Linda Ronstadt: Voice Silenced Due to Health

In 2013, the smooth-voiced singer Linda Ronstadt, who racked up an impressive 11 Grammy awards, 2 Academy of Country Music awards and an Emmy award during her lengthy recording career, revealed that she had Parkinson's Disease, which meant that she, in her own words, "can't sing a note" anymore.  Both AARP interviewed her at http://bit.ly/2cCqiaD and People magazine interviewed her at http://bit.ly/2cBC3JJ which are worth reading.  Evidently, the Parkinson's Disease has also impaired her daily movement, but she said that she can still get around, although certainly not like she used to.

With a recording career that spanned rock, pop, country and everything in between, Linda Ronstadt really did not belong in a single musical genre, only what her voice could accomplish.  Indeed, few pop singers have been as successful, as durable, and as wide-ranging as Linda Ronstadt.  She began her career back in the 1960's in a band called the Stone Poneys, and one of her best-known songs "Different Drum" came from her time there.  Below is a recording of Ms. Ronstadt performing one of her songs with the band in the late 1960's (this is the "official" Vevo video of a live performance on YouTube).  Watch below, or by visiting https://youtu.be/TGZznJXY1Xc:



Ms. Ronstadt is a music-biz anomaly for many reasons.  For one thing, she grew up on a ranch in the Arizona desert near Tucson, but she is part Mexican even though she speaks (and formerly sang) English perfectly.  Indeed, as a child she grew up with Spanish-language music that her grandfather taught her, although few would mistake Ms. Ronstadt as a Mexican immigrant.  She also spanned musical genres years before others did (I've talked about country cross-over artists before, check the archives for details).  For example, anyone who thinks Taylor Swift is unique because she began in country before moving to rock likely doesn't know Linda Ronstadt, even if they know her famous music.  The former songstress has collaborated with some of Nashville’s best-known recording artists, including her friend Dolly Parton.

Ms. Ronstadt also released a memoir in 2013, reflecting on her long music career.  NPR's Terry Gross, who is the host of the program Fresh Air spoke with Linda Ronstadt, which can be listed to below or at the following link:  http://www.npr.org/2013/09/17/223172521/in-memoir-linda-ronstadt-describes-her-simple-dreams.


Similarly, WNYC's Studio 360 interviewed Linda Ronstadt in August 2014, well after her public disclosure of her Parkinson's Disease diagnosis, which can be listened to below, or by visiting: http://www.wnyc.org/story/linda-ronstandts-curtain-call/.


Finally, NPR's popular Diane Rehm show interviewed Linda Ronstadt in July 2014, around the time her new book was published.  Although I cannot embed that interview, the link can be found at: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-07-29/singer-linda-ronstadt-her-life-music.

Although Ms. Ronstadt's voice has been silenced because of her health, her impressive library of recorded music will remain with us.  If you aren't already familiar with her music, now would be a great time to discover her musical library!

The Forces Behind Iconic PSA's in U.S. Advertising

For Gen Xers who grew up in the 1970s, most of us remember at least a few of the iconic advertising campaigns by an organization known as the Ad Council.  Indeed, the crying native American TV ads helped influence an entire generation of us.  The ads themselves received all kinds of awards from the advertising industry.  But is this a case of a Hollywood-esque awards show sponsored by the industry, giving itself various awards and forcing the country to watch as it does so?  The short answer is "kind of".

Catch this iconic television ad which first aired in 1971 but continued for a number of years after, just as Generation X was growing up.  The iconic native American crying ad (incidentally, the book disclosed that the actor wasn't native American, but Italian-American) can be seen below, or by visiting http://youtu.be/9Dmtkxm9yQY:



The Ad Council was the creative force behind these iconic public service advertising (PSA) campaigns including the crying native American as well as versions of Smokey the Bear and others.  And while the Ad Council's creativity was behind the ads, the organization which based in New York City, began as part of the war effort in the 1940's.  But the actual organization which paid to run the ads was an organization that called itself Keep America Beautiful, which sounds innocent enough, but isn't your grassroots Sierra Club.  In reality, it is/was a a pseudo-charity funded by the packaged good manufacturers in this country.  In other words, companies like McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, Reynolds Aluminium, Nestle Waters, the American Chemistry Council — these are the companies who produce both the chemicals and the packaging material that ends up in our waste stream and in our garbage stream, and they were the ones lecturing us to pick up our waste to keep America Beautiful.  If only the ads weren't funded by the companies that created all that waste!

Book by Wendy Melillo

Wendy Melillo, an assistant professor of communications at American University is the author of a new (as of September 2013) book entitled "How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns", is interviewed by NPR about these campaigns and the organizations behind these iconic campaigns.  The interview which can be listened to below (or by visiting http://n.pr/1bMejQk) is fascinating.
I think its important to acknowledge that Ms. Melillo isn't trying to discredit the Ad Council's work.  Indeed, she claims it is a "premier organization we have in this country for public service advertising. And it does a lot of good."  She says her goal with this book is to take a look at the business model, and to recognize that there are some limitations.  She says society can work together to determine how we can improve that to make it even better, but she clearly thinks that one of the keys is making sure people know what the current business model's limitations actually are.

Can Al Jazeera America Improve Upon U.S. TV News Coverage?

Starting Tuesday, August 20, 2013, there was a new startup in the American television news front, an operation which aims to deliver 14 hours of straight, live news everyday with correspondents in oft-overlooked corners of the country.  The remainder of the day will include pre-recorded content such as what it describes as "hard-hitting" documentaries.

The New York Daily News reported (see http://nydn.us/1eTJGpg):

"Don't look for coverage of Kim Kardashian, or courthouse camp-outs during high-profile trials. Instead of following the lead of Fox News, MSNBC and CNN — which have all played up crime coverage and punditry to increase ratings — Al Jazeera sees itself more as the NPR of the tube."

On top of that, it will have fewer commercials than any other news channel (at least initially) on television.

Unlike PBS and NPR, which are also both commercial-free media outlets and only partially funded by U.S. tax dollars (often to criticism of individuals with political views who claim those networks are biased against their views, see http://wny.cc/12iVsHa for details, even though in truth, both tend to adhere to the old-style journalism that tries to stick to the center and tell both sides — and both have seen public funding decline steadily over time to the point that neither can be truly be called publicly-funded), the new player has been called by some as the most ambitious American television news venture since Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes started the Fox News Channel in 1996.

That new player is Al Jazeera America, which acquired Current television at the beginning of 2013.  Al Jazeera America has hired hundreds of U.S.-based journalists and TV production staff, and has been very open about its hopes to win over a skeptical U.S. public.  Only five of the country's biggest cable operators carried its predecessor Current, and one of them - AT&T U-Verse - dropped the channel before the switch to Al Jazeera America.  Time Warner Cable, another of the country's largest cable delivery companies, publicly dropped Current TV upon Al Jazeera's acquisition, but has since resumed talks with Al Jazeera America, which is seen as a big sign of progress (although it hasn't signed yet).

The New York Times described (see http://nyti.ms/17CoEsg) Al Jazeera America as "... the culmination of a long-held dream among the leaders of Qatar, the Middle Eastern emirate that already reaches most of the rest of the world with its Arabic- and English-language news channels. The new channel, created specifically for consumers in the United States, will join cable and satellite lineups on Tuesday afternoon."

Al Jazeera is headquartered in Doha, Qatar, and is partially financed by the former emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, although Al Jazeera has its own management team and operates with a degree of independence not seen in most other news organizations based in that part of the world.  The network did win global praise for its balanced, in-depth coverage of the Arab Spring.  However, independently, the Qatari Royal Family has also been known to use its money to support various political outcomes in the Middle East; for example.  Their support helped to fund uprisings in Syria and Libya.  According to according to Bloomberg News, they have also lent $8 billion to Egypt since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak.  Yet their support has also received some criticism within the region, most recently in July 2013, when two dozen employees at Al Jazeera's network in Egypt resigned over what they characterized as the network's biased coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel has somewhat mixed opinions of the network.  No one can deny that any kind of Arabic political discourse reflects a degree of anti-Semitism, yet any network which attempts to realistically cover the region must report that dialogue, without necessarily trying to advance a particular viewpoint.  Its also worth noting that the network is widely-watched in Israel, and not just by Arab viewers. Still, the conversation in Al Jazeera's coverage about Israel and American foreign policy is different from our discourse in the U.S., which is not necessarily a bad thing.

