1980s Fall TV Previews: TV Guide, Crazy Network Specials, and Saturday Morning Nostalgia

Weirdy Way Media. Eighties, so pretty babies through the city the world. Welcome to eighties TV, ladies. May your summer days be long and the glorious, and your fall be filled with art, love and justice. And here are your fabulous hosts, Susan Lambert had Him and Sharon Johnson.

Hello. I'm Susan and I'm Sharon. I have so been looking forward to today's episode because today we'll be looking at the nineteen eighties fall TV previews for the new network shows. Before we get into that, i'm'm remembering how it felt when summer was coming to a close and fall was about to begin. When I was still in school, in particular, I know, it always felt like a little bit of pressure, like did I have a great summer?

What am I going to do when I see everybody back to school? What am I going to say when they go, what'd you do? How is your summer? I felt a little bit of pressure. Well, and this is really going to take you back, because I want to know how your summer was.

What have you been up to? I think I set. Myself up for that, but you know, we've both been moving, we'd been selling a house, and the really exciting news. Now. I got a ton of basically pre and post production for various projects that are coming to Fruition in August and September, Famous Lake Park.

I think by the time this airs, it'll be just after we had our New York premiere. I'm sure I'll talk about it at some other point. But it went great. I'm sure I say that hoping, but my fingers crossed. Then in September, so much says happening.

Michelle Malone is coming to La She is the co writer of The Flirt Bar. She will be performing at the Love Song Bar on September fourth. One woman's show Liza Not at the Palace is coming to the Los Angeles LGBT Center the Rendberg. It will be produced by Artsola Kart. And you can get tickets at the LGBT Center website.

But I won't even be able to be there for the production because rich and I will be on tour with Richard Adams's paranormal Bookshelf Live show The Light in the Dark. And yeah, so that's my summer. Has been a lot of prep for whatever is happening next, but it's been busy and wonderful, and we moved into an absolutely beautiful new house and we love it. How is your summer, Sharon. Well, like you moving, transitioning to living in another state, you know, doing all of the things you need to do when you do that sort of thing, like going to the what they call here the B the letter B MV to get license plates and driver's licenses.

And I have to tell you, I was really gobsmacked to walk in on a Monday morning to find that this gigantic lobby area was empty, unlike going to the DMV in California, where it's always just packed and there's ever enough space for everybody. I was totally floored, and it was once I got my stuff together, it was relatively painless to get that. I had my new license and license plate in about a week, so good for them. Other than that, it's just been getting myself acclimated and things put away, and you know, getting used to being back in the Midwest and very very humid summer weather, hot and humid. I'd really forgotten what that was really like on a day to day basis.

It's taken my body some getting used to. But I don't have as exciting travel as you have, but I do have one small trip that I have coming up, and then hopefully a visit to La sometime in September. Next weekend, I am driving up to Green Bay, Wisconsin because as an owner of one Shriff stock of the Green Bay Packers football team, I am going to the annual stockholders meeting for the first time in the thirty or so years that I've owned this Shriff stock. And then, since i'm driving, I'm going to and I'm driving through Chicago on the way up there. On the way back, I'm going to stop at the Obama Center and I'll be able to explore the grounds and parts of the other areas of the facility.

I don't have a ticket for the museum, but I'll have to go back some other time. So that'll take care of next weekend. And yeah, we'll see what happens after that. Oh my gosh, I'm so jealous of that. So, Ken, can you get tickets or I assume there's a long wait or well.

When the center opened in mid June, they sold tickets through I think I want to say, the end of August, and they were gone pretty quickly. And then last July eighth, they put another batch of tickets on sale. I think from September first to the end of the year, and they were gone in a couple of hours. I've just learned that occasionally they may have a few extra tickets on it randomly on a day. I'm crossing my fingers that that will happen on the day that I'm there.

But if it doesn't, that's fine. I will absolutely go back another time. So, yeah, you got to tell us all about that. I love it, Melissa. What have you been up to this summer?

Oh? Oh, I don't know. I'm pass What are you looking forward to in the fall? In the fall I'm looking forward to. I don't know.

Pass. No, I have. The next thing I'm planning for is you know, cause mommy passed before Jewish Holiday, we never really had any kind of memorial, the tracy with how Jews have to get buried and all that. So I have Mommy's memorial coming up in August, so that's really what I'm focused on. There's been lots of great photographs that are surfacing.

My brother Kai all came up with some when we were in Zimbabwe that was They. Just plored me. I'm like, how did you find those? Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that was awesome.

And listeners, our summer intern is here with us. Her name is Shannon Lee, and I'll let her tell you about herself. Hello, Shannon, how are you doing and how has your summer been? Hi? Susan.

