Defend the Indefensible: NBC's 78-78 Season

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Channel 4 Schedule: 1978-79 Season
Weekdays:

6:00 a.m. - Classroom

6:30 a.m. - Pop Goes the Country (M,Th); Nashville On the Road (T, F); Porter Wagoner (W)

7:00 a.m. - Today (hosted by Tom Brokaw)

7:25 and 8:25 a.m. - Today in Detroit (5 minute cutins with Carmen Harlan)

9:00 a.m. - New Dating Game

9:30 a.m. - All Star Secrets

10:00 a.m. - This Morning (hosted by Cathie Mann)

11:00 a.m. - High Rollers

11:30 a.m. - Wheel of Fortune

12:00 p.m. - Jeopardy!

12:30 p.m. - News 4 Detroit (with Lowell James)

1:00 p.m. - Hollywood Squares

1:30 p.m. - Days of Our Lives

2:30 p.m. - Doctors

3:00 p.m. - Another World

4:00 p.m. - Dinah!

5:30 p.m. - News 4 Detroit (with Sande Drew, Lowell James, Sonny Eliot and Joe Pellegrino)

6:00 p.m. - News 4 Detroit (with Mort Crim, David Wittman, Sonny Eliot and Joe Pellegrino)

6:30 p.m. - NBC News

7:00 p.m. - Bowling For Dollars

7:30 p.m. - Wild, Wild World of Animals (M); Wild Kingdom (T); Price is Right (W); In Search Of (Th); Muppet Show (F)

8:00 p.m. - NBC programming

11:00 p.m. - News 4

11:30 p.m. - Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

1:00 a.m. Tomorrow (with Tom Snyder)

2:00 a.m. - Classroom

2:30 a.m. - News 4 (repeat)

3:00 a.m. - Signoff

NBC shows on 4 included:

CHIPs (Sat. 8 p.m.), Saturday Night Live (Sat. 11:30 p.m.), World of Disney (Sun. 7 p.m.), Little House on the Prairie (Mon. 8 p.m.), Quincy (Thurs. 9 p.m.), Diff'rent Strokes (Fri. 8 p.m.), Rockford Files (Fri. 9 p.m.)

Other shows on 4:

Oopsy! The Clown (Sat. 6:30 a.m.), Meet the Press (Sun. 12 p.m.), Midnight Special (Fri. 1 a.m.), Tigers games

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:14 (twenty-one years ago)

OOPSY! THE CLOWN

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Porter Wagoner is great!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Automatically redeemed by The Muppet Show and the SNL glory days.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:19 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.algonet.se/~earflaps/bowie/tv770415.jpg

Iggy Pop on Dinah! Classsic!

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:19 (twenty-one years ago)

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/1978.phtml
You can't get any better than this.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, see, we need the FULL rundown of the weeknight programming.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

And In Search Of...!
And how was Rockford "new" in '78? Maybe that station just finally got with the program.

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Fred Willard and Devo on SNL in 1978!!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:23 (twenty-one years ago)

So this is what we'd watch if the network affiliates only showed pure NBC lineup? Because what about local programming, and Ultraman reruns and shit?

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I think we're actually missing the meat here:
8:00 p.m. - NBC programming

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:25 (twenty-one years ago)

In Search Of is still the best TV show ever made. I learned more hard facts about Sasquatch and Spontaneous Human Combustion from Nimoy that from anywhere else.

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:28 (twenty-one years ago)

andy otm!

― latebloomer: the rebel sound of grits and bacon (latebloomer), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:32 (twenty-one years ago)

What's wrong with Jeopardy!?

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Primetime sched for 78-79: http://www.inthe70s.com/prim7879.shtml

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:35 (twenty-one years ago)

NBC Lowlights: Grandpa Goes to Washington (Tues); actually, other than that, there's nothing that screams out terrible.

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Hollywood Squares was pretty bad. Paul Lind, Paul Williams, that ventriloquist guy, Charles Nelson Reilly, etc.

