JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 207 из 359The program had problems finding a steady sponsor (this was back in the days, you must remember, when dinosaurs walked the earth and TV time was cheap enough to allow a single sponsor to pay for an entire program-hence GE Theater, Alcoa Playhouse, The Voice of Firestone, The Lux Show,Coke Time , and a host of others; to this writer's knowledge, the last program to be wholly sponsored by one company was Bonanza , sponsored by GM), and CBS began to wake up to the fact that Sterling had put none of his cudgels away but was now wielding them in the name of fantasy.
*Meredith became perhaps the most familiar face of all to Twilight Zone fans, save for Serling's own. Probably his best-remembered role came in "Printer's Devil," where he plays a newspaper owner who is really Satan . . . complete with a jutting, crooked cigar that was somehow diabolical.
**In 1972 CBS discovered another "prestige program"- The Waltons , created by Earl Hamner, Jr., who wrote a good many Twilight Zones . . . including, coincidentally, "The Bewitchin' Pool," the last original Twilight Zone episode to be telecast on the network. Placed against brutal competition-NBC's The Flip Wilson Show and ABC's own version of The Church of What's Happening Now, The Mod Squad -CBS stuck with Hamner's creation in spite of the low ratings because of the prestige factor. The Waltons went on to outlive its competition and at this writing has run seven seasons.
During that first season, The Twilight Zone presented "Perchance to Dream," the late Charles Beaumont's first contribution to the series, and "Third from the Sun," by Richard Matheson. The gimmick of the latter-that the group of protagonists is fleeing not from Earth but to it-is one that has been utterly beaten to death by now (most notably by that deep-space turkey Battlestar Galactica ), but most viewers can remember the snap of that ending to this day. It was the episode which marks the point at which many occasional tuners-in became addicts. Here, for once, was something Completely New and Different.
During its third season, The Twilight Zone was either canceled (Serling's version) or squeezed out by insoluble scheduling problems (the CBS version). In either case, it returned the following year as an hourlong program. In his article "Rod Serling's Dream," Ed Naha says: "The 'something different' the elongated ( Twilight Zone ) came up with turned out to be boredom. After thirteen publicly shunned episodes, the 60-minute Twilight Zone was canceled.” It was indeed canceled-only to return for a final, mostly dull, season as a half-hour show again-but because of boredom? In my own view, the hour-long episodes of The Twilight Zone included some of the best of the entire run.
*Meredith became perhaps the most familiar face of all to Twilight Zone fans, save for Serling's own. Probably his best-remembered role came in "Printer's Devil," where he plays a newspaper owner who is really Satan . . . complete with a jutting, crooked cigar that was somehow diabolical.
**In 1972 CBS discovered another "prestige program"- The Waltons , created by Earl Hamner, Jr., who wrote a good many Twilight Zones . . . including, coincidentally, "The Bewitchin' Pool," the last original Twilight Zone episode to be telecast on the network. Placed against brutal competition-NBC's The Flip Wilson Show and ABC's own version of The Church of What's Happening Now, The Mod Squad -CBS stuck with Hamner's creation in spite of the low ratings because of the prestige factor. The Waltons went on to outlive its competition and at this writing has run seven seasons.
During that first season, The Twilight Zone presented "Perchance to Dream," the late Charles Beaumont's first contribution to the series, and "Third from the Sun," by Richard Matheson. The gimmick of the latter-that the group of protagonists is fleeing not from Earth but to it-is one that has been utterly beaten to death by now (most notably by that deep-space turkey Battlestar Galactica ), but most viewers can remember the snap of that ending to this day. It was the episode which marks the point at which many occasional tuners-in became addicts. Here, for once, was something Completely New and Different.
During its third season, The Twilight Zone was either canceled (Serling's version) or squeezed out by insoluble scheduling problems (the CBS version). In either case, it returned the following year as an hourlong program. In his article "Rod Serling's Dream," Ed Naha says: "The 'something different' the elongated ( Twilight Zone ) came up with turned out to be boredom. After thirteen publicly shunned episodes, the 60-minute Twilight Zone was canceled.” It was indeed canceled-only to return for a final, mostly dull, season as a half-hour show again-but because of boredom? In my own view, the hour-long episodes of The Twilight Zone included some of the best of the entire run.