View Full Version : Early 60's as the new season approaches


oldtvman
08-29-2005, 07:13 PM
Its almost fall and the anticipation of the new television season has you guessing as to which shows coming on this fall will be colorcast. Gee maybe ABC and CBS will break out some of their sparsly used color broadcast equipment. I'd better check my Channel Master yagi antenna to make sure all is ready for the upcoming season, maybe I'll switch to some of that coxial cable that I've seen in some of the tech magazines, it claims to eliminate ignition noise from passing cars and CB radio interference. I'll be right back I'd better degauss the crt for the best picture possible.


Oh well that was then and this is now.

Larry Melton still stuck in the past.

Celt
08-29-2005, 07:51 PM
Ah, those were the days! Back then our next door neighbor had an old Ford that had the noisiest ignition in the world. Heard 'em coming half a block away thru the TV and radio. And yes, bless 'em...there were the CB'ers with their oversaturated radios. Was in church one Sunday morning and the preacher was reading from the book of Isaiah and thru the church P.A. system, as pretty as you please, came WELL, THAT'S A BIG 10-4 GOOD BUDDY!!! :lmao:

frenchy
08-30-2005, 12:56 AM
I wasn't born with color started. But HDTV was sort of similar to color switchover for me. When I got my HDTV set I had a vhf/uhf on my chimney already but it needed a boost to pick up some of the weaker digital channels from Los Angeles 50 miles away. So I boosted it with a separate uhf antenna on the same mast to get more signal. Then I had to trim a big tree I had in back because it was blowing around and sometimes cutting the signal off!
Then had to do the same crap at my Mom's house to get her HDTV set up.
I have been watching the last two years as more and more shows are converted or added in HDTV. Used to be rare to have two HDTV shows on at once, now you can see ones occasionally on ABC, CBS, NBC, WB and FOX all in the same time slot. (Not that easy since the last two go to local news at 10 instead of 11.) Basically all of the primetime cop shows are hdtv now, sitcoms too. News magazine shows have lagged, none are in HD.
Plus I remember two years ago there were a lot more 'growing pains' with the local stations and networks than I see now - pictures screwed up, sound missing or not synched right. NBC station here in LA a few times showed the program all chopped into about a dozen squares and all rearranged randomly! Similar to the early days of color where the color was inconsistent or sometimes would cut out.
So instead of saying that was then this is now, I say... what comes around goes around ; )

Chad Hauris
09-07-2005, 08:40 PM
Didn't he or someone else at that time say that
"Television is a called a medium...because it's neither rare, nor well done"

Steve Hoffman
09-07-2005, 09:43 PM
Didn't he or someone else at that time say that
"Television is a called a medium...because it's neither rare, nor well done"

The great FRED ALLEN.

frenchy
09-09-2005, 11:51 PM
The great FRED ALLEN.

Read somewhere else that it was Ernie Kovaks who said that. Or maybe it was Milton Berle and he stole it from both of them ; )

Steve Hoffman
09-10-2005, 12:36 PM
No, Fred Allen. He was not a fan of TV (and was never successful on it)..

Steve Hoffman
09-10-2005, 01:13 PM
ALLEN, FRED

( From Museum Of Broadcast Communications)

U.S. Comedian

Fred Allen hated television. Allen was a radio comedian for nearly two decades who, as early as 1936, had a weekly radio audience of about 20 million. When he visited The Jack Benny Show to continue their long running comedy feud, they had the largest audience in the history of radio, only to be later outdone by President Franklin Roosevelt during a Fireside Chat. The writer Herman Wouk said that Allen was the best comic writer in radio. His humor was literate, urbane, intelligent, and contemporary. Allen came to radio from vaudeville where he performed as a juggler. He was primarily self-educated and was extraordinarily well read.

Allen began his network radio career in 1932 after working vaudeville and Broadway with such comedy icons as Al Jolson, Ed Wynn, George Jessel, and Jack Benny. This was a time when the United States was in a deep economic depression, and radio in its infancy. In his autobiography Treadmill To Oblivion, Allen wrote that he thought radio should provide complete stories, series of episodes, and comedy situations instead of monotonous unrelated jokes then popular on vaudeville. With this idea in hand, he began his first radio program on NBC called The Linit Bath Club Review (named after the sponsor).

Allen's world of radio was highly competitive and commercial, just as TV would be many years later. He wrote most of the material for his weekly shows himself, usually working 12 hour days, 6 days a week. Most comedians, like Bob Hope, had an office filled with writers, but Allen used only a few assistants in writing his comedy. And some of these assistants went on to have successful careers in literature and comedy, such as Herman Wouk author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War, and Nat Hiken who created Phil Silver's The Phil Silvers Show for TV. Allen's program was imbued with literate, verbal slapstick. He had ethnic comedy routines in Allen's Alley, appearances by celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, musical numbers with talent from the likes of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and social commentaries on every conceivable subject, especially criticisms of the advertising and radio industry. His radio producer, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver (later to become head of NBC TV programming), observed that Allen's humor was so popular that three out of four homes in the country were listening to Allen at the zenith of his popularity. In writing his comedy scripts, Allen compiled a personal library of over 4,000 books of humor, and read 9 newspapers (plus magazines) daily. According to the scholar Alan Havig, Allen's style of comedy had more in common with literary giants like Robert Benchley and James Thurber than with media comedians like Jack Benny and Bob Hope.

