Talk:Turn-On

Influenced "Bizarre (TV series)" and "Saturday Night Live"
Though "Turn-On" was ahead of it's time, the format it presented was nothing to be dismissed. Years later, a short lived Cable TV Show called "Bizarre", with Host John Byner, brought the similar inovative rawness of "Turn-On" to a mature audience. This same format would be re-defined later into the later influence and success of "Saturday Night Live".Aedwardmoch (talk) 18:41, 26 October 2009 (UTC)AedwardmochAedwardmoch (talk) 18:41, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

No mention of "Limboland" on Comedy Central?
Plain white background. Hosted by "technology" (in this case, a CGI skeleton). Random off-the-wall comedy. 1994, Comedy Central. It was obviously a re-boot of "Turn-on", except it lasted a full season on CC. --EmiOfBrie (talk) 00:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Obvious in your opinion, maybe. Can you provide sourcing to indicate that the Limboland was officially a remake of Turn-On? If not, then we can't include it otherwise it violates WP: NOR. 70.72.223.215 (talk) 13:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

re list of skits
An editor (User:Inanygivenhole) is wanting to remove the list of skits from the article, and in fact is pretty insistent upon it, having done this three times now. Per WP:BRD he's supposed to take this to the talk page, but there's really no way to make him do this, and I can't revert his edits anymore or I'd be edit-warring. So far the conversation has been through edit summaries, which is not the right way to do it, so let's think about this more deeply. The history so far is: So let's take if from there.
 * User:Inanygivenhole deleted the list of skits; edit summary "This is extraneous."
 * User:Herostratus restored the list of skits; edit summary "Not sure this is too much detail. It might be, but also gives specific data to aid understanding of what the fuss was about. Let's talk if you still want to remove it." (User:Herostratus then moved to list to the bottom of the article.)
 * User:Inanygivenhole deleted the list of skits; edit summary "This should be, at most, a list of 'notable' skits, not an entire recap of the show."
 * User:Ajmilner restored the list of skits; no edit summary.
 * User:Inanygivenhole deleted the list of skits; edit summary "Revert unexplained revert of utter trivia, if a skit is notable, it may be included, if not, it shouldn't crap up the article"

First of all, I don't think that deleting the article is on the table. It's possible that the article is entirely trivial, but no one's suggested that, and I doubt that it'd fail to pass a WP:AFD, although I could be wrong about that.

So, assuming that the article does exist, what should be in it?

One option would be to pare it back to a stub, with basically just air date and personnel. I'm not saying anyone wants to do that, but it's an option. I wouldn't support that, though, because to the extent that the entity's notable, it's because of the material in the Reaction section, and IMO this material is worthwhile if the article's going to exist at all. This was kind of a unique situation, and a tiny bit of TV history and kind of a window into some of the fault lines in America in the late 1960's.

But then OK, the list of skits, which is what the editor in question is objecting to. Here's my take: without some description of the show's contents, the reader is kind of left hanging, wondering what exactly the fuss was about. There's different ways to bring present this material: a complete list of skits with very brief descriptions (as we had); or a partial list of some skits; or a narrative description of some skits, with more detail; or a paragraph describing the contents in detail without describing specific skits; or maybe other ways. And the editor in question has opened the question of paring the list of skits to notable ones (in his edit summaries anyway; in practice he's just deleting the whole list).

A couple problems are, we don't have this material. We have a list of skits with brief descriptions. (This all happened a half-century ago so if we wanted to gather this material somebody'd beter get cracking.) If we wanted to pare the list to notable skits, we then have a problem with deciding which skits are "notable". If we can get cites showing which skits in particular were objected to, then maybe we could. But by cites plural I mean just that, I don't think digging up a quote from one person or even two would be sufficient to prove which material was generally considered problematic. I don't think that we the editors just deciding on our own which skits are notable and which not would be a good idea. If we wanted to do this we'd need a transcript for starters, and several editors participating, and that's a lot of work, and even then it'd be our own original-research guess.