Yes, Like Susan mentioned her summer intern, I'm a rising senior at Cornegie Mellon studying art and film, and my summer has been really great. I got to learn about under Susan and Richard as well. I got to meet both their dogs and work on Susan's project, Famously Park, which it will be in New York. So that's exciting and I'm excited to be a part of this podcast listening. I don't know a lot about eighties, but excited to listen.

Can you think of one eighty show you knew before you started. I'll let you include if you learned of it this week or this month. Golden Groups, well done done. You can throw out Golden Girls. That's the answer to almost any question, whether it's about eighties TV or what's your favorite show, or who do you quote the most?

Like? It answers a lot of questions if you just throw out Golden Girls. If you don't know how to answer anything, and they made finger Puppets. Don't forget the gold Finger puppets. Melissa has the Golden Girls finger Puppets, and she wants us to do an animated show with the.

Golden Girls finger puppets. I think there'd be some copyright infringement, but I think it's fun. No, you could keep them here. We just can't make a show about them. You can show them.

We're not in trouble for showing those bland does It looks a little bit like the Joker and that's just down geddy. That's a little bit closer. But she looks like she's got kind of cauliflower head or like as. They're funny, they're fuddy puppets. Oh my gosh.

All right, well, Shannon, I'm so excited that you've joined us this summer. You've been super helpful. We would not have gotten through Famously Park without you, and not been as successful with Adies TV Ladies without you either, So thank you. Yay. All right, Shannon's going to be listening in and we are going to get back on track.

Which is the. Joy of the Fall TV preview, whether it was in print or even better on television. When I think of eighties television, that is one of the things I think of is the network specials that highlighted their new shows. They were always informative, joyful, and optimistic because of course, all the networks are expecting all these shows to become big hits. They're putting all this effort and money behind them.

Some of them did, far too many of them did not. Some of them really deserved to maybe stick around longer than they did, while many others it was probably just as well that they went to wherever TV shows that don't last go. Nevertheless, as a TV junkie, it was in a lot of ways the best time of the year. And what was your go to? Where did you go first for your fall preview?

Oh? I waited with baited breath for the TV Guide Fall Preview issue, which was two three times as thick as the usual TV Guide was, and it listed all the new shows and information about them, and all all the returning shows and the schedules for each night of the week. And you know, there there was no other way to get this information. And you know, really until TV Guide, I think they were really the first ones to publish it. Then it would make its way elsewhere as well.

The TV Guide had seemed to really have kind of a monopoly on it, so I waited. I couldn't wait for. That well, and I of course was fascinating. I'm like, when did the first Fall preview come out on TV Guide? I knew TV Guide had been around a while, but I decided to do a little little bit of a dive into the TV Guide was founded in nineteen fifty one by Lee Wagner and Mark Brenner, who merged like several regional television publications under one the Walter Annenberg Triangle Publications, and the first issue of TV Guide was released April third, nineteen fifty three.

The cover was really special because it featured a photo of an adorable baby swaddled and yellow against a blue background, under the headline Lucy's fifty million dollar Baby. The baby pictured was Lucille Ball's newborn son, Desi Arnez Junior, and the reason that headline existed is because the advertising revenue around her pregnancy and his birth was expected to surpass that amount. Desi Arnez Junior was arguably America's first newborn star because his parents, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, who produced and starred in the sitcom I Love Lucy. They had written Lucile Ball's pregnancy into the show, which was incredibly daring, groundbreaking, and the network did not want it to happen. In nineteen fifty two, the same day that Desi Junior was born in real life, the fictional Lucy Ricardo gave birth on television to Little Ricky, which I think that's insane.

Say, but it was. It was a coincidence, though, it was. Yeah, it just yeah, it just happened serendipitously to both the girls the same day. That's that's fantastic. But the TV Guide was printed in digest size aka Readers Digest, and again that's another old reference, so you have to be of a certain age to know what that means.

For fifty two years. It is now still printed, but it's not the same size and it's mostly online. It was hugely popular, especially the nineteen fifty three Fall preview issue. So their first Fall preview issue was in nineteen fifty three, which is astonishing to me. I guess I'm not surprised that it didn't take them long to figure out that this would be a good thing to do.

I mean, at the end of the day, the TV Guide was to help promote the TV shows and people were really getting into it and this is a great way to do it. I know for me that I waited for it so I could see what the new shows were, what are the ones I wanted to watch, and also where my returning shows were going to be, because I would have to plan around if I wanted to watch them and hope that there wasn't something else I really wanted to watch new show wise or even other shows that got moved around that were going to conflict. And there were always. Conflicts, always conflicts, which sure we could talk about more later. Well, we could talk about it now, like how did you make the decision?

