THE GREAT NIELSON AIRWAVE WAR
Cracked #138, December 1976
a: McTurk (John Severin)
They spelled Nielsen wrong. Maybe that was on purpose though. That was how they measured ratings when there were only three networks. Maybe they still do.
This was around the time
Cracked started to do combinations of TV shows and movies so they could keep doing as many as they could over and over again and use celebrities to sell copies. First here is Peter Falk as
Columbo.
The first casualty is Redd Foxx of
Sanford and Son. The other detectives are Dennis Weaver as McCloud and Angie Dickinson in
Police Woman.
The ABC bunker has Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams of
Laverne and Shirley, Lindsay Wagner as
The Bionic Woman, Henry Winkler as
Happy Days' Fonz, and Starsky (David Soul) & Hutch (Paul Michael Glaser).
John Travolta from
Welcome Back, Kotter, Steve Austin of
The Six Million Dollar Man, Edith (Jean Stapleton) and Archie (Carroll O'Connor) from
All in the Family, Jimmie Walker as J. J. from
Good Times, Cher, and McGarrett (Jack Lord) and Danny (James MacArthur) from
Hawaii Five-O.
UPDATE:
I discoveredm there was a cover to this which I just added and put at the top.
On page 2, panel 3, that looks like Lloyd Bridges. Apparently he starred in a cop show that year called Joe Forrester; it only lasted one season.
ReplyDeleteOn page 5, the competing variety show hosts are Carol Burnett and (I think) Flip Wilson.
One more reference. On the last page, the guys who are cancelled are Andy Griffith and Nick Nolte. They were in a show called Adams of Eagle Lake, which only lasted two episodes. It wasn't due to ratings, though; Griffith had creative differences with the network early on, so the show was cancelled before it ever aired.
DeleteI got that last one wrong. That's not Andy Griffith and Nick Nolte; it's Claude Akins and Frank Converse, from a show called Movin' On, about truckers.
Delete