Color my world

The post you’re reading now was composed on Wednesday evening of the previous week—and before I begin, I apologize to everyone who may have already been clued into this news (I talked about it on Facebook…but not everyone in the TDOY faithful is into the whole [anti]social media thing); an article that I read at the MeTV website sort of planted the seed of inspiration, and I knew I needed to cobble together something fast and economical because of the weekend busyness.

Back about this same time last year, I mentioned that our DISH network system started carrying WGTA (channel 32), a local TV station in Toccoa (the “GTA” stands for “Greenville to Atlanta”) …and because WGTA’s programming consisted of the substations Heroes & Icons (32.1), Decades (32.2), and Movies! (32.3), our DISH had the full Heroes & Icons lineup—a rarity in the world of DISH, since they don’t usually carry substations.  In January of this year, there was an announcement that MeTV would be available on our DISH Channel 32 starting March 25, because WSB-TV—which originally carried MeTV as a substation—had dropped it, switching to Escape.  (And not the good kind—“designed to free you from the four walls of today.”)  The addition of MeTV as a WGTA substation meant all the other substations moved down a peg in terms of OTA (off the air)—Heroes & Icons is now 32.2, Decades 32.3, and so on.

The news that MeTV would once again be available in the House of Yesteryear was, as you may have guessed, warmly welcomed; sure, I experienced a small amount of initial disappointment (I was only a handful of episodes from a complete collection of Broken Arrow) that gave way to me being extremely jazzed because MeTV offers a good deal more variety in their classic TV programming.  (Also, too; I would gain access to reruns of Our Miss Brooks and 77 Sunset Strip—two series not yet released to DVD.)  I’m not happy that these shows are heavily edited in order to cram in the commercials my father constantly bitches about…but a thirsty man never turns down a glass of water.  I’m not joking about the ads on MeTV, by the way; I tried to persuade His Lairdship to start watching Gunsmoke on MeTV at 1pm EDT weekdays because they show two of the half-hour episodes back-to-back and he’s seen all of the color hour-long episodes they run on TVLand at that same hour.  (He claims he hasn’t…but this is incorrect, because I’m usually in the living room with him and I know I have.)  He gave up after one thirty-minute episode.  “Too many commercials,” he griped.  (I’ve been away from TVLand too long—I was not aware they were now ad-free.)

The amusing thing about MeTV is that on their current schedule, they run back-to-back episodes of The Andy Griffith Show at 8pm EDT weekdays (7pm EDT Sundays)—but only in selected areas.  If they’re running TAGS on another station in your viewing area, MeTV substitutes those reruns with…wait for it…Mayberry R.F.D.  (“Every time I think I’m out—they pull me back in!”)  Now comes an announcement that the network is going to work the TAGS episodes from 1965-68 into the rotation.  That’s right.  The color episodes.  The Mayberrys That Dare Not Speak Their Name.

I know many people—I think we even heard from them in the comments section when I was doing the Mayberry Mondays posts—who will not only refuse to watch The Andy Griffith Show in color…they vehemently deny the period ever existed.  And I get this—I really do.  There are a lot of TAGS episodes from the color era—a lot of episodes—that clearly illustrate that sitcom was running on fumes once Don Knotts said “I’m off like a prom dress.”  I think Don’s departure is the chief explanation for the hostility toward the Mayberry color era—replacing the Barney Fife character (even though Knotts returned on several occasions in a guest-star capacity) with that doofus played by Jack Burns was an idiotic decision that would not be equaled until they rolled out New Coke.  And I say this as a guy who likes Jack Burns…I just believe his "Warren Ferguson" was not a good fit where Mayberry was concerned, and in the MeTV article (“The Color Seasons of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ are Great and Here’s Why”) the author amusingly notes “the character only appears in 11 episodes before mysteriously vanishing to wherever Chuck Cunningham went.”

