FACT TREK—The Death Slot (or: The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate)

[Christopher]

I suspect the majority of the 60s tv audience was familiar neither with the GH radio show nor the Batman comics. They were first and foremost TV watchers (just as MCU watchers are mostly not comics fans).

On the contrary. The Green Hornet radio series ran from 1936 to 1952 -- a sixteen-year run that ended less than 14 years before the TV series premiered. It was aimed at young teenage audiences, and it was one of the most popular radio series of its day. So if we assume its audience was mainly 13- to 16-year-olds, they would've been in their late 20s to mid-40s when the TV show premiered -- a substantial overlap with the prime 18-to-35 demographic that TV advertisers usually target.

So we're talking about something that was a hit roughly 15-30 years in its audience's past, which is the equivalent of something like, say, Batman: The Animated Series or The X-Files from the perspective of a present-day audience. Would you call that obscure and forgotten? Presumably they remade The Green Hornet because it was popular and remembered among the generation that had grown up to become the creators of new programming, the same as it is with remakes and reboots today.

 

[Neopeius]

On the contrary. The Green Hornet radio series ran from 1936 to 1952 -- a sixteen-year run that ended less than 14 years before the TV series premiered. It was aimed at young teenage audiences, and it was one of the most popular radio series of its day. So if we assume its audience was mainly 13- to 16-year-olds, they would've been in their late 20s to mid-40s when the TV show premiered -- a substantial overlap with the prime 18-to-35 demographic that TV advertisers usually target.

So we're talking about something that was a hit roughly 15-30 years in its audience's past, which is the equivalent of something like, say, Batman: The Animated Series or The X-Files from the perspective of a present-day audience. Would you call that obscure and forgotten? Presumably they remade The Green Hornet because it was popular and remembered among the generation that had grown up to become the creators of new programming, the same as it is with remakes and reboots today.

You may be right. In the end, we'd have to do some survey work to be sure.

 

[Maurice]

The Green Hornet radio show was not broadcast in the same sort of media world as Batman the Animated Series, which basically never disappeared due to numerous cable channels and home video, therefore the latter is likely not a reliable barometer to the former in terms of determining what constitutes relative obscurity.

 

[Christopher]

The Green Hornet radio show was not broadcast in the same sort of media world as Batman the Animated Series, which basically never disappeared due to numerous cable channels and home video, therefore the latter is likely not a reliable barometer to the former in terms of determining what constitutes relative obscurity.

I figured someone would call that out, but I think the fact that it ran for 16 years balances that out somewhat. Again, it ended less than 14 years before the TV show began. I wouldn't call that a relic from the depths of time. The show had a huge listening audience that would've mostly been in their 30s or 40s at the time the TV show premiered. It would've been part of the direct personal experience of a large percentage of the 1966 TV audience. People remember the shows they loved growing up, even if they haven't rewatched them more recently.

Not to mention that the children watching the TV show would've been told about its radio and serial antecedents by their parents who'd been fans of them. Families watched TV together back then, since there was generally only one TV set in a given household.

Heck, my own father was born in 1933, and he still remembered the radio shows he'd grown up listening to. I'm fairly sure The Green Hornet came up on occasion, and the fact that the Hornet was a relative of the The Lone Ranger (another character who was hugely popular for decades). Though my father was more a fan of radio comedies like The Jack Benny Program and Fibber McGee and Molly.

 

[plynch]

Thanks to Detroit Public Radio I grew up hearing a good variety of old time radio. The shows seemed so old then (70s/80s). Now, mathematically many things dating from my childhood are older, but don't seem so old.

I think it is the sea change of the 60s. Pre-60s culture v. post. We're SO into pop culture that never goes away, too, as noted above. Where in the 70s, OTR and Big Band had really disappeared for awhile. "Dated" before becoming "classic." I'm reminded of the touching TZ ep of the man with the radio that tunes in the big bands. It's stuff from about 20 years previous. That'd be like getting all worked about about finding an iPod that magically played early Adele. But the 40s seemed so far away to the folks in the go-go tv/jet age/space age 60s, I guess.

