The Lack Of Action Car Shows On Modern TV

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The Lack Of Action Car Shows On Modern TV

Post by Sith » Fri Sep 17, 2004 2:29 pm

"The Dukes of Hazzard" was a program with two hot guys who walked around bare-chested, a pinup girl so desirable that her ratty denim shorts ended up in the Smithsonian, and wizened old moonshiner Uncle Jesse -- the white-trash Yoda of his time.

All that talent, and a battered old car called the General Lee still received more than half of the show's fan mail.

Sure, there were a few famous actors in the mid-1980s, but the humans in programs such as "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Magnum, P.I." and "Knight Rider" were frequently overshadowed by the real stars: a 1983 Pontiac Trans-Am, a 1979 Ferrari GTS and a 1969 Dodge Charger.

In 2004, two decades after the peak of car-crash television, there are 17 reality shows on the fall television schedule and seven dramas with the words "Law & Order" or "CSI" in the title, but there isn't a single program that features weekly driving stunts. Last year's cancellation of "Fastlane" may have seemed like a blessing, but it left only reruns for viewers who want a serious dose of vehicular mayhem.

No wonder most 12-year-olds would rather play video games than watch TV. The expense of complicated stunts is part of what drove the networks away from car-themed shows, but perhaps studio decisionmakers have forgotten how much fun it was to watch 2 tons of American steel jump over a creekbed. Whether you were watching a couple of good ol' boys, a crack commando unit sent to prison for a crime it didn't commit or the unknown stuntman who makes Eastwood look so fine, the fall of 1984 was a wondrous time for connoisseurs of mindless television.

Of 72 shows on three networks in prime time, at least 13 featured weekly car crashes. There were shows about police ("T.J. Hooker," "CHiPs" and "Miami Vice"), outlaws ("The A-Team," "Hot Pursuit" and "The Dukes of Hazzard") and even a series that celebrated the stuntmen who made the whole thing possible ("The Fall Guy"). In most cases, at least one vehicle was so prominent it was practically a member of the cast -- whether it was Mr. T's van in "The A- Team," the Ferrari Daytona Spider in "Miami Vice" or the Coyote X in "Hardcastle and McCormick."

This season there are more than 120 programs on six networks, plus several dozen more on cable. Although shows such as "24," "Alias" and HBO's "The Wire" include the occasional car chase, the only series with the potential to match the vehicular carnage of a 1980s action drama such as "Hunter" is the newcomer cop show "Hawaii" on NBC.

Maybe it's mostly about the money -- car chases still thrive in movies -- but the lack of stunts on television also says a lot about the direction our Prius-buying, muscle-car-fearing society is headed in. TV police used to investigate crimes by barreling their Crown Victorias into the concrete bottom of the Los Angeles River and chasing a potential suspect until the whole thing ended in a ball of fiery mayhem. Now they use microscopes to solve cases. It may be good for ratings, but it can only mean bad things for the world supply of testosterone.

Whatever the reasons against producing another "Knight Rider," they are outweighed by the argument for studios to rush a talking car back on the small screen, pronto. Add a good vehicle to the cast, and your television show is walkout-proof. When the two biggest human stars on "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "CHiPs" temporarily left their shows in separate financial disagreements, the shows continued because enough viewers stuck around -- presumably to watch the stunts.

For now, the golden age of guilty-pleasure television can be rediscovered on DVD, where the producers of the "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Knight Rider" box sets have shown the good sense to give stunt coordinators equal billing in the bonus materials.

"Dukes" stunt-coordinating genius Paul Baxley reveals that there were 309 General Lees used during the seven-year life of the show (most ended up on the scrap heap).

"We got different kinds of cars to do different things," stunt coordinator Jack Gill explains in a "Knight Rider: Season One" bonus feature. "One would do 160 miles per hour and one was zero to 60 in 3 seconds. I had a car that would jump long distances and a car that would jump small distances and cars that were set up for dirt and cars that would do burnouts really well. We had a car with a big engine and a nitrous system in it so I could take off just like that."

If it were the mid-1980s, and you were a prepubescent male, chances were good that one of Gill's airborne cars was plastered on your lunchbox. Is there a single prime-time TV show that's Thermos-worthy today?



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Post by neps » Fri Sep 17, 2004 5:09 pm

Is there a single prime-time TV show that's Thermos-worthy today?


Yes, where is my "The Apprentice" lunch box, dang it!

To be honest, I don't know if a Knight Rider based show would work on the big networks, maybe WB or UPN. But todays audience seems to not want the cheese that a talking car show inevitably brings. Maybe a Fast and the Furious type show would be successful, cause the cars can be the tools to catching the bad guys. I mean, is anyone clamoring for a 2000's version of Alf?

