The Media Funhouse

I'd like to promote two things today. One is a wonderful show on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (aka. "cable access") hosted by Ed Grant called The Media Funhouse. The other is a show that Media Funhouse featured heavily on one of its episodes, Naked City. It was a film-noir detective show that originally ran on ABC from 1958 to 1963 starring Paul Burke and Horace McMahon. It featured a number of up-and-comers such as Roddy Mcdowall, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, etc. The coolest thing about the show is perhaps the backdrop: New York City circa 1958-1963.

I had never heard of this show in my life. I grew up in Philly, and the syndication gods were apparently not smiling upon me in my youth, as this show was never syndicated there (it was syndicated in New York in the early 80's on Channel 5 and never seen on television since). Luckily, Image Entertainment has released these shows on DVD in a somewhat odd manner. They started with one-disc sets that included three episodes each and then moved on to three-disc sets (Vol. 1-3). I know the 3-disc sets include the original commercials (as bonus material, so you don't HAVE to sit through them if you don't want to, which is brilliant); the one-disc sets I'm not sure about yet.

The Media Funhouse currently airs in Manhattan late Thursday/early Friday at 1:30 am on channel 67 on MNN.

In the meantime, here's a clip from Naked City in which Alan Alda plays an extremely snotty beat poet trying to insult a near-comatose Burgess Meredith. That's really all I know (it was a short clip from the Media Funhouse episode; I've yet to see the actual episode), except that I've been driving everybody around me crazy with my impersonation of this scene.

Click here to download the clip.

Enjoy.