The 1970s were peak TV-watching years for me. I logged about five hours of TV a day–starting with old syndicated shows in the afternoons after I got from school, (Andy Griffith, Ozzie and Harriet etc.) moving onto dinner served on a stack table while watching The Three Stooges and ‘I Love Lucy’, finally bringing the current day programs into the mix by watching pretty much anything on prime time that captured my attention. Perversely, I didn’t watch many of the hits–I was, for some reason, more taken with watching the new shows and seeing what might or might not last. As a result, the above reel of promos and opening credit sequences of shows of the 70s that didn’t make it is oddly familiar to me. Does anyone remember William Shatner’s bomb ‘Barbary Coast’? Or Jack Palance as “Bronk”? Or a ridiculous Italian-family sit-com ‘The Montefuscos’? How about ‘Joe and Sons’? Or Hector Elizando in ‘Popi’? Well, I remember all of them. I’m not sure how many episodes of each show I saw (as you’ll see from the helpful informational title cards most didn’t last very long) but I not only remember the shows, I remember the TV Guide cover story that many of them received. The TV Guide was the most important thing in the mail and I eagerly scoured it, reading the articles and circling which shows and movies I’d be ingesting that week. How did I spend this much time watching TV and  do homework at the same time? I think that’s the answer–it was done at the same time. I seem to remember lying on the floor of my parents bedroom, textbooks open, occasionally writing something down while keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the TV screen. I wasn’t hungry for school accomplishment for some reason–I was hungry for filmed (or taped) entertainment. As long as I passed with a ‘Gentlmans C’ I considered it a job well done. Things have now reversed entirely–as they tend to do in life. I now watch little television, preferring to sit around and read, listen to music and converse. Of course I didn’t drink Martini’s back in the 70s–if I did, it might have been a completely different story…