TV Week listings for Wednesday, October 3, 1973.

 

Before Burt Reynolds was the biggest movie star in the world (He was!  Really!  Late 1970s-early 1980s) he was a run-of-the-mill TV star.  In 1970-71, he played a Santa Barbara, CA, homicide detective on ABC's "Dan August," alongside the guy who would become Mr Roper on "3s Company" (Norman Fell) and "The Six Million Dollar Man's" boss (Richard Anderson).  In 1973, Burt was gaining traction, so CBS aired reruns of "Dan August" in the summer of 1973.  On October 3, 1973, CBS was still getting ready for its new Wednesday, 9:00 PM show, "Kojak," so they burned a rerun of "Dan August."  That seems crazy today, but their cost was near zero and the ratings were as good as any of their current shows, so why not?

At 3:30 PM on KMSP, the ABC "Afterschool Special" was "Rookie of the Year."  An 11-year-old girl (played by 10-year-old Jodie Foster) who was the equipment manager for a boys team, takes to the field and turns out to be better at the game than most of the boys.  Chaos ensues.

Also on KMSP, at 10:30 PM, they were running the syndicated "Dick Cavett Show."  Tonight's guest: Katherine Hepburn.

In 1973, the marriage of Sonny and Cher was ending and their "Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" was about to blow up as well.  Tonight's guests were John Davidson and Truman Capote.  Truman Capote on a network variety show?  That would have been worth tuning in for just for the cringe.

I see a listing on KMSP at 7:00 PM for "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," a series I never watched based on a movie I've never seen.  The theme of the movie was sexual liberation and spouse swapping.  I wonder how that was portrayed in a 30-minute comedy on at 7:00 PM?  You'd better have found out quickly as the series, starring a young Robert Urich, would get pulled after only seven episodes.  Side note: 10-year-old Jodie Foster had a recurring role in the series but did not appear in tonight's episode, apparently because she was too tired after being a baseball star in the "Afterschool Special" earlier today.

Tomorrow: Thursday appears to be the most boring day of the week, circa 1973.

TV Week listings for Tuesday, October 2, 1973.

The new season was kicking into high gear, as the networks were running the first or second episodes of most of their fall slates.

On ABC at 7:00 PM, season 2, episode 2 of "Temperature's Rising" starring Paul Lynde and a pre-Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little.  I caught a couple of episodes but my 11-year-old self didn't find anything terribly funny about it.

On CBS at 7:00 PM, it was the fourth episode of "Maude," which was getting a lot of buzz for its controversial topics, most of which are tame by today's standards but that is somewhat due to the battles that Norman Lear fought with "Maude."  Esther Rolle played Maude and Arthur's maid, Florida, and she left halfway through the season to go back to the projects and anchor "Good Times."

An interesting premiere tonight, also on CBS.  "Hawkins" starred Jimmy Stewart as a defense attorney.  "Hawkins" was one-third of a rotating trio of shows that CBS used to imitate the success of NBC's "Sunday Mystery Movie."  One of the other shows was a TV adaptation of "Shaft," starring Richard Roundtree, late of the theatrical movie.  It seems audiences were confused - unlike NBC's "Sunday Mystery Movie" ("McMillian and Wife," "Banacek," "Columbo," "McCloud," among others) which had thematically similar programs, CBS put the cerebral Jimmy Stewart on one week and Roundtree's private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks the next (Hey, I'm talking about Shaft).  They pulled the plug in March 1974.

NBC had three premieres this night.  At 9:00 PM, it was the critically acclaimed "Police Story." A true anthology, "Police Story" told a different story with different characters every week and the cops weren't always the good guys.  It was a direct ancestor to "Hill Street Blues" and "Law & Order," among many others.  It ran weekly for four years before being shifted to a two-hour occasional series for its final year.

At 8:00 PM, Bill Bixby was "The Magician."  Tony Blake was a world famous illusionist, who travelled the world (we only saw him travel the United States, but still) in his private 707.  He drove around in a white 1973 Corvette, and, of course, his plane had a car-sized cargo bay so he hauled the Corvette everywhere he went.  Tony helped people in need by creating elaborate illusions to help them escape or expose corruption, and solved mysteries by deconstructing crimes as intricate illusions.