The channel's interim CEO, Ehab Al Shihabi spoke with APM/Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal at the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier in 2013 and said he believed that the channel's journalistic offerings would be something the American public will watch — and ultimately be willing to pay for.

That transcript for that interview may be found at http://bit.ly/1d2BtTR.

Al Shihabi told Marketplace "I am not entering the landscape of opinionated news. I am not entering the landscape of the infotainment.  I'm entering a landscape which, in my opinion, doesn't exist, or it exists, but not in the level that the American audience deserve.  So the idea here is we are entering for a market that consider underserved."

There's no denying the network's brand carries a great deal of skepticism among many Americans.  Right after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Al Jazeera made an editorial decision to broadcast messages from Osama bin Laden, which many observers felt was overtly anti-American, or at the very least, insensitive to the American audience, even if it was trying to present both sides of a major news story.  That decision may prevent some viewers from ever tuning in.

Still, Mr. Al Shihabi may well be onto something.

"Curiosity will initially drive some viewers to the network," says Mohammed el-Nawawy, a communications professor at Queens University of Charlotte who has written about Al Jazeera's impact. Enticing them to stick around with 'a hard-news, serious approach' will be its biggest challenge," he says.

However, USA Today acknowledged the network comes at an interesting time for the industry, and had this to say:  (see http://usat.ly/1cDQIBA for their coverage):

Its entry into the U.S. comes at a precarious time in the cable industry, which is grappling with massive changes in technology and viewer behavior. Beset by stiff competition, dwindling advertising budgets and an accelerating pace of 'cord-cutting' viewers ditching cable, the cable news business has been struggling to hold onto viewers. Many of them are going to streaming services, such as Netflix and Hulu, and some are getting around costly cable fees by using cheap antennas for over-the-air signals."

During the recent 2012 elections, the news coverage, even among perceived independent voices such as BBC America, was overwhelmingly partisan, leaving many Americans to wonder where all the objective news coverage had gone.  But whether the network can overcome the perception it developed as the media outlet Osama bin Laden turned to for coverage remains to be seen (although with him now dead, people’s collective memories may fade over time).

Taking a step back for a moment, its worth noting that Bob Meyers, President of the National Press Foundation, recently wrote in a blog post (see http://bit.ly/2c81l5N):

"I am reminded of three other news organization launches in the U.S. that were transformative.  One was the launch of CNN on June 1, 1980; the second was the launch of Bloomberg News in 1990; and the third was the launch of Politico in 2007."

Interestingly, Mr. Myers did even not mention Fox news, in part, because Fox News actually has a very small news gathering organization (indeed, the Fox News' news-gathering organization is reportedly smaller than Al Jazeera America's is, which has a staff of 900, including 400 newsroom employees) while Fox News has focused more on political commentary and opinion.

Fox News did prove to be very successful from a business standpoint, although its growth has stagnated in recent years.  In July 2013, Fox News had 1.3 million viewers in prime time according to Nielsen data.  However, co-founder Roger Ailes admitted to New York magazine (see http://nym.ag/iP5fuN) that while the strategy he developed proved brilliant from a business perspective, there were some signs that it had started to backfire in terms of the network's failure to embrace more central, mainstream perspectives, which in hindsight may have contributed to the Republican party's loss of the Presidential race in November 2012.

For example, Fox News' ratings towards the end of George W. Bush's presidency had fallen by more than 30%, as viewers began tuning out when all the news on the network was overwhelmingly doom and gloom (aimed at advancing a particular political perspective).  That part of the strategy proved to be unsuccessful, as the center held, with President Barack Obama being elected in 2008 and subsequently re-elected for a second term in 2012, while the makeup of Congress remained largely unchanged.  Meanwhile, Fox has more recently tried to move a bit more to the center, letting controversial commentators such as Glenn Beck go (having proven to be too extreme for a network that relies on mass viewers and advertisers to pay its bills), though surveys show that a vast majority Americans still view Fox news as an outlet to advance the agenda of Republican party (incidentally, they see MSNBC doing the same for the Democratic party).

The New York Times wrote (see http://nyti.ms/17CoEsg) that "Al Jazeera's approach - more time for more serious journalism - is an implicit criticism of the other options for news on television."

While Current TV, before it was sold to Al Jazeera, did have some legitimate investigative reporting of the sort that Al Jazeera found valuable, it also veered into the opinion aspect targeting the political left, which isn't necessarily the content Al Jazeera is interested in.  Examples of Current TV's coverage that is likely to continue include coverage of China's poaching of endangered tiger species around the world in order to make tiger wine, or an examination of the narcotics industry in America and elsewhere.  That’s the type of coverage Al Jazeera America expects to do more of; which seldom gets much coverage in other media outlets.

The network says it does not expect its focus to be primarily overseas coverage, which was the original plan for the network, which some see as an effort to appease skeptics, although much of the original evening’s coverage seemed very focused on current events in Syria and to a slightly lesser extent, Egypt.  I got bored hearing about that after a half hour.  The simple reality is that global coverage has much more limited appeal to an American audience, which can already get that sort of coverage from other providers like BBC (Britain), or CBC (Canada), so in order to succeed, the network must fully develop its American news content.  At the moment, Al Jazeera America's overseers are trying to emphasize how much American news it will actually cover and how many domestic bureaus it will have.

Al Jazeera America acknowledges it still has its challenges.

Gaining carriage on cable remains a huge challenge, and that was a major reason it bought Current TV in the first place.  Al Jazeera America will start in about 48 million of the country's roughly 100 million homes that subscribe to cable or satellite television.

Still, gaining carriage on cable meant making some concessions which were difficult for Al Jazeera.  Since U.S. cable distributors discourage their partners from giving programming away on the Internet, Al Jazeera will have to block American users from the live streams of its programming that tend to be popular in periods of tumult overseas, something it hasn't had to contend with in other markets where it operates.  That could also prove difficult in luring a new generation of American viewers who no longer watch even news on actual televisions, but on tablet computers, mobile phones, game consoles, etc.  However, that could evolve over time.

Journalistic integrity is reportedly part of Al Jazeera's business plan, and having an American arm (and perspective) could indeed help the organization to be slightly less centered on the Arab perspective of the news, although only time will tell.

"Viewers will see a news channel unlike the others, as our programming proves Al Jazeera America will air fact-based, unbiased and in-depth news," said Ehab Al Shihabi, the channel's acting chief executive, on a news conference call last week. He was explicit about what will be different, saying, "There will be less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings."

Mr. Al Shihabi and other Al Jazeera reps say proprietary research supports their assertions that American viewers want a PBS-like news channel 24 hours a day.

Forbes blogged that Al Jazeera America could mean a return of more serious science, and medical TV reporting (see http://onforb.es/19LC23j for details), an area in which U.S. networks have de-volved into pseudo-science (like disputes over climate change, for example, something Fox news in particular has promoted, although other networks’ coverage of science and medicine is sorely lacking, too).

To be sure, Al Jazeera still has competition in the space.  The British Broadcasting Corporation continues to press for wider carriage of BBC World News in America, and its coverage is also more global in nature than U.S. networks' coverage generally is, although it has learned that American viewers have found limited interest in a majority of news coverage being outside the country, so BBC America's coverage has also evolved to deliver a slightly more American perspective on the news coverage than it does in its native broadcasts or elsewhere it does business.

