Rod Serling saw things differently. As a television writer, he tried to broach controversial subjects and social issues, but frequently found himself at odds with networks and sponsors. He ultimately reasoned that he could tell more stories of the kind that he wanted if he cloaked them in the veneer of science-fiction and the supernatural. Since the best horror, fantasy, and science fiction stories comment on the human condition anyway, his notion made a perfect fit. This week in 1959, Serling brought The Twilight Zone to television. The anthology series made a deep impression on the American psyche during its four seasons, deep enough that the show has been turned into a theatrical film and revived for new runs in three separate subsequent decades. For its 60th anniversary, here are six reasons that The Twilight Zone remains one of the greatest, and most important, series in the history of television.
1. The Theme
We recently placed the spoken-word intro of The Twilight Zone at number one on our list of classic show-openers, and with good reason. There’s never been a more effective scene-setter than Serling’s ever-evolving narrations and Marius Constant’s eerie tune. The second season intro is perhaps the most famous, with Serling intoning, “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone.”
2. The Writers and Directors
The assembly of talent behind the various iterations of The Twilight Zone remains impressive. For the original four-season series, Serling, a decorated World War II veteran who used the G.I. Bill to gain an education in literature and broadcasting, wrote or adapted a whopping 99 of the 156 episodes. Among the other writers were masters of horror and science fiction like Richard Matheson (16 episodes), Charles Beaumont (19 episodes), and that old friend of The Post, Ray Bradbury. The directors came from film and television, frequently boasting hefty resumes or bright futures; among them were names like John Brahm (director of film classics like The Lodger), Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke), and Christian Nyby (The Thing from Another World). That tradition of top-flight talent continued into the later reboots of the series, with writers like Harlan Ellison and directors like Jordan Peele (Get Out), who runs the current version seen streaming on CBS All Access.
Rod Serling in 1959. (Publicity Image, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
3. The Actors
The list of actors who graced individual episodes of the original series reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood. Some were young and unknown, while others were well-established at the time. We’re talking about Ron Howard, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, Charles Bronson, Dennis Hopper, William Shatner, Burgess Meredith, Cloris Leachman, Elizabeth Montgomery, Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, Julie Newmar, Art Carney, Mickey Rooney, and Buster Keaton, among many, many others. That tradition continues today, with established talents like Tracy Morgan and Seth Rogen appearing alongside newer stars like Zazie Beetz.
4. The Twists
Despite its prodigious reputation in this regard, not every episode of The Twilight Zone deployed a shocking twist ending. However, those that did produced some incredibly memorable conclusions, which helped build that reputation for the show. Endings that are still discussed and debated today include the final scenes of “To Serve Man,” “Time Enough at Last,” “Eye of the Beholder,” and “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Those four episodes, plus two others and a Serling retrospective, are coming to select movie theaters in November.
(Shutterstock)
5. The Indelible Images
In addition to the trippy and spooky sights of the opening, the show worked off of a strongly cinematic visual vocabulary. While “To Serve Man” is most famous for the climactic explanation of its title, the suspense that is built into the last few scenes is expertly delivered (even as it works in a sight gag involving a smiling alien and a scale). The tight shots in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” put the viewer in the same claustrophobic space that William Shatner’s character is experiencing. That high-level craftsmanship, combined with the impact of the stories themselves, left a lasting impression on generations of viewers.
6. The Truth
Perhaps the most important element of The Twilight Zone is that each episode turns on an essential truth about humanity. People can be prideful or judgmental, but that comes with a cost. Awareness is good, but paranoia is destructive. Not all gifts are given with the best intentions, and so on. Serling’s aim was also true; he wanted to tell particular kinds of tales wrapped in a package that made them inviting to the masses. It’s easy to say that he succeeded. Unfortunately, some of the things that Serling and the other writers tried to warn us about still exist in American culture. People are still suspicious of their neighbors. Differences are not always celebrated. And we’re frequently more concerned about what we’ve got than helping our neighbors. Maybe that’s why the show keeps coming back; every generation needs to learn its lesson. That’s just a little bit of introspection, courtesy of The Twilight Zone.
Read Part One of our look at the Greatest TV Themes here. Read Part Three: The 40 Greatest Animated TV Series Theme Songs here.
How do you determine the greatest TV show themes of all time? It’s a daunting task. Consider that, in 2016, more than 1400 shows ran on prime-time television in the United States; more than 400 were original scripted programs. And that doesn’t include streaming. Most of those shows have some kind of introduction with music, stretching the line even further. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, suggested that bands should be considered for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the basis of “impact, influence, and awesomeness,” so we’ll use a similar criteria of catchiness, memorability, and appropriateness for the shows. We’ll also be breaking this list into three distinct categories: live-action, spoken-word/voice-over, and animated intro themes. A few months ago, we brought you the greatest live-action themes. Today, we bring you part 2: spoken-word/voice-over themes.
Honorable Mention: Forever Knight (1992-1996)
The opening to Forever Knight (Uploaded to YouTube by ArcoFlagellant)
While not quite great enough to make the list, the opening of Forever Knight does show what a good spoken-word intro does. The best of them establish a premise, which is why they’re so pervasively used in science-fiction, fantasy, and horror programming; they clue the audience into what the show is all about so they can hit the ground running. Forever Knight does that, letting you know that Nick was “brought across” (that is, turned into a vampire) centuries ago while giving you some insight into the ongoing plot.
25. Highlander: The Series (1992-1998)
The opening to Highlander (Uploaded to YouTube by Manticore Escapee)
Based on the cult classic film starring Christopher Lambert, the series gave us Adrian Paul as the immortal Duncan MacLeod (the cousin of Lambert’s Connor from the films). The show proved popular enough the it generated both live-action and animated spin-offs, and Duncan eventually joined Connor on the big screen in 2000 before returning in a television film in 2007. The spoken-word intros changed frequently over the years, adding nuances of plot and situation.
24. Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001)
The opening to Xena: Warrior Princess (Uploaded to YouTube by ShakiAldi)
The wildly popular Xena (Lucy Lawless) spun out of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, a surprise 1994-1999 hit. The two series ranked among the most highly rated syndicated shows in the world during their runs. An unapologetic female action hero on the air during a time when there were precious few, Xena appealed to multiple audiences. The show contained plenty of action, frequently delivered with a nod and a wink. The over-the-top narration set the stage perfectly.
23. Knight Rider (1982-1986)
The opening to Knight Rider (Uploaded to YouTube by NBC Classics)
“A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man . . .who does not exist.”
Sounds pretty cool, right? David Hasselhoff played Michael Knight (originally Michael Long, a policeman who was shot and presumed dead, but had his face fixed and a new identity given to him by the Knight Foundation). Knight’s partner was KITT, an artificially intelligent talking car voiced by William Daniels (of St. Elsewhere and Boy Meets World). The introductory narration is provided by Richard Baseheart, who played Knight’s patron, Wilton Knight; the character died in the first episode, but his voice remained.
22. Kung Fu (1972-1975)
The intro to Kung Fu (Uploaded to YouTube by videoblast)
The Kung Fu intro pulls the trick of using dialogue from the show, but it does it in a way that explains the training and journey of Kwai Chang Kane (David Carradine; interestingly young Kane in the intro is played by David’s younger brother and fellow actor, Keith). With this set-up, you understand a bit more about Kane before he went to walk the Earth.
21. Hart to Hart (1979-1984, plus eight made-for-TV movies)
The opening of Hart to Hart (Uploaded to YouTube by TheWraith2006)
Created by novelist Sidney Sheldon, Hart to Hart worked off of the same vibe as Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man: rich couple solves crimes. Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers played the Harts, while Lionel Stander played their assistant, Max (who also delivered the voice-over). The show proved popular enough that it returned for a series of TV-movies in 1993; Stander appeared in the first five before his death in late 1994.
20. Quantum Leap (1989-1993)
The various openings of Quantum Leap (Uploaded to YouTube by TVNostalgia)
Quantum Leap didn’t have the voice-over intro right away, but it did acquire one in season three. Not only does it explain the premise (Dr. Sam Beckett is leaping from body to body across time, trying to set things right), but it also strikes a plaintive note of danger (telling us that Beckett just one day hopes to leap home). The final episode contained one of the great “down” endings in TV history, as a final title card tells us, “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.”
19. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981)
The season two intro Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Uploaded to YouTube by Jack Taylor)
Buck Rogers is one of the longest-running science fiction heroes in popular culture, having first appeared in the 1928 novella Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan. Since then, Rogers has appeared in comics, novels, film serials, TV series, and theatrical movies. NBC’s TV series launched with a theatrical film that featured a theme song, “Suspension” by Kipp Lennon. That melody was used in the instrumental theme for the TV series. The film’s opening narration by William Conrad was edited down for the first season; in the second season, a new voice-over was delivered by Hank Simms.
18. Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979)
The intro for Battlestar Galactica (Uploaded to YouTube by NBC Classics)
“There are those that believe that life here . . . began out there.” Such are the words of John Colicos, who also played recurring antagonist Baltar. Certainly, BSG is the only show with a voice-over that references the Toltecs and the Mayans. The narration gives you air of mysticism before the soaring theme by the great Stu Phillips crashes in.
17. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present)
The intro for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Uploaded to YouTube by salehesam101)
With 458 episodes and counting, SVU will break the record for the longest-running American prime-time live-action series this month. Certainly the most successful spin-off ever, it makes the list because of its own iconic opening passage. However, we just couldn’t place it above the original, which you’ll find later on the list. Dun-Dun.
16. The Flash (2014-present)
The various intros to The Flash (Uploaded to YouTube by Phantom)
When Mark Waid took over as writer on The Flash comic book in the 1990s, he took the character’s long-time nickname (The Fastest Man Alive) and ingrained it into the narration that opened each issue: “My name is Wally West, and I’m the fastest man alive.” While the 2014 CW series opted to go with original Flash Barry Allen as its lead, it kept the spirit of Waid’s narrations. Series star Grant Gustin reads the openings in character, which adjust for each season and the arc of that year’s plot. We also use this entry to give a special nod to the Flash’s fellow CW crimefighters, Arrow, Supergirl, and The Legends of Tomorrow, all of whom use a variation of this device.
