M*A*S*H has not been seen on Hallmark Channel since mid-July and will not be part of the cable channel’s official fall schedule. A variety of Martha Stewart programming will be the cornerstone of the channel’s afternoon/early evening schedule starting in September, with sitcoms The Golden Girls, Who’s the Boss? and Cheers airing multiple times in the early morning, evening and late night. According to Sitcoms Online, the schedule may change as Hallmark learns how the Martha Stewart programming performs. M*A*S*H, along with Little House on the Prairie and The Partridge Family, are said to be “resting” and could conceivably return at any time.

M*A*S*H continues to air on broadcast network Ion Television and cable channel TV Land, although as of September Ion Television will only air M*A*S*H on Saturday afternoons when it is not airing a movie. As for TV Land, starting in September it will air M*A*S*H from 4-6AM on weekday mornings and 8-10PM on Sunday evenings.

I’ve updated my feature on The Hallmark Channel’s M*A*S*H Bash specials, broadcast in January and May of 2007, respectively. In fact, each special now has its own page. Wayne Rogers hosted the first 12-hour marathon on January 1st, 2007 and you can watch four of his introductions here. Jamie Farr hosted the second marathon on May 31st, 2007 and you can watch all of his introductions, both specific and generic, here.

Despite having owned the Season One set since 2002 and the Martinis and Medicine Collection since 2006, until last weekend I hadn’t watched any episodes of M*A*S*H without the laugh track. I don’t recall the ability to watch episodes of the series without the laugh track being used as a selling point back in 2002 (not that M*A*S*H needed any help selling itself on DVD) but it was something of a bonus feature for an otherwise bare bones release.

Personally, I’ve never found the laugh track on M*A*S*H to be obnoxious or overwhelming. But after sitting down to a mini marathon of six episodes — “Requiem For A Lightweight,” “The Army-Navy Game,” “There Is Nothing Like A Nurse,” “The Late Captain Pierce,” “Death Takes A Holiday,” and “Sons and Bowlers” — I realized that the laugh track does occasionally overpower dialogue. I can’t think of any examples where the laugh track intruded upon an actual conversation or ruined a joke but there were certainly times where laughter covered up the reaction to a joke.

Hearing each and every one of these words for the first time was a treat. So why did it take this long for me to try out the audio track without the canned laughter? A combination of laziness and forgetfulness. Popping in a disc, selecting an episode and hitting play is easier than selecting the audio track without the laugh track. Not much easier, I admit, but a little easier. I had also more or less forgotten about the ability to watch without the laugh track. On a whim, while I was turning on the closed-captions, I decided to select the option for the audio track without the canned laughter.

I don’t know if I’ll be watching every episode without the laugh track from now on. I’m so used to hearing the laughter that it was a little strange not to hear it. I’ll probably watch some episodes without the laugh track and some with it. But what about everyone else? Am I the only one watching the DVDs with the laugh track? Or is watching M*A*S*H without the laugh track a little weird? Hit the comments with your opinion on being able to watch the series without the laugh track.

I don’t typically write about anything not directly related to M*A*S*H the television series but this was interesting enough that I thought I’d mention it. The house built in Bremen, Maine by the late Dr. H. Richard Hornberger — who wrote MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors under the pen name Richard Hooker — will be offered at public auction on August 28th, 2010 by Thomaston Place Auction Galleries. I doubt very much there are any hidden manuscripts in the walls or anything like that but the view from the house looks beautiful.

Here’s a press release about the auction:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

M*A*S*H Fans Take Notice

Date: 28 August 2010
Time: 1400 Hours
Place: 76 Heath Road, Bremen, Maine U.S.A.

The home of Dr. H. Richard Hornberger, author of the hit book which inspired the movie and TV series M*A*S*H, will be offered at public auction. Writing under the pen name ‘Richard Hooker’, Hornberger developed his main character, Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, with many influences from his beloved Bremen home. The legendary Medomak estuary of Broad Cove where the home is located is known to the rest of the world through Hornberger’s writings as “Crabapple Cove.”

