Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Hepburn shines in revival, NBC creates Washington waxworks...
Backstairs at the White House (Mondays, starting Jan. 29, NBC) is the gaudiest illustration yet of why many TV viewers would rather undergo root-canal work than tune into downtrodden NBC. Intended as a keyhole view of 20th century American Presidents, this nine-hour miniseries quickly proves to be a trivialization of history. In lieu of incisive political drama or even licentious fun, NBC offers a cavalcade of boring anecdotes and a rogues' gallery of often laughable cameo performances. In Backstairs, power is not an aphrodisiac but a soporific...
Harder to judge is how much journalists were unconsciously guided by a sense of the national interest. Concedes Dick Fischer, NBC'S executive vice president for news: "Early on we reported rather softly on the Shah; we thought he was our man." A telling indictment in the Columbia Review is that in an eleven-month study the authors could find no use of the word dictator to describe the Shah. Though the press did speak of torture and a repressive secret police, it usually labeled the regime as autocratic or authoritarian...
SPUTNIK. It was the earth's only other satellite except the moon, a polished metal sphere the size of a beach ball, hurtling around the planet at 18,000 m.p.h. An NBC radio announcer that October in 1957 bade his audience: "Listen now, for the sound which forever separates the old from the new." And over thousands of radios, from somewhere in space, came an eerie beep ... beep ... beep...
Delta House (Jan. 18, ABC, 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.). In a typical display of initiative and daring, all three networks have sched uled fraternity-house sitcoms for 1979. Two of the entries, CBS's Co-ed Fever and NBC's Brothers and Sisters, are rip-offs of National Lampoon 's Animal House; ABC's Delta House is a spinoff. In the competitive circus of TV, where arcane distinctions mean everything, the ABC show has the decided edge. Delta House may not quite be Animal House, but at least it is the one genuine forgery...