Saturday Morning TV

by Gary Grossman

Book Overview

Saturday Morning TV celebrates thirty years of television programs that touched the kid in all of us. Beginning in the infancy of TV itself with movie matinee perennials like Laurel and Hardy, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440583616
• ISBN13: 9780440583615
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The next best thing to a time machine

This book has been out of print for some time (my own copy dated from the early eighties) but those willing to undertake the search for this classic book on classic TV will not be disappointed.Saturday morning, says Grossman, was not always the kids' progamming ghetto that it is today. In fact, in 1950 one would have been hard-pressed to find anything other than a test pattern. Programmers soon learned, however, that Saturday morning proved to be both a valid "proving ground" for new show ideas--and a dumping ground for those that had outlived their usefulness. Saturday morning had something for everyone in those days--kids would be drawn by old Republic Hopalong Cassidy serials, while their parents could watch such pioneering action shows as "Highway Patrol." Teens were treated to such forgotten (and forgettable) fare as "A Date With Judy" or "Paul Whiteman's TV Teen Club" (a sort of paleolithic "American Bandstand") as well as, yes, "American Bandstand."And the puppet shows--at one time, television on Saturday morning was bursting with characters on and off strings, from "Judy Splinters" (a local L.A. phenomenon in the late forties and early fifties) to Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop (did you know Shari hosted her first show at SEVENTEEN)? As one might expect, all shows were live in those harrowing, primitive pre-tape days--Buffalo Bob Smith of "Howdy Doody" fame repeats the oft-told story of one Halloween broadcast when a young member of the "Peanut Gallery" urgently needed to go to the bathroom. The impatient Smith gestured toward a technician, but the kid thought he was pointing toward a large pumpkin, lit by a candle, placed just out of camera range. Let's just say the kid put out the candle, while Smith laughed hysterically on-camera in front of a bewildered home audience. To explain to viewers who wrote in asking what happened, Smith later composed a cute poem recounting the incident, which is printed in the book.The book also covers the other two staples of early Saturday morning kid programming, namely the western and the "space opera." Grossman interviews an unmasked Clayton Moore, TV's Lone Ranger (at the time of the book's publication, Moore was involved in a legal dispute with the producers of a new Lone Ranger movie--with the result that he could no longer wear his famous mask in promotional appearances. He got around the problem by wearing wraparound sunglasses. The movie bombed--poetic justice of a type the Lone Ranger could appreciate).The book's only flaw is its sweeping condemnation of the then-current Saturday-morning product--namely, animated cartoons. Make no mistake, "Scooby Doo" was far from quality programming, but Bugs Bunny ruled Saturday morning as well (with classic cartoons sadly shorn of so-called "violence.") Grossman seems to side with such self-appointed guardians of "pro-social"(ugh!) behavior as Peggy Charren, head of Action for Children's Television. He objects to cartoons on the ridiculous grounds that they gave