Word: fared
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...growth of independents has produced a cavernous appetite for programming of the sort Murdoch hopes to provide. The independents' staple fare, reruns of recent network series like Webster, now earn their production companies as much as $1.5 million per episode in nationwide syndication deals. Independents will spend an estimated $750 million to buy programs this year, up from $75 million in 1975. Says Eugene McCurdy, president of the independent WPHL-TV in Philadelphia: "I think Mr. Murdoch's timing is excellent. The market is there, waiting to be served...
...network look is spreading. The Arts & Entertainment Network, which offers cultural fare and "quality" programming from Britain, also telecasts reruns of such defunct network series as United States and Breaking Away. Nickelodeon, the children's channel, is trying to attract older viewers at night with reruns of chestnuts like The Donna Reed Show and Route 66. Even MTV now interrupts its playlist of rock videos with a sitcom on Sunday nights, an import from Britain called The Young Ones...
Cable executives insist that their series are different from network fare, in many cases more daring in language and subject matter. Usually that simply means a gratuitous glimpse of skin here, an expletive undeleted there. Brothers' treatment of homosexuality, for example, is a touch more explicit than ABC or CBS might allow. Yet in most ways the show is indistinguishable from a typical Norman Lear sitcom of the mid-1970s...
Cable's freedom from network restrictions, however, has also given rise to more ambitious fare. HBO last summer anticipated this fall's anthology trend with its fine Ray Bradbury Theater, three original stories by the famed fantasy writer. The tales were seductive and creepy (in The Crowd, a man notices that the same group of bystanders shows up at car accidents across the city). Three more episodes are scheduled for this season. Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater on Showtime, meanwhile, continues to provide imaginative family fare. In December, Duvall will launch a second Showtime series, Tall Tales, which will...
Trapped by the constraints of a poorly fleshed out character, Harris, as Cline's husband Charlie Dick, could possibly fare even worse than does Lange in the execution of his role. Beer-guzzling, knee-slapping chauvinist Charlie would not appear to have much cult potential among today's hypersensitive post-Rambo moviegoing audiences. He certainly doesn't score too highly with wife Cline, who gave up a safe of boring first husband to plunge into the depths of eroticism with Charlie only to discover that she's not the only one keeping his bed warm at night...