The Trends of Autumn
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television THE TRENDS OF AUTUMN BY MARVIN KITMAN With the help of my most reliably informed—and uninformed—sources at the networks, I am prepared to reveal the latest developments in TV...
...is about a sexy black policewoman, a Ms...
...is similarly based on a successful animal movie...
...sounds like it has something to do with cars or oil-rich wheelers-and-dealers...
...Sonny Bono, the host of the year's only new variety hour, is not unusually tall...
...But Dean Martin was going off the air and TV always makes sure to schedule at least one singing Italian...
...David Hartman, 6'5", is the star of Lucas Tanner (NBC, Wednesdays, 9 p.m...
...is a Swedish Waltons, circa 1850s...
...relates the ongoing adventures of a service station owner in East Los Angeles...
...Come to think of it, Lucas Tanner is really like Marcus Welby, M.D...
...Why...
...This is not ABC's first expedition to the north...
...In the pilot, the brakes failed while the truck was movin' down a mountain...
...is like Get Christie Love!, except it concerns a sexy white policewoman, played by Angie Dickinson...
...Unfortunately, this one-hour action-adventure starring Robert Forster as Nakia Parker, a Navajo cop in a New Mexico town, will not make the natives less restless...
...Let me briefly outline two of the more exciting new warm shows replacing the now virtually extinct cold action-adventure shows (one way to describe next season's drop from 31 to 24): The Little House on the Prairie (NBC, Wednesdays, 8 p.m...
...I hope she is spending her summer in a crash course at the police academy...
...and ABC's Everything Money Can't Buy, the story of gasoline at the height of the shortage (in any case, that is what I was told by my impeachable sources...
...After its success with 1950s nostalgia (Happy Days), ABC apparently is hoping to set back the nostalgia boom by a century...
...As a matter of fact, the last female detective on television was Honey West, who shared the spotlight with a pet ocelot named, I believe, Brucie-bite-a-bit...
...Police Woman (NBC, Fridays, 10 p.m...
...She's a vice cop, which should give them all a good laugh in Washington...
...Remember, they were the people who gave us The Alaskans...
...His remarks were reprinted in the Congressional Record...
...The Texas Wheelers (ABC, Fridays, 9:30 p.m...
...Jane Bond, and it stars Teresa Graves in her first sock-it-to-'em role since Laugh-In...
...Planet of the Apes (CBS, Fridays, 8 p.m...
...It was about Kansas, he said, even though it was filmed somewhere south of Anaheim...
...f t is important to remember when the fall rosters were put together...
...Louis, not New York, and Tanner becomes a school teacher, not a broadcaster...
...Where will the drama come from week after week...
...After all, even the Indians will have their own series, Nakia (ABC, Saturdays, 10 p.m...
...Actually, "Wheelers" is simply a family name...
...is an 1850s Midwestern Waltons starring Michael Landon, formerly of Bonanza...
...One may say, I think, that this half-hour sitcom would be going nowhere were it not for the oil embargo...
...Although his setting this time is Yosemite, look for the show to stress not the latest conservation techniques but forest fires and stickups at the lodge...
...Of this year's new crime-and-punishment programs, 12.5 per cent are about lady dicks—up from zero in '73-74 and '72-73...
...They are trained, and will not bite the other actors when upstaged...
...The hero is a truck...
...Before the pilot went on the air...
...is the exception to the rule that tall guys are dominating the series this season...
...The New Land is not supposed to have any connection with the movie of the same name that starred Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow...
...Hartman plays a 6'5" former professional baseball star who quit the game when his arm went bad...
...1. A lot of tall guys have new series this fall...
...It wants the show to appeal to all Scandinavians...
...Sierra (NBC, Thursdays, 8 p.m...
...is a spin-off from an Ironsides episode...
...This is the first show ever endorsed by the Governor of Kansas, who urged everybody to watch the pilot last season...
...Produced by Jack Webb, Sierra is the story of forest rangers and their activities in the woods...
...The decision to shelve these three shows may be the most reassuring sign we've had all year that the energy crisis is over...
...This program is about two lions, a subject that has been neglected on TV since Jack Paar retired...
...Kodiak is modeled after Cheyenne, Walker's old series, but has been reset in Alaska...
...4. There is a trend towards policewomen series...
...He plays a 6'6" Alaska state patrol officer named Cal "Kodiak" McKay, who polices the large state in "his especially equipped truck or snowmobile...
...Get Christie Love...
...is a series adapted from the five hit movies that appealed to the love of animals among the young...
...There may be some hanky-panky in the tents, too...
...Movin' On (NBC, Wednesdays, 10 p.m...