15. Tales from the Darkside (1983-1988)
The intro and ending to Tales from the Darkside (Uploaded to YouTube by TheSpace163)
Created by Night of the Living Dead director George Romero, Tales from the Darkside was a horror anthology series. Among the many legendary writers who contributed scripts or allowed their work to be adapted were Stephen King, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and John Cheever. Romero wrote the opening and closing narrations himself; the lines were performed by Paul Sparer, best known for his work in soap operas like Another World. “Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.”
14. Farscape (1999-2004)
The four intros to Farscape (Uploaded to YouTube by Farscape)
An Australian-American production that combined the forces of The Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment, Farscape remains one of the most off-beat science fiction series ever made. Action-packed, frequently hilarious, and put together with a mixture of CGI and Henson creature creations, Farscape tells the tale of John Crichton (Ben Browder), an astronaut who ends up on the other side of the universe and on the run from a fascist army with his collection of alien companions. The intros quickly explain the plot and premise via Browder’s narration, and were updated each season to reflect ongoing changes to the plot. Most notable? Season four’s “Look upward, and share the wonders that I’ve seen,” a grand tease for Crichton’s return to Earth.
13. Babylon 5 (1993-1998)
The five intros for Babylon 5 (Uploaded to YouTube by High Lord Baron)
Sci-fi classic Babylon 5 might be the ultimate expression of the changing introductory voice-over. In each of the first three seasons, a different actor from the show did the narration, with the dialogue changing to reflect the evolution of the story. The most telling change from the first two seasons to the third was the switch from “Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace” to “Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. In the year of The Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.” Season four included the majority of cast delivering alternating lines of narration, while the final season altered the intro into a collage of dialogue from across the series, ending with a game-changing moment from the previous season finale.
12. The A-Team (1983-1987)
The intro to The A-Team (Uploaded to YouTube by TalkerOne)
A perfect marriage of narration and theme song, the intro to The A-Team captures the story with precision (“In 1972, etc.”) before launching the music with a fusillade of bullets and a literal cannon blast (from the TV-movie pilot). Veteran composers Mike Post and Pete Carpenter composed the main theme, which puts nearly everyone immediately in mind of the flipping jeep.
11. The Incredible Hulk (1977-1982)
The opening of The Incredible Hulk (Uploaded to YouTube by philo1978)
The second live-action Marvel Comics-inspired series of the ’70s (the first being the short-lived Amazing Spider-Man), The Incredible Hulk turned into a hit that ran for five seasons and a handful of TV movies. The theme by Joe Harnell sounds very of its time, but it’s definitely emotive. The narration gives you everything you need to know about Dr. “David” Banner (though other reasons have been posited for the name switch, it was because the producers thought that the alliteration of “Bruce Banner” was too comic-booky; just imagine a comic book character’s name sounding like it came from a comic book), including Bill Bixby’s rather famous line about being angry. The narration was provided by Ted Cassidy (yes, Lurch from The Addams Family). Actual Hulk actor Lou Ferrigno has spent the last decade-plus providing the voice of The Hulk in the various films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the recent Avengers: Endgame (“So many stairs!”).
10. The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-1978)
The intro for The Six Million Dollar Man(Uploaded to YouTube by kelly86410)
“Better . . . stronger . . . faster.” “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him; we have the technology.” You know that the voiceover is a stone-cold classic when it produces multiple quotable lines. Richard Anderson, who plays Oscar Goldman, the boss of the titular bionic man, Steve Austin (Lee Majors) handles the monologue. The Six Million Dollar Man was a huge hit, spawning merchandise, a spin-off (The Bionic Woman), TV movies, and an entire generation of kids that made “chug-chug-chug-chug” noises when they bounced on a trampoline.
9. Charlie’s Angels (1976-1981)
The Season 1 intro for Charlie’s Angels (Uploaded to YouTube by Charlie’s Angels)
Jack Elliot and Allyn Ferguson’s jazzy ’70s main theme became a classic when paired with the smooth, knowing narration of John Forsythe (Charlie himself). The “Once upon a time” opening gently mocks the “very hazardous duties” that female police officers were subjected to, trying to strike an empowering note. However, the show was divisive on that point, with some critics dismissing it as “jiggle TV.” Social critic Camille Paglia recently wrote that the show was an “effervescent action-adventure showing smart, bold women working side by side in fruitful collaboration.” The show proved exceedingly popular for a time, even with cast replacements. After an abortive late ’80s reboot failed to materialize, the show has since seen life as two theatrical films, a revival TV series, spin-off comics, and a pending return to the big screen.
8. The Outer Limits (1963-1965; 1995-2002 revival)
The 1963 intro to The Outer Limits (Uploaded to YouTube by Florin MC)
The Outer Limits wastes no time getting to the creepy. As the picture begins to fail, a voice tells us, “There is nothing wrong with your television set; do not attempt to adjust the picture.” Most often compared to its fellow anthology, The Twilight Zone, this series hewed more closely to science-fiction, whereas Zone cast a wider net. While the original series only ran for two seasons, the words of the intro have stuck around in popular culture ever since, meriting a Top Ten spot on the list.
7. Dragnet (1949-1957 on radio; 1951-1959; 1967-1970 revival)
The 1954 intro to Dragnet (Uploaded to YouTube by Mill Creek Entertainment)
Jack Webb played Detective Joe Friday across three mediums off-and-on for 21 years. He was the lead in the radio drama, the first TV series (and its spin-off film), and the series revival. From the radio through the second TV show, two ongoing narration pieces were used. The first was an announcer, letting you know that the story you are about to see is true (although the names have been changed to protect the innocent). The second element is Friday himself, setting the L.A. scene and introducing himself. The no-nonsense set-up is the ancestor of our next entry.
6. Law & Order (1990-2010; on cable somewhere at this precise moment)
The spoken-word introduction to Law & Order (Uploaded to YouTube by Florin MC)
A franchise engine of the highest order (every pun intended), Dick Wolf’s Law & Order ran for 20 years while producing six direct spin-offs (with L&O in the name), indirect spin-offs like Conviction (the 2006 series), absorbing characters from other shows (Richard Belzer’s Detective Munch from Homicide: Life on the Streets), and sharing a fictional universe and ongoing character crossovers with programs like New York Undercover and the family of Chicago shows (Fire, P.D., Med, etc.). The iconic introduction, echoed on most of the shows that bear the Law & Order name (including SVU from earlier in the list), lets you know that the show will follow both the police (Law) and the prosecutors (Order). Dun Dun forever.
5. The Odd Couple (1970-1975)
The intro to The Odd Couple (Uploaded to YouTube by retrorebirth)
Certainly one of the greatest television comedy series, The Odd Couple was based on the film that was based on Neil Simon’s stage play. Starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, the series had the distinction of doing so well in summer reruns that its second-run performance became the deciding factor each time it was awarded a new season. At the close of its run, the show was given a genuine finale episode, wherein Randall’s Felix re-marries Gloria and moves out. Multiple remakes of The Odd Couple exist on stage and screen, including a gender-flipped play, a remake with an African-American cast, and, this is true, an animated take with dog and cat roommates (The Oddball Couple, which ran on ABC in 1975).
4. The Lone Ranger (1949-1957)
The intro to The Lone Ranger (Uploaded to YouTube by TeeVees Greatest)
Cue The William Tell Overture.
Narrator: The Lone Ranger!
Lone Ranger: Hi Yo Silver!
Narrator: A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty, ‘Hi Yo Silver!’ The Lone Ranger!
Lone Ranger: Hi Yo Silver, away!
Narrator: With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early west. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The Lone Ranger rides again!
And scene. Do you really need anything else?
3. The Adventures of Superman (1940-1951 radio; 1952-1958 TV)
The intro for The Adventures of Superman (Uploaded to YouTube by MissingPieces4U)
Though the opening narration may have been imported in large part from the radio, they remain some of the most famous words in the history of popular culture. It’s all there . . . “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s . . . Superman!” You get that he’s a “strange visitor from another planet.” You learn that he’s “faster than a speeding bullet . . . more powerful than a locomotive . . .” Basically every word of this is classic Americana. It’s like the super-hero Pledge of Allegiance. There is zero chance that you haven’t heard some part of this in the course of your everyday life.
2. Star Trek (The Original Series, 1966-1969)
The intro to Star Trek: The Original Series (Uploaded to YouTube by dinadangdong)
A perfect marriage of text, image, and music, the opening narration of Star Trek gives you everything you need to understand the show and a dose of otherworldly tunes to go with it. Alexander Courage composed the theme, and the immortal words are delivered by Captain James T. Kirk himself, William Shatner. It’s been repeated in films, covered by Patrick Stewart for the first live-action spin-off (Star Trek: The Next Generation), and completely assimilated by popular culture. Or did it assimilate us? Only the Borg know for sure.
AND . . . the Greatest TV Spoken-Word Intro belongs to . . .
1. The Twilight Zone (1959-1964; revivals from 1985-1989, 2002-2003, and 2019-present)
The intros to The Twilight Zone from 1959 to 2003 (Uploaded to YouTube by Tardis & Beyond)
Witness if you will, a TV series with a basic premise so powerful it’s spawned a legion of imitators and has been rebooted itself three additional times. Submitted for your approval, a show so gripping that people who saw individual episodes as children still remember the endings decades later. Amazingly, though the lines of the intro were tweaked across seasons, every iteration remains incredibly memorable. Part of that was the delivery of the show’s creator and host, Rod Serling, and part of it was Serling’s own talent for finding that cold space in your mind and squeezing. Not every episode was scary, and not every episode had a twist, but the intro let you know that you had to be ready for anything. It’s timeless, it’s iconic, and it’s our Number One.