After his tour in the Korean War as a U.S. Army surgeon in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H), Hornberger settled on Heath Road in Bremen. His writings are riddled with direct and indirect references to the places and people of mid coast Maine. Hawkeye Pierce’s home town of Port Waldo is the town of Waldoboro, as well as Wreck Island and Thief Island which are other Muscongus Bay landmarks. The name of Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan’s fiancé, Donald Penobscot, was inspired by the Maine town and county of the same name. The fictitious Androscoggin College, named after another Maine County, where Hawkeye Pierce played football, most agree is Hornberger’s alma mater Bowdoin College. Even the Pierce family is said to be modeled after the real life Spear family who have had deep roots in the mid coast Maine area for generations.

The auction will take place on location and is being conducted as a joint venture of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries and Coldwell Banker SoundVest Properties. According to Thomaston Place Vice President John D. Bottero, “We view this as an opportunity to own a Maine landmark, and this will be offered with the same importance as a rare work of art of an important historical item.” Imagine the ability to be inspired the way that Dr. Hornberger was as he looked out of his living room window across “Crabapple Cove” and penned one of the 20th Century’s best known novels.

All of the connections mentioned in the press release have to do with the character of Hawkeye Pierce in the original MASH novel and its sequels and, to a lesser extent the 1969 film. The television version of the character has little in common with the novel version. I’ve left out the contact information but for anyone interested in learning more about the auction or a prospectus of the house see this page at the Thomaston Auction website. Photographs of the house can be found here.

(For the record, I received the above press release via e-mail from Thomaston Place Auction Galleries but have no connection to the auction house, the Hornberger family or the house itself.)

The 26th Annual TCA Awards, put on by the Television Critics Association, were held on this past Saturday (July 31st). The nominations were released in June and I completely missed the fact that M*A*S*H had been nominated for the Heritage Award, given “to one long-standing program that has culturally or socially impacted society.” The other programs nominated were 24, Lost, Law & Order and Twin Peaks. According to the Internet Movie Database, M*A*S*H was nominated for the Heritage Award in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

According to HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall, producers Gene Reynolds and Burt Metcalfe were at the awards ceremony as well as Mike Farrell and William Christopher. Here’s how Sepinfwall described the award’s acceptance:

Reynolds took the stage alone to accept the award, and asked Farrell and Metcalfe to join him. Both declined. Then Reynolds asked Christopher, and the 78-year-old actor positively sprinted and bounced up onto the stage, to the point where a hundred TV critics in the room all used the word “spry” at the same moment. Christopher’s display got the others to come on stage, which led to a second standing ovation, and to Farrell once and for all putting to rest any rumors (or “Simpsons” jokes) suggesting he has beef with predecessor Wayne Rogers, who left “M*A*S*H” early, starred in some other failed series, but made a fortune in real estate investments, as he said he was blessed to join the series late “thanks to the unerring business judgment of Wayne Rogers.”

Tim Goodman of The San Francisco Chronicle mentioned “a prolonged standing ovation for Gene Reynolds” while TV Squad’s Joel Keller reported that “in the lobby bar after the post-show cocktail party broke up, the ‘M*A*S*H’ contingent was sitting and laughing, outlasting most of the much younger critics, who wandered back to their rooms around midnight.” Last year, M*A*S*H was given the TV Land Awards Impact Award, similar to the TCA Awards Heritage Award.

It seems that Hallmark Channel has pulled M*A*S*H from its schedule once again. According to the cable channel’s online schedule, M*A*S*H is nowhere to be seen through Saturday, August 14th. Hallmark started airing the series in September of 2003 and showed it consistently until October 2009, I believe, when it was pulled for the first time. It returned later that month only to be pulled again in November, not returning until January of 2010. It was pulled in February and didn’t return until May.

How Hallmark hopes to build its audience when it constantly changes its schedule is beyond me? And M*A*S*H isn’t the only show to suffer from abrupt removals and surprise returns. On the other hand, Hallmark must be doing something right because it was the 23rd most-watched ad-supported cable channel in prime time for the week ending July 18th, according to Media Life Magazine.