Since any audience is larger than the zero audience IDoJ had here, yes. I mean, Dallas was huge here when I was a kid, but also, never seen the other thing.
I was a kid in the '70s, and watched him in reruns of I Dream of Jeannie for years. I answered the poll, not from my own personal POV (which would, indeed, be Tony Nelson), but which role, I suspect, he was best-known for among the general public – and I am pretty sure that that would be J.R. Ewing.
I recall watching I Dream of Jeannie not too long ago on MeTV: one of several syndicated over-the-air networks, similar to Antenna TV, Cozi, etc., which local TV stations now run on their “secondary” digital channels. Those channels all feature old reruns – primarily network sitcoms and dramas from the 1960s through 1980s – but seem to rotate various series in and out, and it doesn’t look like they have that series right now.
Young people don’t watch those old shows on MeTV or TVLand, even if IDoJ were on those. That’s for old fogeys like us. First of all, there are commercials, which young people never see anymore. Second, look at the ads – they’re all for diabetes meds and Medicare Advantage. Third, they aren’t forced to watch old crappy sitcoms, since there’s an infinite number of streaming options now. I never would have watched Giligan’s Island if it weren’t the only option.
I think they go back to Friends or How I Met Your Mother. My kids (who are all grown) don’t watch any 70s or 80s shows and none of their friends talk about them. One of my kids loves the Dick van Dyke show, but she’s an anomaly.
This is something that irritates me, how some shows are considered special or had amazing ratings or the cast are held up as legends, when in reality they were watched repeatedly because that’s how they were broadcast. Quality was irrelevant, it was frequency of repeats and a narrow field of options. Nobody on The Brady Bunch or The Munsters are putting in world class performances of award winning scripts, they were just what was on.
That’s why these end up being repeated year after year for the youngest and oldest audiences. I do think that could end soon with so much more content available.
Did Dallas ever enter syndication or any other distribution channel for modern audiences to watch it?
It may have been syndicated, but it really wasn’t the type of show that does well in traditional syndication , where the show was sold to different stations in different markets - hour-long dramas don’t tend to do well , and those with a continuing storyline less so. It was probably shown on a cable station like the Soap Opera Network or TNT and I know it’s definitely streaming now (I saw it listed on one service or another)
I was able to find I Dream of Jeannie on the schedule for Antenna TV, after first checking on MeTV and Cozi TV. You have to really want to watch it to go to the trouble of tracking it down. It’s not something that kids today are going to just come across and decide to watch for awhile. I don’t think young people watch TV in that way anymore.
A few of the Live Streamers are showing I Dream of Jeannie. Tubi is one.
Every day in the prime after-school spot. I must have seen every episode 5 times.
I liked it. Hey, Iw as a kid.
Then they replaced that slot with Star Trek, and a whole new world opened up. Now I can;t stand Gilligan’s Island, though some episodes still linger as fond memories (usually the fantasy/dream ones).
I was also born in 1967. I didn’t watch reruns of IDoJ, nor did I watch Dallas. But even though I didn’t watch it, I knew Hagman played J. R. Ewing on the latter, and I remember all the hoopla over “Who shot J.R.?”
Looking at a list of primetime TV shows during that era, I was watching The Dukes of Hazzard, Happy Days, and That’s Incredible!.
Nice! If it was either GI or One Life to Live or some talk show, I was definitely watching GI. For me, IDOJ>Get Smart>Bewitched>GI. Gosh, we had some terrible shows to choose from.
I thought Get Smart was a very good show.
The acting is pretty terrible. The writing was funny, though.
The acting in a lot of 60s shows was pretty terrible I guess. I didn’t notice it being any worse for Get Smart. Maybe Max himself, but the rest were average for the time. There were stand outs like The Dick Van Dyke show, but most of the sitcoms were actually insipid. The Dramas usually had leads on par with Shatner.
I think the Chief is also a terrible actor, like so bad it’s as if they didn’t use an actor. I will never say anything against Agent 99, of course.
Completely. And, there was so much less content that had to be made. It’s weird – they only had to fill 3 channels, and they filled it with so much crap. Now, there are 5 or 6 networks, plus HBO, Prime, Netflix, Apple, etc., and the quality of the writing and acting has gone way up.
Well, at least the ones that kids would actually sit down and watch after school in the 1970s. The “good” sitcoms from the 1960s would have bored us to death.
That’s part of the reason the quality has gone up - when there were three or six channels of crap, I had to watch one of those or do something else , which wasn’t always an option. I’m not going to the movies every night right before bed like I might have watched some old sitcom every night at 11. Now, if the broadcast channels all have crap and the cable channels all have crap, there are a zillion streaming services I can watch , with everything from movies to that series I always wanted to watch in the 80s but I worked Thursday nights so I never did and so on. The same channels can have the same crap - but now I have options.
But, in a sense, now there’s TOO MUCH television. How many streaming services are there? And how many shows? I guarantee that 90% of streaming is crap, but how can you tell which is which without watching it all?
And 70s. I’m sure a lot of the humor went right over my head in the “good” sitcoms. I could “get” Gilligan’s Island, but when I watched Mary Tyler Moore it was only OK. When I rewatched it as an adult I couldn’t believe how much innuendo there was. Mary!