The article makes some good arguments…and some not-so-good.  Their first bullet point, “Howard Sprague is a wonderfully milquetoast character,” is the strongest argument they could make (I’m going to assume that’s why it was first); it’s no accident that, as I have stated in the past, Howard is usually at the center of the one laugh-out-loud moment in every episode of Mayberry R.F.D.…and the subject of that show’s funnier episodes (“The Panel Show,” “The Caper,” “The Mynah Bird,” etc.).  My fellow Facebook denizens and I discussed this article a bit, with many of MeTV's points greeted with all the enthusiasm of drinking warm beer.  I believe it was Andrew “Grover” Leal who had his flabber gasted at #4, “Road Trips”—personally, I didn’t have a problem when Andy, Opie, and Aunt Bee made the trek to Hollywood…because if it was good enough for Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, it was good enough for the Taylors.

The only item on the MeTV list that found me searching for where in my skull my eyes had rolled to was #7, “Aunt Bee Gets to Do a Lot More.”  Mr. Leal persuasively argues: “[They] were trying too hard to fill the ‘Barney does something wacky’ gap,” and I have to agree (while at the same time believing “The Mayberry Chef” to be one of the stronger final season episodes).  I might be persuaded to side with MeTV if I stopped to consider that with every “wacky” Aunt Bee installment that meant less time spent with Mayberry’s resident fix-it savant and wife-batterer, Emmett Clark.  As I told Facebook chum Jason Beard: “…I have stared into the R.F.D. abyss, and I know that even on its worst color-saturated day TAGS was better.”

I think that last part might be the number one reason I’m not as filled with revulsion with a color Mayberry as some.  You see (this is the portion of the blog where I tell a sad childhood story—please, no tears), we didn’t get a color TV set until 1976.  Mayberry was always in black-and-white when I was a kid.  Sure, some of town’s residents either vanished (Otis, Ernest T.) or moved away (Barney, Floyd), but for the younger Ivan, that sleepy little North Carolina hamlet remained in its monochromatic state until the day my father decided that color TV was no longer a fad and was here to stay.  (Yes, he never misses an opportunity to ride me about my love of black-and-white TV shows and movies—completely missing the irony that my childhood might have had something to do with that.)

So bring on the color episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, MeTV.  The channel is also running announcements of the return of Rhoda (yay!) and Remington Steele (snore) …I just hope this isn’t going to interfere with my burgeoning Our Miss Brooks collection.

The final frontier

So Star Trek will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary this coming September 8.  I know people now refer to it as Star Trek: The Original Series, to differentiate it from the myriad shows that followed in the franchise…but I’ve never been one to follow the crowd.  (I’m a loner, Dottie.  A rebel.)  I suppose if I gave it a good deal of thought it’s probably because outside of TOS, I was never a huge fan of the other entries in the Star Trek universe.  Sure, I’ve watched episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine…but they really weren’t my cup of Luzianne, as it were.  They’re good television…but my personal preference is for the first series.  And I say this as someone who’s sat down with all of the Star Trek films…the only exception being the latest one, Star Trek Beyond (2016).

To cash in on commemorate Trek’s semi centennial, the Heroes & Icons channel has acquired all five series in the franchise: TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise.  They’re running them six days a week, and though H&I’s promos said they would be “back-to-back,” this really only applies to Sunday nights; Monday through Friday the block is interrupted by Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and NYPD Blue.  H&I’s ads for the Star Trek schedule addition also boasted that TOS would be shown “uncut.”

Here’s why I’m a mite skeptical.  I pulled out my first season Star Trek set and watched the premiere episode, “The Man Trap”—and clocked that sucka at fifty minutes.  There is no way on this once-green Earth that Heroes & Icons can squeeze all those mesothelioma, catheter, and reverse mortgage commercials in the span of ten minutes.  I suspect the only way the channel can accomplish this is by subtly altering the running time of each episode by speeding it up…and I say “subtly” with a large dose of sarcasm because while they think they’re getting away with it they’re not.  FETV does this frequently with their Lone Ranger reruns, and the reason I know they’re speeding them up is that when I hear Gerald Mohr say “He was a fabulous individual…” it’s in a much higher register than the actor’s usual speaking voice.

Interestingly, my father has taken to Heroes & Icons’ Star Trek acquisitions like a duck to water.  (Well, not the last three Trek series—they air past his bedtime.)  To be honest, I thought the DISH austerity program here at Rancho Yesteryear would cause me to go cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs…but it seems to be affecting the ‘rents far more.  I have to confess getting a kick out of seeing my mother yell at the television set: “There is not one goddamn thing on!”

As for me…well, I have been revisiting the show through the magic of DVD.  I’m not one of those people who read too much into the show (“It’s an allegory on the human condition”); I just enjoyed watching it as a kid (I thought Spock was one of the coolest characters on TV…and the fact that all the female members of the Enterprise wore shorty-short skirts as part of their uniform stoked my adolescent fantasies).  It still holds up…even the sub-par episodes.

The state of the blog (with fabulous prizes!)

It seems like every time I return to the blog after an extended absence I always find myself profusely apologizing for that absence.  So I won’t ignore tradition, and I’ll get the act of contrition out of the way: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

The disappearance of posts for over two months can be attributed to a number of factors…but chiefly among them is that I have been sidelined with a lack of motivation.  A few years back, I made a casual observation that with the onslaught of the social media phenomenon, the art of blogging was in danger of being threatened; platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow individuals to accomplish pretty much the same as a blog post without having to expend a great deal of energy.  (And for someone like me—who has raised inactivity and laziness to an art form—it’s a siren song that’s mighty hard to resist.)

I don’t want to sell myself short, however: I’ve kept in the game with both blogging for Radio Spirits and my “Where’s That Been?” column at ClassicFlix…so don’t pour salt on this slug just yet.  But both of these (plus the lucrative liner note projects for RS) do keep me occupied—here’s an example: I had wanted to contribute to the Classic Film and TV Café’s “National Classic Movie Day” blogathon in May…but that event coincided with my wrapping up some liner notes for a Green Hornet set (which you should check out—it contains a number of uncirculated episodes), and when I completed that I was just too wiped to work on anything else.  (So a “mea culpa” to friend Rick for bailing on that.)

As such, until I can get back into the swing of blogging again, this post will be a “catch-up” on the comings and goings here at Rancho Yesteryear.  As the cliché goes—there’s good news and bad news.  The jubilant bulletin is that my sister Kat and her family have relocated to North Carolina (after spending the past three years in the Pacific Northwest); stemming from the fact that her partner has obtained gainful employment in the Piedmont.  To say that my mother did cartwheels (and with her recent back surgery, this was a revelation) at these developments would be an understatement, since she has missed her grandson so.

To a dee-luxe apartment in the sky.

Speaking of my nephew, he has just returned from a two-week engagement at summer camp…where it appears that every photo of him taken during that experience found him participating in some sort of water activity.  (I joked to his moms that they might want to check between his fingers and toes for webbing.)  He talked non-stop for two hours on the drive home to the new Double K Ranch, then crashed hard in the last hour.  Davis has also apparently developed a taste for Cheerwine, the bubbly cherry soda concoction that has been a regional favorite since 1917 (though it can also be purchased in other sections of the U.S. of A.)

Sister Kat hasn’t made the complete transition to NC yet; she will finish up her camp director duties for the summer and then…quien sabe?  Seriously—Mom asked her what her plans were and Kat replied: “I don’t know…but at least my hair will be perfect.”  (This is a reference to the fact that during her sojourn in the PNW, she searched high and low for a decent haircut; she missed the stylist in Athens who maintained her perfect coif, and now will have the opportunity to continue her patronage since the salon is a little closer to her new address.)

Sadly, into every life a little rain must fall.  (This is the “bad news” portion of the post, so if you want to skip the next seven paragraphs to get to the swag giveaway I won’t think any less of you.)  Los Parentes Yesteryear and I just recently celebrated our first year anniversary of moving to Pixley Winterville, and the latest bill from DISH confirmed what we had been dreading for some time: they are raising the rate on our service.  (Gigantically, as character veteran Don Barclay might say.)  Since the ‘rents and I are all subsisting on what is often referred to as “fixed incomes,” there just wasn’t going to be any way of reconciling such an increase in the family budget.  (I have railed about this in the past, as you may well be aware, but it bears repeating: both the cable TV and satellite companies are staffed with human-weasel hybrids.)

