In the era prior to the advent of music videos, the only genuine recordings (singles, albums) was often the recorded music itself (artist performances on film did not really exist, and tended to be exceptions). However, television performances on TV variety shows of the era were fairly close. Those recordings represent what we have for musical performances before music videos became routine.
Musical artists regularly guest starred on different variety programs of the day, including the legendary "The Ed Sullivan Show" which ran from 1948-71, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" which ran from 1967-69, "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" which ran from 1969-72, "The Johnny Cash Show" which ran from 1969-71 on a different network, several incarnations of the "Sonny & Cher Show" which collectively ran from 1971-77, "Tony Orlando & Dawn Rainbow Hour" which ran from 1974-76, "The Captain and Tennille Show" which ran for one season between 1976-77, "The Jacksons" which also ran for one season between 1976-77, and of course, the legendary "Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson which was really more than a late-night talk show.
The legendary "Carol Burnett Show" focus was really more on comedy, while musical performances were a secondary program idea.
While Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Tony Orlando & Dawn and The Jacksons all got their start in music, aside from Sonny & Cher, their variety shows were not primarily focused on music. They covered the full entertainment spectrum including TV, comedy and movies as well as music.
A relative late-comer to the music-themed variety show scene which ran from 1980-1982 on the NBC television network was "Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters" which was co-produced by Sid and Marty Krofft who were better known for producing odd and vaguely sci-fi children's shows as "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Land of the Lost". A brief fill-in known as "Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris" ran for just a few months in 2015, but the genre proved far less suitable from a ratings perspective during an era where Americans enjoyed unprecedented access to hundreds of broadcast and cable TV stations (and this happened as even more choices became available with free ad-supported streaming TV ["FAST"] platforms such as PlutoTV had just emerged).
But in 1972, the U.S. TV business was still dominated by a few major broadcast networks (whose origins were in radio broadcast networks of the same names in the decades before), hence producer Burt Sugarman pitched a unique program which he called "Midnight Special" as a means for NBC to capitalize on a potential audience in a late-night time-slot. Mr. Sugarman said "Our aim was to reach for the 18-33 age bracket, the young married and daters who attend concerts and movies but don't watch much television".
NBC initially rejected the idea for Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special. None of the Big Three broadcast television networks had any recurring programming on after 1:00 am ET, and common practice by most network stations was to sign-off after the final program (some local affiliate stations ran old reruns after to entice viewers and advertisers alike). Despite a lack of competition in the late night time-slot, NBC was not interested…
But the NBC rejection led Mr. Sugarman to instead buy the air time for a premiere on his own as a brokered show, and he managed to persuade Chevrolet to become the show's first sponsor. The show premiered with ratings high enough for NBC to subsequently reconsider its original denial decision, and the network ultimately bought the program.
The Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special's original time slot was on Saturdays from 1:00–2:30 AM in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (Midnight to 1:30 AM Central and Mountain). Midnight Special ran from 1972–1981. By 1981, however, cable television had become commonplace in the U.S., and with it a number of cable-only television stations, including the original iteration of MTV: Music Television which was inaugurated in 1981 (although the cable network later shifted away from music in 1992 to cheap, low-quality "reality" show programming and has since abandoned music content completely).
One of the things which made Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special is it had musical performances from anyone who was anyone in the music industry between 1972-81. Those musical performances were recorded on film rather than video, meaning the quality of the performances has held up better than lower-quality video recordings of the same era have without digital remastering.
Alas, due to the many thorny issues with licensing of music, many of Midnight Special musical performances were presumed out of reach.
But on YouTube, Mr. Sugarman has released a surprising number of the original Midnight Special musical performances which are worth revisiting (if you saw them originally), or seeing for the first time now because they are a truly unique window into the music of that era.
I have created the following YouTube playlist for a sampling of some of the memorable music performances which aired on Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special. Have a look (and listen!), the list can be seen below, or by visiting https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7002826672729120464/8742372143663920791#
You don't have to be a fan of Elton John to know his music; even the most pop culture-oblivious person knows songs including "Bennie and the Jets," "I'm Still Standing", "Crocodile Rock" and of course, "Rocket Man". That's why the biopic movie "Rocketman" which opens this week is so anticipated.
Of course, Elton John is the public half of a genuine creative duo, with the other half being his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin (actor Jamie Bell plays Bernie Taupin in the movie). The duo collaborated on more than thirty albums, even if the Rocketman was arguably the public persona. A great deal is riding on the film "Rocketman's" success.
As the New York Times observed (see its review at https://nyti.ms/2EfoGj5 for details): "Multiple movie studios passed on the opportunity to make "Rocketman," which is an R-rated musical biopic about music legend Elton John. They said it was too gay. Too expensive. Too reliant on an unproven star.
But one film company, the down-on-its-luck Paramount Pictures, saw the audacious project as a chance to prove something to both Hollywood and Wall Street — namely that, to borrow a reference from Sir Elton, it's still standing.
Now comes the moment of truth."
The New York Times adds that "Rocketman" arrives in theaters on May 31, 2019 as perhaps the most ambitious movie of Hollywood's summer season, a four-month period that typically accounts for 40% of annual ticket sales and relies overwhelmingly on franchises. "Rocketman" stars Taron Egerton and the movie cost an estimated $120 million to make and market worldwide. "Rocketman" trails glitter — a million Swarovski crystals adorn the costumes and eyewear — and even depicts gay sex, a first for a major movie studio.
Taron Egerton, 29, stars as Elton John and is perhaps best known for his role in the "Kingsman" action comedies, but he did all of his own singing, reinterpreting classics like "The Bitch Is Back." There is also intricate choreography (one stylized scene finds an entire London neighborhood dancing in formation) and an orgy musical number set to "Bennie and the Jets." Aside from Egerton playing the Rocketman himself and Bell playing Bernie Taupin, actor Richard Madden plays Elton John's one-time manager and lover.
It was very well-documented that virtually all gay imagery was downplayed in "Bohemian Rhapsody," (catch my review for that movie HERE) sometimes to the dismay of many people eager for Hollywood to prove it is less timid about the topic of homosexuality. Homophobes baselessly assert that exclusion of all reference to Freddie Mercury's sexual orientation was the main reason the film succeeded.
In reality, his sexual orientation was irrelevant. The timing was right for "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the same thing can be said for "Rocketman". The band Queen still resonated with a significant audience (making it relevant to Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and even some younger audiences who have heard of these artists on the radio and on popular TV shows like "Glee"), and more than a few of whom are still old enough to remember when they were still topping the Billboard charts. "Bohemian Rhapsody" became last year's blockbuster Queen biopic, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture last year among others, and actually won four Oscars. But the gay part in that movie was largely unaddressed.
Freddie Mercury was undeniably gay; in fact, he died from AIDS in 1991 which he'd contracted from unprotected male-on-male sex. But Freddie Mercury was not a solo act like Elton John was; he was merely the front-man for a band. Much of the downplaying of Mercury's sexuality was simply attributed to the existing Queen band members' desire to focus on a story more about the band as a whole, rather than being exclusively about the band's flamboyant front-man.
But unlike Freddie Mercury, Elton John (who is also gay) is still very much alive today and he is also one of "Rocketman's" executive producers, therefore he has been very influential in this movie's story, casting and direction among other things. That said, although a few fear that any depiction of same-sex relationships in "Rocketman" could potentially limit interest in more conservative parts of the U.S., most believe those concerns are vastly overblown, even though the contemporary romantic comedy "Love, Simon" did struggle more than rival films to reach theatrical coverage parts of the country in 2018 because it ventured a kiss between teenage boys.