And the article is not all that terribly long even with the list. If it was season-long show with many episodes, then listing each skit in each show (even if we had separate articles for each show) would be too much, I agree. But this was a one-off oddity.

So in summary, I don't think we need to pare the list for space reasons, and anyway I don't think we can easily pare the list to some notable subset, and I don't think we should delete the list altogether because that omits material that helps the reader understand the totality of the event. I await further discussion. Herostratus (talk) 03:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)


 * We don't mention *every little detail* of a television episode or movie for a reason. This one should be no different. In response to "If we wanted to pare the list to notable skits, we then have a problem with deciding which skits are 'notable'," that's easy, sources mention the skits, thus making them meet the notability criteria. "It's not long" isn't an argument for inclusion, some articles are deservedly short, and a one-episode television show sure sounds like a good candidate for that. Inanygivenhole (talk) 04:29, 1 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The article absolutely needs some idea of the show's content since what makes the show notorious is the reception of that content. Even if much of that content wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, having samples of the sketches does make clear what made the show unacceptable to middle America in the very late 1960s. But I'd absolutely agree a complete list of every sketch on the show is overkill. I'd suggest posting the complete list here on the talk page to see if editors can reach a consensus on, say, 5-7 sketches which best establish the nature of the show and how it crossed boundaries in a way that was not acceptable to advertisers and local affiliates. It would be better to work that out on the talk page than in the article page itself. ObtuseAngle (talk) 15:17, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Controversial sketches aired on the program
 * OK. On consideration I suppose it'd be OK to have an editor-selected subset if other editor agree with that. The list is below. Herostratus (talk) 16:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Two policemen say, "Let us spray," before spraying cans of mace at the camera.
 * 2) A firing squad prepares to shoot an attractive woman when the squad leader says, "Excuse me, miss, but in this case we are the ones with one final request." (This skit was recycled in Schlatter's revival of Laugh-In in 1978, with no complaints.)
 * 3) "The Body Politic", shown three times during the episode, featured a buxom, reclining blonde (Maura McGiveney) saying things like "Mr. Nixon, as President, now becomes the titular head of the Republican Party."
 * 4) McGiveny asks Tim Conway if he loves her. Conway gets offended, telling her that he just met her and, for all he knows, she could be a "a pot-smoking, jaded, wild-eyed, radical dropout." When McGiveny tells him that she's just that, he says, "I love you!"
 * 5) A sleazy TV pitchman (Robert Staats) promotes a breakfast cereal "soaked in mescaline."
 * 6) The same pitchman appears in a second spoof commercial selling women's shoes, though he is gradually revealed to be a foot fetishist.
 * 7) A diagram of a swastika is displayed as a narrator says, "You are now looking at the table at the Paris peace accords agreed to by General Ky."
 * 8) Several gay-themed messages scrolling across the screen, including "God Save the Queens", "Free Oscar Wilde" and "The Amsterdam Levee is a dike".
 * 9) A pregnant woman singing "I Got Rhythm" (alluding to the rhythm method of birth control).
 * 10) A vending machine dispensing the birth control pill, with an anxious young woman putting coins into it and then feverishly shaking the broken machine (some ABC affiliates cut the show off after this sketch).
 * 11) A draft-dodger holding a sign reading Sweden.
 * 12) Conway, dressed in a samurai outfit and speaking mock Japanese, is revealed to be university president/politician S.I. Hayakawa.
 * 13) A black man, face-to-face with a white man, says, "Mom always did like you best!" (an allusion to a popular catchphrase of The Smothers Brothers)
 * 14) One cop, played by Chuck McCann, asks a second, "You want to take some of this pornographic literature home with you tonight?" The colleague replies, "I don't even have a pornograph!" McCann then rips up a skin magazine and begins eating the pieces.
 * 15) A commercial spoof shows Conway touting a masculine deodorant while lifting weights and working out. "When I'm all through, I smell like a lady," he concludes and is shown in drag.
 * 16) In another commercial parody, Conway is shown wearing a tuxedo, and heavy eye mascara.
 * 17) A sequence (the show's longest) with the word sex flashing on and off in pulsating colors while Conway and Bonnie Boland leer at each other. Various stock photographs are displayed during the sequence, including one of Pope Paul VI.
 * 18) Conway as spokesman for "Citizens Action Committee of America," a group with the acronym CACA.
 * 19) The black programmer shown programming the computer supposedly generating the show says he dreamed he was a duck in Lester Maddox's bathtub. "I migrated," he says.
 * 20) A young woman in cap and gown is shown lobbing a hand grenade.
 * 21) Two men (Hamilton Camp and Chuck McCann) are standing at a globe. "Tell me," one says to the other, "where is the capital of South Vietnam?" The second man spins the globe and points, "Mostly over here, in Swiss bank accounts."
 * 22) A Catholic nun asks a priest, "Father, can I have the car tonight?" The priest replies, "Just as long as you don't get in the habit."
 * 23) Conway tells Graves, "I was so damned angry when I found out my kids were popping pills, I went out and got drunk."
 * 24) One message scrolled across the screen: "Israel Uber Alles."
 * 25) A recurring series of skits with Conway as a marriage counselor in session with an African American husband and an Asian wife. The last state laws against interracial marriages had been struck down only two years earlier.
 * 26) Two men in Stetson hats defend the principles of Southern womanhood. One then says to the other, "Come on, big beauty," and they hold hands and walk out effeminately.
 * 27) A white Southern hotel guest phones the main desk about the Gideon Bible which states "'Moses married an Ethiopian woman' ... in the Atlanta Hilton!?!"
 * 28) A puppet snake says, "Remember, folks, I could have given Eve the apple and the Pill!"


 * Let's see, numbers 10 and 17 are both mentioned in "levine2007", #3 in the St. Petersburg Times. I think one of the ones referencing racism and homosexuality should be included too, the latter got referenced in the St. Petersburg Times one. Inanygivenhole (talk) 17:22, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with #10 and #17 certainly though I might take #28 over #10 as an example of Pill humor. So many of these skits are so time-specific that that they would tend to confuse people who weren't well-versed in the politics and culture of late 1960s America. However, the political content was part of what made the show so offensive to so many; the article can't just make it seem like all the sketches were risqué. #2, though, has been cited in other works as an example of the show's humor. (I can't give an example at the moment since I'm away from my books, but I'm pretty sure that sketch was cited in one of the Books of Lists.) ObtuseAngle (talk) 15:36, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * After looking it over, I'd just keep the whole list. Detailed reasoning below.


 * Re "[T]hey would tend to confuse people who weren't well-versed in the politics and culture of late 1960s America", on the contrary they give a concrete example to a reader who is studying (or just interested in) the subject of some of the topics that were hot buttons back then. Right? The whole point of articles is to educate and inform. I'm sure many people coming to our articles on Relativity and so forth aren't well-versed in the subject but hopefully are little better versed by the time they leave. Same deal here.


 * Looking over the list, it seems most of them hit on a particular sore point, each one a point of contention or subject of discussion and dispute in the country at large at the time. (I'll grant that it may have been done crudely and unfunnily, but that's not important.) Birth control, Vietnam war and the draft and protestors, emerging youth drug use, sexual revolution, recent civil rights struggles, just-about-to-emerge gay rights movement, what have you. Woodstock and Stonewall both occurred a few months after the show was aired. Fraught times.


 * #2 #3 #14 #22 #17 look to be basically just dumb jokes (some recycled), but most are risque. At least some of them are useful if showing the presence of risque humor is useful.


 * #12 is just about an individual, S.I. Hayakawa, but recall that for a short time he was a very polarizing figure. "During 1968-69, there was a bitter student and Black Panthers strike at San Francisco State University for the purpose of gaining an Ethnic Studies program... It was threatened that if these demands were not immediately and completely satisfied the entire campus was to be forcibly shut down... Hayakawa became popular with conservative voters in this period after he pulled the wires out from the loud speakers on a protesters' van at an outdoor rally, dramatically disrupting it". Stuff like this was a big deal back then, I guess.


