On Saturday, Miami (Fla.) crushed South Florida 49-12 to take the Unofficial College Football Championship. Miami will defend the title at home on Saturday against the University of Florida.
Sunday, September 14, 2025
MLB Update
The Washington Nationals (62-87) and Minnesota Twins (65-84) have been eliminated.
The Milwaukee Brewers (91-59) and Philadelphia Phillies (89-61) have become the first two teams to clinch playoff spots.
1978: What's on TV Thursday Nights?
Mom pitched camp in the kitchen Thursday nights in 1978. Her portable was absolutely locked in all prime time to Channel 12.
But, for me, it's more 7-9 p.m. Central sitcom domination by ABC.
The new show (a last-second shift from Monday nights) is the stud of the Channel 3 Thursday bunch. I found both Mindy and Mork to be adorable in their own ways.
And I'm satisfied to roll the next 90 minutes with What's Happening!! Season 3, Barney Miller Season 5 and Soap Season 2. Mom's Waltons/Hawaii Five-O/Barnaby Jones bender is helpful in this regard, as it is likely to keep her distracted from helicoptering the Channel 3 storylines on the portable in my bedroom.
As for 9 p.m., the new NBC show about broadcasting doesn't sound like nearly as much fun as the new CBS show about broadcasting.
I might opt for a Season 4 Quincy, M.E. on SelectaVision. Or, every other Thursday night, I might expand my horizons with some public broadcasting, as PBS is bringing to its national audience an appealing creation germinating from its Chicago affiliate.
Saturday, September 13, 2025
1978: What's on TV Wednesday Nights?
It honestly had never occurred to me until my year-by-year nostalgia slog at the HP just how hard I fell in love with newsrooms and newspeople through TV shows like Eight Is Enough and Lou Grant in the wake of Watergate and All the President's Men. In fact, I think Eight Is Enough might've been the most formative for me of all of the newspaper art of the 1970s.
I really, really dug Dick Van Patten's Tom Bradford, an editor with a secretary and lots of professional respect--but a guy who ultimately seems to spend most of his time and emotional energy hanging out with with his wife, children and friends. Also, he's forever playing football or tennis or some sport. I see now that this dude was a total hero for me. I watched Eight Is Enough regularly when it was on; I skipped a lot of class in my first year or two at Western watching daytime reruns of the show on one of the two channels I could tune in on my dorm-room portable TV, and my wife and I even now and then put on an episode on Tubi (she liked/likes it, too).
So, Eight Is Enough Season 3 is my solid Wednesday-nights TV79 opener.
I don't know that I ever actually loved The Jeffersons, but I did come to love George, Louise and all of their family and friends, as I can't imagine that there's an episode that I haven't seen at least some of. So Jeffersons Season 5 is a likely SelectaVision situation for me at some point later in the evening.
The new shows? Meh.
I think it makes total sense that NBC in 1978 would take a flier on Dick Clark as ringmaster of an SNL for squares, but, in hindsight, it sure seems clear that the Ed Sullivan era was just solidly passed.
I watched a lot of the Vega$ pilot movie, and I found it surprisingly compelling. Still, I never watched that show when I was a kid; it's just not the kind of fun I'm usually looking for from TV. I'm not holding space for it.
Of course, 1978 me will give the new Channel 12 sitcom, In the Beginning, a go. It's clear CBS had high hopes for this Norman Lear sendup of Going My Way. Here is a very entertaining reel of promos that the network put together, apparently, for affiliates or advertisers or some B2B audience, and In the Beginning ("a different kind of comedy with impact for on both children and adults") is introduced as a big-tent Social Gospel meditation:
That back end of TV79 Wednesdays ultimately looks like movie territory for me, however. Here's what most grabbed me from the borrowed-from-box-office summary that TV Guide compiled for the new season:
Friday, September 12, 2025
1978: What's on TV Tuesday Nights?
Channel 12 did a special preview of The Paper Chase the other night in 1978, and I thought it was excellent!
However, there's just zero hope of any other network's breaking ABC's hold on me 7-9 Central Tuesday evenings.
Jumped-the-shark Happy Days is starting Season 6 with an hour-long visit to a Colorado dude ranch. I am embarrassed to admit that I failed to note that Laverne & Shirley Season 4 actually kicked off last week in 1978, so we will have to hope to catch the hour-long "Festival" extravaganza in rerun. As previously noted, Three's Company (Apartamento para Tres) Season 3 gets going with "Double Date." And, then, at 8:30, one of my favorite shows of all time debuts.
For my money, there is no better sitcom pilot than Taxi's first episode, which includes the following phenomenal scene in which the coworkers learn that the pay phone in the garage is broken in such a way that they can place calls anywhere and get their coins back. So Bobby calls the National Theatre of Great Britain; Tony tries to call a Bangkok masseuse whom he met on R&R during the Vietnam War, and Alex initially declines to call his estranged daughter. It's such a clever, clever way to introduce these characters' back stories and shared station in life, and the actors are so immediately lovable and believable.
Well, anyway, I'm back open to offers at 9 Tuesday nights, which means Grandpa Goes to Washington might get some SelectaVision love during that hour.
But, more likely (sorry, Jack Albertson), I'm going to use that hour to catch up on Paper Chase or the last hour of the NBC special or CBS movie. Speaking of which, in the "Wednesday Nights" edition of this HP series, we'll take a look at some of the exciting-to-me movies that the networks have licensed for my pleasure in this dawning, glorious TV79.
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