Don't be a Gilligan

Mr. Howell was a billionaire and one of the world’s richest men because of the money he had inherited from his father. Muddled? Sure. But loaded to the gills with disposable income.

The affable Mr. Howell met his wife “Lovey” at Harvard and married her in 1944. That was the day Consolidated General jumped 17 points. And even though we’re told that they’d been married for nearly 20 years, we’re also let in on the fact that the past 4 or five of those years weren’t all that blissful.

Now, knowing that money was NOT an issue for the Howells on September 26, 1964, when the show first aired, why would they ever ’slum it’ and head down to the docks for a ride on The Minnow, which had to be smaller than any dinghy the Howell’s owned.

It makes no sense. Or does it?

It turns out, dear friends, that The Minnow was so named after Mr. Newton Minnow, then chairman of the FCC. And it was widely known that Mr. Minnow had repeatedly called television a ‘vast wasteland.’ Hmm.

Was this creator and executive producer Sherwood Schwartz’s way a taking a huge swipe back at the FCC?

Did he deliberately put these two billionaires (with a ‘b’) on The Minnow to prove that television was in fact no wasteland? That it demanded respect? That it demanded the respect of everyone no matter how much money or power they had?

Is that why Mr. Schwartz did that?

Gilligan’s Island is the longest continually running program syndication after just 98 episodes. Its run was from Sept 1964 until a very sad April 17, 1967.

But by putting the Howell’s on The Minnow, has putting the Howell’s on The Minnow left all of us with timeless television lessons?

Kevin Browne is a former Creative Director and Senior Copywriter at agencies including J Walter Thompson, McCann Erickson and Young and Rubicam. Kevin now runs WhitehavenWeb.com where he shows web owners how to FINALLY earn website sales consistently [http://www.whitehavenweb.com]

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