Happy Days

[jdw]

Is there a way to get a copy of that tremendous post, and perhaps a post or two that add on to it, copied out of the thread-o-death over into here? It was one hell of an exceptional post...

[jdw]

The Who's The Boss stuff and especially the Kotter stuff is great too.

 

Beauregarde "Beau" De LaBarre = Lance Von Erich = Awesome!

[tomk]

Ralph Malph regimmicked as Satanic Heavy Metal singer on CHIPS:

 

[Zenjo]

Don't go putting tunes in my head.

[NintendoLogic]

Don't go putting tunes in my head.

Seconded. I've had the fucking Happy Days theme song stuck in my head for the past week because of this stupid thread.

[JerryvonKramer]

Didn't know where to put this and it's not really wrestling-related, but I have a request for Johnny Sorrow -- well, anyone if they'd like to answer -- but I know the man Johnny has good knowledge of TV going back to the 1950s when he was a boy.

 

I watched Jerry Seinfeld's Cars and Coffee thing earlier with David Letterman on it. We don't get the US talk shows here and they are not really on our radar so much. Over the years, once in a while, I'll watch an interview of interest on one of them ... and well, I've never liked Letterman. He wasn't very likable in the Seinfeld chat either. Maybe it's just something lost in translation, but I don't get him.

 

Anyway, what I wanted to ask Johnny is this ... basically there are a lot of guys like Letterman I have seen or heard of. Dick Cavett, for example -- who I like quite a bit interviewing guys like Richard Burton in the 70s. There's Jay Lano, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson and a bunch of other dudes I have filed under "US talk-show guy". What I don't really have a concept of, and Googling and Wikipedia don't help that much here, is a real sense of who is the most important, who is thought of fondly by the public, etc. etc. It feels like all of these guys are big deals, but I have absolutely no sense of how big they are in relation to each other. Any help appreciated.

[BrickHithouse]

Carson, Carson, Carson.

 

Johnny Carson.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Well, first of all, Ed Sullivan wasn't a talk show host. He had a variety show that probably had the biggest cultural impact due to all the music acts he broke in on American TV. The Beatles being the biggest example. The night The Beatles debuted on Sullivan, crime rates around the country dropped significantly, as everyone was watching Ed.

 

Carson was the king of late night. Steve Allen was the first host of The Tonight Show, followed by Jack Paar, and then Johnny took over and held court for 30 years. He is considered the big dog that everyone aspires to. Leno has been around forever, had a lot of success, and has a loyal and large fan following...but no one really thinks of him as "iconic". Letterman has always been considered "hipper", even though he's been around forever too. And hasn't really been "hip" in years. I love him, but I don't imagine he plays well outside of America.

 

Tom Snyder floated around for years, and I always loved him. He was kinda awful yet fascinating. His last run in the Mid Nineties was fantastic.

 

Think of Johnny as, say, Oh...Bruno. Or Lou Thesz, maybe. And Jay as Hogan and Dave as Flair. Jay's more popular, but Dave has the "hardcore fans." That old chestnut way of thinking.

[BrickHithouse]

Tom Snyder floated around for years, and I always loved him. He was kinda awful yet fascinating. His last run in the Mid Nineties was fantastic.

Ah man I TOTALLY forgot about Tom Snyder. The guy was great.

[JerryvonKramer]

Cheers Johnny.

 

How about Dick Cavett then? Larry King is another guy I have a vague notion of.

 

Talk shows have kind of died a death here, they were big in the 70s and 80s, Wogan was the last of the real American-style talk shows, or Parkinson maybe. Jonathan Ross had a successful show for a while in the 00s, but now I don't think there's anything. Occasionally there's a really mawkish Piers Morgan interview with a celebrity crying on it.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Dick Cavett's show in the Sixties was really cool, but he's kinda known as a failure.

 

Larry King did his show on cable and it didn't follow the standard talk show format. He did one on ones in a studio with no audience.

 

We currently have two really good ones. Jimmy Kimmel is hilarious and is slowly becoming the "Man." And Craig Furgeson is outstanding.

[JerryvonKramer]

I get the impression that Cavett and King might be more kinda cerebral than Leno or Letterman.

 

While we're having these fun cultural exchanges, I might as well ask about the TV stations too.

 

So, here ok, you know we have the BBC and it is funded by a TV license. The big mainstream channel is BBC 1. BBC 2 is more specialist / cultural. The main rival to BBC 1 is ITV which is a commercial channel funded by advertising. Channel 4 is like BBC 2, a bit more specialist, maybe "hipper" and also commercially funded. There is a Channel 5 too but it's a joke. That's it as far as the big channels go. There are lots digital channels but realistically I don't think anyone thinks of channels outside of the traditional big 4 and the viewership will be a tiny fraction of them. Sky is the private subscription giant who dominate premium sports and who show WWE.

 

---

 

What it's hard for me to understand is a sense of how the US channels work. Through wrestling I understand the difference between network, syndication and cable. "Network" is channels everyone has, syndication shows on local channels and cable is, like Sky, paid-for subscription, although some channels are free through it too. That sound right?