But Elton John told The Mirror "I'm proud Rocketman is the first major studio film with a gay love sex scene in it. He says the scene was a very, very important part of his personal life. He added "I was a virgin until then [age 23]. I was desperate to be loved and desperate to have a tactile relationship," adding that if they were going to tell his story in the film that it had "to be honest."
He also added "If I'd left it out, I'd have felt I was cheating people. I'm so glad it's in there because I am a gay man and I didn't want to airbrush it under the carpet. If they don't like it, I understand, but it's part of who I am."
However, because the target audience for most movies skews heavily twenty-somethings anyway, many of whom have little issue with LGBT people and ask what the big deal is, it's likely a bit over-simplistic to suggest "Rocketman" won't find audiences even in red-state America. Elton John is not closeted. And national theater chains aren't as afraid of showing such movies as independent theaters once were, and the latter have largely fallen by the wayside in favor of chains. Financially, outside the U.S., "Rocketman" is expected to generate enormous ticket sales in countries like the UK and most of the English-speaking world as well as Western Europe, even though the film will likely not even make it past Chinese censors without severe sanitization, something that executive producer Elton John is likely to deem a nonstarter.
It's worth reminding people that "Bohemian Rhapsody" actually had the seal of approval from all of the surviving members of Queen. Although that film switched producers and lead actors several times before its ultimate release, in the end, the Queen band members all approved. Actor Rami Malek was ultimately selected as the actor, and he is credited with helping to make that film a success.
"Rocketman" has a similar blessing from Elton John. The movie "Rocketman" is also directed by Dexter Fletcher, who also took over the reigns for "Bohemian Rhapsody" once Bryan Singer left. The story for "Rocketman" — developed by the rocket man himself — but very much like "Bohemian Rhapsody" has gone through a number of directors (Michael Gracey) and lead actors (including both Justin Timberlake and Tom Hardy) since it was first announced in 2012.
John and Taupin at the 27th Annual Elton John Aids Foundation Academy Awards viewing party, West Hollywood. Photograph: Michael Kovac/Getty Images for EJAF
Beyond Elton John's sex life, however, perhaps the biggest focus is his downfall into substance abuse, and his recovery from that. Indeed, the movie opens and closes with Elton John speaking from rehab. His subsequent re-emergence as a successful artist is really the central story of "Rocketman". That element is arguably a by-the-numbers biopic focus, although many other biopics feature a tragic downfall without a benefit of recovery and resurrection, which is a somewhat unique perspective for "Rocketman". That recovery and resurrection is what Elton John himself wishes to focus on for "Rocketman".
However, the biggest question is whether the formula used for "Bohemian Rhapsody" by choosing a relatively less-known actor to lead and use of the same director will lead to similar success for "Rocketman"? Paramount certainly hopes so, and the friendship developed between Elton John and actor Taron Egerton who will play him in the movie suggests that "Rocketman" could see similar commercial success (even if the critical reception by the Academy is highly dependent on what else is running in cinemas during the year).
The trailer, as well as two brief interviews with actor appears below, or by visiting https://bit.ly/2Xg5Orq.
People born after the 1980's really have no idea of just how big or important the company once known as AT&T (an acronym for American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which began as a company back in 1885) truly was. In fact, the company today known as AT&T was actually one of the original "Baby Bells" (Google that term if unfamiliar) known as Southwestern Bell/SBC, which changed its name to AT&T in 1995, fueled in part by its acquisitions of several (not all) rival baby bells including San Francisco-based Pacific Telesis (a.k.a. Pacific Bell) which served California and Nevada, and Chicago-based Ameritech serving a big portion of the industrial midwest, and Atlanta-based BellSouth which served the southeastern U.S. It also consolidated ownership of a wireless carrier once known as Cingular and renamed that AT&T. That means that in spite of having the same corporate name and some of its assets, it's not the same company.
After nearly a century of operating as a "natural" monopoly, Federal antitrust regulators started to investigate the original AT&T's monopolistic, anti-competitive practices starting in 1974, which culminated in the 1982 decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to break the company up (which would happen by 1984), effectively killing the old "Ma Bell" (another term to Google). That closed a very long and storied chapter in American corporate history. The original company known as AT&T also gave rise to such important entities as Bell Labs, the historic laboratory which was created by the late Alexander Graham Bell, and the original company was also behind a wide range of revolutionary technologies that are today quite ubiquitous, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the operating system Unix (upon which both the Linux and the Android mobile phone operating systems were built), the C language which currently runs most large Internet servers even today, and the company helped make the internet a reality, with inventions including touch tone dialing, fiber optic cables and more.
Prior to the AT&T Bell System breakup, corded landline handsets were mainly built domestically by a hardware manufacturer owned by AT&T known as Western Electric (part of that would later become a company known as Avaya which today competes in the corporate internet VoIP telephony space), but when that ended, new handset manufacturers emerged, selling cheap, low-quality Asian products (Taiwan was the place of origin for most, as mainland China would not emerge as a low-cost manufacturing hub until more than a decade after the historic Richard Nixon visit to China in 1972). What really differentiated Western Electric's phones was their quality construction and the ability to continue working even after extremely tough abuse. All of that came at a very high price, which in 1982 was forced to be itemized as a telephone receiver rental fee.
Even if its becoming an anachronism, most of us can remember the classic landline dial tone, which can be listened to at the BBC's Free Sound Effects website, specifically by visiting
The AT&T archive has an entertaining, short clip of some vintage, 1970's advertisements for some of Western Electric's "Design Line" telephones. The basic content of those phones were largely identical (they had the same exact dials/keypads, the same ringers, the same handsets, and the same internal wiring), but these were designer versions of landline phones meant to fit into a more modern household of the era. The ad appears below, or at https://youtu.be/CyVe3dD-1mE:
Curiously, on September 11, 2017, some U.S. media outlets were waxing poetically about how the first iPhone was released 10 years ago … gee, a whole decade ago! I thought to myself: "who cares?" because I've never had an iPhone, and I don't need or want one today, especially since the newest model costs nearly $1,000. I'll pass; I can do a lot more with that kind of money than buying a little device that's designed to become obsolete as soon as the next model comes out. My LG Android smartphone isn't the newest, but it's still functional and completely paid for (no contract). I don't have to worry about losing or breaking it. Besides, I've always been more of a Droid user than an Apple fan anyway. But I remember the days when TV news would show lines of kids (today's Millennials) camping in front of Apple Stores waiting to get the latest, overpriced iPhone. Although some believe otherwise, mobile phones are NOT the pinnacle of modern technology. My view of Apple is one of resurrection rather than market domination. I lived in Silicon Valley when former CEO John Sculley ran Apple at a time when the company was still teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.
I have a smartphone, and while it is handy to have when I'm on the go, I'm certainly not attached to it. Some is due to my age; I struggle to see a tiny screen without magnifying glasses and lasik surgery hasn't fixed that (although Google Assistant, or its better known iOS equivalent known as Siri, or at home with talking computer devices like Amazon Alexa/Echo, Google Home and others could mitigate that in the future). Plenty disagree with me, but it's hardly a universal opinion.
Smartphones are NOT man's greatest invention for several reasons. For one thing, the core function of making audio phone calls stinks on mobile phones -- I've never had an uninterrupted call on a smartphone. Smartphones do a lot of cool things, but making telephone calls isn't one of them. Plus for plenty of people, call mobility was always just a solution in search of a problem to solve. That's because cordless telephones solved the biggest limitation traditional landlines suffered from decades earlier (having a cord of sufficient length to move around without getting tangled in it).
