FCC Chairman Newton Minnow called TV a “vast wasteland” in 1961. Two years later, the wasteland featured a show starring a 17 year old, set to appeal to young people; here are some of the lyrics to the show’s theme song:

Meet Cathy, who’s lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Patty’s only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights — What a crazy pair!

But they’re cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.

Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control — What a wild duet!

Oh, well, forget it. We were going to ask the question: is it 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 young people today who know where Berkeley Square is, or know what Ballet Russe means. But apparently the songwriting team of Sid Ramin / Bob Wells couldn’t keep its spelling in order (if we are wrong, we apologize), so our clever point about the decline of the West is shot.

Minnow was right; even back in 1961 TV was a vast wasteland. Go see this entry from Jump the Shark to see how much more vast it is today.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 at 5:28 pm and is filed under art, culture, General, MSM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.