It is an absolute shame that ABC cancelled this show. I could definitely see this show on a different channel if it didn't come out in the 1960s. like Adult Swim, (early 2000s MTV ) or Comedy Central. Hopefully this show makes a comeback one day. 7/10 Great show.
They sandwiched it between two movies that people probably wanted to watch especially Spartacus. It seems like they really wanted people to watch this turn-on show. Probably to test how short their attention spans were getting.
The fatigue I felt while watching Turn On #1 and 2 last night couldn't be fixed by Excedrin. I actually wanted to do my homework from 1969 for the first time -- just anything to get away from the show.
not sure it was meant to be laugh out loud funny....was clearly very thought provoking and dealt with issues in both the industry and the nation that few spoke about
The Excedrin commercial was on the never-aired 2nd episode. The first episode had a commercial for Bufferin. Guessing that you might need to take a couple of Bufferin or Excedrin after watching a few minutes of "Turn-On". This was a show that was way ahead of its time. And some TV network/station bigshots tended to be very conservative with their programming decisions back in 1969. I can see why WEWS Channel 5 in Cleveland pulled the plug after the second commercial break, and other stations followed. One of the drawings did involve nudity. Some of the subject matter on the show did result in a lot of angry phone calls to ABC and their affiliates.
I was looking for B roll footage for a video I was making on Turn On and came across this video. I used the late night show clip that you showed, and gave you credit that I managed to get it from your video.
After seeing this video clip, it's now settled. The Monkees were not in episode #3. It was believed now they were in unseen episode #5. Still, if George Schlatter has the episode in his vault somewhere, I'll be willing to see it. The unseen third episode had Sebastian Cabot as guest host and unseen episode #4 supposedly had Joey Heatherton as guest host. If you have them somewhere, George, I'll watch them. This is a great experiment that never took off.
I spoke with Schlatter last month (story drops next week) and Davy Jones was slated for #5 -- he didn't seem to recall the Monkees, specifically. I'll have to check my notes, but he also didn't seem to recall if any episodes were actually produced beyond #3... but they definitely had 8 episodes written (as seen in his new vid)
@@KBTime Thank you for your info. By 1969, Davy Jones was beginning to do solo appearances in TV variety shows without Micky and Mike. Peter had already left the band by January 1969. I heard that Davy made solo guest appearances on a Tennessee Ernie Ford special and an appearance alone on "This Is Tom Jones" by mid-1969.
Yesterday I found both intact shows. What a freakin' treat! The only way to see either of them prior to this was by going to the Museum of Broadcasting in either NYC or LA.
The humour and ideas were very relevent and probably controversial for 1969, by the mid 70's it was mainstream. The fast cuts seem like a lot of shows I've watched, some were for kids, some adults...a lot like Flying Circus. I don't think the format was all that revolutionary, it does seem awkward, but only in the sense that the fast cuts needed a bit of tweaking to flow a little better, and not too much tweaking either.
I can see why some of the humor was controversial, especially since the MAJORITY of American opinion was very conservative at the time and you had to toe the line or not be obvious about certain things on TV. It's a shame it didn't last but I get why
@@fixxxer3456 Yes indeed, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were the guys in the White House by February 1969. If a controversial TV show were shown today with political content, the recent administration would blame Donald Trump. What goes around comes around.
The local ABC affiliate had a manager's show that got complaints several months after it was cancelled.NBC & CBS both turned down Turn On,An executive at the latter said"there wasn't a single joke in it.
I read that George Schlatter showed a milder version to ABC, got that approved, and then did the show the way he always wanted to anyway. Apparently the presidents of both ABC and Bristol-Meyers were shocked and offended by the show, and wanted it off *NOW.* Then CBS announced "We had the good sense to turn down 'Turn-On'."
The episodes didn't "escape". George Schlatter released them. 55 years have passed. ABC has changed owners twice in that time. Pretty sure the network wouldn't care at this point.
@@Dan_KM8DAD this video was made before Schlatter officially released them. And if you don’t think decades old contracts can be used to make trouble, look up what happened when Ron Howard tried to use some footage from the Beatles’ She Stadium concert… 61 years later.
From what we have seen, the "soundtrack" or background effects was jarring and grating on the ears, and the jokes were not that funny, even accounting for 1969. Not surprised it failed.
_Au contraire_, _Turn-On_ was quite good, and the Heller Corporation’s musical accompaniment was state of the art and still interesting today. It’s a shame that the two episodes enjoyed only brief exposure on UA-cam.
Naw, the whole avangarde concept and the unfunny jokes made it so hilarious. It was proto adult swim humor, or basically a 1 hour version of the find the fish sketch from monty python
Apart from a few funny-ish bits with the Eddie E Edwards character, I thought, much like Laugh-In, it was pretty bad. But then most American comedy like Laugh-In and Carol Burnett is like a foreign language to me, I just sit there stone faced, yet if you put on on the British stuff from the same time, Morecambe & Wise, Benny Hill, The Goodies etc... I'm away laughing.
