Before you watch Johnny Carson on Antenna TV, you can watch Merv (1 Viewer)

Get TV will have a 3-hour nightly variety block:


http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/merv-griffin-judy-garland-gettv-richard-pryor-1201604041/

Thanks for that. I never got to see Merv's show back in the day. Since my market didn't get an independent TV station until about 1986, a good amount of first-run syndication shows like Merv never got play here, so will definitely have to take a look.


This will be the first time I've watched GetTV for anything! Luckily, I have this along with AntennaTV and MeTV. Only digital subchannel I'm missing out on that I'd like is BuzzrTV.

Can the modern audience handle Arthur Treacher?

Neil Brock said:

Get TV will have a 3-hour nightly variety block:


http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/merv-griffin-judy-garland-gettv-richard-pryor-1201604041/

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But the article says: "The channel is creating a variety-show block to air weekly on Mondays from 8-11 p.m."

Even once a week is fine with me. Certainly would make it easier to stay ahead of as far as recording to disc (especially once January comes around with Johnny on every night).

Looks like Monday, October the 12th is when it starts, from 8-11pm, then repeating from 11pm-2am (presumably so it can also air in prime-time on the west coast).

GET.TV has a full back cover ad, and another ad on the Monday schedule page, advertising the Judy Garland Show portion of the Monday schedule, in TV GUIDE.

I think it's odd that the ad doesn't mention Merv Griffin. GET.TV has been around two or three years, now, and I have never seem them advertise anything.

It is ironic that they are advertising in TV GUIDE, since the magazine does not list GET.TV, or any of the other broadcast digital stations in their schedule grids.

It looks like they just hacked the first half hour out of the Merv Griffin show and showed the last hour. I don't see why they can't show the whole ninety minutes.


The segment with Robert Kennedy was very sad for two reasons. One was it was difficult to watch him knowing he had only about nine more months to live. The other is that he was talking about problems we STILL have, almost fifty years later. In some ways, they're worse than ever.


Did you notice that all three shows: The Judy Garland Show, Channing and Bailey on Broadway, and The Merv Griffin Show, all had the credit for music arrangement and conducting for Mort Lindsey. Is this just a coincidence? If it is, it's quite a coincidence, but it must be, because I can't imagine this really has anything to do with him.

Joe Lugoff said:

It looks like they just hacked the first half hour out of the Merv Griffin show and showed the last hour. I don't see why they can't show the whole ninety minutes.

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From the show's original 75-minute running time, you got about 40 minutes. I expect that this will be the norm, and musical performances will be very limited. They even made sure that you didn't get a note of music going out or coming back from commercial breaks, walk-ons were subbed, and the closing was truncated. As always, broadcast rights for talk shows are much more complicated than even variety shows and specials. I'm waiting to see what Antenna-TV does with the Carson Tonight shows.

Joe Lugoff said:

It looks like they just hacked the first half hour out of the Merv Griffin show and showed the last hour. I don't see why they can't show the whole ninety minutes.

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Was this incarnation of The Merv Griffin Show the one that was offered to stations in both a 90-minute and a 60-minute format (before they just went with a 60-minute show later on, since that's the length most of them chose)? If so, then I'm sure it was the hour-long version they used.


I'm not familiar enough with this show to know.

AndyMcKinney said:

Was this incarnation of The Merv Griffin Show the one that was offered to stations in both a 90-minute and a 60-minute format (before they just went with a 60-minute show later on, since that's the length most of them chose)? If so, then I'm sure it was the hour-long version they used.


I'm not familiar enough with this show to know.

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This show was from the Westinghouse era (1965-69) which was offered up as either 90 or 60-minute. However, this was not the 60-minute version, but was a Frankenstein amalgam pieced together from across the show's 90-minutes worth of material.

John Karras said:

This show was from the Westinghouse era (1965-69) which was offered up as either 90 or 60-minute. However, this was not the 60-minute version, but was a Frankenstein amalgam pieced together from across the show's 90-minutes worth of material.

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Thanks for the clarification! I've never seen Merv's show before, so had no idea. It's a real head-scratcher: if they wanted to fill a 60-minute slot, it certainly would've made sense to use the 60-minute version, unless, of course, the master tape for that no longer exists (this is a 1960s vintage recording, after all, and it's quite possible that Griffin only kept the longer ones archived and wiped/reused the shorter ones once they were no longer viable for syndication).

Bob Gu said:

Can the modern audience handle Arthur Treacher?

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Or, Jack Sheldon?!?

John Karras said:

From the show's original 75-minute running time, you got about 40 minutes. I expect that this will be the norm, and musical performances will be very limited. They even made sure that you didn't get a note of music going out or coming back from commercial breaks, walk-ons were subbed, and the closing was truncated. As always, broadcast rights for talk shows are much more complicated than even variety shows and specials. I'm waiting to see what Antenna-TV does with the Carson Tonight shows.

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Aoccording to reports, AnntenaTV has been able to clear the music,etc. Mind you the big mystery is the show's theam

AndyMcKinney said:

Thanks for the clarification! I've never seen Merv's show before, so had no idea. It's a real head-scratcher: if they wanted to fill a 60-minute slot, it certainly would've made sense to use the 60-minute version, unless, of course, the master tape for that no longer exists (this is a 1960s vintage recording, after all, and it's quite possible that Griffin only kept the longer ones archived and wiped/reused the shorter ones once they were no longer viable for syndication).

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The master tape is safely tucked away. I'm quite sure that these amalgams will be the norm in exactly the same way that the DVD set was put together where decisions were made about which guests on a particular show would be considered "more interesting to today's audience" than others. GET-TV is only allocating about 41 minutes (from an original 75 minutes) as the running time for each show, so you'll be getting a "highlights" version. I'm assuming that Reelin' In The Years who controls the licensing rights is making all the edit decisions and delivering a tape clocking in at GET-TV's specified time.

The new TV Guide has GET.TV ads for MERV. This past Monday's trio of shows, Judy, Andy Williams, and Merv is being rerun this afternoon.


I think the original hour versions of the 90 minute Merv Griffin show just lopped off the last half-hour. It would have been easy enough to alter Arthur Treacher's opening voice over to delete the mention of guests only appearing in the last half-hour.

The latest 1960's Merv episode hacked out "Cambridge Circus". Cambridge Circus consisted of John Cleese and Graham Chapman (Pre-Monty Python) and other British comics. It certainly would have been horrible for us to see their U.S. TV debut. Thanks a lot Get-TV!

The arbitrary hacking that was done in the DVD release I have to confess left me with a bad taste in my mouth after awhile because I don't like someone else telling me who would somehow be more interesting than someone else to us which in effect is what the producers of the DVD set did. I have to accept the limitations they're dealing with in repeats, but their track record I have to admit now makes what's being done with the Carson material, which for years I was critical of, come out looking a million times better.