By JOHN BILLINGER
Tiger Media Network
A phrase I’ve heard often is you can’t sell a product ahead of its time. That in itself has been proven various times, and there have been many examples — such as the 1934 Chrysler Airflow, the Amiga Computer and today’s subject: the 1969 comedy series Turn-On.
The show has gone down in history as one of the biggest flops in the history of television, mainly because it was canceled after just one episode, received numerous call-in complaints and on one station, was pulled off-air in the middle of the pilot. The second episode, which was already made, never aired, and both episodes went unseen for decades until last June when they were uploaded to Youtube.
The show was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, creators of the 1968 to 1972 comedy series Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, which had been a big hit. It featured humor that was considered taboo and groundbreaking for the time. Naturally, for their next show, they wanted to kick it up to 11. Their goal was to make a sketch show that would make viewers at home as uncomfortable and disoriented as possible. The result was Turn-On, which had the premise of being a show that was created by a computer (so basically they predicted AI-generated media). The pilot was rejected by CBS and NBC before getting picked up by ABC.
The first episode was hosted by Tim Conway and premiered Feb. 5, 1969. Describing what happens in each sketch would be a challenge even to the most intellectual of viewers. Each one is around 30 seconds long, plays out on a white background and usually features some sort of comedic visual or phrase centered on either then-current political issues, race, gender, religion and a whole bunch of sexual innuendos. In fact, it was the amount of innuendos that got the show in trouble. Several stations refused to broadcast the show and the ones that did received numerous call-in complaints.
One station based in Cleveland, WEWS-TV, pulled the show off-air 10 minutes into the program and replaced it with a black screen accompanied by organ music for the remaining 20 minutes. The general manager of the station even sent a message to ABC saying, “If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don’t use our walls. Turn-On is turned off, as far as WEWS is concerned.”
Virtually every review of the pilot that was published in the immediate aftermath was negative. After that disaster of a premiere, Turn-On was given a hiatus and eventually canceled.
Watching Turn-On today is a surreal experience. Truly the only way to really understand it is to watch it, which is a challenging experience. I’d say if it didn’t work then, then it definitely doesn’t work now. It’s like someone made a compilation of completely unrelated clips. As stated earlier, each segment is somewhere around 30 seconds long, and there is no laugh track at all. Instead, they had a bunch of old computer noises be the laugh track. The whole thing doesn’t flow well and makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience, which to be fair, is what the creators wanted. I think the man who summed it up best was Tim Conway who hosted the first episode. He said the show was “way ahead of its time. I’m not sure even if you saw it today that maybe that time has also passed.” I agree.
Overall, Turn-On will go down as one of the shows of all time. There really isn’t much else to talk about other than its production history. It’s so confusing and disjointed, it’s almost impossible to describe. The show just exists as a weird…thing. Do yourself a favor and turn it off if you ever find it. Despite all the build-up, it’s not really worth a look in my opinion.
John Billinger is an FHSU student in the Informatics Department and an avid movie buff.