I learned about the lost episode after making the video, and even Schlatter wasn't sure about it when I interviewed him! www.ideastream.org/reporters-notebook/2023-08-31/when-cleveland-turned-off-turn-on
Having just watched some of the second episode - it definitely wasn't excessively fast-paced, it just wasn't funny. It did have a different look and sound from any other TV program at the time, but unlike "Laugh-In", which was also different for its time period, nothing in "Turn-On" was funny. I remember the publicity when it failed immediately, and if it had been possible to watch it, I would have. At the age of 15 I would've quickly rejected it.
Same, all these years I'd hear small details about this show and thought, "It can't be that bad, can it? Surely it's just that people of the time weren't expecting it?" But now that I've seen it, it's not offensive or outrageous, it's just...awkward and annoying. I got a little smirk now and then, but it wasn't worth listening to the other unfunny material, and that constant jarring soundtrack.
@@jonleibow3604 That Eddie E Edwards character was trying to say…something?? What was he? Old showbiz? Old Hollywood? And it’s jarring to see Tim Conway talk about sex.
@@GilbertNeal I often wondered whatever happened to Bob Staat after this show failed. His sleazeball character of Eddie E. Edwards was the only character on the show to have an identity and a name. I also wonder if this is where cartoonist and animator Danny Antoucinni got the name for his hit show "Ed, Edd, And Eddy." Probably not, since Danny is from Canada, and I don't think Canada aired "Turn On." They did show "Laugh In", though on the CTV Television Network.
They were trying to see how short the attention span was of Americans. If Americans liked it they knew their system was working. Now with TikToks and UA-cam shorts their system is working perfectly. People have the attention span of a goldfish and are easily controlled.
@@joejones9520 because they want it out of control so they can come with their solution. They let criminals off easy so they are back on the streets to commit more crimes. The people are getting scared and sick of the circumstances. So it's the good old Problem, Reaction, Solution they always use. They create the problem and then offer the solution. The solution will probably be more surveillance and rights taking away under the guise of keeping us safe.
they sold it to a sponsor first not sure where you got that it was pitched to cbs or nbc there was nothing dirty in the show the skits were more thought provoking than laugh out loud stuff and lets face it....whoever was in charge of programming at abc must have been smoking something from here come the brides to turn on to spartacus? the show should have been on saturday night at 10 and turn-on refers to drugs....not sex and im not surprised that harlan dug it....this would be the kind of show that am from "i have no mouth and i must scream" would have created for his captives
The full first episode currently can be found on the Wikipedia page for the show. It is...okay. Lots of sex jokes, but all were very, very mild by 2023 standards. It looks like each episode might have had a theme of sorts; IE, episode one was sex, and from the clips here, I'm guessing episode two's theme was race. Should have started with a different episode to start and aired the sex joke episode later. Note that even in the first episode, lots of the skits had nothing to do with the theme of sex, like the South Vietnam sketch. Edit: Found episode 2 on UA-cam, and I was right; definitely had a racial theme. If they aired that one first I'll bet the reaction would have been different. Wonder what the themes for the other episodes were.
The sight of the Klansmen must have spooked a number of ABC executives to have reason to prevent from showing "Turn On." Of course, when Norman Lear made fun of Klansmen in shows like "All In The Family" and "The Jeffersons", he got away with it.
Turn-on! = "the only show that got cancelled during a commercial" -- Johnny Carson
It is an absolute shame that ABC cancelled this show. I could definitely see this show on a different channel if it didn't come out in the 1960s. like Adult Swim, (early 2000s MTV ) or Comedy Central. Hopefully this show makes a comeback one day.
7/10 Great show.
They sandwiched it between two movies that people probably wanted to watch especially Spartacus. It seems like they really wanted people to watch this turn-on show. Probably to test how short their attention spans were getting.
Here Come The Brides was actually a television show. This was actually a pretty intense show. It was too fast paced for me when I watched.
@@JhomasE Many teenaged girls watched that show because of the popularity of Bobby Sherman, who was very popular from 1969-1972.
Great wrap up of Turn-On here.
That Excedrin commercial was funnier than both episodes of Turn-On.
The fatigue I felt while watching Turn On #1 and 2 last night couldn't be fixed by Excedrin. I actually wanted to do my homework from 1969 for the first time -- just anything to get away from the show.
not sure it was meant to be laugh out loud funny....was clearly very thought provoking and dealt with issues in both the industry and the nation that few spoke about
@@thewkovacs316 the humor is based on the type of societal absurdities that people notice on pot or acid.
The actor George Furth (the husband) was always funny. He probably should've been on the show itself.
