CBS Preview Show from 1961

[jehobden]

I found the following link when I visited this website for a different download:

http://www.archive.org/details/Cbs19...sonPreviewShow

This was a 1/2 hour preview of the shows, both new and continuing, that would be on CBS that fall, highlighting each night w/ a different host from Monday through Sunday. The DVD Show premiered on CBS that fall on Tuesday night, and there are parts of the scene from the pilot aired where Rob Petrie did his drunk act for Alan Brady. Another interesting thing to see was Frank Sutton in a guest-starring role on The Defenders.

[MickeyMac]

^

Nice

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...it's a part of TV history! When was the last time you saw a 1961 "Fall Preview" of a network's new shows?

As far as I know, CBS aired "Seven Wonderful Nights" nationally on September 15, 1961, just before the new season began. It had a "CBS fair" theme, with a "representative" of each evening's programming {Andy Griffith, Garry Moore, Sebastian Cabot, Bob Cummings, Rod Serling, Raymond Burr & Barbara Hale, and "Mr. Sunday Night" himself, Ed Sullivan} acting as "guides" to the evening's schedule, in and out of the "fairgrounds", with several "surprise" celebrities appearing [look, there's Bud Collyer, playing a "shell game" on the "midway", promoting "TO TELL THE TRUTH"! And isn't that Durward Kirby as a "country hick", with Carol Burnett as a "cooch dancer", the better to remind us about "THE GARRY MOORE SHOW"?]. Most of these segments were "taped" at the network's facilities in Hollywood and New York (they used kinescope because it was faster to tape the individual "host" segments and transfer them to film)- Ed Sullivan naturally did his in New York because that's where his show originated, live.

The 1961-'62 CBS schedule was "solid", even one that didn't feature Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason in weekly series. But there WERE problems: Robert Young, trying to shake his "Jim Anderson" image from "FATHER KNOWS BEST", tried starring in a comedy/drama, "WINDOW ON MAIN STREET", on Mondays. But repeats of "FATHER KNOWS BEST" were also seen on Wednesdays (after "THE ALVIN SHOW", CBS' brief entry in presenting a prime-time cartoon show during 1961-'62, due to the success of ABC's "THE FLINTSTONES" the season before), and viewers didn't want to see Young as anyone else, and the show was cancelled after one season, while "FATHER KNOWS BEST" moved to ABC for a final season of repeats on early Sunday evenings. MCA, the biggest producer of filmed network programming at the time (other than CBS), tried to program virtually their entire Thursday night schedule-
"THE (NEW) BOB CUMMINGS SHOW", "FRONTIER CIRCUS" and "THE INVESTIGATORS"...all three were gone by the end of the season [no match for ABC's "DONNA REED SHOW" and "MY THREE SONS", and NBC's "DR. KILDARE" and "HAZEL"].

"THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW" {and I knew you were going to ask me when I was going to get to that!} was placed in a BAD time period- Tuesdays at 8pm(et), because CBS president James {"The Smiling Cobra"} Aubrey didn't really care for the show ["The show is too 'inside'. Viewers will not relate to a New York TV comedy writer! Couldn't you make Van Dyke a Midwestern insurance salesman, like Robert Young on 'FATHER KNOWS BEST'?", he asked Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner. "NO!!", they defiantly told him], and wanted it "out of the way"; he knew that Tuesday time slot never had a show on for long (who could compete against what ABC and NBC scheduled?). He then moved it, in January 1962, to another "terrible" time slot, Wednesdays at 9:30, where "MRS. G. GOES TO COLLEGE" had been [right in the middle of NBC's "PERRY COMO'S KRAFT MUSIC HALL", which had more viewers]....then he "cancelled" the show. Executive producer Sheldon Leonard refused to let the series die without a fighting chance, and successfully convinced sponsor Procter & Gamble to keep the show on the air. They, in turn, told Aubrey that either Van Dyke stayed on Wednesdays, or they'd move ALL of their advertising (and their soap operas) to other networks. Since P&G was the network's #1 advertiser, Aubrey furiously "caved in" {he didn't like dealing with sponsors, agents, and "program packagers", preferring to make his own programming decisions...which eventually cost him his job at CBS in 1965}. As Sidney Sheldon recalled in his autobiography, "The Other Side Of Me", Jim Aubrey was all set to buy his sitcom, produced by Desilu [it was previously pitched to the network as early as 1957!], "ADVENTURES OF A MODEL", for Wednesdays at 9:30 for the fall of '62. Then Desi Arnaz told Sheldon the bad news- Dick Van Dyke's show was being renewed, because, according to Sheldon, Danny Thomas, Sheldon Leonard's production partner, had also put pressure on CBS to renew the show (Danny was starring in his own sitcom for CBS, which was in the "Top Five" at the time, and Aubrey could hardly refuse him, since he was also responsible for "THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW").
With "THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" as a lead-in {that's the kind of sitcom Aubrey wanted on CBS}, "THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW" became a success, lasting until 1966.

Oh, yes...several elements of the special are missing in the print that's on "archive.org" (and YouTube): the brief reminder/footage for "DOBIE GILLIS" (which followed Dick Van Dyke on Tuesdays); a reminder that "THE UNITED STATES STEEL HOUR" and "ARMSTRONG CIRCLE THEATER", which alternated on Wednesday nights at 10pm(et), "Television's Finest Dramatic Hour" [and the only LIVE anthology series on network TV back then- they were cancelled, two years later], was back for another season; and, at the end, the list of "specials" that were to appear on the network during the 1961-'62 season...