No doubt. I re-watched on and it was terrible. But Laugh-In was innovative because it moved at a pace far faster than anything else on TV. Now everything does, so it doesn’t seem particularly original. Sure, most of the jokes were bad, but there were so many of them.
You bet your sweet bippy!
Forced myself to watch it again (I saw it when it premiered). God, it was awful. The jokes weren’t funny. At All.
The electronic music was obtrusive and did not help at all. The lack of a laugh track meant the attempted jokes fell like rocks (even a bad sitcom can get a few laughs from the track). No one showed any personality. The repeated joke of Tim Conway making his one phone call was obvious and unfunny the first time, and repeating it only made it die on the screen.
The only funny thing was that some stations cancelled it halfway, when the worst sexual innuendo came after that point.
There were some good people in the cast (Chuck McCann and Hamilton Camp), but they were given nothing to do.
Really awful.
The 1970s sitcoms, Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, MASH etc weren’t around in the late 1960s. Smothers Brothers was, but here are the top rated comedy/variety shows of 1968-69:
1 - Laugh-In
2 - Gomer Pyle
4 - Mayberry RFD
5 - Family Affair
7 - Julia
8 - Dean Martin
9 - Here’s Lucy
10 - Beverly Hillbillies
11 - Red Skelton
11 - Bewitched
14 - My Three Sons
15 - Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
19 - Green Acres
23 - Ed Sullivan
24 - Carol Burnett
24 - Jackie Gleason
26 - I Dream Of Jeannie
27 - Smothers Brothers
28 - Lawrence Welk
30 - Doris Day Show
Are there other shows on this list that you would be busting a gut over, saying wow, how fresh, how original, how hip?
Without the lubrication of nostalgia, I don’t think many would still be laughing at those shows. For people my age (61) those shows are associated with the best time of the day as children (between the end of school and dinner). Turn On does not have that advantage.
The guy with the plastic hair was a scuzzy pitchman who was supposed to show up every episode to promote some dubious and ethically questionable good or service. Basically, he was a proto-Irwin Mainway/E. Buzz Miller. That’s my guess since they only aired one episode.
The sign carriers were Turn-On’s version of the animated airplane banners from Laugh-In.
I was only four years old when this show aired so I obviously didn’t see it because it was past my bedtime. My guess is the sex jokes probably sank it. Today the jokes are ridiculously mild but it was probably too much for America to handle on primetime television in 1969. Another thing I noticed is how tired the material was. Of course, that would be obvious from a 2024 perspective but I wouldn’t be surprised if the original viewers who were not shocked by the sex jokes thought the same thing.
Turn On sucked…
but your commetn isn’t really fair to a lot of the shows in the lost. Some of them are true sit coms: I never busted a gut at Family Affair, but it was a good show. Same with My Three Sons.
And love it or hate it, but Green Acres was most definitely original. Knowing you’re a character
in a TV show was pretty cutting edge back then.
Lawrence Welk was not a comedy show.
I’m 60, and for me, that was “Gilligan’s Island.”
A friend of mine who had apparently seen the show once described it to me as “potty humor.”
Maybe I set my sights too high, but I didn’t think it was all that smutty. Dumb and pointless and amateurish, yes. But only mildly risqué, if that.