Intros for all but 3 of the 22 new shows that debuted in the fall of 1977. Brief promos are used for the 3 with no available intros for them at the time of this video's creation.
I was 11 years old in 1977, and that year holds a very special place in my heart..I would love to be able to jump through the screen, and take a trip back to that special time in my life..Sadly, that is just not possible so I will sit here and watch all of these memories that you have shared with us on your channel..Thank you!
While you did that Judy I was marching around a parade deck at Paris Island becoming a Marine in Aug of 77 while I was getting read graduation from boot, we heard that Elvis had died. Wow what a trip down memory lane.
The Contrarian + But the ones that were good were very good for the time. Obviously most of them didn't make it from this clip, but 70s TV wasn't bad. Then again I didn't turn 10 until April of 79.
I would go back in a second. Back in the time of my favorite shows. Lucan. The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries.Man from Atlantis. Logan's Run. Monster Squad. Ark II. The Red Hand gang.
bigbabysld One thing I liked about The Love Boat was over the years they often got older actors out of retirement to appear as well as currents who had had some hard luck in landing roles. Plus Lauren Tewes was the same age as me so I had a huge crush on her.
That's the thing, they got celebrities my grandmother grew up with...she could name them left and right, I had no idea who I was looking at, I just liked Gopher, I thought he was hilarious.
+Mark Muffs Fred Grandy also got burned badly when they were shooting on location in Turkey, I believe. They were in a taxi with balloons, and someone lit a cigarette, and it started a fire that burned him.
I was a freshman in high school fall 1977. I always enjoyed the "Lou Grant" show. Not just for the topic of the week, but also for the overall journalism theme of the show. Not surprisingly I was a reporter for our school paper and became a journalism major in college. Then I worked at small market dailies and a few weeklies for a while.
Lou Grant was the best production of the lot by far. They even had an episode where Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady) played the role of the niece of the publisher Mrs. Pynchon (played to perfection by Nancy Marchand) who was desperately hiding a secret. McCormick exhibited some great acting skills that would never be revealed in The Brady Bunch. Here's an interesting observation: When well-known movie actors are interviewed, it's routine to ask them about working with famous directors like Hitchcock. Ever since the Lou Grant show, the same well-known actors will be asked about working on Lou Grant. The talent on that show, from the writers, directors, actors, camera and all the crafts, were nothing but top-drawer. We'll certainly never see anything like it again.
Lou Grant was the best look at crucial issues in the world. On one episode a Rupert Murdock-like character threatens to buy the paper and tabloid-ize it. This foresaw the present political crisis in the U.S. precisely.
In the fall of 1977 ABC NBC and CBS had some great new and returning shows in the fall lineup like Soap, Operation Petticoat, Redd Foxx, Carter Country and many other shows too Well all shows were getting tired like The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Kojak, Maude, was cancelled in 1978!!!!! Awww the memories!!!! Thanks for posting this video!!!! I love it!!!!! I love the 70s!!!! Can you dig it!!!!!!!
ABSOLUTELY... Music on TV was incredible in the 1970's.. TV show theme songs, incidental music.. even music in TV commercials! The bar was high back then..
Really? The ones that sounded mostly like takeoffs from disco or porn movies, those were the good theme songs. The others, instantly forgettable. "Love Boat" is a classic theme song, of course.
SOAP holds up today. I remember Comedy Central rerunning it a lot and was hooked by it. Of course, the first season was where they tended to have a lot of what made the show such a success and such a head turner for the topics and characters they did that were unheard of for their time (an open homosexual that wasn't a stereotype, topics with racism and class equality and that) and made some purists angry. They were able to do a lot in a way that made everything seem like it fit with the story they were telling and made you care about what they were going through, and didn't need to force anything like some shows need to do today. Easy to say that the show STILL holds up.
I Remember Reading About How the Producers Had Hire Casey Kasem to Do the Voice-Over, & He Immediately Quit Because the Show's Concept Went Against His Religious Beliefs (Christian)
In Memphis we did not see Soap the first season it was on, local station claimed it was to fast for us. We didn’t get to see the first season until the summer at it was late at night.
Yes, he is, and her mother is Janet "Psycho" Leigh. If you REALLY didn't know that her father was an actor, look for films like "Houdini," "Some Like It Hot" and "The Defiant Ones" as well as the original film "Operation: Petticoat." Incidentally, Tony's BIRTH name was "Bernie Schwartz." I found that out years ago when I watched "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In."
