Mark Evanier takes a moment to appreciate those great, summer-time, fall promos the networks used to do.
I’m sorry they so rarely make these spots these days. You always got a
catchy jingle — to the point where many of them would reverberate in
your skull, long after the shows they were trying to sell had been
cancelled.
He’s got the video…but I’ve got some audio, which I recorded off the air with a tape recorder when I was a kid. Here’s the scratchy audio for the ABC schedule, EXECUTIVE SUITE, SWITCH, THE TONY RANDALL SHOW, SHAFT, HOLMES AND YOYO, THE NEW PERRY MASON, BARBARY COAST, SPENCER’S PILOTS, CHASE, SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, STARSKY AND HUTCH, and the CBS Saturday Comedy Block.
(All of the above audio clips, and many more, I donated to TVParty some years back)
The one that sticks in my head was how ABC used the hit song “Still the One,” but changed the lyrics around the praise themselves for still being number one in the ratings. The had all the stars from their hits shows in a montage, each actor grinning and pointing at the sky, clearly thrilled to their core at being number one.
My all time favorite was on ABC (can’t remember the year), where the series stars sang along to the tune of “Bad Bad Boys” by Miami Sound Machine. It never failed to make me laugh out loud at the shot of Robert Urich and Avery Brooks (SPENSER: FOR HIRE) walking side by side in the snow, with Urich mouthing the words with a big grin and Brooks (in character as Hawk)not opening his mouth, but cutting his eyes to look at Urich as if to say (in that perfect Hawk Voice) “Um hmmm….I see…”
Sorry, but telling it does not do it justice. It’s one of those moments you really had to see. And I still remember it…:)
I’d forgotten about THE NEW PERRY MASON. Since the episodes have never been showing since (as far as I know), I’ve never seen Monte Markham’s performance, but seeing his other performances out there (such as on “The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries”, “Murder, She Wrote”, and “The Golden Girls”) I just can’t picture him in the part.