It also comes down to a question of price. The cost to destroy a car, vs the cost to have a microscope must be pretty big. Especially when now they all want the reality shows that cost nothing to produce (no talent to pay), would a Network even invest in something like KR in the long term? If so it would probably be way too much CGI for anyones pleasure.

I do however enjoy the Fear Factor episodes where cars are involved. But I'm biased.

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Post by pewter 02ws6 » Fri Sep 17, 2004 5:17 pm

i agree with that 100%.i've had my fill of reality tv. television to me is something that should be your escape from the reality of life not having to see people dating,breaking up,getting makeovers,living on an island to see who will survive,winning a million dollars for doing something scary or even hanging out with a millionaire,etc.when i look back,most of my dreams as a kid and childhood memories revolved around the shows mentioned above.i look at the crap kids have to chose from on t.v. today and think it absolutely sucks!! my nephew(now 11)has been watching the dukes of hazzard and knight rider any chance he could over the last few years.it is pretty sad that even decades later,kids have no intrest in anything they have on tv today but watch these old shows like they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.the only present thing he does watch is transformers but we even had them back then.i can't think of any present show where any kid would pretend or dream of becoming the shows main character(the duke boys,michael knight,the fall guy,cop on chips,etc.)i wanted to be all of the mentioned when i was a kid. the sad thing is,if you have taken notice,everything seems to be going backwards.car manafacturers are going retro with the newer vehicles,some of the cartoons from that time are popping up slowly and letely i am seeing many toys that i had as a kid popping up on the shelves in stores.i just hope that television show creators follow the trend.

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Post by cloudkitt » Sat Sep 18, 2004 12:08 am

TV sucks, video games are the way to go.

Remember Viper? That was an action show for it's first season or two. Then they brought it back after being cancelled and it was a drama. In the last five minutes of the episode the car would fire some bullets and that's about it. Once again, recently, TV sucks
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Post by Stringfellow Hawke » Sat Sep 18, 2004 3:18 pm

In my mind, the reason why all these motorvehicle-related shows were cancelled, was because when CGI arrived fully, studio executives decided that their television and motion picture producers would use more CGI, because it's cost-effective, cheap, and not as expensive and doesn't take as long as setting-up and filming real-life stunts and live action special-effects.

Although I would say "24" is the only real big exception, with it's recent 3rd Season, which it's production budget was higher than any other show that was running at the time, nowadays, you just cannot find a show with expensive explosions and long-durated stunts.

I'm glad Sith has mentioned this -- I thought I was the only one who realised that shows which had expensive explosions and stunts every week had simply disappeared.

But nowadays, for a show to run as long as 3 seasons, it has to sacrifice spending thousands on large-scale action sequences and set-pieces, and rely more on decent script-writing, story-telling and cheap CGI.

Just look at the first few seasons of "J.A.G." and the first two seasons of "24" - they had their fair share of CGI shots, but FOX were beginning to have more faith and coinfidence with the show, that they dramatically increased the show's production budget, so that they could even have the U.S. Marines lease the crew two real-life F-18's, and also, have helicopters blow the hell out of Mexican farms, skyscraper offices, and have them chase each other over the city of Los Angeles.

It's pure and simple: the most visually expensive shows of the Eighties, ones being notably are "Airwolf" and "The A-Team", are a true thing of the past.

Nowadays, film-making is alot more expensive, because video doesn't really exist anymore (except for a few sitcoms), and setting-up and filming a simple dialouge scene, with PanaVision cameras, set props, etc. is actually classed as "expensive". Even location shooting is "expensive", compared to what it was in the Seventies and Eighties, and the likes of "Knight Rider", "Airwolf" and "The A-Team" thrived on being set in different locations, to make each of their episodes distinguisable from each other, and alot more remerable amongst their viewers and fans.

Even an episode of "Will and Grace" (which is simply just a comedy show, shot on a sound-stage, with no action at all) costs between $3-5 million dollars, when an episode of "Airwolf" (in it's 3 original CBS seasons - not the shoestring Canadian USA Network 4th Season!!) costed only $1.1 million dollars, and that show had plenty of massive aerials, explosions, action sequences and some of the best stunts ever shot.

Here is a snippet from an article on my website for "The Equalizer" series, and for those of you who have watched it before, you just ask yourself how "Murder, She Wrote" was so expensive, when there was no large-scale, expensive action sequences and special-effects in it:

"But shockingly enough, the show was cancelled after the 4th season, due to skyrocketing finances that were being contributed to the production of "Murder, She Wrote", which was confusing and irritating MCA Universal Television, who just simply decided to cease every other single series they had going, which were doing absolutely fine in the Nielsen ratings, in favour of the Angela Lansbury show, which lasted very impressively for 12 seasons, from 1984 to 1996."

