betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry) (10/05/84)
Last season *Remington Steele* was far less interesting than had been its wont. It was less witty, less coherent, less intelligent than the show of the season before. I wrote this off to incompetence; turns out it was deliberate. I quote Mark Christensen's *The Sweeps*, Morrow, 1984, p.185-86. "...Tartikoff, the master programming technician, explained the strategies that he'd engineered the previous month in New York. He walked the audience through the schedule, night by night. ... Tuesday night would still be *A-Team* night, and the well-plotted *Remington Steele* would become less plotted, in order to capitalize on the presumably nonthinking *A-Team* watchers." I always thought our friends in Hollywood simply didn't *recognize* quality. Turns out they're actively eschewing it. -- Betsy Perry UUCP: {decvax|linus|cornell}!dartvax!betsy CSNET: betsy@dartmouth ARPA: betsy%dartmouth@csnet-relay
rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (10/09/84)
*I* thought one of the biggest symptoms of Remington Steele's demise was the alteration of the theme music to the jumpy TV detective show opening, with the original "cool jazz" detective show opening (a la Mike Hammer's Harlem Nocturne) being relegated to a snippet at the very end of the opening credits. What REALLY gets me is the way NBC still (I thought they had stopped it, but I think I was wrong) "superimposes" their own chimes and NBC theme music over the closing credits of a show. It's downright rude to hear one or two notes of HSB or RS theme music only to be interrupted by the noise and the announcer saying "This week on "We've Got It Made", Micky takes off all of her clothes, much to the surprise of everyone!" Someone put some sort of effort into writing whatever music closes the show. The other networks have a voice over of an announcer briefly doing an advertisement and saying what's on next, as opposed to NBC's axing the music completely in favor of their drivel. -- Now I've lost my train of thought. I'll have to catch the bus of thought. Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr