“Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out…” - John Sebastian The fall 1975 TV season remains special for me for several reasons.
For one thing, it's when I began my life's mission of collecting Fall Preview issues of “TV Guide.” The 1975-1990 issues stayed neatly stacked in one location, but since then, life has gotten messier. I think one issue is keeping company with my missing socks. Another two are probably engaging in a throuple with that elusive warranty card. I suspect one of the digital issues wound up in the Steele dossier.
It was also special because each viewing opportunity suddenly became more precious. I had started an afterschool job in a convenience market, and - since VCRs were prohibitively expensive and there were no streaming services - I couldn't depend on watching every favorite show every week. Not only did my preferences have to compete with those of my parents and my brother, but they had to compete with stocking soft drink coolers and dusting pickle jars.
Fall 1975 was also significant because of the institution of the Federal Communications Commission's “Family Viewing Hour.” Based on this quaint initiative (abandoned after two years because of First Amendment concerns), the networks agreed to keep the first hour of primetime devoid of any content that was too violent, too sexy, too vulgar, too likely to give the FCC commissioner's maiden aunt a fatal conniption fit… Yes, Americans were battered by inflation, but they could take solace in having at least 60 minutes per day when household tranquility was marred only by their own genteel utterances such as “Where's the &%$#@ remote?” and “I swear I'll kill your sister's boyfriend if she interrupts ‘Little House' to tell us she has VD!”
Fall 1975 was special because of bittersweet dalliances with programs that were canceled too soon, such as the Mel Brooks Robin Hood spoof “When Things Were Rotten” and NBC's retro whodunnit “Ellery Queen.”
(I daydreamed of becoming a programming executive so I could block such cancellation travesties; but cold, hard reality would probably have made me a hypocrite. “Cancel a washed-up vaudevillian or cancel my spa reservation? Hmm…decisions, decisions…”) Most of all, fall 1975 was memorable for the shows that endured for two or more seasons, such as Cloris Leachman's “Mary Tyler Moore Show” spinoff “Phyllis” (I'm catching up on YouTube videos now) and “Starsky and Hutch” (the cop buddy show with its iconic Ford Gran Torino and America's favorite snitch Huggy Bear).
And..Oooh! Oooh! (forgive me, Arnold Horshack)… we mustn't forget ABC's “Welcome Back, Kotter,” which gave stand-up comedian Gabe Kaplan a sitcom venue, started supporting actor John Travolta on the road to superstardom and inspired me to nag my mother into applying a Kotter ironon transfer to my T-shirt.
Kotter's misfit band of “Sweathog” students resonated with viewers who had never ventured within a thousand miles of Brooklyn. My history teacher, Mr. Holt, identified our class as “F Troop,” but a Sweathogs designation would have been just as fitting (which may explain why the school nurse's answer to everything from a paper cut to anaphylactic shock was “up your nose with a rubber hose”).
Will 2025's TV landscape be so fondly remembered in 50 years?
Only if 2025's extended-warranty card can be pried away from “Fall 1997” and “Fall 2004.”
Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected].