Halfway through the season, NBC reconfigured "The Magician."  They jettisoned Tony's newspaper columnist friend and grounded the 707, as well as the pilot.  They had him living in the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, and had him solving the same types of mysteries but only within driving distance in LA.  They also upgraded his car, from the 1973 ducktail to a 1974 torpedo tail, still in gleaming white.  My 11-year-old self loved "The Magician," even after they ditched the 707 but NBC killed the series after one season.  Bill Bixby would go on to star in "The Incredible Hulk," so it's all good.

And at 7:00 PM, NBC rolled out he first episode of "Chase," a show that my 11-year-old self absolutely loved and why not?  A cop show specifically designed for car chases, car wrecks, and explosions?  Yes, please.  The show centered around a plain-clothes task force led by Captain Chase Reddick, played to sleazy, aggro perfection by Mitchell Ryan. Get it, his name is "Chase," and his unit specializes in car chases?  Layers, man.  The task force's sergeant was also a canine officer, so we had a cool german shepherd in every episode.  One officer was a former race driver and he drove an all-white 1973 Plymouth Satellite 4-door with a hood scoop, fat tires, and a jacked up rear end.  Another officer flew a red and white Hughes 500 helicopter.  Yet another officer drove a motorcycle.  By today's standards, the motorcycle was like a toy, probably a Kawasaki 175, but at the time it was impressive enough (Side note: my Honda Goldwing's engine has a larger displacement than my brother's Nissan automobile. Times change).  All of these officers and vehicles were mixed and matched in every episode until the ultimate, and identical conclusion, a car chase.  The white Plymouth would growl and spin its tires, the helicopter would fly too close to the ground, and the motorcycle would almost wipe out but still keep up with the bad guys.  Then the K9 dog, Fuzz, would chomp the bad guy after he ran 50 feet from the vehicle he just crashed.  Finally, Captain Chase would make a sarcastic remark or pun that would one day inspire the writers at "CSI: Miami."  Did I mention my 11-year-old self loved this show?  It was a time to turn off the brain and wait until the adrenaline kicked in.

Alas, after 13 episodes, NBC reconfigured the show.  That's a polite way to put it.  They gutted it.  Reached in and yanked out everything good about the show.  The chopper? Gone.  The white hot rod? Gone.  The frail little motorcycle? Gone.  The three 20-something pretty-boy officers?  Gone.  Now it was a show about a task force that solved crimes the old fashioned way and rarely had a car chase.  The three young officers were replaced by two yawn-inspiring veteran officers.  11-year-old me was crushed.

But I liked the first few episodes so much, I saved the Tribune's TV Week from the week of "Chase's" premiere for posterity.  Then forgot about it for 49 years, until I was cleaning the house a few months ago.  And that is why you are being entertained by scans and recollections of TV from 50 years ago this week.  My 11-year-old self says, "You're welcome."

Tomorrow: Jodie Foster and Truman Capote, but not at the same time.

TV Week listings for Monday, October 1, 1973.

 

Here is the Monday listing from the Minneapolis Tribune from 50 years ago today.  The full day listings for the PBS stations are included.  Notice some very specific educational programming.  You don't see targeted programming like that today, and probably with good reason.  TV stations are "broadcasting," not "narrowcasting."

In prime time, "Gunsmoke" was beginning the 19th of its 20-year run on CBS, and Lucille Ball's "Here's Lucy" was beginning its sixth and final year.  "Here's Lucy" was not the same as "I Love Lucy."  The listing for "Dick Van Dyke" was also not the show you're thinking of but "The New Dick Van Dyke Show."  Like "Here's Lucy," "New Dick" was kinda bland, riding on the coattails and carryover charm of the previous shows.

After Dom Deluise's "Lotsa Luck at 7:00 PM on NBC, came "Diana," a comedy starring Diana Rigg, late of "The Avengers" and 40 years later, would be the grand dame Olenna Tyrell on "Game of Thrones."  "Diana" was essentially following the Mary Tyler Moore, workplace, homelife, sex drive formula, and it was the drop-dead gorgeous, 35-year-old Rigg's first and only attempt at TV comedy, and it would be gone after 15 episodes.

