All kinds of people used to go fishing who don't have to go any more. Not people in rubber boots who read Field & Stream, but the old bamboo-pole fishermen who half the time forgot to bait their hooks and just sat there for hours and hours staring at the same 21-in. patch of water. As the current moved, the patch was never the same from second to second but always the same in every tomorrow. Now all those fishermen are sitting at home staring into a 21-in. patch of glass.
The old shows have gone downstream this spring in large numbers, but the new ones that will replace them next season are from the same tube. Situation comedies will reach a bit farther than ever. CBS offers My Favorite Martian, about a marooned Martian who gets into comic scrapes with a newspaperman. Paul Henning, creator of The Beverly Hillbillies, starts a new yokel yarn called Petticoat Junction, about a widow and three calico daughters. Burke's Law (ABC) stars a millionaire police detective who tools around in a Rolls-Royce when off duty and whips up souffle Grand Marnier for snacks. Gene Barry, who plays the flush cop, learned how to shoot when he was TV's old Bat Masterson.
Back to Quiz. NBC will also begin a drama series about a blackboard-jungle Tarzan, Mr. Novak, with James Franciscus as the muscular teach. Then the viewer can graduate to ABC's Channing, a university with ivy and all—"a world in microcosm," says ABC, "reflecting an alltime interest in the college scene." Thus prepared, the viewer is at last ready for the first big-money quiz show in five years. ABC, figuring TV has outlived the shame of its scandals, has plunged on a new quiz program named for its top take, 100 Grand. The network nostalgically insists that there are "built-in safeguards that guarantee the integrity of the contest."
An interesting first is back-to-back programming, exemplified by a 90-minute ABC show titled Arrest and Trial broken into two 45-minute parts. A different criminal each week is captured by Detective Ben Gazzara in Arrest, then sprung by Defense Attorney Chuck Conners in Trial, thus effectively canceling out 90 minutes of effort.
Psychiatry & Wolves. Hoping to catch some of the popularity slosh from NBC's Eleventh Hour and Hazel, ABC has a new 50-minute hour on psychiatry called Breaking Point, and NBC has hired Imogene Coca to play an itinerant maid named Grindl, who drops dishes in a different job each week. Other shows are not so imitative.
NBC's Espionage has no continuing star, just a succession of eager wolves in Bond clothes, and CBS's The Great Adventure will be a series of stories from American history, including Barney Oldfield, Civil War submarines, Sitting Bull, the crash of the dirigible Akron, Boss Tweed, etc.