by David Krell | Jan 6, 2014 | David Krell
Welcome Back, Kotter meets the fish-out-of-water theme. That’s The White Shadow. An NBA journeyman player has a career-ending knee injury, then takes a job as a basketball coach at an inner-city Los Angeles high school where he unwillingly, sometimes...
by David Krell | Jan 1, 2014 | David Krell
A common thread runs through Saturday morning cartoons of the 1970s. Music. Rankin-Bass produced Kid Power for ABC. Think Peanuts and Our Gang go through diversity training as songs convey messages of peace, love, and harmony for children. ABC aired original...
by David Krell | Oct 2, 2013 | David Krell
Media historians will likely document the 1980s as the Decade of the Peacock. As television approached its 40th anniversary since Milton Berle launched the medium into mass status in 1948 with Texaco Star Theatre, NBC’s avian emblem emerged like a phoenix,...
by David Krell | Jul 22, 2013 | David Krell
Yuppies existed on prime time television before we had a word to describe them. Yuppie, of course, is a slang word for young, upwardly mobile professional. Dr. Bob Hartley was a Chicago yuppie on The Bob Newhart Show. Rob Petrie was a television comedy writer yuppie...
by David Krell | Jul 2, 2013 | David Krell
As dawn anticipated breaking over southern California on the morning of August 30, 1979, a man two weeks shy of his sixty-fifth birthday covered his thinning hair with a cowboy hat. Besides the hairline, age was not a serious opponent. He was still fit and trim with...