Read Part One of our look at the Greatest TV Themes here.
I have a confession to make. Now that I am a “semi-retired” man of leisure, I spend many of my afternoons and some of my evenings time-traveling — transported back to the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s by means of nostalgia television networks like BUZZR, MeTV, Decades, Cozi TV, Antenna TV, and others. While my woke friends binge on the latest edgy, must-see offerings from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Acorn, and the rest of the streaming services, I settle back to enjoy classic game shows like To Tell the Truth, What’s My Line, Password, Super Password, Card Sharks, and Match Game. I also immerse myself in such vintage TV fare as M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Bewitched, Columbo, Gomer Pyle, The Munsters, and The Love Boat.
It’s like stepping through a wormhole and into a comforting, less confusing time. It’s not just reruns; it’s a parallel television dimension.
Welcome to the retro dimension.
“It’s a refuge from the dark aspects of our world today. People come to us because we’re family-friendly, safe, an environment that you can be nostalgic about and be entertained by. … It’s comfort TV.”
More precisely, it’s digital multicasting, and it’s relatively new. Starting in 2009, broadcasters switched from analog to digital technology, which enabled them to run more than one signal from their transmitters. Local stations could now broadcast as many as six different channels, making money from each of them. This created a need for 24-hours-a-day content, which enterprising media companies stepped in to produce and distribute. Today, there are more than 30 English-language multicast networks (or diginets) available, depending on where you live.
Luckily for me, our cable provider here in suburban Philadelphia includes BUZZR in its lineup. (Look for it in yours.) Launched four years ago by global entertainment giant Fremantle (which also produces, among other things, American Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, the current versions of The Price is Right and Match Game, and prestige dramas like My Brilliant Friend), BUZZR describes itself as “a pop culture time capsule” on its website. With owner Fremantle’s vast portfolio of 40,000 iconic game show episodes at its disposal (including the landmark Goodson-Todman catalogue), BUZZR programs four decades worth of hosts and challenges — from Beat the Clock with Bud Collyer to Classic Concentration with Alex Trebek — that, in my humble opinion, still entertain today. (Some better than others, but that’s a quibble.)
Beat the Clock(Courtesy BUZZr)
Mark Deetjen, senior vice president of programming and operations for BUZZR, is an evangelist for optimism: “We live in a world of the 24-hour news cycle, a world of bad news,” he says. “I can focus on content that I feel is uplifting … happy, positive, family-friendly, and engaging in a way that you’re rooting for somebody to win, imagining yourself as a winner as well.”
BUZZR currently airs 18 different titles a week. That may not seem like so many at first, but as Deetjen explains, “Among these titles, we run different years with different hosts. For example, the Card Sharks of the ’70s with Jim Perry, then the ’80s with Bob Eubanks; the Family Feud of the ’80s with Richard Dawson, then the ’90s with Ray Combs.” You can be a fan of one version and not the other, but they’re both on BUZZR.
Perhaps due to the Fremantle connection, BUZZR has impressive distribution. The numbers according to Deetjen: “We are available in about 88 million homes; in 18 of the top 20 markets and 70 individual markets; also, nationally on Dish.” Its core audience is 35 to 64 years old and 58 percent female, which “lines up well” with Fremantle’s current active roster of game shows like Family Feud and To Tell the Truth. But, Deetjen says, things are changing, albeit slowly. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised that there is a small but growing audience of 18- to 35-year-old men watching our channel.” One possible explanation for this is “a move away from shows from the ’50s and ’60s and more into the ’80s and ’90s — for example, Sale of the Century and Supermarket Sweep — which made us a little bit more appealing to a younger audience.”
Match Game featuring Vicki Lawrence (Courtesy BUZZr)
They’re also building BUZZR’s social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. “We have 170,000 followers on Facebook,” Deetjen reports, “and across the platforms, we reach over 200,000 people.” Plus, there’s a pretty cool live streaming app with clips and quizzes and other fun stuff to entertain old and young game show fans alike.
When asked what makes a game show classic, Deetjen explains, “The black-and-white shows from the late ’50s and ’60s, like Beat the Clock and I’ve Got a Secret, we recognize as classics by keeping the original commercials in them — for example, Sylvania TVs and flash bulbs, Remington razors, Adorn hair spray.” Like television time capsules, they provide a glimpse into what people were using and buying back then.
As for what defines vintage, he suggests, “Something that stirs nostalgia. People want to re-experience the feeling of an era, whether they lived in it or not” — the eras in question being the ’70s and ’80s. Vintage shows are “edgier, cooler” than their precursors. “Look at the questions on Match Game and Card Sharks,” he says. “They’re a little more salacious, lots of double entendres.”
Indeed. That’s one reason I’ve become a huge fan of Match Game 73-79. It’s unabashedly and hilariously un-PC, bringing back a less censorious era. I had no idea it had been nominated six times for various Daytime Emmy Awards, including Gene Rayburn three times for Outstanding Game Show Host. Or that it had been named No. 4 of the 60 Greatest Game Shows of All Time by TV Guide in 2013 (Jeopardy was No. 1).
Now, for two hours most every weekday afternoon, you’ll find me playing along with the two contestants, trying to match the fill-in-the-blank answers of six celebrity panelists that host Rayburn calls his “ding-a-lings.” (More about the celebrities in a moment.)
Admittedly, the humor can get a bit puerile. And Rayburn’s habit of ogling the women panelists and contestants alike and making brazenly suggestive comments can get icky. That notwithstanding, he’s the consummate game show host: friendly, quick-witted, and surprisingly articulate, tossing off words like colloquy while yukking it up with the assembled celebrities, who snipe at one another as the studio audience boos and cheers their answers.
Match Game is unabashedly and hilariously un-PC, bringing back a less censorious era “where they equally offended everybody.”
You have regulars Charles Nelson Reilly, Richard Dawson, Brett Somers; about a dozen semi-regulars, including Nipsey Russell, Fannie Flagg, and Betty White; plus a revolving door of big- and little-name talent who all seem to be on hand to have a good time.
My favorite celebs? It’s a toss-up between puckish Charles Nelson Reilly (who you’d want to have at your cocktail party) and sweetly bawdy Betty White (who might discreetly drop an F-bomb at said gathering).
The aforementioned bickering and insults are for laughs (I suspect that the celebs sometimes crossed the street together for a friendly nip or two between episodes), and in defiance of the Surgeon General’s warning, cigarettes and at least one pipe are being smoked right there on the set.
That’s retro.
“Everyone’s having so much fun that people love it,” says Deetjen. “It really has to do with the spirit of the show. It doesn’t get old.”
Card Sharks (Courtesy BUZZr)
It also has to do with the attitude, says Jim McKairnes, a former executive vice president of development and planning at CBS, and author of All in the Decade: 70 Things About 70s TV That Turned Ten Years into a Revolution. “Today we call it snark,” he says. “There’s just great snark in it that makes it trendy today.”
There’s also plenty of innuendo. “You have Charles Nelson Reilly making not-so-veiled allusions to his being gay at a time when being gay was not readily acceptable,” McKairnes says. “Look at the progress made on that game,” says Deetjen, recalling a Nipsey Russell moment. “The question was: ‘Disney added an eighth dwarf to Snow White. His name is [blank].’ Nipsey’s answer was ‘Whitey.’”
All of which is well and good, but I think Deetjen best explains Match Game’s appeal today: “In an era where people take offense at everything, here’s a show where they equally offended everybody.”
In other words, it’s my kind of show. As is another one of my favorites, The Love Boat.
Admittedly, it’s pretty silly. Flimsy plots featuring a flotilla of random B-listers and once-weres who must have needed to pay the mortgage that week. It is a hoot, though, to see who hauls their luggage down the arrival ramp of the Pacific Princess. Milton Berle, Charo, Donny Most, the Village People? (Wikipedia has a complete list of celebrity appearances.) And I do wish that I’d had a chance to go onshore with perky cruise director Julie McCoy back in the day.
In fact, I have to make a rather embarrassing confession.
Every Sunday afternoon as the opening credits roll, I belt out the theme song at high volume — “Love, exciting and new. Come aboard, we’re expecting you …” — and make a spectacle of myself (or would do if anyone was around).
Until recently, I had no idea that I was singing along to the No. 1 rated and distributed multicast network, namely, MeTV (“Memorable Entertainment”), which is owned and produced by Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting, a multiplatform media company that produces five retronets in all, including Movies!, H&I (Heroes and Icons), Start TV, and another favorite of mine, Decades (where I get my Bob Newhart fix).
Marketed as “The Definitive Destination for Classic TV,” MeTV airs a variety of programs from the 1950s through the early 1990s. It’s a mixed bag of shows — The Love Boat, M*A*S*H, The Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan’s Island, Charlie’s Angels, Gunsmoke, WKRP in Cincinnati, The Brady Bunch. Fifty-four in all at current count.
And it’s huge.
“We have 27 million different people watching MeTV every week; our average quarter hour is about a half a million,” says Weigel Vice Chairman Neal Sabin, who conceived the formats at Weigel and is considered a visionary in the digital multicasting industry. (While the audience pales compared to Netflix’s 130 million paid subscribers, it’s impressive proof of the power of nostalgia.)
The Family Feud featuring Richard Dawson (Courtesy BUZZr)
“In daytime, MeTV is a top 10 network compared to all cable networks,” says Sabin. “If you remove the news networks, the sports networks, and the kids networks, MeTV is in the top five and sometimes higher.”
Sabin credits this strong showing to “the power of all the brand names we have, like Andy Griffith, M*A*S*H, Perry Mason, Carol Burnett. That’s by design.”
But what about the competition? My own daily spins through the retro dimension often include stops at diginets Cozi TV and Antenna TV. Like MeTV, they traffic in small-screen nostalgia.