Americans on Camera

Most of Al Jazeera's news anchors have histories at one or more of the major American television networks.  For example, Antonio Mora (a former "Good Morning America" news anchor who spent the last 10 years at local stations) will anchor a 10 p.m. talk show called "Consider This", and he said he had sensed far less commercial pressure at Al Jazeera America than at local stations where he had worked. "There's a sense here of the news being a public trust."

That perspective could be a welcome addition to an industry which has come to rely on tactics of the sort that helped Fox gain a toehold in the space, even if journalistic integrity was thrown aside for its ratings.

Other news anchors on Al Jazeera America (for its 2013 launch) include John Seigenthaler (the anchor of the weekend editions of "NBC Nightly News" until 2007), who had left the business and never expected to take another job in television until Al Jazeera came along, as well as Joie Chen (a CBS News correspondent until 2008) will be a part of the new network's team.

The NPR program "On the Media" recently covered the launch of Al Jazeera America, which can be listened to below, or by visiting http://bit.ly/2b5mafG:

In the end, however, exactly what role Al Jazeera will play in the increasingly-fragmented U.S. media market will likely determine how successful it will be.  The network's aim to be a truly global news player practically requires it to have a place in the U.S. media market.  Having a seemingly limitless financing from an oil- and gas-rich government in Qatar could prove to be an advantage, as long as it steers clear of going the Fox News/MSBNC route of less focus on the news and more on the opinion as coverage.

Ratings will be a secondary concern for its Qatari backers, who have shown patience and seem to care more about prestige and influence than the bottom line says Mohammed el-Nawawy, a communications professor at Queens University of Charlotte who has written about Al Jazeera's impact. "The U.S. market has been the biggest challenge for Al Jazeera. There's national pride at stake here. And the emir (of Qatar) is taking this very seriously."

For the moment, Al Jazeera America looks like it may offer an interesting perspective, and one which has potential to provide more objective U.S. political coverage than any existing news organizations do, which many believe is sorely lacking in TV news coverage in 2013.

The new business objectives for the network has called for much more domestic coverage than Al Jazeera was originally planning.  Based on the initial evening’s broadcast, my perspective was that more is probably still needed, with less coverage of Syria and Egypt but more coverage of East Asia or South America, for example.  Whether Americans will ultimately tune-in remains to be seen, and exactly how long the Al Jazeera America network is willing to subsidize such journalism also remains to be seen, but the new owners' apparent patience could prove to be a virtue.

Author P.S., January 13, 2016:  Al Jazeera America (AJAM) announced (see http://nyti.ms/1Rm1EIK for more) that it would shutter its U.S. cable TV and digital operations by April 30, 2016.  The Arabian media network struggled to gain TV ratings in the U.S., dogged with a brand-name more often associated with terrorists given that the late Osama bin Laden previously spoke with the network semi-regularly.  Despite those struggles, the newcomer network was quickly and repeatedly recognized by its industry peers for the excellence of its journalism.  Within months of launching, AJAM began collecting a number of prestigious journalism prizes (few of which rival Fox News has EVER earned) — from Peabody, Emmy, Gracie, Eppy and DuPont awards to a Shorty Award, for best Twitter newsfeed, and Newswomen's Club of New York's Front Page awards and citations from groups such as the National Association of Black Journalists and the Native American Journalism.

During its brief time on the air, Al Jazeera America indeed produced some groundbreaking journalism, including a broadcast (yet still provocative) documentary about sports doping that linked NFL/Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning's wife to shipments of human growth hormone.  Naturally, Mr. Manning completely denied the allegations, calling AJAM an "illegitimate" news source, yet he offered absolutely nothing to refute the assertions, and the freelance journalist working for AJAM stood by her work.

However, perhaps the global plunge in oil-prices had a bigger impact on the decision to ultimately abandon its efforts in the U.S.  The Qatar-owned network could probably have subsidized its efforts to gain respect in the largest media market for a longer time if oil prices were still high,  But thanks to fracking, U.S. oil output now rivals Saudi Arabia's, and dictatorships including Russia and Venezuela continue pumping oil because they are so dependent on the income derived from selling the precious commodity.  As a result, global oil prices in early 2016 have plunged to levels not seen in years.  As a results, the parent company, which is based in Qatar, has seen its fortunes decline with dropping oil prices, which made its ability to bankroll the U.S. expansion significantly more difficult.  The organization has announced that it still plans to pursue its successful social media efforts, including its AJ+ effort.

Nostalgia: A Cure for What Ails American Society, or a Mental Health Disorder?

Nostalgia is something that old people do a lot of, right?  At one time, nostalgia was considered a mental health illness akin to depression.  However, such diagnoses were done at a time when psychology, neurology and even medicine were all relatively new.  One of the earliest examples was when 17th-century Swiss physician first coined the term nostalgia, who attributed soldiers' mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home — nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos.  Yet the view of nostalgia being a disorder essentially became the established dogma.  No one really looked much further into the matter in spite of significant advances in the science of mental health that came in the years that followed.

As it turns out, new research has proven that contrary to the established dogma, nostalgia is not an illness at all, and it indeed serves a psychological role; it is definitely not a mental illness.  For example, new research shows that nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety.  It also makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders.  Couples feel closer and look happier when they're sharing nostalgic memories.  On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer.  Indeed, it provides a coping mechanism for people who experience loss of loved ones due to death as they age and helps them to prepare for their own death.

Constantine Sedikides at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, is the man who pioneered much of this new research into nostalgia, and pioneered an area of study that today includes dozens of researchers around the world using tools developed at his social-psychology laboratory, including a questionnaire called the Southampton Nostalgia Scale.  In early July 2013, the New York Times had an excellent article on this topic (see http://nyti.ms/18INU4o for the actual article) which probed into the modern research's origins and what has come from it.

That's not to say nostalgia is without its downsides. For example, as the New York Times's observed, it's a bittersweet emotion — although the net effect is to make life seem more meaningful and helps make death less frightening.  When people speak wistfully of the past, they usually become more optimistic and inspired about the future, rather than negative about the future.

This blog is built on nostalgia, although its hardly the only thing I do, here or anywhere else.  In a small way, I've done it to provide a mechanism to take a positive view of the past, yet is firmly anchored in the future.  People don't visit this blog to watch old re-runs of "The Partridge Family" (that stuff can be found someplace else), but they do get to see what the cast of the original show is up to these days (see my posts at http://goo.gl/yuqQN and http://goo.gl/uVxDi for two examples).  My intent is to put a modern spin on the pop culture (such as it was) when I was younger.

Nowadays, the entertainment industry has something of a love affair with what it calls "reboots" which is taking a movie (or television) franchise back to its origins.  If a sequel continues an original story, a prequel tells what happened earlier, and a remake portrays the same events again (using a new cast, but without a change to the original story), then a reboot is supposed to take a franchise back to its origins and begin again with a different take — and cast, perhaps in an effort to make the idea appealing to an audience that might not enjoy the original.

Not all reboots have been good for business.

Some failed because the original upon which it was built may have been a blockbuster, but was actually built upon a weak story line, and giving it a younger and/or more attractive cast won't do much to save it.  Think of movies like the 2011 "Footloose" reboot from Paramount pictures.  The original was a film that starred Kevin Bacon (and Sarah Jessica Parker among others) that was a blockbuster for Paramount back in the 1980s.  But the 2011 "reboot" didn't do nearly as well.  Others include films like "Spiderman", and more recently, "Man of Steel" (based on "Superman").  While the reboot movies based comic books have generally been better than other movies like "Footloose", they're also based on stronger material to begin with.  Generally, to be a success, a reboot cannot be built on a weak foundation, no matter how successful the original may have been.

At the beginning of 2013, I wrote about how the Millennial generation was feeling nostalgia for a time that's barely a decade ago (see that post at http://goo.gl/quEvZ).  However, the reasons for that nostalgia are as valid as the reason an older person senses nostalgia for his or her own youth: to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety and help them be more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders.  I, for one, would say that's not a bad thing, and society as a whole benefits.  Indeed, there are examples (see http://bit.ly/12psgOG for details) examples which prove this (although Detroit's recent bankruptcy show another side to it).  The key is to use nostalgia for the purpose it was intended, not to get tied up in wistfulness of a time that has passed.