 

But what I've never been able to work out is: well, what's your equivalent of BBC 1 and ITV? There's ABC, CBS, PBS, USA Network, CNBC, Fox, and seemingly more recently, HBO which comes across more like a "Channel 4" sort of deal. From this side of the pond, all of these channels seem like big deals and it's difficult to get a sense of what the hierarchy might be.

[Johnny Sorrow]

LARRY KING CEREBRAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

 

 

(takes breath)...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[JerryvonKramer]

I dunno if cerebral was the right word, but ... well you must know David Frost right? Who died recently and interviewed Nixon? King seems more like him than Leno / Letterman. I wouldn't call Frost cerebral, but this is what I'm getting at.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Larry King was awful. He wasn't a pimple on Frost's ass. He was popular...on CNN. But he was one of those guys that was popular but nobody knew anybody who liked him. He must have had a huge audience, but besides senior citizens, I've never known anyone who was a fan. But back when cable was new, he was on CNN, one of the only cable stations at the time. So he gained a following. He's the Big Daddy of interviewers? Someone else can think of an example.

And Letterman originally was kind of weird and "avantgarde" for lack of a better term. Influenced by Ernie Kovacs.

[Graham Crackers]

And Letterman originally was kind of weird and "avantgarde" for lack of a better term. Influenced by Ernie Kovacs.

Which might put the Andy Kaufman vs Jerry Lawler stuff that was promoted on his show into even greater context.

[Ricky Jackson]

Yeah, I'm not sure how big of a wrestling fan Letterman is/was, but back in the 80s on his Late Night show on NBC he seemed to have several wrestling guests. Killer Kowalski for one (

and

). Also Andre the Giant, Bobby Heenan, and probably others. Letterman grew up in Indianapolis and the story goes the nickname for his house band on the show, Paul Shaffer's "World's Most Dangerous Band" was a take-off of Dick the Bruiser's "World's Most Dangerous Man/Wrestler" moniker.

 

Basically CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox would be the equivalent of BBC1 and ITV, the channels with the biggest audience and (excluding Fox) longest history.

[Kevin Ridge]

Who is the Charles Grodin of wrestling? And what about Chevy Chase?

[Johnny Sorrow]

Who is the Charles Grodin of wrestling?

Grodin is Ole Anderson. A great talent at one time who turned into a bitter old failure as a promoter and a talk show host, respectively.

[ohtani's jacket]

Basically CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox would be the equivalent of BBC1 and ITV, the channels with the biggest audience and (excluding Fox) longest history.

What's the deal with the affiliated channels? When I was in the States a few months ago and I wanted to watch the NBA Finals I thought finding the ABC would be as simple as the ABC is on channel 6 or something like that. Do people recognise the affiliate as the affiliate or do they just consider it the ABC?

[Johnny Sorrow]

Basically CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox would be the equivalent of BBC1 and ITV, the channels with the biggest audience and (excluding Fox) longest history.

What's the deal with the affiliated channels? When I was in the States a few months ago and I wanted to watch the NBA Finals I thought finding the ABC would be as simple as the ABC is on channel 6 or something like that. Do people recognise the affiliate as the affiliate or do they just consider it the ABC?

 

People recognize whatever channel number ABC is on in their part of the country as ABC. Same with NBC, CBS, FOX and PBS. They are aware it's an affiliate, but it's all based on where you live and grew up. That being said, sometimes you do see that certain networks seem to turn up on the same number channels a lot around the country. ABC is often on 6 or 7, CBS is often on 2 or 10, NBC is often on 3 or 4, and PBS has 12 and 13. That dates back to the days before cable where you only had 2-13 on the main dial and UHF was what you'd switch on and flip through lots of numbers that had nothing but static until you found a station. Philadelphia's UHF stations were 17, 29, 48 for awhile, and 57 started in 1985. These were the stations where you'd find wrestling for the most part. And Kung Fu movies.

[ohtani's jacket]

Cheers, Johnny.

[JerryvonKramer]

Where does CNN come into things? Is that just a news channel? In my mind, that's a massive deal too.

 

Also, is PBS more kinda .. I dunno BBC 2ish? A little more public service and a little less mainstream?

[jdw]

Where does CNN come into things? Is that just a news channel? In my mind, that's a massive deal too.

CNN is just a news channel, and one who has shrunk massively over time.

 

 

Also, is PBS more kinda .. I dunno BBC 2ish? A little more public service and a little less mainstream?

When we were kids and there were just the Big 3 Networks + Several Strong Locals + Several Local Jobber Channels, PBS was a strong channel. Their anchor relative to the rest was strong kids programing with Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Electric Company, etc. Prime Time they were a niche, but would have some strong things for the UK and be high brow. The had other niche programing like cooking shows. It was a solid channel, high in quality.

 

Now it's gotten hammered. Pretty much every strength they had now has competitors on other channels in every niche. A whole cooking channel sprung up. Their core science and nature documentary stuff like Nova and Nature has been hammed by stuff like the National Geographic Channel with Discovery and other competing as well. History documentaries like Ken Burn's stuff and American Masters have had things like History Channel pop up and loads of others. The PBS Newshour no longer has just CNN to compete with for News+Discussion format, but Fox and MSNBC. Kids programing... things like Nick and Disney have popped up. And the UK programing started popping up on channels like A&E rather than just PBS.

 

John