What Were They Thinking: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History

Ranking the top 100 most memorable mishaps in a countdown format, this book begins with #100 and proceeds all the way to the single most indelible TV blunder. Organizing the material in this manner invites readers to discuss and debate whether Cop Rock was really a bigger fiasco than The New Monkees, or whether the presentation of Elvis Presley only from the waist up on The Ed Sullivan Show was a sillier bit of censorship than the coverage of Barbara Eden's belly button on I Dream of Jeannie. The blunders in this compendium take many forms-good and bad, inexplicable network decisions, casting catastrophes, and TV "events" that weren't. Each entry is covered in a detailed individual essay that answers such questions as "Why did this happen?" and "What were they thinking?"