I only wish mi padre had let me conduct the negotiations with DISH, which occurred this past Saturday; I had previously done some first-rate horse trading with AT&T U-Verse when they wanted to spike our TV bill (though for reasons that I to this day can’t figure out they kept our monthly service the same once we agreed to put in an extra phone line…that we never, ever used).  But unfortunately, once my father gets on the phone, he’s transformed into one of those unpleasant old men constantly yelling at kids to stay off his lawn.  (No offense, Bill.)  He wound up cutting our TV package to the bare bone, and the two most important casualties were getTV and The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™.

I’m not going to lie to you.  I was a little pouty at this news.  (Okay, more like a lot pouty.)  I realize that “living high on the hog,” TV wise, is not a viable option for the Yesteryear Trio, but as I explained to Mom once I had finished a few stiff belts: we don’t have too many entertainment options here in B.F.E.  The only other service available to us (we’re too far out for cable, and U-verse doesn’t service our area either) is DirecTV, and they’re an even bigger band of pirates.  At the time I signed us up, I took special pains to explain to her that DISH was probably going to gouge us once the year was out.  She told me—“What else can we do?  We have to have an Internet connection, and we have to have cable.”  (A lot can happen in a year, I guess.)

My Facebook pal Kingo Gondo suggested sometime back that I look into the option of getting an outside antenna so that I could receive those substations DISH refuses to carry (MeTV, Antenna TV, etc.).  I looked into this seconds after I found out about Dad’s DISH dealings.  Helpfully, the website at which I was pricing the antenna directed me to another website that would let me know what stations we would receive.  They ask you: “Will this antenna be installed 30 feet above ground level?”

Since I wanted to avoid those hassles (I had planned on getting an indoor one) I didn’t check that box…and when I pressed the “send” button, I learned that we would only be able to receive one channel.  Okay, says I, I’ll try it again—maybe I can con someone into installing the antenna outside.  “Send.”  The answer remained…one channel.  That station is WGTA, our Heroes & Icons affiliate…which we get on DISH already.

I probably would have taken this news a little better—oh, who am I kidding; I’m a TCM junkie, and I remember the days when we didn’t have it…they were dark ones indeed—were it not for the fact that most of the crap my father watches (local news, History Channel, MSDNC) remained intact in the whittled-down package.  What a coinky-dink!  (The ‘rents did lose their beloved Braves games…though an occasional contest will show up on ESPN and “Big Fox” every now and then.  To say that my mother was pissed doesn’t even begin to cover it, though.  (Earlier today, my father switched over to TVLand—as is his habit—to watch Gunsmoke reruns and then remembered we said hasta la vista to that channel as well.)

Because I had a little time this weekend to reflect on these developments, I came away with the take that while I’m not jumping for joy at how all this turned out (particularly since I was helping out a few cable/satellite-deprived folks by grabbing and burning to disc programs/movies that had attracted their interest) perhaps there is a silver lining on all this.  After all, it’s not like I’m starved for entertainment around here.  I already socked away a lot of Tee Cee Em/getTV programming on the DVR (I think the gauge was at 49 percent), so there’s that to get through…and I have what scientists have measured as a metric “buttload” of material in the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives.  I’m not humblebragging, you understand—it’s just that a lot of these DVDs have yet to be liberated from their shrink wrap; that’s how terrible my habit is.  I’ve been meaning to get the blog up and running again, so this might provide a much needed kick-in-the-pants.

So to celebrate the return of the blog (okay—everybody back to the post!) how about I give out some Radio Spirits freebies?  Back in August of last year, I was tapped to do the liner notes for Suspense at Work—a 10-CD collection of broadcasts from “radio’s outstanding theatre of thrills.”  The shows in this set all have a common theme: they’re set against a background of the workplace, where ambitious individuals resort to murderous mayhem to get ahead in the company…or the mundane monotony of punching a time clock is interrupted by robberies, embezzlement, etc.  You can always count on Suspense for first-rate radio drama, and some of the stars gracing these broadcasts include Bonita Granville, Edmund O’Brien, Ann Blyth, Van Heflin, Ronald Colman, and Richard Widmark.  (I’m partial to “To None a Deadly Drug,” a nail-biter from October 25, 1955 that features OTR veterans like Harry Bartell, Jack kruschen, Barbara Eiler, and Eve McVeagh.)

