Turn-On is an American surreal sketch comedy series created by Digby Wolfe and George Schlatter that aired once on ABC on Wednesday, February 5, 1969. Only one episode was shown before being pulled from ABC's schedule, leaving another episode unaired. The show has since been considered one of the most infamous flops in TV history, with significantly low initial ratings and negative critical reception. Schlatter and Ed Friendly, who had previously been the producers of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, were contracted by Bristol-Myers to develop the show, and provided it to ABC for a projected 13-week run after it was rejected by NBC and CBS. Turn-On's sole broadcast episode replaced the Wednesday episode of Peyton Place – a fact referenced on the show itself, where, in the opening, Tim Conway refers to the show as "Peyton Re-Place". Conway was the first episode's guest host, and also participated in certain sketches. Among the cast were Teresa Graves (who would join the Laugh-In cast that fall), Hamilton Camp, and Chuck McCann. The writing staff included Albert Brooks. Urban legends by Conway and Schlatter claimed Turn-On was cancelled during the episode by affiliates; while this did not happen, multiple stations protested to ABC after it aired, screened it at a later timeslot, or refused to air it altogether.
Premise
Turn-On's premise was that it was "the first computerized TV show", according to its opening sequence; the show had no sets except for a clinical white backdrop, where sketches generated by an artificially intelligent computer would be acted out. Unlike the generally appealing humor of Laugh-In, Turn-On was oriented around off-color humor and "focused almost exclusively on sex as a comedic subject", using various rapid-fire jokes and risqué skits. Co-creator and production executive Digby Wolfe described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics—even people." Sounds created with Moog synthesizers were used in lieu of a laugh track, representing the computer's laughter. The program was also filmed instead of presented live or on videotape; in a style of presentation that was novel for the time, several sketches and jokes were presented with the screen divided into four squares resembling comic strip panels. The production credits of the episode were inserted at random intervals after the first commercial break, instead of conventionally at the beginning or end.
Reaction When initially presented to CBS, a network official stated that Turn-On was "so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it." Tim Conway has stated that Turn-On was canceled midway through its only episode, so that the party that the cast and crew held for its premiere as the show aired across the United States also marked its cancellation. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Conway later claimed that the Cleveland ABC affiliate, WEWS-TV, replaced the show after the first commercial break and utilized an "emergency protocol" of a black screen with live organ music.
Ten minutes into Turn-On, WEWS general manager Donald Perris called ABC's headquarters by telephone to notify them that they would no longer air the show and sent to ABC president Elton Rule an angry telegram: "If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don't use our walls. Turn-On is turned off, as far as WEWS is concerned. You tried too hard." After the program aired, a WEWS spokesman claimed that the station's switchboard was "lit up" with protest calls, and Perris derided Turn-On as being "in excessive poor taste". George Schlatter would later accuse Perris of actively lobbying other affiliates prior to the broadcast to force a network cancellation after objecting to it replacing Peyton Place on the Wednesday night schedule. However, Perris told The Cleveland Press that neither he nor the station's then-current program director, Ernest Sindelar, had a chance to preview the show prior to broadcast, saying that: It was previewed by a member of our staff whose judgment is usually good. Last night it wasn't very good. The show shouldn't have gone on. It's all right to be racy—but this was just plain dirty. This was a hate show. Its spirit was dirty. I watched it at home and I felt very bad that it was on. At the same time, WAKR-TV in Akron, Ohio—the Cleveland market's other primary ABC affiliate—did not receive any negative phone calls but their general manager criticized the show's "questionable taste". Several stations in the eastern time zones refused to air Turn-On before its premiere, including Memphis, Tennessee's WHBQ-TV, which refused to air the series because the management felt that it was "not up to our broadcast standards for that time of evening". The station quickly replaced it with an episode of The Real McCoys. After seeing the episode, several stations in the later western time zones decided not to broadcast the show at all, including Portland, Oregon's KATU, Seattle, Washington's KOMO-TV, and Denver, Colorado's KBTV. KATU's management stated their belief that certain portions of the program "are not in good taste and that these portions would be objectionable to a substantial and responsible part of the community." Viewers of Little Rock, Arkansas's KATV, which disliked the show but decided to air it, "jam[med] the station's switchboard" with complaints. Dallas, Texas, ABC affiliate WFAA-TV elected to air the show on the following Sunday night at 10:30 local time, to an overwhelmingly negative response. Both The New York Times and the Associated Press gave the show poor reviews, as did Bill Barrett, who was the TV critic for the Cleveland Press. Barrett remarked that "it appears to have proven one point: a television program needs more than shock-and-sex content to be attractive. It has to have taste and style. Turn-On lacked it last night. For all its special effects of split screen, psycho lights and electronic throbbing, it was merely a half-hour of vulgar little snickers." An ABC executive stated that "creatively, Turn-On didn't work". He compared the show negatively to the comedy of Dean Martin, Laugh-In, and the Smothers Brothers, which the executive described as "absolutely beyond belief ... awfully blue", but were popular and less controversial because unlike Turn-On, "they're funny".
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