Of course, all of this raises the question as to just what we as a society should be nostalgic for?

Recently, The Atlantic had an interesting clip (see http://bit.ly/1cYsvXS for details) which observed that if you're an old Republican (and many are), there's a good chance you probably want to go back to the 1950s, while Democrats and Millennials seem to love the 1990s (there weren't as many Gen Xers, so nostalgia for the 1970s-1980s isn't as strong).  It featured the following graph from The Economist and YouGov.

What makes the observations most interesting are the fact that the findings show strong generational correlations, which is hardly surprising.  However, beyond that, the political implications are interesting (and potentially troubling for the Republican party since their core voters are getting older and even though the elderly have proven to be a reliable voting block, it doesn't suggest their latest losses have taught them very much ... (see http://bit.ly/ru4nKc and http://on.msnbc.com/11ywS00) ... yet, although I would say there's still time as long as the lessons aren't simply window-dressing).

In the end, though, the biggest take-away from all of this isn't political, but the fact that nostalgia can help people adjust to new phases of life.  But, I think as some Hollywood reboots prove, if its built on a weak foundation, it can also prove to be an economic disaster.

I wonder where the dominant U.S. political parties stand on that?!

The Love Boat Reaches Its Final Destination, Captain Stubing Writes About His Voyage

There's news that the vessel featured in the seventies TV show "The Love Boat" arrived at a scrapyard off the Turkish coast in early August 2013.  A ship recycling company in Turkey bought the old cruise liner for a little more than $3 million and will strip it for its parts and metal (news can be seen at http://usat.ly/1cMBA3u).  NPR featured a nice, short audio story entitled "Love Boat Reaches Its Final Destination" about the ship's run which can be listened to below, or by visiting http://n.pr/1eulObv:


Although taking a cruise on a ship like the one being discarded was viewed as the pinnacle of luxury nearly 40 years ago, these days, even Princess Cruises, Inc., the ship's original owner, much like the rest of the cruise industry, has moved on to what could best be described as floating resort hotels.  Cruising is a huge industry today (and "The Love Boat" sitcom arguably helped to make that happen), and cruise ships nowadays are unfathomable in size compared to the almost quaint-size of the original ships used back in the seventies, which were more akin to cruise liners like the Titanic than the floating high-rises that exist today.

Truth be told, although some scenes from "The Love Boat" were recorded on the ships or at their destinations, much of the show was filmed on sets in California — 20th Century Fox Studios for seasons one through five, and Warner Hollywood Studios for the remainder of the original series.  That certainly explains why the cabin sizes featured on the show looked more like hotel rooms than real-life cruise ship cabins actually did, especially during that era, although with the newer ships, the cabin sizes have expanded, too.

Much has been written about what was arguably one of Aaron Spelling's biggest hits in the 1970s (it shared a back-to-back timeslot on ABC's Saturday night lineup with another show that Aaron Spelling produced, that one being "Fantasy Island", catch my earlier post on that show at http://goo.gl/si7Fph).  Those two shows borrowed directly from the playbook of a prior ABC show which ran from 1969-1974 known as "Love, American Style", which became known in Hollywood as a place where struggling, unemployed (some of them older) actors could find temporary employment.  But the nonstop parade of familiar faces on the show was a key to its success, although the small, permanent cast who played the ship's crew was also popular with viewers.

The original concept for "The Love Boat" began as an original, made-for-TV movie which aired in 1976.  That was based on a non-fiction book, which was entitled "The Love Boats" written by Jeraldine Saunders, who was once a real-life cruise director.  Two more TV movies would follow before the series began.

As Ellen Seiter eloquently wrote, "No one takes The Love Boat to get anywhere, exactly. Usually the voyage serves to put things — especially personal relationships — back where they started.  What takes place on board is personal life: emotions removed from the everyday cares of work money, homes, cars, neighbors, even, for the most part, children. The work that the crew of The Love Boat performs is that of vigilant friends patrolling the ship night and day in search of passengers who need 'someone to talk to.'"

For the record, "The Love Boat" has been off the television rerun circuit for a while, and only the first two seasons of the series has yet to emerge in digital format (released in March 2008), although there is news that Me-TV will begin showing it in the Autumn of 2013 as part of its "Fall for Me-TV" fall 2013 schedule which will begin starting Monday, September 2, 2013 (see http://goo.gl/MSTRSK for details).  In truth, many fans of the show thought CBS/Paramount Home Video would have digitized the content much, much faster since its an opportunity to make money on something collecting dust in a company vault.  To date, only the first two seasons have been released (and CBS made the greedy decision to split each season into two separate volumes, thereby doubling the cost).  Some are hoping Shout! Factory will step in to pick up the pace, much as they did when Sony stopped after it released Season 1 of "Fantasy Island".  Regardless, fans were glad to see the show again, and the guest list is incredible, with everyone from comedy and stage legends like George Burns, Milton Berle, and Ethel Merman to TV staples ranging from Florence Henderson, Robert Reed and Maureen McCormick, John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Audra Lindley to Dick Sargent, Bonnie Franklin, Meredith Baxter, to kid stars including Kristy McNichol, and Scott Baio.

At this point, while its sad to see "The Love Boat" vessel go to the scrap heap, its fair to say this show helped popularize cruising as a vacation for millions of Americans who might not have ever considered it.  Prior to "The Love Boat", cruise vacations was something that affluent, older people did.  Pastimes on the ships consisted of lectures, shuffleboard and fine dining, but casual sex hookups or rekindling of romances were seldom seen as an onboard activity.  "The Love Boat" changed all that, and helped pave the way for companies like Carnival to become the largest in the industry, best known for being "the fun ships".

Beyond the actual vessel heading to the junkyard, the actor who played Captain Merrill Stubing has already started promoting a new biographical memoir entitled "This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life" due to be released October 22, 2013, published by Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins.   According to actor Gavin McLeod, he's coming clean about his long career in show business.

Historically, biographies tended to be written by third-party authors, partly because writing was left to authors with a track-record in the publishing industry.  However, we've seen a shift towards more self-written biographies, and more recently, the publishing industry has tended to favor memoirs over lengthy biographies.  Also, life spans are longer today, making it possible for people to write about their own lives much longer than in the past.

Nevertheless, in the last few months, there have been some pop culture memoirs from celebrities who were big in the 1970s and 1980s.  Actress Valerie Harper ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show") published hers at the beginning of 2013, and got a lot of attention since she also announced she had terminal cancer.  More recently, Academy Award winner (and star of TV's "The Partridge Family", catch my post on that at http://goo.gl/yuqQN) Shirley Jones came out with a new memoir in which she revealed having threesomes for her ex-husband Jack Cassidy (see http://goo.gl/uVxDi for a post I did on her).  Now, there's news of another memoir from the man who was best known on television for his roles as Murray Slaughter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and perhaps even better known for his role as Captain Merrill Stubing on "The Love Boat".  That man is 82-year-old Gavin MacLeod.

In an upcoming autobiography entitled "This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life" to be released October 22, 2013 by published by Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins, he's coming clean about his long career in show business.

As far as readability, this one might be fair, although as the title suggests, Mr. McLeod seems to prosthelytize a bit when writes about how he brought longtime friend, fellow "Mary Tyler Moore Show" co-star Ted Knight (who was also known for his role on "Too Close for Comfort" back in the 1980s) to Christ just before he died in 1986.  Whether Gavin McLeod deserves credit for this is unclear (after all, Mr. Knight was dying), but Gavin McLeod is taking credit for it.

Beyond that, there's a dose of all the usual Hollywood stuff: battles with depression and near-suicide while working on "McHale's Navy", as well as his other health issues including two heart attacks and a quintuple bypass, as well as his alcoholism which led to his quitting cold turkey in back in 1974 (he says he's now been sober for 39 years).  He also writes about his audition for the original role of Archie Bunker in "All in the Family", and of course, his divorce from his first wife, his second marriage, divorce and subsequent re-marriage to his second wife, actress/dancer Patti Steele.

