This week Ken welcomes fellow TV obsessive and the man behind the It’s About TV site Mitchell Hadley to the show.
Ken and Mitchell discuss Indiana, Ken’s awful short term memory, growing up in Minnesota, Canadian TV, the Twin Cities, TV Guide’s amazing writing, time capsules, futurism, the original source documents, why a period piece will never get it quite right, the golden age of television, sci fi, the benefits of television, how sugar is bad, making us further apart as a society, Howdy Doody, rethinking TV for kids, how crime shows can be instructional, politics on television, doom saying, Nixon getting TV right before he got it wrong, JFK, the 1968 Democratic Convention, Ronald Regan’s origin story, the night James Brown saved Boston, The Year of the Sex Olympics, Bread and Circuses, the power of the Beverly Hillbillies, TV moving west from NY to LA, Edith Efron, the fake version of LA, essays, Gomer Pyle, a war show that never discusses a war, dragging TV into a more socially conscious world, allegory, Twilight Zone, how rules can be good sometimes, cringe, shades of grey, Barney Miller, true Broadcasting, Ed Sullivan, Stiller and Mira, Lawrence Welk, Vanilla Fudge, letting your guard down, Dick Cavet, reaction, the best way to interview people , worshiping the creed while forgetting the message, being superficial, things that are important to you, people who grew up watching TV making TV, MST3k, deconstruction, watching sports, ‘77 Sunset Strip, cookie cutter shows, commercials, TV regulating itself, The Family Hour, Donna Reed, legal dramas, spy shows, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., exposing new generations to shows, It’s About TV, TV Guide as a serious historical document, revisiting shows from your youth that end up even BETTER, The Rifleman vs Branded, Rockford Files, Chuck Connors, The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan, actors with drinking problems, Mitchell’s book The Electronic Mirror and Atomic Bombs.
I’m Ken Reid, a stand up comedian from Boston, MA and a life long television fan. I’ve been twice nominated as the Best Stand up in Boston and I have been featured on Comedy Central, NPR, Nerdist, and MSN. I own every issue of TV Guide. Each week a guest chooses an issue at random, picks their viewing choices from that week and the show is our discussion of the tough viewing choices of our past. We get into stories about growing up, people’s relationship with television, some cultural/media studies dissection and I spit out a lot of trivia.
Note: The Ken Reid TV Guidance Counselor Podcast is rated PG-13 and may contain mild language.
