The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

Not to be confused with Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, this version was a series of specials throughout the 1977-78 television season with little connection to the original.  The positive of this version is a superstar talent got his first national exposure on this show, among other talents who had lengthy careers in television and elsewhere.  A negative is the producer got sued and lost millions because he didn't have everybody's permission to do this show.

Bob Newhart struck gold with The Bob Newhart Show in the 70s and Newhart in the 80s through 1990.  Could Newhart do it again with another self-titled endeavor?  Bob was a clever and funny show, but it didn't have a certain something that both his previous shows had.  Despite quality names as guests including a future Friend, the show was saddled with bad time slots and only lasted a handful of episodes into its second season.

Before Brian Griffin created a series about two oddball roommates on an episode of Family Guy, that premise was used in a short-lived NBC series which paired up a 14-year-old with an ex-Marine in his 40s in a college dorm.  Ratings were amazing for the premiere episode, but the show still lasted only 8 shows.  Find out why in this installment.

It's time to go back to school for the next three installments!  We start with someone who is teaching until he gets his big break in acting, hooking up with seemingly every single lady along the way.  Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher brought some realities teenagers went through (and still go through) at the time, in addition to being a light-hearted comedy.

It's the mid-90s and two startup networks are looking for programming.  A flavor of the month at the time was giving stand-up comics their own shows, see Seinfeld, Life with Louie, and Roseanne, and later The Drew Carey Show and Everybody Loves Raymond.  The new network was UPN and the comic was Richard Jeni, who took a concept from his stand-up show and loosely molded it into a Seinfeld-like TV show.

The 1990s was a renaissance for George Foreman, between regaining the WBA heavyweight championship, and the creation and rise in popularity of what became the George Foreman Grill.  Before those events, Foreman helmed a self-titled short-lived sitcom.  Happy 78th birthday, Susan St. James!

Mike shared a little nugget with the other guys earlier this week.  That message became the seed of this Delayed Reaction, reacting to events which happened close to a decade ago.  Dynasty?  Really?

Under normal circumstances, a popular show which lasted 4 seasons would not be fodder for this podcast.  For our Marvel shows leading up to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, we're making an exception.  Anyway, we think the show got worse once the pizza place part of the premise was abandoned.  Just to reiterate, this is only about the first 2 seasons with the pizza place.

The Brits seem to try just about anything when it comes to game shows.  Case in point, this entry from just over a decade ago, a primetime endeavor which combined game show elements with Henson Alternative puppets.  The end result was That Puppet Game Show, which ran for only 8 episodes.  Even though it aired overseas, listeners on the other side of "the pond" can watch it on a semi-frequent basis.

In the past, we have talked about the ESP fad in the 60s through the early 80s.  A 1973 comedy used the sixth sense as a premise, one that was used less as time went on, turning the show into just another TV show.  Despite two great leads, The Girl with Something Extra was not a show with anything out of the ordinary.