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Post by Lost Knight » Sat Sep 18, 2004 6:23 pm

My thoughts exactly. Now I realize why I have little interest in any TV shows anymore and mostly stick to cable or DVDs. Although I do have to admit that some of the Reality shows can get interesting at times, however the whole concept is blown out of proportion. If it was just a few programs here and there like it used to be (Cops, The People's Court, The Real World, etc.) it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately it doesn't appear likely that major television networks will ever return to their previous action shows of the 80s.

The fact is a reality television show is a lot cheaper to make than any action show with a lot of stunts, being that there is little to no writing, no need to pay millions of dollars to overpaid arrogant actors, little to no sets, and it's just easier to turn a camera on and follow people around, plus the fact that a lot of these shows like The Apprentice get higher ratings than a lot of actions shows had. If they can achieve such high ratings from these reality shows (despite the fact that there's really no choice anymore but to watch a reality show anyway), from a business standpoint, it wouldn't be logical to go a more expensive route and take a chance on a show with a lot of stunts and action sequences.

Shows like Seinfeld, Frasier, and Friends got very high ratings because they're about every day situations or relationships that the majority of the world can relate to. Frankly, it annoys the hell out of me that creative sci-fi shows don't do as well and are much harder to find. The majority of these shows are put on the Sci-Fi Channel, or UPN with seemingly small budgets and cheap cartoonish looking CGI sequences. One of the many things I loved about Knight Rider and other 80s shows were that they never relied on or used any CGI sequences whatsoever. They used real cafefully coordinated stunts; when you see that Trans Am flying flying through the air, it is actually flying across the air, or when K.I.T.T. changes into SPM, there is no cartoonish computer effect showing the metamorphosis. They may have used different cars, but it was still real.

Any time I've ever seen a creative show that wasn't about these bland overkilled plot ideas, it either struggled in ratings or was cancelled after a season or two. It was adequately put that there is no more fantasy, it's all reality. Television used to be an escape, not an outlet to watch other people struggle and go through drama and think to ourselves "glad that's not me."
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Post by cloudkitt » Sun Sep 19, 2004 12:45 am

JAG's a great show. That's probably the only current show I watch. But you're right, the early season had much more action.
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Post by btwracing » Sat Sep 25, 2004 6:34 pm

Yeah, TV stinks these days. I watch the apprentice just to see how the contestants handle projects. It's a good learning experience.

Video games are cool. I wished they'd bring our KR for the Xbox. Anyway, I still watch ninja turtles on sat. morning cartoons, just for the nostalgia. A lot of us sure grew up with some excellent shows/cartoons.

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Post by KnightRiderGirl » Mon Sep 27, 2004 1:18 pm

They showed a prieview for a cartoon that is coming out on Cartoon Network next year called "Stroker and Hoop". It appears to be a mixed parody of "Knight Rider" and "Starsky and Hutch". When i watched the episode, I was appauled....

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Post by Skav » Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:58 pm

i've said this before, tv today is so much more serious.

gone are the days of camp shows where everything was light hearted and fun.

the 80's are slowly coming back into fashion but i doubt we'd see tv like that again...although i'm still hoping.
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Post by Lost Knight » Mon Sep 27, 2004 4:34 pm

It's pretty sad that things suck so much nowadays that everything has to attempt to go back to the 80s or other time periods, except for television so far. Even music (rock music has a lot of newer bands with retro styles, and hip hop constantly samples old records). Things should keep rolling forward but keep the same element of fun & uniqueness that made past decades so much more fun.
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Post by Knightwolf » Tue Sep 28, 2004 4:27 pm

I thought there was hope for the world of prime time television when NBC brought Hunter back last year. It had all the greatness of 80's TV, including a good number of car chases, but due to the unforgivable mismanagement by NBC (they put the show in the 8pm saturday time slot, and advertised it as the 9pm time slot) the show didn't get ratings and was cut after only 4 episodes. Insted NBC decided to go with an all "Law and Order" lineup for saturday night for the rest of the season.

Well, In any case, the big 3 networks have gone to the dogs. Heck on CBS almost everything is reality TV now (with the exception of Dan Rather and the CBS nightly news LOL, Nowadays I'm more inclined to believe in a talking car then the words of Dan Rather)

Alright I'm done with my ranting : )

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Post by Michael Pajaro » Tue Sep 28, 2004 4:45 pm

I almost agree with you Stringfellow regarding the fate of video vs. film on TV... except for that pesky HDTV. Those big expensive action-adventure shows of the 80s could now be done with HDTV much more easily than with film. Still expensive, but costs are coming down every year. I expect that video still has quite a long life ahead of itself and will actually be replacing film in a lot of TV production.
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Post by Lost Knight » Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:07 am

Whoa, they brought back Hunter? Looks like it went as fast as it came.
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