More retrospection on television
It’s not who you know but rather what you know. In a nutshell, the story of my life and relative success. Give me a round of trivia and I’ll forego a social occasion any time, hands down. Testing is now believed to increase retention, so I will continue to rise every day to a quick round of online trivia. And I am not alone.
This afternoon, while other channels were covering the birth of a new European nation (a continent that has a long and coloured history of doing just that), my friends at PBS brought me four (or more) episodes in a series that recounts the history of primetime television. The narrative of our lives, if you will. After all, whether I lived in the dark ages where only one channel was available, or in more modern times with dozens of channels (all showing CSI derivatives), the TV has provided a view of the world I live in. Forget other places, where they’re busy at the national forge. I live in a world that was designed by a handful of successful men and women.
Getting back to trivia, I learned that the best of class was designed by one man who had to find a way around a legal conundrum. If it was illegal to provide the response to a question, was it equally wrong to provide the question to a response. Mathematically, yes. In the through the looking glass world of television, no. The juggernaut known as Jeopardy was born.
What about late night TV? I’m now too old to stay up that late, but in earlier times I too watched Johnny and Joey and Arsenio and David and the others. The newest political jokes the silliest premises for a show (Steve Allen in a banana split), the rise and fall of the Rat Pack; all were found here after the kids went to bed.
Even Barbara Eden was there. She may dress less provocatively now that she’s into a seventh decade, but she started out back when TV hadn’t yet found a way to broadcast colour to the masses. Forty years ago, we too were searching for odd bottles on the beach, just in case.
There’s a DVD available for the series (or part of it). This might be worth popping a few hard-earned dollars to own.