Shecky Green was the guest host of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."  If I recall, Carson worked Tuesday through Friday and left Mondays for guest hosts.  Notice that "Tonight" was 90 minutes long back then and it was the only talk show in late night.

Tomorrow: The reason I kept this edition of the Minneapolis Tribune's TV Week for 50 years.

TV Week listings for Sunday, September 30, 1973.

 

Here is the Sunday listing from the Minneapolis Tribune from 50 years ago today.  If it's Sunday in Minnesota in the Fall, there will be Vikings.  On this particular day, the Vikings played the Green Bay Packers on WCCO at 12:30 PM and won, 11-3.  The Vikings would go 12-2 during the 1973 season and end up playing in the Super Bowl.  I don't remember how that turned out but it must have been good.

You'll notice that 60 Minutes isn't on today.  In 1973, it was only broadcast from January - June and even then CBS ran it on Sundays from 5:00 - 6:00 PM - before prime time.  It was hardly the ratings behemoth in 1973 that it would become a few years later.

Notice also that the network programs started at 6:30 PM and the 9:30 - 10:00 PM slots were filled by a news feature program on WCCO and syndicated (non-network) programs on the other affiliates.  The networks wouldn't start broadcasting from 6:00 - 10:00 Sundays until the Fall of 1975.  Having an hour-long program start at :30 minutes after the hour seems odd today but I liked it then and I like it now.  The 9:30 show on WCCO was called "Moore on Sunday," and it was an institution in the Twin Cities for ages.  Hosted by WCCO's 6 & 10 PM news anchor Dave Moore, "Moore on Sunday" was an unpredictable show, sometimes with hard news, investigations, opinion pieces, interviews, comic skits, and even pie-in-the-face gags on occasion.  It was must-see television before we knew what that term meant.

The CBS program at 6:30 displays as "Perry Mason" in the grid but it's really "The New Perry Mason."  The ill-fated reboot starred Monte Markham and Sharon Gless (pre Cagney and Lacey) and was yanked after 15 episodes.  I remember watching it and liking it. If you wanted the original Perry Mason, WTCN aired a Raymond Burr episode at 10:30 PM.

The guests on "The Wacky World of Jonathon Winters" on KMSP this week were Chuck Connors (Gunsmoke), Jo Ann Pflug (not sure what her claim to fame was), Tony Orlando and Dawn, and singer Maureen McCormick.  "Wacky," indeed!

Notice as well the advertising insert at 8:00 PM.  Can you imagine a network promoting a 65-year-old actor as a way to hook new viewers today?

Finally, the program on KSTP at 9:30 PM that shows as "Surgeon" is actually a syndicated Canadian program called "Police Surgeon."  Believe it or not, it ran for almost 100 episodes over four seasons.  I remember watching the show a few times and it wasn't as crazy as it sounds but it wasn't great.  Sam Groom played a doctor who was also a police detective.  Not a medical examiner or coroner but an actual detective who was also a doctor.  I don't recall how cases came to his attention but he drove around Toronto in an ambulance van - with police livery, not ambulance - and interviewed witnesses and suspects and usually figured out what was wrong with his patients in the nick of time, saving the victims' lives and, I suppose, preventing a crime like poisoning from becoming a homocide.  I guess "Police Surgeon" was sometimes like "House MD," only with a badge.

Tomorrow: A connection to Game of Thrones.

TV Week from September 30 - October 6, 1973

 I was cleaning out a closet a few months back and came across a manila envelope with a couple of TV Week booklets from the Minneapolis Tribune, one of them for the week of September 30 - October 6, 1973.  That's 50 years ago, starting today!  This week, I'll be showing you some differences between the media universe from 1973 and 2023.  It's very like me to save souvenirs for no particular reason and at first I didn't understand why I saved this particular edition but it came to me after couple days.  I'll share that reason with you on October 2.

If you need someone to explain what newspaper was, or what a weekly TV booklet was, or what broadcast television was, I'm not your guy.  We're just going to have fun looking at what the three-channel television universe looked like and see how different it was compared to today's 500-channel cable systems and multiple streaming service reality.

