In a previous column, I mentioned my television viewing habits, which got me thinking about the production and consumption of this particular medium of communication and entertainment. As I confessed before, I am no scholar of popular culture, but with television, my lifespan is only about a decade shorter than the lifespan of the medium. Thus, I have been tuned in for much of the history of television.
On the production side, several trends interest me. One has to do with the sources of inspiration for television entertainment content. I am old enough to remember a format that thrived in the 1960s and 1970s but is now all but dead: the variety show. Ed Sullivan’s may have been the greatest while Carol Burnett’s was one of the latest. The format itself hearkens back to vaudeville, which provided not only a template for early television shows but also some of television’s earliest stars, including Milton Berle. But today, the echoes of vaudeville seem long gone from the small screen.
Or are they? The vaudeville/variety format presented small servings of different kinds of entertainment: music, dance, juggling, stand-up comedy and sketches. If I am not mistaken, Jackie Gleason’s “Honeymooners,” eventually a situation comedy, began as sketches in a variety format. So, perhaps, the television situation comedy evolved from vaudeville sketches. And sketches are the heart and soul of “Saturday Night Live,” once a cheeky upstart, now a venerable television institution.
In any event, the situation comedy format was perfected by “I Love Lucy,” which ended its original run about six months before I was born. While some television formats have waxed and waned in popularity over the years, the situation comedy, created by Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and Karl Freund, has never gone away. Just think about how many sit-coms appeared, at the time, to be the sit-com to end all sit-coms: “Roseanne,” “Married With Children,” “Seinfeld.” Yet, after “Seinfeld” came “The Big Bang Theory.”
One fascinating aspect of television history is the medium’s seemingly endless ability to revive and rethink the situation comedy format. And let’s not forget the series finale of “Newhart,” which revealed that the entire run of that sit-com was, in fact, the dream of a character in another sit-com, “The Bob Newhart Show.”
Not only have I seen all sorts of changes in television content, I have also experienced major changes in the ways in which television is consumed.
When I was a kid, there were three commercial television networks plus PBS. There was no cable, no VCRs, no Tivo. In most homes, there was one television set, downstairs, in a living room or family room. At my house, there was no television on school nights, except for the Charlie Brown Christmas special or the occasional Leonard Bernstein “Young People’s Concert.” In my youth, television watching was largely a communal event, connecting everyone to and through a schedule determined by the networks and their local affiliates.
Indeed, what kid who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1960s or 1970s didn’t watch “Chiller Theatre” during Friday night sleepovers? I’m not sure that locally produced entertainment programming, a staple of my youth, even exists anymore.
Back in the olden days, before HBO and TCM, seeing a movie on television was a big deal. Networks ran Sunday Night at the Movies, and we waited all year for the “Wizard of Oz.” One weekend, my parents made me choose between “The Birds” on Saturday night and Jack Palace in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” on Sunday night. Watching both would have been too much TV. As a literary guy at heart, I chose Jekyll and Hyde.
The whole idea of “appointment television,” now a charming relic, probably originated with “I Love Lucy.” I have read that in cities across the country, water pressure dropped significantly during Lucy’s commercial breaks, as viewers took that opportunity to use their bathrooms without missing a minute of the broadcast. Decades later, a huge audience tuned in, simultaneously, to find out who shot J.R. on “Dallas,” and the final episode of “M*A*S*H” attracted even more viewers.
Today’s television landscape is entirely different. Television watching seems to be a less communal activity than it once was, due to the proliferation of channels and programs, storage technology and online streaming, to name just a few factors.
I am thrilled that there are so many more opportunities for writers, actors, directors and all the other people who make television programs. Indeed, the explosive increase in distribution pathways has done two things at once: it has multiplied creative opportunities and splintered the audience.
Except, of course, at halftime of the Super Bowl. Every year, everyone has an opinion on that particular television show, which gives us an annual water-cooler moment we can always count on.