The show was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, the producers of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Bristol-Myers contracted with them to develop the show, and provided it to ABC for a projected 13-week run after NBC and CBS rejected it. A CBS official confessed, "It was so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it." Production executive Digby Wolfe described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics—even people."
Turn-On's premise was that it was produced by a computer. Distinguishing characteristics of the show were its use of the Moog synthesizer and lack of sets, except for a white backdrop. Unlike Laugh-In the show "focused almost exclusively on sex as a comedic subject," using various rapid-fire jokes and risqué skits, but no laugh track. The program was also filmed instead of presented live or on videotape. Several of the jokes were presented with the screen divided into four squares resembling comic strip panels....
An ABC executive... compared the show negatively to the comedy of Dean Martin, Laugh-In, and the Smothers Brothers, which the executive described as "absolutely beyond belief ... awfully blue," but were popular and less controversial because unlike Turn-On, "they're funny."... [TV Guide] quoted a source... "(T)here wasn't any sort of identification with the audience -- just a bunch of strangers up there insulting everything you believe in."
"It wasn't that it was a bad show, it was that it was an awkward show," concluded author Harlan Ellison, a fan of counter-cultural comedy and a TV critic for the Los Angeles Free Press in 1969....
Many assumed the show's title was itself an implicit reference to Timothy Leary's pro-drug maxim, "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
February 5, 2019
50 years ago today: The TV show "Turn-On!" premiered and was taken off the air in the middle of episode 1.
According to Wikipedia:
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15 comments:
Must have been the first of the "That's not funny" days. The culture wars were getting serious way back in 69.
This style was just ahead of its time. Look at MADTv and especially the Adult Swim show Tim & Eric Show: Great Job and the schizophrenic similarity is striking. A lot of it isn't funny but it moves so fast that within seconds something else is being pitched at you.
Just not enough ADHD or autism in '69 for a sizeable enough audience I guess.
Judged by my bourgeois parent's generation! BTW, don't trust anyone over 30!
Far out, Man. 69' was a heavy year, Man.
Watched it at home with family, I was 13.
One blackout: " they have finally Decided on the shape of the Paris peace accords table". Reveal: table in the shape of a swastika. My father,disgusted, got up and on the phone and asked for ABC in New York.
I was in the UK in 1969, so instead got to watch Monty Python.
It would be interesting to send back Game of Thrones. Of course, the NBC Nightly News from today would be yanked off the air too.
George Schlatter can't put all the available footage on YouTube?
He can but he's a prick. Let's hear some "metoo" stories about him.
I pretty sure they showed the whole first episode in Chicago, and I'm pretty sure I saw it. I didn't think much of it, but I don't have any specific memories.
Yamaha Big Bear Scrambler
In 1961 there was a show with Jackie Gleason called "You're in the Picture" that lasted one episode. The next week Gleason appeared on a bare set and asked "how it was possible for a group of trained people to put on so big a flop." He said the show "laid, without a doubt, the biggest bomb in history." Years ago I went to the Museum of Broadcasting in New York to see it again. Gleason was great.
I remember that and the huge controversy TURN ON created. It was talked about as if it would have scandalized the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah.
So why isn't the episode on Youtube? Does the producer think he'll make a fortune off a one cancelled TV episode?
Or is he waiting to for someone to buy it and show it in re-runs?
If it was cancelled after one show, why was it ever green-lighted to begin with?
Talk about poor management.
I'm probably one of the few people still alive who actually saw "Turn-On." It was as bad as they say it was. Nowadays, of course, the writers and players could do a half hour of unfunny leftist agitprop, and people would say they were brilliant.
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