The Worst TV Show in Broadcast History?

In the late 1960s, American television executives Digby Wolfe and George Schlatter were on the verge of TV history. Sketch comedy shows, most notably “Laugh-In” — which the two had previously worked on together — had seen massive success on the airways, and Wolfe and Schlatter had come up with a fun new way to expand the format: “Turn-On.” Their show was billed, tongue-in-cheek, as “the first computerized TV show.”  Computers, at the time, were still mythical beasts that few everyday people had access to, and to be clear, a computer didn’t actually create the show. Rather, the producers, writers, directors, and cast were simply imagining what would happen if a superintelligent machine was told to make a very funny television show. ABC, one of the three major television studios at the time, loved the idea. It told Wolfe and Schlatter to prepare for a 13-episode first season and lined up major brand sponsors to back the program.

As expected, the 30-minute show debuted on February 5, 1969 — and immediately made history. But because it was groundbreaking, but because it was awful.

So awful, in fact, that it was so awful, it was (effectively) canceled about 10 minutes in. 

Turn-On was a lot different than any other TV show in its era. Every element of the show reflected the “made by a supercomputer” concept. The set was just a big white space, a perfect void that could be filled with virtually anything. Unlike similar shows of its time, Turn On didn’t have a studio audience; instead, audio engineers used a synthesizer to create what they thought were appropriate sounds from a computer’s perspective. The Lost Media Wiki describes the experience:

Sketches were very short (mostly under 30 seconds) and adult-oriented far beyond anything airing on American TV at the time – a kind of smutty stream-of-consciousness involving sex, race, sex, politics, sex, religion and of course sex. The only named recurring character was E. Eddie Edwards, a shoe salesman with a foot fetish. Many segments consisted solely of bizarre images or surrealist one-liners: “President Nixon now becomes the titular head of the Republican Party.” [That’s a subtle but somewhat vuglar play on words.] The premiere episode featured over 30 such avant-garde snippets in just 25 minutes – a dizzying pace even by today’s standards.

To say that people hated it would be a huge, huge understatement. CBS rejected the pilot, with one executive saying that the show was “so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it.” But ABC gave it a go and found out that the CBS exec was right. Viewers of the debut episode were so upset with the show that they called their local broadcasters, in volumes rarely seen, to complain while the show was still on the air. As Deadline reported, “10 minutes into the broadcast, between the first and second commercial breaks, a programmer at WEWS in Cleveland stated that the remainder of the program would ‘not be seen this evening….or ever.’ The rest of the Cleveland time slot was filled with a pitch-black screen. A local organist on a retainer was then called upon and filled the remaining airtime with sprightly organ music. Cleveland’s action sparked an avalanche, and as word traveled of that cancellation, other programmers reacted and pulled Turn-On. The show never aired even once on the West Coast.”

ABC canceled the show immediately thereafter. Only two episodes of Turn-On were ever recorded, and only the first one ever aired. However, decades later, the Internet took over, and someone (it’s not clear who) uploaded a copy to YouTube. Schlatter decided to release an “official” version in February of 2024, which you can watch here, if you’re willing to risk it. And if you like it, good news: Schlatter also released the second episode to YouTube, here, and a group of clips that he called “The Lost Episode,” here.

Bonus fact: In the summer of 2021, NBC started filming a reality competition show titled “Ultimate Slip N’ Slide,” which the network, via The Wrap, described as “a wet-and-wild new series [that] takes the spirit of the classic backyard slide and transforms it into a real-life water park full of gigantic slippery rides with the chance to take home a big cash prize.” The show was supposed to debut right after the opening ceremony of the 2020 Summer Olympics (which was delayed due to COVID-19), underscoring NBC’s investment in the program. But it never aired. Seven weeks into the eight-week production cycle, production shut down entirely “after 65% of the show’s staff were infected by a giardia outbreak that caused multiple cases of ‘awful explosive diarrhea,’” per another report by The Wrap. The final rounds of the competition were supposed to be filmed during that eighth week, but that never happened, and efforts to edit in a resolution were unsuccessful. The show never aired despite NBC’s reported $18 million investment in it.

From the Archives: Uh… this was a dumb idea.