The Prisoner aired on CBS in the summer as
a replacement for 'The Jackie Gleason Show'.
Dean Martin Presents The Golddiggers, was set in the 1930s, and
starred Frank Sinatra Jr., Joey Heatherton, Paul Lynde, Barbra Heller,
Stu Gilliam, The Times Square Two, Skiles and Henderson and The Les
Brown Orchestra.
Irwin
Allen rips off his own series - Lost in Space redux in a land
of hostile giant people. The show even has it's own built in villain
with Commander Fitzhugh, former Army officer on the run with a million
dollars in cash. A million teensy-weensy dollars as it turns out.
Like
all Irwin Allen productions, the first episode is good - and most of
the rest suck.
Second season for The Carol Burnett
Show on CBS's winning Monday Night schedule that included Gunsmoke,
Here's Lucy, Mayberry RFD and Family Affair.
Mayberry
RFD was the number-four rated show for the first two years it was
on the air, losing ratings only when Frances Bavier (the only remaining
original cast member) retired in 1970.
Plotlines
in 1968: in the year 1775, Barnabas loses his true love Josette when
witch Angelique tricks her into jumping to her death. Victoria Winters
is hung as a witch in 1775, but mysteriously travels into 1968 where
the modern day Barnabas and Julia Hoffman have created a creature
called 'Adam' who goes on a killing rampage. Angelique returns to
modern times to torment Barnabas and wreak havok with the Collins
family.
Johnny
Carson also had a primetime special called Return to StudioOne which aired in March of 1969. It featured the classic teaming
of Bob Hope, Dean Martin and George Gobel. It
is now available on DVD.
Program
Profile Ugliest Girl
in Town
Thursday nights at 7:30 ABC / 1968-1969
In
1968, 'gimmick' shows were hot - funny thing is, most of the gimmick
shows never caught on. The gimmick here is that the main character
is running around in really bad drag.
You
see, Timothy Blair (Peter Kastner) has a photographer brother
named Gene (played by Garry Marshall, creator of 'Lavern & Shirley').
Gene lost some important photo shoot pics - so he dresses Timothy
up in Hippie chick garb and submits these shots to his London
publisher. The publishers think they've found the new 'Twiggy',
and 'Timmie' becomes a hot fashion model. As a girl, of course.
This
works out great for Timothy - he gets to fly back and forth to
London where his girlfriend Julie Renfield (Patricia Brake) lives.
And he gets to be a supermodel, prancing around go-go London in
all the latest mod fashions. Sixties' audiences were not amused.
Typical
plot: Tim refuses to do a bathtub scene, sparking a morality campaign
with the slogan, "Cover thyself!"
For
comparison, here are the top shows for
March, 1968 (the 1967-68 season) broken down by demographics.
18-34
Top Ten:
1. Saturday Movies / 2. Friday Movies / 3. Thursday Movies / 4.
Wed Movies / 5. Mission: Impossible / 6. Tuesday Movies / 7. Dean
Martin / 8. I Spy / 9. Sunday Movies / 10. High Chapparral
(Keep in mind that there was no such thing as renting
movies in 1968, the whole idea
that you could see a movie in
your own home - in color - was revolutionary
at the time.)
Popular on Saturday mornings: Birdman, Top Cat, Spiderman,
Go-Go Gophers, Wacky Races, Herculoids, George of the Jungle,
Fantastic Voyage, Super President.
The Banana Splits were super hot on Saturday mornings in 1968.
This was the third TV series for Walter Brennan ("Real McCoys'),
a western series that followed grandfather Will Sonnett and his
grandson Jeff in search of the boy's pa - a no-good gunslinger
named Jim Sonnett. They travelled from place to place, encountering
hostile townspeople that had been recently wronged by the guy
they were searching for.
The
reunion finally did take place in the last episode of the second
season, with all three Sonnetts joining forces to become lawmen
for a third season that never came.
The
Dating Game
and The Newlywed Game were ABC primetime shows in 1968. "Lest
some of us forget, both these ABC hits started as daytime shows;
Dating Game in late 1965, Newlywed Game a few months later. Both
established themselves as daytime hits. So much so that when one
of ABC's fall sitcoms was tanking in the ratings in early 1967,
Dating Game went primetime as a midseason replacement. Newlywed
Game followed Dating Game to primetime later that year. Both stayed
in primetime until the early '70s, but continued in daytime for
a few more years." - Steve Byrd
Don
Rickles bombs in his own show Friday nights at 9:00 (leveling
insults at a studio audience), guests included Joey Bishop, Regis
Philbin, Pat McCormick. Vic Mizzy conducted the orchestra.
Here
Come the Brides starring Bobby Sherman and David Soul debuts
for a two-year run.
The
Good Guys starring Herb Edleman and Bob Denver begins a two
year run. Denver felt cheated that he wasn't getting substantial
residuals from Gilligan's Island so he had part ownership
in this series - but The Good Guys proved a flop in syndication.
During the second season, the show moved to the beach to be more
'Gilligan'-like.
:CANCELED: The Summer Brothers Smothers
Show (starring Glen Campbell) was the summer replacement
series for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968. The
Smothers were fired by CBS the next year but the Glen Campbell
hour (produced by Tommy Smothers) clicked and continued on.
Glen Campbell was brought back in early 1969. The
Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, with many of the same writers
and production personnel as the Smothers' shows, was a hit (but
without Tommy, he was suing CBS).
