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An appreciation for Art Linkletter

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Times television critic Robert Lloyd has an appreciation of TV and radio personality Art Linkletter, who died Wednesday at 97, on the Showtracker blog.

Lloyd writes about Linkletter:

’ ... his work was itself couched in a democratic respect for and a delight in ordinary humanness. Unlike, say, Jay Leno’s ‘Jaywalking’ segments, which are meant to make their subjects look stupid, or what we have currently agreed to call ‘reality television,’ which seeks to reduce unscripted behavior into trite melodrama, Linkletter’s work was rooted in the belief that people are inherently interesting and entertaining: ‘People Are Funny’ was the philosophical title of the stunt-oriented, audience-participation prime-time show he hosted on radio and then television from 1943 to 1961.’

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Click here to read the rest of the appreciation. The full obituary is here, and a thorough interview Linkletter did with the Archive of American Television in 1997 can be found here.

-- Claire Noland

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