Pick a Night of TV Idea (1 Viewer)

[Neil Brock]

This came to me today. Take a bunch of pieces of paper. Then write down days of the week on one, years (or TV seasons) on another, and the 3 networks on the third. Then separate them and throw them into a hat and pick out one of each and that's what you watch that night. I would do the 60s and 70s, since the 50s are too hard since there were so many lost anthology shows and live shows. I like a few shows from the 80s but I don't think enough to do this and after the 80s, forget about it. Something to do while we are actually home at night instead of going out.

 

[BobO'Link]

I'd guess you would be able to pick something from any decade of regular broadcast - 50s-current - as there would likely be at least one qualifying show no matter what. Now whether or not it's in your collection is another story... If you come up with something you don't have just go back to the well for *one* of the drawn items.

In my case I could likely come up with something for just about any year/day/network from 1958-2000. I also have several hundred unwatched seasons to dip into and would limit myself to those. It'd certainly make it easier to select what to watch next.

 

[Mysto]

I'd guess you would be able to pick something from any decade of regular broadcast - 50s-current - as there would likely be at least one qualifying show no matter what. Now whether or not it's in your collection is another story... If you come up with something you don't have just go back to the well for *one* of the drawn items.

In my case I could likely come up with something for just about any year/day/network from 1955-2000. I also have several hundred unwatched seasons to dip into and would limit myself to those. It'd certainly make it easier to select what to watch next.

I am in awe!

 

[Ethan Riley]

I thought of watching all the shows that aired the day I was born. Here's the list the internet gave me, and the ones I know for sure are on dvd. I collect 3 of these shows at present:

Fri, 05. Nov 1965
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. S02E38
Hogan's Heroes S01E08
The Addams Family S02E08
The Flintstones S06E08
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. S02E08
The Wild Wild West S01E08

 

[BobO'Link]

Ethan, you missed:

Honey West: S1E8

It's also on DVD. AFAIK, none of the other shows that aired that night have seen release.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Cool idea, Neil! I also like Ethan's "birth date" plan.

I was born on Thursday, October 12, 1967. The schedule that night (according to TV Tango) was as follows:

8pm:
ABC - The Flying Nun 1.6 "Flight of the Dodo Bird"
CBS - Cimarron Strip 1.6 "The Battle of the Bloody Stones"
NBC - 2nd half of Daniel Boone 4.5 "Beaumarchas"

8:30pm:
ABC - Bewitched 4.6 "No Zip in My Zap"
NBC - Ironside 1.5 "The Taker"

9pm:
ABC - That Girl 2.6 "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Nervous"
NBC - Dragnet 1967 2.5 "The Big Neighbor"

All of the above are out on DVD, but I only own Dragnet S2, and it's still back home in the States. So...nix on that idea. I'll try Neil's randomizer plan and check back in...will have to limit the date criteria from between say, 1955 to 1985 (with a heavy emphasis on the '60s).

 

[BobO'Link]

I checked Ethan's "birth date" plan on mine and it's a no-go. Only 1 show has seen release and it didn't air anything on my birthday.

 

[Mysto]

I thought of watching all the shows that aired the day I was born. Here's the list the internet gave me, and the ones I know for sure are on dvd. I collect 3 of these shows at present:

Fri, 05. Nov 1965
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. S02E38
Hogan's Heroes S01E08
The Addams Family S02E08
The Flintstones S06E08
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. S02E08
The Wild Wild West S01E08

Then I'll have to listen to radio

 

[Neil Brock]

I could do 3 nights of that date, one for each network. although a couple of the rarer shows, like Convoy, I wouldn't necessarily have the exact episode for that date. And I would have to sub Court Martial for The Jimmy Dean Show, even though it was a mid-season replacement. But the birthday idea is good for one night. We will be stuck in the house for months. Besides, I don't remember watching any TV on the day I was born!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I was born in the summer, so I have plenty of reruns for the birthdate version of this idea.

ABC: Fall Guy, The Hamptons, Dynasty
CBS: The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd (movie)
NBC: Real People, The Facts of Life, Buffalo Bill, The Family Tree

Of those, Dynasty, The Facts of Life, Buffalo Bill, and the film are on DVD. Of those, I own The Facts of Life. The episode aired that night would've likely been a season 4 rerun, so we're at the end of the Eastland years.

I might pick up the Buffalo Bill set, though. Dabney Coleman is a talk show host. I've heard worse ideas.

 

[MatthewA]

My Mom and I are the only immediate family members not born in or near the summer, so the birthday route would be hard. Facts was 8 minutes in progress on the East Coast the moment I was born, but I already watched that episode ("Take My Finals, Please", the penultimate episode of season 4 and one of my personal Top 10 episodes) multiple times*. I even tried to make a composite uncut-ish version by cutting together mutually exclusive scenes from the Nick at Nite and USA Network versions with multiple VCRs; it passed the 24-minute mark, and unlike Shout!/Sony for any episode not from the Edna's Edibles years, I put back the Embassy logo (albeit the Communications one with a Coke byline since it was the best quality one I had at the time). Square Pegs was on CBS before it and was also a rerun; I own the DVDs and I've been meaning to watch them but never got around to it. Taxi, The Fall Guy, and Quincy, M.E. were the only other shows on that night that are on disc, and all but the last one were reruns. Ryan's Four seems to be lost to time already; I've never seen it and only heard of it from TV reference books. The likelihood of a Real People DVD collection of any substance isn't likely for whatever reason: rights, licensing, perceived lack of interest by the rights holders. When was the last time it was even on TV? There were reruns on some now-defunct CBS-owned cable channel in the 1990s, but since then, nothing, except the credit/blame for the glut of "Reality" TV over the past 20 years.

