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Welcome to the Television Obscurities, home to an ever-expanding collection of oddities, curiosities and relics from television's past and present. Inside these pages you'll find some fifty articles covering subjects like short-lived programs, unsold pilots, lost television promos and much, much more.

With over three hours of streaming audio and video Television Obscurities offers an unique look at forgotten aspects of American broadcast television. If this is your first time visiting us, please take a moment to read our About Us page. And be sure to take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions page.

Be sure to fill out our site survey. Your responses are appreciated.

Latest News and Updates

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Now, for the first time, the power to choose the next article to appear on Television Obscurities is in the hands of you, the readers, thanks to the following nifty poll. Pick which of the three possible articles you would most like to see and whichever article wins, we'll write!

Here are the possibilities:

"Toma": An hour-long crime drama that aired on ABC from 1973-1974. It starred Tony Musante as David Toma, an undercover detective with an uncanny ability to disguise himself. When Musante declined to return for a second season, Robert Blake was signed to replace him. Instead, Blake would go on to star in Baretta beginning in January of 1975.

Selena Mead: The Show That Almost Was: Polly Bergan was signed to star in a half-hour series based on Patricia McGerr's short stories starring secret agent Selena Mead. Although scheduled by CBS for its 1965-1966 season, the series never materialized.

Midseason 1979: The three networks premiered more than twenty programs between January and March of 1979 as part of a massive midseason campaign that for the most part completely and utterly failed. Remember Flatbush? What about Turnabout, Little Women, Married: The First Year or Co-ed Fever?

Advanced Poll
Which article would you like to see next?
"Toma"
Selena Mead: The Show That Almost Was
Midseason 1979


View results
Version 2.03

The voting period ends in seven days, so vote soon and tell all your friends.

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

This is it, the big one, the great conversion to Flash Video that turned into a complete overhaul of all our articles to include citations and, in many cases, a total rewrite. We're especially proud of our articles on The New People and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., which have been expanded considerably with new information from Broadcasting magazine and other sources.

In addition, we've shifted the focus of some of our articles:

  • The Batgirl Presentation Short: Retitled Batgirl and the Batman Phenomenon; expanded to include information on Batman's rise and fall.
  • The 10 Most Outlandish TV Concepts Ever: Retitled 10 of the Most Outlandish TV Concepts Ever; we've removed our rankings due to the subjective nature of what constitutes the "most outlandish" concept ever.
  • The Star Wars Holiday Special: Retitled Star Wars on Network Television; now covers the history of the Star Wars franchise on broadcast television, from 1977 to 2005.
  • The Return of Starbuck: Retitled A Tale of Two Galacticas; now looks at the reasons Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980 failed.
  • NBC Promotional Packet For Star Trek: Retitled Building NBC's 1966-1967 Schedule; expanded to cover all the work that went into crafting the 1966-1967 schedule.
  • Forty Years of Star Trek: Retitled A Look At Star Trek; examines Star Trek's scheduling, Nielsen ratings, critical response, demographics and more.

One article, Coin Operated TV: Telemeter, still needs to be rewritten, but our research on the topic is still underway, so we have left it untouched for the moment. Another article, Smallville: The Unaired Pilot, has been removed so we can work them it into a new article: Unaired Pilots.

We've also launched something new called Exhibits, where we will display videos, images and other material that does not or would not fit into a typical article. To start things off, we've converted Famous Faces Do Commercials from an article to an exhibit with twenty-five commercials for your viewing enjoyment. Also converted to an exhibit is our article on Television Promotion.

And finally, check out our new Video Vault for many of the videos that were part of our defunct Video of the Week initiative. More videos will be added in the future.

Here at Television Obscurities, we're excited about future articles and exhibits currently in the works. Sometime next week we'll be putting a poll asking you which article (out of three or four potentials) you'd like to see next. Please Contact Us if you find any broken links or missing images or just have comments or questions on the relaunch.

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