If there was one word to describe television in the 1970s, that word would be cheesy. The very definition of tube books during this decade has been with television programmers turning to unconventional, high-concept sitcoms and variety shows to invite audiences. Shows like The The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, The Love Ship, Charlie’s Angels, Three’s Company i> and others were innocently silly and lighthearted, but audiences in Vietnam, civil unrest, and the Watergate scandal, like their 1960s counterparts, escaped reality. The king of cheese was undoubtedly executive producer Aaron Spelling. Responsible for such shows as The Love Boat and Charles’ Angels, the series traded spells on cheese sexuality and conventional stories that are easily resolved at the end of each episode. Spelling created a formula popular over the decade and replicated by other TV shows such as the sitcom Three’s Company, which perfected situational comedy and traces of laughing conventions. PBS, founded in 1969, offered an alternative to cheese through educational and informational programming to the public. I love the showsTheatre Master and Great Effects of the arts for the first time and he brought it to the institution of food as Sesame Street and The Electric Company demonstrated that programming can strike a balance between entertainment and education for children.
Race, gender, and sexuality were still presented in stereotypical ways and, in the case of the nation, were also disadvantaged. During this decade, cop and detective shows became more popular than the networks aired such shows as street , Columbo, Baretta, Barnabas Jones, McCloud, Kojak, Starsky and Hutch“, and others. When Americans were more concerned about crime in urban streets, these shows traded in many stereotypes African a> Criminals and thugs. Blaxploitation films in the first decade inspired these images, actors such as Anthony Fargas (Huggy Bear, and others. These programs were popular with both black and white audiences, but critics also complained that they reported coon images, especially of people black. One such show featured criticism from Good Times, a spin-off of the popular CBS sitcom Maude. Although Good Times began in earnest about black families surviving poverty in Chicago’s ventures, eventually J.J. yielded to the shuck and five antics of J.J. Evans (Jimmie Walker) whose signature tagline “Dynamite” has become a popular catchphrase with audiences. Eventually, actors John Amos (John Evans) and Esther Rolle (Florida Evans) left the series due to creative differences on their part. However, these programs, good or bad, opened up television to different images of Africa in the early days. However, with the exception of Love Christie Love (Teresa Graves) and S.W.A.T., featuring George Sanford Brown, there were few pictures African Americans on television joined Bill Cosby in Alexander Scott’s 1960s spy drama I Spy.
Images of other non-white characters were also few and far between. In the 1968 police procedural Hawaii Five-O, Asian actor Kam Fong had his first role as Det. Chin Ho Kelly, but also that show of Asian characters martial, Kung Fu, The comic stars David Carradine in the titular role. Latino roles were also few and far between, with the late comedian Freddie Prinze starring in the 1974-1978 sitcom Chico and the Man and actor Gregory Sierra in the 1975 sitcom Barney Miller and >Sanford and Son, representing a few that have aired this decade. Like African American players, Latino actors are relegated to criminals in the civilian cop game. Barney Miller was one of the few shows that featured non-white actors such as Ron Glass and Jack Soo among its cast. Also, sitcoms like WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, Welcome Back Kotter, White Shadow and others have also broken the barrier for non-white players of color.
The picture of women starts and fits this decade. In shows as diverse as Police Woman (Angie Dickenson), Buck Rogers , and Charlie’s Angels, women profiting from their mutual sexuality for the feature as they are in soap operas and sitcoms. Cheesecake, produced exclusively by Orthographia, defined many of the images of women in this period, where appearance and sexuality stood in heavy images of strong men and wise women. There were, however, exceptions. Wonder Woman, stars Lynda Carter, and Bionic Woman. >, starring Lindsay Wagner, though just as cheesy as most 1970s TV, nevertheless leads a strong female that critics have hailed as feminist role models. The Mary Tyler Moore Show featured a working woman in a newsroom. One of the first TV sitcoms to take a place primarily in work, The Mary Tyler Moore Show features the lead character who is the smart, strong, and quirky actress Mary Tyler Moore who has become America’s sweetheart. The aforementioned sitcom Maude featured the first feminist on television (Bea Arthur) and tackled many women’s issues (such as abortion) that other sitcoms did not dare to touch. Other shows, such as Drew’s Nancy Mysteries, Alice, One Day at A Time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoff Rhoda, and other features strong, quirky, and interesting female leads.
The 1970s paved the way for sexuality to become mainstream on television just as sex, drugs, rock and ethics became mainstream in the 1960s. Three’s Company, starring John Ritter and Suzanne Sommers, was just a man who moved in with two beautiful bedrooms, but pretended to be gay in order to divert attention from a conservative gentleman playing Norman Fell. We got a glimpse of the sitcom about loose and loose attitudes to sexuality in the 1970s, and what was one of the first television treatments of homosexuality, albeit in this case for laughs. The soap opera Soap first developed a hilarious character in the first season, played by Billy Crystal, surrounding the controversy surrounding conservative groups. But the first depiction of homosexuality on television came a decade ago with the PBS documentary An American Family. Considered the first reality TV program in the same vein as the later MTV program The Real World, the cameras followed the adventures of a typical suburban family, The Louds. The show was crushed when one of the boys in the room, Lance, came out of the room and announced his homosexuality to his family. As American attitudes to sex and drugs loosened this decade, television was pushing the envelope on what could and could not be depicted, although these depictions were still focused under a more conservative lens.