Briefly: Cozi TV is an NBC Universal Media project that specializes in sitcoms and dramas, mostly later series like Murder, She Wrote;Frasier;The Nanny;Will and Grace; and Magnum, P.I., but also ’60s stalwarts like The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Munsters. Antenna TV, which is owned by Tribune Broadcasting, serves up classic television series from the 1950s to the 1990s. There you’ll find Father Knows Best; I Dream of Jeannie; Bewitched; Welcome Back, Kotter; Three’s Company; Wings; Johnny Carson; and more.
Like Deetjen at BUZZR, Sabin positions MeTV as wholesome escapism. “It’s a refuge from the dark aspects of our world today,” he says. “People come to us because we’re family-friendly, safe, an environment that you can be nostalgic about and be entertained by and not have to worry like you do when you turn on the news and some of the streaming shows. It’s comfort TV.”
This resonates with former network exec and author McKairnes: “It takes me away from the world of politics and darkness. I look at these retronets as a refuge from confusion, even from network television, which has become very confusing.”
Maybe I’m doing more than just enjoying myself watching classic game shows. Could it be that I’m actually exercising my brain as I play along?
Who are his fellow refugees? According to MeTV’s latest ratings (September 2018), viewers aged 25 to 54 make up the largest segment, split 50-50 between the genders, with the next largest being those aged 35-64.
As it happens, the diginet has seen “pretty substantial growth” in the 18-25 demographic in the last year, Sabin reports. “Younger viewers are discovering these shows through social media, through their parents. It amazes us how many young people love Hogan’s Heroes.”
For Sabin and Weigel, keeping up with shifting demographics means tweaking the rotation. “We always try to have more than 50 shows going. It’s our secret sauce: having a wide variety of shows that appeal to various groups. We have 200 series in our library to service our five networks.”
Perry Mason (Courtesy MeTV)
What’s most popular on MeTV depends on the audience and the time. There are the perennials like M*A*S*H, The Andy Griffith Show, and Perry Mason. “Westerns on the weekend are among the highest rated,” Sabin says. “Columbo on Sunday nights after football sometimes draws two-plus million.”
When asked what constitutes classic TV, Sabin is a bit vague but comes down on the side of what pulls the ratings. “Our core is the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, but we touch on the ’90s a bit,” Sabin explains. “We get mail from die-hard fans who say we should only do shows from the ’60s and ’70s. We read them, but what we read that counts are the Nielsen ratings.”
For his part, media maven McKairnes believes what defines classic television are storytelling and characters, even in sitcoms. “Most of television these days, outside of streaming services and some premium channels, is ephemeral, like cotton candy,” he maintains. “Viewers are looking back to the past to find engaging storytelling and developed characters like you find in, say, Columbo and M*A*S*H. True, they can find storytelling and characters in, say, House of Cards or The Walking Dead, but something tells me that there’s something in the sitcoms of old, even Mama’s Family, that is more relatable or digestible.”
M*A*S*H (Courtesy MeTV)
In any event, they don’t seem to be having a problem finding MeTV on social media. “We have three-quarters of a million Facebook followers,” says Sabin. “But we don’t push for likes so much because we can’t monetize them. Instead, we push traffic towards our website, where there are games, quizzes, videos, music, merchandise.” (Note: There’s also a MeTV app — with live streaming on the horizon.)
So, what does the future hold for MeTV and other retronets? There are only a finite number of previously seen shows that qualify as classics, and viewers may eventually tire of the same menu. Will MeTV need to go original?
Sabin doesn’t see a need for that, at least for now. “We may dabble in some original content, but we must be on the 20th run of Perry Mason and the 30th run of M*A*S*H, and the numbers are getting stronger, not weaker. It has to do with the timelessness of these old shows.” And, as McKairnes observes, “running reruns is relatively risk-free, whereas there’s a ton of original programming out there that isn’t making money.”
On the other hand, Sabin acknowledges that viewer habits are in transition, what with live-streaming apps and such. “The way people are going to watch television is going to change,” he says, “and we’re going to change along with it.” Still, the basics will abide. “There’s something to be said about coming home from work and all the stress of the day and having a ‘stream’ of curated classic shows waiting for you.”
Or as McKairnes puts it, “I like lying on the couch and watching MeTV. It’s a very comfortable relationship.”
The other afternoon, as I was watching Password (or maybe it was Super Password), I had a thought. Maybe I’m doing more than just enjoying myself watching classic game shows. Could it be that I’m actually exercising my brain and delaying possible dementia as I play along? After all, I’d once read that crossword puzzles are good for brain health. This is close to that, yes? I decided to ask an expert.
Gary Small, M.D., is the Parlow-Solomon professor on aging at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Longevity Center. He’s also the author of The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program: Keep Your Brain Healthy for the Rest of Your Life. If anyone would have an answer, it would be him.
The Love Boat (Courtesy MeTV)
Turned out, I was breaking new ground.
“I’ve talked to so many journalists over the years,” Small says, “and I believe this is the first time someone has asked this question specifically.”
He explained that there aren’t any systematic studies on whether watching, say, Match Game or Password boosts anything, but there has been research looking at other forms of mental stimulation.
“A few years ago, we looked at what happens to the brain when people search online. People who had prior experience searching online showed tremendous neural activation. People who were doing it for the first time didn’t show that, but there was significant increase after they trained an hour every day. What that tells me is that any significant engagement online or a mentally challenging task can exercise your brain.”
Like playing along with Match Game or Card Sharks or Password?
“There also has been some significant research into what are called working memory games,” Small says. “Working memory is a form of short-term memory that we use to solve problems and think about stuff, holding information in your mind long enough that you can use it. These games do have an impact.”
Like Match Game and Card Sharks and Password? I asked hopefully.
“Possibly, when you engage in these games, you could be helping your brain or your cognitive acuity.”
Possibly. Okay, I’ll take that.
Then, perhaps concerned for my overall health, he added, “We have better studies on the benefits of physical exercise.”
Password and push-ups. Now that’s the ticket.
This article is featured in the March/April 2019 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
How do you determine the greatest TV show theme songs of all time? It’s a daunting task. Consider that, in 2016, more than 1,400 shows ran on prime-time television in the United States — that doesn’t include streaming — and most of those shows had some kind of opening sequence with music. Tom Morello of the band Rage Against the Machine suggested that bands should be considered for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the basis of “impact, influence, and awesomeness”; we’ll use a similar criteria of catchiness, memorability, and appropriateness to rank TV theme songs. We’ll also be breaking this list into three distinct categories: live-action, animated, and spoken-word/voiceover themes. We begin with Part 1: Theme songs for live-action shows.
50. Veronica Mars
2004-2007, 2014, 2019; “We Used to Be Friends” by The Dandy Warhols
Uploaded to YouTube by Veronica Mars
This 2003 Dandy Warhols track was both bracingly of-the-moment and completely appropriate for the Kristen Bell-led teen detective show. Veronica Mars ran three seasons, had a film continuation released in 2014, and will return for a multi-episode run on Hulu this year.
49. Friends
1994-2004; “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts
Uploaded to YouTube by alliemaster93
We’re practically legally obligated to include this one. The Rembrandts co-wrote the original minute-long version of the tune with Friends producers David Crane and Marta Kauffman, Kaufman’s husband Michael Skloff, and musician Allee Willis. The song became so popular, with DJs playing it on the radio, that the group recorded an extended version for a single, and a companion video was produced featuring the six leads of the show. The release was a massive hit around the world between 1995 and 1997, and notched No. 1 positions on the U.S. Mainstream, Adult Contemporary, and Airplay charts.
48. Tie: Perry Mason and Ironside
Perry Mason: 1957-1966 by Fred Steiner
Uploaded to YouTube by spudtv
Ironside: 1967-1975 by Quincy Jones
Uploaded to YouTube by TeeVees Greatest
Raymond Burr headlined two much-loved dramas with highly regarded theme songs. Legal drama Perry Mason’s theme had a jazzy swagger that befitted the character borne from Erle Stanley Gardner’s detective stories (some of which ran in The Saturday Evening Post). Ironside featured Burr’s wheelchair-bound crime solver and a theme by the legendary composer and producer Quincy Jones. It was the first TV theme to have its sound rooted in synthesizer.
47. Firefly
2002-2003; “The Ballad of Serenity” by Joss Whedon
Uploaded to YouTube by Mikey Mo
The first Joss Whedon show on the list, the space western Firefly boasted a theme composed by the writer himself. It was performed by Sonny Rhodes, and remarkably infused the space theme into a traditional country tune.
46. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
1997-2003; by Nerf Herder
Uploaded to YouTube by Krasus
Joss Whedon gets a lot of credit for revitalizing genre TV. His first hit, based on the film that he wrote, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, came packed with a great theme. It starts with a nod to the old Universal horror days with a fugue on organ. Then it rips into four-on-the-floor post-punk surf-rock, turning the old themes on their heads in the same way that the show stretched horror tropes.
45. The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
1993-1994; by Randy Edelman
Uploaded to YouTube by 6201Films
This weird western starring Bruce Campbell ran for only 27 episodes in the mid-1990s. However, it earned a cult following and is fondly remembered by TV critics. Incredibly, the theme lives on, having been appropriated by NBC for its Olympics coverage since 1996.
44. Gilligan’s Island
1964-1967; “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island” by George Wyle and Sherwood Schwartz
Uploaded to YouTube by 4458RobertC
In one of the theme songs that actually states the show’s premise, “The Ballad” explains how the S.S. Minnow got lost in a storm with seven very different people aboard. The words and music were by George Wyle and show creator Sherwood Schwartz.
43. The Fall Guy
1981-1986; “The Unknown Stuntman” by Dave Somerville
Uploaded to YouTube by oneforperry
Producer Glen A. Larson wanted to develop a show featuring a stunt man. Coincidentally, his friend (and frontman of The Diamonds) Dave Somerville had written a song about a stunt man for a show that never went forward. Inspired by the song, Larson created the character of Colt Seavers, a stunt man and bounty hunter. Lee Majors, having worked with Larson on The Six Million Dollar Man, signed on to play Seavers and even sang the theme song. The “I’ve been seen with Farrah” line was a reference to Majors’ then-marriage to Farrah Fawcett of Charlie’s Angels; she also appeared in The Fall Guy pilot.
