Hacker Cinema
The Bob Newhart Show
1972 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 6 seasons
Created by Lorenzo Music, David Davis
The Bob Newhart Show is an American situation comedy produced by MTM Enterprises, which aired 142 original episodes on CBS from September 16, 1972, to April 1, 1978. Comedian Bob Newhart portrays a psychologist having to deal with his patients and fellow office workers. The show was filmed before a live audience.
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5 comments on Hacker News
I've re-read it 5 times. I do not see what I am supposed to be seeing.
> Am I the only person who thinks its odd
No. Many people have complained. In the TV show "The Bob Newhart Show" we find that Bob Hartley thinks that talking about the then-recent timezone standardization to be a safe topic with his father-in-law, but the latter finds it very odd and irritating.
> that my government (US)
Time standardization started without governments. Would you rather follow local sun time and railroad time and radio/TV station time, all different? Which time do you follow if you want to call your aunt 150 miles west of you?
> that my government (US) thinks its can tell me what time
How are they preventing you from keeping your own time? How are they preventing people from following the Jewish calendar?
OTOH, if you have jury duty at 9am next Monday, you better be there on government time. But note that when I last served on duty, the county was huge, and some people took an hour to drive in. Their home could well be many minutes off court house time. So how do they determine the right time to be there?
> time to get up and go to bed?
The government has never told me what time to get up or go to sleep. I was never in the military or other organization where the government had that much power over me.
> Before timezones, "noon" was the point where the sun was the highest in the sky.
Which ended up being a problem once fast long distance travel became commonplace. So how do you solve that problem?
> It seems we should
Yes, you've expressed an opinion. I responded by pointing out the known consequences should everyone followed it, based on historical practices.
> with a little more flexibility for rural areas so they can stay on the same time as their closest major population center.
I also pointed out how that can happen in a timezone system, by changing ones listed hours of work/school/etc.
Iceland is on UTC+00:00 year-round (Greenwich Mean Time), to stay in synch with much of western Europe, even though that's at least an hour behind local solar time.
So plenty of people disagree with your opinion, and changing their opinion would be hard.
If you go to Amazon and search "tv antenna" you find lots between $20 and $70. They're very small, too. One of these days I'll go up on the roof and take down the old analog monstrosity and just leave the pole & new antenna.
Besides NFL, all the really big sporting events (MLB, NBA, Olympics) are still on broadcast, although usually not the quarterfinals & other minor games. As is PBS, the local news, and most of the classic TV shows. Not often but sometimes, Cheers, Taxi, and The Bob Newhart Show are more appealing than the streaming garbage.
I've been hearing about the death of broadcast TV for 20 years now. It's not happening, and neither is the death of print magazines.
https://theconversation.com/magazines-were-supposed-to-die-in-the-digital-age-why-havent-they-217371
Some does, some doesn't. The Marx Brothers movies still work, while Bob Hope does not.
To pick two TV shows that were popular at the exact same time: the original Bob Newhart Show still totally works, while The Mary Tyler Show is wearing kinda thin.
Newhart deliberately avoided any topical humor in his shows, just for that reason.
There might have existed a moment where every broadcast television signal on Earth was showing John Fiedler (Mr. Peterson on the Bob Newhart Show, Piglet in Winnie-the-Pooh, a thousand other credits). He was everywhere in the same way people make fun of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
For Columbo side-roles, Vito Scotti is a fun one to spot. I think he was in four or five episodes.
I thought the section on TV shows was nonsense as well. He cherry picked a few examples that fit his model.
Off the top of my head some modern comedies that don't fit are Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, and Desperate Housewives.
There were plenty of classic shows set in the city as well. Mary Tyler Moore, The Jeffersons, The Bob Newhart Show, Three's Company, Taxi, Welcome Back Kotter.