The 4th Season NBC Myth

General goings on in the 1966 Batman World

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AndyFish
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by AndyFish »

I've never put much weight in the NBC story, no matter how many times someone mentions it there is very little evidence and the lack of reruns is a clear indicator the show was dead.
The only thing that would indicate interest by NBC are the two specials they did in '79 but that was produced by Hanna Barbera and more a live action Superfriends than a resurrection of the '66 show.
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Dr. Shimel
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Dr. Shimel »

AndyFish wrote:I've never put much weight in the NBC story, no matter how many times someone mentions it there is very little evidence and the lack of reruns is a clear indicator the show was dead.
The only thing that would indicate interest by NBC are the two specials they did in '79 but that was produced by Hanna Barbera and more a live action Superfriends than a resurrection of the '66 show.
In '79, NBC's ratings were in the toilet, so they were likely looking to glom onto anything that even sniffed of decent ratings.
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Bob Furmanek
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Bob Furmanek »

I could be mistaken but I don't think a studio "bulldozes" a set. The amount of dirt and dust that would kick up would be ridiculous.

Aren't the sets basically dis-assembled just as they were built, in pieces?
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Progress Pigment
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Progress Pigment »

Yes. Going up against "The Waltons" and "Mork and Mindy" on Thursday night, and also considering the specials had laugh tracks and were bad beyond description, the ratings on "Legends of the Superheroes" were abysmal. but still, I believe the (completely unconnected) possible continuation on NBC in 1969 was a fact. Stranger things have happened. Bill Paley brought back "Hazel" from the dead for CBS. I barely remember the show, and that only in reruns, but I read Paley's biography recently. I wonder if ABC was part of Batman's downfall. It was considered a fledgling network at the time and Batman was the biggest hit they'd ever had. NBC or CBS might've giver the show a bigger budget, not pushed the producers to cut corners so much, forcing Dozier to use stale unexciting shooting techniques and hack writers in season 2.
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High C
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by High C »

Here's how I see it--even if NBC had casual interest [which wasn't reported anywhere at the time, as Bob Furmanek has noted], the problem is this--it takes two to tango.

Dozier clearly had NO interest in continuing the show--it was more profitable to him dead, so to speak, than alive. He had had enough of TV producing after the quick decline of Batman and the failures of Green Hornet [canceled after one season], The Tammy Grimes Show [canceled after four weeks] and Dick Tracy [pilot not sold].

So if NBC wanted to squeeze out a season 4, they would have had to 1. get Dozier's permission because he held a share of the rights and then 2. re-assign the production to someone else.

So why would Dozier 'rent' the rights and give permission when he didn't want anything to interfere with his upcoming syndication windfall?? For all he knew, a season 4 with someone else at the helm could have further devalued the product he was selling. His goal, quite obviously, was to sell the entire series, all 120 half-hour eps, into syndication, which he did early in 1968. A season 4 only would have complicated things.

One has to understand the fact Dozier was a businessman and this was a business decision.
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Dr. Shimel
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Dr. Shimel »

Progress Pigment wrote:Bill Paley brought back "Hazel" from the dead for CBS. I barely remember the show, and that only in reruns, but I read Paley's biography recently.
Of course, Hazel only lasted one year on CBS after they underwent an absurd cast change, replacing the original family, with the much younger "brother" of the husband.

As far as ABC's finances, there were in the midst of trying to merge with ITT at this time, but political entities helped scuttle it because of fears that that the owners of ITT (many foreign) would try to influence news coverage.
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epaddon
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by epaddon »

High C brings up a great point about how Dozier by this point was ready to call it a day as far as producing TV shows were concerned. If Dozier saw a fourth year as his only way of remaining viable in the business for the sake of potential future projects, then I'm sure he would have fought harder to save the show. But we really forget how back then, getting a windfall from syndication for a show in color was a big deal at the time since this was the first time local stations could dump older black and white shows from their daily lineups and go with recent fare. So long as the show remained in production it could not go into syndication (unless the show's name was changed in reruns, where you had older half-hour "Gunsmokes" syndicated as "Marshal Dillon" at that time) and thus Dozier would be risking financial losses for another year and it was also possible that having more episodes by then might actually drive the value of a syndication package down further.

