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Now and Now Media December sixth, twenty twenty three, allegedly according to that
thing we call a calendar, and this is the Ocelli effects. So you
might notice I sound a little stronger, but still a little stuffed up.
We're still recovering over here, but a lot better than I was a couple
of weeks ago. So welcome to it. Welcome to Wednesday or Wodin's Day
in the middle of the week. Now, this is an interesting topic.
The topic, the guests you may be familiar with if you've listened to my
show for a while, for sure, But the topic is different. Why,
you know, different types of media have different effects. Sometimes, you
know, media is just entertainment and it's just junk food for the brain,
and that's all there is to it. Uh. People figure out a while
ago to stop writing scripts. They could just bring on real people, create
circumstances and have reality TV. Sure, that's something that went on and still
goes on. As we're living through yet another incarnation of the Jersey Shore.
I think I'm not living through it, but somebody is because they're making it
anyway, it is what it is. And of course I've talked on this
program about the evolution of the talk show even the other day, discussing what
Phil Donahue and the fact that he had a format that was sort of picked
up by Oprah Winfrey, et cetera, et cetera, and later on evolved
into the Jerry Springer experience. They called those things talk shows. But the
way Springer did it, it was what the Battle of the idiots, and
who knows if all those idiots were actual real people are not they could have
been actors. And later on they took that format and gave it over to
his security guy, the bald guy, Steve Wilcos Right. Anyway, the
evolution of various types of media, it's effect on society and society effect on
it is actually what we might end up discussing tonight. Why there was a
phenomena, you know, at some point, and it was some years ago
really at its height of popularity. Unsolved mysteries now that fits a lot into
true crime, and true crime is a genre that continues, especially in the
podcast world. It is one of the most popular types of podcast. It's
one of the most popular types of TV. Show, it's almost always a
winner. Check any network or streaming service. They got plenty of true crime,
and Unsolved mysteries kind of fell into that category, but it was different.
Along with things like America's Most Wanted, the audience was meant to get
involved anyway. I find this interesting, just like I find the evolution of
Like I said, even even reality TV kind of interesting, starting with real
people. If you think about it, back in the seventies there with John
Barber's creation and what a monster he created, going on to basketball wives and
every other maniac thing that happened the real world, et cetera. Unsolved Mysteries,
though, is a weird thing because I don't think anything really evolved from
it, although it was baked into that true crime sorta genre, and yet
it was its own thing too. I'm not going to discuss this on my
own. I've got veteran journalist Albert Lanier with me who wrote a piece about
this. Now. He wrote this a little ways back, but due to
the fact that I had to go to Dallas and then I spent three weeks
sick, we got a couple of months here that I probably should have gotten
him on a couple of months ago, and I meant to, and then
crazy stuff kept happening, so and the road trip to Dallas and all that.
So you guys know, I've been busy. It's been crazy, the
network's been weird. So I finally got back around to bring on Albert Lanier
again at the tail end, and because he's probably discussed this in other places
with a couple other people, but but guarantee you won't hear this conversation anywhere
else. He wrote a piece about unsolved mysteries, and we're going to talk
about that along with god knows what else because I never script this either.
Uh, mister Lanier, how are you doing tonight? I'm fine, turning
out. I love the taxonomy and the digression of your evolution of talk shows,
the way that Phil Donahue begat, Oprah Biquett begat Jerry Springer. I
actually liked that because I thought that was great. So I just wanted to
come out and say, love the opening. Love the opening. You know,
it's nothing to do with unsolved mysteries. I like it even better because
it has nothing to do with unsolved mysteries. But I love that opening because
I used to watch the Phil Donahue Show. Right, that's a whole other
show to talk about. But this is a first for me, as people
who have heard me on The o'chill Effect and another shows probably are aware.
I'm in kind of brand new territory now. I was a journalist, and
I was a writer for twenty two years, freelance writer for twenty two years.
And I among the things that I did as a journalist and a freelancer
was I was a film reviewer for about eight years or so, or online
film reviewer. I used to cover film festivals. I wasn't a TV critic,
so let me just state that from the outset. If there are fans
of Unsolved Mysteries or other TV shows, I'm not a TV critic. I
don't know much about TV critics, film film film critics. I know I've
met them, I've interviewed them. I've talked to other film reviewers, so
I know that I know that aspect very well. I don't know anything about
TV critics. I know a couple what's just name Tom Shields. I think
of Washing Post. It was John J. O'Connor. I think the New
York Times. But I don't know anything about TV criticism. And this is
a first for me because I've never really talked about a TV show, and
so people are probably wondering, well, if you're a journalist and you're a
freelance writer, and you were a freelance writer, and you were a journalist
and you're a writer, why are you talking about TV now? Well,
I'll tell you. I found out, Oh, I guess late September,
early October about the anniversary of Unsolved Mysteries, Okay, And that got me
to thinking. I've been on a number of podcasts since twenty nineteen where I
have analyzed true crime content. You talk about the explosion and true crime and
that it's very successful. That's what I had heard because I was I actually
got started talking about true crime by actually supposedly I was going to go on
another show and talk, you know, go back to another show and talk
about a subject, and the host wasn't that interest in the subject. I
asked, So, what are you interested in? Her crime? Hot Hollywood?
