Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

Obviously neither 'American Idol' nor 'Dancing With the Stars' is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate elements of drama, comedy and suspense is moderately ingenious.

Jimmy Kimmel still comes across like a guy who crashed a party and got caught at it, yet adamantly refuses to leave.

The once inviolate frame within which programs or commercials were displayed on television - always separately - has been violated to a pulp. Program content is seen increasingly as a mere backdrop on which ads are posted like billboards on a fence.

People of a certain age look back on the Mayberry of 'The Andy Griffith Show' and become almost as homesick for that simple fictional hamlet as they do for their own home towns.

"More fun than a barrel of monkeys." Has anyone ever stopped to think how cranky, if not downright vicious, a barrelful of monkeys would be, especially once released from the barrel?