First, I should probably point out that the Minneapolis Tribune is now the StarTribune.  For almost a century, the paper's owners published the Tribune in the morning and the Minneapolis Star in the afternoon.  In 1982, they killed the afternoon edition and changed the morning paper's name to the Star and Tribune.  Later, they dropped the "and" and pushed the two names together.  When I think about the Minneapolis paper these days, which is rarely, I still call it the Tribune.

On the cover of this TV Week is a promo picture for a new 30-minute Friday night comedy on CBS called "Roll Out."  It was supposed to be a World War II comedy in the style of M*A*S*H, and was produced by the company that produced M*A*S*H.  "Roll Out" would be gone after January.

When we start looking at the daily listings, you'll notice the Tribune only lists four channels.  That's because there were only six TV stations broadcasting in the Minneapolis-St Paul market at the time.  The two PBS stations (KTCA-2, KTCI-17) apparently weren't worth the newspaper's trouble to include in the schedule grid, although they did have a small side area each day - with small print - for readers who wanted to seek them out.  The stations in the grid are your standard CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliates, and one independent.  Compared to today's endless cable channels, the listings look kinda sparse.

Today's Lesson

Today's lesson is on the subject of Home Renovation, or Home Repair, whichever you find yourself doing.  When installing a toilet, you are obligated to cut off the bolts that secure the toilet to the flange.  The instructions tend to say to use a hacksaw.  If you find yourself using an angle grinder, and if you have an angle grinder or have ever wanted to have one, you will find yourself using an angle grinder for this purpose, get ready to spend some time prepping before you cut.  Like many things in life, doing this task right will take much longer than you are imagining.

There will be sparks when grinder meets bolt.  This is an incontrovertible fact yet it may be overlooked.  Do not overlook this fact. It is incontrovertible.

Cover the toilet and the nearest wall with barriers of some sort.  Painter's tape will do fine for the curvy parts.  Heavy paper or cardboard is adequate for the walls, floor, and large parts of the toilet.  Estimate where the sparks will go and cover the porcelain thoroughly.  Then measure the distance from your bolt to where the barricades end, then double the distance and cover that area.  Then increase the amount of the covered area by half again and cover that area.

Check for gaps in the covering and cover any gaps with tape.  Check again.

Carefully decide at what level the bolts need to be cut off.  Mark the bolts.  The correct place to cut will be hard to see once the grinder is running.  Mark the bolts well.  Cut off the bolts.  Use eye and ear protection.  Use exhaust fans if you are near a smoke detector.  The smell of burning metal is a by-product of grinding metal.  This fact is also incontrovertible yet sometimes overlooked.

If you have learned from this lesson, you will now spend about 15 minutes removing your mostly-tape barricade.  Your toilet will look wonderful.  Do not ask how I learned this lesson.  It Is Just Known.  Now excuse me while I spend the next hour buffing some porcelain.  That is not a euphemism.

Refinancing Semi-Debacle, the Way-Past Conclusion

Almost four years ago, I refinanced my mortgage and blogged about it as I neared the finish line in the post "Refinancing Semi-Debacle."  The adventure concluded shortly after that post but not without further excitement.

Let's start with the date.  In a series of e-mails where we hashed out details, my loan officer from the credit union set a closing date of January 13.  She then asked me to get a payoff statement from the old lender for the 18th, which I did.  On the 13th, she e-mailed me with "Urgent" in the subject.  "You missed your appointment," she said.  No, I didn't, I replied, you changed it to the 18th.  No, she said, the appointment for the 13th stands - the 18th is the settlement date between institutions.

I see I'm starting to lose you with this riveting dialog, so let's move along.  It turns out you can't trust everyone.  In December, she set a closing date and asked for a payoff statement for the same date.  If we had closed as scheduled then, the numbers would have been off and we might have had to start over, but only in hindsight did I find her mistake.  For the January incident, she was right, but so was I for following the same pattern she set in December.

Well, my workday is generally flexible, so I grabbed my papers and set off for Minneapolis.  On a normal business day, the credit union is about 15 minutes from my office.  On a normal day.  On January 13, 2011, the Twin Cities received 8+ inches of snow, six of them by the time I headed out.  It took just over 90 minutes to reach my destination.  I won't bore you - further - with tales of sitting in traffic, except for one distraction that I enjoyed.