Edit: nice job naming it the Jack Benny Program above. I can hear Don Wilson's voice saying it as I sit here with my turkey bacon and bagel. Btw XM has a good OTR channel if anyone cares.

 

[Warped9]

I suddenly have an urge to watch Woody Allen’s movie Radio Days.

 

[Neopeius]

I think it is the sea change of the 60s. Pre-60s culture v. post. We're SO into pop culture that never goes away, too, as noted above. Where in the 70s, OTR and Big Band had really disappeared for awhile. "Dated" before becoming "classic." I'm reminded of the touching TZ ep of the man with the radio that tunes in the big bands. It's stuff from about 20 years previous. That'd be like getting all worked about about finding an iPod that magically played early Adele. But the 40s seemed so far away to the folks in the go-go tv/jet age/space age 60s, I guess.

Jefty is five. He's always five.

 

[plynch]

I've always been a radio guy. I listen to the Tigers on the radio, rather than watch TV. Even Meechigan football. (Plus sports on TV is a horrific experience now -- but even when it was less so, I listened over watching.)

All the media y'all talk about -- movies, shows -- other than Trek I'm clueless. I have a tablet and netflix, never watch anything. Interesting how we're all different.

Ok, I do watch the Waltons at lunch on MeTv. They're definitely in radio days culture. I've even tried not having screens during meals. To regain my focus. It isn't working right now though, ha ha!

 

[Christopher]

I think it is the sea change of the 60s. Pre-60s culture v. post. We're SO into pop culture that never goes away, too, as noted above. Where in the 70s, OTR and Big Band had really disappeared for awhile. "Dated" before becoming "classic." I'm reminded of the touching TZ ep of the man with the radio that tunes in the big bands. It's stuff from about 20 years previous.

I would say just the opposite. People today seem bizarrely ignorant of any culture more recent than the past decade or two, because we're so inundated in media that people just narrow in on the parts that already interest them. In the past, everyone was immersed in the same more limited range of cultural and media input, and they shared in culture as a collective experience as families or communities, getting together for singalongs in the parlor or going to plays or movie theaters with their neighbors. And pop culture referencing its own past was as much a thing then as it is now -- look at the Warner Bros. or MGM theatrical cartoons of the '40s and '50s and their constant allusions to radio and movie stars, classical and popular music, and the like. For instance, Chuck Jones's The Scarlet Pumpernickel from 1950, parodying the 1934 film adaptation of the 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel. And then you had something like the 1955 I Love Lucy episode that guest-starred Harpo Marx and homaged the mirror routine from 1933's Duck Soup. People did remember and reference past media all the time back then.

That'd be like getting all worked about about finding an iPod that magically played early Adele.

Who said anything about getting worked up? I'm talking about knowledge of the character. Remember, the original question under discussion was whether audiences would have expected The Green Hornet to be like Batman, a premise that assumes they had no prior knowledge of the character and were basing their expectations only on the William Dozier connection. My point is that a very large percentage of the TV audience would have direct personal memories of listening to the radio series in their youth, between 14 and 30 years before, and thus would know firsthand that it was played straight rather than being campy like Batman. That doesn't require excitement, it simply requires having a functional long-term memory. Younger viewers might have been surprised that TGH was more serious than Batman, but most people over 25 or so probably knew better.

 

[Warped9]

I think it’s more than just entertainment. With only one television and one stereo system in the house we were exposed not only to our parents’ tastes we were also exposed to the news and history they were familiar with reinforced by what many of us learned in history class in school.

And with fewer channels available there was a broad variety of programming shared by everyone. Today most everyone is in their own little lane and seemingly ignorant of most anything outside of their lane. Not just in entertainment, but in history. For many of them nothing happened before they were born. Their ignorance of just 20th century history is astonishing.

I sometimes enjoy watching Youtube of people in their 20s-30s reacting to music and film we grew up with from the 1950s up into the 2000s. It’s interesting to watch their surprise and astonishment over things we’re already familiar with. The most common responses are, “I had no idea!” and, “We don’t have anything like this today!”