In fact, reports on the imminent death of the landline telephone are exaggerated. That said, traditional landlines aren't exactly making a comeback, but as already noted, iPhones (smartphones) are't what killed the landline telephone, the internet is.
According to data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a majority of telephone lines serve medium and large business, institutional, and government customers, NOT individual consumers or households. Hence, any discussion of traditional landline services is incomplete without an acknowledgement of who actually buys most of the lines: businesses and government, not households or consumers. And, most businesses generally prefer landlines over wireless services. Yet too many writers fail to acknowledge this reality when they boldly assert that smartphones have usurped traditional telephony technology.
Any discussion of traditional landlines is incomplete without acknowledgement of who actually buys most of the lines: businesses, not consumers according to FCC data
Articles written by young authors who grew up with mobile phones assert as fact that the latest trend is to ditch landlines for smartphones and that only oldsters still have landline phones. Such stories always involve very selective disclosure of the facts. Unfortunately, the Hollywood media machine has started to go with this narrative, too -- even among much older characters. For example, in the Netflix sitcom Grace & Frankie about several septuagenarians, the character Frankie portrayed by Lily Tomlin has a conversation she doesn't really want to have with her now-gay ex-husband Sol (played by Sam Waterston), and thinking of how slamming the receiver down used to really hurt the other party's ears, she slams her iPhone down like it was an old Western Electric model phone, only to realize that she hasn't even hung up!
Also, in spite of widespread adoption of iPhones and Androids, the devices have not improved the nation's productivity, which has limited smartphones' broader societal impact. The nation's last major increases in productivity followed the introduction of the personal computer and the widespread adoption of the internet (both trends were driven by businesses), but there has been absolutely no productivity gains following the introduction of the smartphone, which says it all. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity in the U.S. economy has stagnated in the years (see https://www.marketplace.org/2017/01/10/world/what-killed-us-productivity for more) following widespread adoption of mobile telephones. The mobile phone certainly isn't solely responsible for that, but it hasn't done anything to help matters, so mobile phones don't deserve undue praise, either.
Wireless smartphones were a big disruptor for Apple and Samsung, but not so much for telephone companies. Based on wireless usage data, we know that 80% of people using mobile phones aren't even talking to anyone on the phone, they're using the mobile computer/internet functions. But my nearly 50 year-old ears cannot hear the mobile phone ringing even at the loudest volume with a loud and annoying retro-ringtone. Plus, it's uncomfortable for having a conversation of any duration on a smartphone. Classic phone designs enabled users to hold the receiver and conduct a conversation without their hands (resting on the shoulder), but it's much tougher to do that with a smartphone.
I'm not naïve, people can be nostalgic for the days of perfect telephone reception on true landlines, but let's not forget, that's only half the story: the other half is that telephone bills were astronomical in those days, especially for long-distance calling. Where I grew up, even a call to a neighboring town was considered a toll call, and a simple conversation to a friend less than 5 miles away could cost $5.00 or more, so it wasn't all wonderful.
Today, it's an economic decision to not get (or switch from) a landline to mobile phone usage exclusively, and it's a rational reason to ditch (or not get) a landline. The expense is redundant, and if you're not at home anyway, it doesn't serve much purpose. But contrary to the perspective coming from kids who grew up using smartphones as pre-pubescent kids, mobile phone technology isn't what killed the landline, as I've already noted, the internet did (more specifically, Voice Over Internet Protocol/VoIP technology). And the migration was driven by businesses who spent a whole lot more money on telephony than the average individual or household ever did.
Some technologies, such as pay telephones, have become largely obsolete by the widespread adoption of mobile phones, although they remain in settings like public transit hubs (airports, train stations, etc.). Most people who grew up in the seventies recall the episode of "The Brady Bunch" in which Mike Brady gets a pay telephone to limit his six kids' phone monopoly-usage in the home telephone ("Sorry, Right Number" [S1/E9] which originally aired on November 21, 1969). Many parents of that era may have secretly (or un-secretly) wished they could do the same, although the one line in the episode was when Mike Brady says to his wife Carol "Do you know how hard it is to get a payphone? You know all the red tape I had to go through with the phone company?" suggests it wasn't something the phone company was encouraging.
Nevertheless, for those interested in these increasingly rare pieces of phone history, its worth mentioning that Crosley Radio still sells replica pay telephones designed to look like payphones from the 1950's (see the company's website at https://www.crosleyradio.com/1950s-payphone-cr56 for details). Its fully-functional, although with several revisions. For example, the cord on the receiver isn't coated aluminum as payphone operators adopted to preserve the life of pay telephones. Also, the cord is not modular, so its hard-wired, meaning replacement or repairs are a bit more challenging. On the plus side is that the dial is actually touch-tone, but laid out as if it were an old, rotary dial. Finally, this phone model does not require a payment to receive a dial tone. But the device itself is considered by many historians to be quite life-like, and at $79.95, its not a terrible price.
A handful of better-researched articles [see one at https://seniorplanet.org/how-to-save-money-by-ditching-your-landline/] do acknowledge the impact of voice over internet protocol (also referred to as VoIP) technology, even if their editorial perspective still tries to promote mobile as being a more important driver of the trend away from landlines.
But again, the data shows proof that mobile phone technology is NOT responsible for rendering the landline telephone obsolete, the internet is. And, as with so many other trends, it began with businesses, not consumers. For smartphone device-lovers who are convinced that mobile phones are the technology that is replacing landlines, many are surprised and even disappointed to learn that VoIP phone service on the internet is the far bigger technology disruptor than the smartphone is, especially with the business community, although it is impacting consumer phone usage, too.
Data Shows a Less Flattering Picture of Mobile Phone-Only Consumers
It's only been since late 2016 that mobile-only households even outnumbered landlines (that evolution took ±30 years to occur), and only an ever-so-slight majority (one-half of one per cent). While people make the perfectly rational decision that it's a redundant expense to continue paying for both a mobile phone and a landline, the option is most feasible mainly in topographically flat states like Texas, Florida or Indiana. Elsewhere, mobile phone signals may be unreliable so smartphones don't work everywhere, sometimes even in different rooms within the same house.
Rolling hills, lack of cell towers, skyscrapers and many other things interrupt mobile reception in these areas. In more rural parts of the country, you may not even have a cellphone tower around for miles. If you need to make a phone call in those areas, you likely need a landline to do so. Broadband internet usually works in areas when mobile coverage is poor, except in rural, unpopulated areas where broadband may not be available, either.
I live in the biggest city in the country (NYC, with 8.5 million residents), and I don't get a reliable mobile phone signal in my own apartment because the nearest cell tower is blocked by skyscrapers and the others are located in New Jersey or Long Island, so the signal cuts out a lot (luckily, I can rely on VoIP calling at home). Think about that. I live in the biggest metropolis in the country (with more than 8.5 million people living in the same municipality), and I can't even use my mobile phone to make/ receive calls at home. I can only imagine what people who live in flyover country go through!
In spite of boastful claims made by mobile phone carriers and device manufacturers, mobile phones have only recently (and just barely) become a majority of the phones used by consumers in the U.S., and the data reveals more about those who have landlines compared to those who do not.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (the CDC's) National Center for Health Statistics gathers data on all kinds of trends about the state of Americans' health. The in-person survey of 19,956 households is part of the CDC's National Health Interview Survey, still tracks landline use in order to assure it has truly representative samples in its ongoing health studies. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.
