I'm sure that's not the kind of thing my dad was bragging up at deer camp. I was trying to get inside the heads of the heads of programming.
Child prodigy tv#
But, really, my main focus was in creating The Board, on which I'd try to guess what the actual TV lineups would be.
In which I didn't have to miss "Charlie's Angels" for "CHiPS." In which I didn't have to agonize between "Eight Is Enough" and "Real People." On rectangles of paper, I would write down every show, then arrange and rearrange my dream lineups, in which "M.A.S.H" didn't make me miss the start of Monday Night Football. The X-axis listed every prime-time slot from 8 p.m.
In preparation for the unveiling, I would have already made my own boards - pieces of cardboard graphed with, on the Y-axis, the three networks. This was the early 1980s, and each of the three networks - ABC, CBS, and NBC - would unveil their fall lineup with a prime-time special hosted by someone like John Davidson or Gary Collins or the blond guy from "CHiPS," all of whom later turned out to be the same person.Įach special centered around a large board on which the host would play clips of the new season's shows and then reveal - slowly, tantalizingly - which time and night these shows would run. When I was a kid, one of my most anticipated TV shows of the year was the TV show that revealed the upcoming season's TV shows.