Television: Midnight Idol

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"wasteland" that Newton Minow complained about in 1961 is still parched; a Roper Research study found that 18% of TV viewers agreed with Minow in 1963, and 29% are with him today. Television journalism and sports coverage are getting better, and even commercials are improving; but regularly scheduled programs are still as vapid as ever. Mindless game shows and cheery-teary soapers dominate daytime television. Prime-time TV (7:30-11 p.m.) is hardly more satisfactory. The top-rated Nielsen shows for 1966-67 are either tired adventure series such as Bonanza and Dragnet or low-IQ sitch-coms on the order of Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched. The only steady programs that offer the hope of entertainment are Old Standbys Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Ed Sullivan and Dean Martin—and movies, for which TV can claim no creative proprietorship. The only spice in the schedules are the sporadic specials, many of which are first class; to their credit, the networks next season will produce 300 such programs, including two Truman Capote adaptations on ABC, and at least four newly commissioned works on CBS Playhouse. About half of the specials will be documentaries—among them an NBC study on the state of U.S. justice, a four-hour ABC essay on Africa.

Dial-the-Radio. The trend away from packaged format continues, and the direction is toward talk, talk, talk. Joe Pyne, who gives his viewers a thrill by insulting guests, is running on 46 stations. David Susskind's discussion show hits 17 stations. William F. Buckley Jr., on 20 stations, commands one of the more intelligent talk shows. Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty is a regular chatterbox on local TV, joshing away with Pierre Salinger or George Jessel, and Comic Mort Sahl has found a Los Angeles TV soapbox from which to harangue an avid following with his prophecies of Armageddon.

Radio, too, is talking as well as rocking around the clock. For cheap entertainment, there's nothing like the hotline show. All it takes is a know-it-all at the mike, a big switchboard at the station, and listeners with telephones. People who used to have nothing more to do than Dial-a-Devotion, Dial-the-Weather, Dial-the-Time, Dial-the-News and Dial-a-Senator, can now Dial-the-Radio. New Yorkers will hold the phone for ages waiting to tell WNBC's Brad Crandall what jerks the other listeners are. There is a prestige that accrues to the hot-line caller who succeeds in saying his piece on Viet Nam, abortions, pollution, church and state, and unkempt lawns; and, indeed, WNBC urges people not to call if they have already been on the air once that week.

Lonely People. One way or another, it is audience involvement that makes the talk shows successful—whether the listener is actually participating or just watching or listening. What engages them is a matter for the social psychologist. NBC Vice President Paul Klein suggests that "people are always lonely at night. Forty or fifty percent of the people have bad sex partners or none at all." Klein's statistics may be suspect, but after all, he is NBC's man in charge of audience measurement. Sylvester L. Weaver Jr., onetime NBC president and instigator of the Tonight, Today and Monitor shows, believes that the new interest in broadcast conversation is a sign of a higher level of education in the country. Bill Buckley perhaps correctly explains it as "a negative