42. Dallas
1978-1991, revived 2012-2014; by Jerrold Immel
Uploaded to YouTube by TeeVees Greatest
Jerrold Immel broke into television composing scores for Gunsmoke in the early 1970s. He would go on to write the theme for Dallas and score 55 episodes of the show. He also created themes for other shows like Dallas spin-off Knots Landing and the third season of Walker, Texas Ranger. The Dallas theme, an improbable blend of western film tropes and disco, remains instantly recognizable.
41. The Munsters
1964-1966; by Jack Marshall
Uploaded to YouTube by POP COLORTURE
The surf-inspired theme for monster comedy The Munsters received a Grammy nomination in 1965. Some readers might recognize the song from Fall Out Boy’s 2015 song “Uma Thurman,” which used the theme as the source for its primary sample.
40. WKRP in Cincinnati
1978-1982, 1991-1993; by Tom Wells and Hugh Wilson with Steve Carlisle vocals
Uploaded to YouTube by Classic Sitcoms
This theme joins The Fall Guy theme (and many others) in expressly describing what the show is about. In this case, it mainly reflects the story of station program director Andy Travis (Gary Sandy). After a decent run on CBS, the show became enormously popular in syndication. It was revived for a short run in the early 1990s, and retained the theme (albeit updated a bit, musically).
39. Game of Thrones
2011-2019; by Ramin Djawadi
Uploaded to YouTube by GameofThrones
Based on the hugely successful A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin, HBO’s Game of Thrones became a worldwide fantasy phenomenon. The music of the show has inspired orchestral concerts and tours. The majestic main theme is by composer Ramin Djawadi, whose body of work includes creating additional music for Hans Zimmer scores for movies like Iron Man, Batman Begins, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
38. Sanford and Son
1972-1977, and for Sanford 1980-1981; “The Streetbeater” by Quincy Jones
Uploaded to YouTube by doop72
The popular Redd Foxx/Demond Wilson sitcom featured the catchy funk of Quincy Jones. Though the song never charted, Jones nevertheless included it in his Greatest Hits collection. The theme was also used for Sanford, a brief revival that Wilson declined to join.
37. The Brady Bunch
1969-1974; by Frank De Vol and Sherwood Schwartz
Uploaded to YouTube by Marcia Brady
The theme from The Brady Bunch serves as a microcosm of our bigger list. Song explains the plot? Check. Co-written by a show creator? Check. Sherwood Schwartz again? Check. Used in revivals of the show? Check. The song certainly gets credit for quickly establishing the premise of a blended family, and it proved popular enough to generate variations or instrumental motifs used in the nine variation spin-offs and continuations of the show. The tic-tac-toe board layout of the opening sequence and the song itself have been parodied many times, including a recent take by the actors of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
36. Good Times
1974-1979; “Good Times” by Dave Grusin and Alan & Marilyn Bergman, performed by Jim Gilstrap and Blinky Williams
Uploaded to YouTube by Yon Legend
Both Sanford and Son and Good Times, along with a couple of upcoming entries on our list, were developed by super-producer Norman Lear. Lear didn’t shy away from controversial topics or blue-collar characters, and Good Times was an exemplar of that. The theme’s lyrics reference the hardships that the Evans family faced in the projects, notably the hard-to-hear-unless-you-know-the-words “hangin’ in a chow line.”
35. Laverne & Shirley
1976-1983; “Making Our Dreams Come True” by Cyndi Grecco
Uploaded to YouTube by Lennie72
If Norman Lear was the king of 1970s sitcoms on CBS, his counterpart at ABC was Garry Marshall. He hit with The Odd Couple and followed with phenom Happy Days. Happy Days generated a remarkable seven spin-offs (two of which were animated). The first, and most successful, was Laverne & Shirley, which followed two single gals who first appeared on Days as friends of the Fonz. Laverne herself, Penny Marshall (Garry’s sister), contributed the hopscotch chant that comes before the song in the opening credits.
34. The Facts of Life
1979-1988; by Al Burton, Alan Thicke, and Gloria Loring
Season 1
Uploaded to YouTube by Steven Brandt
Season 2 onward
Uploaded to YouTube by Steven Brandt
Much like the show, the theme had two distinct versions. The first version was used for season 1 and featured star Charlotte Rae and a number of the seven featured young ladies trading lines. When the show was retooled for season 2 (which included replacing four of the girls — one of whom was a young Molly Ringwald — with Nancy McKeon’s Jo), portions of the lyrics were rewritten, including the addition of the more famous “You take the good, you take the bad” opening line. From season 2 on, the theme was performed by co-writer Loring, known for her role on Days of Our Lives and her later hit song Friends and Lovers.
33. Diff’rent Strokes
1978-1986; by Al Burton, Alan Thicke, and Gloria Loring
Uploaded to YouTube by TeeVees Greatest
The Facts of Life actually spun off from Diff’rent Strokes, so it was logical to have Burton, Thicke, and Loring write both themes. However, on this earlier program, Thicke sang lead. This was just one facet of Thicke’s incredibly diverse career that ran the gamut from composer to singer to talk show host to lead actor on the successful sitcom Growing Pains.
32. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
1970-1977; “Love Is All Around” by Sonny Curtis
Uploaded to YouTube by Brian Harrell
It’s hard to overestimate the impact of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Having a single career woman in the lead was a huge deal at the time, and the incredible cast and crew (including creator and sitcom writing/directing legend James L. Brooks) powered the show to 29 Emmy wins over its run. The Sonny Curtis theme became an empowering anthem, and Mary’s hat toss at the end of the opening is an iconic TV moment. The theme has been covered by a number of artists, including Joan Jett and Minneapolis-based Hüsker Dü, who parodied the show’s opening in their music video; Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould still performs the song as an encore on his current solo tours.
31. The Sopranos
1999-2007; “Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One Mix)” by A3
Uploaded to YouTube by acer_16
British electronic act Alabama 3 (called A3 in the U.S. to avoid confusion with country band Alabama) blended their modern approach with the mood of a bluesy murder ballad. The tune, set against a spare opening of mafia underboss Tony Soprano driving home through New Jersey, evokes the dark tone of the series.
30. The Dukes of Hazzard
1979-1985; “Good Ol’ Boys” by Waylon Jennings
Uploaded to YouTube by will244
Country legend Waylon Jennings nailed the spirit of a show about car chases and misadventures with his plot-explaining anthem. Extremely popular, the single reached No. 21 on the pop chart and hit the top of the Hot 100 Country chart in 1980. Jennings also served as narrator for the series.
29. All in the Family
1971-1979; “Those Were the Days” by Lee Adams, Charles Strouse, and Roger Kellaway, performed by Caroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton
Uploaded to YouTube by BlastFromTheePast
The No. 1 show in America from 1971 to 1976, and another of Norman Lear’s murderer’s row of monster CBS hits, All in the Family’s plots turned on the clashes between bigoted Archie Bunker (O’Connor); his ostensibly silly but deceptively wise wife, Edith (Stapleton); their liberal daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers); and her ever-more-liberal husband, Michael “Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner). The show had five definitive spin-offs (a couple of which spun off their own shows). The theme featured leads O’Connor and Stapleton opining on better days (at least as how Archie saw them).
28. The Jeffersons
1975-1985; “Movin’ On Up” by Jeff Barry and Ja’net Dubois, performed by Dubois
Uploaded to YouTube by Matt Laufenberg
One of the spin-offs from All in the Family featured the extremely popular neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson, played by Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford. The theme charts the Jefferson’s move from their old neighborhood to their new high-rise thanks to the success of George’s dry-cleaning chain. The Jeffersons holds the distinction of having the most seasons of any sitcom with a primarily African-American cast. Musical side-note: the late regular cast member Roxie Roker (Helen Willis) is the mother of rock star Lenny Kravitz.
27. The Andy Griffith Show
1960-1968; “The Fishin’ Hole” by Earle Hagen, Herbert Spencer, and Everett Sloan
Uploaded to YouTube by GreatestShowsOnEarth
One of the most memorable themes ever is one of the simplest. Largely whistled (by Hagen), actual musical instruments don’t come in until about halfway through the 30-second theme. The tune is absolutely unmistakable.
26. The Muppet Show
1976-1981; “The Muppet Show Theme” by Jim Henson and Sam Pottle
Uploaded to YouTube by killerwattvids
Though certain parts of the song changed over the course of the five seasons, the core of “The Muppet Show Theme” remained the same. The song was performed by creator Henson, Frank Oz, and other operators via their various characters. In a move similar to the later “couch gag” on The Simpsons, each episode’s theme song ended with a different noise emanating from Gonzo’s horn, usually followed by a punch line.
25. Danger Man/Secret Agent
1960-1962, 1964-1968; “Secret Agent Man” by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, performed by Johnny Rivers
Uploaded to YouTube by 14Undertaker31
Danger Man was a British TV series featuring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. It had a short U.K. run but became an unexpected hit in the U.S. during summer reruns under the name Secret Agent. Part of the new success was owed to the rocking U.S. theme song, which became a No. 3 hit on the Hot 100. This prompted a resurrection of the show that ran from 1964 to 1968. At the end of the final season, McGoohan left and launched the unofficial sequel, cult classic sci-fi show The Prisoner.
24. Space: 1999
1975-1977; by Barry Gray and Vic Elmes
Uploaded to YouTube by 11db11
Space: 1999 didn’t have a long run, but it left behind several generations of fans. The show was led by Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (who were married at the time and had starred in Mission: Impossible together) and shot in the U.K. The premise turned on the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, who have to try to survive when the moon is knocked out of Earth’s orbit. The theme opens with portentous classical sounds, and then kicks into full-on sci-fi disco. It’s very of its time, but awesome lives forever.
23. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
1990-1996; “Yo Home to Bel-Air” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince with Quincy Jones
Uploaded to YouTube by Raqraqxox
Someone had the idea to put the wildly charismatic Will Smith, the “Fresh Prince” of hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, in a sitcom. Someone was a genius. The show was a huge hit and launched Smith into an even more successful film career. The theme, which is actually called “Yo Home to Bel-Air,” puts the show’s premise and Smith’s talent on full display.
22. The Golden Girls
1985-1992; “Thank You for Being a Friend” by Andrew Gold, performed by Cynthia Fee
Uploaded to YouTube by Steven Brandt
Though most people associate this song with the TV series, Gold’s original recording of Thank You for Being a Friend hit No. 25 on the Hot 100 in 1978. Re-recorded for the series by Fee (and re-recorded again for later spin-off, The Golden Palace), the tune is now indelibly associated with Dorothy, Sophia, Rose, and Blanche.
21. Doctor Who
1963-1989, 1996, 2005-present; by Ron Grainer
Uploaded to YouTube by Doctor Who
It’s been 56 years since the first Doctor stole the TARDIS and began his adventures through space and time. Played today by Jodie Whittaker, the official 13th doctor (and first female), the character continues to command a devoted international following. The theme was composed by Grainer, but the studio wizardry of Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mills incorporated the electronic sounds that made it legendary. Though there have been a number of versions, you know that theme when you hear it.
20. The Monkees
1966-1968; “(Theme from) The Monkees” by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, performed by The Monkees
Uploaded to YouTube by Merovee999
We’ve covered the origin of The Monkees more than once in this magazine. The theme itself was written by Boyce and Hart, the songwriting team that also composed other Monkees tunes, like “Last Train to Clarksville” and “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone,” as well as other 1960s hits like “Come a Little Bit Closer” for Jay and The Americans.
19. Sesame Street
1969-present; “Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?” by Joe Raposo
Uploaded to YouTube by Divi Cents
What can you say about Sesame Street? A giant of educational programming and the generator of countless beloved characters (and the proving ground for The Muppet Show), the show has won an unbelievable 189 Emmy awards during its run. The theme itself ran in its original form until 1992; since then, occasional and subtle changes in pacing and instrumentation have been made, but it’s still a classic.
18. Hill Street Blues
1981-1987; by Mike Post
Uploaded to YouTube by Brill Videos
Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, Hill Street Blues changed television almost immediately. From its diverse cast to its multi-episode stories to its handheld cameras and innovative editing, the show broke ground in different levels of writing and production, earning 98 Emmys during its run. The instrumental theme by veteran TV composter Mike Post hit No. 10 on the Hot 100 in 1981.
17. The Love Boat
1977-1986; by Paul Williams and Charles Fox
Uploaded to YouTube by Analog Child
Singer Jack Jones performed the title tune that was used for the first eight seasons of the show; Dionne Warwick did the version used in the final season. The Love Boat was part of ABC’s hugely successful Saturday night lineup, airing ahead of fellow hit Fantasy Island. The two series even had a crossover episode; another episode guest-starred Charlie’s Angels. The show also had the distinction of being one of the few hour-long American series to employ a laugh track.
16. Miami Vice
1984-1989; by Jan Hammer
Uploaded to YouTube by AMB Production TV
A No. 1 hit for Jan Hammer in 1985, the Miami Vice theme was as cutting-edge and of-the-moment as you could find on TV. Packed to bursting with synth, electric guitars, and Cuban rhythms, the piece aimed to evoke the titular city, action, and fashion all at the same time. It won two Grammys in 1986. Music was an integral element of the show, with classic and current hits splashed across every episode of its run.
15. The X-Files
1993-2002, 2016-2018; by Mark Snow
Uploaded to YouTube by Chris Burns
We revisited the history of The X-Files in September 2018 for the show’s 25th anniversary. At the time, we commented on the “famously spooky opening theme.” Mark Snow composed the theme; it was used in the nine original seasons, the two revival seasons, and in both theatrical films.
14. Wonder Woman/The New Adventures of Wonder Woman
1975-1979; by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel
Uploaded to YouTube by Steven Brandt
Wonder Woman had an unusual production history. Given the greenlight for a series after a TV movie, actress Cathy Lee Crosby was replaced with Lynda Carter. The first season, set during World War II, ran on ABC. CBS picked up the show for the next two seasons, but moved the setting to the 1970s. Accordingly, the iconic theme song, with its World War II references, was retooled as an instrumental. Unlike some superhero themes that would never be used today, the classic still pops up in places like Wonder Woman’s guest appearance on Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
13. The Greatest American Hero
1981-1983; “Theme from the Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not)” by Mike Post and Stephen Geyer, performed by Joey Scarbury
Uploaded to YouTube by 888eve
An action-comedy about a high school teacher who gets a superhero suit from aliens (but loses the instructions), The Greatest American Hero had a decent three-season run in the early 1980s. The theme song was an even bigger hit, going to No. 2 on the Hot 100 in America and charting in five other countries. It ended up being the 11th biggest hit song of 1981 in the States.
12. Twin Peaks
1990-1991, 2017; “Falling” by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch
Uploaded to YouTube by Long Evenings
Visionary film director David Lynch did the unthinkable in 1990. Along with writer Mark Frost, he created a TV series for a major broadcast network. The short first season was a critically praised, must-watch hit. However, difficulties with the network, a loss of momentum after the revelation of Laura Palmer’s killer, and constant time-slot disruptions (due, in part, to the Gulf War) led to the show not being renewed after the second season. Lynch, Frost, and much of the cast revived the series on Showtime in 2017. The theme, Falling, was derived from a song that Lynch and his frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti wrote for singer Julee Cruise. A single with both the instrumental and Cruise versions charted in over a dozen countries between 1990 and 1991.
11. Peter Gunn
1958-1961; by Henry Mancini
Uploaded to YouTube by 71superbee3
One of the most instantly recognizable pieces of television music ever created, the Peter Gunn theme brought Henry Mancini an Emmy and two Grammys, including Album of the Year in 1959 for The Music of Peter Gunn. The album itself hit No. 1 on the Billboard Album Chart. Frequently covered and used as a musical cue in film, the song received a second life in the 1980s as the music for the enormously popular Spy Hunter video game.
10. Happy Days
1974-1984; by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox
Uploaded to YouTube by Ldolcebimbp francesco.C
It’s not often that a second theme song becomes the one that’s most associated with a show. The first season used a re-recorded version of Bill Haley and His Comets seminal Rock Around the Clock for the opening, with the Happy Days theme (with Jimmy Haas on lead vocals) playing over the end credits. From the second season to the tenth season, the Happy Days theme was moved to the front; the 11th season featured an updated version with Bobby Arvon on lead vocals.
9. M*A*S*H
1972-1983; “Suicide Is Painless” by Johnny Mandel with lyrics by Mike Altman
Uploaded to YouTube by Carolina Trains
The TV series spun out of the successful 1970 film by Robert Altman; that movie featured a version of Suicide Is Painless complete with lyrics. Those lyrics were written by the director’s son, who was only 14 at the time. The elder Altman would later note on The Tonight Show that the song’s use in the film and TV series had subsequently earned his son over $1 million in royalties.
8. The Twilight Zone
1959-1964, with revivals in 1985, 2002, 2019; by Marius Constant
Uploaded to YouTube by Master Hoshi
We’re breaking our own rule by including an entry from the forthcoming Greatest Spoken-Word Themes list here, but we have to do it. This is another theme that switched between seasons. While season one did contain Rod Serling’s immortal speechifying in the intro, it had fairly standard music by Bernard Herrmann. With the second season, the theme gave way to the familiar, unsettling theme by Marius Constant.
7. The Addams Family
1964-1966; by Vic Mizzy
Uploaded to YouTube by Steven Brandt
A piece that’s destined to live forever on Halloween compilations and in sports arenas, The Addams Family theme might contain the most famous double-snaps of all time. It’s also one of the few lasting themes to prominently feature harpsichord. Fun note: the spoken “neat,” “sweet,” and “petite” were supplied by Lurch himself, Ted Cassidy.
6. Mission: Impossible
1966-1973, 1988-1990; by Lalo Schifrin
Uploaded to YouTube by Themes and Titles
Two TV series. Six movies (and counting). Covers by members of U2. Innumerable references in popular culture. Lalo Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible is one of the gold standards for theme music. With subtle variations, it was used in the original series, the 1988 revival, and at varying points in each film of the Tom Cruise franchise. Impossible Missions Force trivia tidbit: In the 1980s series, Phil Morris plays the son of the character that his father, Greg Morris, played on the original series.
5. Batman
1966-1968; by Neal Hefti
Uploaded to YouTube by Patrick Rooney
Jazz composer Neal Hefti was nominated for three Grammys and won one for his work on Batman. The memorable track with a single lyric (“Batman!”) paired wonderfully with the animated intro, evoking the campy and comedic tone of the show. Thanks to the guitar and bass tones on the track, it’s considered an entry in the surf rock genre; it’s been covered by acts like Jan & Dean, The Who, The Kinks, The Jam, and Eddie Vedder (with his daughter, Harper).
4. Cheers
1982-1993; “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, performed by Portnoy
Uploaded to YouTube by TeeVees Greatest
One of the great statement-of-purpose themes, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” received an Emmy nomination in 1983. Widely praised by a variety of publications and websites, it’s generally considered among the best of TV show theme music throughout the history of the medium.
3. S.W.A.T.
1975-1976, 2017-present; “Theme from S.W.A.T.” by Barry De Vorzon, performed by Rhythm Heritage
Uploaded to YouTube by 11db11
A spin-off of the hit show The Rookies, S.W.A.T. only lasted two seasons. This was, in part, because of controversy surrounding the level of violence on the show. The indisputably awesome funk-driven theme song, however, was a No. 1 hit for Rhythm Heritage and sold over a million copies. A version of the music was used in the 2003 film adaptation, which starred Samuel L. Jackson. In 2017, a CBS television reboot starring Shemar Moore debuted; it uses an updated version of De Vorzon’s theme by Robert Duncan.
