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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!dartvax!betsy
From: betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry)
Newsgroups: net.tv
Subject: Why Remington Steele went Downhill
Message-ID: <2453@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Oct-84 15:48:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2453
Posted: Fri Oct  5 15:48:35 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Oct-84 06:48:34 EDT
Organization: Dartmouth College
Lines: 23

Last season *Remington Steele* was far less interesting than had been
its wont.  It was less witty, less coherent, less intelligent than
the show of the season before.  I wrote this off to incompetence;
turns out it was deliberate.  I quote Mark Christensen's *The Sweeps*,
Morrow, 1984, p.185-86.
 
"...Tartikoff, the master programming technician, explained the strategies that
he'd engineered the previous month in New York.  He walked the audience through
the schedule, night by night.
...
Tuesday night would still be *A-Team* night, and the well-plotted
*Remington Steele* would become less plotted, in order to
capitalize on the presumably nonthinking *A-Team* watchers."
 

I always thought our friends in Hollywood simply didn't *recognize*
quality.  Turns out they're actively eschewing it.  
 
-- 
Betsy Perry
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