TV Series

Some Of My Best Friends

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS (1969)

An experimental seven hour marathon sensitivity training session with seven African-Americans and seven Jews, edited into a two hour program. The traditional civil rights partnership between Blacks and Jews was being shredded by white fears of Black Power, the black uprisings in many American cities and black demands for community control of school boards, demands for police civilian review boards and control over the economies in their neighborhoods. The program was an attempt to bring greater understanding between the two groups and heal the rift.

“a remarkable experiment in communications,” Dean Gysel, Chicago Daily News

The 51st State (1972-1976)

The 51st State, a local news show, was created when New York City was in financial crisis. John Lindsay was mayor, crime and heroin were rampant, Serpico was blowing the whistle on police corruption, the Vietnam War was still raging, women and gays were pushing all boundaries and the arts, both uptown and down were flourishing. The show covered the news from the bottom up, reporting stories from all over the city, and provided an unprecedented context, depth, analysis and understanding for issues that most news organizations ignored. Broadcast five nights a week at 10 PM, the 51st State hired young filmmakers and seasoned investigative reporters who broke stories that allowed ordinary citizens to participate and comment on the stories that affected them directly. Nat Hentoff wrote in the Village Voice:

“This provocative, unpredictable nightly news show is beginning to present a formidable challenge to print journalism while leaving the other local television news operations light years behind. The question now is how those of us reporters without a camera are going to keep up with this really new journalism.”

The 51st State was the first and last news show of its kind.

For more information on The 51st State, visit thirteen.org.

The Great American Dream Machine

This ground breaking show was the first to combine animation, short films, satirical sketches, drama and political commentary in a magazine format that ran the gamut from pathos to humor. Created by NET for PBS, it highlighted the difference between the American Dream and reality. Featuring actors Chevy Chase, Marshall Efron, Stacey Keach, Charles Grodin, Henry Winkler, Elaine Stritch, Albert Brooks, Alan Arkin, Renee Taylor and Joe Bologna; and columnists, Nicholas Von Hoffman, Howard Kurtzman, and William Rusher, the show won an Emmy and received rave reviews: ”

Comes close to being what television is all about.”
– The Washington Post

“–a wacky, wishful, wonderful, wise conglomeration of extravagant creations that brings a dazzling mental stimulation to the visual screen.”
– The Boston Globe

 

The Inner Core: City Within A City (1968)

This EMMY wining series was made for Wisconsin Public Television station WHA to examine the condition of Milwaukee’s African-American population (1968). It was prompted by more than seven months of marches by African American citizens protesting the deplorable housing conditions of Milwaukee’s Inner-City. The series included a half hour documentary on inner-city housing and four live town meetings, some lasting as long as two and half hours, that dealt with housing, the police, medical care and jobs. One day after the housing segment aired, Milwaukee’s Common Council passed an Open Housing Law banning discrimination in housing based on race. Many people credited the program with the bill’s passage which had been languishing in the Common Council for months.

“Television at its serviceable best,” The Capital Times
See Video.WPT.org “The Inner Core: City within a City”