Because it was it was a decision you had to make if two of your favorite shows were on at the same time, which one would you watch because you were going to miss the other one until hopefully you could catch it in some previews, I mean some are reruns. There was no it was. It really came down to which was more important to me, which did I want to watch more than the other, And as I cursed the TV gods, I would pick one and you know, just lament that I that I couldn't watch this other show. It's a long time ago, but do you remember if you would pick the new over the old. Oh no, not at all.

A lot of times the new would have to would be sacrificed at the altar of the old show if it was something I really loved and really wanted to watch, because it was already a known quantity, it was already something I was emotionally attached to. I think even then I began to realize that far too often shows I really liked were not long for television. They would They would be the ones that often would be canceled too quickly. In my opinion, you. Had to get they had them.

Don't forget the end of season cliffhangers too. M hmm. That's right, because you had to tune in to find out what happened who shot. I was in college when when who shot Jr? Happened?

And in my dorm we had a pool because nobody knew who you know, that was back then when spoilers and things did not get out, and so we put all the names and the characters in a hat, and everybody picked one, and sadly I pulled Jock Euing Jr's father, and I'm like that, what, it's not him, it but it's not it not him. But you know, you could do things. You did things like that. It was it was television episodes were much more of a big event a lot of times around things would be around things like that, like that, or the end of series like Mash and other shows that were just beloved and basically it was like time stopped. Everybody would be watching it.

Yeah, I know exactly where I was the last episode of Mash. I was at my friend Betsy's apartment with her mom and brother and sister and our friends. Betsy's mom made fund and I felt so sophisticated. I had never had fun due before shoot. They were from New York and so they were very sophisticated.

I remember we were sitting around having fun do and having this watch party for the last episode of Mash, and it felt so very special, right. It felt like such a community thing, which I think we had a little taste of that with the World Cup. I think it's hard to recreate some of that sense of community around television that we have had that we had pre Internet, that that was a shared experience and I think the fall preview was also this sense of anticipation and excitement of what would be the new. Favorite show, right, I couldn't wait. And I would say that I probably picked the new show that was interesting to me over the old show, if there was a choice, saying, and I think it had to do with the fact that if it was a show I loved and it was on and it had made it through the season, I think, and it was being picked up, I think I was like, Okay, I'll be able to catch up with that.

They'll do reruns at some point and I'll catch up. Unless it was like a who Shot j Arth then you had to watch. But the new shiny object with the new stars were very exciting to me. I remember being really excited to figure out which would. Be the new show to watch.

And I saved a lot of those fall preview TV Guide issues. I had a bunch of them until maybe about five years ago, and I was going through a purge and looked through the box and went, I don't need pays, so I off they went. I doubt there were any once from the eighties. I'm guessing there were probably more like in the nineties at that point, but still, you know, they were pretty important to me. And again I scoured that damn thing, going through the whole thing page by page and scheduled by schedule to see what was coming on.

Richard still has his, and he was like, should we dump them? And I was like, you've kept them this long. I could tell he didn't really want a dump them. He has them from childhood, so I'm assuming from the seventies and they're in boxes and I think it's pretty much everyone which is coci. It's a lot of lots.

Yeah. He was also like, but I don't know that I need to keep all of them. So I think what we're going to do, and this is a possibility for the new podcast studio that will be built out of our garage and my office at some point, hopefully soon, is I think we may paper part of a wall with the covers, which I think would be great for eighties TV ladies. It also would work for Richard Haban's paranormal bookshelf because they're his and he talks about television and he worked on television, so I think it fits and it would be kind of a cool thing and a little nod to our old house where in our guest bathroom we had sci fi magazine covers of the old sci fi stories, so like Fantastic Stories, one mall and it was lovely and really funn and cute.

I'm excited idea. Wow. So that's why I think we might end up doing with them if we could pull it off. But the TV Guide was super fascinating to me that it really was the bible for television. We didn't have a subscription, but we would buy the fall preview like at the grocery store.

We would buy special issues. It was the television bible for millions of Americans. It was hugely popular. I want to note that the TV Guide is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first weekly periodical to sell a billion copies in a year. Wow.

TV Guide was the most widely read magazine in the United States in the sixties and into the seventies. It peaked in nineteen eighty eight, which is very interesting. I didn't even know you had to subscribe to it. I thought they just sent it to you. Obviously, my mom or my dad subscribed to it.

