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The 20th Century Called … And They Have the TV Remote
Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with daughter Candice on The Charlie McCarthy Show 1952 (Photo: CBS)
CBS announced on Wednesday that they have reached a deal with creator Dianne English and star Candice Bergen to revive Murphy Brown, a 10-year hit for the network that first debuted in 1988. It is just the latest in television’s zombie lineup of shows that been repeatedly stabbed, shot, blown up and generally worn out but simply will not die.
Bergen, who debuted on her father’s radio show at age 6, is now 71. The fictional baby that riled the 1992 Presidential campaign when then-Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the glamorization of single motherhood would be 26. Don’t struggle trying to remember the sex of the baby because, by now, nine chances out of 10 the kid is probably transitioning to something else.
According to the network the revival will be set in “a world of cable news, fake news and a very different political and cultural climate.” In other words, like the cast of Will & Grace, they are itching to get into the game of bashing one Donald J. Trump.
There are very few fictional characters that once they’ve left the culture I’ve pined to learn their fate. I really don’t care to know what cable network Murphy Brown is reduced to working at. After the disaster that was the series finale for Mad About You (also slated for revival), I don’t care to revisit the domestic life of Paul and Jamie Buchanan. I don’t care if the truth is still out there nor does the prospect of John Goodman pulling a Patrick Duffy in the mind of Roseanne Barr send a thrill up and down my spine. What’s next? Does anyone want to know if Sam Malone of Cheers fell off the wagon and is dealing with the devastating effects of an STD?
Rule One of show business used to be “Don’t stay on the stage too long.” Rule Two should be “Don’t force your way back.” The Golden Rule was “Always leave them wanting more.”
Published in Entertainment
Their audiences aren’t old enough already, so they have to bring back shows that were on before the demographic they really want was even born.
And the baby daddy (it was a boy, by the way) is busy on NCIS New Orleans. Scott Bakula still looks fine but I don’t need anymore Murphy Brown. Didn’t they learn that Madame Secretary did not elect Hillary Clinton?
After I posted this piece I learned that The Boss disagrees with me.
Yeah. I don’t need to see this.
I don’t need a re-boot of “BJ and the Bear” either, just in case any network execs are reading this.
*sound of Rob muttering angrily*
Let’s bring back Bring em Back Alive starring the man repping a feminine private area coloring agent. Bruce Boxlightner.
Where is the Three’s Company remake? Where I say? The audience demands it!
From the marketing firm Fizzology the post popular shows by the audience’s political persuasion
The Purplish Show? Dancing with the Stars (ABC)
Regretfully, The X-Files has also gotten in on the Trump-bashing, with Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) making references to “the president” wanting to destroy the FBI. However, Mulder does have great taste in sunglasses (Ray-Ban RB3519). So there’s that.
Scott Bakula needs to help revive Star Trek: Enterprise and give it a proper ending.
RE: The chart above
1. Conservative shows are all on the Big 4 broadcast nets.
2. Two of the top 5 for liberals are netlets or cable.
3. The Founding Father is #2 and trying harder
(#5 show is in the middle)
For my money Blue Bloods is the most Conservative show on TV.
Give (CBS supremo) Les Moonves credit for brains and good sense. He boosted Gary Sinise and “CSI:NY” as long as the show held up, and overlapped it with its successor, “Blue Bloods”, another show about the NYPD starring a (rare) Hollywood conservative. Despite the justified feeling that Hollywood doesn’t love us, the fact is in the acting category the town has always had a Get Out of Jail card for tough guys who play soldiers, cops, spies, or other heroes. It’s expected that many or most will have a predominantly conservative audience, so the studios smiled indulgently at Chuck Heston, Clint Eastwood, Arnold, Bruce Willis, Sinise, and Selleck. Until he went off the deep end, Gibson got the same pass.
People still watch TV?
Yes. And sometimes on their TV.
Please wake me if they bring back “Downward Dog.” I found the show to be zany and fun. And the dog was left un-cute-ified, just a normal steadfast canine companion.
If you get MediaCom, “Counterpart” is excellent. Character driven, and a good throwback to decent sci fi. (It may be best described as “sci fi meets noire.”)
BBC4. She’s Cathy Newman’s producer. There can even be a Jordan Peterson-like conservative character originally envisioned as a figure of fun who, by virtue of actually being interesting, becomes the breakout character of the series.
Don’t get me wrong, but I am genuinely confused when people say “What is (x)?” when X is obviously something that would be known to people whose memory extends back six or seven months. How is professing ignorance supposed to make the speaker seem smart and up-to-date? I know it’s supposed to be a cheeky way of making the subject seem irrelevant to contemporary concerns, but when has anyone ever thought “hah! That person is confused by the mention of the telephone and newspaper, they’re really modern. Their utter lack of backstory context lends great weight to their opinions.”