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Howev, compared to CBS & ABC, which were airing bona fide TV classics, NBC comes up short.
ABC: Mork & Mindy; Happy Days; Taxi; Laverne and Shirley; Benson; Barney Miller; Soap
CBS: The Jeffersons; M*A*S*H; WKRP in Cincinnati; Lou Grant; Barnaby Jones; Big Sharks, Little Sharks

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:42 (twenty-one years ago)

What the hell? Where's SUPERTRAIN? CLIFFHANGER? THAT STUPID SHOW WHERE THE HUSBAND AND WIFE'S BODY EXCHANGED SOULS? Was that another season?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Wasn't CHiPs in '78? What network was that?

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:49 (twenty-one years ago)

CHiPs was on Sundays on NBC.

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Bowling for Dollhairs is pretty quintessential late 1970's Tv. It's got bowling *and* the vicarious thrill of winning a quick buck.

― diedre mousedropping and a quarter (Dave225), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:55 (twenty-one years ago)

3:00 a.m. - Signoff

How quaint. I remember when they used to do that, play the national anthem and show a flag or something. I have very early memories of a rotating device in B&W, with 3X5 typed index cards that would say like "Lions Club Pancake Breakfast" or "H&H Tree Service", and a clock and thermometer would pass by from time to time.. some kind of early tele-craigslist.

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 17:58 (twenty-one years ago)

they still do both of those things in canada!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 16 May 2005 17:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Canada: We've Kept the Good Parts of TV

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 18:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Ah, Cliffhanger. Susan Anton saves the world, cheesy Dracula gets fucked up, the Wild West discovers futuristic humans. And yet, I loved it. I was nine or so.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I have never heard of this Cliffhanger, but from Ned's above description it sounds like the greatest thing ever.

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 18:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Rockford rulez.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Gnu-gnu, gnugnugnu, Gnugnugnu gnugnu.

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.joemotes.com/catalog/images/DavidCarradine.jpg

My life revolved around Kung Fu at that age, but I see it was cancelled in '75. I must have been seeing syndicated reruns, on Channel 44!

(To all Bay Area folks: Sadly, our 70's-80's afterschool TV host Dr. Don Rose passed away recently. He chose to do it on the same day as the Pope, so it didn't really make the news. He was awesome, and will be fondly remembered. Bob Wilkes of Creature Feature is still alive.)

― andy --, Monday, 16 May 2005 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Huk, the way it worked was that there were three episodes in an hour long slot per week, all progressing simultaneously and all ending with a 'cliffhanger' har har. Essentially three mini-Republic serials per hour, all very Star Wars-inspired I'm sure. IIRC all of them started mid-stream -- like the Susan story began with episode 5 or some such nonsense. It was compelling(ly bad). Annoyingly, I only remember the Dracula story getting resolved.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

YES! I've found a great page about it. New thread in a sec, Huk.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, we're good to go:

Defend the TRULY Indefensible and yet Stupidly Genius -- NBC's early 1979 effort _CLIFFHANGERS!_

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I didn't own a tv in 1978.

― Aimless (Aimless), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:15 (twenty-one years ago)

We had a B/W, but I wasn't allowed to watch it.
Kept up on crap culture through Mad Magazine parodies, though.

― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Monday, 16 May 2005 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

THAT STUPID SHOW WHERE THE HUSBAND AND WIFE'S BODY EXCHANGED SOULS?

This sounds great! I miss these sort of insane concept shows.

― Leon Federline (Ex Leon), Monday, 16 May 2005 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

We didn't get a TV until I was in 2nd Grade, and it was B/W. We didn't go colour & cable until I was too old to really, really appreciate it (had already learned to read, what a waste!). But I had friends and grandparents, etc.
But I remember getting a MAD or Cracked TV Guide parody, and basically learning all I ever needed to know about TV through that.

― Huk-L, Monday, 16 May 2005 20:02 (twenty-one years ago)

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