...Is he another Indian who can't get ahead in the world...
...Credit for an assist must also be given to the 1974-75 ABC, NBC and CBS schedules...
...Yes, Little Joe has gotten married and begun raising a family of his own—thus dispelling those ugly rumors about the Cartwright boys...
...If the pilot was any indication, she'll be lucky to last a week on the force...
...Included in the cast are Claude Akins as a gypsy truck driver and Frank Converse in the role of a graduate student who has chucked it all for the lure of the big rigs...
...NBC's Second Start, the tale of an ex-door-to-door insurance salesman who got out of that business because the gas shortage was slowing him down, and who is now going to medical school so that he won't ever have to make house calls again...
...Do you know anybody who cares that much about Alaska...
...Born Free (NBC, Mondays, 8 p.m...
...All three of these series were produced by David Victor-the fabulously successful Svengali of the spin-off...
...There is talk that the (Senator John O.) Pastore committee, which last spring investigated TV violence again, will open hearings this year on excessive warmth...
...Television is not called a relevant medium for nothing...
...And Prairie got the highest rating of any NBC pilot last year...
...a series about the life of truck drivers, describes the thrills of cargo conveyance...
...Obviously Webb, who did such a terrific job as a volunteer flack for the Los Angeles police and paramedics, has exhausted his supply of civil servants in the L.A...
...area and decided to pull a Thoreau...
...ABC, Wednesdays, 10 p.m...
...and Owen Marshall: Counset-lor-at-Law...
...She does not, however, patrol the streets of San Francisco in a wheelchair...
...It just goes to prove the pulling power of the Congressional Record," a source said...
...It will give famous guest stars an opportunity every week to play apes, a challenge heretofore unavailable on TV...
...But I digress...
...What can we expect to see on the Sonny Comedy Revuel "We can expect to see short, blonde singers," predicted one network spokesman...
...It is being filmed in Africa with Gary Collins and Diana Muldaur, but information leaked from the network indicates the lions will be from the San Diego zoo...
...On Television THE TRENDS OF AUTUMN BY MARVIN KITMAN With the help of my most reliably informed—and uninformed—sources at the networks, I am prepared to reveal the latest developments in TV programing...
...was initially titled The Rangers, but I should make one thing perfectly clear: It is not a series about hockey players...
...The head of the clan is called—now get this-Truckie...
...I'm sure this is an idea with a lot of mileage left in it...
...Nakia Parker is only a deputy sheriff, and pressure groups will undoubtedly ask why he never became sheriff...
...It's The Jim Bouton Story all over again, except that Lucas Tanner takes place in St...
...For in addition to the above trends one can see the influence of the energy crisis on many shows...
...Previously, celebrities could only play gorillas on the crime shows...
...2. There will be less violence in programing this jail...
...Victor once told a reporter he is after "drama that has a way of striking hard at the emotions with a retentive hangover...
...Before the fuel shortage, the show would have been entitled The Ohio Joneses or The New Jersey Kit-mans...
...This program was one of the real surprises of the fall lineup...
...Senator McGovern also encouraged people to tune in, because it portrayed what is good about South Dakota...
...As a higher-up at ABC put it, "It's a big show, though Sonny himself is rather short...
...Cher had been expected to get the slot, especially since she is tall and Sonny was supposed to be the one without talent...
...Clint Walker, 6'6", is the star of Kodiak (ABC, Fridays, 8 p.m...
...Not since Chopper One has an inanimate object other than an actor played a lead in prime time...
...More than any man in TV, he has demonstrated what a high you can get on soapsuds...
...Finally, I should mention three other new sidetracked series: The Love Nest, a CBS show about a 70-year-old Florida couple who have a personal energy crisis...
...The Sonny Comedy Revue (ABC, Sundays, 8 p.m...
...I am told the network is trying to play down the fact that the family in its TV series is Swedish...
...But changing tires should also fill up many an exciting hour...
...3. There is a back-to-nature trend this fall...
...The New Land (ABC, Saturdays, 8 p.m...
...otherwise, it would be called The Bruins or The Flyers, names that sound more exciting and suggest less likelihood of choking up when the Nielsen going gets tough...
...Amy Premiss (NBC, Sundays, 8:30 p.m...
...Chico and the Man (NBC, Fridays, 8:30 p.m...
...Insiders at the network say McKay may wind up driving the vehicle that belonged to Doc Elliot, whose show was dropped, reportedly because he was discovered practicing acupuncture without a license...
...Because it's very hard to insert blood and gore into The Waltons and Apple's Way, the type of show that has recently broken out on the airwaves like prickly heat...
Vol. 57 • August 1974 • No. 16
