The Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture is home to such ephemera as this Mork & Mindy pull-string doll, which mysteriously stopped working when its star, Robin Williams, died.
“The Bleier Center has an eccentric relic for almost every show or moment that’s graced our television screens,” says Roman Doyle ’24, an LA-based filmmaker.
Most Tuesday afternoons, Syracuse University senior Victoria LaFarge ’25 curls up on the couch with a slice of pizza and watches TV. It’s a ritual she shares with about 40-50 other regulars known as the “Bleier Bunch,” so named for the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture in the Newhouse 3 building.
LaFarge attends Tuesdays With Bleier, a weekly series of TV screenings that the center’s founding director, Bob Thompson, has hosted for the past 17 years. Fun and informal, each event is like an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with trailing commentaries provided by Thompson and his retinue.
“He invites everyone—students, other professors, library workers, janitorial staff,” says LaFarge, a dual major in television, radio and film and English and textual studies. “We’re like family, brought together by the magic of television and pop culture.”
The drop-in series draws on the Bleier Center’s extensive archives—tens of thousands of news reels, documentaries, sitcoms, reality shows, cartoons, commercials, etc. Many are from Thompson’s personal stash of 30,000 hours of videotape.
Everything is presented in its original, unfettered glory, “every television memory you can think of,” LaFarge continues. From the Apollo 11 moon landing to the finale of M*A*S*H. From the assassination of President Kennedy to the Beatles’ debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Come for the show, stay for the commercials.
The Bleier Center hosts a drop-in screening series called Tuesdays With Bleier. Ryan Maguire ’23 (above) attributes the series’ popularity to the center’s affable founding director, Bob Thompson.
We’re like family, brought together by the magic of television and pop culture.
Free and open to the campus community, Tuesdays With Bleier—and the self-named center—is a “dream come true” for Thompson, the gregarious Trustee Professor of Television, Radio and Film in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “I try to make our screenings timely and relevant,” says Thompson, adding that the series title is a nod to the book Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, on whose radio program he has appeared.
Film major Hunter Guillet ’25 says that no two screenings are alike. “My favorite was the first episode of Saturday Night Live, which aired 50 years ago. Afterward, we discussed how different it was from the current iteration of the show.”
When activist poet Nikki Giovanni died last December, Thompson dug up a rare, 1971 conversation between her and James Baldwin on the television show Soul! Co-funded by the fledgling Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Soul! was then the only nationally televised weekly series produced by and for Black people.
“Giovanni was a rising star; Baldwin, a literary icon,” Thompson recalls. “She didn’t pull any punches, but her respect for him was apparent. The interview is an extraordinary glimpse into Black history and culture.”
In addition to running the Bleier Center, Thompson serves as the Trustee Professor of Television, Radio and Film in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Relic Hunter
Aside from Thompson, the most important character in the Bleier Center is the space itself. The three-room suite is stuffed with ephemera that seem to leap off the shelves—part library, part museum and part memorial to the Televised American Dream.
There’s a vintage Mork & Mindy pull-string doll that mysteriously stopped talking the day that its star, Robin Williams, died. A Smell-A-Vision card from a special broadcast of The Office’s “Dinner Party” episode. The first anatomically correct baby boy doll, inspired by a character from All in the Family.
And dozens of other toy figures and figurines, from Donny and Marie Osmond and Captain & Tennille to Bart, Bratz and Barbie.
“The Bleier Center has an eccentric relic for almost every notable, impactful and extraordinarily weird show or moment that’s graced our television screens,” says Roman Doyle ’24, an LA-based filmmaker. “It’s the only place on campus where you can have a deep discussion about the hidden politics of 1970s toothpaste commercials under the watchful eye of a SpongeBob SquarePants plush toy.”
“Television has the ability to unite and divide people,” says Thompson, one of the world’s most widely quoted media scholars. He responds to four to six reporter queries a day.
The Prince of Pith
Originally an art history major, Thompson began studying television while enrolled at The University of Chicago. His Syracuse appointment in 1990 coincided with the rise of the Internet and of media studies as a field of study.
Today, Thompson is one of the world’s most widely quoted media scholars. He responds to four to six reporter queries a day, each interview lasting no less than 45 minutes. Small wonder that the Associated Press has dubbed him a “pop culture ambassador.” His encyclopedic knowledge and knack for pithy quotes are virtually unrivaled.
Thompson believes the Emmy Awards reflect how good TV is right now. “Most of today’s nominees would have been considered pioneers 30 years ago.”
Thompson considers such work an “extension of the classroom”—and the vision of then dean David Rubin, who founded the Newhouse School’s Center for the Study of Popular Television in 1997. The space was renamed in 2005, thanks to a generous donation from media pioneer Edward Bleier ’51.
In addition to Tuesdays With Bleier, the center offers courses, keynote lectures, artist residencies and symposia. It also oversees the acclaimed Television and Popular Culture series, published by Syracuse University Press.
Ryan Maguire ’23, who works in Newhouse’s academic advising office, says the center’s courses are among the school’s most popular. “Students appreciate Bob because he combines harsh realism with utter whimsy. He loves what he does and wants nothing but the best for them.”
On the surface, the Bleier Center is pure kitsch. Credit the postmodern aesthetic of Pee-wee’s Playhouse for inspiring the space’s vibrant personality. Every artifact, every relic, is positioned for maximum effect—even the screening room couches, which smack of the basement in That ’70s Show.
Such pageantry, however, belies a strong academic ethos. “What we consume [through mass media] reflects our beliefs, attitudes and values,” says Thompson, former president of the Popular Culture Association. “Television has the ability to unite and divide people.”
To join the Tuesdays With Bleier mailing list, contact Thompson’s assistant, Donna Till, at dmtill@syr.edu.
