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What's on TV? Friday, June 13, 1980
There's a space-filler box with "Vital Statistics" in today's listing that tells us, "Cable systems now offer their subscribers a maximum of 36 channels. However, some companies are presently testing a...
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No laughing matter
Last Saturday, I offered a bit of a screed on the genre known as the dramedy. As if to reinforce my point, at Slate this week, Dahlia Lithwick has a defense of the final season of Ted Lasso, the Apple+...
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Around the dial
Acouple of maintenance items on the personal side to lead off. My latest appearance on Dan Schneider's internet show is up; this week, Dan and I discuss the original Hawaii Five-O, and you can see it...
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This week in TV Guide: June 10, 1978
In the decade-plus that I've been writing this feature, we've dealt with many topics: politics, sex, sports, drugs, nihilism, and on occasion even television. Never before, as far as I can recall...
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What's on TV? Tuesday, June 13, 1978
I'm looking this week at the guest list for some of today's shows. Now, keep in mind I'm not as smart as casting directors and guest coordinators, and any one of you can probably cite an example in...
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Around the dial
I think we'll start this week with Cult TV Lounge, and a look at the Lost in Space TV tie-in novel written by Dave van Arnam and Ron Archer in 1967, while the show was still on the air. It contains...
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This week in TV Guide: June 18, 1966
Odds are, you've never heard of Pippa Passes, Kentucky, in eastern Knott County. Its population in 1990 was 195, and I'd imagine it wasn't much different back in 1966, when it makes its one and (to my...
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What's on TV? Sunday, June 19, 1966
As we read about on Saturday, ABC will be carrying live coverage of the conclusion to the 24 Hours of Le Mans this morning; Wide World of Sports ran from 1961 to 1998, and was one of television's...
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The Descent into Hell: "The Year of the Sex Olympics" (1968)
[Aldous] Huxley and [George] Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. . . What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there...
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Around the dial
We'll start this week on a self-serving note; my latest appearance on the Dan Schneider Video Interview is up. We're talking about the original Mission: Impossible: why it's a terrific show, why it's a...
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This week in TV Guide: June 21, 1980
Some things never change, it seems. If you've watched a DVD any time in the last—well, however long it's been that DVDs have been around—you've seen that warning from the Federal Bureal of...
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What's on TV? Thursday, June 26, 1980
Speaking of classics, as we often do here since this is a classic TV website, one of the all-time sitcom classics airs at 11:30 on WXIX: the Chuckles the Clown episode of Mary Tyler Moore. It doesn't...
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The enduring popularity of Lawrence Welk
Here’s a question for you, how does Lawrence Welk do it? How does he remain popular when, according to popular thought, his audience should have died off a long time ago?When I was a kid, my...
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Around the dial
It looks like someone didn't get the lesson in school about never sitting too close to the television set. Remember how they used to tell us it would ruin our eyes? They never said anything about it...
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This week in TV Guide: July 2, 1955
Now, I know what you're thinking: you've seen the cover of this week's issue, and you're waiting for me to make some remark about television going to the dogs. Well, that would be too easy, and as you...
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What's on TV? Wednesday, July 6, 1955
For once, I'm at something of a loss for words. There really isn't anything new that I can mention today that I didn't already cover last Saturday, and none of these shows are particularly landmarks....
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It's a courtroom drama and a game show
Fans of classic television know all about subchannels like MeTV, Antenna, H&E, and the late, lamented Decades. But if you've ever surfed through the full range of subchannels in your area, you know...
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Around the dial
If you haven't seen my latest podcast appearance, I'm with the great Ken Reid on his show TV Guide Counselor, where we talk about classic shows, the role of TV in American pop culture, and TV Guide...
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This week in TV Guide: July 5, 1969
Like many of you, I rue the day when "fake news" entered the vocabulary. It may have been a good idea at the time, but that time is long past, and the term has been so overused, so distorted, that it...
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