SitcomsOnline.com News Blog

TV One September 2008 Schedule and Highlights; TV Rebels: Bill Cosby

Our look at the fall 2008 season on cable continues with TV One's September 2008 line-up. This September TV One will be adding the hit '90s sitcom Living Single to its African-American line-up. Living Single premieres on TV One in a week-long marathon event that airs each weeknight from 7pm-12am ET/PT (encores 3-6am ET/PT). Each character will be showcased on various nights -- Khadijah on Monday, Synclaire on Tuesday, Regine on Wednesday, Max on Thursday, and The Boys (Overton and Kyle) on Friday. Living Single was a situation comedy that centered on the lives of a group of six African American friends living in (or near) a Brooklyn brownstone. The series focused on the personal and professional lives of each character, as well as their relationships with one another.
After the marathon, Living Single settles into its regular time-slot weeknights at 8:30pm & 9pm starting Monday, September 29, with an encore from 3-4am ET/PT.
Other changes include the fall 10am-4pm block. Beginning on Monday September 8 and continuing until further notice, the TV One daytime marathons which air weekdays from 10am to 4pm will have a steady schedule consisting of the following: Eve (Mondays), Movies (Tuesdays), Wanda At Large/Divorce Court/Between Brothers rotate (Wednesdays), TV One on One/Roc rotate (Thursdays) and All of Us (Fridays).
On Monday, September 29, the TV One fall schedule settles into place with changes taking place after 5pm. View the full TV One September 2008 line-up for complete details.
Moving on to other highlights, on Saturday September 20 beginning at 1pm, it's girl power time as TV One presents the "Eve-Sisters Doin' It For Themselves-Marathon" that showcases episodes of the sitcom Eve that feature the women taking charge while resolving their own problems and issues that will keep viewers laughing as well as fired up with emotion as Shelly (Eve) and her crew prove that new millennium women have it all together.
Future Outlook: TV One has also acquired the sitcom Half & Half for later in the fall...we will have details on that at a later date!
So, don't forget to view and discuss the TV One September Line-Up!


It's time for another edition of TV Rebels. We originally had special permission to publish the first 6 essays on TV shows and actors that will be featured in the upcoming book TV Rebels: 100 People and Programs That Shaped the Medium by authors Lou Orfanella and Oscar De Los Santos...and as we mentioned in April, we have now gotten rights to 6 additional essays (for a total of 12!), so we will be bringing you one each month until at least November! Upcoming TV Rebel columns coming soon are about Rod Serling and Desi Arnaz. The book is in the works and will be released in 2009.

So without further adieu, we bring you the eighth essay of TV Rebels:

Bill Cosby: Double Rebel
by Lou Orfanella

In 1965 standup comic Bill Cosby earned critical praise and the first of three consecutive Emmy Awards as outstanding lead actor in a dramatic series as he began his three year run as globetrotting government agent Alexander Scott on the NBC drama I Spy. More significant and media changing than his triple Emmy feat was that this was the first instance of a major dramatic starring role by a black actor on a network television series. The groundbreaking weekly adventure costarred white actor Robert Culp as Scott's partner Kelly Robinson. "Coinciding with the crest of the civil rights movements, the series' light touch was 'balm for the jangled American psyche of the time,' said the New York Times. It was a historic moment in casting when a black man was placed along side a white man as his equal and it created international interest in the show" ("Biography").
After I Spy ended in 1968, Cosby headlined the sitcom The Bill Cosby Show on NBC ffrom 1969-1971 as well as the variety shows The New Bill Cosby Show (CBS) and Cos (ABC) in 1972 and 1976 respectively. He entered the Saturday morning children's shows arena from 1972-1977 with the message filled animated offering Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. It was in 1984 however, that Cosby would achieve his greatest success and become a double TV rebel.
In 1984 with the situation comedy genre mostly left for dead by network executives, Cosby returned to weekly series duty as the unflappable dad Cliff Huxtable on NBC's The Cosby Show, a light hearted family sitcom that skyrocketed to the top of the ratings and rejuvenated the genre during its eight year run. In the process it became the anchor of what was to become NBC's Thursday night lineup of "Must See TV." The Cosby Show was the most watched show on the air for five of its seasons and is credited with reviving the viability and profitability of the situation comedy genre.
In many ways The Cosby Show allowed its star to extend the social changes he had been a part of with I Spy. Two decades after Alexander Scott showed that blacks and whites could be equal partners, The Cosby Show depicted the black family on equal footing with middle and upper class white families, rather than as low income ghetto dwellers such as in previous shows as Good Times and Sanford and Son. "The Cosby Show discontinued familiar sitcom formulas filled with disrespectful children and generational conflict and presented instead a two-parent family in which both partners worked as professionals. In the Huxtable household, viewers were exposed to the existence and culture of historically black colleges and universities" ("Cosby"). Black art and music as well as black history were all apparent in the Huxtable universe expanding the traditional and often stereotypical view of black families television had presented.
During the 1990s the man known widely as simply "Cos" would star in three additional series. First came the revival of the comedic quiz show You Bet Your Life with Cosby filling the legendary shoes of Groucho Marx. The Cosby Mysteries followed, and the Cosby (CBS, 1996-2000) sitcom closed the decade. He also hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things for CBS. While none of those efforts made an indelible mark on television history, Cosby's legacy had long been secured with I Spy and The Cosby Show, two series that helped change the face of television.

Works Cited
Biography of Bill Cosby. The Kennedy Center. 7 August 2007 http://www.kennedy-center.org.
Cosby, Bill. The Museum of Broadcast Communications. 7 August 2007 http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/humlC/cosbybill/cosbybill.htm.