Season 3 Sound Clips

[MacGyver]

It was quite awesome!

[hardygirl847]

I thought it was funny to see him as he is now after watching him as a young Joe Hardy. A lot of his fans knew him when he was actually that young so it's been a gradual change. He's practically aged overnight for me! lol

[MacGyver]

I remember hearing about this somewhere, but I just found a news article to confirm it. Apparently, during the writers' strike of 1988, Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC, wanted to revive The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries series with new leads for Frank and Joe Hardy. The plan was to do this sort of thing with other older shows as well to help fill in holes in the schedule. I gather it would have aired Sunday nights again, alongside The Wonderful World of Disney movies and specials and such. (The article actually says it would have been replaced once a month by a Disney movie.)
    Anyway, I'm pretty sure nothing ever came of this, but I wonder how far they got in the process. Was this just an idea talked about or did they actually have casting calls and maybe footage from a potential pilot or anything? Even stock photos of potential actors would be interesting to see. I don't know that I can put a link to the article, but I'll put the text of it below.

........................................................
The Miami Herald

July 16, 1988 Saturday
FINAL EDITION

HARDY BOYS TO BE NBC'S FIRST RE-CAST OLD SERIES

BYLINE: From Herald Wire Services

SECTION: COMICS/TV; B; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 201 words


The 1977-79 ABC series The Hardy Boys will be the first TV series to be resurrected as part of NBC Entertainment
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President Brandon Tartikoff's plan to re-cast and re-shoot old TV material to plug holes in the fall schedule left by the writers strike.

Tartikoff said The Hardy Boys will air Sunday nights, when the network's new Magical World of Disney hour was to have debuted. The Hardy Boys will be replaced once a month with a Disney movie, he said, adding that the debut of original Disney programming will probably be delayed until January.

The revival has not been cast yet, but the NBC programming
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chief said he and Universal, which will produce the show, will "conduct a nationwide search to find the two teen- aged male leads who will re-create the title roles of Frank and Joe Hardy for the series," originally played by Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy.

Tartikoff pointed out that The Hardy Boys gave "ABC its best ratings on Sundays 7-8 p.m. that they had in years and have had since. With great casting the show could discover a whole new audience."

He said NBC will decide how to fill remaining time slots one by one as it becomes clear which show is next in being "past the point of no return."

[MacGyver]

Here's another story to follow up on the last one I posted. I've bolded the significant part talking about The Hardy Boys.
...

The Miami Herald

July 24, 1988 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

OLYMPICS, WORLD SERIES, GIVE ADVANTAGE TO NBC

BYLINE: MARK DAWIDZIAK Knight-Ridder News Service

SECTION: AMUSEMENTS; K; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 989 words


This is war -- Hollywood-style.

NBC Entertainment
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President Brandon Tartikoff says the three major commercial networks are fighting for their very survival, and on July 14 he added more stopgap measures to the many tactics devised during the 20-week-old writers' strike.

The aim of the war is to protect the networks' increasingly vulnerable flanks from opportunistic cable services out to capture their viewers, and it's being waged on several fronts.

In addition to competing against each other while trying to stem the tide of declining viewership this fall, the three major commercial networks must battle a prolonged writers' strike.

Robbed of most new series, NBC, ABC and CBS will field ragtag prime-time lineups that they hope will at least keep their common enemies -- cable, home video, PBS -- from making substantial advances. Although many industry analysts believe that Tartikoff is carrying the life-and-death scenario a bit too far, no one denies that the networks could be facing heavy casualties -- significant loss of viewers and advertising revenues.

What are they going to do about it? Each network has outlined its strategy for the crucial fall campaign. As expected, the ranks will be filled with sports, reruns, feature films, mini-series, TV movies, pseudo-documentary programming and some returning series.

This is what you will see and might see:

NBC

NBC is in the best shape by far. When 124 independent production companies signed the striking Writers Guild "model" contract, it meant five of the No. 1 network's series -- The Cosby Show, A Different World, ALF, Amen and Highway to Heaven -- could start making new episodes.