The Excedrin commercial was on the never-aired 2nd episode. The first episode had a commercial for Bufferin. Guessing that you might need to take a couple of Bufferin or Excedrin after watching a few minutes of "Turn-On". This was a show that was way ahead of its time. And some TV network/station bigshots tended to be very conservative with their programming decisions back in 1969. I can see why WEWS Channel 5 in Cleveland pulled the plug after the second commercial break, and other stations followed. One of the drawings did involve nudity. Some of the subject matter on the show did result in a lot of angry phone calls to ABC and their affiliates.
I can't imagine the audience from "Here Come the Brides" staying around for "Turn On."
They would have turned it off when they learned that Bobby Sherman wasn't guest hosting the program.
I was looking for B roll footage for a video I was making on Turn On and came across this video. I used the late night show clip that you showed, and gave you credit that I managed to get it from your video.
I like it. Too bad they canceled it. Its ahead of its time.
It was on too early. 8:30 was not a good idea...10:30 would have been better.
TV memes. Way ahead of their time.
you know some of the music used in Turn-On sound like a video game.
After seeing this video clip, it's now settled. The Monkees were not in episode #3. It was believed now they were in unseen episode #5. Still, if George Schlatter has the episode in his vault somewhere, I'll be willing to see it. The unseen third episode had Sebastian Cabot as guest host and unseen episode #4 supposedly had Joey Heatherton as guest host. If you have them somewhere, George, I'll watch them. This is a great experiment that never took off.
I spoke with Schlatter last month (story drops next week) and Davy Jones was slated for #5 -- he didn't seem to recall the Monkees, specifically. I'll have to check my notes, but he also didn't seem to recall if any episodes were actually produced beyond #3... but they definitely had 8 episodes written (as seen in his new vid)
@@KBTime Thank you for your info. By 1969, Davy Jones was beginning to do solo appearances in TV variety shows without Micky and Mike. Peter had already left the band by January 1969. I heard that Davy made solo guest appearances on a Tennessee Ernie Ford special and an appearance alone on "This Is Tom Jones" by mid-1969.
The third episode is on YT now.
Also, Tim Conway talking about sex is a little disquieting after being introduced to him via Carol Burnett. He seems like a good sport.
Tim had a lot of fun talking about the canceling of "Turn On". He kept mentioning about it on talk shows until the year that he died.
All of ep 2 is on youtube now
Yesterday I found both intact shows. What a freakin' treat! The only way to see either of them prior to this was by going to the Museum of Broadcasting in either NYC or LA.
@@Pimp-Master LA doesn't exist anymore. I went to NYC and one thing I wanted to do is go to Paley to see both of these episodes, and I did.
Finally, some more video! Thank you! 🙏
Some? We got it all. ua-cam.com/video/yxs5ki5e8nE/v-deo.html
The humour and ideas were very relevent and probably controversial for 1969, by the mid 70's it was mainstream. The fast cuts seem like a lot of shows I've watched, some were for kids, some adults...a lot like Flying Circus. I don't think the format was all that revolutionary, it does seem awkward, but only in the sense that the fast cuts needed a bit of tweaking to flow a little better, and not too much tweaking either.
I can see why some of the humor was controversial, especially since the MAJORITY of American opinion was very conservative at the time and you had to toe the line or not be obvious about certain things on TV. It's a shame it didn't last but I get why
@@fixxxer3456 Yes indeed, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were the guys in the White House by February 1969. If a controversial TV show were shown today with political content, the recent administration would blame Donald Trump. What goes around comes around.
The local ABC affiliate had a manager's show that got complaints several months after it was cancelled.NBC & CBS both turned down Turn On,An executive at the latter said"there wasn't a single joke in it.
Finally saw the episode that aired... Diet Coke version of Tim and Eric.
OMG... that got on air??
I read that George Schlatter showed a milder version to ABC, got that approved, and then did the show the way he always wanted to anyway. Apparently the presidents of both ABC and Bristol-Meyers were shocked and offended by the show, and wanted it off *NOW.* Then CBS announced "We had the good sense to turn down 'Turn-On'."
The episodes didn't "escape". George Schlatter released them. 55 years have passed. ABC has changed owners twice in that time. Pretty sure the network wouldn't care at this point.
@@Dan_KM8DAD this video was made before Schlatter officially released them. And if you don’t think decades old contracts can be used to make trouble, look up what happened when Ron Howard tried to use some footage from the Beatles’ She Stadium concert… 61 years later.
Johnny Carson trying to be hip with a scarf around his neck
From what we have seen, the "soundtrack" or background effects was jarring and grating on the ears, and the jokes were not that funny, even accounting for 1969. Not surprised it failed.
No wonder you would need to take the sponsor's pain relief products after watching these. "Turn-On" = Excedrin Headache Number 27.
