"Previously On..."
A recurring look at recent TV I've watched, notable industry news, items from my archive & their significance, and the history of TV programming as told through the pages of TV Guide or Variety.
A Man On The Inside (Netflix): While the mystery in the second season of Ted Danson’s latest series is tepid compared to S1, the humor is stronger. The joy of this show has moved from the whodunnit to the comedy. Specifically, Danson’s grandchildren are hysterical - I could easily watch a spin-off about that family.
Knives Out 3: Wake Up Dead Man (Netflix): When I saw the original Knives Out I thought it was fine but did not really get why it was all the rage at the time. The second film, Glass Onion, was a bit over the top for me and the mystery, convoluted. The third film, set in a church, is the most entertaining of the trio with a more approachable and understandable puzzle but still quite clever.
Landman (Paramount+) I am not really a fan of Billy Bob Thornton so when S1 of Landman was released I checked it out only because I enjoy most of Taylor Sheridan’s series. I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed BBT as Tommy Norris alongside all the other characters and storylines. Ali Larter and Michelle Randolph are particularly fun to watch as his ex-wife and daughter. A notable change for S2 is that Jon Hamm is no longer on the show which allows Demi Moore to take on a bigger role as his widow. Andy Garcia and Sam Elliott are new additions (although Garcia was in the S1 finale) and they generally fit in. S2 is off to a good start.
Champagne Problems (Netflix): I am a sucker for cheesy holiday movies. I try most of what’s on streaming and cable (Hallmark, GAF) if the plot sounds of interest. Many of them I turn off before the end as they are boring or insipid. Champagne Problems is my favorite original holiday movie of the season thus far due to a combination of factors which are often part of the formula that works in this space: 1) The leads, Minka Kelly and French actor Tom Wozniczka, are very attractive and have good chemistry, 2) a Christmassy setting that feels authentic - in this case France where it apparently was actually filmed 3) Some sort of stakes that fits the spirit of the holiday. Here it is the sale of a family-owned champagne company. 4) A syrupy message and ending. Check.
Rob Reiner: As a pre-teen in the early 1980s my father and I watched one show together every weeknight at 7:30pm - All In The Family on what was then WNEW Channel 5 owned by Metromedia (now Fox’s WNYW). Laughing together at a sophisticated sitcom brought us closer together and is a cherished memory. Rob Reiner’s performance as “Meathead” sometimes gets lost amongst all his movie successes and dare I say many of his film fans have never seen the show. The chemistry he had with Carroll O’Connor is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle casting events that can turn a series from good to great.
Many TV fans today do not realize the impact this one sitcom had on a country that was far more chaotic and divided then today despite what you might read. Rob Reiner and his portrayal of a young, liberal, college-educated man of Polish descent taking on the conservative, bigoted views of Archie Bunker represented the culture clash happening in the era of Nixon. In the 70s, the average American could not be heard as they can so easily today on social media. Mike and Archie represented everybody and the CBS comedy was the way everyone heard each other’s POV. All In The Family is the most impactful television show of all time. No series has ever changed the social conversation to the same degree and no show will do so in the future.
In addition to All in The Family, there is a another significant connection between my formative TV viewing and Reiner. One of my favorite TV shows is The Odd Couple - I even host a podcast about it (you can find it here) - and he played “Sheldn” (no “O” on the birth certificate) who married Oscar’s secretary Myrna, played by his then real wife Penny Marshall. Reiner’s brother-in-law Garry ran that show.
Lucy and Desi Series In The Works: The life of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz has been put on celluloid every decade since the 1990s There was the 1991 TV movie Before The Laughter starring Frances Fisher and Maurice Bernard, 2003’s Lucy with Rachel York and Danny Pino and 2021’s Being The Ricardos with Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardim. The problem with this trifecta isn’t the acting. It’s that with a limited amount of time they’ve each told almost the exact same stories of their lives with the same recreations of the same episodes over and over (candymakers, Vitametavegamin, grape-stomping). They also each got a number of facts wrong.
Now comes word that Lucie Arnaz is partnering with former NBC President Bob Greenblatt to “develop what they envision as a three-season deep dive into the lives of Ball and Arnaz, from the couple’s separate tumultuous upbringings to making TV history with “I Love Lucy” — and then the clashes that led to their eventual divorce. … We think it’s three seasons of eight episodes.”
On a personal basis this is fantastic news since I Love Lucy is one of my favorite shows. With 24 hours to tell the full story, so much more of the history of the series, including recreating of other episodes, and their lives post-divorce can be told. 10/15/26 will be the 75th anniversary of the Lucy’s premiere which is part of the reason for this undertaking now according to the reporting. It is perhaps the oldest TV show still popular in syndication (I cannot think of one that started before 1951).
The chart below contains the top 50 library TV comedy half-hours on streaming for 2025 based on minutes viewed. I Love Lucy is #26 at 5.4B minutes, ahead of such modern series as Everybody Loves Raymond, The Nanny, SNL, The Golden Girls and Always Sunny.
Audrey Meadows Only Emmy Nominations: In addition to I Love Lucy and The Odd Couple one of my other favorite comedies of all time is The Honeymooners. While Ralph and Alice Kramden were featured in a lot of segments on The Jackie Gleason show, the actual half-hour comedy only aired for one season and 39 episodes 1955-56.