Even before this development, NBC was prepared to coast through the fall with 179 hours of the Summer Olympics from South Korea and the World Series. NBC also has a new fall series, the true-crime Unsolved Mysteries, and a summer variety series, Funny People, that aren't affected by the strike.

Filling the remaining hours won't be easy, but Tartikoff said that "come hell or high water," he'd do it with TV movies, feature films, mini-series and series from two other categories: comedies produced from British and Canadian scripts or recasting old American shows with new actors.

Following through on this promise July 14, Tartikoff announced a revival of The Hardy Boys to replace the Sunday Disney anthology. Supervised by Tartikoff during his tenure at ABC, The Hardy Boys (1977-79) starred Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy. New actors will get old scripts and Disney will provide monthly specials.

Other possible fall programming includes a pseudo- documentary series, True to Life, and a variety show starring John Byner and former Miss America Suzette Charles. Tartikoff said 200 submissions had been narrowed to 12 finalists for series, and new titles would be added as the strike made it necessary.

David Letterman, host of NBC's late-night talk/variety show, has returned to work without his writers but with their blessing.

ABC

ABC does not have NBC's enormous advantages, but it does have an edge over CBS. The network has decided to air half of the 36-hour War and Remembrance, the $104 million mini-series sequel to The Winds of War, in November.

In addition to the baseball playoff series, ABC has four series not affected by the strike: Monday Night Football, which should nail down a consistent one-night ratings victory for the network; Roseanne, a new comedy starring Roseanne Barr and produced by a company that settled with the guild; Incredible Sunday, the That's Incredible! revival; and the newsmagazine 20/ 20.

ABC has yet to unveil a complete strategy, and network executives won't comment on a report that plans include extensive reruns of four popular comedies: Growing Pains, Perfect Strangers, Who's the Boss? and Head of the Class.

The network also has ordered 13 episodes of Mission: Impossible for the fall. Shot in Australia, the revival of the 1966-73 CBS spy drama will go with new stars and used scripts.

CBS

CBS enters the fray with the shabbiest reinforcements -- no major sporting events, no big mini-series. "We are nonetheless ready and able to program strong original product for the fall season," said Kim LeMasters, president of CBS Entertainment.

Newsmagazines are not affected by the strike, and CBS has three of them: 60 Minutes, West 57th and 48 Hours.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, although poorly rated during a spring run, will be back in the fall. Because Tom and Dick Smothers have a waiver from the Writers Guild, their variety show becomes the only CBS entertainment series that can return from last season with new episodes.

CBS has first-run episodes of two comedies originally held for midseason: The Cavanaughs, which will return Aug. 8, and First Impressions, which will premiere Aug. 27. Both will run through October.

On Thursday, the network named four new "strike-proof" shows for the fall that either will be filmed abroad or require little or no writing. Jake's Journey, to be filmed in England, stars Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame in a half-hour comedy- fantasy about an American teen-ager whose family moves to Britain. Dolphin Bay, to be filmed in Australia, is a one-hour drama about an American scientist and his two children who move Down Under where he works with dolphins. High Risk is a reality- based magazine series about the dangers and rewards of unique occupations and hobbies. Dick Clark will host a variety hour to be broadcast live before a studio audience.

The rest of the prime-time lineup will be filled with two additional installments of 60 Minutes, two college football games, three new episodes of Murder, She Wrote, an animated mini-series starring Charlie Brown, three four-hour mini-series (including Jack the Ripper, starring Michael Caine), animated specials, TV movies and feature films.

CBS, like NBC and ABC, is pursuing series similar to Unsolved Mysteries, game shows and foreign productions.