2. The Rockford Files
1974-1980; by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter
Uploaded to YouTube by 11db11
The effortless cool of James Garner as P.I. Jim Rockford was conveyed in this terrific number by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter. Incorporating electric guitar and some very 1970s keys, “The Rockford Files” had a four-month chart run in 1975, eventually hitting No. 10. It also won a Grammy in 1975.
1. Hawaii Five-0
1968-1980, 2010-present; by Morton Stevens
Uploaded to YouTube by bfelten
Sometimes the best is just the best. Endlessly covered, a staple of marching bands (it’s the unofficial “fight song” for the University of Hawaii), and awesome enough to be used again for a series remake 20 years later (the original was re-recorded with some of the same musicians), we’re confident in saying that “Theme from Hawaii Five-0” is the greatest. Apart from composing film and television music, Morton Stevens was Sammy Davis Jr.’s arranger and occasional conductor from the 1950s until Davis’s death in 1990. Morton himself passed away in 1991, but we have a feeling that this tune is never going away.
—“The Myths of Television,” Editorial, November 30, 1968
The first basic myth is that television is a great medium of information. This bedlam of sights and sounds is not really information. Information informs, shapes, teaches. It separates fact and fiction, true and false. Television simply presents everything, sequentially from day to night and simultaneously on a dozen channels.
The second basic myth is that television is the new medium of reality.
Most of television, of course, is a series of images artificially designed to simulate reality. From the arguments over Dick Nixon’s makeup for the Kennedy debates to the arguments over whether TV cameramen slanted their coverage of last summer’s Chicago riots, we can see that the famous “reality” of television is, one way or another, for good or ill, stage-managed.
As it prepares to enter a television-record 51st season, 60 Minutes continues to deliver its famed investigative reporting and personality profilesThough the cast of correspondents has changed over time, the mission of the program remains the same. On the occasion of the show’s 50th anniversary today, we look at five of the biggest stories that 60 Minutes tackled.
1969 and 1999: Mike Wallace and the My Lai Massacre
Mike Wallace covered the My Lai Massacre in 1969, then returned to the story (and the village itself) in 1999.
As the Vietnam War raged on, a company of American soldiers perpetrated the My Lai Massacre in March 1968. It’s estimated that as many as 500 South Vietnamese civilians were murdered, including women and children. The company entered the area having been told that civilians would have cleared out, leaving only National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) collaborators. The horror of what was happening was discovered by helicopter pilot Warrant Officer (WO1) Hugh Thompson, Jr., and his crew. Thompson intervened, saving civilians on the ground and going so far as to order his crew to open fire on U.S. troops if they attacked any other civilians. Thompson reported the incident to his superiors; however, steps were taken to cover-up what had happened, including disseminating false versions of the story to armed forces periodical Stars and Stripes. Eventually, servicepersons in the know began writing letters to superiors and to members of Congress, prompting an investigation. When the story got out and 60 Minutes covered it, there was outrage. Some observers believed that the story added fuel to the opposition of the war in the United States.
While 26 people were tried in relation to the massacre, only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted. Years later, Thompson and his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier’s Medal for bravery (Andreotta’s award was posthumous, as he died before the end of the war). Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes reported on the incident in 1969; 30 years later, he, Thompson, and Colburn returned to the spot of the Massacre for another piece.
John Ehrlichman served as White House counsel and then assistant to the president for domestic affairs for President Richard Nixon. During all of the furor surrounding the Watergate Hotel break-in and subsequent scandal, Mike Wallace interviewed Ehrlichman. The visibly uncomfortable advisor denied that the White House was involved in a cover-up even as Wallace ran through the laundry list of charges being levelled. Ehrlichman’s protestations mattered little, in the end; in 1975, Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice, and spend eighteen months in prison.
1992: Bill and Hillary Clinton Discuss Gennifer Flowers
The famous 60 Minutes interview with The Clintons.
In the midst of a contentious campaign that would later see Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton emerge as president, 60 Minutes sat down with him and his wife, Hillary, for what would become a famous interview. Bill Clinton had been dogged by allegations of infidelity, notably with Gennifer Flowers, who claimed that she’d had a 12-year-long affair with him. During the interview with Steve Kroft, Clinton minimized his association with Flowers. Hillary Clinton remarked that she was not “sittin’ here like some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette,” in reference to the legendary country tune. That quote became an oft-repeated sound bite, and Wynette drafted an angry open letter in response; Hillary Clinton later issued an apology. The interview is still the fourth-most-watched interview in television history, with an estimated 40 to 50 million total viewers. Overall, the general consensus is that the piece may have saved Bill Clinton’s imperiled candidacy at the time by addressing the allegations directly.
1993: CIA Shipped a Literal Ton of Cocaine to America in 1990
The piece, “The CIA’s Cocaine,” earned a Peabody Award.
Pre-emptively embarrassing itself is not something that that Central Intelligence Agency chooses to do lightly, but they chose to do it by releasing one particular story. The CIA had to get ahead of 60 Minutes in 1993 when they discovered that the show was about to break some embarrassing news. An investigation revealed that during Reagan’s “war of drugs” in the ’80s, elements inside the CIA pitched a plan to the DEA and the Venezuelan military for an operation that would ship drugs out on the South American country into the United States in order to gain the confidence of Colombian drug traffickers. This was a plan that involved long-game thinking and complicated strategy, and the DEA wanted no part of it. The CIA did it anyway, with the unfortunate side effect that some of the cocaine made its way into the hands of American dealers to be sold. In the years since, rumors and conspiracy theories about the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade continue. Politicians like Representative Maxine Waters of California have called for further investigations, and books continue to be written that allege that the CIA was not only involved in South American cocaine, but in the crack epidemic as well.
2004: Ed Bradley Revisits the Emmett Till Murder
Correspondent Ed Bradley tried to speak to Carolyn Dunham (nee Bryant) about Emmett Till.
In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was abducted, beaten, shot in the head, and thrown into a river, weighted down by a fan blade. The reason? It was alleged that he whistled at, flirted with, and touched a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. The men accused of the crime not only got away with it, but admitted to their guilt post-trial during a Look magazine interview. In 2004, Ed Bradley took a further look and attempted to speak to Bryant. She and her son both declined, but she would later remarkably recant portions of her story, including the portions regarding Till touching her, in a 2008 interview with historian Timothy Tyson. Bradley’s report is credited with helping to bring the Till story back into the spotlight, paving the way for Tyson to obtain the subsequent interview. The investigation into Till’s murder was reopened in July of this year, based in part on the recantation.
America has learned not to expect too much from television. We no longer assume the programs of commercial television will display a consistently high level of morals and art. We’re just happy to find an occasional show that interests us.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the early 1960s, many Americans were deeply concerned over what they saw as a lack of quality in television programming.
They had allowed television into their homes because it had promised them art, information, and entertainment. But after a decade of network broadcasting, most of what they got was mindless entertainment. Or so Newton Minow believed, and he was the head of the Federal Communications Commission. In 1961, he invited the country’s broadcasters—
“to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day… Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”
Originally, that line in the speech read “a vast wasteland of junk.” That’s how Minow’s speechwriter, John Bartlow Martin, had expressed it after watching an entire broadcast day of a Chicago station. In those 15 hours, he saw little more than cheap, unimaginative programming and an endless torrent of advertising.
The commercials, loud and frequent and long, seemed stupefying. One commercial asked, “Would you prefer this kind of whiteness?”… [When another] inquired, “Is your bathroom guestroom-fresh? Just one light whizzer whoosh in your bathroom.…” nearly 3,000,000 of us watched.
[By mid-morning, I had] witnessed some seventy commercials.
In the preceding nine hours, except for the news broadcasts and two brief interviews on the Today Show, nobody on Channel 5 had discussed a single idea.
The game shows of the morning were succeeded by soap operas in the afternoon.
We were entertained by Young Dr. Malone, a somewhat mystifying program to a one-time watcher, because so much seemed to have gone before, and From These Roots, which presented the same difficulty, though it did contain one memorable line… “Why, I’m in better shape now than I was before my brain operation.”
By the time he reached prime time, he wasn’t enjoying anything, not even the program called “the hottest show in television”: Sing Along With Mitch.
Mitch said, “Hi. Here we are again—to stir up the fires of memory,” and invited us in 11,700,000 homes to join him in singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” The author did not join him and has no way of knowing how many of his fellow watchers joined him. Mitch introduced elaborate production numbers, with costumed dancers and singers and what looked to be a live horse. He was sponsored by cereal, eye make-up, wine and a soda drink. Near the end he said. “At this point anyone out there who’s not clutching the hand of someone he loves has a cold, cold heart.”
Which, after 15 hours, was Mr. Martin.
After wading through the trite violence of detective shows and the vapid chatter of talk shows, he thought the shows well deserved the description of “junk.”
Many intellectuals think it may be making idiots of us and destroying American culture.
Parents and educators deplore its effect on children.
Denouncing television is a national pastime.
The quality of television was a serious concern to Americans who’d seen the influence of television grow like nothing before it.
In 1946, 8,000 homes had television sets. Today 47,000,000 homes have them. In addition 5,500,000 homes have second sets, and public places have 1,500,000. Television is virtually inescapable.
In one month this year the average American home television set was turned on for six hours a day. Maybe some of that time nobody is watching. Advertisers doubt it; they spent more than $1,5000,000,000 on television in 1959.
All that money, Martin suggested, was pressuring the networks to churn out programs with no merit other than to generate large clumps of viewers.
But Americans still expected the networks to live up to a standard of good taste and service that would earn them the license to use the “public airwaves.” But public good was being outweighed by the desire to attract advertiser with the biggest viewership possible.