Disney had a short-lived show on that night: Zorro and Son (also a rerun). Guy Williams refused to do it because he didn't like the idea of making a joke out of the character, even with the gay jokes and subtexts from George Hamilton's 1979 movie Zorro the Gay Blade taken out and a son added as proof of heterosexuality.** Henry Darrow took his place. They even used the original version of the theme song from the 1950s! They'll release it right after they relent on Song of the South (read: not for a while if ever). Even the Walt Disney Treasures season sets of the original series act like it never happened. One of the show's writers, Eric Cohen, later wrote for The Golden Girls. They aired an hour-long episode on my eighth birthday ("Never Yell Fire in a Crowded Retirement Home," in which they think Sophia might have caused the Shady Pines Fire of 1984), but sadly it was just a clip show (Cohen was off the show at that point). At least this show's clip shows were the least cringeworthy out of all the major 1980s sitcoms because the clips usually stood alone well enough outside of the context of the episodes they came from to sustain a whole hour.

I might pick up the Buffalo Bill set, though. Dabney Coleman is a talk show host. I've heard worse ideas.

I've heard good things about the show but not about the way it was presented on DVD. They cut Ray Charles' version of "Hit the Road Jack" from an episode to save money on music rights though it was part of a key scene.***

*Diff'rent Strokes was what NBC had in daytime reruns then. Both were edited there (as were Silver Spoons, Family Ties, 227 et al) and those edits were the basis of the syndicated cuts.
**Tell that to Meredith Baxter. Ironically, the son, Paul Regina, later starred in Paramount/Showtime's landmark gay sitcom Brothers.
***Helen Reddy covered it on the same album "I Am Woman" (also the album's name) was on. Would that have cost less money? Probably not from a publishing standpoint.

 

[KPmusmag]

I do this often. Hopefully I am playing correctly. I have many playlists for different days. And they may not be absolutely accurate for the time. But they make me happy.

A few examples:

Monday
Here's Lucy
The Doris Day Show
The Julie Andrews Hour
Medical Center

Tuesday
Happy Days
Laverne & Shirley
Cheers
WKRP in Cincinnati
Starsky & Hutch

Wednesday (syndication night - any combo of the following and others - especially good when the fog rolls in)
I Love Lucy
Bewitched
That Girl
I Dream of Jeannie
Batman
The Lucy Show
Get Smart
Flipper
Family Affair
Green Acres
The Addams Family
The Munsters
The Flying Nun
Gilligan's Island
[I am sure I am forgetting some]

Thursday
Friends
Will & Grace
Frasier
Wings (or The Nanny)
E.R.

Friday
The Brady Bunch
The Partridge Family
The Odd Couple
Room 222
Love, American Style

Saturday
All in the Family
M.A.S.H.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Bob Newhart Show
The Carol Burnett Show

Sunday
[early to bed because work tomorrow]

 

[MatthewA]

I was born in the summer, so I have plenty of reruns for the birthdate version of this idea.

ABC: Fall Guy, The Hamptons, Dynasty
CBS: The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd (movie)
NBC: Real People, The Facts of Life, Buffalo Bill, The Family Tree

Of those, Dynasty, The Facts of Life, Buffalo Bill, and the film are on DVD. Of those, I own The Facts of Life. The episode aired that night would've likely been a season 4 rerun, so we're at the end of the Eastland years.

I might pick up the Buffalo Bill set, though. Dabney Coleman is a talk show host. I've heard worse ideas.

You must be my age then. Also, The Fall Guy is on DVD … sort of. They stalled that at season 1 and actually IIRC altered the visuals to get out of paying for the song some bar band in the background performed.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

OK, I decided to try Neil's idea, with some slight adjustments, as my classic TV collection is nowhere near as broad as his. I put all 7 weekdays into an online randomizer, and then did a separate randomizer for the years 1955 - 1985, and put together a list of the first 7 or so choices. I didn't restrict to only one network, though, but chose the shows on a given night of a given season that are in my collection. Here are the first seven choices according to the randomizer (shows listed in order of primetime airing, with some overlap, according to the TV Tango website):

1) Saturday 1964
Flipper
The Outer Limits
Secret Agent
Gunsmoke

2) Wednesday, 1963
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
The Virginian
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Dick Van Dyke Show

3) Sunday, 1969
Lassie
Land of the Giants
The FBI
Bonanza
Mission: Impossible

4) Monday, 1968
The Avengers
Gunsmoke
I Dream of Jeannie
The Guns of Will Sonnett
The Big Valley

5) Friday, 1977
The Rockford Files
Quincy, M.E.

6) Tuesday, 1969
The Mod Squad
I Dream of Jeannie

7) Thursday, 1985
Magnum, P.I.
Simon & Simon

Haven't watched any of these line-ups yet, but some of them look pretty good to me, so may give it a go.

 

[DavidJ]

Very cool ideas. Unfortunately, there’s not much to choose from on my birthday in primetime.

 

[Gary OS]

I was at the movies the night I was born. Saw Charlie Chan Carries On. Will have to pull out my theater film copy of that one to celebrate.


Gary "in all seriousness, I'm not sure of the lineup but if it's solid I'll post later" O.