[MacGyver]

In this last article, I'm curious about the line that said "New actors will get old scripts and Disney will provide monthly specials."
The monthly specials from Disney are the Disney movies that would air each month in place of the proposed Hardy Boys show that Tartikoff had mentioned in the previous article.
But if new actors were getting old scripts, I wonder if that means they would have been reshooting episodes that had originally aired as episodes of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (which really doesn't seem to make much sense- I would think they would just air reruns of the '70s show if they were going to do that). Or more likely- I'm thinking this probably means there were completed scripts for additional episodes of the '70s show that were never made- but this 1988 proposed series would have filmed those episodes for air. That would be interesting to see.

[MacGyver]

One more quick follow up- this article basically confirms that the proposed Hardy Boys revival show was pushed back- and as far as I know, pushed back so far that it was off the schedule altogether.
...........................................................................


The New York Times

August 1, 1988, Monday, Late City Final Edition

TV Notes

BYLINE: By Eleanor Blau

SECTION: Section C; Page 16, Column 4; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 886 words





Dukakis and TV
When Michael S. Dukakis gave his acceptance speech for the Democratic Presidential nomination in Atlanta, his former boss was home watching, with a professional eye. ''That was Michael at his superb best,'' said Greg Harney of WGBH in Boston. Back in 1971 he hired Mr. Dukakis to be the moderator of ''The Advocates,'' a public-television series of courtroom-style debates on public affairs issues.

Mr. Harney, then the program's executive producer, had been impressed, he said the other day, with the ''control'' the young state legislator from Brookline, Mass., had shown when he moderated another program on timely issues, ''The Turned-On Crisis.'' But, Mr. Harney emphasized, Mr. Dukakis honed his television skills on ''The Advocates.''



Mr. Dukakis, who left the program in 1973 to run for Governor, returned to moderate some of the programs in 1979 and 1980, after he was defeated for re-election. ''He got a lot more confident,'' Mr. Harney said. ''His eye contact got better; everything about him improved.'' Well, almost. ''He still has a tendency,'' Mr. Harney said, imitating that tendency, ''to bring the ends of sentences up - instead of down.''
Peter Cook, who followed Mr. Harney as executive producer, said that ''The Advocates'' gave Mr. Dukakis ''a terrific education, not only on issues - the preparation was very complete - but also on how they can be argued on television.''

''He got to see a lot of guys doing it well and not doing it well,'' Mr. Cook said. Also to his advantage, Mr. Dukakis was ''perceived on camera as a listener,'' Mr. Cook added. ''And it allowed him to be exactly in the middle on every issue.''

'Molly Dodd' Survives

Molly Dodd will live on after all, not on NBC, which ditched her a couple of weeks ago, but on Lifetime cable.

Critically acclaimed for an offbeat charm that set it apart from ordinary sitcoms, ''The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd'' - just nominated for three Emmy Awards - stars Blair Brown as a New Yorker in her mid-30's.

Living her life without help from a laugh track, she encounters difficult and exhilarating moments dealing with characters like her manipulative ex-husband, her doting mother and the elevator operator in her apartment building.

Ratings were good when the series began in May 1987, and even better when it returned last March. But they had declined considerably by the time ''Molly Dodd'' was put on ''indefinite hiatus'' after the July 13 broadcast. The drop in ratings was apparently caused at least in part by the program's on-again, off-again career at NBC, which moved it last May from its favored time slot, Thursday at 9:30 P.M. (the night of NBC's popular ''Cosby Show''), to Wednesday night at 9 o'clock and later to 9:30.

Jay Tarses, the creator, producer and director of the series, said he had been ''very sad about the fate of 'Molly Dodd.' '' Speaking from California, he said NBC had shown ''puzzlement and antagonism'' toward the comedy-drama since its start. ''It's not an easy show to categorize,'' he said. ''We're not prime-time normal.''

''There are more and more places to go these days besides the networks,'' he added. ''A lot of rules are changing as the networks erode.''

Under the agreement between Lifetime and You & Me, Kid Productions ''Molly Dodd'' will go into production for 13 new episodes. (The writers' strike won't affect them because they have an independent contract with the union). Lifetime has an option to order an additional 26 episodes.

Before the spring debut, Lifetime will broadcast 26 existing episodes of ''Molly Dodd,'' starting in January.

