Turn-On | Episode 1 | Official George Schlatter Release

Very much an attempt at a Laugh-In style show

This makes me feels like I’m on lsd

This is exhausting to watch. I only made it 8 minutes and had to stop watching. I can understand why it got pulled.

I've been a fan of Laugh-In since it originally aired. I've known about Turn-On for years, saw brief clips, and now I've attempted to watch a lengthier sample. Sorry, but I find it unwatchable.

How appropriate that Bufferin was one of the sponsors!

My brain after I forget to take my meds:

This show would be #1 today

This isWHO DO YOU DO that ITV UK filmed. Same style.

what the fuck did I just watch

"In the future, entertainment will be randomly generated"
-Larry the Cucumber, 2003

Pretty wild for a show in 1969 to have a gag about foot fetishes.

I admire the fact this finally got uploaded, but I do wonder if the synth-beat sound is placed in the background recently. That does sound too 'modern' in comparison to the rest of the source.

Yeah, I understand how this got cancelled. 😀 There's some good stuff in there, but still a bit too much chaff

Creators Digby Wolfe and George Schlatter were doubtless heavily influenced by the late, great Ernie Kovacs although this show is far raunchier than anything Kovacs did for television. He was the master of the blackout gag and paved the way for many others.

Thank you for sharing these shows with the world. I never saw this series when it aired. It came and went. I heard all about the controversy, however, surrounding it.

Wow, still ahead of it's time!!

George Schlatter was doing what Ernie Kovacs might have done if he’d had this technology available.

I'm starting to understand why this was considered "lost media"... I wouldn't have searched too hard to recover it.

Lowkey a reboot of this would go hard

I remember reading about this show as a little kid. It leans a lot more on the computer generated theme than I was expecting. Honestly it is more watchable than a lot of TV from 60s/70s

As a 21 year old just discovering, considering the time, it gives the perspective that similar concepts were present so long ago is so entertaining and interesting.

Now that this is openly available, i have no more reasons to ever go to New York

The audio is awful

Birth control pills were controversial then and they are controversial now. Men have yet to evolve.

Today's so called "anti woke' crowd would have a fit if this type of comedy were aired today.

there are some really clever jokes in this and I enjoy the off-the-wall, fast paced feeling. If it had fewer of those seemingly pointless random bits of people... dancing and stuff I think it would have been a lot better. But having seen Tim and Eric, I have a lot more tolerance for this type of weirdness than the average person watching prime time tv in the 60s.

Good lord, that awful soundtrack below the entire thing makes it impossible to enjoy even the clever bits. I kept fast-forwarding through the video to see if it ever stopped. Alas, only briefly, and then back to the annoying music. Whose lousy idea was that?

Agony.

You can certainly see aspects of Laugh-In.

Total crap.

So what were you guys smoking at the time you made these???

So the show was off the air in less than 10 minutes and it was the fault of the a program director in Ohio that it was pulled? I think it was off the air that quickly because it was so bad. 23 minutes of that background sound, skits that aren't funny (so bad, people in the skits laugh at the end in hopes you will think it is funny), and just overall weird and somehow boring. One person commented he watched because he wanted to see what would happen next. This isn't even as good as car wreck because I can't imagine even wanting to rubberneck to see what happens in the next scene.

Because of this show’s controversy, ABC was nervous about picking up All in the Family which was later picked up by CBS. So All in the Family’s fate and all of its spinoffs might have been different if it weren’t for this show😂🤔

I never thought I'd see the full episode

Remember, a group of network executives had to approve this.

TV Land could’ve done a special two hour documentary on this show back in the 2000s featuring a full airing of this episode

So that's it? Its just 'absurdism+dadaism the show'. For the time period, foregoing a 'live audience' probably weirded people out and made it feel awkward to viewers that weren't 'with it'.
This is like something you'd see on Adult Swim at 2am and not think twice about.

It makes me laugh how Teresa graves was in this pilot, that september she joined Laugh-In

Wow, it's worse than its reputation.

Saying that this show was way ahead of its time is an understatement.

If I would describe Turn-On, I say it's a merge of the psychedelic zaniness of Laugh-In and the surreal irony of Monty Python.

I noticed all three variety shows are from '69 (Fact check: Laugh-In started a year before in '68).