He also writes about his encounters with some of the world's biggest stars, including Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan (an actor before he became California governor or U.S. President), Steve McQueen, Bette Davis and Robert Redford and others.

MacLeod writes "My life has taken one incredible turn after another. I've gotten to do what I wanted to do. I've been a captain! I've been given this incredible gift of life and now I want to use it to give back. That's why I'm sharing my story here, the fun parts and even some not-so-fun parts, in the hopes that maybe someone will take a nice walk down memory lane with me - and maybe I'll even give someone a little bit of hope."

To be sure, the book might be interesting reading, but its kind of late.  Still, for anyone who wants Captain Stubing's perspective on life on "The Love Boat" set, this might be a way to, as Jack Jones sang in the show's memorable theme song "Set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance ..."

Author P.S., August 28, 2017:  Peter Knego became a cruise ship historian and journalist after growing up near the Port of Los Angeles World Cruise Center in San Pedro, and he grew up obsessed with all the cruise ships that docked in his city.  He has retained a large collection of ship memorabilia, including some of the ships' original artworks, etc.  Unfortunately, Princess Cruises was not interested in his collection, even though his hobby has resulted in a great deal of original Love Boat content being saved, which could potentially be refurbished or recreated in the future.  He has started selling some items featured on the The Love Boat's ships.  The network Me-TV featured a blog post about his archived collection and detail on where he's selling some at http://bit.ly/2iE8X4C if you're interested in learning more.

Author P.S., November 17, 2020: Vulture and other outlets report that the ViacomCBS-owned free streaming platform known as Pluto TV https://pluto.tv will be bringing six new "virtual" channels devoted to throwback TV shows from corporate sibling CBS Television Distribution to its platform, adding over 60 seasons of classic TV series on November 24, 2020. Among the six virtual channels being added to Pluto TV is a channel dedicated to the Aaron Spelling's show "The Love Boat" (a total of 9 seasons) in which celebrity guest stars hopped onboard the Pacific Princess each week in hopes of finding romance (they almost always do). The best part is that Pluto TV is free (it has commercials, but not as many as first-run shows seem to have).

Bert and Ernie: America's Same-Sex Couple

On the front cover of the July 8 & 15, 2013 issue of The New Yorker magazine, the artwork featured something that looked a lot like Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie, the famous, fuzzy Muppets.  The artwork caused some controversy, because it appeared that Bert's arm was wrapped around Ernie, and Ernie's head nestled against what appears to be Bert's shoulder against the glow of a black and white TV set as they watch the Supreme Court overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (a.k.a. "DOMA", a photo of the U.S. Supreme court justices is featured on their TV in The New Yorker magazine cover, depicted below) and allow the lower courts' ruling that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional to stand because the defenders lacked appropriate legal standing, restoring same-gender marriage to the biggest U.S. state.

The New Yorker's controversial cover (2013)

The New Yorker's cover, entitled "Moment Of Joy," was not officially licensed by Sesame Workshop, but it also took a great deal of creative license, because the image did not technically feature the puppets' faces, it was merely a shadowed outline of something that looked a lot like the back of their puppet heads (in orange and yellow felt).  Still, it seems unlikely there's very much legal basis to challenge the artwork based on the illusion of an "familar-looking" image.  Indeed, Generation Xers who enjoyed Topps Wacky Packages (I'll probably cover that in a different post) as kids learned that challenges to Wacky Packages did not stand up in court even if the parody stickers actually looked a lot like real products already on the market.

NBC's Today show featured a short clip on the cover, news of which can be seen at http://on.today.com/1alNgKK.

The cover was sourced from, of all places, the Internet.  Jack Hunter, the artist behind the cover, originally submitted his image, unsolicited, to Tumblr.  The New Yorker version was modified slightly (the original Tumblr image featured President Obama's image on the television, rather than the U.S. Supreme Court justices), but the net impact was much greater since it was published in a major magazine that sells millions of copies, coming out right on the heels of two Supreme Court rulings in same-sex marriage which overturned section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") although it left untouched Section 2, which allows states to deny recognition to other states' marriages which is another lawsuit waiting to happen (indeed, as I write this, lawsuits filed by the ACLU have already been filed in Pennsylvania and Virginia), and another which allowed a lower court ruling which found California Proposition 8 (which outlawed same-gender marriage in that state) to be unconstitutional to stand.

The characters of Bert and Ernie (and most of the main Sesame Street characters) were created more than four decades ago by the late Jim Henson (see a related post I did featuring Mr. Henson at http://goo.gl/KYjpqH), who created both "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show".  The Bert and Ernie characters were screen-tested to a number of families in July 1969, (the year I was born), and later premiered on PBS stations starting on November 10, 1969.

Cover of "Love", a 1980 album

In recent years, the question of whether Bert and Ernie "are" or "are not" [a gay couple] has emerged, fueled by the fact that the two puppets share a bedroom, although they sleep in separate, single beds.  One has a curious obsession with his rubber ducky.  Neither has a girlfriend (by comparison, other Sesame Street characters including Oscar the Grouch, has a lady friend named Grundgetta, and the Count has the Countess), and they behave a little bit like television's "The Odd Couple".  Indeed, this sexual ambiguity was the basis for two characters in the Broadway musical "Avenue Q" in which two puppets, not too dissimilar to Bert and Ernie, discuss the possibility of one of them being gay.  A song entitled "If You Were Gay" is featured on the soundtrack, which can be listened to below, or downloaded from Amazon.com at http://amzn.to/148HElL:


Public speculation about their sexuality (or lack thereof) has existed for many years according to ABC News (see http://abcn.ws/1brSXZ4), which reported that in 1993, TV Guide had received dozens of letters railing against Sesame Street for "condoning a homosexual relationship", and shortly after, a North Carolina preacher began a failed campaign on his radio show to try and ban the puppets for their supposed "immorality".  In truth, the separate beds issue was true for other TV sitcoms prior to that same era.  In fact, the first live-action TV couple to regularly share a bed on television (who were not already married in real life), were Darrin and Samantha Stephens on "Bewitched", in the October 22, 1964 episode "Little Pitchers Have Big Fears".  Prior to that, TV couples generally were depicted as sleeping in separate, twin beds like Bert and Ernie (think of "I Love Lucy" as the best example).  However, many people, especially the Gen Xers who grew up when these characters were first created, do believe them to be one of the most famous gay couples in pop culture.  As adults raising their own children in 2013, many in the generation seem to believe Bert and Ernie are indeed gay, and the subject has become a topic of great interest as the nation struggles with the issues related to legal recognition of same-gender relationships.

As I write this in July 2013, thirteen U.S. states plus the District of Columbia officially license same-gender marriages (I would remind my readers that the U.S. began as thirteen colonies, but expanded to fifty states).On June 28, 2013, WNYC's "On the Media" radio show recently featured a segment which looked at same-gender marriage, particularly the messaging that both advocates and opponents have used in recent political battles and how messaging has evolved from both sides.  To listen, visit http://bit.ly/1S2k1m1.  Outside the U.S., Canada has permitted same-gender marriages nationwide since 2005, and a variety of other countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Argentina and Sweden all do the same, so the issue has emerged on a worldwide basis.  In 2013, legislation passed in Uruguay, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, which means the list of places around the world which permit it has grown considerably, with more to be added in 2014 based on different implementation schedules in different jurisdictions.

Legal recognition of these civil marriages remains controversial among some segments of the U.S. population, particularly for conservative religious groups, although most states that permit same-gender marriages also exempt religious organizations from any obligation of facilitating same-gender marriages if they prefer (civil servants are not exempt, so if these employees object, they've chosen the wrong career to work in!).  Nevertheless, societal change on the issue has occurred rapidly.

