Show Ternwood' returns to television (cable) by Phil Rosenthal Letterman's persona is not too far removed from Mull's dead-oportrayal of host Barth Gimble a n Los Angeles Daily News LOS ANGELES — A dozen years and seemingly a lifetime removed from it Alan Thicke still can re- member frantically dictating scripts into a tape recorder during his trip to the studio each pre-daw- n morning Such were the demands of trying to keep up with the pace of producing and writing the brilliant 1977-7- 8 talk-shoparand its ody "Fernwood later incarnation "America Night" "It may be the proudest accom2- plishment in my varied and checkered career" said Thicke who later became an actor and now is best known as Jason Seaver on "Growing Pains" which will begin its sixth season on ABC this fall "It was a very difficult show to do It threatened to kill us all had it gone on to a third year But it's one of which we were all quite proud" Thicke has not seen any of the 130 episodes since their original syndicated run and neither has the general public — until now Nickelodeon cable is reprising the landmark Norman Lear creation starring Martin Mull and Fred Willard nightly at 8:30 pm If you were a fan of "Fernwood — a spinoff of Lear's soap opera takeoff "Mary Hartman Mary Hartman" which also was set in tiny Fernwood Ohio — it is just as funny (and often as tasteless) as you remember If you missed it the first time around (the program wasn't shown in the country's more sensitive sectors) its dry incisive and insightful humor really is something that should not now be missed To watch it is to see the genesis of NBC's subsequent talk-shoput-o"Late Night With David Letterman" Both take the conventions of the television talk show and turn them upside down — or at least leave them slightly askew n man who elevated smugness to high art Letterman's sidekick Paul Shaffer often seems a cross between Willard's second banana Jerry Hubbard and band leader Happy Kyne who was played by Frank De Vol the musician responsible for such actual TV themes as "My Three Sons" and "The Brady out-of-- Bunch" "I'm a it big fan of show while his wife arranged book movie and merchandise deals There was even an essay contest for viewers ("I would like to throw the switch because ") "One of the keys was our commitment to staying with reality" Thicke said "If you couldn't believe it it couldn't be funny" klit''''''4 ' : Jew" And no one could possibly forget "Electrocution Night '78" in which a convict was to be executed on the '''' 1:':' 4-1- Williams and George Goebel in 1978 "Fernwood moved to the fictional UBS network ("where we put U before the BS") and relocated in Alta Coma Calif "the unfinished furniture capital of ' 1 - geN 4 Letterman" Thicke said "I don't think they consciously copied us It's more of a shared sensibility" Fictional experts were regular guests on "Fernwood They had results from tests of laboratory rats that proved leisure suits caused cancer evidence that homosexuality was caused by a virus (one symptom was supposedly limp wrists) and details of the new French birthing innovation the La Fromage method Other guests were just plain bizarre One guy played piano from an iron lung A Salvation Army choir sang "Da Doo Ron Ron" A young boy came on to talk about his phenomenally successful lemonade stand and subsequent tax dodge the Church of the Divine Lemonade On one show Gimble talked to a mother and father who complained a cult had programmed their son to dress in a black outfit and keep "falling on his knees and mumbling in a foreign tongue" The son it turned out was a Catholic priest When a poor schmoe named Morton Rose got a speeding ticket in Fernwood Barth invited him on the show because he figured most viewers had probably never seen a Jewish person This was followed by a phone-i- n segment called "Talk to a - guests such as Carol Burnett Robin tg:4:1 '' 44'4: y too44— tA44 ' To maintain that sense of reality and yet incorporate celebrity r talk-sho- - i'- 4c 17 1 ' - 647 t 04'i J'A"' ' ''' '''1'''' ::'''''' 1''': i 1 :4'::-:'- ''''''''t'-- :—44' '' ' '''''''' 't''' ' F ' ''' i ''' - - i t4t n d - - 3: t i' ' - " s'' ' - - I ' i1°''''' Alan Thicke former talk show host and now regular on "Growing Pains" series was producer and writer the wacky (but brilliant) 1977- of "Fernwood 78 talk show-parod- y TV rating system competition heats up John Lippman Los Angeles Times KC Nielsen Co which has come under fire from the networks for alleged discrepancies in its television ratings reports is about to have its position as the sole measurer of who watches TV challenged by the company that tried to start a competing ratings system three years ago AGB Television Research will announce perhaps as early as Monday that it is renewing a campaign to supplant Nielsen as the company that provides national television ratings to the networks and advertising community Nielsen has had a virtual lock on the national ratings business for more than 30 years Since early this year the networks have been engaged in an increasingly vocal and acrimonious battle with Nielsen and advertising agencies over a sudden and steep falloff in television viewing levels Although viewing levels have stabilized in recent months the networks maintain that erratic dips reported in the first quarter have cost them collectively between $150 million and $200 million in lost advertising revenues All three have said they are changing their ad rate policies for By 4T the fall season to protect themselves against future ratings drops Nielsen says it inspected its ratings system and found nothing wrong with it It will be London-baseAGB's second attempt to crack the US market with a new television ratings system AGB which measures TV viewing in the United Kingdom and Europe is the originator of the "peoplemeter" It brought the peoplemeter to the United States in 1987 but scrubbed it less than a year