Disney Specials

''The Magical World of Disney'' won't be a casualty of the writers' strike this fall after all. NBC had said it would be replaced by a remake of ''The Hardy Boys,'' a 1970's ABC series based on the old Franklin W. Dixon novels about two teen-age detectives.

But the new plans are to present a mix of Disney specials, theatrical films and animation - all already produced, but some never seen on NBC - starting Oct. 9. ''The Hardy Boys'' is still on, though, with a date to be announced soon.

CBS's New Eye

In case you blinked and missed it, the new ''state of the art'' version of CBS's eye-shaped logo, complete with seven-note theme tune, made its debut last night just before ''60 Minutes.'' CBS calls it ''a moving, burnished bronze graphic'' intended to ''appeal to younger viewers while still pleasing the audience that grew up with the eye.''

ABC Appointment

From ABC, a staff announcement: Allan Dodds Frank, a former senior editor of Forbes magazine, will be an ABC news correspondent specializing in economic issues and investigative business reporting.

'Festival Latino'

The ''Festival Latino in New York,'' Joseph Papp's annual celebration of Latin-American culture, includes television as well as theater, music and film, and the television component of this year's event is much expanded over last year's.

Concerts, dance, drama, a live call-in show and tapes of past hits of the festival will be available to cable subscribers in Manhattan, on both Manhattan Cable Television and Paragon). The programs will be carried on Channel 25, seven days a week, from this Wednesday through Aug. 23, 6 to 11 P.M. and midnight to 5 A.M.

[MacGyver]

Last word I've seen on this is that the Hardy Boys series was left in limbo- I never really thought about it before, but I guess the 1988 writers' strike did have a lot of networks scrambling- and some did go forward with remake series. A new verison of Mission: Impossible aired in 1988 and I remember watching that one as a kid. That was a great revival version of the 1960s classic, which I also love and watched as a child.
But it doesn't look like anything more came out of this Hardy Boys revival deal. But I'm still curious about those old scripts that were mentioned.
...............................


The Miami Herald

August 10, 1988 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION

NBC STILL HOT -- EVEN STRIKE BREAKS ITS WAY

BYLINE: STEVE SONSKY Herald Television Critic

SECTION: LIVING TODAY; D; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1118 words


As usual, NBC has good reason to be in a good mood. Because when you're hot, you're hot, and for NBC, everything seems to break its way. Even the writers' strike.

At an NBC party/lobbying session for the press at Bob Hope's swanky estate in fashionable Toluca Lake, one NBC veep even felt so happy and bold as to suggest that after all the money NBC had paid Hope in its 51-year association with him (pre-dating television), visiting TV critics should feel free to help themselves to anything they wanted of Hope's -- ashtrays, silverware, a Matisse . . .

Hope, for his part, was taking no such chances. We couldn't get anywhere near the Matisses. The house was bolted shut and critics were confined to the back yard. Well, back yard is sort of an inadequate word here. It's not exactly like we were cooped up with nowhere to roam. There's a golf course in Bob Hope's back yard. Anyway, Hope dished it back pretty good. The first time he hosted an NBC party for the press, he said, the co-hosts were he and Marconi. (Ba-Boom.) If he'd only known 51 years ago that NBC would have lasted this long, he'd have bought it, he said. (Ba-boom.)

And, a little self-deprecating strike humor too, from old Ski Nose (NBC's dessert was Chocolate Hope Heads carved in the shape of the famous Hope ski-nose caricature; in raspberry and vanilla sauce):

"I'm ready to go back to work," he said. "Now that the writers' strike is over, I can ad-lib again." (Ba-boom.)

So, as I was saying, even the writers' strike has broken NBC's way. Due to fortuitous circumstance, along with the cushion that the September Olympics and the October World Series gives them, along with the kind of prescience that makes programming czar Brandon Tartikoff the peerless master of his field, NBC is going to be able to launch its strike-delayed fall schedule with new shows probably a good three weeks before the other guys. And they won't need much of that horrific "strike programming" that everyone was talking about.

