What Might've Been: Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories (1985)

 While CBS was preparing a remake of The Twilight Zone, Steven Spielberg & Amblin Entertainment decided to do their own version.

Amazing Stories ran for 2 seasons total, airing on Sundays, coupled with another reboot, this one of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Spielberg actually obtained a license for the title, since it's also a long running magazine that launched 100 years ago.

Like Twilight, Amazing Stories had a mix of thrillers and lighter fare, the latter of which is represented in an excerpt from season 1. In "Remote Control Man", a henpecked husband (Sidney Lassick, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest") acquires a new TV with a bizarre remote control that brings anything on the screen into the "real world". With guest appearances by Barbara Billingsley (Muppet Babies, ex-Leave it To Beaver), Dirk Benedict (The A-Team), Lou Ferrigno (using archived Incredible Hulk footage), Lyle Alzado, Jim Lange, Professor Toru Tanaka, Richard Simmons, LaWanda Page (ex-Sanford & Son), Sid Haig, and Ed McMahon (Star Search, The Tonight Show):

That Tanaka is given dialogue is rare, but it also sounds like they had Keye Luke dub over the dialogue.

Silly. NBC gave it up too soon.

Rating: B.

Videos of Summer: Suddenly Last Summer (1983)

 "Suddenly Last Summer" was the first single from the Motels' 1983 album, "Little Robbers". Singer Martha Davis, falling asleep after reading a Harlequin romance novel, imagines herself on the beach, and....

YouTube Theatre: Tammy & The Millionaire (1965-7)

 It was a common practice in the 60's & 70's for studios to repackage episodes of series that were either hits or flops into feature films to gain some extra mileage.

Universal did just that with "Tammy & The Millionaire", a compilation of 3 episodes of the 1965 series, Tammy, hoping to save face after the series had ended. Debbie Watson (Tammy) had transitioned into taking over the role of Marilyn Munster in "Munster Go Home", which came out around the same time, within a few months.

On The Air: 60 Minutes (1968)

 When 60 Minutes bowed in 1968, it was at the back end of CBS' Tuesday lineup, before moving into its current spot at the front of the network's Sunday block. Today, it is on the verge of being repackaged into tabloid television if CBS' current owners so desired, the better to placate a frequent guest who has self esteem issues. If you don't know what I mean, you haven't been paying attention.

60 Minutes represented investigative journalism, getting to the heart of stories not getting enough time on the evening news. Revealing to America the names behind the headlines. Mike Wallace (ex-Biography) was lead anchor at the beginning, with a rotating cast of co-anchors & reporters including Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl, Diane Sawyer, Ed Bradley, Harry Reasoner, and pundit Andy Rooney, an Albany native. When it came to major headlines like Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis in the 70's & 80's, 60 Minutes was must-see TV, long before NBC coined the term.

From 1974, a profile on Watergate figure Donald Segretti.

I shan't be surprised if, within a year, the series is reduced to being a network cousin to, say, Inside Edition, dragged down into the dirt because of a thin-skinned loose screw in Washington.

Rating: A.

Yo, Alabama! Do you really want a carpetbagging ex-football coach as your next governor?

 Before becoming Senator, Tommy Tuberville was known in Alabama as the head football coach at Auburn. He eventually ended his coaching career in Cincinnati, at the university there, before turning to politics.

Instead of running for re-election for his Senate seat, Tommy Tubes decided to go for higher stakes, and run for governor of Alabama. Ah, but therein lies the rub. Emphasis on lies, folks.

Remember when former Georgia football icon Herschel Walker decided to return to the Peach State to run for Senate, at the request of Donald Trump? You know how that worked out, right? Walker was sacked, losing the election to Rev. Raphael Warnock. Walker had been living in Texas at the time, ignorant of the rules regarding residency to run for office in either state. Trump subsequently made Walker an ambassador to the Bahamas last year.

Tommy Tubes is making Walker out to look like a deer-in-the-headlights rube, as Farron Cousins explains.

George "Pinocchio" Santos, the 2nd most prolific liar in the GOP, after, of course, Trump, didn't finish his lone term in Congress. Madison "Foghorn" Cawthorn, was defeated in a primary, serving just 1 term, and at last check, left North Carolina for parts unknown. Tommy Tubes is facing an uphill battle, and his own tax returns may have cost him his career.

No wonder Trump is so reluctant to let his returns be made public. He's got more skeletons in his closet, don't ya think?

At CBS, it's not about real news anymore. It's about placating a hypersensitive man-baby

 60 Minutes has been on the air nearly 60 years. Right now, the anchor of CBS' Sunday lineup is looking like it may be headed for the endangered species list.

Reporter Scott Pelley, a former CBS Evening News anchor, was fired earlier this week for standing up to the network's right-wing-aligned head of the news department, Bari Weiss, and her new head man at 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton. Weiss, then, lied about the firing in a statement released to the press.

With CBS' corporate parent, Paramount-Skydance, still looking to close a deal on a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, the network has gutted its news department in an effort to placate president Donald Trump, the most thin-skinned, hypersensitive man in modern history. Even with Trump-friendly management, President Pampers is still rage-watching, looking for excuses to whine & complain about the longest running primetime news program the network has ever had. Former anchor Dan Rather has railed against his former bosses. Founding co-anchors Mike Wallace & Morley Safer are turning over in their graves.

The merger would give Skydance owners Larry & David Ellison control of CNN, as well, another outlet that fuels Trump's rage. Trump doesn't understand that not all criticism is negative. He watches TV so he can have something to complain about and rile up his base of marks.

If the merger isn't finalized by, say, November, and the midterm elections go in favor of the Democrats, as has been forecast for months, it probably won't be final at all.

For Scott Pelley, I'd not be surprised if someone suggests the prospect of a wrongful termination suit. That would have more merit behind it than any frivolous attempt at litigation from Trump and his crew.

When Icons Meet: Betty White visits The Price is Right (1988)

 I just couldn't pass this up.

Betty White (The Golden Girls) paid a visit to good friend Bob Barker's The Price is Right in the fall of 1988 to help a contestant play the Hole in One golf game......

Betty would make two more appearances on Price, including, I think, one during the current Drew Carey era.