According to the CDC's most recent survey (see https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/wireless201705.pdf for the results to that survey), 50.8% of homes and apartments had ONLY mobile phone service (which admittedly is up from 41% just 3 years ago) in the latter half of 2016, the first time such households had attained a slight majority in the survey. The share of homes with both landlines and mobile phones was 39.4% (down from 47.7% 3 years ago), while 6.5% of families have a landline without mobile phone service, and 3.2% have no phone service at home at all. Of note is that the CDC survey is the only one in the federal government's statistical system that is even tracking this estimate, and it plans to keep doing so. Naturally, the pro-mobile phone folks were all over these results showing their supposed victory over landlines. But the reality tells a different story.
Renters and younger adults are more likely to have just a mobile phone, so a predictable skew of young vs. old and non-affluent vs. affluent shows up in the results, but that over-simplifies the findings. For example, rates of mobile phone-only homes were highest in the South, while homes in the Northeast were the most likely to still maintain landlines. But this finding goes beyond incomes which are inversely correlated to cutting landlines, as well as the regional skews in income, which is higher in the Northeast compared to the South. Instead, it speaks to a much more practical reality: it's much more feasible to rely only on mobile services in a region like the South where signals are less likely to be interrupted by great hills and skyscrapers (at least in major population centers) that can block mobile phone signals, as is the case in the Northeast.
Mobile phone-only homes have some other commonalities. "Wireless-only adults are more likely to drink heavily, more likely to smoke and be uninsured," even after factoring for age and income, says Stephen J. Blumberg, the study's co-author (and a landline user himself). "There certainly is something about giving up a landline that appeals to the same people who may engage in risky behavior". Why that's so will require further research.
The picture of mobile-only users isn't terribly flattering overall. They drink more heavily, are more likely to be smokers and less likely to have healthcare insurance, and are more heavily concentrated in the South. People with mobile phones exclusively are more to be living with unrelated roommates, and be renters rather than homeowners, and skew more heavily Hispanic and black rather than white. Not exactly the image that mobile phone device makers and mobile carriers like to present with ads of attractive, young, smartly-dressed, affluent Millennials featured in their advertising, is it?
As The Atlantic reported (see HERE), the overall picture is that the more stable your living situation, the more likely you are to have a landline. And, just as richer Americans have the means to adopt new technology like mobile phones early, they also have the means to hang on to the old technology they are already attached to, like landlines, longer: Why choose one when you can have both? VoIP Phones Go Mainstream
Rather than personally going with a mobile phone only (which I don't care for), I personally compromised with a hybrid-solution that works great: a voice-over-internet-protocol (a VoIP-based) solution which uses my broadband internet to make and receive telephone calls (I pay for broadband anyway rather than sharing it with 20 people who live around me) only it's not linked to my internet provider, so I can readily switch from Verizon Fios to Time Warner/Spectrum cable, to RCN or another competitor).
I also find the internet much better at a computer with a real keyboard and big monitor rather than a tiny, touch-screen on a mobile phone, which as an experience leaves much to be desired. Cable companies and other internet providers now routinely offer "triple play" packages, although I initially went with Vonage, but I then switched to Ooma, slashing my costs progressively with each change to the point that my "landline" now costs me less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Note that the CDC's definition of a landline actually DOES include for Internet-connected phones — also known as VoIP phones — because the question that's asked in the survey is: "Do you have a telephone in your home that is currently working and is not a cellphone?"
U.S. businesses are dumping (or have already dumped) analog phone systems in favor of cheaper, better-quality, internet-powered phone systems. The average person working for a company impacted by this has no idea, and that's proof of how ubiquitous internet telephony has become. Voice over internet protocol-powered telephone systems offer lots of features that the phone company once charged extra for (things like Caller ID and Call Waiting) and most are included in the cost of maintaining an internet-connected office network. Today, businesses can get a sophisticated phone system with many lines for a cost much lower than old phone systems. Companies like Vonage [https://www.vonage.com/], 8x8 [https://www.8x8.com/], Shoretel [https://www.shoretel.com/] (now Mitel), Jive [https://jive.com/], Cisco, and Avaya all sell VoIP-based phone systems (as do others) which have enabled many companies to replace expensive landlines with sophisticated phone systems that offer all of the same benefits for much less money. Today, a lot more VoIP landlines exist than mobile plans. But a few companies that began in the business VoIP telephone market have expanded to the consumer market. More details follow.
VoIP Telephone Companies for Consumers
Because all VoIP phone companies' business model is to maximize self-service, most won't even offer an option to send you a phone bill by mail (although broadband internet and television services are often billed together and typically send monthly bills), and instead require automatic billing to a payment card or direct deduction from a checking account. Know that credit cards offer you some protections for unwanted services that debit cards and monthly checking account deductions do not offer under Federal law.
Vonage is the best-known player in this arena [https://www.vonage.com/personal] which is considered to be the granddaddy of VoIP services (although they have both business and residential customers), and Vonage is also one of the more expensive VoIP providers for consumer packages. Right now, Vonage has a one-year introductory price of $9.99/month, followed by $29.99/month after that. However, Vonage does pay for the VoIP box needed to make your phones work, so that's a decent savings, and 911 services are included in your monthly charge. But I don't believe that $29.99/month is all that much cheaper than analog landline telephone services are.
BasicTalk [http://www.basictalk.com/] offers a lower, longer-term cost (the price remains at $9.99/month, compared to Vonage which triples your price after the first year) but with fewer fancy features like call forwarding. BasicTalk's underlying service is actually provided by Vonage (similar to how both Chevrolet and Cadillac are cars made and sold by General Motors). Note that it has traditionally charged an account 'activation' fee, which you could say is really the cost to port your phone number over which BasicTalk claims is free. Most of the other VoIP providers will charge a number porting fee instead, but regardless of what they call the fee, the amount paid out-of-pocket is roughly in-line with their competitors. Their VoIP box is pretty inexpensive and was sold at Walmart and other retailers, though it may only be carried seasonally.
Ooma Telo [https://www.ooma.com/telo/] is my personal favorite VoIP provider. With Ooma, you pay slightly more for its VoIP box up-front (around $90), but their services are cheaper in the long-run. Based on my experience, Ooma's Telo service has been great; the only caveat is that the dial tone your hear in the receiver sounds a little different from the one you're probably used to. They are more of a VoIP box manufacturer, which explains why they sell hardware. I switched to them after my Vonage introductory pricing expired, and I paid to port my number over, and now my monthly landline (including 911 services) costs less me than a cup of coffee! They also offer additional premium features like call forwarding and number blocking for a few extra dollars more each month; I skipped those (if you opt for the free trial, they'll continue billing you for it), but the cost wouldn't be very much to upgrade in the future should you want them.
Google Voice [https://voice.google.com/] is another option from technology giant's Google (now Alphabet), which was originally launched nearly a decade ago with some fanfare when Google bought a phone management tech firm then known as GrandCentral which rings both your landline and cellphone simultaneously and also offers text transcription of your voicemail messages. Its slightly more complex to set up, but if you read on, I promise the info. will be useful.
When people started dumping expensive traditional landlines or not getting them in the first place, Google Voice services became less relevant (although its international calling rates remain among the cheapest anywhere). If you already have a gmail email account but not a Google Voice account, you can create a Google Voice [https://voice.google.com/] account at no charge in just a minute, and it does not require a contract. Login to gmail, then in another browser window, type https://voice.google.com/. Today, with Google Voice, you can also create a fee-free (mostly, read on....) landline for your home and/or office. It's done by purchasing an OBi Talk VoIP device [https://www.obitalk.com/info/googlevoice] sold by Silicon Valley-based OBihai Technologies (it's a small box that plugs into your Internet router) for about $50. Your analog telephone plugs into the modular phone jack on the OBi Talk device itself. Note that on January 4, 2018, it was announced that Polycom had acquired Obihai Technologies (see the press release HERE).