Likewise, family dramas and sitcoms have experienced a seismic shift during this decade. Where for decades nuclear family sitcoms represented the unity of the nuclear family with the father and mother as the ultimate authority figures, family dramas have slowly begun to address the problems of modern families, including divorce, teenage sexuality, medicine, and dysfunction. Even serene, harmless sitcoms like The Brady Bunch have explored the problems of united families. with which many Americans were dealing with in the great age of divorce, even though the parents in this widowhood program were more than divorced. A decade later, the CBS sitcom OneDay at A Time for a Divorced Mother developed two daughters raised himself as a teenager and often discussed issues of teen sexuality and drugs as part of a weekly sitcom show. The family drama Eight Is Enough, starring Dick Van Patten, also deals with the problems of a stepmother marrying into a ready-made family after actress Diana Hyland, who played the first Mrs. Bradford in the series, passed away. and was removed and replaced by actress Betty Buckley. The ABC drama Family (Sada Thompson and James Broderick) similarly dealt with serious issues like divorce, alcoholism, and lesbianism, a far cry from the simple troubles of the 1950s sitcom Beav. Leave the beaver. Even traditional family dramas such as Little House and the Prairie often resorted to “special topics” to address social issues that were of concern to 1970s audiences.
Although it was big, mostly televised, in the 1970s it was inoffensive and superficial. Variety shows are popular forms of shows with shows such as The Sonny and Cher Show, Donnie & amp; Marie, Burns & The Schreiber Comedy Hour, The Captain and Tennille Show, The Dean Martin Show, Flip Wilson, Hee Haw, The Lawrence Welk Show, The Leslie Uggams Showand others all made their way into the first season with mixed success. The variety show featured movies and TV shows that were healthy for other family audiences, but were terrible in both execution and humor. These programs were very timely and seem dated to today’s audiences. There were two shows that appeared in the 1970s that were ahead of their time. In 1976, the sketch comedy show Saturday Ago debuted, featuring not. Ready for First Time Players (Bill Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, etc.) SNL was the first TV show that was geared specifically to the baby boom generation, with humor, music and popular themes that demographic. It quickly developed a reputation in the industry and fan art as one of the hippest shows on the air. The Richard Pryor Show, which briefly stood a year later, was a monster star. black comedians and features future comedy stars such as Robin Williams, Sandra Bernhard, Paul Mooney, and others among the cast and writing staff. Edgy and daring, The Richard Pryor Show explored issues of racism in sharp and humorous ways, but quickly fell out of favor with studio executives who thought the show would not appeal to their largely white audience. The show was canceled after just a few episodes, but the show’s kind of humor continued to influence shows like the 1990s Fox sketch comedy In Living Color.
Television programs across the pond were also heavily influenced by the 1970s, as Hollywood executives turned to TV for inspiration. Shows such as All in the Family (to Death Do Us Part), Sanford and Son (Steptoe and Son), Three Company (The Man from Home, and all others. Based on the British versions But Hollywood remakes wasn’t the only way British television was moved Monty Benny, Monty Python The Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, The Avengers< /i>, and The Saint< /i>, were touted and popular in the United States.Masterpiece‘s popular Downstairs miniseries, which were similarly popular with American audiences Rich Man, based on Irwin Shaw, was a hit with audiences, but in 1977, ABC scored a monster hit on Roots, based on the book by author Alex Haley Roots, which began the story of the Haley family in Africa and later during slavery in the antebellum American South, was successful in more ways than one. Not only was it a ratings winner, but the show also successfully introduced the issue of America’s history with slavery into the national dialogue and encouraged African‘s own family lineage is to be traced. Ministries also developed from black actors and portrayed images of African Americans that contradicted the popular sitcoms. during this time.
New programs like 60 Minutes have also proven popular with American audiences as CNN news correspondent Mike Wallace questions politicians and corporate CEOs alike. As in the 1960s, broadcast news became a great tool for Americans to learn more about the world. The Senate aired the Watergate hearings between May 17 and August 7, 1976 and was watched by approximately 85% of the hearings at various points in the television audience. During the Iran hostage crisis, journalist Ted Koppel made a name for himself through continuous nightly episodes investigating the events until his release in 1981. The show proved so popular and powerful with audiences that it remained an ABC program under the Nightline banner. , who hosted Koppel until he retired in 2006. Nixon’s resignation speech and later interviews with British journalist Sir David Frost, which was his first interview since resigning from office, also marked high points for television in the 1970s.
Sources:
Wikipedia
IMDB.com
www.super70s.com