I went, okay, Well, the only thing I know I didn't
follow true crime. Now. I listened to a couple of podcasts here and
there, but I didn't know so the death of Bob Crane and the death
of Natalie Wood were the only ones that're kind of familiar with, And so
that's how I started in terms of true crime. Now why do I say
all that, Because when I was on these shows and I still do it,
from hind to Todd analyzing true crime cases, host would ask me,
how did you find out about this particular case or that particular case, how
to come to your attention? And the answer is, I saw it an
Unsolved Mysteries. I saw this segment on the original Unsolved Mysteries. I saw
that segment, and so I decided if I can say that I saw this
on Nsolved Mysteries or I got this case from Unsolved Mysteries when I talk about
Unsolved Mysteries, never wanted to, but I thought seems fair to me.
So that's initially how this all I started that I'm talking about. Okay,
well, and I have a question right here because Unsolved Mysteries in a way,
as I said during the introduction, fits in the true crime genre,
but also doesn't because not everything on Unsolved Mysteries was true crime. Some things
were just weird circumstances or long lost relatives. Even they had all sorts of
things like this. You know, here's somebody was born, their father had
to leave the country. I remember specifically a couple of them were, you
know, like somebody who was a military person and they maybe had a child
and they weren't aware of how to find that child. And a couple of
those were on there. So it wasn't always crime. It might have indeed
been something that was a mystery to someone in their life. They were adopted.
Uh, they had lost track of an item even a couple of times.
It was a special item, right, something that was important to a
family legacy in one way or another. It was weird. And also there
were disappearances and there were crimes. Now, I even confided in you that
I had recently gotten a hold of an artifact from Unsolved Mysteries, which was
weird. It was a random occurrence. I got a hold of their copy
of the Zuppruter film again because I'm a JFK guy, you know, And
they did some enhancements and stuff like that, because they had done some stuff
on the Kennedy assassination on Unsolved Mysteries. Now, I don't even remember the
episode, honestly, I don't either. Yeah, it's funny because I know
they did a segment on Martin Luther King right, and they did at least
a couple of segments on Robert Kennedy. Yes, I think one it was
about a photographer with taking photos there. The other was about the assassination in
general. I don't recall them doing anything on JFK. Now, again,
let me have another disclaimer here and say I do not know. Although I
did research into Unsolved Mysteries for not only the piece I ended up writing about,
but also come on shows like this and talk about it, I do
not know every segment, every case, and every episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
So please, if you react to me on Facebook or on X or elsewhere,
please I don't know every segment. I don't know everyone. I only
got to watch like a few episodes in preparation even for this, even for
this interview today. Last night I was watching their documentary. They had a
new documentary commemorating the thirty fifth anniversary called Unsolved Mysteries Behind the Legacy, which
I think is available on YouTube now, And so I saw that. I
saw the first episode of Unsolved last night. Again, I had seen it
previously as part of my research, right, So I thought again, and
I saw a couple other first season episodes, so I do not know every
episode just so that I let it. I don't know every case. I
don't know what wet no fair enough. And look, if you go to
an unsolved dot com no kidding, they have that web address. If you
go there, you can still see uh stuff about the program, the legacy
of it, uh mysteries that are as yet still unsolved. And I had
Jamie Scott Enured on this show, by the way, just as a follow
up on the RFK thing, that photographer. I had that photographer on the
show. I think I used it still from Unsolved Mysteries to promote it because
it was one of the best pictures that they had of him out there at
the time. And I used it because I was like, hey, look,
I want to talk about his photographs because that is an interesting I don't
know if you're familiar with the details there, but again they are little yeah.
Well, they were reaching out to the public and saying, look,
if you know something, and in a lot of cases they found that there
were people that had tips that had information that could present something to the people
at Unsolved Mysteries one way or another that would be indeed helpful in some cases.
Like I said, there were victims of things, there were people that
disappeared, you know, all kinds of stuff. And if you look on
there now they have, you know, episodes they show you are on various
streaming platforms. Other are episodes on Netflix and Hulu and all of that.
So, you know, and this is a weird thing because again it's not
really true crime, but there are true crime elements to it. And again
Peacock, Pluto, you know, all these different things. YouTube even has
episodes of this. It's like, which is the company? I believe that
if they don't own the rights and there the distributor, that that's still that
the distributes on Solved Mysteries right for broadcast, stir or other kinds of platforms.