It’s funny seeing how so many people assumed the Bee Gees were black based simply on having heard Stayin’ Alive.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I think it is the sea change of the 60s. Pre-60s culture v. post. We're SO into pop culture that never goes away, too, as noted above. Where in the 70s, OTR and Big Band had really disappeared for awhile. "Dated" before becoming "classic." I'm reminded of the touching TZ ep of the man with the radio that tunes in the big bands. It's stuff from about 20 years previous. That'd be like getting all worked about about finding an iPod that magically played early Adele. But the 40s seemed so far away to the folks in the go-go tv/jet age/space age 60s, I guess.

I agree with this. Television came in like a great wave that washed away a whole culture of radio.

Today we have an enormous number of cultural "distribution channels," meaning we have practically all vintage entertainment at our fingertips when we want it. For instance, I recently checked out Billie Holiday at length on Youtube, for free. It was like I suddenly had a collection of 78 RPM records. But material like this has only come to us through a kind of high-tech archaeology. Record labels have digitized their back catalogs for the Internet, and dug deep, and thus almost the whole history of recorded music "exists" again.

Not so in the 60s and 70s, for the great majority of us. My parents had not saved any "seventy-eights" at all. Those old things wore our fast under the crude needle, and on top of that the records were brittle. Nobody I knew still had them, at least not out of the attic or something. And even the rare eccentric who wanted to, couldn't keep 78's in use because, again, they wouldn't last. So they were forgotten. Everybody moved on.

Radio shows of the 1930s and '40s were even more ephemeral: all of that stuff had evaporated into thin air by the '60s, except for the few folks who bought specialty records and tapes to commemorate them. My parents would surely have remembered the pre-TV "radio era" if prodded, but on a day-to-day basis it was pointless to dwell on that vanished stuff, so it was effectively forgotten.

 

[Neopeius]

I agree with this. Television came in like a great wave that washed away a whole culture of radio.

Thank you for that excellent post. It's so easy to forget how current pop culture was. These days, one can immerse one's self in any time. Some crazy person might even pretend to live, oh, 55 years ago, or something silly like that.

It spotlights how significant things like the Blish books and TMOST and all the zines were -- that's all we had.

 

[Warped9]

Pop culture didn’t start in the 1960s. One can argue it started to change into its more familiar form in the 1950s and ‘60s.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think it's accurate to say that television washed away the culture of radio. On the contrary, most early television shows were continuations or remakes of radio shows -- Dragnet, The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Superman, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Texaco Star Theater, Meet the Press, Gunsmoke, The Guiding Light and other soap operas, Truth or Consequences and other game shows, news and interview shows, and so forth. Even I Love Lucy grew out of a radio sitcom, My Favorite Husband. TV evolved from radio and carried forward its culture, content, and formats.

You could say that television took radio's original identity and culture away from radio itself, since once TV had supplanted radio as the source of dramas and sitcoms and news and game shows and soaps and action-adventure and so forth, radio was left with a more limited range of programming like music, news, and talk. But as far as the overall culture was concerned, TV inherited and perpetuated what radio had originated.


And there's a big difference between something being "effectively forgotten" on a day-to-day basis because it's not part of your life anymore, and something being literally forgotten so that you don't remember it even when you're specifically reminded of it. For instance, I just finished a rewatch of the 1986 Starman TV series after I found it was on Tubi. It's a show I've only occasionally given any thought to in the past few decades because it wasn't part of my daily life anymore. But I still remembered what the show was about and what its style and tone were. You can remember something when you're reminded of it, even if you've hardly thought about it since you were young. That's how memory works. We can forget what we had for lunch two days ago but still remember a song we haven't heard in 30 years.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Well to tie it back to STAR TREK. Trek is mostly remembered in the social conscious and pop culture because of the ubiquity of syndication.

TV, Film, and radio has always been disposable mediums. Home video has made it more lasting for certain things. Streaming too.

