Pioneers of Television - season 4

[JW]

It looks like a new group of four programs will start on PBS this week with Standup to Sitcom, about "standup comics who laughed their way into America's living rooms."

The other three are Doctors and Nurses ("Following TV’s long love affair with doctors and nurses"), Acting Funny ("The backstage techniques of America’s favorite comedic actors"), and Breaking Barriers ("Breakthrough stories of people of color on American television").

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/

[Jon Delfin]

Caveat to anyone who hasn't seen the previous entries: These shows are the opposite of "in-depth." Apparently, the budget to clear clips is minimal, and so they use a limited number of them, often ones that aren't representative of the topic but seem to be only what they could afford, and then show bits of them repeatedly. They also tend to spend most of their time on the people who are willing (and still alive) to sit for interviews, at the expense of giving a balanced view.

Granted, by the fourth series, maybe they have more money to spend and are doing a better job on this front. But I bet the Closed Captioning will still be risible.

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[Diner]

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 7:58:56 AM UTC-4, Jon Delfin wrote:

Caveat to anyone who hasn't seen the previous entries: These shows are the opposite of "in-depth." Apparently, the budget to clear clips is minimal, and so they use a limited number of them, often ones that aren't representative of the topic but seem to be only what they could afford, and then show bits of them repeatedly. They also tend to spend most of their time on the people who are willing (and still alive) to sit for interviews, at the expense of giving a balanced view.

I remember their first season episode on variety shows, where one of the people who was willing to sit for an interview with them was Andy Williams - so they included a bunch of clips from his show. Not his big-budget, hit show of the sixties, mind you, but his cheap summer replacement show of 1958, with Dick Van Dyke as his sidekick. Likely not a show that either one of them looked back on fondly - more like an example of how they had to pay their dues before they hit the big time. But hey, the clips were probably public domain.

Then there was their episode about game shows where they couldn't afford a clip from "The Newlywed Game," so they hired two actors to play a married couple and recreate a "typical" moment from the show. The sort of painful stuff that makes you wonder "whose idea was this?"

[PGage]

I have to say I completely whiffed on the first three seasons of this series (apparently called "Pioneers of Television) and did not even know it existed. Shame on me. Thanks for the head's up, some of these look potentially interesting, although some of these kinds of PBS shows are surprisingly bad, and The History Channel or E would be embarrassed to run them.

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[Dave Sikula]

The series lost all credibility to me last year when in a "TV's Funniest Women" (or something to that effect), they were all over Joan Rivers and ignored Gertrude Berg, the first Most Powerful Woman in Television. While I've never liked Rivers, I'll stipulate to her importance in stand-up. But TV? No. And surely, licensing clips from "The Goldbergs" wouldn't have been that expensive.

I chalk it up to laziness, ignorance, and incompetence more than lack of wherewithal.

--Dave Sikula