So and I've watched Unsolved Mysteries on YouTube for the past couple of years,
so I have been watching episodes. To be fair, I know people
are going to ask me, did you watch the original Unsolved Mysteries? Yes,
I did. I watched it when I was in college, get home
from a late class, get off the bus into my apartment, and it
was I was just in time. To watch it. So I did see
it years ago. I saw the original, so getting to and it was
on multiple networks, just really quickly for just for context here, it was
on various networks. Started out on NBC in nineteen eighty seven and then continued
on to well, let's see, continued on to CBS for the Tennessee,
you know, all these different things. It was across all different networks and
then eventually went to Lifetime in two thousand, which is you know, so
this is something that continued on and I'm trying to figure that one out.
How how did Lifetime get that show? I don't know. I didn't look
at this. I wasn't able to find the specific details. I know Lifetime
was airing reruns of the show, I think when it was still in first
run. Yes, so that might have been one aspect today, right and
the Yeah, they went up commissioning new episodes though, which was interesting because
it was sort of thought to be, uh, you know, no longer
viable commercially and you know, just sort of like the odd thing with Star
Trek. It was so cheap that it went across all the independent uh you
know, TV channels for a while, and because of its wide distribution actually
gained greater popularity than if they had held out for more money trying to distribute
the thing, which is really a fascinating model, right right, Well and
back then. You know, it's funny you mentioned that because cause well I'm
a lifelong Star Trek fan, and Star Trek is one of those shows that
chose the power of syndication. Yes, like syndicating shows, So that's an
indication of that. And they reinvented syndications. Star Trek just as a side
note, reinvented syndication when they went to the next generation. I'm I'm quite
aware of media. Yeah, first run, they they tear them out first
run, and they were spending big money as a first run syndicated show.
They were spending big money on Star Trek Generation. It's not that the cast
got it at first. I mean, what I heard of the conditions,
I should be talking about Star Trek. But uh, it's interesting, that's
a whole other episode. I'm gon go and talk about Star Trek the next
Generation. Well, absolutely, Star Trek, but I got to talk about
unsolved Let's let's get back into unsolved mysteries. But it's worth bringing up that
that this is something to you know, there's the business of it, and
then there was the phenomena of it. And next generation skipped this whole process
of going to a network in the first place. Uh, they did it
to uh and and then later on they would use star Trek to literally launch
a network, which is really fast. Right, Like, Star Trek is
an interesting thing in media history anyway, whether you're like star Trek or not.
But anyway, but I get talked about the Star Trek all day.
Maybe I'm getting next time you're mentioning, Yeah, you were mentioning, I
want to do derails because I love Star Treks. Unsold Mysteries had an interesting
history, So let me just deal with the history of this first Unsold Mysteries.
Unlike was unlike the vast majority of primetime network TV shows when it aired
in the late eighties. The first thing was that it technically was an one
hour or what they call an hour long show. Like the two acic aspects
of TV are the half hour sitcom and the hour on drama. Right,
So technically Unsolved was an hour long show, but it was not an hour
long strictly fictional or scripted dramatic show. Well, what do you think show?
Yeah, what do you think about my assertion that it was like one
of those shows in that time period that was meant to have public involvement,
Like it was interactive in a way like America's Most Wanted and a few other
shows where they literally would evoke public response, call us, let us know,
participate in this show, literally help us figure things out. Either it
was to catch criminal or to catch somebody, or to find something that was
kind of a sub genre also right at that time. So go ahead,
well, well what happened is this? Your point is an interesting one because
that was what I called the part of the two selling points of the show.
As I called one was viewer interaction. At first there was a peel
box for Unsolved Mysteries. When it became a series, and then it became
the one eight hundred number, so viewer interaction. If you know something,
call us here. Then the other selling point was what I call the basis
of the show, what the show essentially was, which was what I call
a multi varied, multi faceted show, unlike even shows prior that are what
I call true life shows, meaning dealing with true factual subject matter. I'll
give you an example of a show because I compare it a little in my
peak in my piece in my article, there was a show for a number
of years hosted strangely enough by an actor from Star Trek, Leonard Newboys,
called In Search Of. In Search Of was not an hour long, It
was a half hour show, but it was a show that it was a
show that dealt with subject historical subject matter primarily, but also paranormal and various
other types of subject matter. But it was the episodes were done on a
subject by subject basis, meaning if they looked at something like Jack the Ripper
or the Mary Celeste, they looked at it, or Stonehenge or something,
they looked at it entirely for the half hour. Through the half hour.
Stoneheands was one of my favorite ones actually, where they just how did this
happen? They would ask the question and they would put some you know,
interesting accounts this that serre's some evidence, and there was a half hour good.