After an online account setup with OBihai, the OBi Talk device will then connect to your Google Voice account and act as a portal to your Google Voice services much like Vonage or Ooma do without requiring a landline or cell phone that the service needs to be forwarded to (see a good ComputerWorld article about this HERE for more details). Once done, your computer does not need to be turned on, and you do not need to be logged into Google for it to work. As a plus, Google Voice service also offers the ability to block particular phone numbers for free, and free voicemail transcription to text and/or email, and some of the cheapest international calling rates around. The one downside is that 911 isn't included, so you must pay a third-party to provide that service (Obihai offers that through a partner e911 company which bills separately), and I would caution that this is something you really need, because its too late to get it when your house is on fire, or you need an ambulance, so do not casually dismiss it.
Beware that Google has not committed to provide continued official support to VoIP through OBi Talk service forever. In 2014, the two companies had a legitimate dispute over the security protocols that almost ended this VoIP service (although it was eventually resolved, see http://blog.obihai.com/2014/09/google-voice-and-obihai-update.html for more on the outcome of that) but first-generation Obihai devices became incompatible with new Google Voice security protocols http://blog.obihai.com/2017/11/end-of-line-for-google-voice-on-obi100.html, so there are no long-term guarantees . Google has also been known to kill very popular services like Google Reader in the past, so just beware that unlike with Vonage, Basic Talk or Ooma, Google/Alphabet could decide in the future that it no longer wants to be in the telephone business, and the service is not guaranteed just because you bought a VoIP box from OBihai.
In the tech world, there's a saying "if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product" and in Google's case, there's definitely truth to that, as the company makes millions on advertising. But most people feel that by allowing Google to mine your email and web browsing activity to allow advertisers the ability to target ads more precisely is a fair exchange for Google's many free services. But if Google cannot monetize a service, it has historically been willing to pull the plug on it. Google Reader users learned that only too well in 2013 even though the motto of Google's current corporate code of conduct is: "Don't be evil".
OBihai requires that the OBi Talk device must still be under warranty protection to remain compliant with latest security updates that Google requires (if you buy an extended warranty for the OBihai VoIP box, you get around the issue of what OBihai calls ‘firmware updates’, which happen automatically). Google Voice/OBi Talk does NOT provide 911 service, so you must use a third-party e911 provider for an extra fee to get that (they have a partner which charges $25/year, or about $2/month), or you can simply add the local phone numbers for fire, police and paramedics to your speed-dial list, but dialing 911 won't work so you'll have to tell the police, firemen, or paramedics where you actually live when you call (they can't tell by your phone number).
As far as emergency e911 services, if you have a newer-model AT&T Trimline [https://telephones.att.com/pd/201/210M-White-Trimline-corded-telephone] corded telephone, those phones have buttons for each of these things already built-in (at the top of the handset), you just have to program them into the phone itself. Or, you can just keep a post-it near the phone with the relevant phone numbers handy if you elect not to pay extra for e911 services. It's vital to give appropriate consideration to this issue, because you won't have the luxury of waiting if you need an ambulance or your house has been robbed or is on fire! The FCC has a document on e911 services you can download HERE.
The main benefit is Google Voice/OBihai option gives you a landline where one might not have existed at a very low cost. Beware of service contracts with VoIP phone companies -- some services have them (like Vonage), others do not. I also recommend paying for VoIP telephone services with a credit but not a debit card or checking account deduction, as you can dispute charges you have not authorized on a credit card.
Outside of the Google Voice arrangement, Obihai also sells Obi Talk VoIP boxes that do not require a Google gmail account. These are reliable, and avoid potential Google-mandated firmware updates, but still has the same issue without e911 services being provided. The service is reliable and inexpensive.
If you still believe that the iPhone killed landline telephone service, you probably also believe fake news found on Facebook and Twitter. I've offered verifiable facts to prove otherwise. VoIP is the technology disruptor, not mobile telephony.
The 1970's may be remembered for many things, but one particular fad I recall is how a food known for its origins in Switzerland suddenly became a chic party theme among young Baby Boomers (no, not chocolate, although it could be): fondue. It first emerged at the Swiss Pavilion's Alpine restaurant at the 1964 World Fair in New York, but would soon gain a bigger following.
A groovy Fondue party!
But less anyone thinks this just happened by accident, NPR reported in April 2015 that the popularity of fondue was no accident. It was planned by a shadowy association of Swiss cheese makers which aimed to convince the world to consume pots full of melted fat (cheese). It began selling the now-familiar dreamy image of fondue with "big ad campaigns of good-looking Swiss people in ski sweaters partying it up over pots of cheese." With the rise of globalization, it didn't take very long for that message to hit the U.S. That story can be listened to below, or by visiting https://n.pr/1GkUvjZ:
David Sax, author of the book "The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue" [http://tastemakersbook.com/] discusses how food trends emerge, where they come from, how they grow, and where they end up. One thing he notes is how the cycle of such trends has been dramatically shortened in recent decades. Just as Fondue was a legitimate food fad from the 1970's, there have been dozens of more recent food fads, perhaps most recently the "gluten-free" trend, which has nothing to do with the incidence of celiac disease (which has remained flat, incidentally). He spoke to Marketplace radio about that, and the 4:30 interview can be listened to below, or by visiting http://bit.ly/2pZF9Cr:
As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed (see HERE), back "when fondue parties first were a fad, you may have been wearing bell bottoms and playing Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (on vinyl) on the stereo. Or maybe you were wearing rompers and playing on the swing set ... fondue made a comeback in the early 2000's and has been growing in popularity ever since."
Perhaps one reason for its seemingly sudden popularity back in the seventies was that fondue is about as sociable as a meal can get. Fondue is typically eaten with long-handled forks dipped and twirled in a communal pot, usually heated with Sterno fuel or special fondue burners that are heated with a special gel fuel which is ignited, or even candles (such as tealights), although electric fondue pots also emerged at that time as a safer alternative (for alcohol-consuming customers who might tip the flames over). Fondue usually consists of bread cubes (from French bread) dipped into warmed cheese, although some also use the fondue pot to cook small pieces of meat in hot oil, and/or for desserts made from melted chocolate that is heated in the fondue pot.
Fondue pots in classic (and questionable) 1970's colors
In the seventies, fondue pots were also widely available at S&H Green Stamp redemption centers (catch my post on that at https://goo.gl/BvDmG8 for more) before those disappeared. They were popular when S&H went out of business because they did not require too many books of stamps for redemption, but were something people might not otherwise purchase on their own. Popular fondue pots sold in the U.S. at the time were also made in the same questionable colors of kitchen appliances of the day, including avacado or lime green, harvest gold, and coppertone brown.
Back to fondue, which David Sax claims was a food fad.
Fondue is actually a tad more complicated to prepare then it appears (for example, just ask anyone who's tossed a bunch of cheese into a pot and expected anything other than a gloopy mess). To make classic Swiss fondue, a fondue pot (called a caquelon in Swiss-French) is first rubbed with a cut garlic clove, then dry white wine is added and heated, sometimes with a little cornstarch (though cornstarch is decidedly not Swiss, many find it makes the texture more sustainable as the heat goes away, but the Swiss use some flour, pepper, and nutmeg instead). A blend of shredded [Swiss] cheeses is then added (most typically Gruyere, as well as Emmentaler and/or Appenzeller are the most traditional cheeses used in fondue), and the mixture is stirred constantly until the cheese is melted. Cubes of French bread are then used for dipping, but other baigneuses (a.k.a. "bathers") can also include apples, fingerling potatoes, most fresh vegetables including green beans, and/or chunks of lightly seared beef, chicken or pork (some types of fish could also work, although the smell tends to ruin the communal dining experience, hence its not very popular).