It’s been 2-3 months since I did a giveaway here at TDOY…so the usual “thirty-day rule” won’t apply here.  What will apply is that if you’d like an opportunity to win one of these sets (I have two to hand out) just drop me an e-mail with “Suspense at Work” in the subject header (that way I know your intentions are honorable, suh, and you’re not some bit of spam from the wrong side of the tracks) at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com.  The deadline for this contest will be 11:59pm EDT next Monday, July 18; I will select two winners via the all-powerful numbers generator at Random.org and inform them of their good fortune so that they can provide me with snail-mail details (so that I might send their swag on its way).  Remember, faithful readers—Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is the phrase that pays!

“Broken Arrow? This is why we can’t have nice things!”

This morning, whilst I dubbed onto a blank disc a copy of Passport to Suez (1943) for my pal Andrew “Grover” Leal, I decided to supplement Suez’s short running time (72 minutes) with a pair of episodes from the 1956-58 TV Western Broken Arrow, which we recently acquired when DISH Network added station WGTA to its lineup.  I mentioned in Saturday’s post that this was a most welcomed surprise in the House of Yesteryear, because a similar channel (in the same spot as WGTA is now on DISH, channel 32) that offered up the occasional tasty classic TV run had been yanked about the time we signed on as DISH subscribers (in July of 2015).  What I did not know—or rather, would have known had I did a little more research—was that this was the same channel.  Hereby hangs a tale.

WGTA (“Greenville to Atlanta”) was originally WNEG, a Toccoa, GA station that had been in operation since 1984, primarily serving four Georgian counties that comprise the Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville market.  (Athens, Gainesville and Braselton comprise the station’s secondary market.)  In 2008, the station was sold to the University of Georgia, who had planned to use WNEG as a training facility for UGA’s journalism and broadcasting majors, and the station became WUGA in May of 2011.  But the UGA experiment came to an end when the station was sold to Marquee Broadcasting in March 2015, and it adopted its WGTA call letters in July (just as we were subscribing to DISH).  If you’re like me, and you do a lot of channel hopping just to see if there are any non-home shopping channels on DISH, you would have come across a disclaimer on channel 32 stating that the channel was no longer available but that you (the viewer) should keep an eye out for replacement programming.

So DISH graciously gave us Heroes & Icons on WGTA’s 32.1; the 32.2 portion of WGTA features programming from Decades! and 32.3 is a Movies! affiliate.  I was genuinely surprised that the ‘rents have clutched WGTA to their bosom—they amused themselves Saturday mornings with reruns of the 1966-68 Tarzan series (my father wanted to know why the ape man spoke perfect English and I had to explain to him that it was Johnny Weissmuller who attended The Tonto School of Speech…not Ron Ely) and Dad put on a pair of Wanted: Dead or Alive episodes this morning while he engaged in his morning paper ritual.  As for myself, I took a stroll down Memory Lane last night with back-to-back reruns of Hill Street Blues.

But leave us return to the matter of Broken Arrow.  The TV series premiered six years after the release of the 1950 movie version (adapted from Elliott Arnold’s novel Blood Brother) that starred James Stewart and Jeff Chandler, with a May 1, 1956 pilot that originally aired on CBS’ The 20th Century-Fox Hour.  In that pilot, actor John Lupton played Stewart’s role of Tom Jeffords and future Fantasy Island mogul Ricardo Montalban as Cochise.  By the time Broken Arrow was greenlighted as a regular series in the fall of 1956, Michael Ansara took over as Cochise—he made for a very convincing Native American chief despite his Syrian-Egyptian origins.

Ansara wasn’t particularly jazzed about his gig on Broken Arrow.  “Cochise could do one of two things—stand with his arms folded, looking noble; or stand with arms at his sides, looking noble,” he explained to a TV Guide interviewer in 1960.  But I have to be honest; Mike is the main reason the show works, in addition to the fact that it was one of the few small screen oaters at that time to portray Native Americans in a positive light.  The first installment I watched was “Indian Agent” (10/09/56), in which Jeffords falls for and marries Sonseeahray, the maiden who later draws her rations (Debra Paget played her in the 1950 movie—here it’s Sue England in the role) as a result of a fight between Cochise’s men and a bunch of “the-only-good-Injun-is-a-dead-Injun” yahoos.  It’s a well-done episode that features Tom Fadden (a series regular as “Mitt Duffield”), Robert Warwick, James Griffith, Michael Pate, Kenneth MacDonald, and Anthony George.  Ansara sure gets his nobility workout here, as he tries to counsel the hot-headed Jeffords not to fly off the handle in the face of revenge.