But a lot has been lost to time. Whole runs of Troughton's WHO because they just taped over the tapes. B-noir films of 1930s-40s. Live TV from the 1950s that's just gone! Not many remember THE DEFENDERS and the biting topics it tackled, crediting TREK more with being progressive in its social conscious. Why? TREK lasted. THE DEFENDERS didn't. (Though it’s now available on DVD.)

If we're gonna talk about memory, we should discuss it as societal memory, through things like articles, documentaries, and TV specials. Where myths are repeated ad nauseam. Such as the Nacelle Company's error filed STAR TREK docu-series.

Because that's what's at hand here, especially in FACT TREK's ultimate mission.

That's really where things last. Sure, an individual can remember STARMAN (I do and I recall the "yellow light" joke from the film, as used in a recent PICARD episode). But does the social consciousness or pop culture memory recall STARMAN. Maybe... as a footnote but not as prominent as TREK.

 

[Neopeius]

But a lot has been lost to time. Whole runs of Troughton's WHO because they just taped over the tapes.

Thank Ghod for reconstructions. Our UK correspondent is watching and reviewing Who, and these shows would be completely lost without them. It is an interesting era, the 60s, when folks routinely audio taped episodes, even if they could not video tape them. I still have reel to reel tapes of the openings to Secret Agent and The Prisoner as well as a few scenes ("I am in command; obey me and be free!")

B-noir films of 1930s-40s. Live TV from the 1950s that's just gone!

When I go to fill up the rota for KGJ Channel 9, I'm often dismayed at how much TV doesn't exist. Or if it does, in bowdlerized form (almost all of Julia exists, but ALL edited for syndication).

If we're gonna talk about memory, we should discuss it as societal memory, through things like articles, documentaries, and TV specials. Where myths are repeated ad nauseam. Such as the Nacelle Company's error filed STAR TREK docu-series.

Because that's what's at hand here, especially in FACT TREK's ultimate mission.

Thank you so much for what you do!

I have found that reading newspapers of the time helps. You get "in the moment" viewpoints. I pay about $150 a year for an all-archive access to newspapers.com, and at first I thought it was too expensive to keep, but it's just such a valuable resource, I will probably keep it.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Thanks! Most of the FACT TREK credit goes to @Maurice and @Harvey. I just poke my nose in as time permits.

 

[Christopher]

If we're gonna talk about memory, we should discuss it as societal memory, through things like articles, documentaries, and TV specials.

Should we? I think that's losing track of my original point. Again, the question was whether 1966 audiences for The Green Hornet would have assumed it was going to be like Batman. That's the only thing I'm addressing here. My point is that a very large percentage of the 1966 viewing audience would have personal memories of listening to the very popular, long-running TGH radio series that had ended only 14 years earlier. That's not about anything as abstract as society or myth, it's simply about their ability to retain memories of their own direct, first-hand experiences.

 

[Lord Garth]

A few related images...

Variety calls it:
View attachment 26815

Star Trek's direct competition.
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Verrry interesting but familiar materials at use in Beautiful downtown Burbank.
View attachment 26814

Had I been around, I don't think I would've watched Star Trek until the second season. On Thursdays, I would've been watching Bewitched on ABC, as I already would've been for a few years by that point.

Knowing me, I probably would've heard word-of-mouth from friends, then taken a look to see what the Big Deal was, probably in the summer of 1967. So I would've caught reruns for some of the first season.

Boston showed reruns of TOS starting in the fall of 1969, so that's when I think I would've seen most of S1 for the first time.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Should we? I think that's losing track of my original point. Again, the question was whether 1966 audiences for The Green Hornet would have assumed it was going to be like Batman. That's the only thing I'm addressing here. My point is that a very large percentage of the 1966 viewing audience would have personal memories of listening to the very popular, long-running TGH radio series that had ended only 14 years earlier. That's not about anything as abstract as society or myth, it's simply about their ability to retain memories of their own direct, first-hand experiences.

Yes. Yes we should. My reason already laid out in the post you snipped quoted. YMMV.