It didn't just show up. It did not, Okay, I just still catching up Okay, thank you. I don't remember. Actually I must have, but I don't remember reading TV Guide when I was a kid. But when I was once I graduated from college and was out on my own, I definitely had my own subscription, and I had it for years and years and years.

I don't know if maybe you know there were four years when I was in junior high first couple of years of high school, and we were living in Japan, and certainly we didn't get TV Guide then because who cares. It wasn't on TV. You can't American TV exactly, how horrible. Well, it didn't stop me from watching television. There were there were Actually it was interesting to watch television, not understanding the specifics of the language, but nevertheless in many cases still being able to kind of figure out just by tone and visuals what the hell was going on enough for me to find it enjoyable.

Yeah, I'm a TV junkie from way back. The TV Guide Fall preview that I found and decided to use for us to look back at was was the nineteen eighty TV Guide Fall preview that came out September thirteenth, covering September thirteenth through the nineteenth. It would be arrived the day before right. Certainly before maybe two or three days before, so you'd have a chance, you know, to go through it and go through it you want to watch and stuff. But it was September thirteenth to the nineteenth of nineteen eighty.

The interesting thing about looking back at it, and we'll have a link in our description, is it starts off talking about the strike, the actors strike, which was going on a lot longer than people thought it was going to and it now was interrupting the premiere of the fall shows. They basically talk about the strike in the first article in the TV guide. It almost feels like Variety, like it's got so much information. It really does feel like a news source, which you don't think of from an entertainment magazine. And it's basically saying, we don't have any premiere dates for any of these shows because we don't know when they're going to premiere because they don't know.

When the strike will end. And the strike was not settled until October, but I think a lot of those shows didn't premiere until January, so that was very interesting. And I also loved the advertisements. It's always interesting to see the early eighties advertisements in particular. But I was stunned at the amount of cigarette and liquor ads there were.

I guess I. Shouldn't have been. It's stunning about of smoking and hard drinking in the eighties, that's right. And there's a little foreshadowing in that. There's an ad for HBO, which I found just fascinating, you know.

Well, I also found it fascinating that these in this fall preview they talk about what's on cable, about what's on HBO, what's coming to HBO, they talk about what's coming to public television. It was so. Well organized and very interesting. It wasn't just about the fall previews. It was about what theatrical movies are coming to be on broadcast.

They had a lot of information about what was going to happen in the fall of that year. Yeah, and even just you know, on a day to day basis. It had the entire schedule from dawn tail dusk, from midnight till midnight the next day, of every hour of every day of what's on your local television stations because it didn't it didn't have cable listings at this point. Because I'm not sure exactly outside of HBO. What other cable stuff was going on at that point beyond ABC, NBCCBS and PBS.

That was pretty much it. There may be some There may have been some larger cities. It may have had one or two independent stations, But this magazine was about what's on network television and their schedule throughout the day and into the evening and into the night. Yeah. I think in the coverage of the HBO it was more like, here are the movies HBO is having on because HBO would get a different class of movies, usually closer to theatrical release than broadcasts would get.

And they covered soap operas. Here's what's going to happen in the fall soap opera. Oh. The other really prescient ad was for Maxwell, the first high grade videotape. Wow.

So the Saturday shows that stood out to me that were supposed to premiere in nineteen eighty and I know at least one of them didn't premiere until nineteen eighty one that I thought were really interesting. We're Breaking Away, the TV show based on the movie, which is a fabulous movie. I can't speak to the TV show. I don't remember watching it. You to Starred Sean Cassidy.

I feel like it should have been on my radar, even at nineteen eighty. You know, I can't be sure, but I think I did watch it, or try to. I'd have to go back and take a look at the schedule to see what it was on against. But if my distant memory is correct, I think I found it wanting and not living up to the movie, which I agree with you is really fantastic. I think at some point I went to look at it and it does not live up to the movie, which is hard.

Yeah, it really does feel like it would be hard to capture the feelings of that movie in a weekly television. Obviously, we know why they didn't have the schedule, but looking just at Saturday and even thinking about the Breaking Away TV show, I really wish we had a schedule to see what these shows were up against, because I think that was still Saturday Night was still all about CBS and their their comedies, and it would be very interesting to see what day. Was the Love Boat on. Is it Saturday? Was Love Boat Saturday or Friday?

I you know, I don't find. Anywhere I feel like it was Saturday, but I guess it was before Fantasy Island and wasn't Fantasy is Definitely it was. Love Boat Fast and Fantasy Island back to back. There's no data about back to back. Yeah, world right over into it, okay.

On Wikipedia, I found the network schedule looks like Breaking Away started in November at eight o'clock and then and then in the winter, though it doesn't have the exact date, it was replaced by Charlie's Angels WHOA. And then in the it was a mid season replaced. No, but not in nineteen eighty, it was around. It was in the seventies. Oh, they just switched.