For example, when Gallup first polled the U.S. public about same-gender marriage in 1996, only 27% of Americans favored legal same-gender unions.  But in less than two decades, support for same-gender marriage rights has more than doubled.  A demographic landslide of youth voters who overwhelmingly favor marriage equality (and this group remains the least religiously-affiliated generation in history according to researchers at UC Berkeley and Duke University) and will soon dominate politics everywhere is really driving this change.

A majority of U.S. businesses were opposed to DOMA because they have historically handled the matter that an employee is either married or isn't, yet DOMA required a cumbersome and unnecessary human resources record-keeping in order to separate out legally married, same-gender couples from other married couples.  DOMA forced them create a third category which could not be recognized by Federal law, yet must be recognized under state laws, creating a government regulatory headache for a constituency that has historically supported the Republican party which put DOMA into law, and businesses didn't like DOMA.

Nationally, nearly 300 companies and business groups signed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the DOMA, saying it forced them to discriminate against legally-married gay employees and cost them money to comply.  Signers included Google Inc. and Apple Inc., Goldman Sachs Group, Walt Disney Co., General Mills Corp., Marriott, Nike and Pfizer.  A major swath of corporate America stood up to argue that treating married employees differently based on whether they are gay or straight was unfair to them and imposed an unnecessary a cost burden which harms U.S. economic interests.

"The federal law forced an employer to put its employees in two different castes," said Sabin Willett, a partner with the Boston law firm Bingham McCutchen, which wrote the brief.  "DOMA was bad for business."

Separately, a March 2013 survey of young voters undertaken by the College Republicans National Committee, found that the party should back off its opposition to same-gender marriage.  The survey found, perhaps not surprisingly, that most young voters believe that jobs and the economy are the most important issues.  But there is little appetite from this generation to see U.S. lawmakers crusade against same-gender marriage.  For example, among voters under age 30, many said they would not vote for a Republican candidate if they opposed same-gender marriage, even if they agreed with the candidate on a range of other issues.  About two out of five young voters (39%) said that a candidate’s opposition to same-gender marriage would make them less likely to vote for them.

A March 2013 article featured on the front cover of Time magazine entitled "How Gay Marriage Won" (see http://ti.me/14xRXOU) posited that a variety of factors have helped the gay and lesbian community go from protests at the Stonewall Inn in NYC to the altar in two generations.  Among the factors cited were the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s to genetic engineering taking place in labs at U.S. companies like Genentech (now Roche) and Monsanto, to test-tube babies, all with the encouragement of U.S. Federal lawmakers, really helped put same-gender marriage on the national agenda today.

Back to Bert and Ernie.

Sesame Workshop has officially denied that Bert and Ernie are anything more than friends.  For example, when the subject first emerged in 1993 as Generation X came of age, the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) had to issue this press release:

"Bert and Ernie, who've been on Sesame Street for 25 years, do not portray a gay couple, and there are no plans for them to do so in the future. They are puppets, not humans. Like all the Muppets created for Sesame Street, they were designed to help educate preschoolers. Bert and Ernie are characters who help demonstrate to children that despite their differences, they can be good friends."

More recently, in 2007, Gary Knell, then-president of Sesame Workshop, hoped to put the issue to rest with the following statement:

"They are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets.  They do not exist below the waist."

All of that may be true, but the official responses have hardly put the issue to rest.

Photo from a 2005 rally for same-sex marriage

The issue was revisited yet again in 2011, when the New York Daily News felt the issue was significant enough to address in an editorial, at which point, Sesame Workshop (which is based in New York) issued a slightly longer statement, stating:

"[Bert and Ernie] were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves," the statement said. "Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation."



The issue is likely to continue for at least a few more years, as part of DOMA still remains in effect, and different states treat such marriages differently, which may prove to be an economic differentiator (see http://bit.ly/12TmwNc for an interesting Marketplace.org story on the subject).

Indeed, there are already moves to legalize same-sex marriage (including reversing constitutional bans in at least a few) in states including Michigan, Oregon, New Jersey, Nevada and Hawaii in the name of economic development.  A June 2010 study conducted by UCLA's Williams Institute found that same-sex couples would spend between $4.2 and $9.5 million on their wedding celebrations, if allowed to marry in Hawaii, while out-of-state guests for those weddings would spend an additional $17.8 to $40.3 million dollars, all of which would in turn create up to 333 new jobs in Hawaii primarily in the events and travel industries.  However, with a ban, the dollars go elsewhere, especially to California.  The figures in the study are estimated based on a 4-year period).

The only difference today is that more and more U.S. voters might seem to agree with the logic of the Williams Institute and, if the elections in 2012 are any indication, will vote to legalize it.  Even conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh agrees.

Author P.S., September 16, 2018: Its what might possibly be one of the longest coming-out stories ever (nearly 50 years!), but there was news this week that Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie are actually a same-sex couple, even if the Sesame Workshop has not officially confirmed it, nor have the two gay Muppets themselves.

In an interview with Mark Saltzman conducted by Queerty, Saltzman revealed that the Bert and Ernie characters were based on he and his own partner, at least that's what was in his mind when he helped characterize the two Sesame Street stars.

Mr. Saltzman had a 15-year tenure with The Muppets (earning several Emmy's for the show), including writing scripts and songs for Sesame Street.  Saltzman is gay, said he said that he and his significant other Arnold Glassman were referred to as Bert and Ernie. As the "jokester," Saltzman identified with the Ernie character, whereas his partner, a more detailed-oriented film editor, was Bert.

Mr. Saltzman revealed that when he first started working at Sesame Street, he was already dating Glassman, and their relationship formed the inspiration for the one he wrote between the male puppets.

"I don't think I'd know how else to write them, but as a loving couple," said Glassman — although he never revealed this information to the PBS children show's head writer.

More can be read in TV Guide https://www.tvguide.com/news/sesame-street-bert-ernie-gay/ or in the Advocate's coverage of the matter at https://www.advocate.com/television/2018/9/18/sesame-street-writer-bert-and-ernie-are-loving-couple.

Mary Tyler Moore Show: Groundbreaking, or a Reflection of How America Was Changing?

The Mary Tyler Moore (MTM) Show premiered CBS in 1970 and ran until 1977.  The show's name comes from the actress who played the lead character, even though the character's name was Mary Richards on the show.  Perhaps it's because Mary Tyler Moore was already a well-known television personality at the time, having co-starred in a (black and white, no less) popular sitcom called "The Dick Van Dyke Show" as his wife, Laura Petrie.  I don't know.  But The MTM Show was considered groundbreaking at the time it premiered.

The reason?

The lead character was a never-married, independent career woman.  As Mary Richards, she was a single woman in her thirties, and moved to Minneapolis after breaking off an engagement with her boyfriend of 2 years.  She applied for a secretarial job at TV station WJM, but that was already taken, but she was instead offered a position of associate producer of the station's "Six O'Clock News".  Mary Richards was very different from other single women on TV before her (or even at that time).  She was neither widowed nor divorced, but she was also not seeking a man to support her.  Prior to that, the only other show I can think of which even came close was "That Girl" (which was a Desilu production at the time, although Desilu was purchased by Gulf+Western in 1967, which renamed the company Paramount Television, which would later become CBS Television).  "That Girl" ran on ABC from 1966-1971 and starred Marlo Thomas as Ann Marie who moves from her hometown of Brewster, NY to try to make it big as a young actress in New York City.  But Ann Marie had a fashion wardrobe that no one in her financial situation could afford, even if she did break the mold of women depicted in roles as homemakers or traditional employment as secretaries (adminstrative assistants) or nurses.   But unlike Mary Richards on MTM, Ann Marie was pretty attached to her boyfriend Donald Hollinger (played by actor Ted Bessell), and the lead character Ann Marie also reached out to her parents somewhat regularly.

