Posted on 04/09/2014 6:35:11 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
The broadcast network announced “an unprecedented effort to discover fresh comedic voices” on Tuesday by launching a national campaign offering aspiring comedy writers from around the country the chance to pitch their sitcom ideas. [snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at insidetv.ew.com ...
The last one was probably Seventh Heaven.
LOLOL!
Hey NBC!
Here’s an idea for yah.
Rerun the following:
Winky Dink and You - the first interactive cartoon show
Crusader Rabbit
Tom Terrific
That’s right, cartoon shows from the fifties. They would certainly raise the intellectual content by several orders of magnitude over the puerile nonsense NBC currently broadcasts.
And they’re certainly vastly funnier.
Bring back the evening Family Hour.
Good idea! Kind of like Gilligan’s Island, only it could be Gullibles’s Iceberg.
Though it wouldn’t happen through NBC, I can imagine a new production studio oriented to “volume” instead of just a few high budget productions. It’s selling points:
1) Popular with the various unions, because it provides *some* work for a lot of people, instead of just a few big names. So an emphasis on vignette productions, like the original Twilight Zone, with a mostly different cast and production team each episode, live music, script and acting heavy, with minimal f/x.
2) Everybody works for scale, so no stars who want more. Everything goes direct to syndication, and profits go back into production.
3) Return to the stage production look and feel instead of reality based shows. That comes into play later, with old style travelogue and nature shows like Wild Kingdom.
4) Eventually produce a variety show, which is a tried and true formula.
I’d watch Bob Newhart every week, but of course, he’s about 84 years old now, probably not going to happen. I loved his guest spots on Big Bang.
"STOP IT!"
OK, so there’s this overly paranoid, not-too-smart-but-very-arrogant, gay drug abuser with a hidden past......
Heeeeey... yeah... Bob Newhart plays a retired astronaut who almost went to the Moon during the Apollo program, but his scheduled flight was cancelled (it all ended with 17). One of his neighbors believes the Moon landings were faked, his first marriage ended in divorce (which was a commonplace during the space program heyday) but he remarried a much younger woman. First episode his wife is watching “Apollo 18” and it’s making him angry, frustrated, and uncomfortable.
Sometime in the first season he invites his old space program buddies over for a poker game, and all of them except him are actual Apollo astronauts who went to the Moon.
...and during the episode they cut away from the action and have a fake CNN newscast about the search for their missing plane, and the search area varies by 1000 miles each time.
George: What writer? It’s a sitcom.
I never watched Seventh Heaven, but if Michael Landon was in it, it had to be great.
Two Unlikely Roommates
Democrat Suicide of the Week with weekend group shows.
I still think the broadcast finale episode of Newhart was one of the best and funniest finales ever.
I watched The Bob Newhart Show but never watched Newhart — until that finale.
IIRC, when they released the Newhard DVD, they edited out significant parts of that finale episode, thus ruining the comedic value the broadcast episode had.
How about a compilation of guys getting hit/kicked/slammed in the testicles? You could call it “Ouch! My Balls!”
Considering the caliber of today’s brain-dead audience, it would be a smash.
(With acknowledgement to “Idiocracy,” which at first I thought was a documentary.)
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