Follow the Sun Promotional Spot

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Here’s a promotional spot for ABC’s Follow the Sun, which ran for 30 episodes during the 1961-1962 season. Unrelated to the 1951 film of the same name, the drama series starred Brett Halsey and Barry Coe as magazine writers living in Hawaii and Gary Lockwood as their research assistant. Gigi Perreau played their secretary. The series premiered on September 17th, 1961 and the final first-run episode was broadcast on April 8th, 1962.


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4 Replies to “Follow the Sun Promotional Spot”

  1. This was part of ABC programmer (and president) Ollie Treyz’s effort to create an action/adventure alternative on Sunday nights in the 1961-’62 season. This was the schedule {all time Eastern}:

    6:30 MAVERICK
    7:30 FOLLOW THE SUN
    8:30 LAWMAN
    9:00 BUS STOP
    10:00 ADVENTURES IN PARADISE

    Three of the five series were from 20th Century-Fox (including this one); the others were from Warner Bros.- those were the main studios that gave Treyz and the network what they wanted: action/adventure/Western/detective shows that younger audiences [and advertisers trying to reach them] wanted to see. By 1961, however, Treyz had “gorged” on these kind of shows {especially the kind that looked too much like variations of Warner’s “77 SUNSET STRIP”}, and they were dragging the network’s ratings and prestiege into a slump…exactly the kind of programming F.C.C. chairman Newton Minow had denounced in his famous May 1961 speech, accusing network television of being “a vast wasteland”…and nowhere was that more evident than ABC’s own schedule.

    After a Senate investigating committee denounced the notorious “BUS STOP” episode “A Lion Walks Among Us” (adapted from an obscure Tom Wicker novel) in February 1962, virtually the entire Sunday line-up “fell apart”. Ollie Treyz was fired, and “BUS STOP” and “ADVENTURES IN PARADISE” were replaced in April by ABC’s first Sunday night movie, “HOLLYWOOD SPECIAL”. “FOLLOW THE SUN”, which was already close to cancellation because more viewers were watching “THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW” on CBS, and NBC’s ‘WALT DISNEY’S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR” (which, as “WALT DISNEY PRESENTS”, ABC had virtually “thrown away” the previous season), was off the air at the end of the season.

  2. Consitering how popular ADVENTURES IN PARADISE was, the network should have moved it to another night.

    With it’s location shooting,strong lead and good guest stars, it might have been cost factors and not overall raitings that motivated ABC to kill it.

    Getting another show from Warner Brothers was alot cheaper. They still had a decent foothold on ABC for another two seasons.

  3. Keep in mind, Herb, that the third season of “ADVENTURES IN PARADISE” (on Sundays) competed against CBS’ “CANDID CAMERA” [the #1 series in its time period] and “WHAT’S MY LINE?”, and NBC’s “prestiege” program, “THE DuPONT SHOW OF THE WEEK”…so it was a matter of total viewers…and that fact that the majority of the Sunday night schedule was “falling apart”, that ABC decided it wasn’t worth it to renew “ADVENTURES” for a fourth season.

  4. Hank Simms is the announcer in the promo…there’s space at :53 for a live announcer to add, “Sunday at 7:30, 6:30 Central Time, over most of these stations”.

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