Dick Cavett, former talk show host who appeared on U.S. broadcast television in a program called "The Dick Cavett Show" which aired intermittently on different networks from from 1968–1986, best known for his interviews with celebrities including Groucho Marx, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Marlon Brando, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, and countless others even got in on the 70's fondue fad, too. Note that he also appeared in different TV sitcoms and movies, often in cameo appearances of himself. Not to be outdone on the food fad of the seventies, he had a recipe for Fondue Bread, in which the bread serves as the actual fondue pot or bowl itself. It can be found online at http://thememorablekitchen.com/dick-cavetts-fondue-bread/ and https://www.recipegoldmine.com/celeb/dick-cavetts-bread-pot-fondue.html and http://classiccelebrityrecipes.blogspot.com/2016/04/recipes-by-dick-cavett-bread-pot-fondue.html to name a few places that it appears today, although it likely was found in newspapers and magazines from the 1970's.
Predictably, Unilever's Lipton soup had a fondue recipe of it's own in the seventies.
Emmi Roth USA, a subsidiary of Switzerland based Emmi Group, is the largest Swiss milk processor and a leading producer of specialty cheeses that Switzerland sells for export actively promoted and encouraged fondue parties. They have a few recipes HERE and a convenient PDF recipe card (for the moment) HERE. Indeed, entire websites dedicated to fondue can be found online, including one that calls itself "Best Fondue" (see http://www.bestfondue.com/ for the site) have been created.
Of course, traditional Swiss fondue has been taken in creative new directions by creative cooks around the world. For example, an American created Chipotle and Tequila fondue, which adds a zesty Mexican spin on things (rather than using an exclusive traditional base of wine) is one creative variation. Others have tried a lower-fat, lower-calorie version that uses mashed cannellini beans to slim down the recipe yet keep a thick and tasty texture (see HERE for a recipe) that might be worth sampling. For dessert, a chocolate-coffee recipe (see HERE for details) is another modern spin on the classic chocolate fondue.
Fondue equipment (pots, forks, etc.) can still be bought today (and it might make for an entertaining, communal meal) at retailers ranging from Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, to Amazon.com, but these days, it seems to be more typical to enjoy fondue at a restaurant. One of the best-known and popular fondue chains is The Melting Pot [https://www.meltingpot.com/]. They claim have many locations in America, so there might just be one near you.
Their YouTube channel has a video at https://youtu.be/a9W5dNQ6oDY (or see below) that seems to get at the heart of the fondue experience found in their restaurants.
Wow, there's so much pop culture news today, unfortunately, not all of it is happy. For example, Baby Boomer icon (and perhaps the best-known original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer) Annette Funicello passed away today (see the Los Angeles Times obituary at http://lat.ms/XzIJj7) at age 70. For the record, I grew up during the first remake of "The Mickey Mouse Club" and the best known alumnus from that era is perhaps Lisa Whelchel (catch my post that covers her at http://goo.gl/koOhe), the Britney Spears/ Christina Aguilera/ Justin Timberlake was the third and final rendition of that show. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died today, too (see http://nyti.ms/YbwY1H for New York Times coverage), although her death is perhaps less shocking given her age (she was 87) and her health issues were well-known, notably from Alzheimer's Disease which was recently depicted by actress Meryl Streep in last year's successful film "Iron Lady"). The latter not really being pop culture news, as Ms. Thatcher was more of a political leader (and Ronald Reagan's ideological soul-mate from the UK).
But today's post is a slightly happier theme, although it too is rooted in tragedy.
Comedy's Leading Lady With Troubles At Home
During the 1970s, comedienne Carol Burnett (who is nearly 80 years old as I write this) made news not only for what she was doing on the TV screen, but also because of the struggles she was having at home with a teenage daughter (Carrie) who was abusing drugs and alcohol starting at age age 13. Her daughter's well-publicized struggles with addiction were fodder for tabloid articles, and also contributed to the demise of Ms. Burnett's marriage at the time.
Indeed, Ms. Burnett's struggles with her daughter Carrie, along with her disclosure of those to the public, helped push a new first lady named Nancy Reagan to adopt the cause of drug abuse as her signature campaign known as "Just Say No" following Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.
To Carol's credit, her willingness to be public about her struggles with Carrie also helped many parents realize they weren't alone in the struggle in dealing with kids that were addicted to drugs. However, to some extent, much of Generation X was treated as one that needed to be saved from drug abuse when not all kids even had those struggles. Not all kids of that era were abusing drugs, yet Gen X kids were kind of treated as if we all were a bunch of aimless potheads regardless, often by parents who had a stash of marijuana of their own.
Carol Burnett and her daughter Carrie Hamilton
In the years that followed, Carol's daughter Carrie Hamilton had become a model of a post-addiction child and remained extremely close with her mother (perhaps because of her intervention during her wild childhood), but as the poster-child for kids (many kids of Hollywood celebs) gone bad, her struggles were much more public than ordinary kids elsewhere in America. Indeed, Carrie herself said that was a big reason she started using drugs in the first place, to get out of her famous mother's shadow.
That's why when Carol Burnett's daughter Carrie, who had successfully rebuilt her life and relationships later passed away from lung cancer in 2002 (see http://bit.ly/10NwwTo for the People magazine coverage of Carrie's passing, although there's a nicer version which features full-color scans of the original at http://goo.gl/kgrg4), it was kind of a sad postscript not only for Carol, but also a sign that not every Hollywood story has a happy ending.
This week, CBS' Sunday Morning news show featured a nice interview with Carol Burnett, who perhaps not coincidentally, happens to have a new book coming out on April 9, 2013. Her new book, unlike her biography, is in honor of her daughter Carrie entitled "Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story" (which can be found at http://amzn.to/16IGjPw). Although the interview barely addresses the new tribute to her daughter, we do see Carol touring the old CBS studio where "The Carol Burnett Show" was filmed back in the day (today, the gameshow "The Price Is Right" is recorded there), and we get to see a few vintage clips from her show. You may watch the CBS Sunday Morning inteview with Carol Burnett by visiting http://cbsn.ws/10LZnd2.
In the end, as Carol told CBS News, as a parent, one never really gets over the loss of a child, but she says you learn to cope with it because she says she and other parents like her have no other choice. Her new book is meant to be Carol's tribute to her late daughter Carrie. She wrote it to be a funny yet moving memoir about raising Carrie through the struggles and triumphs of her life. Carol shares her personal diary entries, photos, correspondence, and traces the journey she and Carrie took through some of life's toughest challenges and sweetest miracles.
Although I haven't read the book myself (it won't be released until tomorrow), coming from one of comedy's greatest legends, I did read Carol's own autobiography "This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection" which I enjoyed, as I thought it was written in a very readible way yet was also entertaining, much like Carol Burnett herself.
These days, reruns of "The Carol Burnett Show" aren't widely seen on television even on networks known for reruns including TV Land, Me-TV, Antenna TV or RTV-Retro Television. As a consolation, Carol had sold a limited set of episodes direct-to-consumers on videocassette and later on DVD from the direct marketing firm Guthy-Renker until that company left the entertainment distribution business to focus on beauty products. Since then, collections of "The Carol Burnett Show" have been sold by Time Life at http://carolburnettdvdstore.com/ (although they can also be ordered on Amazon.com).
