‘The Monkees’ Fans Duped Twice After Producers Made These Key Changes to the Syndicated Series
In the 50 years since the last episode of The Monkees television show aired, fans remain surprised over new information regarding the series. The Monkees lasted only two seasons. However, the show’s impact on popular culture and the television medium remains. While other syndicated series remained unchanged, The Monkees continued to evolve after its finale episode. Two significant changes occurred when The Monkees moved into syndication, and fans were duped.
‘The Monkees’ series ran for only two seasons
The Monkees debuted on NBC in Sept. 1966 and starred Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork.
The series aired on Monday nights at 7:30 p.m. EST, preceding I Dream of Jeannie and opposite The Iron Horse (ABC) and Gilligan’s Island (CBS).
The first episode is titled “Royal Flush.”
Subsequently, The Monkees rescue Princess Bettina, Duchess of Harmonica (Katherine Walsh), from her evil uncle Archduke Otto (Theodore Marcuse).
However, after 57 episodes, the series ended with its final installment on March 25, 1968, titled “The Frodis Caper.”
The final episode was significantly different than the first.
The series veered away from its traditional slapstick comedy and inserted references that reflected the culture of the late 1960s.
Fans duped twice when ‘The Monkees’ went into syndication
The Monkees aired in reruns beginning in the fall of 1969 through Sept. 1972 on a new network, CBS.
After that, the show moved to ABC, which aired the series until the summer of 1973.
In 1975, The Monkees television series was sold to local markets for syndication.
At that time, a new generation of The Monkees viewers was duped twice, beginning with how they saw the series.
All season 1 episodes of The Monkees started with the season 2 opener.
Therefore, fans who first discovered that band during the time didn’t even know the series’s first season had a different opener.
A second sneaky switch included music featured on The Monkees.
Over the summer of 1967, NBC reran multiple episodes of The Monkees with revised soundtracks to promote the band’s album Headquarters and its subsequent singles.
Between 1969 and 1973, both CBS and ABC revised the soundtracks again to promote the band’s later albums, The Monkees Present and Changes.
Some of these episode changes begin with the very first episode.
Original songs featured in “Royal Flush” included “This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day” and “Take a Giant Step.” By the time the series began its reruns in 1967, production had changed the songs to “You Told Me” and “The Girl I Knew Somewhere.”
Finally, on Saturday mornings, that same episode included the “Apples, Peaches, Bananas and Pears” tunes and “Good Clean Fun.”
Fans can find a complete listing of the music changes made to each episode on a forum written by Steve Hoffman.
How many of ‘The Monkees’ episodes were updated with new music?
All in all, 27 of the series 49 total episodes, more than half, were updated with new music.
In the Spring of 1969, Billboard Magazine reported on the changes ahead for Monkees fans with an article titled “Monkees Fix Rerun Music.”
The article said that the switch from “bubblegum music” to “contemporary” enabled The Monkees to update the older episodes with newer tunes from albums produced later in their careers.
