Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Open House (1964 TV series)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Nominator has withdrawn their deletion request and there is no other support for Deletion. Liz Read! Talk! 02:58, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Open House (1964 TV series)

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Appears to fail WP:NTV and WP:GNG. Tagged for notability since 2022. PROD removed because it "ran for 32 episodes". Still needs reliable sources though. Donald D23  talk to me  03:03, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Television and United Kingdom.  Donald D23   talk to me  03:03, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment TV Pop Diaries appears to cover it. It's pretty sparse, but it asserts that it collects information from primary sources, which could make it an independent RS. More to the point, this actually says a tiny bit about the show. which our otherwise permastub doesn't appear to cover. Jclemens (talk) 04:53, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.  The review notes: "This is a mixture of odds and ends which you can pick up and let drop as you wish, watching this or that as it catches your fancy and then returning to your book, or your woodwork or the ironing. If you are a critic you watch it right through. All five thousand four hundred seconds of it. It has improved quite a lot since BBC-2 started. It runs more smoothly than it did though it still lacks bite. The interviews with the celebrities would be much better if they weren't thanked quite so gushingly for condescending to come. But I prefer my celebrities to be doing that which made them famous rather than chatting to someone else. Unless I lost count, there were fifteen different items in the programme last Saturday. There was something for everybody, as they say. ... All in all a hotch-potch of a programme for dipping into. To watch from beginning to end is too much. But how do you know when to switch on for the items you fancy? You can't. You don't. You have to leave the set on and pop your head round the door now and then, or sit through it."  The review notes: "On this first showing, Open House is a sort of elephants' graveyard of all the old discarded television programmes. Like the ghosts in Richard III, they popped up one after another wailing "Remember me!" Of course, a loosely-shaped magazine of this kind needs time to find its feet. It would not be fair to write it off as a failure after the first edition, but some hard thinking will have to be done pretty sharpish if Open House is not to carve itself a deep canyon of bad habits from which no one will be able to escape. Gay Byrne, who I have not seen before, has a pleasant, relaxed charm. But what a struggle the poor man had to inject a little yeast into the soggy dough. The idea of a programme you can pick up and drop whenever you like is a good one—even if it is a dead pinch from radio's Roundabout. ... All the same, the musical numbers were the best features of this programme except when the sets cut performers' heads off. For my money, the star of the show was Joe Brown. This young performer has come on apace in the last year but he must learn not to giggle at his own remarks."  The review notes: "Sport has monopolized Saturday afternoon tv up to now, so the third channel has only to stray from it to provide an alternative. This is what "Open House" sets out to do, in the form of an informal equivalent to the easily flippable magazine or to radio for motorists. It's a show that can be dropped in on, and the only question it raises is whether audiences will treat it just as casually. After all, you can't drive an automobile and watch tv at the same time. ... ﻿Producers T. Leslie Jackson and Stewart Morris gave a slick and fast-moving format to the melange, and the chief fault was the general flabbiness of Tony Marriott's script, especially in the linking. The interviews, too, seemed a decade out of date. Columnist Lord Arran came over best in this branch of the program, for he makes a living at being outrageous. Tony Osborne's smooth orchestra gave fine backing throughout, though Osborne should give up winking at the camera. Certainly, it was an alternative in horizontal viewing."  The article notes: "And Britain's new third TV channel, BBC-2, will be without its all-Saturday-afternoon magazine show, "Open House," (which concentrated on pop) after Dec. 5."  The article notes: "I have only seen one of the Saturday afternoon programmes "Open House," and not all of that, so I will say only that nothing I saw would have brought me in to the set or kept me at it, unless I had been a prisoner, infirm, aged, or a critic. The slow, relentless pottering, the bad jokes, the schoolboy howlers, the silly drawings to illustrate news items, the ineffably coy and cosy air of the whole thing was unbelievable. There did seem, however, to be one useful and interesting idea, that of showing places like the Tower of London and Greenwich with the Cutty Sark. There were details of how to get there and what it cost. But for the most part "Open House" is like a reversion to the oldest days of television when to see anything on the screen at all was a marvel. Let's hope it fascinates all those sport-hating women." <li>Barrett, Nicholas (1964-12-04). "An introduction of the new service to Midland viewers" (pages 1 and 2). Birmingham Post. Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 2023-09-11. Retrieved 2023-09-11 – via Newspapers.com. The article notes: "And what an alternative is has been—Open House, up to two hours of ingratiating light entertainment, which has had in its favour only the fact that it was "live," which seems to count for so much in television circles; not that an audience cares. People who watch Saturday afternoon television on BBC1 are watching because they want to see sport, not because they want to watch television. Open House seems to have catered for people who have nothing better to do than watch the box. Its all-grinning, all-jesting presentation from the inevitable black Vynide swivel chair can have done little more than mildly tickle the passing fancy of the sort of audience whose sensibilities have already been dulled by the ad-men. ... ﻿The big surprise the real volte-face-comes with the news that Saturday afternoon tele on the second channel is being dropped. Open House, roundly condemned elsewhere, is to go."</li> <li> The article notes: "The Saturday afternoon programme, Open House, would be dropped. This would enable BBC-2 to go on the air earlier in the evening and finish later."</li> </ol>There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Open House to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 06:38, 11 September 2023 (UTC) </li></ul>
 * Withdrawn per the sources identified by Cunard. Donald D23   talk to me  00:56, 12 September 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.