"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.
Death By Lightning (Netflix): A four-part, lavish telling of the story of President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) and his assassin Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfayden). The program covers Garfield’s unexpected rise to the presidency and Guiteau’s meandering life in the years before the murder. I describe it as lavish because it does a convincing job of transporting the audience back to 1880.
The one issue that detracts from an authentic period viewing experience is some of the performances. Matthew Macfayden is of course a great actor but he plays Guiteau with a comedic goofball flair that doesn’t feel quite right. The other anachronistic portrayal is former Presidential hopeful and Secretary of State James Blaine who is played by Bradley Whitford as a 19th century Josh Lyman.
Despite these idiosyncrasies this a compelling and ultimately tragic lesser-known chapter in American history.
Married At First UK Sight S10 / MAFS S19 USA (Channel 4 / Peacock): You’ll need a VPN to watch the former but I am enjoying both the domestic and across-the-pond versions. Despite being part of the same franchise they are VERY different in execution. The UK and Australian versions have always been trashier and more compelling than the U.S. because of the forced interactions amongst the contestants and experts that create drama - perhaps some of it contrived. The USA version is more earnest compared than the others so the drama comes across as more organic but is less frequent.
The Diplomat (Netflix): I have finally finished S3 and was underwhelmed by the final two installments. After six episodes of great political intrigue the last 25% revolved around a storyline that felt more at home in a Tom Clancy book. I am not quite as excited for S4 as I was for S3.
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost (Apple): Ben Stiller’s documentary about his parents’ legendary comedy partnership and later individual careers is a candid, heartwarming portrayal of their life together. Since many people only know Jerry Stiller from Seinfeld or King Of Queens, and may not know Anne Meara at all, this will educate them on why he was even on those shows to begin with.
It mixes a lot of footage from Ed Sullivan, talk show appearances, TV and film work with interviews of other family members and close friends like Christopher Walken. There was one specific element that I could relate to personally. The film revolves around Ben and his sister clearing out their Upper West Side family apartment in order to sell it and say a bittersweet goodbye. In 2021 I went through the same thing with my family’s apartment on the UES and had to clear out 50 years worth of stuff. Ben Stiller found love letters from Jerry to Anne that he had never seen before. In my mother’s papers I found love letters from a former boyfriend I had never heard of when she was working in local TV in Chicago before she met my father.
Devil In Disguise (Peacock): I appreciated this scripted procedural account of John Wayne Gacy because of the stupefyingly boring and factually inaccurate scripted telling of Ed Gein’s story by Ryan Murphy on Netflix. From Michael Chernus’ performance as Gacy, the set design, costume design and accurate storytelling, I really believed that I was watching the story of Gacy and his victims. Ed Gein never felt real - only like an 8-hour dream sequence.
Emmy Nominations For 1950s Supporting Female Actor Icons: A distinct area of my TV collection is Emmy nomination plaques. The most recent addition is Audrey Meadows’ nomination as Alice Kramden on The Honeymooners for the 1956 Emmy awards. Since the “classic 39” only comprised one season - this is her only Emmy for that show although she had four total noms in her career and one win for The Jackie Gleason Show the year prior. Jackie Gleason and Art Carney were also nominated for the sole season of The Honeymooners and Carney won. Along with the plaque the auction lot consisted of the original telegram sent by NY Emmy Chairman Ed Sullivan inviting Meadows to a cocktail reception.
I have included in the gallery below a similar item I acquired a few years ago, one of Vivian Vance’s four nominations as Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy (she won one).
These plaques memorialize the contributions that these two iconic actresses made in the first decade of television and the durability of these two classic series 70 years after they aired as they are still highly consumed.
This week’s edition of Variety comes from the week of 7/15/96.
Considering that the MSNBC brand will be ending in eight days it is very fitting that one of the headline TV stories of this edition is the channel’s launch. The first article on the left is a bit of “Puck” style business gossip with CNN reportedly trying to stay competitive with the top NBC talent on the new cable net by looking to lure Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings away from their evening news perchs after their current contracts end.
The middle and right side article focus on several important topics while noting that MSNBC is a $400M enterprise.
No major cable systems were going to drop the channel as MSNBC took over the position from America’s Talking (remember that?), also owned by NBC, which was going dark to accommodate the new launch.
Local affiliates were not happy that NBC was going to heavily promote the new venture on the air and potentially siphon viewers away from their stations.
Advertisers and agencies expressed support for MSNBC as a way to put competition in the marketplace against CNN’s premium rates. There is also a mention of “Fox’s forthcoming all-news channel.”
The star power from NBC’s news roster included Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Bob Costa, Bill Moyers and Brian WIlliams.
The final sentence of the piece states “What’s crucial for MSNBC over the next year or so is for its sales staff to convince cablers to follow the lead of such MSOs as Cox, Adelphia and Jones and agree to sign a full-rollout contract that would eventually make MSNBC as widely cleared as the mass-circulation nets
that dominate the cable biz.”
(Please click on the image to see the full text of the articles)
In the current environment of significant media ownership changes and consolidation this issue of Variety allows us to look back at a potential acquisition which ALMOST happened and, if it had, might have radically changed today’s landscape.
In the mid-1990s New World Communications was a mid-sized local station owner affiliated with Fox that was on the verge of buying King World which owned Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy and Oprah at the time. If that had happened King World would not have been sold to CBS which then helped Paramount morph into the company it is today and playing a large role in traditional media’s future. Instead, New World was bought by Fox and solidified its O&O base and status as a full-fledged major network, no longer the struggling start-up.
Had New World bought King World and become a bigger company that did not sell itself to News Corp and instead stood on its own 1) It might have become a buyer instead of seller and been a major player today 2) Fox might have taken longer to become hit 100% strength and 3) Paramount would have been deprived of a significant revenue source.
In 1996 the cable business was in growth mode and MTV was launching its first spin-off channel “M2”, which is MTV2 now. However, cable operators were not quite sure if a second channel was worth signing up for. Of course at this time MTV was still primarily a music channel. A programming executive for the now-defunct competing channel The Box said “I don’t think anybody can say at this point if MTV’s idea is a home run or not but from the way I’ve heard it described, M2 doesn’t sound so unique.” M2 was positioned as “embracing an eclectic mix of genres from classic rock to reggae to world music to alternative to hip-hop to even some jazz that aims to snare MTV’s identical target 12- to 34-year-old demographic. It will be pre-taped and consist almost entirely of musie videos drawn from MTV’s existing library.”
(Please click on the image to see the full text of the articles)
The week of July 4th has always been one of lowest rated periods of the year on TV driven by Summer + holiday travel, reruns, hot weather that keeps people outside, and Daylight Savings time at its peak. This chart features HH ratings. The highest-rated shows of the week were the MLB All-Star game, newsmagazines which were not in repeats (Dateline, Primetime Live, and 60 Minutes), NBC TV-Movie encores based on Robin Cook novels and a Home Improvement rerun.