They just yeah. And then there was something called two forty Robert that aired on Saturday night at eight o'clock for an indetermined amount of time at this point, and then in the spring, eight is enough, So you had at eight o'clock, let's just say in the fall in November ish breaking Away WKRP in Cincinnati, and then the Barbara Mandrel and the Mandrel Sisters show. Nice. I probably watched that. I definitely watched WKRP in Cincinnati totally.

I was w KARP in Cincinnati. Same love that show. Yeah, it's a great show, great show. And I don't remember, but I don't think it originally premiered there. I think that's where it eventually got moved at some point.

Couple of shows I thought were notable in that nineteen eighty fall preview. One was, of course, Hill Street Blues, that would not end up premiering until January nineteen eighty one. I sort of think of it as a mid eighty show, but it led the eighties. So interesting when you realize it's created that early in nineteen eighty. And Hill Street is one of the shows I know that I watched from the beginning.

I have memories of watching that very first episode when the two cops walk into that building and it ends with gunshots and we just assume that they're dead. And then the next there are no spoilers here. This is fortyes plus years ago, and then they decided after the pilot, no, no, we're not going to kill these guys. We got to keep them around, Thank goodness. The next episode they were obviously they'd been injured in the hospital and stuff, but there they lived to stick with the show for the next god knows how many years.

The theme song to the est I remember the theme song. I remember that theme song in the car at the front of the car. Your progress, surplus storm Corner, People's. Drive or four Street. One of the many Mike post great TV theme songs.

So anyway, yeah, and every beat, you know, you got. Your characters showing up, ed Veronica. Some great ladies on that show too, Oh tell late. It was not an eighties ladies show, but it had a lot of really special ladies. Ladies.

Speaking of ladies, I also thought it was interesting there was a show that did not survive called Ladies Man about the token man hired to work at a women's magazine, which again is such an eighties premise, and we. Have to make it about women. Let's make it about the man. Let's make it about the guy, right, working with women, Working with women, of course, one is level headed, one is super feminist, and one is man crazy. It just the dialogue sounds crazy because they actually list the dialogue in their preview, which I thought was really interesting.

Dialogue snippets and it's just a lot of tropes, right and so weird. Okay, we're going to make a TV show about a woman's magazine and it'll center around the one guy that works there and how uncomfortable it is. To be around a bunch of women. Oh no, I'm gonna have to write women's stories. Oh no.

And also one of the one of the shows that we covered, It's a Living Yes, I believe, debuted that season. Yes it did. Yeah, so good for them. It's fascinating to. See those fall previews and then go, oh my god, this show sounds on paper like it should totally be a hit, and I've never heard of it and it clearly didn't last a season.

I was just so struck by the craft of the writing, the amount of research that's going on. This is like pre Internet. This isn't information you could find out by just googling it. You had to track that information down. You know.

Press releases in nineteen eighty were still typed. Oh of course, you know. But I don't even think they were xerox. There were multiple copies typed. I think it's crystal clear that the networks were very cooperative with TV Guide because they recognize how important it was for them and the success of their shows to get at whatever good information they could into this magazine.

Because of the circulation, and that the TV Guide only had a handful of networks that they were dealing with Unlike the hundreds and hundreds of them that exists now, it was probably much much easier and simpler to get their arms around all of that. I don't want to minimize the amount of work that went into putting these things together, but it was a whole different day in terms of TV journalism, if you want to call it that back then. Agreed, Yes, I don't want the ability to navigate through a TV guide to go away, because it is very much a treasure trove of early television. Without it, there isn't a lot that tells you about those shows that are no longer anywhere, right. One of the other shows that clearly did not make it was Freebie and the Bean about special assignment cops Ones Young and wild Tom Mason and the Bean is a conservative Hispanic cop, which I thought was pretty great for nineteen eighty played by Hector Elizono oh Young, Hecton Hector.

But it's all about his hair's going He's going bald. So apparently there's a lot of story points and character points about come on, I mean, come on. Well, wasn't Freebie and the Bean a movie? Wasn't sounds like it now? Freebie and the Dean was definitely a movie.

It was I don't want to say this, but I think it was. It was with like a Jewish priest and a cowboy. It was like Jane Wilder and no, you're thinking of something else. Freebie and the Bean. Freebie and the Bean is a nineteen seventy four American buddy cop buddy cap okay comedy action film starring James Kahn and Alan Arkin.

Oh okay, good wow. Probably very funny. Yes, and clearly spawned a TV show that didn't. Quite make it. But my speaking with the so who was it.

Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Hello ladies, TV ladies, listeners. As you know, I sometimes make theater as well as podcasts. A dear friend of mine and a friend of the Pod, indie rocker Michelle Malone, is coming to town now.

She rarely plays in Los Angeles, but she will be here on Friday, September fourth, for one night only at the Love Song Bar in downtown Los Angeles. And here's the fun thing about that. As a favorite to me, she's going to be playing some of her songs from the new musical I wrote the Flirt Bar, So it will be a very special fun night of music. She will be here with fame guitarist Doug Keys, and they will be playing all hers catalog as well as some special flirt Bar songs. So come on down to the Love Song Bar hear some flirt bar music.

It'll be too fun. Rich and I will be there and you should too. Go to Artslacarte dot org to get tickets. You can also buy tickets at the door. Come join us to see Michelle Malone Friday, September fourth at the Love Song Bar in downtown La.

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I'm sorry, I'm not inspiring and also interested. You know, it's a Frisco kid and it's Harrison full and god, could she evenim? Betther? Was this a pre Star Wars arison for? I don't know if it was shot pre Star Wars, but it was post Star Wars.

Oh it came back. It came out in nineteen seventy nine. Okay, I bet it was shot after Star Wars. Yeahali, a Polish rabbi wanders through the Old West on his way to lead a synagogue in San Francisco. On the way, he is nearly burned at the stake by Native Americans and almost killed by outlaws.

So who was Freebie and who is the bean? Well? Though this was a Frisco kid, this is just sorry, So Frisco kid, Frisco. Fritzco. Breathe.

Okay, Now we got to get back on track, my ladies. As much as I love the TV Guide, the Network prime time special was just my all time favorite. And so we start talking about this. I didn't remember that they did this? How did I not remember that they did this?

Well? Because A they're hard to find because when I was like, oh, I've seen them, I know I've seen them, and you've seen snippets, but it's really hard to find the full thing. There are various versions of the full thing because they were mostly I think made for affiliates. They were made to sell the fall shows and the network to the affiliates, to make them go instead of running the thing you know will work, Can you please run this new show that your audience may not like? And a lot of early eighties is kind of in that weird spot for archive.

They weren't necessarily archived or kept like the same way that we think to archive things. Or it's easier now that it's digital because it's hard drive that may someday be destroyed, but it's fine anyway. We see those snippets of the all the weird stars dancing, you know, like Hal Lindon doing a tap dance thing, and I found it so fun and fascinating. They were always so joyful and yet also awkward. They felt like a high school variety show in some ways, where it was like, well, just get a lot of people.

We had one rehearsal, let's go up. But my favorites were the one that were set like in a particular TV show where the stars of the other TV shows were arriving. And my favorite that I found was the ABC nineteen eighty three Love Boat Fall preview special. Saturday, Papa Boy The love Boat for an all new stars studded bass with James Brolin, County Tellica, Bryan Keith, Joan Collins, John Forsythe Stephaniey Powers, Robert Wagnerio John Ritter, Brizilla Barnes, Henry Winkler, and more than Let's say on a fabulous two hour crews The Romantic Riviera, I'm Lucky, spend the whole night on the love Saturday all starting at eight seven Central Len Mountains. So it comes across as a really like Lucy Goosey love Boat episode right where the staff of the Love Boat, as their characters, are meeting all the stars of the new upcoming shows.

They're coming on as guests to the love Boat, but as the actors that are starring in their show and talking about it. But they're talking to Gopher, they're not talking to the actor playing Gopher. So it's this we you're a double world where the love boat is a real thing, not a TV show. You know. Captain Stuping is giving lecturing all the crew, like, now, these are just real people.

They're they're like us. You don't treat them like stars, you don't fawn over them. They just won't be treated like people. But we were respectful, We do your job. It's fine.

And then he turns around and it's hard to heart and the Stephanie powers and then he trips over himself trying to celebrity eyes her. It's so funny and charming and interesting to me to watch them. They feel like of another time. I let's not call them stars people and will be treated like any other passenger that got. The list of stars, Henry Winkler, John Ritter, John Foresight.

And I was saying, they are just people that will be treated like any other passenger. Now shows me, I am going to greet our guests. How is midwagon of anyway? It's not hot to welcome you avoid my ship. You're very kind of No no, no, I mean, And I loved your show and Captain you have a gorgeous sh no, No, you're the gorgeous ones.

Shall we join the party? There's something very weirdly innocent and like Bob Hope. It feels like a Bob Hope special. I don't think I really remembered them either. Just looking back over some of the videos, you were somehow able to unearth, especially that ABC one.