 * #18, it's not clear what the deal was. If Citizens Action Committee of America was presented as a conservative group it's political satire. The Citizens' Councils of America, formerly the White Citizen's Council, had been newsworthy in the 1960s and was still active, FWIW.


 * I'd keep these two in but I guess I can see an argument for not. A few topics are covered by multiple skits so maybe there's couple that are repetitious, and maybe a couple others are marginal. So we're talking about removing around five or so, maybe seven or so, perhaps nine if you push it, from the list. That's a quarter to a third. I don't see the benefit of just removing 25%-33%, it introduces our editorial judgement without shortening the list enough to help anything. I'd just go with the complete list.


 * FWIW, looking at the article history... This version of September 2007 did indeed have a selection, expressed in narrative form. Seven skits are described -- firing squad, scrolling messages (not actually a "skit"), I Got Rhythm, birth control vending machine, weird flashing "SEX" thing, nun borrowing the car, mixed-race couple (#2 #8 #9 #10 #17 #22 #25). People could look at that and see if they think it's an improvement.


 * Right after that, User:66.16.161.35 formatted it as a list. Later some more were added, possibly by User:66.16.161.35 (not sure); with this edit in August 2008, User:66.16.161.35 added skits and corrected some leaving the list in more or less its current state. Based on this and other edits I think that User:66.16.161.35 was working from a recording rather than a script. I doubt he was working from memory but you never know. He's not active here anymore. Herostratus (talk) 18:19, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, where do we stand? Right now AnyGivenHole and ObtuseAngle have commented and don't know whether I've convinced either of them or not (actually ObtuseAngle's position is not entirely clear). We need a refuting argument, or more people, or something. Absent that, having made a reasonable argument, I'm inclined to restore the list per WP:BRD. Herostratus (talk) 20:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Christ, give us time. We don't live to edit Wikipedia, it's just a casual hobby. The fate of the world doesn't rest on this obscure article. The first issue with all of these is verifiability. This is very hard to get a copy of and we have absolutely no way to verify the authenticity of any of these that aren't discussed in a reliable source. Second, Nos 2,3,14,17, and 22 are indeed dumb jokes, and the risque nature of the program is clearly shown by the notable examples. We don't need to include every single one of them in order to give an idea that the show was populated by dumb, risque jokes. That's pretty clear from the notable examples. I'd be okay with including #12 but I don't understand what the force of your argument for #18 is, it's a "funny acronym/poop joke" that pokes fun at an organization. So what? "The whole point of articles is to educate and inform." Yes, about the subject in question, **not** about every tiny 1960s culture reference. Inanygivenhole (talk) 21:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll clarify: I oppose including all the skits. The only ones listed should be ones that are cited in secondary sources. ObtuseAngle (talk) 22:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * OK OK relax no hurry. I just figured it had gone dead, and I figured I'd forget it if I wait too long. Take your time. Herostratus (talk) 00:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Did people ever come to a consensus on this? It's been 2 years since this discussion ended and the article is still without any examples of what exactly was so offensive. It is a bit odd to read an article about a show with such controversial content that it didn't even last through one episode, and then find that there are apparently sources discussing the specific content examples, but NONE of the content examples are in the article.  I think at minimum the 2007 description of skits that are discussed in reference sources ought to be put back in the article. TheBlinkster (talk) 06:21, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with TheBlinkster for me, coming to this article and not knowing anything about this show, the article is a bit mysterious, and the skits really explain what the show is about, and the reason why it was cancelled. As you say, at a minumum the 2007 description of skits should go back in. It seem to me, the general consensus here is for some of the skits to go back in, at least, I will add them back, if anyone has any objections, please advise. Deathlibrarian (talk) 00:47, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Source 4 is broken!
The youtube video that was cited has been privated. This should either be replaced or removed. 2A00:23C8:AA2:3200:60C2:133C:FF78:334E (talk) 01:53, 27 August 2021 (UTC)