In later years, some shows that were hits originally flopped big time in syndication because they had bad last seasons that no one wanted to watch the reruns of (the last year of "Welcome Back Kotter" and the post-Freddie Prinze episodes of "Chico And The Man" come to mind). Maybe a fourth year of "Batman" just like a fourth year of "Star Trek" would have made it less of a phenom ultimately in the rerun world!
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Dr. Shimel
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Dr. Shimel »

epaddon wrote:In later years, some shows that were hits originally flopped big time in syndication because they had bad last seasons that no one wanted to watch the reruns of (the last year of "Welcome Back Kotter" and the post-Freddie Prinze episodes of "Chico And The Man" come to mind). Maybe a fourth year of "Batman" just like a fourth year of "Star Trek" would have made it less of a phenom ultimately in the rerun world!
The Fugitive was another show that originally flopped because people "already knew how things would turn out." Of course, that thinking eventually evaporated as succeeding generations that had never seen the original became fans. The fact that the 1993 movie was a hit certainly helped.
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hobbybuilder01
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by hobbybuilder01 »

I believe the sets were disassembled and widely scattered more than bulldozed . If I recall the reactor core was used upside down in a 60s spy spoof movie possibly Matt Helm (Dean Martin )
Mr.Freeze
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Mr.Freeze »

"it was more profitable to him dead, so to speak, than alive"

Sounds like you're talking about Colonel Parker :|

As HHH would say : "It's best for business"

So I see Doziers point of view.......
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epaddon
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by epaddon »

hobbybuilder01 wrote:If I recall the reactor core was used upside down in a 60s spy spoof movie possibly Matt Helm (Dean Martin )
When they turned it upside down did Jill St. John come tumbling out? :)
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Batfanman
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by Batfanman »

hobbybuilder01 wrote:I believe the sets were disassembled and widely scattered more than bulldozed . If I recall the reactor core was used upside down in a 60s spy spoof movie possibly Matt Helm (Dean Martin )
It was used as a prop in the 1967 movie "In Like Flint" starring James Coburn.
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BATWINGED HORNET
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by BATWINGED HORNET »

epaddon wrote:In later years, some shows that were hits originally flopped big time in syndication because they had bad last seasons that no one wanted to watch the reruns of (the last year of "Welcome Back Kotter" and the post-Freddie Prinze episodes of "Chico And The Man" come to mind). Maybe a fourth year of "Batman" just like a fourth year of "Star Trek" would have made it less of a phenom ultimately in the rerun world!
The series could not go on another year. I doubt NBC--or any other producer--carefully studied the series enough to think as fans do: that the 1st season was great, and that was the way to go for a 4th year.

Get Smart was cancelled by NBC, only to be picked up by CBS for a 5th (and final) season, and in that season, no attempt was made to recapture what made the series a hit in the first place. Most of the staff were just going through the motions, so it is no surprise the audience abandoned the show, along with CBS.

Batman--as bad as season three was--would be the natural tone set for a fourth year, and that is the stuff of nightmares. Dozier turned the show into a farce, but I find it interesting that Filmation's The Adventures of Batman (making its debut in the fall of '68) proved Batman remained a viable property for TV. Although aimed at kids, it was still more respectful of the source than the live action series' final year, which led some to write articles that its demise meant all superhero programming had run its course. In reality, it was the Dozier excesses...or indifference (depending on your point of view) that doomed just one production, not all superhero shows.

In a way, we can thank Dozier and crew for making season 3 so awful, as it guaranteed there would be no 4th year of pure heartless parody.
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cammy85
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by cammy85 »

I'm not sure if I should start a new topic or not but I wonder if the third season would've been better if they hadn't tried to make a spinoff for Batgirl? I'm not saying ax her altogether as that was handed down from above. They did film a seen minute pilot promo but how fa did they get making a show for her? I imagine with the changes they had to make while producing and then rearranging hurt the Batman show, especially when ratings were already dipping by the end of the second season. Could they have kept the same two day a week formula while still retaining Batgirl if her series had been tried and not gotten off the ground? Sorry if that doesn't make sense.
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BATWINGED HORNET
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Re: The 4th Season NBC Myth

Post by BATWINGED HORNET »

cammy85 wrote:I'm not sure if I should start a new topic or not but I wonder if the third season would've been better if they hadn't tried to make a spinoff for Batgirl? I'm not saying ax her altogether as that was handed down from above. They did film a seen minute pilot promo but how fa did they get making a show for her? I imagine with the changes they had to make while producing and then rearranging hurt the Batman show, especially when ratings were already dipping by the end of the second season. Could they have kept the same two day a week formula while still retaining Batgirl if her series had been tried and not gotten off the ground? Sorry if that doesn't make sense.
Thanks to the ratings suffering by the end of season two, the producers were going to attempt tweaking in any case--and not taking inspiration from season 1. Moving to one episode a week, along with the utter slide in script activated the "exit" sign over the door, but adding their version of Batgirl was the boot that kicked the series through that door.
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