From the Same Tube

All kinds of people used to go fishing who don't have to go any more. Not people in rubber boots who read Field & Stream, but the old bamboo-pole fishermen who half the time forgot to bait their hooks and just sat there for hours and hours staring at the same 21-in. patch of water. As the current moved, the patch was never the same from second to second but always the same in every tomorrow. Now all those fishermen are sitting at home staring into a 21-in. patch of glass.

The old shows have gone downstream this spring in large numbers, but the new ones that will replace them next season are from the same tube. Situation comedies will reach a bit farther than ever. CBS offers My Favorite Martian, about a marooned Martian who gets into comic scrapes with a newspaperman. Paul Henning, creator of The Beverly Hillbillies, starts a new yokel yarn called Petticoat Junction, about a widow and three calico daughters. Burke's Law (ABC) stars a millionaire police detective who tools around in a Rolls-Royce when off duty and whips up souffle Grand Marnier for snacks. Gene Barry, who plays the flush cop, learned how to shoot when he was TV's old Bat Masterson.

Back to Quiz. NBC will also begin a drama series about a blackboard-jungle Tarzan, Mr. Novak, with James Franciscus as the muscular teach. Then the viewer can graduate to ABC's Channing, a university with ivy and all--"a world in microcosm," says ABC, "reflecting an alltime interest in the college scene." Thus prepared, the viewer is at last ready for the first big-money quiz show in five years. ABC, figuring TV has outlived the shame of its scandals, has plunged on a new quiz program named for its top take, 100 Grand. The network nostalgically insists that there are "built-in safeguards that guarantee the integrity of the contest."

An interesting first is back-to-back programming, exemplified by a 90-minute ABC show titled Arrest and Trial broken into two 45-minute parts. A different criminal each week is captured by Detective Ben Gazzara in Arrest, then sprung by Defense Attorney Chuck Conners in Trial, thus effectively canceling out 90 minutes of effort.

Psychiatry & Wolves. Hoping to catch some of the popularity slosh from NBC's Eleventh Hour and Hazel, ABC has a new 50-minute hour on psychiatry called Breaking Point, and NBC has hired Imogene Coca to play an itinerant maid named Grindl, who drops dishes in a different job each week. Other shows are not so imitative.

NBC's Espionage has no continuing star, just a succession of eager wolves in Bond clothes, and CBS's The Great Adventure will be a series of stories from American history, including Barney Oldfield, Civil War submarines, Sitting Bull, the crash of the dirigible Akron, Boss Tweed, etc.

Ben Gazzara and Imogene Coca are only the beginning of a queue of stars that has been lined up for '63-'64. Judy Garland has a new regular program, and so, for the first time, does Danny Kaye, both on CBS. East Side, West Side is the CBS-TV series to which Actor George C. Scott has mortgaged himself in order to pay for his gallant theatrical experiment, the Theater of Michigan Company. He plays a social worker. The Bill Dana Show (NBC) stars the man who created Jose Jimenez but presents Jose in a new role--as a Manhattan elevator operator in a posh cooperative. The Richard Boone Show (NBC) is a series of hour-long original dramas with Clifford Odets as script supervisor. Jerry Lewis will begin a weekly variety series on ABC. ABC's The Greatest Show on Earth stars Jack Palance, with props by Ringling Bros. Phil (Bilko) Silvers is back on CBS in a series in which he plays an industrial foreman. Patty Duke has her own show too, a situation comedy in which she plays two roles, an American girl and her Scottish cousin.

More or Less? In public-affairs programming, Charles Collingwood's Eyewitness has been ended by CBS, and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley are giving up their regularly scheduled programs on NBC. This could appear to signify the beginning of a swing back to the old cretinic days before the scandals forced the networks to adopt a strong interest in public affairs in order to rebuild TV's shattered image. It merely indicates a shift in emphasis, the industry insists.

Next season both NBC and CBS will be offering full half-hour news broadcasts each evening. As a result, public affairs will actually command more network evening time next season than it did in the past one. Additionally, NBC plans 40 hours of public-affairs specials, and a new hour-long show called Sunday, which will cover political, cultural and scientific news something in the fashion of a weekly newsmagazine. CBS has a new show called Chronicle that will consist of frequent specials on everything from the two world wars and innumerable revolutions of the 20th century to the life of Edgar Allan Poe. ABC has replaced Howard K. Smith and his contentious comments with a half-hour of commentary by assorted specialists.

NBC's and CBS's news staffs have grown in preparation for the daily 30-minute newscasts, and the great curly-haired gods of current events are not at all sorry to be giving up their own weekly shows, since they are losing neither exposure nor income; they will be the oracular voices of the specials and the casters of the daily news.

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