![]() Now it is common to see gay or lesbian characters. As I wrote above – this was the ‘70s, and things like that weren’t part of the normal viewing schedule. It was situation comedy about the Tate family, but what ruffled the public’s feathers was the character played by Billy Crystal – an openly gay man. One more show that caused quite a stir was “Soap”. ![]() Again, I doubt there is a network that would even consider a show like that today. ![]() George Jefferson can best be described as a black Archie Bunker, only living in a better part of town. Can you honestly see any network trying to get a show like that on the air in today’s politically correct times? Not a chance. I won’t use any of the words he used, but think of all the derogatory and racist names used for other races, religions and nationalities and you’ve pretty much got Archie’s world view. Keep in mind this was the early ‘70s, therefore the show was quite controversial. The other star was Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie Bunker, a dyed-in-the-wool bigot. Jean Stapleton, for those too young to remember, was one of the stars of “All in the Family”. I said the major networks, and by that I mean the American networks. But, enough of CITY – they’ve become civilized now. I recall reading an article in one of the Toronto papers at the time that said on Friday nights it was common for people (read “men”) to drive to a place near the border with their television sets they could plug into the lighter socket in the car, and hope they could catch CITY’s signal across the lake. There was also CITY-TV in Toronto which, very late on Friday nights, would run what they called the “Baby Blue” movies – basically soft-core porn. Of course, living in southern Ontario as I do, in addition to those, I also had access to the two major Canadian networks, CBC and CTV. But back then you were pretty much stuck with the three major networks, plus PBS if you were lucky. With the wealth of cable channels available now, no matter what you want to watch, you can probably find it somewhere on the dial. Let me clarify that – network television pushed the limits, cable being virtually non-existent. ![]() A friend and I were talking earlier this week, following the death of actress Jean Stapleton, and we both agreed that television pushed the limits more in the 1970s than today. ![]()
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