Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2016 November 7

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November 7

Actresses and their roles.

I have been reading Wikipedia articles on 2 well known actresses. 1 Yvonne De Carlo and 2 Carolyn Jones. I am old enough to have seen The Muensters when they originally aired. Your articles on both actresses state that they both were on the TV Show The Muensters. One is correct but my thinking may be cloudy at 67 years old but I seem to remember both actresses were in the TV Show. I was wondering if you could clear this up for me. Thank you for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SPOTSOTW (talk • contribs) 05:09, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Yvonne de Carlo was a member of the regular cast of The Munsters. Carolyn Jones was a member of the cast of The Addams Family, playing a very similar role (as Morticia Addams) in a very similar (but different) show. Carolyn Jones' biographical article does not say that she appeared in The Munsters. General Ization ^Talk 05:15, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

IMDB says the only time they appeared in the same TV program was Roots --TrogWoolley (talk) 12:11, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

• I would not say the shows are "very similar". The Munster family are explicitly weird, in specific ways, and think they're the normal ones; the Addams family's weirdnesses are vague (in many episodes Thing is the only evidence that they're not merely eccentric) and they don't care what's normal. —Tamfang (talk) 07:22, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Confusion update

I want to give you an update on clearing up the confusion regarding Power Girl and Supergirl. That was the image I was referring to. Thank you so much. But what can anyone tell me about the comic strip artist Ata Boy?2604:2000:7113:9D00:B81E:C008:E611:FADF (talk) 08:19, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Ata-Boy is a design company and manufacturer, not a specific person. They specialize in licensed products, such as stickers, buttons, pins and refrigerator magnets, including some bearing DC Comics superheroes. Visit http://www.ata-boy.com/. General Ization ^Talk 13:15, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you so much.2604:2000:7113:9D00:B81E:C008:E611:FADF (talk) 22:50, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

TV show episode titles

Many US TV shows (I'm thinking of The Sopranos, for example, but the practice is widespread) have individual titles for their episodes. These titles are given in the relevant Wikipedia article for each episode and in other websites etc., but do not appear in the opening credits of the episode itself. I assume these are the official titles for the episodes, and have not just been assigned by fans or whatever. In which case, my question is twofold: where are the titles published, and why aren't they shown in the opening credits of the episode? --Viennese Waltz 11:01, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

The shows I watch typically indicate titles in the description portion on the cable TV box, whether or not the titles are displayed on-screen in the program. Presumably the box titles are from some kind of "official" sources connected with the respective shows. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:20, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually, this question has a familiar ring to it, as something like it was asked a number of months ago. On my cable box, the source of each description seems to be a service such as Tribune Media Services. They don't say where they get their info, but it's also the case that a given show's producers or the network will issue a press release with that info. I know from experience that that info is the source of at least some shows' descriptions in Wikipedia, as there are typically citations to such. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:30, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes. See this archive.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:33, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

And the source of show descriptions and titles on my cable box is Gracenote, which was the successor to Tribune Media Services. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:41, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks BB. Actually I remembered that discussion and even read it before I posted my question, but I didn't think it was relevant because it was about descriptions, whereas my question was specifically about titles. But I suppose it's possible that the titles and descriptions come from the same source, although it's still not clear to me where Gracenote/Tribune get their information from. Presumably it's the networks, although a source for this would be nice. And what about the second part of my question – why don't the shows' producers put the titles in the opening credits of the episode? --Viennese Waltz 12:28, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

In some cases they did, but it wasn't generally part of the general fabric of TV viewership. A few series, such as Family Guy, NewsRadio, and Friends have used the episode titles for internal humour, in part because they knew nobody else would see them. In hindsight, it does seem odd; movies and plays get publicized titles - why not TV episodes? I look forward to some references, perhaps from the early days of TV. Matt Deres (talk) 17:40, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

One possible reason has to do with reruns; the title might tell somebody they have seen it before, and then they will switch to another channel right away. On the other hand, without a title, they may watch for a while before they figure out that they've seen it before, and increase viewership, and hence ad revenue, during that time. StuRat (talk) 18:28, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

It's hard to tell. Some random examples I can think of: Star Trek original series had titles at the front of each episode. Adventures of Superman did too, in fact the early episodes had the title at both the beginning and the end. The Streets of San Francisco, the voiceover guy announced the title out loud. I don't recall if it was also on-screen. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:21, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Streets of San Francisco is probably typical of Quinn Martin productions, though I don't now remember titles in others; they all shared some other details of format. —Tamfang (talk) 20:36, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

• The OP may be interested in This article and of course TV Tropes has everything you every wanted to know about the subject including reams of information about episode naming conventions for all of your favorite shows. --Jayron32 19:32, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Then again, there was the excellent but short-lived series "Police Squad!", which gave one episode title with an on-screen graphic, while simultaneously an audio voice-over gave an entirely different title.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 03:57, 11 November 2016 (UTC)