If you are familiar with I-394 eastbound in Minneapolis, you know that there is a chokepoint where it meets I-94.  We call it the Lowry Tunnel exit because as soon as you clear the exit ramp, you go through the Lowry Hill Tunnel.  We Minnesotans are awfully clever with our names.  394 eastbound carries a lot of traffic and about 2/3rds of it gets funnelled into a single, curvy lane and that causes a backup on a good day and on a snowy day, it can backup four miles or so.  Like this day.

As you approach the Dunwoody exit, the last one before Lowry Tunnel, a fourth lane appears on the right.  It's a brief extra lane, part of an on-ramp and off-ramp pair that are less than half a mile apart.  A woman came off that on-ramp and her ultimate destination was Dunwoody, so even with the backup on the main three lanes, she had clear sailing to her exit.  She was also driving one of those Honda four-wheel drive cars.  Should have been easy for her.  However...

I was in stop & go traffic, making maybe 5 MPH.  This lady could could easily have gotten up to 30 MPH or so for the minute or so needed to get to her exit. I first noticed her in my rear-view mirror, where she would travel slowly, cautiously, and dare I say safely, up to about 20 MPH, then slam on her brakes.  Four wheel drive and anti-lock brakes or not, in heavy, wet snow, you slide when you slam on the brakes.  Slamming on her brakes caused the Honda to slip sideways, maybe 45-60 degrees to the right of center.  When she had stopped completely and regained her composure, she would straighten out, then slowly, cautiously, and dare I say safely resume her trip and get her speed up to about 20 MPH, and do the whole thing over again.  I saw her do it maybe three times in my mirror, twice while she was beside me, and another three times before I lost visibility around a curve.  Considering I wasn't going anywhere, it was as entertaining as anything could be at that point, but not so much for the line of people that had formed behind her.

So I eventually got to the credit union and met with a junior loan officer.  We started going over the paperwork and immediately realized that it was wrong in several places.  You remember all those details I went over with the senior loan officer?  Yeah, it appears she got all the information and did nothing with it.  So, the paperwork had to be redone.

It all worked out.  Everything that had to happen between the credit union and one-payment lender happened.  I got my lower rate and have saved $11,148 in interest and PMI since.  I mainly like dealing with the credit union more than the too big to fail banks, but I like Suntrust's web site better - the credit union doesn't allow you to apply extra principal without making a call, for example.

My trip home that day was only 75 minutes, which was a victory in and of itself.  In the scheme of things, we shall lump all my annoyances and travails regarding the refi as first world problems.

Let There be Light

I'm putting up christmas lights this year.

I know, I know!  Who am I all of a sudden?

Well, the details tell the tale.  I have a 12 foot deck on the front of my house.  It has your basic railing system constructed of 2x4 cross members and 2x2 uprights.  I bought a single, 9 ft strand of icicle lights (LEDs, of course) that I will attach to the top railing.  Nothing fancy, just a little light and less than $10.

I went with all blue because I think that looks nice, and to avoid the glare of all-white lights if any of the light peeps in the house when I have the drapes open.  It's all very middle-aged childless guy who lives alone.  I was tempted to get a cascading set, but that would have been $40 for the same size and I have to draw the line somewhere.  Yet, there are still a couple months of temptation that I will have to resist before the lighting season is over.

Whither Rose McIver, or, The Cautionary Tale of Sharon Stone

No, you've probably never heard of Rose McIver.  She's a Kiwi actress, born in 1988, and hardly a household name.  Tonight, however, we have a watershed moment in her career - her first appearance on Once Upon a Time, in the recurring role of Tinkerbell.  It may very well be Rose's big break - we'll analyze that in a few years.  Tonight, however, I will be watching Once Upon a Time with decidedly mixed feelings.

We're not to the Sharon Stone part yet.

