“Turn On” Was NOT the Worst TV Program of All Time

February 5, 1969 was the air date of the one and only broadcast episode of the TV comedy sketch show Turn On.

Turn On has become legendary as the shortest-lived tv series ever, because not only was it cancelled after the first episode, but many of the ABC affiliates who aired it pulled the plug DURING the first airing. Much of the show’s bad reputation came from Tim Conway, the show’s first guest, who spoke disparagingly of the show thereafter. As invariably happens, a kind of lore built around the show, with critics, historians, writers, and other commentators parroting the same received wisdom about it until it had developed into a party line: “worst show ever”.

It’s up on Youtube now, you can watch it if you like, and I’m here to tell you that (as always) everyone is WRONG. To call it a bad television show is philistinism. It’s an EXPERIMENTAL television show, and frankly I think it’s pretty cool. It was produced by George Schlatter, who’d previously worked for Ernie Kovacs, and had also created Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in, still a big hit at the time. Both of those shows often featured very brief black-out sketches and gags, entire segments that consisted of but one, two, or NO lines of dialogue. On Kovacs’ shows and Laugh-in, strings of such bits were included between longer ones as a kind of motif, to keep the show fast-moving and unpredictable. But Turn On consists entirely of such moments. The effect is like leafing through a book of one panel cartoons, or scrolling through memes, or Tik-Tok (if it were scrupulously curated). Some moments hit, some miss, but they pass by too rapidly to dwell on any particular one. Very much in the Hellzapoppin tradition.

To further alienate some, the whole thing is packaged in a kind of futuristic cloak, almost as though it were what we think of as video art. The design was stylized. While comedy costumes were worn and there was furniture, there was NO background, no walls, or floors on the set, just a field of white as though it were all taking place in heaven, or a dream, or (my first reaction) a TV commercial of the time. The soundtrack includes all kinds of electronic noises. There are animations, and copious use of video effects such as split screen.

Many have claimed that the show was too bawdy, and some have even made the wildly erroneous claim that it was ALL sex jokes. In truth, there are merely SOME sex jokes, and though some of those bits probably pushed the envelope for the standards of that day, they occur only occasionally. After all, they made it past the network’s in-house censors. So that ain’t really it. There is however LOTS of racy political content, much tweaking of authority, police, political figures and the like which surely made execs nervous. Even MY jaw dropped when the phrase “Israel Uber Alles” scrolled by at the bottom of the screen. Granted, at the moment the gag seems particularly outrageous…but surely it was no more safe back in 1969! It’s not really too different from what Godard, William Klein, Morton Downey (Sr.) and many others were doing at the time, but it was rarer than rare to see this sort of thing on network television.

More than anything, I think the show was too aesthetically adventurous for the gatekeepers in this intrinsically conservative medium. The common expression is that it was “ahead of its time”; Conway quipped that its time had also passed. Both are sort of true. What it looks like to me, and, blimey, I think it’s pretty cool, is that it resembles television in another dimension, if the medium had taken a completely different path from the one we know here on Earth One. I mentioned video art before. The form that Turn On has is the kind of thing that would work beautifully in a modern art museum. You know, where you wander into the gallery, something is playing on a video monitor, you watch it until you’re bored, and then you walk away. If you think about it, there is no reason at all why you couldn’t have such a thing in your house. In fact, though we certainly have had an explosion of new video-based art forms in recent years, one can certainly conceive of some directions we haven’t explored yet, and still might. There can be large flat screens on peoples walls with non narrative stuff happening that would function like wallpaper or a painting. It’s diverting to look at, but only momentarily, and it’s always on. In some other universe, Turn On became the first show manifesting such a conception of television, and then the entire industry went that way.

Another reason the show fizzled, I think? A cast of unknowns didn’t help. New programs frequently transcend that limitation, but if other things are going against it, popular stars can provide insurance. None of that here. Conway was only booked on the premiere episode. Of the rest of the cast, the most recognizable were Chuck McCann, Mel Stewart, Teresa Graves, France Nuyen, and Hamilton Camp. The other performers included Maura McGiveney (daughter of Owen McGiveney), Bonnie Boland (later of The Tim Conway Comedy Hour), Robert Staats (from such rad things as Putney Swope and The Faking of the President), Maxine Greene,Ken Greenwald, Carlos Manteca, and Cecile Ozorio.Albert Brooks was one of the writers.

Another hurdle the show faced was probably (conscious or unconscious) racism. It was a commendably diverse cast. Two black people, two Asians, and a Latino — much higher proportional representation than was typical for the time. Just another way, sadly, that Turn On was ahead of its time, apparently to its detriment.

Eight episodes of Turn On were written, two were filmed, and as we say, only one aired, in some cases, just a portion of one. Anyway, as I say, its on Youtube. Check it out! You don’t have to watch the whole thing! That’s kind of the point!

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.