I’d like to comment on those ridiculous remarks made by a person in your Vent column last Wednesday about the old “Leave It To Beaver” TV program. Where in the heck do they get the idea that it was racist and sexist and that the kids were constantly misbehaving? That show never had anyone smoking pot, sniffing cocaine and using swear words as today’s TV programs do. They also never promoted the idea of people living together and making babies BEFORE marriage — that’s if they would get married at all as in today’s TV programs. We need more programs today to show that at one time, we had a decent family oriented society in America.
Walter Jakubowski
Mesa
2plus2make4 posted at 2:32 pm on Fri, Nov 2, 2012.
Yeah, let's bring back "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" so our television time can be just as terrible as the world around us. No thanks.
Bluepoet posted at 3:06 pm on Fri, Nov 2, 2012.
Well, the whole idea behind Leave It To Beaver, was that the Beav would do something stupid, mostly because of peer pressure, and then his older brother would rescue him, and his dad would lecture him, and mete out the proper punishment. Tame stuff, by today's standards, to be sure...and, a pretty boring morality play.
However, it was no more true, that families were like that then, anymore than now. There were a lot of problems, in the 50s...many of them, the same problems that exist today. Putting on rose colored glasses and lamenting a time that never was, is no more honest than lumping an entire generation under the label of worthless, rude drug addicts, today.
truth posted at 3:11 pm on Fri, Nov 2, 2012.
What I don't understand is, Arizona is ranked on the bottom of all U.S. States. But we continue down the same road of distruction. Arizonans or should I say 50 % are so stupid that the major news paper in Arizona has to print a full page article telling Arizonans how to vote. We all know that Arizona is on the last rung of the ladder, on the bottom, but we still keep voting for the Rs. We have reelected John McCain for eterinity even though he was a major player in the failure of Lincoln Savings and Loan and a member of his family stole drugs from her own charity for personal use. So Arizona lets help Twit Romney become our next president that way the three greatest recessions since the great depression with a republican in the White House Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Twit Romney. I'm sure Twit Romney will out do both of the above and be the president of the United States with the greatest recession or even a depression.
Accuracy posted at 11:38 am on Sat, Nov 3, 2012.
Walter Jakubowski's Letter: "We need more shows like ‘Leave it to Beaver’"
“Leave It to Beaver” episodes in 1957 were one of the undisputed classics of American television. Education, occupation, and marriage and family were presented in the weekly half-hour warm, credible sitcom about modern suburban life as seen through the eyes of small children.
Television today needs more family-oriented shows; friendly people who are nice as requisites for a happy and productive life together especially in an intellectual endeavor. Sitcom shows to attain iconic status in the US, and produce family-oriented programs such as “The Cosby Show.”
mrconservative posted at 12:34 pm on Sat, Nov 3, 2012.
I loved watching "The Cosby Show" when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I've never seen a single episode of "Leave it to Beaver". I'll have to look at it sometime in the future.
sockratties posted at 12:22 am on Mon, Nov 5, 2012.
Sit-coms are products produced to sell and create a profit. There is no way that Leave it to Beaver, The Beverly Hill-Billys, The Andy Griffith Show or even the Cosby Show would attract enough of a market today. While they may have projected a version of the American Dream and played to a family audience, both the dream and the audience have changed significantly. The media constantly tries out new concepts and supplies what the audience wants. Of the millions of viewers every evening during prime time, how many families are sitting semi-circle around the family TV enjoying a family program? Probably very few. The moral teaching, roll model family TV program is a thing of the past as is the audience.
VofReason posted at 1:21 pm on Mon, Nov 5, 2012.
You mean they still make TV shows? I generally only watch shows made before 2000. Most shows now are to predictable, bad acting, or vulgar. I guess they know their audiance.
Accuracy posted at 8:56 am on Thu, Nov 8, 2012.
"The moral teaching, roll model family TV program is a thing of the past as is the audience."
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That's why television today needs more family-oriented shows. Friendly people who are nice as requisites for a happy and productive life together especially in an intellectual endeavor.
sockratties posted at 4:34 pm on Thu, Nov 8, 2012.
Accuracy... I agree with you in an ideal world. Unfortunately the audience must exist to attract sponsors. NPR used to get funding which put some quality situation comedies on public television, many of which originated on BBC. Being British they're somewhat foreign for an American family but were intelligent and expected the audience to use some reason and imagination.
It's all about who's paying the bill and in this case it equates to demand then supply. Evidently an American audience wants animated cartoons like FOX provides, or contrived "reality TV," or sit-coms that are so dumbed-down that they explain punch-lines and use laugh tracks. Arbitrary innuendo and vulgarity also seem to attract American viewers.
You'll notice that success breeds imitation so when one network has a winner all the other networks soon produce shows of the same genera. NCIS is a good example. Now there are about a dozen NCIS look-likes, just as did there are “survivor” types. If a good family show were to find an audience we could have a bunch of them until the next big thing comes along.