I first became aware of Rose McIver on Febuary 3, 2010*, when watching The Lovely Bones.  I didn't want to see the movie.  It was about a story I had no interest in, by a film maker who made two of the worst movies in the history of cinema (Lord of the Rings and King Kong (2005)). The only reason I went is because Saoirse Ronan played the lead.  I was blown away by her Academy Award nominated performance in Atonement, and she even rescued an otherwise awful City of Ember a year later.  I put her on my 'must-see' list and so I went to see The Lovely Bones despite my misgivings.  It's an awful movie, full of Oscar and Emmy winners and nominees, and with a big budget, but it's all-around bad.  The novel didn't translate to the visual medium at all, the acting was generally wooden, the comic relief was jarring, the back-to-the-70s look was cliched and even the amazing Saoirse Ronan seemed to sleepwalk through entire scenes.

It was bad until late in the movie, when the lead character's younger sister decided to investigate her murder. She suspected a neighbor and broke into his house.  I felt I was watching a real person, not just an actor in a movie.  Instead of watching a movie, I was suddenly experiencing a movie.  It's the feeling every moviegoer wants to feel.  It's why I see 100 or more movies a year.  And in a movie with so many handicaps, one actress playing an 18-year-old girl in a life-or-death situation made the magic happen.

After that, I started to pay attention to Rose McIver.  It wasn't easy, since she's from New Zealand and doesn't work steadily in the US market.  But in the next year and a half, I saw her in a couple of TV movies and I noticed that she made the movies better than they had any right to be.  Her style is so natural that I automatically believe I'm seeing a character - a real person, actually - and not an actor.

Then, it got even better in an unbelievable fashion.

Have you heard of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers?  Yeah, well, they're still on.  They change the cast and setting every year or two but the show is still being produced.  It also changes its name subtly every incarnation.  In 2009, Rose McIver became the yellow ranger on Power Rangers RPM.  I'm going to spare you any references to the Power Rangers formula, except that if you fast forward through the cheesy battle and morphing scenes in RPM, you get a pretty good post-apocalyptic story and you can finish an episode in 15 minutes or less.  I streamed all 30 episodes on Neflix in 2011.  Rose McIver's scenes were out of place - too good - in a program aimed at preteens.  In fact, the whole show overshot what other incarnations of Power Rangers tried to do, in scope, vision and acting.

OK, so at this point, I've got to cop to a fanboy crush on Rose McIver.  I saw something funny on the internet a while back that summarizes it best - a form titled "Marital Status."  There were three check boxes: "Single," "Married," and "In a committed relationship with a celebrity that neither knows nor cares that I exist."  I could check box number three.  At least as a joke.  Which brings us to Sharon Stone.

The details are somewhat different, but in the early 1980s, when I should have been studying, I watched a lot of TV, and on several programs, I noticed a 20-something cutie named Sharon Stone here and there.  I developed a bit of a crush on her as well, but not quite to the same degree as with Rose. Then, in the late 80s, came Total Recall and Basic Instinct, and Sharon Stone was a star.  Superstar.  You couldn't get away from the publicity and she went from being a working actress to a tabloid name brand and I stopped liking her.  I stopped enjoying her work and when her flavor-of-the-month career crashed, I didn't care.  I barely noticed.  Fame and success took the 1980s Sharon Stone away from me.

Tonight at 7:00 (8:00 Eastern and Pacific), Rose McIver will be presented to the country - nay, the world - in Once Upon a Time and who knows what will happen?  7.65 million people watched Once Upon a Time last week.  That's a lot of people who will be seeing Tinkerbell tonight, and, if I'm allowed to project a little, a  few will become smitten by her.  Possibly a few casting agents.  Will this be the beginning of a new star or just a steady paycheck for a working actress?  Will my fanboy crush crash and burn?  Time will tell.  I wish Rose McIver well, but at the same time, I don't want to get Stoned.


* Yes, I spell 'Febuary' the way I pronounce it.  It's my blog.

A Day Late and Several Votes Short

I was perusing a news site a few minutes ago and found this ad targeted towards me.  The top one of the three.

Notice the date.

Two problems.  First, I'm not in Representative Stensrud's district, so directing this ad at me was problematic.  Second, THE ELECTION WAS YESTERDAY.  "Private Sector Know How" people should know how to control their advertising better.  "Common Sense" would be to put an end date on his advertising.

And oh, yeah, the doofus lost.