The revival of TV's Hardy Boys -- using old scripts with new boys -- is now in "limbo," Tartikoff said at a press conference Wednesday. The silly idea he at first euphemistically and with great fanfare dubbed "American revivals" -- which is the same thing as calling used cars "pre-owned" -- is suddenly not so ballyhooed anymore. And why should it be?

ABC and CBS are talking late October and early November for premieres of their returning and new shows, and Tartikoff Wednesday said he's going to have 13 series back on by the week of Oct. 3, five more plus a miniseries by the week of Oct. 24, and five more the week after that. Only his Tuesday line-up of Matlock, In the Heat of the Night and a new show called Midnight Caller will be laggards, they being held until the week of Nov. 28 to avoid going up against ABC's monster miniseries epic, War and Remembrance.

But Brandon the Bodacious is not even afraid of that! He's got a secret weapon. He's got . . . Vanna!

Yes folks, Wheel of Fortune's Vanna White, the game show hostess with the mostest, the Vixen of the Vowels, in her TV acting debut as Venus, the goddess of love in . . . Goddess of Love, a TV movie that has a strong possibility to be scheduled opposite War and Remembrance's opening night.

War and Remembrance is "an 18-hour clump . . . That's a big book," Tartikoff explained of his counter-programming strategy. "So Awe're going to offer (viewers) nice, little books with very big print. And I would say that The Goddess of Love is about the biggest print we could find right now."

(Asked at an earlier press conference why she chose the Venus role for her debut, Vanna said it was a good segue for her, a likable character in a light comedy -- about Venus coming forward 3,000 years to America. And hey, it wasn't as easy a role as it sounded. "Trying to pull off lines like 'Where dost thou slumber?' like it's my normal language was verry difficult," she said. Also, she explained later, "Venus and Vanna go together well, don't you think?" Well, let's see . . . They both have five letters and two vowels . . . And they both start with V!)

So how did NBC manage to get so lucky and have so many series ready before the competition? Well, Tartikoff explained, they planned ahead, anticipated the strike and ordered scripts early. But also, NBC has more comedy on their schedule than anyone else -- 14 1/2 hours -- and comedies are easier to gear up than dramas. They'll even sneak-preview one of their new comedies, either Baby Boom with Kate Jackson, Empty Nest with Richard Mulligan or Dear John with Judd Hirsch on Sept. 10, between Golden Girls and the Miss America pageant.

They had several shows -- Cosby, A Different World and ALF that had interim agreements with the writers guild and were able to resume writing before the strike ended. They had Unsolved Mysteries, a show not written by entertainment writers, already scheduled.

And, among their hour shows, the form that takes the longest to get back into production, Miami Vice and L.A. Law each have scripts left over from last season that they can begin shooting fairly quickly. Hunter was preparing for a producer change and had six scripts ready before the strike anyway. And Tattinger's, the new series from the producers of St. Elsewhere, had been on the drawing board for over year and so had several scripts near completion before the strike.

There might be some flexibility in all this. One thing Tartikoff said he will not do is try to rush shows on the air before they're ready, so that their quality would suffer. "It is not going to be our tack," he said, "to rush programs on, especially the new series, and jeopardize their long-term success just to get them on one week earlier."

In other news:

*In the category Tartikoff called "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," he's -- ARRRGH! -- signed Geraldo Rivera for a one-shot, two-hour special that will air on Friday Oct. 7 from 8 to 10. "And the subject he's picked -- it doesn't really matter what subject he's picked, does it?" Tartikoff quipped as the critics roared -- "is the occult." ARRRGH! (Later, a critic asked if Tartikoff could list any specific dead people Rivera had lined up for the show as yet.)

*And, in the category of The Lisa Bonet Question -- Tartikoff said it had been decided that the pregnant actress' Denise Huxtable character would begin the season on The Cosby Show for six or seven episodes, letting Cliff Huxtable deal with "something very good and very important" -- the college dropout. The Denise character will not, however, be pregnant.

