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What's on TV? Monday, July 7, 1969
It's always a good idea every once in awhile to take stock of what shows are making the syndication rounds. Many of the shows now fall into the "classic" category, but back then they were only a few...
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Burke's Law: the cop show with a heart—or at least wallet—of gold
A badly wanted to do comedy," Gene Barry said in a profile for the November 23, 1963 issue of TV Guide. "I searched the scripts for the inherent comedy that can be found in almost any drama. I searched...
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Around the dial
Most of today's commercials are—what would you say? Odes to crass materialism? Of course, that's always been a part of advertising. But sometimes a commercial can evokes an era long left behind, and at...
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This week in TV Guide: July 15, 1967
I'd suppose most of you are familiar with Desilu Productions, if for no other reason than the number of times its logo appears at the end of your favorite programs, from The Untouchables to Mission:...
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What's on TV? Friday, July 21, 1967
Tonight's debut show on ABC is Malibu U., hosted by Ricky Nelson during his "Rick" years. It runs for seven episodes, which is probably all that were planned; still, it's always a bad sign when a...
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The Descent into Hell: "A Feasibility Study" (1964)
It is hard enough to find anyone who will die on behalf of a just man, although perhaps there may be those who will face death for a good man.—Romans 5:7 At the outset, the opening narration from the...
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Around the dial
Xt the Broadcasting Archives, we start the week with an intriguing look at how The Lucy Show almost wound up breaking new ground in television, and why the show didn't continue with its mildly feminist...
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This week in TV Guide: July 20, 1968
You've probably seen the famous New Yorker illustration "View of the World from 9th Avenue," which depicts pretty much everything other than New York as a vast wasteland. Well, as Edith Efron points...
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What's on TV? Monday, July 22, 1968
The 6:00 p.m. movie on KOVR, Cell 2455, Death Row, is an adaptation of the 1954 book by Caryl Chessman, who at the time was on death row in California for kidnapping and raping two women in separate...
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Read anything interesting lately?
Remember those ads in the middle of TV Guide where the issue was stapled together, ads for the book of the month club or the record of the month club or a plastic model of the Apollo spacecraft,...
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Around the dial
We'll start the week, as we often do, at bare•bones e-zone, where Jack's Hitchcock Project has moved on to the teleplays of Frank Gabrielson, starting with the third-season episode "Reward to Finder,"...
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This week in TV Guide: July 29, 1967
This week we've got yet another article telling us how cable television is going to change the industry forever, and we'll get to that in a bit, but this must be the umpteenth time TV Guide has...
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What's on TV? Sunday, July 30, 1967
Soccer on television has come a long way from the match between Atlanta and Philadelphia on CBS today. Back then, U.S. networks routinely took commercial breaks during play, risking the chance they...
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What I've been watching: summer edition
Shows I’ve Watched:Shows I've Added:Sam BenedictCaptains and the KingsHarry OTinker, Tailor, Soldier, SpySmiley's PeopleBurke's LawTwin Peaks: The ReturnTrue story: in 1963, the family of Dallas...
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Around the dial
Once again we begin the week with a shameless bit of self-promotion: my latest appearance on the Dan Schneider Video Interview. This week, Dan and I discuss television in the 1950s, in all its various...
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This week in TV Guide: August 7, 1954
Some years ago, an author whose work I otherwise respect—which is why I'm not naming him here—tossed off what I'm sure he considered an amusing bon mot about Orson Bean, to wit that he was a game show...
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What's on TV? Tuesday, August 10, 1954
On Tuesday, Herbert Hoover becomes only the fifth former president of the United States—and the first since John Quincy Adams—to reach 80 years of age, and NBC is making a day of it with remote...
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Around the dial
Frank Gabrielson's second and final Alfred Hitchcock Presents script is Jack's subject at bare-bones e-zine. The 1958 episode "The Foghorn" is a superior adaptation of a powerful short story, and as...
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This week in TV Guide: August 13, 1966
Edith efron leads off the week with one of television's truly existential questions: what do game shows prove? In the summer of 1966, game shows comprise 32 of the 110 weekly hours of network daytime...
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