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1972-73
Fall TV Season / PART
TWO THE
WESTERNS:
Alias
Smith and Jones ABC
promo for Alias Smith & Jones: Kung
Fu Keye Luke, who played Master Po, was best known for his role as 'Number 1 Son' in the 1930s & '40's era Charlie Chan movies seen frequently on local stations in 1972. He was also a regular on Anna and the King this season as well as providing voices for Hanna-Barbera's The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (this time he played Charlie Chan). When Alias Smith & Jones was cancelled mid-season, Kung Fu went weekly and ran for three years.
Bonanza Hec
Ramsey Because of his pistol-slinging past, Hec is forever goaded into match ups in the street - but he's a peaceful man who's determined not to draw his gun again. The series lasted only one season. Produced by Jack Webb's Mark VII (Dragnet, Adam-12), it was part of the NBC Sunday Night Mystery Movie lineup that included Columbo, McCloud and McMillian and Wife.
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DAYTIME
Eileen Fulton (above) in the role of Lisa in the popular soap opera As The World Turns. Return
to Peyton Place Dinah's
Place
Merv
Griffin Show The New Price is Right with Bob Barker debuted in the mornings on CBS (and in the evenings in syndication with Dennis James) to incredible ratings. Price was part of an onslaught of new game shows that included Gambit and The Joker's Wild. From You Tube, this is from the first episode of The New Price Is Right:
Split Second was a popular ABC game hosted by Tom Kennedy (thanks to Michael Thom for the audio capture). The big finale featured a row of five cars on the stage - every day, one contestant earned a key. If that key fit the ignition in the car they chose, they won it. This show aired from 1972 until 1975 in the 12:30 timeslot, following Password. Concentration, Sale of the Century, Hollywood Squares and Jeopardy were also popular. ABC Afterschool Specials Broadcast in the afternoons on an irregular schedule, the Afterschool Specials were an important part of growing up for two generations. The Afterschool Specials debuted in 1972 and ran until 1995, a groundbreaking 60-minute educational anthology series for elementary- and secondary-school kids (and in later years for teens). ABC won a Peabody Award for the series. IN 1972: The first in the series was The Last of the Curlews, an animated nature docu-drama from Hanna-Barbera. Another of the earliest productions was William, a musical look at Shakespeare starring Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson and Lynn Redgrave. Santiago's Ark, about a 14-year-old boy from Puerto Rico who builds a boat to sail through Central Park. The Secret Life of T.K. Dearing starring Jodie Foster. |
Amazon Prime - unlimited streaming PR4 & PR5 Pages for Advertising |
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PROGRAM
PROFILE: Search starred TV favorites Burgess Meredith (Batman), Hugh O'Brian (The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp), Doug McClure (The Virginian) and Tony Franciosa (The Name of the Game). Don Harden writes, "Each week, one of three Probe agents would be the star of the episode. This revolving format was successful for The Name of the Game, a previous NBC series produced by the late Leslie Stevens (seen left), the creator and producer of Search." Typical episode: WSC is infiltrated by a mole that hinders agent Lockwood in his urgent quest to stop a terrorist; think 24 with a sci-fi bent.
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Sunday CBS: 7:30 - 8:00 : Anna and the King 8:00 - 8:30 : M*A*S*H* 8:30 - 9:00 : Sandy Duncan Show 9:00 - 9:30 : New Dick Van Dyke Show 9:30 - 10:30 : Mannix NBC: 7:30 - 8:30 : Wonderful World of Disney 8:30 - 10:00 : NBC Mystery Movie (McCloud, McMillian & Wife, Columbo and Hec Ramsey) 10:00 - 10:30 : Night Gallery ABC: 8:00 - 9:00 : The F.B.I. 9:00 - 11:00 : Movie Monday CBS: 8:00 - 9:00 : Gunsmoke 9:00 - 9:30 : Here's Lucy 9:30 - 10:00 : Doris Day Show 10:00 - 11:00 : New Bill Cosby Show NBC: 8:00 - 9:00 : Laugh-in 9:00 - 9:30 : Movie ABC: 8:00 - 9:00 : The Rookies 9:00 - 11:00 : Monday Night Football Tuesday CBS: 8:00 - 8:30 : Maude 8:80 - 9:30 : Hawaii Five-0 9:30 - 11:00 : Movie NBC: 8:00 - 9:00 : Bonanza 9:00 - 10:00 : The Bold Ones 10:00 - 11:00 : NBC Reports / America ABC: 8:00 - 8:30 : Temperature's Rising 8:30 - 10:00 : ABC Tuesday Movie of the Week 10:00 - 11:00 : Marcus Welby, M.D. Wednesday CBS: 8:00 - 9:00 : The Carol Burnett Show 9:00 - 10:00 : Medical Center 10:00 - 11:00 : Cannon NBC: 8:00 - 8:30 : Adam-12 8:30 - 10:00 : NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie (Banacek, Madigan, Cool Million) 10:00 - 11:00 : Search ABC: 8:00 - 8:30 : Paul Lynde Show 8:30 - 11:00 : ABC Wednesday Movie of the Week 10:00 - 11:00 : The Julie Andrews Hour Thursday CBS: 8:00 - 9:00 : The Waltons 9:00 - 11:00 : Movie NBC: 8:00 - 