When I was working for ABC in the marketing department at that time. It was in the mid aughts. If you will, when I first started there, mid to late aughts, and ABC had been running this series of promos in the world of this promo that the stars of all of their shows lived in this neighborhood and there was a mailbox in front of each house which indicated the name of the show. So these are the people that lived there. When they'd be coming down the stairs in each other's houses and that kind of stuff.

That was the last time I think that they ever did anything quite like that. So over the years they, I know, they tried to find creative ways to because that was their job to do these kind of promos. But still the wonder in the glory that is that nineteen eighties one is really just unmatched. I thought it was terrific. Well, it's along the lines of the Battle of the Network Stars, right, that was the time when we loved these actors and these stars, but there was no Internet.

You were never going to meet one unless you went to Hollywood, and maybe even then not right, so you saw them, you saw the real person on talk shows and on these shows, right on the Battle of the Network Stars, on the Fall previews, on the Bob Hope specials, or celebrity game shows, game shohows. Yes, and it was so special, it felt so special, and it perpetuated that Hollywood myth, well it may not have been a myth in the seventies and eighties, where everyone in Hollywood knows each other like they all hang out all the time, like all the stars hang out. So it feels like that in these fall previews. One of the other ones I really like is the promo clips set to song like music videos of their fall preview set to some song.

And this nineteen eighty five CBS Fall Previews is Kenny Logan singing a song called We've Got the Touch on CBS and somehow he makes it rhyme that one's really great. First, were you take a chance, find a venture? Final ements. It's all here. CBS, CBS got the Touch, Got the Touch, Got the Touch.

On CBEs, and then ABC also in nineteen eighty five, had one that was insane because it's a parody of Randy Newman's I Love La using the music, but it's new words, right, And there's always something good to see on ABC. With the inside of watching. Yeah, ever. All the time, there's always something good to see. And you're like, okay, really like that song came out in nineteen eighty three, and in nineteen eighty five they're paying a ridiculous amount of money it had to have been to create their own version of that song.

I wish there was some way to find out how far back we'd have to go to find when they were using actual contemporary music, putting their own words to it, obviously to sell their shows, because that became more of a staple over time. And the fact that they did that with I Love La I guess because of World Cup and makes me think of the Olympics. But I wonder that came out around the Summer Olympics in eighty four, right. Well, the Summer Olympics would have been eighty four, and the song came out in nineteen eighty three. Okay, For some reason, I always associate that song with the Summer Olympics at eighty.

Well, I'm sure they used it because it was in LA I'm sure we heard a lot of it. But the other one that's really fun, and I think the clip that's been around the internet is a short ter clip from a longer piece. It's nineteen eighty You and Me and ABC, and it's all the ABC stars and they're dressed up in Broadway outfits dancing on a lit upstairs, and the fawns is in a tuxedo and a sparkly thing. It's just so charming and weird and uncomfortable but not. It's great.

I think this was one of the ones that was made up for the affiliates, because there's various versions of it the front. Yeah, there's a version where they filmed the rehearsal, and then there's another version where it's that plus clips from the shows. So those are fascinating. I adore them, and listeners. If you know of one and we don't have it in our links, please send it, because yes, yes, I feel like there's one somewhere that I think I saw but I couldn't find this time it's a roller derby or there aren't roller skates in a roller skating rink.

Cindy, Cindy Lapper, No, not Cindy Lapper. That's too soon, Cindy from Cindy Williams, Dandy Williams. Thank you God, I'm doing that. Oh, it's been a long summer. There was a spinoff of the network show thing that was also the Saturday Morning Previews, which I had also forgotten about.

Sharon, did you look at any of these? I have to admit I tried. I'm like, I don't know what's happening here. They're real? If the clips that I found are real clips, they're like a like a pot dream or something like.

They're very surreal because it's basically the cartoon lineup hosted by real life stars. So there's one where mister t and some of the cast from the Facts of Life are part of a promotion for for the Saturday Morning Cartoons. That one's nineteen eighty three NBC, nineteen eighty four CBS special hosted by Joyce DeWitt from Three's Company and Ted Knight from Too Close to Comfort. I'll return to Saturday's the place, Wake Up, Rise and shaw. Oh gosh, oh my, I'm sorry.

I've been so tired lately. I've been working on this special project. You must be mister McKay the cartoonist. Well, one of us is, and I don't think it's you. You should work so hard, nice young lady like you.

