Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 12, 1995 TAG: 9504130019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Most of commercial television remains a garbage dump, from the daytime talk shows that feature trash talk and trashier people, to the nighttime of foul language, partial nudity and the portrayal of dysfunctional lives as normal.
But wait. CBS is resurrecting a show that, when it premiered last Easter, attracted more than 30 million viewers and for six straight weeks delivered higher ratings than the network's average for its time period all last season (or this season). The demographics were good, especially among women, whom networks and advertisers love to reach. But for reasons known only to the alien life forms called network executives, the show dropped out of sight after its initial episodes.
Yet, remarkably, CBS is giving the show ``Christy'' one more try. This Saturday and next at 8 p.m., CBS will air two new episodes of a story set in Tennessee's Smokey Mountains featuring some of the loveliest scenery and most wonderful acting one is likely to see on network television. The series is based on Catherine Marshall's best-selling book, set in 1912, about a young teacher in Appalachia who succeeds in making a difference in the lives of poverty-stricken children. (Speaker Gingrich and President Clinton, please note.)
This week's story, ``To Have and to Hold,'' is full of the virtues we once promoted as a nation: selflessness, reconciliation and family closeness. It takes a little getting used to - no special effects, nudity, profanity, car crashes or other gimmicks often used by the networks to appeal to our lower natures.
If ever a show - and its writers, producers, actors and sponsors - deserved to occupy a regular time slot on a network, ``Christy'' is it. One of the executive producers, Ken Wales, believed in the story so much that he mortgaged his house and spent all he had just to buy the rights from MGM, which was sitting on it with apparently no intention of bringing the story to the screen.
If ``Christy'' and any other show like it is going to succeed, it will need an outpouring of support from people who have been critical of television. Groups that regularly condemn television's content and sometimes boycott its advertisers now have a wonderful opportunity to show what they're for.
Thinking about ``Christy's'' fight for life, I recalled a conversation I had Some years ago, I had a conversation with the then-president of NBC Television, Robert Mulholland. He said that on one prime-time night, CBS had broadcast the 1981 Best Picture Academy Award-winner ``Chariots of Fire,'' and NBC counter-programmed with a film based on a Jackie Collins novel. ``Guess which film had the higher ratings?'' he asked me. It was the trash film, of course. The implication was that CBS had given people what many said they wanted, but they failed to respond in sufficient numbers.
The next two Saturday nights are opportunities for those who want to see some light shine in the network darkness. Turn on your sets, watch ``Christy'' and then flood the network and sponsors with letters of approval. And buy the advertisers' products. This may be one of the few chances left for good television. It's time for those who have been making so much anti-TV-programming noise to put up or shut up. There couldn't be a better vehicle than ``Christy.'' Moses and the Trapp family can wait.
- Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB