Shark Bytes

I loved Lloyd Dobbins, but I have lost track of him. He had a way of delivering the news that was different and refreshing. So unlike present day broadcasters. And, so it goes was his sign off line Linda Ellerbee copied it and made it hers. Did Dobbins die ... if so when?

you are not the only ones. i remembered this gem the other day out of the fog of my brain. i loved dobbins. didnt he have a pock marked face or something? kind of screwed up? he seemed like a very angry and sardonic man. forget the woman - linda whatsername. he was king for a while.

So it goes, used by Dobbins and Ellerbee, was from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Apparently Dobbins got it from there and Ellerbee stole it from Dobbins. Dobbins complained, but noted that the phrase was still working, but he wasn't.

When the late-night, 90-min. show was moved to prime time and cut back to an hour (and Linda Ellerbee was added as co-host to Lloyd Dobins, though it wasn't really her fault) in 1978. Very high on the short list of programs that I'd love to see again that I don't guess I ever will; how much of a market is there for twenty-five-year-old newsmagazine shows? But the mix of TV documentary and sardonic attitude and satirical humor was really fresh and special. It appeared the first Saturday of every month, and the two years or so that it alternated with the early "Saturday Night Live" were late-night TV heaven.

This never really jumped the shark. Perhaps, one may argue, when it went into prime time each week, instead of the previous once monthly late night slot. The off-beat style didn't work as well as in the late hours. They sure had a camp sense of humor, including bumpers saying in effect "We thank you for telling someone to watch us." Give NBC credit for thinking out of the box in a good way with news magazines. (This from a devoted 60 Minutes fan.) As Linda Ellerbee said, "And so it goes."

Wow, I am IMPRESSED! Very cool that this show is listed. I remember seeing this show maybe a half a dozen times when I was a kid and LOVED IT. The anchors were..... IRREVERENT! In the early going I thought ABC News Now (w/ Aaron Brown) was kind of similar. Anyway, I seem to remember a story about some overseas (French?) delicacy which involved eating a very small cooked bird. I mean the whole bird. Once finished, each person at the table would carefully remove the only remaining part from their mouth, hold it up, and say, "Le beak! Le beak!" Or something to that effect.