Post by telegonus on Dec 23, 2018 19:28:57 GMT
I kind of like it. A holdover from radio? Dragnet used those intros; and it ended the same way, with the announcer winding up the story. The sitcoms used them as well. Later, on the Norman Lear shows, and others like them, they'd substitute a title song. Mary Tyler Moore had that, too, but not Bob Newhart. WKRP was another like that, though I hated the music they used. Later, they used easy to remember opening and closing music, as on Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere, which turned up on radio a lot.
In the much earlier shows the intros date them, but for me not in a bad way. Didn't Leave It To Beaver have an intro? The somewhat earlier The Honeymooners has a classic opening, with Gleason's music and the announcing of the star players. I don't consider those openings (and closings) an insult to the viewer's intelligence. My sense is that it was more like what the networks considered good manners, as they announced their entry into the viewer's living room. Also, television was a "family medium" back then, and all those elaborate openings, with the announcer's voice, whether joyous or somber, setting the tone.
The setting of a certain tone was essential to the workings, as it were, of a show like The Untouchables, with the hard-driving, melodramatic music, Walter Winchell's "sensational" introductions, as if what you were about to see was hot off the wires. I don't think the show would have worked nearly so well without those "framing devices". Around the same time, the Warners detective series used similar, very contemporary feeling openings, complete with finger snapping, for the Sunset Strip, the island drumbeats for Hawaiian Eye.
Also, while we now take television for granted, back in its early years there may well have been concerns, and legitimate ones for the time, that some viewers might not "get it". I mean, kids watching The Lone Ranger might think they were watching something that was actually happening, thus there was, even more than on old-time radio shows, a need for someone to tell the kids what was "up", thus "return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear" or whatever the announcer said, so that it was clear what kids were about to see was fantasy, not a news story! Then there were the mentally impaired, "slow" people; plus older folks who weren't sure what was up. There were still plenty of Americans who grew up in rural areas and in small towns, who remembered the horse and buggy days. I've known my share of people who grew up in the Old America of the early 20th century.
Back when television was a new medium I think a lot of people still didn't quite get what was happening with the newfangled "moving pictures in our house". The polite sounding announcers and narrators helped things along, for children and old folks alike. Just my take. To put all this on context, I mean. I don't think that the intelligence of the viewer, whether high or low, was a factor in any of this so far as the TV networks were concerned. They just wanted to make viewers feel at ease with the new medium, which for some, they were maybe concerned, might otherwise, unvarnished, and with no "explanation" might have felt like a "shock to the system".
In the much earlier shows the intros date them, but for me not in a bad way. Didn't Leave It To Beaver have an intro? The somewhat earlier The Honeymooners has a classic opening, with Gleason's music and the announcing of the star players. I don't consider those openings (and closings) an insult to the viewer's intelligence. My sense is that it was more like what the networks considered good manners, as they announced their entry into the viewer's living room. Also, television was a "family medium" back then, and all those elaborate openings, with the announcer's voice, whether joyous or somber, setting the tone.
The setting of a certain tone was essential to the workings, as it were, of a show like The Untouchables, with the hard-driving, melodramatic music, Walter Winchell's "sensational" introductions, as if what you were about to see was hot off the wires. I don't think the show would have worked nearly so well without those "framing devices". Around the same time, the Warners detective series used similar, very contemporary feeling openings, complete with finger snapping, for the Sunset Strip, the island drumbeats for Hawaiian Eye.
Also, while we now take television for granted, back in its early years there may well have been concerns, and legitimate ones for the time, that some viewers might not "get it". I mean, kids watching The Lone Ranger might think they were watching something that was actually happening, thus there was, even more than on old-time radio shows, a need for someone to tell the kids what was "up", thus "return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear" or whatever the announcer said, so that it was clear what kids were about to see was fantasy, not a news story! Then there were the mentally impaired, "slow" people; plus older folks who weren't sure what was up. There were still plenty of Americans who grew up in rural areas and in small towns, who remembered the horse and buggy days. I've known my share of people who grew up in the Old America of the early 20th century.
Back when television was a new medium I think a lot of people still didn't quite get what was happening with the newfangled "moving pictures in our house". The polite sounding announcers and narrators helped things along, for children and old folks alike. Just my take. To put all this on context, I mean. I don't think that the intelligence of the viewer, whether high or low, was a factor in any of this so far as the TV networks were concerned. They just wanted to make viewers feel at ease with the new medium, which for some, they were maybe concerned, might otherwise, unvarnished, and with no "explanation" might have felt like a "shock to the system".