| TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Also known as | Super Bloopers and Practical Jokes Super Bloopers & New Practical Jokes Bloopers |
| Genre | Reality Television Comedy |
| Written by | Bryan Michael Stoller Karl Tiedemann |
| Directed by | Bill Davis Bryan Michael Stoller |
| Presented by | Ed McMahon (1982–1993) Dick Clark (1981–2004) Suzanne Whang (1998) Dean Cain (2011–2013) |
| Narrated by | Charlie O'Donnell |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Running time | 45 minutes (1984–1986, 1991–2007) 22-23 minutes (2011–2013) |
| Production companies | Dick Clark Productions Carson Productions (1984–1998) |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC (1984–1998) ABC (1998–2007) Syndication (2012–2013) |
| Release | January 9, 1984 (1984-01-09) – July 1, 2013 (2013-07-01) |
| Related | |
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TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes is an American television program. Debuting as a weekly series, new episodes have been broadcast as infrequent specials during most of its run. It premiered onNBC in 1984, moved toABC in 1998, and was revived insyndication in 2012. The NBC run of the series was co-produced byCarson Productions andDick Clark Productions (Known in the end credits as the C&C Joint Venture), and the ABC and syndication runs have been produced solely by Dick Clark Productions.
The series was predated by two separate series of specials, one devoted to television and filmbloopers—humorous errors made during the production of film and television programs, or on live news broadcasts—and the other a series of specials featuring classic televisioncommercials. TheTV's Censored Bloopers specials were hosted by longtime TV producerDick Clark starting on May 15, 1981 (and were dedicated to 1950s TV producerKermit Schaefer, who had pioneered the concept of preserving bloopers), and theTelevision's Greatest Commercials specials, which started on May 25, 1982, were hosted byEd McMahon (which he continued to co-host even as he moved on to co-host the weeklyBloopers series). Both sets of specials garnered highratings, and following a combination special (TV's Greatest Censored Commercial Bloopers), in the winter of 1984 it was decided to combine the two programs into one series, hosted by Clark and McMahon.Charlie O'Donnell (who was also Clark's announcer onAmerican Bandstand from 1958 to 1968) would be added as announcer (to intro both McMahon and Clark, and to announce bloopers in the "Coming up next" bumpers).
Besides dividing the series between bloopers and classic TV advertisements of yesteryear, the original version of the show also featured at least two practical joke segments per episode, with celebrities caught inCandid Camera-like situations (a forerunner of the later seriesPunk'd). Like the blooper and commercial segments, the "practical jokes" were first seen in a television special,Johnny Carson's Greatest Practical Jokes—hence Carson Productions' involvement in the series.
Other regular features included:
As the original two-year weekly run of the series progressed, adjustments were made to the format and eventually the commercials were phased out, along with other segments, leaving only the bloopers and practical jokes.
The weekly series ended in 1986. In 1988, Clark revived it as a series of specials retitled asSuper Bloopers and New Practical Jokes, and returned with McMahon as co-hosts. Titles of the specials includedTV's Censored Bloopers in 1993, and simplyBloopers, as the practical joke element was ultimately dropped. These specials aired irregularly on NBC until as late as 1998, often appearing as "filler" for cancelled series, and acting as a low-cost summer replacement series; the series even briefly returned to a weekly format in 1998 (asTV Censored Bloopers 98) with Suzanne Whang as co-host.[1] The specials often drew a larger audience than their competition, which consisted mainly ofreruns.
In the later years of the series' run on NBC, the bloopers shown tended to be drawn mostly from programs produced by NBC.
From 2000 until 2002, The NBC specials reran daily onTNN shortly after they became "The National Network."
In 1998, Clark moved the series to ABC. New specials aired periodically until 2004, when Clark suffered astroke. ABC continued to air reruns of these specials until 2006, and they frequently appeared onTBS as well, mainly in thegraveyard slot asfiller to bring the schedule back into kilter at the start of the broadcast day after the end ofTurner Sports coverage in primetime. As with the specials from the later years at NBC, the ABC specials mostly focused on outtakes from series produced by ABC itself, or from productions ofThe Walt Disney Company, which owned ABC. In addition, logos of networks other than ABC, and of stations affiliated with those networks, were obscured.
In March 2007, ABC aired the specialCelebrity A-List Bloopers, produced by Dick Clark Productions, withJohn O'Hurley as host in Clark's place.[2]
In the fall of 2012, the series was revived by Dick Clark Productions andTrifecta Entertainment & Media under the titleBloopers, in a half-hour, syndicated format, airing twice per week.[3]Dean Cain hosted the series and comedian Jack Vale starred in the hidden camera pranks and acts as co-producer.[4] Instead of television and movie outtakes, this incarnation of the series focused on web anduser-generated content. However, the practical joke segments in the vein ofCandid Camera, which were dropped from the series during the time of the NBC specials, had been reintroduced.[5][6]
During the show's original two-year run on NBC, it sparked a number of imitators on other networks, most notably the ABC seriesFoul-ups, Bleeps & Blunders. That show aired bloopers fromStar Trek for the first time on American network television. ABC's ersatz series never matched theratings of the original, however. AfterBloopers left NBC, the network launched its own similar series,Most Outrageous Moments, which lasted until 2009.