Turn-On

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Turn-On was an American television series that aired for only one day in 1969.

The show was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, producers of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and picked up by ABC after it was rejected by NBC and CBS. Production executive Digby Wolfe described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics -- even people." The show's main gimmick was that it was produced by a computer (although in reality this wasn't true). It featured synthesized music and was filmed on a white backdrop without any sets. The show consisted of various rapid fire jokes and risque skits, for which there also was no laugh track.

Turn-On's sole episode aired on Wednesday, February 5, 1969. Among the cast were Pat Paulsen (best known for his appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and his many comical runs for the Presidency) and Chuck McCann (longtime kiddie show host, character actor, and voice artist). Guests for the one and only televised episode included "guest star" Tim Conway (best known for his long run on The Carol Burnett Show), with special appearances by former Vice President of the United States Hubert H. Humphrey and an animated Daffy Duck.

In some markets, including Denver, the show went to a commercial break and simply never came back. Many stations made the decision to never air it again immediately after the first episode finished. ABC pulled the plug completely within a week.

Some claim that the show was cancelled because it was too extreme for America's tastes at the time -- the only episode that aired featured, in roughly equal proportions, rapid fire gags with sexual innuendos that turned people off instead of turning them on, pastiche film clip sequences in extremely bad taste, and straightforward non sequitur bizarreness. However writer Harlan Ellison, who has long held a taste for the extreme and pushing the envelope, maintained that it was simply a very bad derivative of Laugh-In.

Turn-On has been consistently called one of the most notorious flops in television.

The idea of setless white background sketch comedy would be later revisited in 1994 on the Comedy Central series Limboland.