In 1946-47 Allen was ranked the number one show on network radio. World War II was over, Americans were beginning a new era of consumerism. And a very few consumers had recently purchased a new entertainment device called television. When Fred Allen was asked what he thought of television, he said he didn't like furniture that talked. He also said television was called a medium because "nothing on it is ever well done." Allen dismissed TV as permitting "people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything." But, after nearly two decades on radio, he fell in the ratings from number 1 to number 38 in just a few months. Such a sudden loss of audience was due to a new ABC radio give-away show called Name That Tune, starring Bert Parks, as well as a general decline in listeners for all of radio. Listeners of radio were rapidly becoming viewers of TV. And where the audience went, so went the advertisers. In a few short years the bottom fell out of radio. Fred Allen quickly, but not quietly, left radio in 1949.

Allen was first to leave radio, but Bob Hope, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen soon followed. They all went to star in their own TV shows. All but Fred Allen. He made a few attempts at TV, but nothing more. He first appeared on the Colgate Comedy Theater, where he attempted to bring to TV his Allen's Alley from radio. For example, the characters of the Alley were performed with puppets. Such attempts seldom successfully made the transition to the new medium. On the quiz show Judge for Yourself (1953-54), he was supposed to carry on witty ad libbed conversations with guests. But as Havig states, Allen's "ad libbing was lost in the confusion of a half hour filled with too many people and too much activity". In short, Allen's humor needed more time and more language than TV allowed. He then was on a short lived Fred Allen's Sketchbook (1954), and finally a became a panelist on What's My Line in 1955 until his death in 1956.

Fred Allen's contributions to TV has taken two forms. First, he became one of the true critics of TV. He has remained, many decades after his death, the intellectual conscience of TV. His barbs at network TV censorship still hit at the heart of contemporary media (e.g., Allen: "Heck...is a place invented by [NBC]. NBC does not recognize hell or [CBS]"). Second, his comedy style has become part of the institution of TV comedy. His Allen's Alley created the character Titus Moody who turned up on TV as the Pepperidge Farm cookie man. His Senator Claghorn, also of the Alley, was transfigured into Warner Brothers TV cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn the rooster. And later, the "Senator" appeared on the Kentucky Fried Chicken TV commercial. A variety of TV comedians have done direct take-offs of Allen's performances. For example, Red Skelton's "Gussler's Gin" routine and Johnny Carson's "Mighty Carson Art Players" can be traced back to Fred Allen. And Allen's "People You Didn't Expect to Meet" is an idea that has worked for David Letterman. And of course, radio's Garrison Keeler's "Lake Wobegan" is a throw back to Allen's style of comedy.

Allen wrote in Treadmill to Oblivion "Ability, merit and talent were not requirements of writers and actors working in the industry. Audiences had to be attracted, for advertising purposes, at any cost and by any artifice. Standards were gradually lowered. A medium that demands entertainment eighteen hours a day, seven days every week, has to exhaust the conscientious craftsman and performer." He was talking about radio, but his remarks could apply just as well to television many decades later.


- Clayland H. Waite


FRED ALLEN (Fred St. James, Fred James, Freddie James). Born John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachussetts, U.S., 31 May 1894. Married Portland Hoffa, 1928. Served in Army, World War I. Began performing on stage as an amateur teenage juggler, eventually adding patter and turning pro with the billing of the "World's Worst Juggler"; for ten years as humorist toured the vaudeville circuit, including 14 months in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and Honolulu, 1914-15; dropped juggling, settled on the professional name of "Fred Allen," and moved up from vaudeville to Broadway revues, early 1920s; worked on radio, notably Allen's Alley and Texaco Star Theatre, from 1932; a panel regular on the television quiz show What's My Line?, 1955-56. Died in New York City, 17 March 1956.

TELEVISION SERIES
1953 Fred Allen's Sketchbook
1953-54 Judge For Yourself
1955-56 What's My Line?

FILMS
Some film shorts, 1920s; Thanks a Million, 1935; Sally, Irene and Mary, 1938; Love Thy Neighbor, 1940; It's in the Bag, 1945; We're Not Married, 1952; Full House, 1953.

RADIO
The Linit Bath Club Review, 1932; Allen's Alley, 1932-49; The Salad Bowl Revue, 1933; Town Hall Tonight, 1934; Texaco Star Theatre, 1940-41.
PUBLICATIONS
Treadmill to Oblivion. Boston: Little Brown, 1954.
Much Ado about Me. Boston: Little Brown, 1956.
Fred Allen's Letters. McCarthy, Joe, editor. Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, 1965.

FURTHER READING
Havig, A. Fred Allen's Radio Comedy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
Taylor, R. Fred Allen: His Life and Wit. New York: International Polygonics, 1989.

Steve Hoffman
09-10-2005, 04:21 PM
After reading this interesting biography, another label should be attributed to Fred Allen - LUDDITE!


But a lovable one..

bgadow
09-10-2005, 10:22 PM
I've heard a clip of Fred Allen saying that line, can't remember how he did it exactly. His show is one of my favorites. The biography is good though-it mentioned Bert Parks & Name that Tune-I thought it was a different show, but the same kinda theme. I'll have to try & research that, it will bother me now!

frenchy
09-11-2005, 01:07 PM
<<Allen dismissed TV as permitting "people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.">>

Methinks he anticipated the arrival of reality shows...