later after losing $67 million British media mogul Robert Maxwell bought AGB four months later Maxwell who bought publishing giant Macmillan Inc for $27 billion in 1988 has one of the largest media empires in the world Despite AGB's determination to try the US ratings market again a workable alternative to the Nielsen system which now uses its own version of the peoplemeter could be years away Network executives said building a ratings system from scratch would cost tens of millions of dollars and it probably would not be fully operational until the fall of 1992 Another potential competitor to Nielsen is Arbitron Ratings Co a subsidiary of Control Data Corp Arbitron competes with Nielsen in d The Salt Lake 'Tribune TV Matagne Sündiy June 24 1990 measuring local television and radio stations but does not provide national ratings For the past couple of years Arbitron has been operating another version of the peoplemeter system in Denver called Scan America Using sophisticated technology it is able to tie the watching of TV commercials to product purchases Network executives said the current controversy surrounding Nielsen may prompt Arbitron to advance its plans to roll out Scan America nationally "We're interested in a new and better system and the only way you are going to get that is through competition" said David Po Itrack vice president of research and marketing at CBS Po ltrack declined to say whether CBS had decided to back the AGB proposal but said the network is "willing to invest significantly in an alternative" CBS helped finance AGB's first attempt at introducing the peoplemeter Network sources said Maxwell visited CBS last week in New York to personally pitch the idea of relaunching AGB in the United States Each network pays about $5 million annually for Nielsen's national ratings service called Nielsen Television Index NTI collects ratings information from 4000 people-meter- s in homes around the coun- try Alan Wurtzel senior vice president at ABC said the "fundamental problem" with the Nielsen people-mete- r system is its use of "single-sourc- e households" to collect ratings information He and other network researchers want Nielsen d to install a measurement system Under that system one group of homes would record what channel is being watched and another group who is watching Wurtzel and other network executives contend that the Nielsen system under-report- s viewing levels because people forget to push the button on the remote control device that signals who is watching a program Until Nielsen introduced peoplemeters three years ago viewers recorded programs they were watching by making entries in diaries The diary method however favored regularly scheduled programs — as opposed to specials or e viewing — since people often recorded what they watched hours or even days afterward Viewers tended to remember only those programs they watched on a regular basis two-tiere- one-tim- the world" "The best celebrity guests were ones who played it fairly straight" Thicke said "We had Charlton Heston on and the big thing was that he was going to make some sexual revelation about his youth and every time he'd get started Jerry would say something like 'I know I know the same thing happened to me but go on with your story' (Heston) was there with this incredible look on his face It was great" Like Thicke's actual syndicated bust 1983's "Thicke of the Night" — which helped spark the careers of regulars Arsenio Hall Rick Ducommun Charles Fleischer Gilbert Gottfried and Richard Belzer — "Fernwood 2- Night" was saturated with talent in front of and behind the cameras Among the people who were either recurring guests or staffers were Jim "Hey Vern!" Varney Bill Kirchenbauer ("Just the Ten of Us") Harry Shearer ("This Is Spinal Tap") Julie Brown ("Just Say Julie") Corey Feldman ("The Lost Boys") Dabney Coleman ("Buffalo Bill") Gary Coleman ("Diff'rent Strokes") and Tim Reid ("Frank's Place") Many like Mull and Willard have never done better work But Thicke who considers "Fernwood his finest effort nearly did not make it "Norman Lear almost fired me in the first week" he recalled "He had envisioned this talk-shoparody as totally improvised He figured you could hire a character actor give him a person to play and have him ad lib "That notion scared the hell out of me You could go an awfully long time without it working So we wrote the first five shows and (Lear) was furious I knew I was done He was at the taping in the booth throwing things But the audience was laughing so he let us roll with it Each show was totally scripted after that" And the writing was truly inspired lunacy One typical show included: — A musical act featuring two brothers whose gimmick was that they pretended to be Siamese twins — A consumer reporter whose spiel about TV record offers ("Here's one called 'Buck Owens Favorites' Who is this Buck Owens anyway? Are these his favorites?") lapsed into a pitch for his own album of liturgical hymns and chants ("Fifty nostalgic nifties all sung in a dead language!") — House band Happy Kyne and the Mirthmakers — a quartet feadoturing a guitar and accordian ing a Holiday Inn version of Rick Dees' novelty hit "Disco Duck" — Ersatz US Congressman William Chambers unable to tell of some supposedly earthshaking discovery he had made about the Kennedy assassination because Hubbard kept interrupting for small talk about the congressman's family " Ternwood was a for- tuitous melding of the right people at the right time in the right place" Thicke said "The same sort of thing happened on 'Saturday Night Live' in the early days But it doesn't happen that often "I think we all realized it was something special Every now and then I'll run into (Lear) and he'll say something about how we should get back together maybe do a 20threunion show even though it's only been 12 years" That as Barth Gimble would say is almost interesting |