So In search Of to me was the kind of I would call it
standard true life show. I saw. Mysteries was different in that it was
from In Search Of obviously in that it one was an hour long show,
right, but it was also a show. And I make this point that
basically took I think I made this point in my in my article that it
takes the basis of news, which I would say are the block or segment
type structure, skeletal structure a block, D block, c bloc D block,
and it uses that as the skeletal structure and as the mainframe for the
show and other And also what it did was it didn't have a singular subject
matter. It had multiple subject matters because of the skeletal structure the block,
what I call the block structure, it allowed for different types of cases,
different types of segments, different stories to be told in one So you could
have, from what I understand, they had at least this was I think
cited in the documentary Behind a Legacy, twenty categories of subjects for on sell
mystery. So you had stuff like you would have normally have the crime stories
right where there was some criminal that was on the loose. You also had
what they call lost love, where somebody was seeking a family member or a
friend or someone that made a difference in their life. Then you had what
you would call the You had others like final Appeal, which is actually one
of my favorites where someone who was convicted of a crime was allowed to make
their case as to why they didn't commit the crime. So there were different
kinds of stories, issues, elements, cases with it. So that structure
ABCD E block what have you normally consisted of about anywhere between four and five
segments, and this often included what they would call an update. And the
update was of course an update on a previous case. So if a criminal
was on the loose and they had been caught, then they would have this
update. And for what I had found in my research, they had to
try to keep pretty fluid in terms of the structural organization of each episode,
because if something came up, they found a futuritive where they found a missing
person, they would then send a unit to go out and capture that.
They had I think a separate unit, a separate crew which did updates only
on Unsolved mysteries. So they went and did that and they would get that
b ro edit it and get it out there. So it was very different
from other what I call it true life shows. Even to this day,
there really aren't shows like Unsolved Mysteries. They don't really exist with that kind
of multi varied and multiple type of segments and issues. At best. With
some of these true crime oriented shows, you might have a segment of your
two segments in one episode, but it's not normally the case. It really
was a very different show for a number of reasons. As my piece called
you may be able to help solve a mystery? Makes clear? Did I
get into why the show worked? Why that's the I think of the piece.
Yeah, I think where you quote Robert Stack, which, by the
way, on mister linear sub Stack, which I'm going to link to and
actually publish with your permission. I'm going to republish your article on my site
as certain and add a few things to it, just to just to give
some reference. Says, but you know, you quote Robert Stack in one
of your paragraphs here, which I have just pulled up in front of me,
where you quote them from an LA Times interview where he says, quote,
we're balancing two needs here. We're trying to produce theater and we're looking
to do a public service. And the thing is, you didn't feel as
though you were watching something that was sensationalistic for the sheer's sake of the You
know, if it bleeds, it leads, let's excite the audience. Only
that wasn't what the purpose was. It did seem as though they were literally
trying to do a service for the people that you know, we're involved here.
Like you said, the Lost Love thing. It could have been a
missing family member, it could have been someone that they lost track of many
years ago for whatever reason, terrible circumstances something. And then you would get
the like you said, the updates, which, by the way, they
changed those out. Sometimes there would be new updates, especially when they started
to do the Lifetime thing. Lifetime had you know, updates, because they
would rerun a show from the eighties and the mystery might not have been solved,
but twenty years later, somebody comes around and you know, finally gives
them a piece of information, and they might publicize that or bring that person
on and say, oh, they were looking for the witness, Well,
here's that witness. They were looking for this piece of evidence, they were
looking for this person. Here's the person found. And they would show you
in a quick flash, Hey, you know, here's the reunion of these
two people, the lost love and it was just it was really interesting.
I don't know, it was interesting theater, and you also got the feeling
that legitimately they were trying to help people that were in search of answers for
things and unsolved mystery truly, you know. So I find that interesting,
and I find that you use the quote from the host Robert Stack in the
article, which sums it up pretty well. What do you say? Yeah,
I thought it was a good quote. When I was doing my research,
I said, oh, I got to use this quote. So that
was a part of it. The interesting thing to me about Unsolved because I
never thought about unsolved mysteries until I started doing the research. And the odd
thing about the article is I never intended to write an article about Unsolved.
I actually because I decided I was going to talk about it the next time
I get interviewed on shows. I was actually doing research just to be on
shows like this, and just for shows like this, because, to be
honest, I really didn't know anything about unsolved mysteries as the TV show as
an entity. We talked about Star Trek earlier. I know a lot about
Star Trek because I'm a Star Trek fan, but I knew absolutely nothing about
unsolved mysteries. And so I started doing the research, and I initially was
when I was doing my recarch, reading articles and doing listening to interviews and
the standard kind of structure of research. What I realized was when I was
looking at my notepad, my reporter's notepad, which I still have, I
looked at it and I went, you know, I could turn this into
an article, which is kind of unusual. So I didn't really do research
for my article. I had done research for appearances on talk shows, and
the research I did basically helped become the article. So it was unlike anything
I've ever done before. I've never done that before. In twenty two years
of being a journalist or a freelance writer, I had never done research in
general, and then just decided to write an article about it just never happened.
