That last post features a show Lear did with Mickey Rooney. It wasn't the first time he'd approached the actor about a role in one of his sitcoms. One of my favourite pieces of trivia is that Lear wanted Rooney to play Archie Bunker in "All In The Family." Rooney turned it down because he thought America would never accept a bigot and some of his language on television. 

In a short segment from the Television Academy Foundation archives, Lear recalls making that phone call to Rooney and what the veteran told him as he tried to outline his show. It's less than 2 minutes long, but you have to wonder "what might have been?"


 

Norman Lear was also a WW2 veteran.   Joining in 1942,  He served as a radio operator and gunner in a B-17 bomber named “Umbriago” by its crew, after a catchphrase of the comedian Jimmy Durante.
Dangerous work for sure.

How important was Norman Lear's contribution to TV? Get this - every major U.S. network will pay tribute to him at the start of primetime Wednesday night. 

CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and the CW will all run a brief title card at 8 PM that reads:

“in recognition of Norman Lear’s vast accomplishments and influence across television.” 

I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen that before. It's a small thing but it's also pretty incredible and proof of the effect he had on the medium. This is the equivalent to dimming the lights on Broadway when a prominent theatre star or director dies. 

In Rare Move, All Major Broadcast Networks to Honor Norman Lear In Primetime

This is pretty incredible - Lear was 101 and still producing TV shows, including several upcoming projects with Netflix and a possible reboot of a modern day "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." He's gone but new shows of his will still be appearing on television.

Remarkable. 

Norman Lear To Make Cameo Appearance In ‘Good Times’ Netflix Animated Series As TV Icon Leaves Slate Of Upcoming Projects Behind

There are plenty of groundbreaking, hilariously funny and dramatic TV shows out there right now that are pushing the envelope. We can't see them because they're available on streaming services in the U.S. with limited reach into Canada. The days of three U.S. networks dominating the broadcast landscape are long gone and OTA TV has had to retreat into safe cliches to avoid panicking the old folks who still are still wedded to traditional media. Take a look at these:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2023-in-review/the-best-tv-shows-of-2023

You're not entirely wrong about the streamers and to a lesser extent cable, but it's a bit of apples and oranges comparison to me. You have to remember the times. This was button-downed network TV in the early 1970s, when hillbillies, country bumpkins and small town Mayberry was the norm on sitcoms. 

All In The Family and the shows that followed changed the language and what was acceptable on TV, pay or otherwise. Archie was a bigot yet somehow lovable. That in itself was ground breaking. Edith was the first character to go through menopause. She was also the victim of an attempted rape, another TV sitcom first. Maude had an abortion. Archie's war buddy was gay. Even the sound effect of a flushing toilet was never done before on the tube. (Leave It To Beaver was the first one to ever actually show a shot of a toilet, but no one ever actually used one on air before.)

This stuff was never seen on the screen then. That's why I say he broke new ground. Would there have been the kind of shows the streaming services show if Lear hadn't broken the mould? Maybe. But for his time, he did something no one else did. And TV creators to this day own him a debt of gratitude just for opening those doors and showing what was possible on the small screen.

Those who come before influence those who follow, whether they realize it or not. Lear was a pioneer for his time - and even if they've never seen his shows, he influenced theirs, because they can get away with stuff that wasn't possible before him. 

BowmanvilleBob wrote:

But yet you, RA, and others of your ilk, spend a lot of time on this board bemoaning the "politically correct" and "woke" culture without acknowledging that the politically correct and woke people who work on the streaming services are producing the most enlightening and thought-provoking TV on the air today. It's the MAGA crowd in the U.S. and Canada who want TV to be bland, inoffensive and boring. The major networks keep caving into these people because its easier to recycle old TV ideas from 80s and 90s than it is to put something together that might offend someone and earn a rebuke from some lunatic senator or right-wing troll on social media.

What's the outcome of this? Well, look at the situation in Quebec. Take a look at this article from La Presse, which shows, among other things:
- teenagers in Quebec have been deserting OTA TV in large numbers in favour of streaming shows on content providers like Netflix. 
- the teens don't feel the shows and characters on OTA TV reflect their problems and lifestyles. They want to see more shows that deal with things like sex, gender issues, drugs and social media problems.
- They don't care about having to watch shows that are dubbed or use subtitles because even if the shows are done in English, they deal with issues to which they can relate.
- The suits in charge at the ad agencies have clued into this trend, and they're worried that a whole generation of young people have become so turned off by TV that they won't be coming back.

https://www.lapresse.ca/contexte/2023-12-10/la-generation-qui-boude-notre-tele.php 

I get the feeling you guys may be misinterpreting my point. It is that every generation of content creators gets influenced by the ones who came before and hopefully, incorporate that into their new material, adding and improving on it. Before Norman Lear, TV was pretty stagnant. He opened the door and thousands have thankfully followed through it, morphing the medium with every passing decade.

At no time did I imply that the shows today are somehow inferior or unwatchable. I've seen some of the shows mentioned in the article listed your original post and I like many of them. As for the younger demos today, the way people watch TV has definitely changed. But I believe there will always be room for well written topical programs that serve the next generation, who will then influence those who follow. 

Unfortunately, even with broadcast television being much more adult that it used to be, it can still never go as far as cable/streaming shows can due to broadcast regulations about the public airwaves. So of course, those shows appeal to a newer generation of viewers and try to zero in on topics they care about. And good for them for demanding that change. But they're almost exclusive now to streaming services.

I also don't blame them for eschewing OTA. They're used to far more graphic language, sex and topics that can only come through the Internet and off the public airwaves. They also hate commercial breaks and I can't blame them. I DVR everything I watch and never see the spots. I only watch news and occasionally sports live. Otherwise it's recorded and makes an hour show into a 40-minute one. What a great timesaver!

My major point remains that it was producers like Norman Lear and maybe Stephen Bochco who opened the door a crack towards the future we're in now, and that's part of the reason we have the streaming shows we do now. If anyone was woke and politically incorrect, it was Lear. And he did it at a time we didn't even have those phrases. 

I'm well aware that OTA TV is in big trouble and that some have pronounced it dead. I'm not sure we're there quite yet, but cable and satellite are losing subscribers by the thousands every year. Something is going to give. 

And for the record, I'm as far from the MAGA crowd as you can possibly get. I don't want my TV to be "bland, inoffensive and boring," as you put it. All I want is good shows. Whoever may make them or show them. And if streaming is the sole survivor, well, I'll miss the freebie, but let the marketplace decide. 

I was wondering if Archie Bunker's bigotry and some of the words he used - which I won't repeat here, but they were racially offensive - would be allowed on TV today. There is such great sensitivity that even a satire using those terms might never be allowed now, certainly on broadcast television, in this era when every single word is heavily scrutinized. That's what I was referring to and that's why I wondered if it would have been allowed on the air in the 2020s.

Not that they should have worried. The famous story (and it's true) goes that CBS hired hundreds of extra operators to take calls from angry viewers on the night All In The Family debuted. Almost no one called to complain. I would very much question if those operators (or likely those online now) would be so idle if the same thing happened now. 

The other thing that happened a lot after "Family" debuted was the phones rang at hundreds of houses across America, where mothers called up their kids and said, "Turn on your set quick! Your father is on TV!" Sadly, there may have been a lot of Archie Bunkers out there and I worry that there still may be.