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The Strike is Struck -- What's Next?
The wait’s almost over, radio fans. After long but fruitful months of negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and their benevolent bosses at the studios, the writer’s strike has ended, and your favorite programs are zipping their way back toward your waiting ears. No more insipid quiz shows or pre-recorded repeats for you, America! Here’s a preview of what to expect from your favorite returning programs!
Jack Power of the C.T.U.: The popular 20th Century Fox Broadcasting series, featuring screen star Mr. Keith Southerland as the two-fisted head of the government’s Communist Tracking Unit, returns after a lackluster seventh season. Though audiences still thrilled to the work of the gifted radio artists who created such convincing sounds of bones cracking, flesh burning, and Red agents screaming as ol’ Jack gave them the working over they thoroughly deserved, listeners found the plot’s political maneuverings a bit too labyrinthine. This season, producers promise to ditch the inscrutable forces of Red China as the primary villain, in favor of a sinister Fifth Column plot within our own country. As long as they bring back Jack’s delightfully tart-tongued secretary Chloe (Miss Mary Lynn Rogers), we’ll be happy! The John Birch Society and Ford Motor Company return as the program’s sponsors for the seventh straight year.
Acme Staples Presents The Co-Workers: America’s favorite workplace returns with a manila folder full of laughter! Mr. Steven Carrell, fresh from his successful turn in the Hollywood blockbuster Congressman Noah, reprises his role as Michael Scott, the lovably bumbling manager of the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company, along with Mr. Ralph Wilson as his scheming subordinate Dwight. If you thought Michael had trouble keeping the office in order before, just wait until this season, when he learns that his new boss is a dame — and she’s hungry for a man like him! And don’t worry, romance fans; producers promise that the tender love affair between salesman Jim Harper (Mr. John Cross) and timid office girl Miss Beasley (Miss Jennifer Fisher) will experience its fair share of ups and downs in the new episodes.
The Johnson & Johnson Showcase, featuring Seattle Nurses: If your hearts are beating faster, ladies, there’s no need to see a doctor — it’s just the impending return of your favorite group of romantic young nurses, and the physicians they love! When we last left Nurse Grey (Miss Ellen Palmer), she feared she had lost the heart of Dr. Shepherd (Mr. Patrick Dempsey) — to her own half-sister! Keep your tissues handy, girls, because the scheming Alexandra (Miss Charlotte Leigh) isn’t going anywhere yet. Producer Shaun Rimes does promise that we’ll learn whether Nurse Towers (Miss Callista Ramirez) will ever win back her straying husband, Dr. O’Malley (Mr. T.R. Knight), after catching him in a passionate kiss with Nurse Stevens (Miss Katharine Hale). Who says the fairer sex lacks for quality entertainment?
Marooned!: Due to its unorthodox production schedule, the NBC Blue Network’s acclaimed suspense drama — broadcast live on location from beautiful Hawaii, to more authentically capture the sounds of the rain forest — has already aired half its season thus far, and will return in less than a month to round out the year. Fans have acclaimed this as the series’ best year since its first, full of spine-tingling mystery and tropical adventure.
Who are the mysterious sailors who say they’ve come to rescue our band of castaways? What sinister plot is the evil Professor Linus (Mr. Michael Emerson) hatching? Will shipwrecked heiress Kate (Miss Eva Lilly) choose between the roguish con man Sawyer (Mr. Joshua Holloway) or the handsome Dr. Shepard (Mr. Matthew Fox) — or will Dr. Shepard fall sway to the enigmatic Juliet (Miss Elizabeth Mitchell), the former bride-to-be of Professor Linus himself? Will that portly scamp Hurley (Mr. George Garcia) make off with the food again? And could the long-lost traitor Michael (Mr. Harold Perrin, written off the series a year ago) be returning? We can only hope that these and many more questions — what does that smoke creature the castaways keep describing actually sound like? — will be answered this year.
Other favorites: Sadly, not all of our beloved programs will be returning so swiftly; some will keep eager listeners waiting until next fall. The Nissan Adventure Hour will be back in September with exciting new chapters of Slans, the funnybook-inspired tale of ordinary humans whose superior genetics give them exceptional abilities. This fall, we’ll hear the evil Sylarski (Mr. Zachary Quentin) assemble a League of Villainy to challenge the forces of right, and follow Mr. Pocketwatch (Mr. Jack Coleman), so dubbed by enthusiasts for the familiar ticking sound that heralds his arrival, as he returns to government work to protect his young daughter Clara (Miss Helen Powers).
Newer programs will also return, including Domino Sugar Showcase, with Ned the Piemaker, recounting more folksy and fanciful tales from the quaint little town of Coeur D’ Coeur, and a particular favorite of this Radiot, Secret Agent C.B.. I heartily enjoyed this light-hearted serial about a mild-mannered young radio enthusiast (Mr. Zachary Long), unwitting interceptor of a secret government transmission over his ham radio set, that transforms him into a living repository of government secrets. Miss Yvonne Strong made a charming foil as the knockout G-woman assigned to keep him out of vile Communist hands, and Mr. Adam Baldwin, fondly remembered from Stagecoach of the Starways, provided excellent comic relief as the hero’s gruff G.I. bodyguard.
With such an embarrassment of entertainment headed our way in the coming months, I say we hold a strike every year! Alas, it seems the writers and the studios are just too chummy to ever make that crazy dream of mine happen.