Every year, the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles has its annual William S. Paley Television Festival. These used to be wonderful: They'd salute great old shows and bring in everyone they could find who'd been a part of them for a big panel discussion. If you ever go to the Museum (and they have these tapes at the one in New York too, I understand) watch the videos of the seminars devoted to classic moments in television.
Alas, the festivals are no longer as wonderful. The last few years, they've had fewer events and they've increasingly been about current shows. I don't think it's posted anywhere on the 'net so here's this year's line-up of seminars…
- March 3 — Creating Characters with J.J. Abrams
- March 4 — Trading Spaces
- March 5 — An Evening With Angela Lansbury
- March 6 — Joan of Arcadia
- March 9 — The O.C.
- March 10 — An Evening With William Shatner
- March 11 — Arrested Development
- March 12 — A Salute to Sherwood Schwartz
- March 13 — The Wire
- March 15 — Smallville
- March 16 — Carnivale
And that's it. Some of the shows being saluted are fine shows and may in the future be viewed as important, classic television programming. But have they yet? Here's an excerpt from the museum's press release for a Paley Fest of a few years back…
The Paley Festival, named for William S. Paley, founder of both the Museum and CBS, offers the public an appreciation of the medium's commitment to quality. During these evenings, the audience views episodes or highlights of the featured work and has the opportunity to ask questions of the cast and creative teams or the individual involved in its production. Since the first festival in 1984, the Museum has honored more than 200 programs, including Cheers, Friends, Gunsmoke, The Honeymooners, Marty, M*A*S*H, Roots, Route 66, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, All in the Family, Will & Grace, Friends, The Untouchables, thirtysomething, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, South Park, The Untouchables, The West Wing and The X-Files, along with such personalities as Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Alfred Hitchcock, Sid Caesar, Cher, Jim Henson, Bob Hope, Jane Fonda, John Frankenheimer, Jack Lemmon, Mary Martin, Carl Reiner, Gene Roddenberry, Garry Shandling, Flip Wilson, Milton Berle, Barbara Walters, Jonathan Winters, and many more.
I suppose one could argue that Angela Lansbury and William Shatner are in the same class as the folks named above. The salute to Sherwood Schwartz will mainly be a salute to Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. Sherwood is a nice man and I love hearing him tell stories about writing for Red Skelton and other such experiences…but the Museum didn't do a salute to Gilligan's Island twenty years ago when more of the cast was alive. What's changed? And have they really run out of shows more than a year or two old…i.e., old enough for there to actually be an overview? This is a very disappointing schedule.