Variety Shows
"The Carol Burnett Show" was perhaps one of the longest-running television variety shows (which as a genre, really no longer exists today). "The Sonny and Cher Show" preceded Carol Burnett on CBS, but didn’t manage to survive the stars of that show’s own marriage ending in divorce. However, the variety show genre continued through the early 1980s, we saw that genre continue with several variety shows produced by Sid and Marty Krofft (better known for their psychodelic puppet show "H.R. Pufnstuf" which I never really enjoyed, perhaps because I wasn't taking drugs as a kid) including the ill-fated "Brady Bunch Variety Hour" (which even the some of the cast members, including Susan Olsen who played Cindy Brady, ridiculed in a book entitled "Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour"), "The Osmonds" which aired a few years later, and perhaps what was of the Krofft's last major network variety shows (and arguably the last of the major network variety show genre) "Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters" which ran for a few years (from 1980-1982) on NBC, with that one being more country music-themed than the predecessors (see my post of country cross-over artists at http://goo.gl/9Lstp.
Carol Burnett Show Spinoffs
"The Carol Burnett Show" also gave birth to syndicated spinoffs such as "Mama's Family" (which starred Vicki Lawrence which began as a recurring skit on "The Carol Burnett Show" called "The Family". That spinoff which ran for one and a half seasons on NBC (from 1983-1984) also featured actress Rue McClanahan as Mama's uptight spinster sister Fran Harper, who was a journalist for a local newspaper. Of course, Rue McClanahan left the show to join a show which would be a far bigger hit for her personally, as well as for NBC, specifically, "The Golden Girls" which ran for an impressive eight seasons on Saturday evenings, doing well in the ratings the entire time. After a series of time-changes for "Mama's Family" on NBC, the show stopped but was subsequently retooled by removing the character Fran and adding Eunice and Ed Higgins' delinquent son Bubba (played by Allan Kayser) and a prissy neighbor Iola Boylin best known for making various cozies for various household appliances.
Although the syndicated version "Mama's Family" was entertaining and generally well-done, "The Family" skits on Carol Burnett were much funnier, often with a very biting humor that the spinoff kind of lacked. Of course, Carol herself starred Eunice (nee Harper) Higgins, who was only in four of the original spinoff's episodes, while Carol appeared in just one episode on the second iteration of "Mama's Family" which ran in syndication from 1997 to August 2006 after being dropped by NBC.
Without getting too far off topic (at one time, I thought about writing about variety shows, but there wasn't much more to say about them than I've written here), Carol Burnett's interview on CBS Sunday morning offers a great overview of "The Carol Burnett Show" as well as a glimpse into Carol Burnett's personal struggle raising her daughter Carrie and also provides a good description for her motivation behind writing her latest book "Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story". Although I can envision an entire post on "The Carol Burnett Show", the challenges she had raising her daughter Carrie was really how I started this post, and I think it helps portray that era. I was lucky enough to have caught that clip on CBS Sunday Morning, saving me from having to create much of that on my own. I hope my readers will consider that perspective and possibly read Carol Burnett's new book with that perspective in mind.
Author P.S., May 20, 2014: The surviving cast [Carol, Tim, Lyle, Vicki, and show costume designer Bob Mackie] of "The Carol Burnett Show" were reunited on "The Queen Latifa Show".
Earlier this week, on October 30, 2012, there was news (see http://usat.ly/VfNkEK or http://buswk.co/SsTQ6v for details) that the Walt Disney Co. would acquire George Lucas' Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion. Talks between Disney and Lucas reportedly began a year and a half ago, Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger told investors on a conference call.
Mr. Lucas, who owns 100% of the film production company named after himself, will get half the purchase price in cash and the rest in Disney stock. At the time of the announcement, we learned that Mr. Lucas would receive about 40 million Disney shares, making him the second-largest non-institutional shareholder with about 2.2% of Disney shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg (the largest is the trust of late Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who sold Pixar to Disney in 2006). Mr. Lucas will officially remain on staff as a "creative consultant" on future "Star Wars" films. Perhaps not coincidentally, both parties simultaneously announced a new, seventh "Star Wars" film, to be called "Star Wars: Episode VII," with a targeted theatrical release sometime in 2015.
Many Star Wars geeks were frightened about the prospect of having Disney somehow ruin the "Star Wars" film franchise (although truth be told, Mr. Lucas learned very early that the movie was but a tiny piece of the overall "franchise" or money machine which began with toy lightsabers, action figures, etc. and morphed into video games, trading cards, and countless other things that could be sold to fans), perhaps by inserting the company's iconic cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Tinkerbell, and various other Disney characters together with Lucas' C3PO and R2D2 in some kind of odd combination.
The Associated Press ran an article on October 31, 2012 entitled "Disney's recent acquisitions of Marvel, Pixar show a successful hands-off approach" indicating The Walt Disney Co. had earned credibility with die-hard fans of other film franchises such as Marvel Comics and Pixar by keeping its fingerprints off them.
The article also featured a quote from a Bernstein Research analyst Todd Juenger, who told the AP:
"They've been pretty clearly hands-off in terms of letting the creative minds of those companies do what they do best. Universally, people think they pulled it off."
We've also learned that Mr. Lucas himself sought a buyer like Disney in order "to protect" the "Star Wars" franchise and keep it going long into the future. After all, Mr. Lucas, who was age 68 at the time of the announcement, wants to retire! Who can blame him, and with a rich payout like the one he'll receive, he can probably afford to retire "in a galaxy far, far away"! However, he spoke with Kathleen Kennedy in the following video (alternatively, you may watch it by visiting http://youtu.be/YyqlTi7lkhY):
Perhaps that was an effort to allay the concerns of fans, or maybe it was to protect the value of his Disney shares. However, for those who weren't aware of it, "Star Wars" was THE iconic science fiction film that originally premiered in 1977, but spawned a host of sequels, prequels, and even an embarrassing television Christmas special in 1978 that has remained in circulation thanks to crude videocassette recordings and nerds copying the odd holiday special. Authors Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont accurately wrote in "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops: The Lost Toys, Tastes, and Trends of the 70s and 80s" (catch my post on that HERE or http://goo.gl/jAIF0):
THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL The Star Wars Holiday Special THE prospect of 1978's Star Wars Holiday Special was enough to make our light sabers tingle with glee—a bonus chapter of the tale as we eagerly waited for the Empire to strike back. In practice, though, it was a disaster of intergalactic proportions. The plot, such as it was, focused on Chewbacca's family—his wife Malla, son Lumpy, and freakish (and, no doubt, flea-ridden and stinky) father Itchy—as they waited for Chewie to return home.
The original Star Wars gang made perfunctory appearances, including an overly made-up Mark Hamill and a stumbly Carrie Fisher. And it all spiraled even further into surreal territory when Bea Arthur, Art Carney, and Harvey Korman showed up. The special was so embarrassing that it only aired once. Thank the Force someone was forward-thinking enough to record it so that future generations could revel in this pile of Wookiee poo. At least it didn't start a trend of other ill-advised holiday specials based on '70s movies. Who would have tuned in to The Jaws Memorial Day Picnic Special or Rocky's Arbor Day Punching Extravaganza? Oh, right: We would have. X-TINCTION RATING: Still going strong. FUN FACT: The TV special found a second life passed around from nerd to nerd on videotape, and now it's being terrible on an ongoing basis on the Internet.
