One of the most infamous disasters in the history of American television, Turn-On is a comedy series that ABC aired very (and we mean very) briefly in February of 1969. Perhaps it could be considered as much a surreal, post-psychedelic art project as a comedy show, owing to its roots as a variation on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. In fact, it came from the same creators — Ed Friendly and George Schlatter — and the basic setup of the show had a similar Rapid-Fire Comedy approach, albeit even more rapid than its predecessor ("Laugh-In at double speed" is how one review described it).
Where Turn-On differed, however, was its aesthetic, which was simultaneously more out-there and more minimalist than Laugh-In was. It was shot on film (rather than video like Laugh-In), there was very little in the way of proper sets, and most sketches were done against a pure white background, with no studio audience or laugh track. The whole idea was that it was "the first computerized TV show," whereas two men running the vintage 60s computer would turn switches, causing cast members and sketches to appear out of thin air. The show's soundtrack was done with early Moog synthesizers, with a primitive drum machine playing under a good chunk of the show, and many punchlines of sketches being punctuated by a loud synthesizer sound.
The combination of all these elements, combined with the show's penchant for shock value (a swastika appeared in a gag within the first two minutes), proved to be far too much for audiences at the time. The show premiered on February 5, 1969 with plenty of hype, and the legendary Tim Conway as the Special Guest, but the premiere met unprecedented levels of pushback. Stations in the eastern regions got an extremely negative response from viewers in the form of hundreds of complaints — when people weren't offended by the envelope-pushing humor, they were disoriented by the presentation — and many affiliates in the western regions opted not to air the show at all, once they saw what kind of show they had on their hands. One affiliate, WEWS in Cleveland, cut the premiere after fifteen minutes, after which general manager Donald Perris sent the network a telegram stating "If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don't use our walls. Turn-On is turned off, as far as WEWS is concerned."
According to Tim Conway, he and the cast had a party in a hotel waiting for the reviews to come in, only for them to slowly discover that their premiere party had immediately become a cancellation party ("Very economical, 'cause it was all in one evening!"). ABC, who'd initially ordered 13 episodes, originally intended to put Turn-On on hiatus for a probable Retool, but by that point most affiliates were refusing to ever air the show again, so it wound up being cancelled outright, even though a second episode (with Special Guest Robert Culp, plus his then-wife France Nuyen) was finished and in the can, and other episodes were in various states of completion.
It wasn't all bad, though — for one, cast member Teresa Graves would eventually show up on Laugh-In, and go on to a modestly successful career. Reportedly, the fallout from Turn-On left ABC gunshy about putting more taboo topics on the air, so they wound up turning down a sitcom pilot written by Norman Lear, that prominently featured a foul-mouthed bigot. So CBS picked it up instead. That show? All in the Family.
The show also did, in a way, contribute to special-effects technology: Much like Laugh-In, the show had insert shots of a dancer in between sketches. But where Laugh-In had Goldie Hawn in a bikini, Turn On had a computer-generated dancer, to appeal to the computer who was ostensibly scripting the show. The effect was created through early-generation computer effects and the first instance of Motion Capture in Hollywood — a dancer was rigged up to a makeshift device that translated her movements to the computer setup. The creators of the effect would also go on to create Scanimation, a popular hybrid computer/cel animation service used throughout the 70s and 80s.
What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History ranked Turn-On at number 25. It was also featured prominently in the 1980 book The Worst TV Shows Ever by Bart Andrews. For years, the only way to watch Turn-On was at the Paley Center For Media in New York. To the surprise of pop culture aficionados, Schlatter posted two completed episodes to his YouTube channel in 2023 — see them here
and here. A heretofore unthinkable third episode (culled from unused material from the Conway episode and bits from an uncompleted episode with Sebastian Cabot) was completed and put online on February 4, 2024 (the day before the 55th anniversary of the ABC debut/cancellation).
Turn-On provides examples of:
- Artificial Intelligence: An early pop culture use of this concept, since a computer is supposedly generating all of the comedy bits.
- Aside Glance: Employed every so often by various cast members. Expect a loud electronic whoop to punctuate it.
- The Bad Guys Are Cops:Policeman: There are too many TV shows these days that make the policemen look bad. One in particular comes to mind... oh yeah, the news.
- Bland-Name Product: Cherry-Oats cereal (Cheerios), Mavis Rent-a-Car (Avis).
- Broken Record: From the third ("lost") episode:Computer operator 1: Hey man, do you think computers will ever replace people?
Computer operator 2: Absolutely not- Absolutely not- Absolutely not- - Comically Missing the Point:Theresa Graves: Do you believe in capital punishment?
Tim Conway: Oh yes. But only as part of our rehabilitation program. - Credits Gag: A variant in the form of an Overly Long Gag. Instead of simply opening the show with the credits, they appeared intermittently throughout the entire show, giving the sense that the show was just barely getting started... for a half-hour (that, or they were closing credits and the show was taking forever to end).
