TVSquad

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Charlie Jones: He was a veteran sports announcer, best known for announcing football games on ABC and NBC from 1960 to 1998. He also worked on the Olympics, soccer matches, college football, tennis, figure skating, and other sports. He died of a heart attack in La Jolla, CA at age 77.

• TV Land has a Beverly Hillbillies marathon all night.
• HBO has an Entourage marathon all night.
• Sci-Fi has The Twilight Zone all night.
• Discovery has a Mythbusters marathon.
• At 8, PBS has a new Live From Lincoln Center, with Joshua Bell and the New York Philharmonic.
• AMC has a Planet of the Apes marathon all night, starting with the original at 8.
• At 10, ABC has Dick Clark's Primetime New Year's Rockin' Eve 2008 (whew!) with Clark and Ryan Seacrest. It's interrupted at 11 for local news then picks up again at 11:35.
• At 11, FOX has New Year's Eve Live, with Cat Deeley and Spike Feresten.
• CNN has Anderson Cooper in Times Square starting at 11.
• Motorcycle stunt rider Robbie Maddison is going to attempt to jump a football field in Las Vegas tonight. ESPN has live coverage starting at 11.
• Also at 11: MTV has New Year's Eve coverage too, with Tila Tequila.
• At 11:35, NBC has New Year's Eve with Carson Daly.

Check your local TV listings for more.

You remember the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies, don't you? It tells the story of how poor mountain man Jed Clampett was out looking to shoot himself some dinner when he came upon some bubblin' crude. Well, before you knew it Jed was a millionaire ($25 million, to be exact). Of course, that was back in 1962.

Today, old Jed is worth about $11 billion dollars! That's according to Forbes' list of the 15 wealthiest fictional characters according to today's real-world commodity and share markets. The Clampett patriarch is listed fifth on the list, between Futurama's Mom ($15.7 billion) and The Simpsons' C. Montgomery Burns ($8.4 billion). Number one of the list is Ducktales' Scrooge McDuck, who is worth a whopping $29 billion! Man, what I wouldn't do to be one of his nephews.

I can't be the only one that sometimes suffers an attack of sticker shock when shopping for TV on DVD. Farscape and The Sopranos, well... anything by HBO for that matter, come to mind. So I was thrilled to find, while walking through my local Half Price Books, the TV Time Comedy Collection.

This 12 disk set contains The Andy Griffith Show (16 eps), Hal Roach's Rascals (9 eps), Dick Van Dyke (6 eps), Petticoat Junction (4 eps), The Lucy Show (19 eps), The Beverly Hillbillies (20 eps), Ozzie and Harriet (18 eps), Burns and Allen (10 eps), and the Rescue From Gilligan's Island movie. All for the low low price of $9.98, new in box. It's a fun collection. While I wouldn't be in the market for season sets of any of these shows, with the possible exception of Dick Van Dyke, it's nice to have them around when the networks go all repeat on us. And finding a twenty-something Dennis Hopper guest starring as a beatnik poet on an obscure Petticoat Junction episode makes it funny in a whole new way.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to track down this exact set anywhere online. Amazon does have a similar set from the same company with a slightly different mix of episodes, and minus the Gilligan movie, new for $23.99, and used for $10.97. Still not a bad deal.

Are you bored? Do you have nothing much to do today? Does the thought of leaving your home and being around other human beings just leave you unfulfilled? Don't worry, that's why I'm here. Instead of stepping outside where you might risk being hit by a car or strangled by a squirrel, why not sit in front of the warm glow of your computer screen and watch some clips from old TV shows like You Bet Your Life, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show? There's also some old Popeye and Looney Tunes shorts, plus movie serials and trailers.

A friend of mine sent me this link to Public Domain Comedy, knowing I'm a sucker for all things cartoony. You can also find a lot of similar clips and full-length videos by poking around the Archive.org site. It's like YouTube, but without the guilt of viewing copyrighted material.