So it was very interesting. And the initial article really was going to
be about the history of the show and the behind the scenes, which I
got really wrapped up in, got really fascinated with. And then my mind
changed when I read two articles, one for the New York Times from the
LA Times that kind of it was about the rebooted show and those who don't
know there's a reboot of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix. I think they've had like
three volumes, as they call her three seasons, so I just want to
let people know about that. And the characterizations of the show from the writers,
from the reporters, Chess was total bs. I looked at that and
I went, that doesn't seem like unsolved mysteries to me. And again,
I'm not an unsolved Mysteries I wasn't an unsold mysteries fan. I was an
unsold mystery viewer that wasn't a fan. So I didn't have a proprietary view
of it, but I just so I guess objectively, I went, that
doesn't jibe with me. And so then I thought, socratically, Okay,
if this isn't what the show is about, what is it about? How
does it work? And that's where the idea for this article came from,
is like, you know why it works. That's a correct journalistic instinct,
right when you read a story and you say to yourself, look, intuitively,
I know something is very wrong here with the way this is being described.
What do you do? As an ethical journalist? You say, well,
what can I learn about this? And perhaps I could represent the missing
pieces here, the mischaracterization. I could correct it. I think journalists really
should be doing that more often. Unfortunately, it's like a copy and piece
of the world anymore. But yeah, so I've gone through that. I
don't know how many times. I hate to see this, but I don't
know how many times I've looked at another news seaper article, or a magazine,
not much magazine but new Zybarco, or some TV show, a TV
news segment and gone, no, I don't think so, No, that's
not right, No that's incorrect. So that's not unusual with me, sad
to say. I don't know if that's a good commentary or not. But
anyway, I wrote the piece and the piece is available on my substack.
Of course, it's the first for me because I don't think I've ever written
about a TV show before. I've never done a piece like this, so
I've never done again. I used to review movies. I was a Mooie
reviewer online movie reviewer from about two thousand and two to twenty ten. I
used to cover film festivals, among other things. So movies I know about
television I know a good deal about but I never had any interest in reviewing
TV shows or analyzing them or assessing them. Or dissecting them. So this
is brand new territory for me. You were talking about this show now is
brand new territory for me. I don't talk about TV shows on talk shows.
Well, i'll tell you why I appreciate you. Now, some people
are going to find this strange that I even wanted to bring you on with
this subject, because usually I'm very dismissive of a lot of television and stuff
like that. I don't watch a lot of it, and I used to
when I was younger, but I don't any longer. And the reason is,
quite frankly, we've gone into an age where, even in the podcast
world, any sort of media creation, all people do, it seems to
me, is they they simply pick up old ideas and redo them. They
never seem to innovate any longer. And there was a time in which people
tried things, and sometimes not so successfully, but people changed the genres themselves.
People changed the way television was done, whether you're talking about Lucy o'ball
or married with children or you know, so on and so forth. Different
things have altered the media because people were innovative about it. Now in our
current sort of you know, mal you of what's happening here we are.
We have podcasters out there that don't know how to do a podcast. They
get on, they have a discussion, they give their opinions, they bs
and that's it. And some of them decide to focus on fandom and they
they they just attached themselves to the popular fandom. Like I can't tell you
how many start like you and I are both Star Trek fans, right,
how many Star Trek podcasts are out there, how many Star Trek YouTube shows
are out there? They are there, but they're just they're just attachments to
something else. They're not innovating anything, you know. I mean they pretend
to. Oh, I have you know, the Captain's Share, and I
break down each episode and I go through each series, and yeah, that's
great because you have this wide field of stuff that somebody created when they were
innovating a particular type of entertainment, you know, and you piled onto it.
But there were points in time not too long ago, when people imagine
different things and created things that were really truly different in their character, in
their presentation, whether it was something that was meant to be a public service
or it was pure entertainment. Is irrelevant. There was a more innovative time
where we didn't just make the eighteenth edition to the Star Wars Universe. Right,
Disney keeps making more and more Star Wars just because they can, you
know what I mean. We don't have superhero movies coming out constantly. But
you know what I'm saying, Like, you're bringing up stuff that I could
talk about. No, no, exactly, but that's my point. I'm
like, I can't talk about it because I'm here to promote my piece.
And I know, I know, and I want people to but I want
people to read this right now. I'm telling you it's really tough because I'm
like Rick Wars. I know, I know, I know, but but
the thing is, it's funny for you right now. I'm like that,
I'm chopping at the bit. It's okay. But the reason why this piece
is important is because it points back to a time when, you know what,
somebody created this, and if you take a look at the way it
was created, it's not just let's do what somebody else already did and slap
a new name on it. Let's not just you know, tag on to
some existing thing. This was. I mean, Netflix at this point is
tagging onto an existing thing and trying to redo it. Yes, but what
I'm saying is you go back to a time when this was created, when
this was you know, different in its in its time period, right,
And that's what's great about this is that you know what you show people,
if you innovate, you might actually create something that becomes a phenomena because it
is attractive, it's interesting, it's entertaining and educational on some level. Right.
