NATPE 1984 article

[BrandonFG]

Earlier this week, I stumbled across a Facebook post that mentioned Sandy Frank being interviewed for 60 Minutes, and Morley Safer roasting him for his cheap production values. In digging a little more, I found this 1984 Washington Post article. It doesn't go into great detail, but it does describe the syndication landscape for the mid-80s, as well as Sandy's frank thoughts on Jeopardy!

[Eric Paddon]

That Morley Safer didn't know what "Jeopardy" was, was more telling.

[Otm Shank]

Here's the 60 Minutes segment.

https://commerce.veritone.com/search/asset/41712369

[Sodboy13]

That was a fantastic watch. Thanks for digging it up!

[tyshaun1]

Whew, watching that was worth it just for Sandy Frank alone. What a great story.

[BrandonFG]

To be a fly on the wall in that year’s convention, between Sandy Frank going a mile a minute, and then the station manager arguing with the guy from Telepictures. Thanks for finding this!

And was that Shadoe Stevens in the “Putting on the Hits” pilot?

[ChrisLambert!]

Whew, watching that was worth it just for Sandy Frank alone. What a great story.

Such a snake-oil salesman. Kennedy NTT was a 10-year hit in primetime? If that was the case it would have still been on!  (fortunately for him, nobody had the internet on their phones back then.)

[Matt Ottinger]

Frank's company owned the rights to a bunch of cheap Japanese monster movies, the kind you would see lampooned on MST3K.  Which led to this:

[Eric Paddon]

Specifically the "Gamera" series about the giant flying turtle.     But in fairness to Frank their poorness was due to bad quality English dubs supplied by the original studio that *they* had done, whereas these same films when they'd first played in the US on TV in the 70s had been given alternate dubbing by the original US distributor, American International Pictures that was much superior.    All of those films were just given a deluxe Blu-Ray treatment with all of their different audio options (Japanese, original AIP dub and the dub that was used for the "Sandy Frank" version) and the set sold out fast (now going for $250 on e-bay!)

[BillCullen1]

36 years later, the boring cerebral show Jeopardy is still going strong, long after the demise of NTT.

Somewhat related. I'm not sure how true this is, but I remember hearing that in 1980, when Family Feud was going into daily syndication, Mark Goodson was playing hardball with stations saying that if they wanted FF, they also had to take the new TTTT with host Robin Ward. Maybe someone who's "in the know" about this can verify or quash it.

[JakeT]

And, man, the market for hour-long drama reruns dried up during that period and for years to come...primetime blockbusters like "Dallas", "Dynasty", and "Knots Landing" crashed and burned when aired as syndicated reruns...

JakeT

[snowpeck]

Somewhat related. I'm not sure how true this is, but I remember hearing that in 1980, when Family Feud was going into daily syndication, Mark Goodson was playing hardball with stations saying that if they wanted FF, they also had to take the new TTTT with host Robin Ward. Maybe someone who's "in the know" about this can verify or quash it.

Yes, at least according to "insiders" who spoke to Variety for an article at the time. And apparently stations were pretty angry about it.

[colonial]

Quite fascinating segment about the business of television.

Sandy Frank came off as an obscenity-free version of Alec Baldwin in "Glengarry Glen Ross." Can't imagine what he said when the cameras were off. That man really missed his calling selling used cars or swamp land.

Brandon is right about Shadoe Stevens in that "Puttin' On The Hits" pilot clip.

As far as Safer claiming not to know what J! was -- given that he spent most of his career traveling the world and living in Europe for a good deal of the original Art Fleming run, his knowledge of pop culture was likely limited. But in one of his obits, it was said that Safer had a knack of making a story out of something offbeat. I could imagine Safer reading about NATPE (or even casually talking with a CBS head honcho or news colleague about it), and deciding to try to make something out of it.


JD

[BrandonFG]

And, man, the market for hour-long drama reruns dried up during that period and for years to come...primetime blockbusters like "Dallas", "Dynasty", and "Knots Landing" crashed and burned when aired as syndicated reruns...

I've been trying to figure out exactly why the reruns didn't work, given how daytime soaps have been a staple for years. Both air(ed) daily and required you to follow a continuing storyline.

/Unless "Who Shot JR" was only compelling the first time around?

[PYLdude]

Somewhat related. I'm not sure how true this is, but I remember hearing that in 1980, when Family Feud was going into daily syndication, Mark Goodson was playing hardball with stations saying that if they wanted FF, they also had to take the new TTTT with host Robin Ward. Maybe someone who's "in the know" about this can verify or quash it.

Yes, at least according to "insiders" who spoke to Variety for an article at the time. And apparently stations were pretty angry about it.

I’m assuming that was for stations that the show hadn’t been airing on? Because in New York both shows has different time slots on different stations (Feud had its prime slot on WNBC, TTTT aired in the morning on WABC where, if I’m not mistaken, the first syndicated series was for most of its run).