Profunksticated

Here’s something you need to know about Profunksticated: He’s an old-school kind of a guy. Well, as old-school as someone born in 1959 can be. He’s not only into the old-school funk-R&B, but he’s a classic TV buff as well. He’s got all kinds of stuff, mostly old network promos, on video.

Now, for you regular readers, here’s where I switch from writing in the third-person to posting in the first-person (LOL).

Return with me to a time, long before there were 500 cable channels with nothing on, to a period when TV markets had only ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS (then known as NET for National Educational Television)  — usually on Very High Frequency or VHF (Channels 2-13) received by rabbit ear anntenae, and a few fuzzy-reception independents on the separate Ultra High Frequency, or UHF dial (Channels 14-83) for which you needed that loop antenna. No HBO, no Showtime, no BET.

There were few remote controls; most folks actually had to get up off their duffs to switch the set on or change the channel.

Now come with me to our ultimate destination: September 1969, Friday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC, the time slot of a groundbreaking half-hour comedy-drama called Room 222. I was almost 10 at the time and loved this show.

Room 222 was about a fictional integrated Los Angeles high school and, according to the site of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, tackled issues such as "racism, sexism, homophobia, dropping out of school, shoplifting, drug use among both teachers and students, illiteracy, cops in school, guns in school, Vietnam war veterans, venereal disease, and teenage pregnancy." Most of it crap that still plagues public high schools today.

What I find significant about the show is that — correct me if I’m wrong — it was the first network prime time show to give top billing to an African American male actor. That man was the late Lloyd Haynes, who played history teacher Pete Dixon. Also starring in Room 222 was that fine-azz Denise Nicholas, along with Karen Valentine and Michael Constantine.

It’s going on nearly 40 years since this show first premiered. It ran on ABC for five years and is described by MBC as "breaking new narrative ground,"  mixing dramatic elements and comedy, that would be used in future shows, including such Norman Lear-produced fare as All in the Family and Maude.

Below this post is Room 222’s opening theme, all of one minute and 30 seconds, a comparable eternity to today’s TV, where the end of one show quickly segues into the next, with theme songs just about non-existent. That’s to keep us viewers from frustrating advertisers by using the clicker to surf to the next channel. (By the way, if you view a related video of a Room 222 network promo once this YouTube clip finishes playing, you might spot a young Ed Begley Jr. playing a student.)

If you’re younger than 30, you won’t remember this, but check it out — this opening makes high school look like college, doesn’t it? Thank God for YouTube.  Enjoy.

Peace.

An update as of Nov. 3, 2007: It seems someone took down Room 222’s opening theme, so that video is no longer available. So I’ve replaced it with this network promo for the show.