I just don’t get it. Of course people still watch visual entertainment on rectangular displays.
Some do. Some don’t.
Just for the record, BBC Four is not the same as Channel 4.
Are you telling me you’re not looking forward to Candice Bergen delivering virtue signaling monologues on the importance of the press?
To be fair, the first few seasons of Murphy Brown were really funny. Miles and Jim Dial were great characters (although I despised Eldon). The later seasons were mediocre, and the final season when Lily Tomlin replaced Miles was a trainwreck of epic proportions.
But I’m happy to hear about this revival. Not because I’ll watch it, but because they only ever released the first season of Murphy Brown on DVD, and the show isn’t available for streaming anywhere that I’ve been able to find. So I’m guessing this means the powers that be will be making the other seasons available again.
But as to expected quality of the revival, anyone remember “the New WKRP in Cinncinati”?
I’m confused. Is there still a “target demographic” for television, because I always thought it was the younger set. Hard to see how all these tedious remakes both on TV and in the movies are not direct at those pining for old times.
At least Candice Bergen is still alive (sort of, I think). I’m waiting for the reboot of the Andy Griffith show in which the late Andy and the late Don Knotts don’t actually appear at all, but are entirely comprised of CGI effects with no live action of any sort.
Oh, wait. Please tell me they haven’t done something like that already, and I missed it or was fooled.
I made the same kind of point in my earlier comment, but then I started wondering. Is there a chance that they’ve given up on the younger crowd, and are just trying to hang on to the oldsters until they die off? Programming for nursing homes.
Never watched Murphy Brown. It was on during the time I worked the 3-11 shift. The only thing I recorded back then was ‘rastlin’ on Monday night. Why do they think people want to watch these old reboots? Is it because Hawai Five-O is a hit? But this falls into the cop/fireman category mentioned above. I can’t bring myself to watch more than 5 minutes of it so I’m no judge. We have been watching the old show since we only have an antenna now. You can’t improve on that. There are only 2 network shows we watch now, anyway. Blue Bloods is one and I hope they end it before it plays out.
You could be right. I also was thinking that perhaps geezers like us (present company excepted, of course) are the only people who watch TV on their televisions, any more. Perhaps the “TV” series is a thing of the past, destined to die off when we do, in favor of streaming and on-demand.
Another song I’m prone to sing on this subject is that an awful lot of people live in areas of the country like mine, where Internet access (satellite or cellular, there’s no other option) is very expensive, is capped, and even if it is “not capped” it might as well be because speeds drop so radically after you use so much, that streaming and on-demand Internet services just are not feasible. We do watch TV on/as TV, although that’s an expensive satellite (non-Internet) service also. However, I would have thought, that most areas of the country like mine are not the “Murphy Brown” target demographic. More in line for a Dukes of Hazzard remake, perhaps?
Can’t quite understand why this is such a thing, and how they make money off it (advertising I guess). But it baffles me why. Unless with the Murphy Brown thing it is just the recycling of a Leftist cultural icon to bash Trump in time for the next election cycle, as suggested in the OP. That makes sense to me. But doesn’t really explain the rest of them.
I’m a fan of “Blue Bloods.” Though they need to be careful of stretching any further the already thin idea of one family solving all the crime in NYC.
I don’t watch “The Brave” – but am enjoying “Seal Team.”
Seems rather fitting, in a way, given how Hollywood seems stuck in a rut of reboots and remakes on so many other franchises. Attention spans are too diluted, and costs are too high, to run the risk of doing the hard work to start a show from nothing, so instead they take smaller risks and bank on nostalgia and name recognition.
Besides, I think the networks know that the Gen Xers and Millenials are, by and large, not the ones watching network TV anyway – just the Boomers. This show likely will only appeal to Boomers, and be written by and for Boomers (watch the commercials for the usual tells), and even if that is a smaller and more limited audience, it’s still a wealthy audience. Will the new Murphy Brown attract a massive audience? Likely not. But if it attracts the right sort of audience then it will pay for itself, or at least that’s the gamble.
So, sure we can shake our heads and wonder why in heck they’re reviving another nostalgic corpse of a long-gone show instead of “making shows that we actually want to watch”, but really it’s not about us at all, they’re making the sort of shows they think their diminishing audience will watch instead, and doing so knowing that they’ll probably snag a bunch of awards for it, and be able to concentrate some of the diminishing ad revenues from Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Depends, and Levitra on themselves.
Most of the younger world has moved on from Murphy Brown, and likely doesn’t remember it. But there are those who won’t move one, and Murphy is catering to them.
Doesn’t affect me at all. I haven’t watched TV in years.
It seems Rob Long agrees with me:
But then they went and cancelled one of the higher rated shows, Last Man Standing.