If Carter Country did one thing right, it was to go off the air in time for many of it's stars to get roles they would be FAMOUS for. I LOVED Operation Petticoat! The person who wrote the theme for On Our Own probably wrote all those cheesy local news jingles. And Andrew Stevens! Helen Hunt! Jimmy McNichol! A family of nine in a station wagon without seat belts! And Lou Grant, which was every bit as good as the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Then there is CHiPs, how could we ever forget, Jack Webb meets roller disco :)
The music scores for tv themes were so much more sophisticated in the seventies: you used to get string, horn, and in some cases, full orchestral arrangements. I kind of miss that. 🎧
stylecollective: And there's no reason they can't still have theme songs with such arrangements now. They just don't want to, just because someone decided that theme songs were somehow old fashioned. I really miss them too!
Networks and/or production companies figured out a way to eliminate theme music requiring the payment of royalties with each airing. It was money. It always is.
I remember being a tiny kid and still remembering these openings. I had to be around two to three years old and I still have flashbacks of these and where I was when I watched them.
Yes- but NBC was too "wary" of his reputation as a "dirty" comedian, and worried some of that might taint his weekly series. They had originally agreed for him to tape 10 hours, but cut that order to five before the series began. THEN, they threw the show against "HAPPY DAYS" and "LAVERNE & SHIRLEY".....and Pryor never hosted another prime-time series again.
Wow!! The rarely seen today in reruns original opening of "Lou Grant." Most versions of show's reruns do not show the logging and paper mill part. And in the first season they still used typewriters in the newsroom. That was the era when video display terminals connected to a mini computer and the phototypesetting (cold type) machine were just starting to replace typewriters in major and some medium size market news rooms.
Jamie Woods Yeah, I haven't seen a complete rerun episode anywhere in at least 25, maybe 30 years. Probably because of that 90 year old SOCIALIST PRICK ED ASNER won't sign-off again on re-runs.
Thanks for uploading. Great to see some of these again. Amazing how few I ever saw, even though I was in high school at the time. Also amazing to think they played those extended intros every week, like Mulligan's Stew.
I was in the US Navy then. In early September of 1977, my ship went overseas. By the time we returned, 7 months later, most of these shows had already been canceled, and I hadn't seen any of them.
I was stationed at a remote radar site in Alaska from January 3, 1977 until January 3, 1978 and we didn't get television shows that the rest of America got. Looks like I didn't miss a thing.
I loved 1977! I was just 9 years old but I remember everything. Star Wars, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, disco music, gas and groceries were cheap, fireworks were legal, family TV shows, and especially my first crush on a cute girl in grade school 😊 Dang I miss that year!!
''77 was when I started paying attention to the prime time shows more, not just the kiddie shows. I liked the bad sci-fi shows like Man from Atlantis and Logan's Run, but also Lou Grant. The one I didn't get that became popular was CHiPs. They didn't really do any police work, just road around on their bikes arguing with each other. In this time was also the easily exploded car. Every time a car would go over a cliff or a hill, it would explode. If it rolled over, it would explode. If it got hit by another car, it would explode. They acted like all cars were '74 Pintos. :)
hepchaos Well Chips was a platform to make Erik Estrada a sex symbol which I recall my older stepsisters and my gay stepbrother had posters of him all over the wall.
MattShizzle Most people the world over hate gays. Go to Africa or any country in the middle east and see what happens to gay people. The only countries that gays actually can live without fear of death are White Christian Nations . ( White Western Europe , Canada , USA )
Every week CHIPS had at least one major traffic pile up on an LA Freeway. The only thing that changed was who was at fault and why. One week might be a distracted driver. Another week it might be a drunk driver. And Ponch and John almost always were the first to arrive, on their bikes of course. Some weeks there were two major pile ups on the freeway.
I was too young to appreciate Soap when it first came out but I recall my parents enjoying it. It looks like it may provided quite a bit of inspiration to Arrested Development.
Of the T.V. class of '77 about the only one worth a damn was "Lou Grant". I remember one episode where a reporter broke up a dog fighting ring and the ring figured out the reporter was a rat. The next day he came into work sporting bruises and black eyes. BTW, wasn't "Taxi" and "One Day at a Time" part of the class of '77?
what is even weirder to me: Ed Asner is still alive... If you showed these visuals to me and I had no idea I would say, "he died in the '90s, right?" He didn't look like the healthiest guy. But I'm glad he is alive. Read or listen to his interviews. He is a very bright man.
Not a big deal, but I know for a fact that this was not the intro used during the premier year for Chips or Lou Grant. Both of these intros were from later seasons. The original intro for Lou Grant started off with a couple of the characters talking on the phone, and the original Chips intro was a little less Disco.