Turning the World on With Her Smile While Paving the Way for Women's Independence

Looking back at it, its hard to believe MTM show was so groundbreaking for its portrayal of women's roles that were not happy homemakers in those days, but it was.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong is the author of a new book about Mary Richards and the rest of the gang at the WJM newsroom and the real life people behind the show.  Her book is entitled "Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic" says that MTM's lead character, Mary Richards was really "The first kind of really independent single woman.  She's 30, unapologetically single on television".  Armstrong says it's from her that we got the single-girl television shows that push boundaries in modern times, from "Sex & the City" to "Girls".

Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace radio recently interviewed Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and that interview can be listened to below, or by visiting http://bit.ly/16cI89Z:

The new book examines the role that working women on television had in the early 1970s, and I've already said that Mary Tyler Moore helped pave the way for the revolution that followed, specifically the disappearance of stay-at-home mothers which would become the exception rather than the rule.  Indeed, Gen X kids paid a price for that by essentially having to care for themselves while both their fathers and mothers were out earning a living.  There were no lesson plans on how to deal with the family dynamics of both spouses working, so it was very much on-the-job training, and Gen X was on the front lines of that.

To be sure, some social conservatives would like to blame women's lib and personal self-fulfillment on narcissism, but the reality was that lousy economic times played a far bigger role than they'd like to acknowledge.  Around that time, it was becoming painfully evident that it was simply no longer possible to live what Americans like to think of as the American Dream on a single income except for the most affluent segments of the population.  Hence, working women became an economic necessity.  Television shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" reflected what was already happening in the U.S. at the time.

MTM paved the way for other hit sitcoms that followed, including "One Day At A Time" (see my post on that sitcom at http://goo.gl/DSznq for more on that show), about a divorced women trying to raise two daughters on her own while also trying to earn an income.  Mary Tyler Moore herself, a TV veteran from the days in which TV was still recorded in Black and White who was a big reason for the show's strategic direction.  She, and her then-husband Grant Tinker, really pushed the show's depiction of the changing role of women when it premiered in early 1970s.

The MTM show's cast moved on to do a host of other TV shows, including "Rhoda", "Valerie", "The Love Boat", "Two Close for Comfort", and various others, all thanks to Mary Tyler Moore.

These days, Mary devotes most of her time as the International Chairman of JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), an autoimmune disease which renders individuals' lives completely dependent on an exogenous source of the hormone insulin, and carries a constant risk of life-threatening complications because managing the disease is far more complex than taking a pill and modifying diet.  Moore herself has the disease, but in her successful career, aside from being a Tony-nominated stage actress, is also an accomplished film actress.  In fact, she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in 1980's "Ordinary People", and was also nominated for the Academy Award for the same role.

MTM Female Cast Reunites on "Hot In Cleveland"

Mary Tyler Moore and much of the cast from the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" (MTM) are getting a fair amount of publicity these days.  Indeed, on April 5, 2013, most the entire MTM cast (at least the women on the show) were reunited to record an episode for Season 4 of TV Land's original show "Hot In Cleveland" (the actual episode will air September 4, 2013 at 10pm ET/PT).  The women of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" had not been on a television sitcom together since MTM ended in 1977.

Mary herself had already been a guest on "Hot In Cleveland" during the show's second season, in which she shared a jail cell with Elka (played by Betty White, who's a regular cast member on "Hot in Cleveland"). 

Betty White was a regular (starting in season 4) on The MTM Show playing the The Happy Homemaker Sue Ann Nivens, on who gave advice on TV to housewives on cooking and decorating on the show's fictional WJM-TV in Minneapolis, MN.  On-screen, Sue Ann Nivens gave the impression of a sweet, perfect wife and homemaker, yet her character off-screen was sardonic and  man-obsessed.  More recently, another female actress from MTM show joined the cast of "Hot In Cleveland", specifically actress Georgia Engel who's now a recurring cast member who plays Mamie (she joined "Hot in Cleveland" in season 4).

Bittersweet MTM Reunion To Air on September 4, 2013

The "Hot in Cleveland" reunion for the women of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" is kind of bittersweet.  That's because actress Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern, Mary's best friend (BFF), told the world that she was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal brain cancer in the winter of 2013, so the "Hot In Cleveland" episode will likely be one of her final sitcom appearances.

Ms. Harper told the press she had some stroke-like symptoms that sent her to the hospital which lead to a diagnosis on January 15, 2013 of a rare type of brain cancer called leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, that occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain.  Her diagnosis is terminal, and Ms. Harper told People magazine (see http://bit.ly/WQSl91) as well as the Today show and TV show "The Doctors" that she likely had only a months to live.  Valerie Harper has been very public with her diagnosis.  I may try to cover Valerie Harper in a separate post since I have enjoyed her recent autobiography and my readers may enjoy it, too.

Indeed, Valerie Harper is getting a fair amount of TV coverage these days.  Her battle with terminal brain cancer will be chronicled in a one-hour documentary from NBC News to be hosted by Meredith Vieira which airs Septmber 19, 2013 at 10 pm, and will offer a first-person account as Harper pursues experimental treatments and continues on with day-to-day life accompanied by her husband Tony Cacciotti and their daughter Christina.  She allowed camera crews to follow her as she goes on doctor's visits, undergoes surgery and reunites with friends and family.

Beyond that, The Me-TV network plans to start airing "Rhoda" reruns starting next week.

As I noted, Ms. Harper was Mary Richards's BFF on MTM back in the early 1970s.  She also had a hit spin-off from that show after MTM ended known as "Rhoda" (both MTM and "Rhoda" are now available on DVD).  In 1987, Valerie Harper made news for being fired from a TV show named after her ("Valerie") by what was then Lorimar Telepictures over a salary dispute (see http://lat.ms/16un2UJ for background).  Lorimar replaced her in the NBC show named after her with actress Sandy Duncan, who supposedly played her sister-in-law, and the show was retitled "Valerie's Family", although the show did not last very long after Valerie Harper was let go.

On that point, even rival NBC television show "The Golden Girls", then in season 4 in the episode known as "The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo" kind of jokes about the dispute in which she goes to a local supermarket representing the elderly, but notes "I've got a a better case than Valerie Haper!"  While in one sense they were lightly poking fun at Valerie, it showed the issues actors were still having with big Hollywood studios of the day.  Lorimar, for the record, later became a subsidiary of Warner Bros., active from 1969 until 1993, at which point it was folded into Warner Television.

I'll close with the lyrics to the iconic MTM theme song "Love is All Around" by Sonny Curtis; you can download the full song by visiting http://amzn.to/13pErZD:

How will you make it on your own?

This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone

But it's time you started living

It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it

You can have a town, why don't you take it

You're gonna make it after all

You're gonna make it after all

Author P.S., January 25, 2017:  There was news today that actress Mary Tyler Moore - considered to one of television's early feminists (along with Marlo Thomas, who played on the sitcom "That Girl" from 1966-1971) because she played a single, career woman in her namesake sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" from 1970-1977), well before the term became popular, had died at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut (see the obituary at https://nyti.ms/2k1cN79 for more detail), which was where she and her husband Dr. Robert Levine lived (along with a Manhattan, NY address where they lived part-time).  She was 80 years old at the time of her passing.  The cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest after she had contracted pneumonia.

The Story of Polaroid

In 2013, the notion of instant photography is with most people all the time.  Our mobile phones have not only cameras, but video cameras that were once seen as gee-whiz technology.  But 40 years ago, we still had things like Fotomats, which were the original outparcel retailers that offered fast (next-day) photo developing before every pharmacy in the country did it right in front of you.  In those days, developing film still required a dark room.  Mail-order providers like Clark Color Labs offered film developing at a discount if you did it by mail order.  These days, they still develop photos, but has refashioned itself as something akin to Snapfish (although competition exists, including from Lenovo Photos which sells photo books and the like at cut-rates).

However, as WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show" featured last November, during the 1960s and 1970s, Polaroid was the coolest technology company on earth.  Mr. Lopate interviews a man named Christopher Bonanos who has a new(ish) book entitled "Instant: The Story of Polaroid".  Listen to that interesting interview below, or by visiting http://www.wnyc.org/story/250794-story-polaroid/:

In his book, and in the interview with Leonard Lopate, Christopher Bonanos tells the tale of Polaroid's first instant camera to hit the market in 1948 to its meteoric rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, to the company's dramatic decline into bankruptcy (Polaroid stopped making film in 2008) and its unlikely resurrection in the digital age as a hot brand.

