Angela Lansbury is remembered for her roles as Mrs. Potts in the Disney classic, Beauty and the Beast, as apprentice witch Eglentine Price in the Disney film, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. However, television audiences got to observe her endearing charm as mystery author Jessica "J.B." Fletcher in the series, Murder, She Wrote.
The series was an anthology of Jessica's travels and home life that would coincide with murders being committed around her. After several seasons, however, the network airing Murder She Wrote, CBS, decided to take the show in a different direction. Instead of focusing on Jessica's home life in the sleepy town of Cabot Cove in Maine being the primary fall back if she wasn't traveling, Jessica took a job teaching a criminology course at the fictional Manhattan College.
While this brought a different perspective to the show, it was also a thinly veiled attempt for CBS to use a show marketed for an older audience to be re-branded into a show for a younger one. At this point in time which was around the late 80's to the early 90's, CBS earned the nickname "Geriatric Network".
Much of its programming was geared towards older audiences, from seeing the veterans of journalism like Mike Wallace and Morley Safer on the news-magazine 60 Minutes, to the faces that audiences grew up with on the hit sitcom, The Golden Girls. Despite CBS' ploy to get the network, like a 50-year-old man, thinking about 20 somethings, it backfired on them. Ultimately, this led to the cancellation of Murder She Wrote after a semi-successful 12-year run.
The final episode of the series was really more of a way to get back at the network for cancelling them over the age demographic. The finale, aptly titled, Death by Demographic, details Jessica trying to solve the murder of a young DJ who takes over the job of a much older, more well-known radio DJ. The difference in their styles was more than enough to really define just how the show was telling CBS what they thought about the move to the newer ideas.
Not many shows feature older actors unless they are playing the guest spot of somebody’s parent, grandparent, or somebody worldly with a great deal of experience to back up their zany antics. More often than not this conjures up the image of Betty White and in this instance, you would be right. She is an example of how older men and women still have great deal left to show the world about what it really means to be funny, or to be an actress or how to perfectly salt a margarita glass.
The last real television series to showcase veteran talent in a group was the TV Land sitcom, Hot in Cleveland. Hot in Cleveland was more or less an updated version of the Golden Girls that focused on the new definition of old age, which is the mid to late 50's and early 60's, and in the case of Betty White, a person in their late 80's and early 90's.
Talents like these should be cherished while we have them, which is the primary reason we send Ruth Bader Ginsburg vitamins and we send Betty White vodka. The show 60 Minutes has been known to showcase many talented reporters who are working hard to tell the truth. In one instance this did not work in their favor. A story done by Norah O’Donnell focused on White House Advisor and friend of then President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett on CBS’ flagship news-magazine, 60 Minutes.
The story was horrible to say the least. If O’Donnell wasn’t asking the wrong questions, she was interrupting Jarrett’s answers. While this sounds more like a segment from The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News, it was a 60 Minutes segment that was not the quality 60 Minutes has produced for years.
Ageism isn’t the problem society and Hollywood are facing but maybe a lack of appreciation for the people in the field. Rushing to please younger audiences isn’t always the best way of making television watchable again. Maybe shows like Netflix’s reboot of One Day at a Time have it right, where newer talent is aided by someone who has been funny for years. Knowing how to do the job is part of it, the other half is learning from those that have influenced the way your job is done.