Oh my gosh! I'd completely forgotten about Soap! Growing up in the Bible thumpin' south, I remember it well. concerned parents tried to get it off the air. Some local stations refused to show it. My friends and I would sneak to watch it and then discuss it the next day at our religious private school. Ironically, all those moms who were so against it never failed to watch their daytime soaps. LOL!
Our local station refused to air it the first year. 2nd year they aired it Saturday night at 10:30. For the rest of the years they aired it in primetime. My how times have changed.
I loved "Soap." I remember at first my mother used to secretly watch it on her own but my brother and I caught her and made her let us watch. It was less of a big deal for us than my mother thought it was (and we lived in L.A., not the Bible belt). Hilarious and with a great cast-- especially liked Richard Mulligan.
God, Mork, Starsky, Baretta, Six Million, Movie of the Week, Three's Company, Carol Burnett, Donnie, Brady Bunch, All in the Family. I don't remember the vast majority in this video. They must have really sucked.
It seems the big problem with a lot the shows that didn't last more than season was that the opening theme music was more memorable than the actual show.
gentillyguy1: But those opening theme songs were so cool! And yes, oftentimes they WERE the best part of the show! Still, it's by far better than today's shows that pretty much have NO theme songs anymore.
gentillyguy1: A prime example of this is the ABC show "The Men", even though it ran back in 1972-73, which had a SUPER COOL opening sequence and theme song (written and performed by Isaac Hayes), and the theme song was a hit on the charts, but I just don't remember much about the rest of the show, and it only lasted the one season. Does anybody out there remember the show "The Men"?
I know what that was like. I worked master control for the old Fox 32 in Appleton, Wis. for a while in 1977. That was when Fox only ran on Saturday and Sunday nights along with the late show at 10 p.m. weeknights. No doubt you father had you pulling and putting away 3/4th-inch or perhaps Quadcart tapes. That was unless the station had a separate tape room and your dad did not have to load, cue up, run, and put away commercials.
Becki Green I worked my NBC affiliate in the late 90s in the evenings and from 97-02, I got to see every single episode of Late night with Conan O Brien. Awesome gig. The only perk.
Becki Green not all for God's sake. Watch Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, This is Us, Veronica Mars, Buffy Vampire Slayer, The Office, Parks & Rec....
Maiden voyage of the Love Boat? Betty White as a cop? Helen Hunt with braces? The title that repeated so many times I forgot it? Yup, the 80s are coming!!!
3 shows starring 4 actors who had just finished the Mary Tyler Moore Show. 2 out of 3 were hits (not bad). One, Lou Grant, is probably the only show in history where a character transitioned from a 1/2 hour sitcom to a 1 hour drama. That's pretty impressive.
That brings back memories from my early teen years. The only shows that had extended runs were The Love Boat, Soap and CHiPs if I remember correctly. Interesting to see a very young Helen Hunt pop up in the cast of The Fitzpatricks which I believe only lasted a few episodes. It is interesting too how the 3 networks constantly and quickly tried to make similar shows. The Fitzpatricks and Mulligan's Stew were CBS and NBC's attempt to do an hour long large family drama similar to Eight is Enough which was a success a season earlier on ABC.
Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor flopped in their own separate variety series, which, as a genre, were on the way out by this time. Carol Burnett's series was the last, ending in 1978.
I watched tons of TV in the '70s (I hated doing homework). Here are the shows I remember: Carter Country was a decent show, I remember watching it - Victor French was very good in it; Operation Petticoat was also pretty good - Jim Varney was on it and played Seaman Broom; Everyone remembers The Love Boat, the haven for out of work actors and Charo;; Everyone also remembers Soap - it was a groundbreaking show - with the young Billy Crystal; Lou Grant was an interesting show - after years of being on a comedy, Ed Asner played Lou in a drama; The intro to CHIPS in this post was NOT the first season intro - the first season had a much slower paced theme song; it was changed to a more disco-ish version in the later seasons - that is what is heard here; Logan's Run was OK, but the theme song is BRUTALLY BAD - the earlier movie with Michael York was better and the still-earlier novel by George Clayton Johnson was the best of all; I vaguely remember the others - most of them were very short-lived.
+paktype Carter Country --- edgy adult humor if I recall like Barney Miller with racial satire I think. Operation Petticoat --- chicks in skirts. A lot for my 8-year old mind to digest. Love Boat --- Charo 'cuchi-cuchi' and bouncing around. See Op Petti above... Logan's Run --- yeah the movie was better. Man From Atlantis --- hell yeah! I tried to swim like him (very hard) at the YMCA because of this show. Patrick Duffy before Dallas. And FTH (F--k The Homework ha)
I beg to differ about Soap. I certainly didn't watch it at the time, and don't remember it being mentioned much through the years (and/or shown in reruns) except for occasional, passing references to it either on TV or on the Internet, and it doesn't seem compelling enough for me to want to watch it now. / Jim Varney, later of "Ernest..." fame?