- Darker and Edgier: Blank white background notwithstanding. The show was intended to be this for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. The pace was even faster, filled to the brim with strange imagery, and loud synth noises in lieu of a laugh track, with the show's humor being more racy than its predecessor. According to the creators, Turn-On was actually much closer to the original Laugh-In concept.
- Double-Meaning Title: Besides referring to turning on a TV set, "turn-on" also means "to sexually arouse", plus it was common 60s slang for getting high, associated with Timothy Leary's "turn on, tune in and drop out" slogan, appropriate for all the sex and drug jokes here.
- Exact Words: "Your money or your life," says a mugger to an innocent woman, and she responds by handing him her copy of Life magazine.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: This exchange from the "lost" third episode:Mom 1: Your children are such perfect little gentlemen! So well behaved! How do you do it?
Mom 2: Terror! - Honest John's Dealership: The show's one major attempt at a recurring character is E. Eddie Edwards, an extremely smarmy pitchman with slicked back hair, a mustache and a tacky suit, who tries to sell various dubious items (like mescaline-laced breakfast cereal), which interestingly anticipates Michael Palin's oily compère character on Monty Python's Flying Circus and Dan Aykroyd's Irwin Mainway on Saturday Night Live. Apparently E. Eddie was a character that had been created independent of the show by cast member Bob Staats, who also played him in some later movies.
- Joisey: In the first episode, Tim Conway plays a New Jersey DA who denounces the influence of organized crime on the state's government, only to have a Mafioso named Rocco step in and kiss him.
- Kent Brockman News: The second episode has Robert Culp in a recurring bit as a news anchor dropping one-liners.
- Last Request: A beautiful woman is being executed by firing squad, when suddenly, she's informed that the firing squad had a last request. We'll let your filthy minds do the work here.
- Ms. Fanservice: Blonde, buxom Maura McGiveney was intended as this, with a Running Gag where she plays "The Body Politic", making smutty political puns while wearing a dress with a Cleavage Window, and she's also the woman who receives the Last Request from the firing squad.
- Muppet: Some grotesque puppets pop up on occasion to up the Mind Screw factor, and oddly make Turn-On something of an unexpected predecessor to Sesame Street and maybe even Saturday Night Live's "Land of Gorch" sketches.
- No Snack for You: One sketch has a woman lose her money in a vending machine trying to buy birth control pills, then smack the machine several times trying to get it back. This bit was the breaking point for at least one station.
- One Phone Call: A recurring bit in the first episode, where Tim Conway is arrested and uses his one phone call to do mundane things like order fast food, check the time, etc.
- Pun:Nun: Father, can I have the car tonight?Priest: Just as long as you don't get in the habit.
- Rapid-Fire Comedy: Taken to extremes. Skits could be as short as five seconds, with even shorter, Dada-esque bits in between.
- Refuge in Audacity: The show wasn't shy at all about taboo topics. The Klan briefly appear in the second episode.
- Sensory Abuse:
- The synthesizer sounds punctuating every skit are mixed very loudly. To say nothing of the constant stream of images between longer skits (relatively speaking). Even the hyperspeed theme song could count. Put together it could all induce a headache, and appropriately enough, the single aired episode was sponsored by Bufferin.
- Producer Digby Wolfe described the show as "a visual, comedic, sensory assault involving [...] animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics... even people." To be sure, the show is very liberal with all of these elements.
- Sequential Art: A recurring bit where the screen is split into four quarters, to emulate a comic-style in live-action. Meaning that with every successive line of dialogue, the actor in the previous panel will just... freeze, and stare blankly ahead.
- Short-Runners: One of the most infamous bombs in American TV history, with ABC hastily canceling it after an affiliate backlash during the debut episode.
- Silence Is Golden: The infamous "SEX" sketch, the longest routine on the aired episode, and probably the one that sealed its cancellation, was set on an all-black background, with just "sex" printed at the top, and the heads of Tim Conway and cast member Bonnie Boland at the bottom, as they express a whole bunch of wordless emotions as the printed word goes through various punctuations (SEX? SEX!!!) to illustrate their feelings.
- Sketch Comedy: One of the most fast-paced examples of this trope in television history.
- So Unfunny, It's Funny: The bits in this vein have aged a lot better than the edgier bits.Cop 1: (holding a stack of magazines) Wanna take some of this pornographic literature home with you tonight?
Cop 2: I don't even have a pornograph! - Surreal Humor: All kinds of it! As many a modern critic has pointed out, it's not too far removed from the madness that Tim & Eric would make their names with, but audiences in 1969 were not at all ready for that.
- Swiss Bank Account: This exchange between two men standing in front of a huge globe.Man 1: Tell me, where is the capital of South Vietnam?
Man 2: (spins the globe over toward Europe) Mostly over here, in Swiss bank accounts. - Throwing Off the Disability: A man in a wheelchair sees a DON'T WALK sign , then when it changes to WALK he gets up and walks.
- White Void Room: The setting for the entire show.