A recent auction acquisition is Audrey Meadows’ Emmy nomination plaque for Best Supporting Actress for that single season, which she lost. She won the prior year for The Jackie Gleason Show. Accompanying the lot is a telegram sent to her by Ed Sullivan inviting Meadows to a reception at The Waldorf-Astoria.
The random date generator chose 11/15/97 for Variety.
The lead article from the TV section reflects the beginning of the pay TV ecosystem almost 30 years ago as DirecTV, which had “3 million subscribers and counting”, was going to order original programming through the “Action Adventure Network” (AAN), from a Canadian company known as Telescene. The behind-the-camera names reported to be involved in making series and TV-movies included Francis Ford Coppola, Steven De Souza (writer of 48 Hours, Die Hard, The Running Man, but also Hudson Hawk) and John Landis. After some more digging I cannot find much that aired on DTV out of this venture - only the pilot to the first-run syndicated TV show The Lost World - but DirecTV was leaning into it as indicated by the newspaper ad from the LA Times below.
15 years later a version of AAN did come to fruition. In 2011 DirecTV debuted the Audience Network which contained original scripted programming such as Mr. Mercedes, Loudermilk, the final two seasons of Damages, and the last three seasons of Friday Night Lights.
Of course now we are witnessing the denouement of this ecosystem and the death spiral of satellite TV.
Two items that are relevant today appear on this page.
1)There was a sincere attempt to reboot the Mary Tyler Moore show with Moore and Valerie Harper for ABC from 20th Century Fox. The original show aired on CBS and was produced by MTM productions which eventually became part of 20th Century Fox which means it is now part of Disney.
The relevance to today is that rebooting popular series with the original cast is still a key programming strategy, nearly 30 years later. Scrubs is coming to ABC early next year while Malcolm In The Middle will be on Hulu also in 2026. There are also other series being rebooted, albeit with new casts, such as Little House, Baywatch, and A Different World.
2)This year the bidding process for the NBA seemed to reach new heights as NBCU determined that sports are a key piece of programming strategy for NBC Broadcast and Peacock. Turns out that was not a new story. In 1997 NBC ponied up 2x what it was already paying to renew the NBA for four years - going from $750M to $1.75B. Turner nets were early in their long-running NBA deals at the time and they went from $350B to $890M. There are only so many A-level properties to go around and even though we think Sports are the lifeblood of linear TV today they were actually seen as just as important in 1997.
Both of these stories are examples of how, despite all the changes to media we are witnessing now, many of the dynamics that shape programming have been the same for decades.
HH ratings for the week of 11/6/97 - Thursday-Wednesday.
NBC: 1) As usual for this era NBC’s Thursday was the dominant force. ER was #1 with 22% of all TV HHs / 37 % of all homes with their TV sets on tuned into S4 of the series. Seinfeld, in its final season, was #2 with a 21.4 rating. This week the Merv Griffin episode aired. The clear laggard here is Union Square with a 13.9 rating. It lost -21% of the Friends lead-in and was cancelled after 14 episodes. Nothing else on NBC was anywhere close to these series. 2) Dateline, then in its sixth season, was NBC’s next strongest asset with three separate telecasts over a 10 rating. 3) The lowest-rated series was Players which led off Friday (4.9 HH rating). It was a Dick Wolf crime drama starring Ice-T.
CBS: 1) It’s hard to remember but Saturdays used to be a big night for Broadcast TV. Even as late as 1997 this was true for CBS with Dr. Quinn, Early Edition and Walker: Texas Ranger. 2) Touched By an Angel was far and away its top scripted series with an 18.0 rating, +61% over #2, Cosby (excluding TV-Movies). This Cosby was his four-season, post Cosby Show sitcom in which he played a retiree, again married to a character played by Phylicia Rashad. 3) Step By Step moved to CBS for its 7th and final season here where it underperformed on a HH basis.
ABC: Comedy was the driver for ABC in the late 1990s with Home Improvement, Dharma & Greg, Drew Carey, Ellen, Sabrina and Boy Meets World. The only drama that had a significant audience was NYPD Blue. It had a lot of other scripted one-hours which were mostly failures.
Fox: HH ratings were not a particularly important KPI for Fox - it was focused on P18-49 - so the numbers here are doing a bit of a disservice. Nevertheless, The X-Files stands out as a very broadest player and one of the top shows of the week with a 15.0 rating. The Simpsons and King Of The Hill served as lead-ins to X-Files on Sundays and were also strong. Other popular programs of the time, all over a 7.0 HH rating, were Melrose Place, Party of 5, 90210 and Ally McBeal
Here are syndicated ratings for the week of October 27. As usual Wheel and Jeopardy are on top. After that we see a tremendous difference between the 1990s and today. In the 90s, Broadcast television series attracted so many viewers and were built to last, that in syndication its existing fans wanted to watch them again or new fans were created. Here we see Home Improvement, The X Files, and Seinfeld in the top 5.
First-run syndicated dramas were also a big part of the TV ecosystem in the decade. Xena and Hercules were in the top ten. The talk show era that really took hold in the 2000s was just beginning to materialize. Oprah was only #6 while Rosie and Regis & Kathie Lee were in the bottom of the top 20
Time to start up that all in the family podcast you always talk about!