_Au contraire_, _Turn-On_ was quite good, and the Heller Corporation’s musical accompaniment was state of the art and still interesting today. It’s a shame that the two episodes enjoyed only brief exposure on UA-cam.
Naw, the whole avangarde concept and the unfunny jokes made it so hilarious. It was proto adult swim humor, or basically a 1 hour version of the find the fish sketch from monty python
@@nerdius8204 But that is just the point. A 1 hour version of "find the fish" would get tedious.
Apart from a few funny-ish bits with the Eddie E Edwards character, I thought, much like Laugh-In, it was pretty bad. But then most American comedy like Laugh-In and Carol Burnett is like a foreign language to me, I just sit there stone faced, yet if you put on on the British stuff from the same time, Morecambe & Wise, Benny Hill, The Goodies etc... I'm away laughing.
"perhaps the third episode doesn't exist"
....yyyyeah, about that...
I learned about the lost episode after making the video, and even Schlatter wasn't sure about it when I interviewed him! www.ideastream.org/reporters-notebook/2023-08-31/when-cleveland-turned-off-turn-on
This is the same thing as my algorithm
*I saw it in 1969 on broadcast TV. It was ok.*
Teresa graves was on this show
Couldn't ABC have made their affiliates air Turn On?
My ABC station wfaa was have a Sunday night curfew after been elected airs at 10:30 following the news.
The early Moog score was goofily terrific, all wheezy, out of tune and unquantized. Thanks, discrete analog components!
Sporticus break
Having just watched some of the second episode - it definitely wasn't excessively fast-paced, it just wasn't funny. It did have a different look and sound from any other TV program at the time, but unlike "Laugh-In", which was also different for its time period, nothing in "Turn-On" was funny. I remember the publicity when it failed immediately, and if it had been possible to watch it, I would have. At the age of 15 I would've quickly rejected it.
This series would have exploded in popularity. This reminds me of the Kentucky Fried Movie.
I have been waiting to see this show since "Book of Lists" came out. But it wasn't really that funny.
Same, all these years I'd hear small details about this show and thought, "It can't be that bad, can it? Surely it's just that people of the time weren't expecting it?"
But now that I've seen it, it's not offensive or outrageous, it's just...awkward and annoying. I got a little smirk now and then, but it wasn't worth listening to the other unfunny material, and that constant jarring soundtrack.
@@jonleibow3604 That Eddie E Edwards character was trying to say…something?? What was he? Old showbiz? Old Hollywood? And it’s jarring to see Tim Conway talk about sex.
@@GilbertNeal I often wondered whatever happened to Bob Staat after this show failed. His sleazeball character of Eddie E. Edwards was the only character on the show to have an identity and a name. I also wonder if this is where cartoonist and animator Danny Antoucinni got the name for his hit show "Ed, Edd, And Eddy." Probably not, since Danny is from Canada, and I don't think Canada aired "Turn On." They did show "Laugh In", though on the CTV Television Network.
They were trying to see how short the attention span was of Americans. If Americans liked it they knew their system was working. Now with TikToks and UA-cam shorts their system is working perfectly. People have the attention span of a goldfish and are easily controlled.
then why is crime out of control?
@@joejones9520 because they want it out of control so they can come with their solution. They let criminals off easy so they are back on the streets to commit more crimes. The people are getting scared and sick of the circumstances. So it's the good old Problem, Reaction, Solution they always use. They create the problem and then offer the solution. The solution will probably be more surveillance and rights taking away under the guise of keeping us safe.
they sold it to a sponsor first
not sure where you got that it was pitched to cbs or nbc
there was nothing dirty in the show
the skits were more thought provoking than laugh out loud stuff
and lets face it....whoever was in charge of programming at abc must have been smoking something
from here come the brides to turn on to spartacus?
the show should have been on saturday night at 10
and turn-on refers to drugs....not sex
and im not surprised that harlan dug it....this would be the kind of show that am from "i have no mouth and i must scream" would have created for his captives
The full first episode currently can be found on the Wikipedia page for the show. It is...okay. Lots of sex jokes, but all were very, very mild by 2023 standards. It looks like each episode might have had a theme of sorts; IE, episode one was sex, and from the clips here, I'm guessing episode two's theme was race. Should have started with a different episode to start and aired the sex joke episode later. Note that even in the first episode, lots of the skits had nothing to do with the theme of sex, like the South Vietnam sketch.
Edit: Found episode 2 on UA-cam, and I was right; definitely had a racial theme. If they aired that one first I'll bet the reaction would have been different. Wonder what the themes for the other episodes were.
The sight of the Klansmen must have spooked a number of ABC executives to have reason to prevent from showing "Turn On." Of course, when Norman Lear made fun of Klansmen in shows like "All In The Family" and "The Jeffersons", he got away with it.