Battle of the Network Stars II originally aired on Monday, February 28th 1977 as Challenge of the Network Stars.

From a more innocent tv age comes this wonderful "reality" show. The premise of the show was that the big three networks (the only three at the time) would have their television stars compete against one another in friendly sports competitions, for the most part no one took themselves too seriously and everyone had a great time. The best thing about this show was the simple fact that you could see your favorite stars outside of their normal television venue, seeing them in some of their best moments and worst. They might be laughing or crying, encouraged or discouraged, frustrated, exhausted or even embarrassed, just like real people might be in the same situation. Yes it was a strange concept to accept at the time but television stars were like the rest of us, they were people too. Of course the competitions weren't too taxing. With some normal sports events like swimming and track and some other out of the ordinary events like a more gentle form of football and the dunking booth there could be something for everyone while at the same time making sure that our stars didn't really hurt themselves competing (except maybe the occasional turned ankle). Put all of this great competitive drama together and then add Howard Cosell's deadpan commentary on top and you have one of the most brilliant television concepts ever offered to the viewing public, a show that it would be impossible to recreate in this modern tv age, nor should they even try.

This was Kristy McNichol's first of three appearances on this program competing for Team ABC. On this episode her teammates were LeVar Burton, Darlene Carr, Richard Hatch, Ron Howard, Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs, Gabe Kaplan (Team Captain), Hal Linden, Penny Marshall and Jaclyn Smith. Competing for CBS were Sonny Bono, Kevin Dobson, Mike Farrell, David Groh, Linda Lavin, Lee Meriwether, Rob Reiner, Telly Savalas (Team Captain), Loretta Swit and Marcia Wallace. Fighting for team NBC were Elizabeth Allen, Robert Conrad (Team Captain), Carl Franklin, Lynda Day George, Karen Grassle, Dan Haggerty, Art Hindle, Kurt Russell, Jane Seymour and W.K.Stratton. Once again Howard Cosell was commentating.

Buying note: To my knowledge this program has not been seen since it originally ran in 1977, however numerous episodes of this program have been rerun on cable and perhaps this one will be seen again as well.

9-8-2007