@@not-so-smartaleck8987 Soap was a big deal when it was on, but my parents didn’t watch it and wouldn’t let me. At 6 I absolutely wouldn’t have understood it anyway. I did watch all like it’s spin-off Benson a few years later. About 15 years ago I found the first season box set at Goodwill, watched the whole thing and loved it. Bought the rest of the seasons too, and was crushed when I found out the sequel to the last season’s cliffhanger never got made.
I watched Carter Country when new, and thought it was funny. Operation Petticoat was good, it was of WW2. I never skipped an episode of Love Boat. I was age 17 during this premiere, and a Junior. We could only get 3 channels, but EVERY evening was great shows, sitcoms and dramas, plus some movies. The dramas were a big variety, too. Also the ads were terrific!!
I wasn't aware Richard Pryor had a network TV show. Keeping him on script must not have been easy. Pryor was known for liberal use of the seven words George Carlin famously said cannot be said on American TV. The first time Richard Pryor hosted Saturday Night Live, NBC engineers had to run the show with an eight or so second electronic delay just in case he said one of those seven words.
They produced 4 total episodes of The Richard Pryor show and before it even aired Pryor and NBC argued over content. The fights were so bad that Pryor opened his first show naked with his "junk" blurred. Pryor was protesting against NBC's censorship. All of the shows I believe are available on RU-vid. Look for a pre Mork and Mindy Robin Williams in the Pryor show episodes.
+BuzzCrumhunger well, shoot. I was a big fan of Man From Atlantis when I was 6... I had no idea then that Patrick Duffy would go on to star in such a douchey show as Dallas.
It's funny that they'd make a TV show out of the movie "Operation Petticoat" 18 years after its release. It's even funnier that Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of a star of the movie, was in the show.
the 70's had a Crush on the 50s (Happy Days, MASH, American Graffiti, Grease, etc) so I'd imagine that played a part... and Hiring Jamie Lee was likely an attempt at synergy (You think Mom's role in Psycho didn't inspire Jamie's casting in Halloween?)
Chris Wells Yep, the year I bought my '57 Chevy for $500, running and driving (did very little to it during the 3 years I had it) People said I got took and gave too much for it. How times have changed.
Carter Country. How long did that show run? Perhaps as long as Billy Beer was on the market. For those who no longer remember or were born years later, Billy Beer was a short-lived beer named after President Carter's beer-swilling, auto mechanic at a gas station brother, Billy.
Due to heavy competition from ABC's sexy crime drama "Charlie's Angels" on Wednesdays, NBC pulled "The Oregon Trail" from its schedule in October of '77 after only six episodes (leaving seven additional episodes unaired; they subsequently aired overseas in the United Kingdom). In 2010, Timeless Media Group released "The Oregon Trail" on DVD, consisting of fourteen episodes (the feature-length pilot film that aired on NBC in January of '76 and the thirteen episodes that followed it, including the seven episodes that didn't air in the U.S.).
Those were the days. So simple. So many less people and people were...better. I’m glad I was raised growing up in this generation and would have it no other way.....
I was 15 in 1977. I was old enough to have memories of TV programs of that time, but I have no recollection of most of these shows, except for Love Boat, Soap, Chips, Charlie's Angels, etc. They must have all bombed after a few episodes.
Rebecca Balding and her character were replaced on Lou Grant after the third episode by Linda Kelsey. I'm mentioning this only because the thumbnail features Rebecca.
Of the short-lived series, I remember Carter Country, On Our Own, and San Pedro Beach Bums. SPBB was put on Mondays before Monday Night Football, and there was a football-themed episode. There was a kicker who didn't speak English other than saying "Football, you bet." I was a sophomore in high school then. After winning a football game sometime afterward, we chanted that phrase several times.
"Family" was truly groundbreaking TV at the time, as it dealt with quite a few real-world topics that were, at that time, taboo to present on nightime TV. James Broderick and Sada Thompson were excellent as the parents, as well as Meredith Baxter and Jon Rubenstein as the daughter and son-in-law.
I can remember being a little boy playing with my Matchbox and Hot Wheels on the floor of Grandma and Grandpa's house on Saturday night. Grandma always had on the Love Boat then Fantasy Island. Then the news and bedtime. Such great memories.
