I’ve been watching the TVland New Year’s marathons - yes, I watch too much tv, I admit that up front (LOL). New Year’s Eve was “last shows” and New Year’s Day is “first shows.”
Now, according to the schedule up on tvland.com, at 12 noon today (NY day), the very first episode of “Gunsmoke” was supposed to air. I was quite excited to see this; TVland’s “Gunsmoke” episodes seem to consist only of the ones from @1968-1975, most of which I’ve seen several times. Instead, though, they aired the first “Hazel” and the first “Leave it to Beaver,” both of which had already aired earlier in the morning! ARGH, no Chester (the first deputy) for me today, I suppose.
This isn’t the first time that TVland has switched their schedule like that nor will it likely be the last. Does anyone else have a fondness for this sometimes irksome network? I especially enjoy seeing the older westerns, and in fact have been looking for them to show one of my very favorite shows when I was a kid, “Rin Tin Tin,” but I’ve never seen it on there yet, unfortunately. Does anyone know what the story is on the “Gunsmoke” episodes, why TVland never shows the earlier episodes? Does someone else perhaps own the rights to the earlier shows, not TVland?
I am still enjoying the New Years Day “first episodes” marathon, though.
I don’t have an an answer but I have to say I miss the early half hour Gunsmokes with “Chester”. (Dennis Weaver)
Except for the Festus character in the later years, the hour long show is laughably BAD.
James Arness is not a bad actor. He is a NON actor. He doesn’t even try to act. He is the same whether he is happy, mad, getting shot at, killing someone, or talking to Miss Kitty. He is EXACTLY the same in every scene. And I remember him in some science fiction movie where he is still EXACTLY the same.
Is this guy still alive? I know his brother is Peter Graves, and I imagine he got into “acting” because he is good looking and some producer spotted him in hollywood somewhere. But I swear this guy just showed up , said his lines once and went home.
Chester and Festus on the other hand were interesting.
His first movie role,IIRC,was as the title character in the Thing.Peter Graves got more work than his brother in the 50s scifiers.Guess you can thank Gunsmoke for that.
Either PG,or Arthur Franz, seemed to be in every one until about '56.
On the Nick front,at least they’re showing Supie’s first episode at 12.30 AM pst.Hardly remember how they handled it back then,but IIRC,landing thru getting a job at the Planet,only took up abt.10 mins.of the episode
From what I’ve read about television sydication packages, older, long-running series aren’t usually sold as an entire package. That is, TV station have the option of buying say–five years worth of episodes at a time (this usually works out to 100 episodes). They feel that’s enough episodes to give viewer a decent variety, without having to shell out too much money. And they are also under the (mistaken, IMO) impression that viewers prefer “newer” episodes to the “older” ones–especially when it comes to black-and-white VS color. So, that’s probably why TVLand doesn’t show the first several seasons of Gunsmoke. This is also why many stations don’t pick up the first few seasons of The Simpsons–they think viewer only want to see the more recent reruns of the show…and ratings support their theory!
I don’t know why TVLand is so sloppy with their scheduling information–things like that drive me crazy too! Maybe they changed their schedule after TV Guide went to press. Did you see if their website reflected the change?
The only part of the TVLand schedule that shows up in TV Guide is the evening, from like 6 PM to midnight, unfortunately. That was from the TVLand website, which is what really irked me! Although when I logged on at 12:30 pm, down in the lower left corner they have a “What’s airing right now” that showed “Hazel” instead of “Gunsmoke” - but no explanation for why “Gunsmoke” was on their New Year’s Day schedule.
I hadn’t logged onto the TVLand website in a while, mostly because it used to be such a mess–it’s not so messy any longer, and now they have message boards, but even their “ask the expert” guy didn’t seem to have many answers to posters questions. I’m considering posting there about the Gunsmoke first episode, but am dubious about any answer I might receive.
Thanks for the replies, folks. Yes, it’s mostly the supporting cast that I enjoy about the show, and I especially like the Chester character on the older shows. In a slight hijack, Dennis Weaver is also still alive (79, I think), and is very much an environmentalist–in fact, IMDB says that his house near Santa Fe, NM is totally made of recycled materials.