There are ways of doing this, like I used to let you brought
up in search of That was one of my favorite shows when I was a
kid too. It was In Search of because it was so great. It
was like this quick rush of information and all of a sudden you might want
to go run out by books find out about this subject. You got very
interested in the subjects that Leonard Nimoy was the host, you know, but
it wasn't I don't think it was really his show. It was like somebody
else. I forget who the writers were at this point, but it didn't
matter. They did such a good job tantalizing you with this fascinating something that
you would all you know, like I knew people who literally got you know,
involved in the Jack the Ripper thing, and were suddenly reading all the
books and trying to find out about the real history and seeing if people were
still alive, and you know, like all kinds of weird things. They
would go and visit the landmarks because they had initially seen it on a television
show. This was kind of inspirational, and it was because it was different.
Now, you know, when you get more of the same, more
of the same, more of the same, it's just like this, you
know, it's the same thing. The guy's playing practical jokes on people.
Okay, we had that little sub genre for a minute, you know,
Komen with Jackass and that Ridiculousness and the show Ridiculousness. Right, anyways,
all these things going on, you know, the people that just took Internet
videos and you know the Daniel Tosh sort of format where you know, I
mean, it's just these were innovations when they were first done. People could
look at things and do them in a different way. And I think Unsolved
Mysteries is an example of that, where indeed mysterious things go all the way
back to you know, you know, written literature. Radio. You know,
there used to be tons of radio stuff that presented mysteries. There might
have even been a show called Unsolved Mysteries that was different from this. In
the time of like you know, the Theater of the Mind, where radio
was the primary entertainment source, right, it was the highest level of entertainment
source for mass distribution. They had mysterious things on there. Some of them
were or you know, plays like and and and series like The Shadow and
Dick Tracy and things like this. Yes, but what I'm saying is that
there were times when these things didn't exist and somebody had to imagine, how
can we do this different? And Unsolved Mysteries is an example of it.
You struck on something that in a way, uh did its own thing,
has not really been truly duplicated, and yet contributes to a bunch of subgenres
and inspired other media. Like I brought up Real People earlier, John Barber's
I've had him on and I love the guy, but yeah, Facebook friends.
I think I'm still Facebook friends with him, but I had talked to
him on Facebook. Very nice guy, seems like and yeah, I remember
real people in the seventies, you know, it feels like real people.
That's ridiculous. Sorry, that's incredible. That's incredible was the ripoff of Real
but it's so funny because that's incredible was the immediate ripoff where they brought in
a bunch of hosts, you know, the studio, the studio with an
audience. Right now, it's interesting in talking about Unsolve Mysteries because and talking
about how different it was, I mentioned the structure of the show, right.
The history of the show is interesting in that it was a show obviously
was unlike other shows on network TV in prime time at the time because it
didn't come from an idea that got turned into a treatment that could turn into
a script that was turned into a pilot. Unsolved Mysteries came about because of
specials. So the kind of special that it was done by these two producers,
John Cosgrovee and Terry Dunn europe or documentary filmmakers, and they they had
done a documentary. There's done special for NBC called Missing Have You Seen This
Person? Was hosted by Meredith Baxter, who was a star of the show
Family Ties It's the Big Hit symptom and her husband David Bernie, and that
of course was dealing with missing people, missing persons, and that special did
well. It was on NBC. It did well, and it came out
in eighty five. There were a couple more specials that came out of the
Missing specials in I think January and April nineteen eighty six. That original Missing
have you have you seen this person? I believe got nominated for an Emmy
Award. And so what happened was that Costco and You're came up with the
concept for Unsolved Mysteries, which was not just to have missing people, but
to have as I mentioned before, with the skeletal structure, the multi varied
structure, to have you know, missing crime stories, to have lost loves,
to have final appeal, to have historical stories, to have various other
types of stories as a part of this, but all mysteries. And that's
what kept that was the motifue, that was the through line, that was
the thread through everything. So that Unsolved Mysteries actually premiered as a special in
January nineteen eighty seven, in nineteen eighty seven, and it was hosted by
Raymond Burke, who people know as Perry Mason. So he did the first
and it was a series of specials. You had Carl Malden who had been
not only a movie actor when an Oscar, but also been a TV star
with the Street San Francisco. He hosted a couple of the Unsolved Mystery specials.