Bonet would then take her maternity leave and would come back later in the year to A Different World, where new characters will have been added to make up for her absence.

[MacGyver]

Found another article on this. This one mentions that Brandon Tartikoff would have been looking for "the next Kirk Cameron or Michael J. Fox" to star.
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-07-15/entertainment/ca-7112_1_hardy-boys
I'm trying to picture Kirk Cameron and Michael J. Fox at the height of their fame in the '80s as Joe and Frank Hardy. That would have been an interesting combo. And honestly- seeing Kirk Cameron as Mike Seaver on Growing Pains and Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties that combo could have worked. They would definitely both have some of the same characteristics down for Joe and Frank, respectively. And from what I've read, both of these stars were pretty good friends particularly when their shows were shooting next to each other in the '80s.
I think I read about this in Kirk Cameron's book, Still Growing. He mentioned that he and Michael J. Fox had a little competition going where they would intentionally try to work in 360 degree turns into their episodes (regardless of whether the script actually called for it) and whoever could get away with the most would win. Sounds like a funny little thing to look out for in episodes of both shows.

[MacGyver]

And one more tidbit on this, regarding the possible time changes for the proposed Hardy Boys revival (which obviously never happened because the strike was resolved and by January 1989, I'm pretty sure it was totally off the schedule altogether.) http://articles.latimes.com/1988-07-30/entertainment/ca-6749_1_hardy-boys

[MacGyver]

Okay- seriously- last bit of news I found on this.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-07-17/features/8801150885_1_hardy-boys-bastille-day-nbc-spokesman-curt-block

I know it's a lot of articles, but in reading through all the various ones, you can piece together the different ideas that were being circulated and all the little details that different articles may have left out.

[Hardy Boys UB Fan]

Not to start a war, but I'm just wondering, isn't this illegal?  Season three hasn't been officially released, has it?

[MacGyver]

No, it hasn't. I haven't totally given up hope on it getting released to DVD, but sadly it just doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

[hardygirl847]

Mac,

I really like Kirk and Michael but I do not see them as Frank and Joe at all. Not even their characters on their shows. Sorry...





Looking at them from back when they were on their shows, I have to say that I just don't see it. But thank you for alerting us to the articles that talked about a HB revival that sadly never happened.

As for Season 3, yeah it's going to happen anytime soon. Also, your discretion is very much appreciated in this matter.

[Hardy Boys UB Fan]

As for Season 3, yeah it's going to happen anytime soon. Also, your discretion is very much appreciated in this matter.

I just don't want anyone to get in trouble. I hope I didn't start a war.

[MacGyver]

Honestly, it's essentially the same as taping an episode of a TV show onto your Beta, VHS, DVD or Tivo. I guess it depends on how you look at the copyright laws, but people have been doing that for years. The Internet has just made it a little easier to trade such recordings between fans.

And thanks for the pics of Kirk Cameron and Michael J. Fox, hardygirl847. As a fan of both actors and both shows, that was really cool for me. (Especially with the Growing Pains and Family Ties logos on their shirts. ) And to clarify, Brandon Tartikoff had said in one of the articles I posted that they were looking for actors for Frank and Joe Hardy who could become stars like Kirk Cameron and Michael J. Fox, not necessarily that they were wanting to cast them or even look-alikes in the roles. But I was just toying around with the idea and I did think that Mike Seaver seemed to match Joe somewhat in the impulsiveness and wildness category and Alex P. Keaton seemed to resemble Frank in the knowledge and refinedness category.  Not a perfect fit certainly- but I can see slight elements here and there.
     Anyway, I'm just wondering about the "old scripts" that the articles kept referring to. If they were further scripts for further episodes of the '70s Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew show, I wonder if there were any further episodes filmed but shelved for some reason? Or at least it seems to indicate that other scripts were completed but never filmed. If such a thing did exist, it would be a really awesome bonus feature for Universal to include on a DVD release of the 3rd. Season of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries