With tonight's big Game 7 of the ALCS taking place on FS1 (if you get it) and Joe Buck on the call, I thought this would be the perfect blog post. This is a hilarious montage put together by Matthew Callan -- 21 years of Joe Buck during the World Series doing live promo reads for upcoming Fox shows. A few you know but most of these shows are long forgotten. So take a nostalgic trip down memory lane to re-acquaint yourself with all these shows you never watched.
Holy cow, that was like walking through a graveyard!
ReplyDeleteHey, The Grinder was pretty good.
ReplyDeleteIt's tough enough to do a game without someone telling you in your ear that you need to promote a show that everyone knows will be horrible.
ReplyDeleteThere's an old story of Curt Gowdy doing a Game of the Week (those were the days) at Dodger Stadium and his producer kept telling him through the earpiece to mention the mariachi band on top of the Dodgers dugout. Gowdy finally hit the button to cut off his mike and said to the producer, "I can't hear you. There's some mariachi band playing on top of the dugout," and went back to doing play-by-play.
One could be cynical and say it's all about money but like advertising signs on the outfield walls it's part of the game. Never realized how much Joe Buck's plugs are part of the fabric of the post-season. Thanks, Ken.
ReplyDelete20+ years of FOX TV newbies & only 1 syndication hit, ‘That ‘70’s Show’.
ReplyDeleteGreat snapshot of how hard it is to build a big (and worthy) enough library to make it to syndie gold. No wonder we still Love Lucy.
I was surprised to realize that my wife and I watched only one of those shows, 24.
ReplyDeleteI loved The Grinder and was bummed it didn't get renewed for a second season. Same with Almost Human. Some of those shows I've never heard of.
ReplyDeleteTo John Mazur: By the time Fox got MLB rights in 1996, its first hit, "Married With Children," had already ended its run on the network and was well into syndication. So give Fox credit for that well-made farce.
ReplyDeleteI once edited a weekly in New Jersey, in the area where Laura Prepon is from, and was among the first to interview her. In 1998, Fox brought Laura to New York to publicize "That '70s Show," and she attended the Yankees-Padres World Series (with accompanying camera time, of course).
Yeah, it's not enough to show a promo, the cast has to go to the game too, jeez, why does that matter? "Oh there they are! Now I've gotta watch that crap!"wtf
ReplyDeleteI remember Jose Offerman. KILLER INSTINCT, not so much.
ReplyDeleteI forgot it was John Walsh who really tracked down Osama bin Laden.
This reminds me of when I used to collect TV Guides. Going through old Fall Preview issues. I would see so many shows that I just couldn't remember and/or only watched once or twice. It also made you wonder how some of these shows got on the air in the first place. Misc: I loved Fox's Sat. night block of Cops and America's Most Wanted. I was an extra on an episode of Living in Captivity. And I can proudly say, without any sense of irony, that I've NEVER watched American Idol and won't be watching the re-boot.
ReplyDeletewhat the buck...
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, that was like walking through a graveyard!
ReplyDeleteAnd listening to Joe Buck is much the same thing!
Family Guy did the same thing when they were brought back from the dead:
ReplyDeletePeter Griffin: Everybody, I got bad news. We've been canceled.
Lois Griffin: Oh, no, Peter, how could they do that?
Peter Griffin: Well, unfortunately, Lois, there's just no more room on the schedule. We've just got to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for terrific shows like "Dark Angel," "Titus," "Undeclared," "Action," "That 80's Show," "Wonderfalls," "Fastlane," "Andy Richter Controls the Universe," "Skin," "Girls Club," "Cracking Up," "The Pits," "Firefly," "Get Real," "Freaky Links," "Wanda at Large," "Costello," "The Lone Gunmen," "A Minute With Stan Hooper," "Normal, Ohio," "Pasadena," "Harsh Realm," "Keen Eddie," "The Street," "American Embassy," "Cedric the Entertainer," "The Tick," "Louie," and "Greg the Bunny."
Lois Griffin: Is there no hope?
Peter Griffin: Well, I suppose if all those shows go down the tubes, we might have a shot.
Still not in the same league of Pat Summerall having to shill for House of Buggin'.
ReplyDeleteNew Prison Break had some major plot holes. The guy clearly died. Now he's back to life, and oh by the way he had a different name all along. Not sure how his brother missed that.
ReplyDeleteFriday Question:
ReplyDeleteKen,
Did you have to shill when you announced in your pro seasons?
Or, maybe a segment for the podcast.
I stopped following baseball a long time ago, for reasons that have no bearing here.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I note that the Houston Astros are the first team in Major League history to win separate pennants in each Major: National in 2005, American this year.
What a shame, what a missed opportunity, that the Cubs didn't win the National this time.
Then the World's Serious would have been an inside-out replay of 2005, when the Astros went up against the Chicago White Sox.
Talk about Irony ...