Blondie was a flop
on CBS
Also
the final year for The Wild Wild West, Peyton Place, Jonathan
Winters Show, The Avengers, Felony Squad, Gomer Pyle, Jerry Lewis
Show, Judd For The Defense, Gentle Ben and Daktari.
Hollywood Squares
aired in primetime in the Spring of 1968 and the summer of 1969.
TV Commercials from September 1968
Program Profile The Big Valley
Monday nights at 10:00 ABC / 1966-1969
Originally
known as 'The Saga of the Big Valley', the title was changed at
the last minute.
Starring
Barbara Stanwyck as the widowed matriarch of the Barkley clan,
living in the Sacramento Valley following the Civil War. "I'm
just playing Lorne Green in a Mother Hubbard" was Stanwyck's take
on her character.
All-star
cast featured Richard Long ('Nanny and the Professor'), Peter
Breck ('The Secret Empire'), Lee Majors ('6 Million Dollar Man'),and
Linda Evans ('Dynasty'). Generally more talk than action. 1968-69
was the last season, westerns were no longer as popular as they
once were.
Program Profile The
Mothers-in-Law
Sunday nights at 8:30 NBC / 1967-1969
The
Mothers-in-Law'
starred Kaye Ballard as Kay Buell and Eve Arden as Eve Hubbard,
two longtime next-door neighbors who become in-laws when their
kids marry. Roger Carmel co-starred as Kay's husband Roger and
Herbert Rudley played Eve's husband Herb.
The
Hubbards were respectable and highbrow - Eve Hubbard was the country
club housewife-type and her husband Herb an uptight lawyer. Roger
and Kay Buell, on the other hand, were a little more way out.
Roger
was a television comedy writer that worked at home and Kay was
a loudmouth, lazy housewife. They were also Italian, which led
to lots of ethnic jokes (since Italians were the only nationality
in the 60s with enough of a sense of humor not to complain about
it).
Jerry
and Susie, the newlywed kids (that lived in a garage apartment
behind the homes), were played by Jerry Fogel and Deborah Walley.
1968-69
was the second and last season.
1968
will be
remembered for:
Debut season for Adam-12,
Lancer, Here Come The Brides, Julia, The Name of the Game, The
Ghost And Mrs. Muir, The Mod Squad, and The
Doris Day Show.
The CBS News magazine
60
Minutes started out
with small audience numbers, low expectations and an irregular
schedule - but it is still running on CBS and getting top ten
ratings today.
FLOPS: The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, Blondie (if Batman
was a hit, why not Blondie, right?), That's Life,
Journey Into The Unknown and The Outcasts.
Program Profile The
Virginian
Wednesday nights at 7:30 NBC / 1962-1971
The
series was set in the 1890's, based in and around Medicine Bow,
Wyoming.
Regular
cast members included James Drury as The Virginian, Doug McClure
as ranch hand/assistant foreman Trampas, Gary Clarke as ranch
hand Steve Hill, Lee J. Cobb as Shiloh ranch owner Judge Henry
Garth, Roberta Shore as adopted daughter Betsy Garth and Pippa
Scott as Molly Wood, newspaper publisher, editor and reporter
on 'The Medicine Bow Banner'.
One
of the strengths of the show proved to be its ability to withstand
the departure of various cast members. Pippa Scott was the first
to depart in 1963 followed by Gary Clarke in 1964, who resurfaced
in the short-lived Western series Hondo in 1967, Roberta
Shore in 1965, following her wedding at Shiloh Ranch and subsequent
move to Pennsylvania and Lee J. Cobb in 1966. A Hollywood veteran,
Cobb had complained of the daily grind of working on a TV series
from the show's beginnings.
Each
75 minute segment was filmed in eight days, with two shows often
being shot back-to-back.
Daytime
game show Eye Guess with Bill Cullen was cancelled in 1968.
Commercial for the 1968 Shelby Mustang GT.
After
several years of dropping ratings, Gunsmoke was slated
for cancellation in 1967 - then it suddenly shot up into the
top ten in 1968 and stayed there for six years. The reason -
a move from Saturday nights at ten to Monday nights at eight
Program
Profile
Overall
Top Fifteen: (1967-68) 
Children
6 - 11 Top Ten: 
Teens
12-17 Top Ten: 
18-34
Top Ten: 
that you could see a movie in
your own home - in color - was revolutionary
at the time.)
Program
Profile 
1968
Commercials 
The
Dating Game
and The Newlywed Game were ABC primetime shows in 1968.
The
Good Guys starring Herb Edleman and Bob Denver begins a two
year run. Denver felt cheated that he wasn't getting substantial
residuals from Gilligan's Island so he had part ownership
in this series - but The Good Guys proved a flop in syndication.
During the second season, the show moved to the beach to be more
'Gilligan'-like.
Glen Campbell was brought back in early 1969. 
Also
the final year for The Wild Wild West, Peyton Place, Jonathan
Winters Show, The Avengers, Felony Squad, Gomer Pyle, Jerry Lewis
Show, Judd For The Defense, Gentle Ben and Daktari.
Program Profile
Program Profile 
The
Hubbards were respectable and highbrow - Eve Hubbard was the country
club housewife-type and her husband Herb an uptight lawyer. Roger
and Kay Buell, on the other hand, were a little more way out.
Roger
was a television comedy writer that worked at home and Kay was
a loudmouth, lazy housewife. They were also Italian, which led
to lots of ethnic jokes (since Italians were the only nationality
in the 60s with enough of a sense of humor not to complain about
it).
Program Profile 