9:00 : Flip Wilson Show 9:00 - 10:00 : Ironside 10:00 - 11:00 : Dean Martin Show ABC: 8:00 - 9:00 : The Mod Squad 9:00 - 10:00 : The Men: Vienna; The Delphi Bureau; Jigsaw 10:00 - 11:00 : Owen Marshall, Attorney at Law Friday CBS: 8:00 - 9:00 : Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour 9:00 - 11:00 : Movie NBC: 8:00 - 8:30 : Sanford and Son 8:30 - 9:00 : The Little People 9:00 - 10:00 : Ghost Story 10:00 - 11:00 : Banyon ABC: 8:00 - 8:30 : Brady Bunch 8:30 - 9:00 : Partridge Family 9:00 - 9:30 : Room 222 9:30 - 10:00 : The Odd Couple 10:00 - 11:00 : Love American Style Saturday CBS: 8:00 - 8:30 : All In The Family 8:30 - 9:00 : Bridget Loves Bernie 9:00 - 9:30 : Mary Tyler Moore Show 9:30 - 10:00 : Bob Newhart Show 10:00 - 11:00 : Mission Impossible NBC: 8:00 - 9:00 : Emergency 9:00 - 11:00 : Movie ABC: 8:00 - 9:00 : Alias Smith & Jones / Kung Fu 9:00 - 10:00 : The Streets of San Francisco 10:00 - 11:00 : The Sixth Sense |
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1972 CBS Fall Previews |
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Variety
Shows A couple of months after the new fall season debuted, the network variety show format was showing signs of wear. Only The Flip Wilson Show cracked the top ten during the first few weeks, Carol Burnett was down to number 41, Dean Martin to 47th and Sonny and Cher down to 52nd. Laugh-in, once a top-ten staple, was mired at number 27. A timeslot change for Sonny and Cher (from Friday nights to Wednesdays) catapulted that show back into the top ten but Bill Cosby (57th) and Julie Andrews (61st) consistently ranked at the bottom of the Neilsens. Only two programs in '72 were less popular than Julie - Banyon and The Sixth Sense. The New Bill Cosby Show:
ABC announced that Jack Paar was returning to late night TV for one week a month. Dick Cavett was also given a week every month to compete with Johnny Carson. Carson prevailed. |
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PROGRAM
PROFILE: Screen legend Joan Crawford played her last television role in the September 30th episode of The Sixth Sense, "Dear Joan, We're Going To Scare You To Death." Gary Collins went on to host PM Magazine. Episodes of Sixth Sense were added to the Night Gallery syndication package.
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First
Year For these The Waltons was the surprise hit of this season, slotted against two of TV's most popular programs - The Mod Squad and Flip Wilson. Ratings rose slowly but steadily as the weeks went along, until The Waltons became the second most popular show in the nation by the fall of 1973 and The Mod Squad was gone. In danger of cancellation in 1972, M*A*S*H* became a monster hit only when it was paired with All in the Family in the fall of 1973. The team that launched All in the Family to ratings gold rolled out two new sitcoms in 1972 - Maude for CBS and Sanford & Son for NBC. Both were massive hits, giving Norman Lear three of the top five shows in the nation as the '72-73 season opened, forever securing his place in TV history. |
PROGRAM
PROFILE: Big Winners at the Emmy Awards: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family and The Waltons. Jack Klugman won the Emmy for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series for The Odd Couple this season; it was the next to the last year for the show.
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Specials: Liza With a Z The Man Who Came To Dinner starring Orson Welles, Lee Remick, Don Knotts, Joan Collins and Marty Feldman. Connie Stevens, Louis Jourdan, Diahann Carroll and Perry Como starred in Cole Porter in Paris. 16 years after its theatrical release, Giant with James Dean and Natalie Wood made its TV debut on NBC, Nov. 11, 1972. Duke Ellington... We Love You Madly featured a line-up of Jazz legends like Count Basie, Quincy Jones, Billy Eckstine, Aretha Franklin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Joe Williams. Pilots that didn't make it: Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and Vince Edwards (Ben Casey) in Firehouse, a drama about NYC firefighters. A TV-movie pilot was aired to high ratings but Roundtree opted instead for a TV version of Shaft in 1973. Topper Returns updated the popular 1950's sitcom with John Fink and Stephanie Powers as the ghostly couple with Roddy McDowell starring as Cosmo Topper's nephew. Eddie Albert is a newspaper columnist and the single dad of a 9-year-old girl and Della Reese is the housekeeper in Daddy's Girl, a Courtship of Eddie's Father-type sitcom. Soupy Sales as a movie star stuck hosting a TV show with a talking bear. James Caan on his role in Brian's Song (a 1971 TV-movie), which was rerun in the fall of 1972 : "It gave me recognition, yuh know? Wherever I went people knew me, the girls knew me, yuh know what I mean? It's something I never experienced before."
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