Now, thanks to the internet, that weird piece of Star Wars history remains in circulation and could for years to come, although knowing Disney, they're likely to start selling it for themselves. That holiday special offshoot featured Harvey Corman ("The Carol Burnett Show"), Art Carney ("The Honeymooners") and Bea Arthur ("Maude" and "The Golden Girls") among the guest stars (which really of made the Paul Lynde Halloween Special which I covered HERE or at http://goo.gl/ZCbtT look positively normal by comparison). What About The Other LucasFilm Franchise: Indiana Jones? It Will Also Continue
Without getting too far off topic, however, the Disney acquisition may also help to preserve another successful LucasFilm franchise, the Indiana Jones movies which starred Harrison Ford (the original Hans Solo from "Star Wars") although Mr. Ford has suggested he's done with playing Indy (he's older than Mr. Lucas, at age 70) but the Young Indiana Jones offshoot-series is likely be continued under Disney ownership.
We already know that Harrison Ford went on to become an even bigger Hollywood star with "Raiders of the Lost Arc" and 3 sequels to the Indiana Jones franchise, but what about the others (although truth be told, but the total number of characters in the collective "Star Wars" franchise exceeded 1,300, so aside from Chewbacca which is a character that could theoretically be played by almost anyone and a host of others, the other main actors in the film have surfaced in various capacities.
Notably, actress Carrie Fisher who played Princess Leia in the original film, has acted mostly on stage, although she appeared on a TV roast for Mr. Lucas and more recently, as a Jenny Craig weight loss system spokesperson.
What about the boy-wonder who played Luke Skywalker who gave up a recurring television series job in "Eight Is Enough" back in the seventies to do "Star Wars", specifically Mark Hamill?
Well, after 3 "Star Wars" films, he found himself completely typecast (it makes you wonder if, as an actor, he might have been better off taking the TV role on "Eight is Enough" which he was the first choice to play ... that role that went to Willie Ames instead ... OK, maybe Mark Hamill's decision was the right one after all!). However, typecasting aside, Mr. Hamill found meaningful employment as a voice artist doing cartoon voices. Sure, Mel Blanc he isn't, but it pays the bills, right?!
Anyway, this clip is also from Australia's 7 network (the same show I noted in my posts on the $6 Million Dollar Man's Lee Majors or http://goo.gl/QkLm9 or The Partridge Family's Shirley Jones or http://goo.gl/uVxDi), but this one happens to be on what's kept Mark Hamill busy in the last 35 years (although he has attended Comic-Con in the past). He also comments on how his knowledge of the film he starred in is nowhere near as detailed as some of the fans when it comes to trivia. In all, a pretty interesting update. That YouTube clip can be seen below, or by visiting http://youtu.be/396q-orFPzo:
The Paul Lynde Halloween Special aired just once (on October 29, 1976) on ABC. It co-starred Margaret Hamilton in what was her first reprisal of her role as The Wicked Witch of the West since The Wizard of Oz was filmed decades earlier (most of her work at the time this special aired was as spokeswoman "Cora" in General Foods' Maxwell House coffee commercials). Although I missed the original airing, I found the DVD release to be worth a look.
Original ad for Paul Lynde Halloween Special from TV Guide
Paul Lynde was perhaps best known for his role as Uncle Arthur on the seventies TV sitcom "Bewitched" (although he was also the center square on the game show "Hollywood Squares" for many years) and he was also known for his roles on stage (and in the movie) in "Bye Bye Birdie", as well as the voice talent on various Hanna-Barbera cartoons and as Templeton the rat in the animated version of "Charlotte's Web", and as guest star on TV shows ranging from "The Munsters" to "I Dream of Jeannie". Yet somehow, this television special from the mid-1970s made it to DVD. The company that brought that into the digital age was S'More Entertainment, Inc. (http://smoreent.com).
S'More Entertainment's DVD
As Halloween specials go, there really wasn't much competition aside from reruns of Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin, which frankly looked a lot like the Peanuts' gang's Christmas special, so the story wasn't one of those memorable ones. But the Paul Lynde Halloween special is also something of collectors item thanks to the musical guests (remember, this was before MTV or music videos generally): the seventies rock band KISS, which performed "Beth" as well as "Detroit Rock City"and "King of the Night Time World". The reason this DVD remains a collectors item among rock fans, is because it was also the very first network television appearance of KISS in their heyday.
As for the plot, the most diplomatic way of describing it is that it's cheesy. Sure, it's cheesy, but it's only 50 minutes long with 3 KISS performances, combined with a "who's who" of celebrities in the 1970's, including Tim Conway, Florence Henderson, Betty White, Roz "Pinky Tuscadero" Kelly (known at the time for her TV appearance under the name Pinky Tuscadero on ABC's "Happy Days") as well as an unbilled cameo appearance of the ever-perky Donnie and Marie Osmond.
This was entertaining because of the odd mix of stars it featured, kitschy comedy (including one skit starring Mr. Lynde as a "Convoy"-esque trucker with a CB radio), and Mr. Lynde's Hollywood Squares center square comedy. There are worse things that one could watch.
The distributor featured a disclaimer on the back of the DVD box that apologized in advance for the quality of the video, which was from the only surviving master tape of The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. And although there's some video noise and picture quality is inconsistent, as DVDTalk noted (see HERE) "anyone who grew up on dubbed video tapes will feel right at home here with this okay 1.33:1 full screen transfer. Not nearly as bad as S'More Entertainment warns us it will be." DVDTalk's review also happens to be one of the most comprehensive available, and I recommend having a look at it.
While S'More Entertainment has digitized the content, and even apologized for the quality (not exactly meeting the definition of "digitally remastered"), in fact, as TV specials go, the entertainment is funny for the peculiar combination of guests and musical talent, which would be difficult if not impossible to do again today even with hundreds of cable channels available.
As DVDTalk.com wrote in it's review: "... there is a train-wreck fascination with this 1976 TV special. Where else will you see KISS competing with Florence Henderson in a sing-off - and lose? I highly recommend The Paul Lynde Halloween Special."
Even though I was never really a huge KISS fan, I would say the KISS performances beat Florence Henderson without any doubt, but you should judge for yourself!
As I write this, in spite of having digitized the content, S'More Entertainment hasn't yet made this DVD available in streaming video format, but perhaps someday that will happen since it's an easy transfer and Amazon can likely handle that. In the interim, this DVD special can be had for a pretty low price (now selling for like $7, although the official "list price" is $14.98, which again, is relatively cheap), and might be worth getting in time for your next Halloween TV viewing.
Definitely worth having a look at for retro television fans. Although the original video which contained the entire special is long gone from YouTube, its still available on Amazon for purchase in streaming format, which can be accessed at https://amzn.to/2yjQOP4 if you're inclined, or on DVD format if you can still find it, although it may only be used copies available. But I have assembled a brief playlist which consists of an original ABC promo for the special, some commentary from KISS frontman Gene Simmons (the musical guest on that special), and then Bruce Vilanch who co-starred with Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares, and because he worked for variety show icons Sid and Marty Krofft on their many variety shows (including the Donnie and Marie Show, which Vilanch worked on and Lynde guest-starred on several times) also recorded some comments on the Archive of American Television worth listening to below, or HERE:
Writer, speaker, brother, son, friend, spouse, advocate for people with autoimmune (type 1) diabetes, thinker, dreamer. Reading and writing is becoming a lost art, but we can learn a lot from reading the medical and scientific literature before drawing conclusions. The press publishes abbreviated facts to fit into limited space, I don't mince words or omit facts.