Well, I do have responsibilities at the magazine, and one of them is to get this article finished. We're going to call it animation, a waste of time and paper, gotchy, thank you. Featuring clips from the Saturday Morning cartoons, Muppet Babies, dungeons and dragons, and all sorts of great It's hard to tell if Ted Night is playing Ted Night or his character from Too Close to Comfort, Like they showed up and they were handed a script and they did it. Sometimes these feel a little bit like the Star Wars Christmas Special, where it's like they were contractually obligated to show up and they did the best they could, but with a real question in their heart. About why they should be doing it, because in.

A lot of ways, I think they were still kind of figuring this stuff out and probably trying to be cool and just in a lot of ways just stumbling badly in that effort. It's early TikTok and YouTube mashup videos. I mean, it really is like they feel like that they're a highlight reel, and you know those existed, but this is something else. I think it's a really special eighties television thing. I think it was gone by the time the nineties came around and got more sophisticated, and then the Internet took over.

So I just wanted to look back because there was that was such a special time. I remember as a kid when summer was ending, school was starting, but the thing that I looked forward to was the new fall shows R Yeah and in what was going to be there, Discovering Magnum Pi and Hardcastle, McCormick and Scarecrow, Missus King. It was very exciting. I remember I wrote a letter to my sister at college telling her she had to watch the A Team and how great the A Team was. I'm breaking down the A Team for her in this letter that I hand wrote to my sister at college, because we love talking about television, and I was like, you have to catch the show.

And there was only a TV in the general room right in there life so if you wanted to watch a show, you had to go down there. And I was like, you got to go watch this show, You'll love it. Yeah. My freshman year of college, I had no access to TV, which was really hard for me. So maybe occasionally if somebody had like a little black and white in the room or something, but it's not like I could park myself in front of a TV every night and watch on my show.

So and of course no DVRs, no way to record, just went So. Anyway, if you've got some links to some cool fall previews, let us know what you loved about the fall preview and the end of summer and what you anticipated would be coming on to television from the eighties. Yeah, we really can't wait to hear from you and hear your stories about your own memories of and relationship with the fall previews and the anticipation of all the new shows in September October. This was a special time. What are you anticipating for fall?

For this fall? Yeah, cooler weather. What I'm anticipating is hopefully a visit back to southern California. Oh good, Hey, don't know when yet. I'm back and forth on it.

I know you and Rich are going to be out of town. I really want to try to be there when you guys are there, so I'll send you all each other in person. That would be great, and maybe even do a podcast recording while I'm there in person looking at each other across the table. But I haven't figured all that out yet. I keep I keep going back and forth and up and down and around.

But that's what I'm anticipating for fall. Awesome, Melissa, this fall, cooler weather. I don't know. I wish I had more. Well, if history is any any judge or my recollection of history, September can be and often is, the hottest month of the year.

Yeah. So yeah, it's gotta be rough. I'm not anticipating pleasant fall as or even temperate weather, but it doesn't matter. It'll be fine. There won't be the humidity and the chewable air that there is here.

When chewable air, I like. That fall colors to that beginning of October. Yeah, that'd be great. So okay, fingers right for today is audio aga. We'll make sure there's a link to the nineteen eighty TV Guide special Fall Preview issue for September thirteenth through nineteenth nineteen eighty.

Please take a look at it. It will be such an interesting walkdown memory lane, and we'll also have links to many of the specials we talked about today. If you want to get ready for when we're coming back, you can check out the original one day at a time, and we'll have a link in our description. As always, check your voter registration and make sure you're ready to vote. I am happy to say I am already registered here in my new home, and help your high school seniors and college students make sure they are ready to vote as well.

You can always go to vote dot org for more information. Your support means the world to us. Advertising plays very little to cover the cost of the show. We will be dropping interviews on Patreon more and more over the next few months, and you get to actually see people in their interviews. You can also help us just pay for the show and make more episodes.

Check out patreon dot com, slash eighties TV ladies. And I know it's tough times, so you can also support the show by hitting that follow like subscribe and rating wherever you happen to listen, or just talking us up to your eighty loving friends and family. Oh oh, my gosh, Jaron, I'm so excited. Don't miss our next episode where we talk with the incredible Adrian Barbo. She is one of our dream guests.

She's an actress, singer, and author who came to fame in the nineteen seventies. She's best known for her portrayal of Carol Trainer on the sitcom mod But she starred on Broadway playing Betty Rizzo in the original Broadway production of Greece. She's also a horror icon, starring in hit eighties films like The Fog, Escape from New York, and Swamp Thing. Miss Barbo was a guest at actress on many, many fabulous eighties TV Ladies shows, including Hotel, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Murder. She wrote, we are so excited to talk with her.

Don't miss it. As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous old and new shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century. This fall on Eighties TV Ladies. So Pretty, Through the City, the World,