The 96th annual Academy Awards aired last Sunday night. While the Oscars always provide fodder for discussion at the water cooler the next morning, television networks used to air counterprogramming during the Oscars that was, for lack of a better term, a dumping ground for leftover material.

Fifty-five years ago this month in 1969, NBC aired “33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee,” the next-to-final nail in the coffin of the Monkees project begun three years earlier. The 41st annual Academy Awards, airing over on ABC, guaranteed that the Monkees special would be buried.