Then Robert Stack got hosted for several more specials, and then finally in
nineteen eighty eight, Onsolve Mysteries got turned into a primetime TV series, greenlit
as a primetime show and it ran on NBC I think for about nine seasons
with Robert Stack, and then as you mentioned, they went to CBS for
a couple of seasons in lifetime and that's after that was its initial run because
Robert Stack died, I believe, and not long after that I think it's
like two thousand and three years tho if I recall correctly, and that cancer
unfortunately, and so the show had a very different kind of history. It
was a show. You know, with these specials, what the networks would
do is they would use them as kind of place filler, seat holder,
time management type programming. You know, if they didn't have a show ready
or they you know, they didn't they didn't want to put on some midseason
replacement in this slot right away, they could do with this kind of special
or entertainment type special and I think these specials did better than I think expected,
and NBC got interested and they turned it into a show, which was
successful. But this is a show that was a top twenty show, right,
And to explain how different it was, just really quickly as a reference
point, to explain how different it was in nineteen eighty seven and eighty eight,
according to Nielsen, the top shows on network television in America were things
like let Me Just Dance through the List really quickly, The Wonder Years,
and Alf and The Golden Girls, and Growing Pains and Who's the Boss and
Night Court, the Cosby Show. Mostly comedies, right, and they were
all sitcom situation comedies. Mostly that was what your big money was. And
NBC was the most dominant network, it appears, with CBS running close behind
and ABC running a distant third. And you know, even though CBS had
stuff like Dallas at Night and you know, a different NBC had Monday Night
Football, et cetera, et cetera, you really had, you know,
mostly those scripted sitcoms seem to be dominating the airwaves in eighty seven and eighty
eight. So yeah, go ahead, that's a very good comparison. So
I'm glad you brought up those shows, because one of the things that I
noted earlier was it was different for virtually every other prime time network TV show,
is that it was a show that was not only true life as I
mentioned in had a Seaton in Search of Right, but it was also a
show that was not a sure entertainment show. It was more of an information
show, and it wasn't I know, the producers don't really see it.
I know they have the new Netflix Unsolved Mysteries. They don't really view it
as a true crime show. I know they kind of edge it, and
I always and I don't disagree with that. I think they're right. I
think I think they're right. I think they're right. Well, the only
informational just really quickly again to note for what was what was rated highest back
then, the only informational show in the top ten according to Nielsen again in
eighty seven and eighty eight was sixty Minutes, which had been a staple of
network television as you well know, CBS magazine, you know, news magazine
show. It's still big now, seems like, and you know, but
it's a staple. It's one of those things. And that's the only thing
that was really in the top ten that was of an informational sort of you
know, even the news shows, Nightline and all that, none of that
stuff was that big at that timeline and really was born out of the what
do you call the hostage crisis. That's where that thing became popular. That's
right, there was the Iridian Hearts hostage crisis. Yeah, and it kind
of evolved from there. It was supposed to be a again place filler show,
late at night time, filler seat filler show as I call it,
and that evolved to become a staple of late night programming for ABC. Yeah,
and it's interesting so that, again, the comparisons are very apt.
I'm glad you bring up these other shows because they demonstrate the landscape of network
TV, the landscape of TV at the time, and why Unsolved Mysteries was
very different. Yes, no one was going to call up to The Cosby
Show or night Court and try to figure out what happened on that show.
There was nothing to figure out. Apply goes from you know, uh goes
from A to B two C and then it ends right. But people could
call up the one eight hundred number. It previously was a peal box.
But the one eight hundred number fer Ontell Mysteries and say, oh, that
guy you had on the show was an escape fugitive. He looks like the
guy who lives in an apartment across from me, or the guy who works
at the store that I work at, or the guy uses the gym that
I'm at. That's what people could do, and there was a kind of
immediacy about it. I don't know what the results are like now, because
I know they have the new Unsolved Mysteries and I'm sure people will go online
and send emails and go to the Unsolved dot Com site. But I don't
think it's the same as there was back in eighty eight, eighty nine to
ninety and onward up until well at the end of it with Lifetime two thousand
and one or so. One doesn't do There isn't that immediacy. There isn't
that freshness. There isn't that vitality of interactivity that you got with that show,
and that was one of the reasons it did. Now what was brought
up was America's Most Wanted, But America's Most Wanted is a crime show based
on the UK show Crime Watch, and that's a pure crime show. I
think America's most wanted clearly was a show that the fledgling thoughts that were at
the time must have green lit partly because of what was happening with Unsolved Mysteries.
Must have seen that criminal component. But I know the producers are unsolved.
They don't really see their show as a true crime show. Even with
the new we move that's out, they don't really see it as a crime
show. I don't disagree, but I think that crime and criminal element weird
way to say it, but the criminal element of the show really helped the
show become successful because my understanding is when it came to the stories and unsolved
mysteries, one of the way they'd get like segments and cases of what was
by co calling and also calling up top, you know, police departments across
the country, and at first, from what I understand, they were like
very hesitant to get involved. But once the success record was being demonstrated episode
after episode after episode with the updates right, they were aboard. And I
know that Terry dunn Yours set in interviews the police in a lot of small
towns and a lot of areas would roll out the red carpet for unsolved mysteries.
