Fox does a terrible job with their older series and they really don't give a damn. A lot of their shows last ran on FoxNet, the cable channel they put together in the late 80s, early 90s for markets where they didn't have a network Fox affiliate. Shows like Bracken's World, Judd For the Defense, Cade's County, Arnie, Karen, Roll Out, Felony Squad and lots of others aired there. None of the black and white shows though, like Adventures in Paradise.
Thanks to all for finding the current homes of many of these shows. Too bad I don't get most of them.
Sometime within the last decade, COMBAT! was running on MeTV, generally in tandem with 12 O'CLOCK HIGH and in the overnight hours.
Amos & Andy. Last time I saw it on broadcast TV was in the Bay Area circa 1981-82. There was a crazy millionaire there who used to do some insane things on his station named James Gabbert. He even showed a 3-D film one time and mailed out the cardboard glasses free to any viewers that requested them. San Francisco used to be a pretty fun place back then...
The surprising descendant to this great show...? Max Headroom. It was as much about commenting on media and journalism, as it was about goofy sci-fantasy. With less lining the birdcage, of course.
Amos and Andy was withdrawn from syndication by CBS in 1966. In order for them to make it look like they weren't doing it because of pressure, they also withdrew the shows My Favorite Husband and Mama at the same time. To date, 50+ years later, I've never heard of them withdrawing any other show from syndication.
One that I'd like to see again is Around The World In 80 Days. As far as I know it was only on the air for one year. They did make some changes to the original story, with Fogg's motivation being changed to making the trip to be allowed to marry his fiancee and Fixx being dispatched by her father to prevent Fogg from being successful. It was also interesting because at the beginning of each episode Fogg would have Passepartout put a number of specific unusual items in their traveling bag but in the course of the episode it turns out their are exactly what is needed. I know the entire series has been released on DVD, and it is possible that they are being showed on Boomerang. It was only on the air for a year or two in my area in the late 1970s, along with shows like The Goodies. The above reminds me of another show I haven't seen in a long time: The Paul Hogan Show. Before he hit it big with the movie Crocodile Dundee, he had a sketch show (somewhat like The Benny Hill Show but without the music) that was very funny. Here's a "best of" collection I found on YouTube:
I have been watching this one on AntennaTV, and it was a fairly well done show. Harry Ackerman and William Asher were behind it. They had done Bewitched. Ostensibly this replaced Bewitched in the ABC line-up. Not that Bewitched didn't deserve to go at the time. Harry Ackerman had his thumbprint all over 1960s sitcoms; if it didn't involve Paul Henning or Danny Thomas, Harry Ackerman was probably producing. Asher did a lot of directing, particularly Bewitched, when he was married to Liz Montgomery. This was getting near the end of the line though, particularly for Ackerman. Paul Lynde of course guested on Bewitched. Some other Bewitched notables show up, particularly Mabel Albertson as Paul's mother in law. She was doing double duty with the New Dick Van Dyke Show, playing Dick's mother there. Despite the veteran pedigree, the show was hip to the times. If you remember the production style of The Bob Newhart Show, this show fit right in that universe. Same sort of filming and timing. Live audience. A fair amount of sexual innuendo, a big change from Bewitched, which shows how fast times moved back then. I like it. I like the inherent tension of having Paul Lynde be the focal point. Don't need a lot else. Well written, and as I said, fits right in with The Bob Newhart Show style of mid-1970s comedies filmed before a live audience.
The Paul Lynde Show did okay in the ratings as did another new Screen Gems show which I like, Temperatures Rising. ABC got the brilliant idea that rather than renew both shows, they would take Paul Lynde and put him in Temperatures Rising and call it the New Temperatures Rising. Bad idea. They essentially killed both shows as the new show was canned after a few episodes, brought back again later in the season but failed once again.
Sorry- "Keep Your Eye on The Sparrow" was sung by Sammy Davis, Jr. Barretta is another show that has been MIA for a long time as far as I know.
The market for soaps has shrunken considerably over the past couple of decades, with some long time programs finally biting the dust... including As The World Turns, All My Children, and One Life To Live. The problem with airing old episodes is that there are SO MANY of them, assuming they still exist in an archive somewhere (which is not a safe assumption for anything from the 1950s-1970s). Here's some numbers of episodes for the more popular US soaps: Days of Our Lives: 13,650 (and counting) General Hospital: 14,000+ One Life To Live: 11,136 All My Children: 10,755 As The World Turns: 13,858 The Young and The Restless: 11,000+ If one wants to air old episodes, where would you even begin... since they have continuously running storylines? Standalone episodes really don't work for most soaps (unless it's a memorable episode where something big happened). Plus, while there are certainly dedicated fans for these shows, some fans will long for episodes from the 80s, while other would prefer the 70s or the 90s... or whatever period they originally watched. So satisfying the audience for these shows would be tricky. Finally, there is the factor of how well these shows will have dated. Even when they were new, these episodes tended to be pretty cheesy. After a few decades, they will be hopelessly out of date... fun for a cultural lesson on what people watched, but not really something that many will want to follow day-to-day. The best possible option would be to make episodes available for streaming on demand, for viewers to pick the era they want to watch and follow. Even then, the logistics of digitizing, uploading, and maintaining thousands of episodes for streaming would be considerable, with very little payback. After all, how many people would really watch a random episode of Days of Our Lives from 1981?
The stuff I'd love to see the most being broadcast here in austria (and it won't happen, anyway): Perfect Strangers 77 Sunset Strip Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip The John Larroquette Show Night Court The Mary Tyler Moore Show That Girl Three's Company Northern Exposure On The Air The Fugitive Tour of Duty The Bill Cosby Show (1969) Soap The Jeffersons Mind you, those shows (safe for Studio 60) had at least two entire seasons dubbed for german-language television, so it's not like nobody knows them. They just don't show them and, as opposed to the US, we don't really have TV stations specializing in old shows (not even on Pay TV).
Believe it or not, Antenna TV was airing this within the past year or two. I actually watched an episode of it -- which happened to be the first episode -- with my then 9-year-old daughter, and even she couldn't believe how poorly conceived and executed the show was.
