Not Just Another Book About Television

Review by Mike Gange

Stay Tuned: Television’s Unforgettable Moments

Joe Garner

Andrews McMeel Publishing, $75.00, 181 pages

Telling about television’s unforgettable moments by using only the print medium is a bit like teaching someone to swim in a gymnasium. How do you write about significant memorable moments from a visual medium like television without pictures, sound or moving images?

New York Times best selling author Joe Garner has the right idea. He has culled television program excerpts from what he views are some of the most memorable of television’s broadcasts, giving us not only a book on 50 years of television memories but also a DVD and 2 audio CDs. Stay Tuned: Television’s Unforgettable Moments is organized into sections on entertainment, news and sports broadcasts that had lasting impact on viewers. While Mr. Garner has researched and written the contents, he called on comic actor Dick Van Dyke, former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite and NBC sportscaster Bob Costas to host the entertainment, news and sports sections, respectively, on the DVD and audio CDs. The result is an enjoyable and rich multi-media tale.

In the Entertainment section, Mr. Garner includes a dozen television segments he says will be long lasting in our collective consciousness. He includes Lucille Ball’s commercial for the "Vitemeatavegamin" in I Love Lucy; a 20-year-old Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and a relatively unknown troupe of comic actors, including John Belushi, and Ottawa’s Dan Ackroyd, under the direction of Toronto’s Lorne Michaels, transforming a television time-zone wasteland into a rich cultural paradise, on Saturday Night Live.

On the news side, there are many powerful stories, but one of the most touching comes from Mr. Garner’s chilling description of the events of November 22, 1963. Mr. Garner writes, "At 2:38 p.m. EST, teary eyed, his baritone cracking, [CBS anchor Walter] Cronkite went on the air to deliver the news that would leave an indelible image in the mind of everyone who watched it: "From Dallas, Texas, a flash, apparently official. President Kennedy died at one p.m. central standard time, two o’clock eastern standard time, some thirty eight minutes ago."

The sports stories included are also special memories for most Americans. Tales of baseball’s batting heroes, famous football games, and a "Miracle on Ice," as the Americans won the Gold medal in Ice Hockey at the Olympics in Lake Placid are all told here.

While the concept of including extra material that goes beyond the book is not a new one, used here by Garner, the stories on DVD and CD are richer than their counterparts in the print. Interviews with either the stars, the supporting cast or the writers have been carefully edited for print, but on the multi-media formats those interviewed are allowed to the tell more of a story. For example, John Ratzenberger, who plays Cliff Clavin, the mailman/barfly on Cheers, tells of a scene at the end of the second season, in which Sam Malone and Diane Chambers slap, pinch and poke each other trying to gain the upper hand in the stormy relationship. While in print the story is humourous, thanks to the DVD we can see how Mr. Ratzenberger’s eyes dance with enthusiasm as he describes how everyone in the studio came to a jaw dropping standstill as they witnessed that powerful scene.

Stay Tuned: Television’s Unforgettable Moments is impressive enough; even with the multi-media additions one would have a difficult time telling of the best of television’s 50 years of broadcasting. But Mr. Garner’s anecdotes are more subjective than qualitative; he rarely mentions critical acclaim or Emmy awards earned. One has to wonder if some of the "unforgettable moments" are included here because of a U.S. network’s willingness to make the resources available. Unfortunately, daytime shows and children’s programs have been overlooked completely. One powerful moment from children’s programming that I can recall, for example, was the Sesame Street cast trying to explain the concept of death to pre-schoolers, after the death of popular shop keeper Mr. Hooper. Maybe Joe Garner’s next book will include broadcasts of world events that relate not only to the U.S. , some daytime and children’s television programs and some of those equally unforgettable Saturday morning cartoons.

 

Mike Gange teaches about the media at Fredericton High.