The tables are turned in “The Captive” (10/23/56); here Jeffords advises Cochise to keep calm and carry on when an Apache brave (Ray Stricklyn) is kidnapped from the tribe.  The boy is a white man raised by Apaches; his grandmother (Kathryn Card) tries to persuade him to return to his birthright…and when he refuses, a skeevy lawyer (who else but Trevor Bardette) arranges for the young man to be snatched, inviting the ire of the Apaches.  Lane Bradford is in this one (appropriately as a henchman), and I chuckled to see Dick Wessel tending bar.

Broken Arrow ran only two seasons on ABC (a total of 72 episodes—seventy-three if you include the pilot) but bounced around on its daytime and evening schedules in reruns until 1960.  I can see why this one hasn’t been given the nod for a DVD release: the prints are not particularly sparkly (I think Facebook chum Hal Erickson pointed this out to me before I watched the show) and of course, they’ve whittled down the running time in order to squeeze in an extra commercial or two (I clocked both episodes at 23 minutes).  But I’ll certainly continue to DVR the shows because I think the series is entertaining; springing from a time when it was possible to do dramatic stories in the short span of a half-hour.

(Anti) Social media update: You may have noticed (then again, maybe not) that I recently deactivated my Twitter account—a proposition that I had been considering for some time…yet refrained from doing so for a number of reasons.  Long story short, I pulled the plug on Twitter this weekend…but I want to reassure people that it’s not for anything you did; I’ve just become frustrated with the whole 140-character “social media” experience.  I’m still on Facebook (I have argued all along that while the FB content can sometimes get poisonous, it’s still preferable to Twitter any day of the week) so I’m able to share pictures of my niece and nephew with their “Nana” and “Pop” from time to time.  Go in peace, my children.

My Heroes have always been Icons

Yesterday, for unknown whys and wherefores, my father decided to strike up a conversation with me about the old Steve McQueen TV western Wanted: Dead or Alive.  You may remember from a previous post that I capitalized on a Starz/Encore freeview several months back by building an episode collection of the entire series (I obtained 92 out of 94), but I worked on this out of the watchful eye of Dear Ol’ Dad, who doesn’t often comprehend how these things work.  (Which is to be expected of the man whose favorite function on the remote is the “mute” button.)  So I was curious as to how he would have access to the series.

As it turns out, he watched it the other morning (while Mumsy and I collected groceries) on WGTA-TV Atlanta—a new channel acquisition appearing on our DISH Network system.  Digital subchannels like MeTV and Antenna TV are a rarity on DISH; for unexplained reasons, they won’t carry them—the only such station that DISH carries (as of this post) is GetTV, and I don’t need to rehash why this is a wonderful way to stoke my classic television obsession.  (Well, I suppose I could also include Laff; DISH replaced Blue Highways TV in March with this subchannel devoted to recent comedy movies and sitcoms.)  So seeing WGTA in the lineup made my little heart go pitter pat: they’re a Heroes & Icons affiliate, and H&I has sprinkled its ho-hum rerun schedule (Hunter, 21 Jump Street) with delectable classic goodies including 12 O’Clock High, Combat!, Wagon Train, and Broken Arrow.

I’ve seen the 1950 James Stewart film that inspired the TV version of Broken Arrow, but I’ve never actually seen an episode of the small screen version.  (My mother announced that she has, and she was kind of smug about it.)  I’m just pleased that DISH added the station (they removed the Toccoa, GA station that had a fairly impressive rerun library many months back), and perhaps there will come a day when I will be able to rejoin my MeTV brethren and sistren.  Apologies for the dearth of posts this month, by the way; I've been distracted by various shiny objects but I hope to have a more robust posting schedule in May.