Rocky and Bullwinkle” for the win. Those shows are still funny.

    “We´re going to protest Normal Mailer at the Student Union”- just thinking about that line cracks me up. It´s in the Bullwinkle-as-college-football-hero episode.

     

    The Kerwood Derby!

    Alexander the Great wore it when he conquered the world. Julius Caesar wore it when he conquered the world. Elvis Presley wore it when he conquered the world …

    • #57
  28. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Dotorimuk: And I seem to remember Cavett saying one of his guests died DURING the show, so it never aired.

    Organic food guru Jerome Rodale. He died of a heart attack about 40 minutes into taping a 90-minute show. It never aired because the show was never completed. Supposedly Cavett still has the master tape.

    I didn’t know that, but I certainly knew about Rodale and the Rodale Institute. It’s magazines Organic Gardening and Prevention were in our house when I was growing up. I eventually got to thinking of him as somewhat of a quack.  Later on, maybe in the late 90s or early 2000s, when an ecology scientist gave a talk at my workplace that referred to some project in which the Rodale Institute was involved, I figured it must have gone straight, just like my primary physician in the late 80s was a former chiropractor who had gone straight and got his D.O. degree (which here in Michigan was mainline by then).

    I looked it up and found that he died in June 1971.  I may have heard about it and quickly forgotten it. I certainly don’t remember hearing that he died at age 72 just after bragging that he would live to be 100.  School was out for the summer after my first year of teaching, but I would have been far too busy to pay much attention to television and celebrities then.

    • #58
  29. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    @garymcvey, got anything on David Sarnoff?

    • #59
  30. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Dotorimuk: And I seem to remember Cavett saying one of his guests died DURING the show, so it never aired.

    Organic food guru Jerome Rodale. He died of a heart attack about 40 minutes into taping a 90-minute show. It never aired because the show was never completed. Supposedly Cavett still has the master tape.

    Dang. I did not know that. The only on-set deaths in a TV series I was aware of were Jack Soo and Red Foxx.

    John Ritter had an on-set heart attack, IIRC, but died in the hospital. Jon-Erik Hexum blew his brains in while playing with a gun on the set of Cover Up

    • #60
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