"The Government to the TV industry; FCC Chairman Newton Minow said, in effect, 'Clean your house or I will.'"
From this arises the “tyranny of ratings.” The A.C. Nielsen Company… attached an electronic device, to television sets in each of 1200 homes… mintended to represent a true sampling of American families…
Ratings have been hotly attacked.
Critics complain bitterly that ratings are abused. Ratings determine which programs stay on the air
and which go off. An evening show whose rating falls below 17 is likely to be dropped—it simply is not reaching enough people. Yet critics point out that such a program reaches more than 8,000,000 homes—can such a program be called a failure? And many things affect a program’s rating—how many local stations carried it, what programs it competed with, what program preceded it, even the weather.
LeRoy Collins, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, has said, “Ratings are a maze of statistics built from scanty facts. And they are like dope addiction in this industry. There is too much equating with the public interest what interests the public.”
One network producer was still promoting quality of programs over quantity of viewers. Fred Friendly, who would later become president of CBS, thought the FCC should be concerned that television might become a “vast wasteland.”
[Television] will get like Times Square. Times Square real estate used to have great value. But today it’s all gaudy and trashy, with jukeboxes and popcorn and junk, and much of it has lost property value and gone down, down, down. And television could go the same way.
He couldn’t have known then how prophetic was his next statement:
“If you breed a generation of Americans that wants to see excitement and violence all night, that’s all the audience you’re going to get.
POST script:
Just how bad were the prime-time programs of 1961? Some critics now consider the wasteland year to be the golden age of television, e.g.,
Television will turn 84 years old on September 7, 2011, and it never looked better.
In its youth, television was a chunky piece of furniture with a tiny, round screen showing fuzzy images of low-budget programs. Despite its shortcomings, it became popular. Between 1950 and 1963, the number of American household with a television jumped from 9% to 92%.
As the audience got larger, the technology got better. Television sets became more reliable through the ‘60s. The reception improved. The picture improved. The major networks started broadcasting programs in color.
Even greater improvements were coming according to Sanford Brown, who wrote “Tomorrow’s Many-Splendored Tune-In” for the Post in 1967. Surprisingly, just about every prediction he made in the article became reality. For example:
All sets in the not-distant future will be color instruments, with black-and-white having long before gone the way of the windup phonograph.
Integrated circuits will make sets smaller, simpler, more reliable and less expensive, and may forever loosen the TV repairman’s grip on the U.S. economy.
(“Grandpa, what’s a ‘TV repairman’?”)
Smaller sets do not, of course, mean smaller screens. TV engineers expect screens to get much bigger … the screen of the future [will use] electro-luminescent panels embedded in the screen.
In fact, today’s flat screen TVs are able to create images without an enormous cathode ray tube by embedding small cells of ionized gases in the screen.
Three-dimensional TV is even farther away, if it is coming at all. There is some doubt that the public would be eager to pay for it, in view of the fairly tepid reception given to 3-D movies.
An even more important device will be the videograph, or whatever name is eventually coined for recordings that register pictures as well as sound. The price is still too high for the average consumer—about $400 for a player … and $20-$100 for each program cartridge, depending on length and content—but a vast home market would be in sight as soon as [the developers] brings the cost down.
But the technology with the greatest potential, according to Brown, was cable television, which was still in its infancy (only 2% of households had cable service that year.) With a cable connection to a national network, he said, “the passive TV viewer will be able to send back signals along the line.”
As he predicted, the future was highly interactive. It wasn’t cable television that gave Americans their electronic connection to the world, however. It was the internet.
Homes could be connected to a central computer for instant figuring of, say, income taxes
High-speed electrostatic printing devices could be attached to TV sets so the viewer need only press a button, then wait a minute before tearing off an electrostatic newspaper to read at breakfast.
Housewives could examine merchandise projected on TV screens and place orders by punching a couple of buttons.
Pollsters could obtain immediate reactions to TV show, or commercials, or even political candidates. Politicians could obtain an accurate consensus from their constituents on important public issues.
He even foresaw the virtual office and the digital workplace:
Using picture phones, instant memorandum printers, big-screen television for conferences, and computer circuits providing information at the touch of a button, a company could operate just as well as if everyone were in the same building. It might even operate better, since employees could live closer to work, in pleasant surroundings, and feel like members of team rather than cogs in a giant corporate machine.
For all the promise of this new technology, though, Brown saw no corresponding rise in the quality of programming. Maybe the picture on the screen was getting clearer and more colorful, but the sitcoms and westerns had barely evolved since the 1950s.
Brown quoted the current FCC chairman—”The future of television is no longer a question of what we can invent. It is a question of what we want.”—and then asked:
What do we want?
It may be that we will turn to TV for ever more exotic escapism and more titillating titillation and let it go at that, leaving its real potentials untapped.
If such is the case, it might be inaccurate to say that it is what we “want,” but it would not be unfair to say it is what we deserve.
Demonstrating the newest hazard that science has introduced to modern living. This night-clubbing husband, having told his wife that he was working late at the office, will have things to regret—including the invention of television—he instant he gets home.” from “Be Good! Television’s Watching” August 14, 1949.
If you watched television in the mid 1980s, there’s a good chance you saw, or at least have heard of, a little medical drama called St. Elsewhere. It drove forward the careers of such Hollywood heavyweights as Helen Hunt, Denzel Washington, Howie Mandel, and Ed Begley Jr., but it was also the beginning of one of the most interesting factoids in all of television trivia. Right now, television buffs are probably screaming at their computer screens about snow globes and children with autism, but that’s not even the half of it. There’s a much larger story to be told about the series. Put simply, St. Elsewhere may have ruined television.
If you are of the population not fortunate enough to have seen St. Elsewhere, it was the first of the modern ilk of medical dramas. What separated it from its predecessors was the reality with which it treated its subject matter. The television portrayal of doctors until that point was more in line with what we think of as super heroes. The patients always got better, the doctors never made mistakes, and everyone, as Garrison Keillor might put it, was above-average. The thinking of the time was, “Who wants to turn on their television only to be depressed? The advertisers certainly wouldn’t like that.” That strategy worked fine for many years, but it turned out not to work on the slightly-more-cynical younger generation. St. Elsewhere followed this new direction, and almost the entirety of the current hour-long medical genre owes its place on TV to “a show that ruined television.”
Welcome to the Multiverse
How does a show like this, with all the good it did for its craft, end up ruining television? The answer comes in two parts. The first is that St. Elsewhere was a very popular, and it continues to be well-respected among people who make decisions for television. The show did numerous crossover episodes where characters from one series appeared on St. Elsewhere or vice-versa. Crossing Jordan, Cheers, BostonPublic, Chicago Hope, The Bob Newhart Show, M*A*S*H, and Homicide: Life on the Street are among the shows where this happened. Outside of this, there are shows that reference St. Elsewhere in a way that makes it clear they are intended to be in the same world. The hospital’s PA system on St. Elsewhere was used at various times to call doctors from other series, even though they were not appearing in that episode. The reverse of this was used on the Canadian show, Degrassi Junior High, where doctors from St. Elsewhere were paged through the school’s announcements system.
The crossovers don’t stop there, though. For example, you’ll notice that St. Elsewhere crossed over with Cheers at one point. This happened in an episode when characters from St. Elsewhere visited the Cheers bar. Cheers, being as successful as it was in its day, ended up creating crossovers with other series on its own. Cheers begat Frasier and another short-lived spin-off called The Tortellis. Since a crossover or spin-off is essentially a signal that the shows happen in the same television universe, all shows connected to Cheers in that way are also connected to St. Elsewhere. The same goes for all the other shows that St. Elsewhere crossed with. They are all, through common characters, happening in the same television universe.
In all, there are around 280 shows linked to St. Elsewhere. The oldest is I Love Lucy, which traces its lineage in this order: I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Danny Thomas Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mad About You, Friends, Caroline in the City, Frasier, Cheers, and finally, St. Elsewhere. Current shows such as Lost, ER, CSI, Law & Order, and Heroes all have their own lineage tied to St. Elsewhere.
Life is but a Dream
The second part of the answer is the bit of trivia mentioned in the opening. In the final moments of the series finale of St. Elsewhere it is heavily implied that the entire series had been a dream of one of the characters. Dr. Donald Westphall discusses his son, Tommy Westphall, which includes this bit of dialogue:
“I don’t understand this autism thing, Pop. Here’s my son. I talk to him. I don’t even know if he can hear me, because he sits there, all day long, in his own world, staring at that toy. What’s he thinkin’ about?”
The next part, the answer to that rhetorical question, shows Tommy Westphall shake a toy snow globe containing a model of the show’s hospital, while real snow begins to fall over the real hospital.
This is the moment that may have ruined television. St. Elsewhere takes place in the same universe as over 280 other shows, and that universe was revealed to be entirely in the mind of Tommy Westphall. So the next time you watch I Love Lucy, Cheers, CSI, Lost, Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show, Law & Order, or any of the other shows connected to St. Elsewhere, keep in mind and take solace in the fact that they are at least two layers of fiction removed from our reality: They are the fictional creations of Tommy Westphall, an already fictional character. Most television, as it turns out, is more fictional than you would have thought.
If you’d like to explore Tommy Westphall’s multiverse on your own, this excellent site has complete documentation of the phenomenon that continues to be updated by contributors. You can take a look at the diagram of all the shows, and check the key to see exactly how they link together. If your friends are good enough at television trivia, you might be able to play a game of Six Degrees of Tommy Westphall.
Mitch said, “Hi. Here we are again—to stir up the fires of memory,” and invited us in 11,700,000 homes to join him in singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” The author did not join him and has no way of knowing how many of his fellow watchers joined him. Mitch introduced elaborate production numbers, with costumed dancers and singers and what looked to be a live horse. He was sponsored by cereal, eye make-up, wine and a soda drink. Near the end he said. “At this point anyone out there who’s not clutching the hand of someone he loves has a cold, cold heart.”
