When it arrived in the mail I was immediately impressed. The packaging from the inside out was extremely well designed. I especially loved how the disc’s themselves were little records. Very nice touch.
Having never seen an episode before, I really had no idea what to expect. This series began in 1978, so I was only three years old when it came out. I did not expect to appreciate the humor fully due to my age gap—and I was pretty on in my assumption.
The show begins with Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson hiring Andy Travis (apparently the role model for Matthew Mcconaughey), to be the program director and try to turn this radio station back into the black. Andy quickly changes the format to Rock and Roll and the rest of the show chronicles the stations many hiccups along the way.
With the exception of Jennifer Marlowe (Loni Anderson), I found myself enjoying the characters at the end. Whether it was Herbs relentless pursuit of Jennifer, or Venus Flytrap and Dr. Johnny Fever getting drunk on the air, or Bailey Quarters running into the boys room to stop a fight between two mascots—they all had their charm. The winner of the prestigious Buckeye Newshawk Award, Les Nessman, was my personal favorite. In my opinion he nailed his role and always had me laughing with a hiss.
The main issue with this release seems to be around the fact that they didn’t gain the rights to much of the original music in the show, so they replaced it with some generic music. There are many times you can see obvious edits, and from what I hear there are even memorable scenes cut out because they relied so much on the music of the time.That was a disappointment since I didn’t get the full experience, but I really have a feeling that they will work out this music rights issue and re-release another DVD set in the near future. I’d love to see that version, and how much of a difference it makes.
I’m still happy that I have finally seen at least this first season. It did nothing but help in my current catchup with culture project. I still have to say that it just wasn’t my style. I’m pretty sure that I missed out on a lot of the humor due to the fact that I was watching it almost 30 years out of context. That said, I wouldn’t be opposed to watching Season Two to see how it progresses.
I think the biggest eye opener about this show was the amount of racism in it. I guess I was pretty naive to think that people started to come out of the dark ages of racism and discrimination before long 1980. I guess I feel a lot better as to how far we have come in the last 2 1/2 decades. Overall I did enjoy most of the show. When Venus and Johnny got drunk on the air was awesome, probably the best episode.