And that's another aspect I should address. I don't want to go too
far into what how the show worked. Does I want people to read my
piece, But I'll just shite one aspect of why the shows the success.
Why the show worked authenticity primarily in terms of locations. They when an event
took place, they would usually go to the state, the city, and
the town and the area where it took place. Often they would hire local
actors to portray people, or people who were involved in the events, portrayed
themselves and were involved in some way. So now, of course this didn't
really make for any winning acting, but you know, but it made for
it's still made for compelling TV. After all, these are re enactments.
I mean, if you want really well acted stop you make a m OW
or movie of the week, or you make a theatrical motion picture and put
it in theaters, you know, or TV or another kind of TV show.
Right. I think it's undeniable though that it's certainly whether it was meant
to be. You know, true crime was meant to be an aspect of
it, but not a main aspect of it. It was just, you
know, part of it. But the thing is you can't deny though,
and I don't think anybody could that it had a great deal of influence on
later true crime because all of these cold case shows out there, there's tons
of them under different names, different networks. You know, Discoveries got them
and History Channels got them, and they're cold case shows, I call them,
and I'm probably using the wrong label, but you know what I'm talking
about, And they indeed go to the locations because I think Unsolved Mysteries did
it first and showed them that it worked. They do reenactments sometimes they try
and show, you know, legitimate footage too. I think Unsolved Mysteries occasionally
did that where it was like, here's some real footage and now here's a
reenactment. And they were one of the first shows to not try and blur
the line. They would tell you this is a reenactment. You know,
they go on this. Yeah. Yeah. Well. My assessment of Unsolved
Mysteries from more of a producing and and from a television standpoint is these were
fundamentally documentary filmmakers caused from your made documentaries. They had made a documentary back
in eighty three for HBO called Five Dangerous Guns, which was about gun ownership.
And I think the directors often on Unsolved Mysteries scheme from documentary backgrounds.
So these are primarily documentary filmmakers doing a network show. And so the I
think Unsolved Mysteries didn't look like the standard dramatic show because it wasn't a dramatic
show that was one hour show. I think it was different because they were
going for authenticity, which is the point that I make in my article.
That's very different. I hate to say, but most so called Hollywood film
and TV commercial uh, not just commercials, but TV and UH and films
don't really care that much about authenticity. Some do, many do not.
I hesitate to use the film Napoleon as example, you know, because the
director Famous Lee told historians what he thought, uh they should do initially in
contradistinction or in contrast to his movie, and so Unsolved was different in that.
And I cite this because I can't cite every reason why it works because
nobody reads the article if I don't. But it was an authentic show,
it was shot in the locations. When you say that it was among the
first to do that, I think outside of news, I think I think
it was one of the first. I mean, it was a show.
I mean I was looking at some episodes last night and and the episode,
you know, the segment I looked at was the d V Cooper case,
which I've discussed on your program this year, in fact, and it was
one of the cases I got from on Zolmscruse. Not that I hadn't heard
of it before, but I've seen that segment. I also saw one called
about Don Henry and Kevin Ives and the death of those two young men in
Arkansas. That's another one I saw Terry me that was a very well done
segment. And I saw the first episode of Unsolved Onsale Mysteres. The pilot,
like I said, was a special with Raymond Burr, but the first
episode, of course was with Robert Stack, who did all the subsequent episodes.
And so the show was the show had a real feel to it it
And you know, you you look at this show and you it shot in
different locations, it's shot using at times real people. You know, you
mentioned real people the TV show, Well, this show used real people,
and you could tell often there wasn't anything inauthentic about on some issues. If
anything comes out to me, it's it's the show wasn't inauthentic, and the
show fundamentally was trying to get the audience to take part by saying, look,
someone out there knows something, and if you know something, call us.
And that's where they had a telecenter, which was like a man you
know, you know, with a large amount of cubicles and for episodes when
they would during the episodes of the air, they get calls and often you'd
have law enforcement personnel that were standing by, uh there to you know,
God's talk to somebody or what have you. And so the term interactive which
you used, is very important. It was I think very much a pioneer
of interactivity on TV. Right. So what I want to do is have
people go to that is the week that is which is the title of your
substack. I want people to read it there. As I said, I'm
going to publish it here too, but I'm going to give you guys the
reference link to go and look at the original article. I want you to
do that explore this idea because again I think it is a great interest.
Excuse me, has a lot to say, Sae. I'm still coughing a
little bit guys. Sorry, excuse me again, not even going to hit
the cough button. All right, here we go. I want you to
go over to Albert Lanier's substack. Check it out for sure. That is
the week. That is is the general title. And this particular article,
yeah, this particular article is called you May be Able to Solve a Mystery
and that's it, and it is about unsolved mysteries and it is worth your
time. So that's all I got to say about that. And again I
want to thank Albert Lanier for being with us tonight. Neil Chilly effect is
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