These days, Polaroid[s], or at least pseudo-Polaroids, are everywhere, with Instagram and popular websites like Poladroid [http://www.poladroid.net/] and Polaroin [http://www.polaroin.com/] making it possible to turn virtually any shitty photo taken with a cheap cell phone to look like a retro-Polaroid.

Indeed, the Polaroid background has proven very enduring.  The image of instant photos with a wide strip at the bottom seems more popular today as a photo enhancement than it ever was during the original company's original business heyday (today's Polaroid is a re-invention as the original company, which pretty much ceased to exist at the turn of the new Millennium).

A man named Antonio Pedrosa from ADR studio developed a concept he called the Instagram Socialmatic Camera, which interestingly enough, will be soon sold by Polaroid itself, or at least the new owners of the Polaroid brand name.  The concept features an internal printer which will allow users to print directly on Instagram paper sheets, with a release planned for early 2014 (Editor Note, Jan. 6, 2014: An "official" announcement of this product's launch can be seen at http://bit.ly/KtI113).  Not surprisingly, the camera will look much like a retro-Polaroid Land Camera in a new, digital format.

The Soon-to-Be-Introduced Instagram Socialmatic Camera

So it seems that Polaroid has reinvented itself for the digital age, while former giants like Kodak haven't been so lucky.  To be sure, some rivals like Fujifilm still sell the old chemical film (in fact, Fuji still sells cartridges that work in old Polaroid cameras in case anyone is interested, for now anyway).

But Polaroid has endured as a brand.

To be sure, royalties for the brand doesn't quite make it the powerhouse employer in the Boston area that it once was, but it seems that nostalgia still means something.  An online store selling film and other Polaroid merchandise can be found at https://us.polaroidoriginals.com.  Only time will tell whether the hipsters who have helped to resurrect the brand in today's environment will continue to support the brand over the long-term, but today, its very much around.

Author P.S. (July 30, 2014): There was news today that another iconic American brand that pretty much died as a result of the digital revolution is getting some help from some big-name film directors, including Judd Apatow and Quentin Tarantino, who are apparently pushing various Hollywood movie studios to commit to buying a certain amount of film from Kodak for the next several years.  The reason is that they want to preserve the option to shoot film recording.  Movies shot on film do have a certain artistic quality that doesn't exist with digital recordings, and a number of small theaters across the country are still only equipped to show movies shot on celluloid film.  However, American Public Media's marketplace.org reports that David Reibstein, a professor at The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School says that having the option to use film in the long-term really depends on just what Kodak does with these sales now.  If the company continues to do what they were doing yet isn't working, that won't ensure that Kodak film (or film from any other film manufacturer including Japan's Fuji or Europe's Agfa which is based in Belgium) will remain available indefinitely unless the company behind the product remains in business, which means they must use the money to evolve their business.  As we've seen, another U.S. film manufacturer (Polaroid) has enjoyed considerable success as a brand.  Whether Kodak can do the same remains to be seen.  Listen to the story at http://ow.ly/zN53G.

Author P.S. (November 23, 2016):  Marketplace ran a story entitled "Nostalgia is driving up sales for Polaroid" http://bit.ly/2fHnyX2 which discussed the company's resurgence and acknowledged that hipsters with no experience with the original instant photography were a big part of their success.

Aimee Mann Has Always Blazed New Trail in Music

Aimee Mann, circa 2012

Aimee Mann was a big voice of the 1980s. She was the lead singer for 'Til Tuesday, although she has since moved on as a solo artist. A native of the Richmond, VA area, she attended college at Berklee College of Music in Boston. But she dropped out of college to become a musician. Although she was in several bands even before dropping out of college, she began 'Til Tuesday with her boyfriend and fellow Berklee classmate Michael Hausman (who would later manage her solo career, although the debut album featured a title track that was actually inspired by her own breakup with Hausman) in 1983.

The track "Voices Carry" peaked at number 8 in 1985, and was a big new wave hit. "Voices Carry" also won the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist (check out the 1985 Spin magazine story at http://goo.gl/Y07YT).

Taking a step back in time, catch that classic 1980s video below, or by visiting the official YouTube Vevo video at http://youtu.be/uejh-bHa4To:

However, over the last 27 years, Aimee Mann has blazed a somewhat different trail when it comes to her music, in effect, rejecting the traditional idea of stardom and the record-company ideal of hit production and instead staying true to her music rather than falling into the "hit machine" ideal.  In fact, she rejected becoming a hit-machine frontwoman with overproduced music for A&M records with 'Til Tuesday, opting to go her own way, but they decided to keep her for the duration of her contract, then let her go.  As it turns out, Aimee's timing was pretty good, because the music business was standing on quicksand anyway, with digital music (think of Napster) eating the traditional music business model anyway.  Today, independent artists with her name recognition can survive on their own, selling their music online or via iTunes, Google, Amazon and elsewhere since music is 100% digital music today anyway.

In January 2013, Public Radio International's "Bullseye with Jesse Thorn" interviewed her. The website describes the podcast this way: "... she found the limelight uncomfortable. Tired of contending with record companies' attempts to pigeonhole her and her work, Aimee struck out on her own. She joins us to discuss that transition from frontwoman to solo artist, the stresses of fame, and coping with uncertainty at a time in her life when she thought she would have had everything figured out." Aimee's new album, Charmer, is available now. You may catch that interesting podcast by visiting http://www.maximumfun.org/bullseye/bullseye-jesse-thorn-aimee-mann-seth-godin-jordan-morris.

Viva Formica: A Retro Design Element Wows New Buyers

No, I'm not referring to the Argentinian soccer team who's best known for, shall I say, its rabid fans, although I certainly could be.  Today I'm referring to high pressure laminates which can be used on countertops, dining tables and even floors.  It's enduring, too.  Typically, Formica can be used for 15, or even 20 years.

But for much of the building boom in the 1990s, people were choosing high-end design elements including expensive granite, marble or other stone elements in their kitchens.  While stone certainly endures, it starts to look the same after a while, especially when every house in the neighborhood has it.  Combine that with stainless steel appliances, and the effect ends up looking pretty, shall I say, cookie-cutter?

That's why, when in 2012, Los Angeles designer Scott Lander chose white Formica for a kitchen he created in an award-winning project, people were mesmerized.

But Scott Lander told American Public Media's Marketplace "Most people were asking, 'What is this surface?' Most people didn't even know it was Formica."

Have a listen to the story below, or by visiting http://bit.ly/Tc4mEi:



How times have changed, indeed.  Will we be seeing more Formica in the coming years?  The company would certainly like that to be the case.

Retro, 1950s ad for Formica products

The Formica Group, which was established in 1913, still remains global design leader in surfacing products, but it's design heyday was really back in the 1950s through the 1970s, but as I already noted, people had kind of moved on and forgotten about it by the 2000s.  It was seen as retro but not necessarily in a good way, being the surface you'd find on a tabletop at a roadside diner someplace.

Formica, however, has also cleaned up its act, and that's meant to be a compliment.

Formica has switched to non-toxic resins, and it uses recycled paper in its designs.  Plus, its products are becoming more popular with a new generation of budget remodelers, for obvious reasons.  The product has a wide array of design choices which are durable and cost-effective.  These days, Formica also sells flooring, too.

However, Formica is but one option and it need not be limited to retro, 1950s-styled designs.  (Retro, however, might be considered.)  At the International Builder's Show, the company introduced a "new" collection featuring retro designs and colors in celebration of its 100th birthday.  The collection was designed by the renowned design firm Pentagram.

So when you think about upgrading your kitchen or bathroom, you might just consider Formica.  Design buyers in Los Angeles were recently impressed, and you might be, too!