... that's all anybody would have done (maybe they'd mention the game every now and then ...).
Ken. Remember when Pat Summerall, at the dawn of the internet, touted the “cars dot compost game show@
ReplyDeleteMike, no one ever acknowledges the White Sox. They went even longer between WS titles than the Red Sox (88 years to 86) without anyone noticing.
ReplyDelete"Joe Buck's plugs" — Ha!
ReplyDeleteVP81955:
ReplyDeleteI was raised as a South Side Irish White Sox Fan in the '50s/'60s, so I know all about being ignored.
I had enough exposure to That Other Team, though.
My Uncle Louie used to have the Sox on the radio, the Cubs on TV, and his bookie on the phone.
I do recall when the Cubs put out an LP of broadcast "highlights" which included:
- The time when an umpire inadvertently allowed two baseballs in play at once.
- The Cub catcher and 1st baseman go after an infield pop-up - which drops in between them.
- Bert Wilson, the Homer's Homer, enthusing over Cub stars of the future like Ted Tappe and Harry Chiti.
- WGN's play-by-play guys Jack Quinlan and Lou Boudreau doing a live commercial for Wieboldt's department store, selling women's foundation garments; they very nearly didn't get back to the game ...
Amidst this, promos for Garfield Goose didn't seem so bad ...
@VP81955
ReplyDeleteThe White Sox were the hotter team in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
The 1959 Go-Go White Sox dwarfed the Cubs coverage.
And the 1964 Sox were a pretty hot commodity as they chased the Yankees that summer.
It wasn't until about 1968 that the Cubs started becoming decent, and the Sox started becoming bad that things switched.
then came 1969 and then came Harry Caray - and that's when the Cubs really took over.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteYour history is a tad shaky.
In the '50s/'60s, the White Sox usually won more than they lost, but this was the era of Absolute Yankee Domination (the Stengel-Houk years).
The 1959 pennant is generally regarded as the Fluke of that decade (the Yankees got off to their worst start in history that year).
It was 1967 when the Cubs, in Durocher's second year, suddenly got good, while the Sox under Eddie Stanky started to go bad.
Harry Caray came to Chicago in 1971 - to the White Sox, where he stayed for just over a decade, during which the Sox were up-and-down-and-in-and-out; the Cubs were more up than down during this time, but Harry was drawing crowds to Comiskey with his booth antics; "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" was Bill Veeck's idea (and Nancy Faust, the Sox organist, was the only one who had Harry's singing in the right key).
When Veeck sold the Sox to Rein&Ein in the early '80s, Harry immediately fell out with the new regime over their embrace of Pay-TV; he jumped to the Cubs the minute his Sox contract ran out.
Not long after, the Cubs and WGN got on the Satellite, and that's when the Cubs "really took over", and Wrigley became a national tourist attraction.
Since Harry's Jump, the imbalance has stayed in the Cubs's favor regardless of the win-loss stats - and I now freely admit that this was a major factor in my withdrawal from baseball.
I was sort of hoping that our current President might turn up at a Serious game this year.
It might be fun for someone to hand Donald the Dotard a baseball - and we could all watch him spend the rest of the day trying to open it.
*rimshot*
Hey Ken,
ReplyDeleteI saw this last week and laughed. Great stuff. It's amazing how much you forget (or what's forgetful) Full disclosure: I'm a NYY fan so I'm whatever on Joe Buck. I don't think he's terrible.
FOX had to be the first to put their "stars" in a baseball stadium and film them. However, my favorite Joe Buck promo moment was from the 1996 World Series. The camera pans to Brian Austin Green of 90210 fame and Joe Buck exclaims: "Brian Austin Green! What a hunk!"
Still cracks me up, --LL
PS- What the hell was FOX thinking in 1997 with "Roar"?
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ReplyDeleteLOVE the fact that Joe Buck actually calls out (about the 5:40 mark) the fact that often the stars bolt the stadium as soon as their on-screen 'commitment' is fulfilled (though I do wonder what they found out when checking back on the cast of "New Girl" (to see how long they actually hung around once their 'promo' was over) that he claimed they would do later in the broadcast!)!
As you've said here yourself Mr. Levine, Joe Buck does NOTHING but show up to his job, do his (seemingly effortless) GREAT job week after week for a NUMBER of different sports, and what does he get for his trouble?
An INCREDIBLE amount of hate from countless sports fans who, for some unfathomable reason, paint him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler!
While I COMPLETELY understand the fact that sports fans are VERY passionate about what they like, and don't like, the seething hatred that SO many spew when it comes to this poor guy is frankly a bit disturbing.
I get the fact that there will NEVER be an announcer that EVERYONE loves (though Tony Romo has done an amazing job at coming about as close as anyone else has in recent memory), it would be SO refreshing to hear sports fans stand up and sing the praises of his guy (Ken Levine, notwithstanding!) just ONCE in a while!
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