Think Catherine “Daisy Duke” Bach dripping in a dunking booth and WKRP’s Jan Smithers in a one-piece, her buoyant Les Nessmans abounce.Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko met Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier today, ostensibly to discuss developing a strategic partnership between the two countries. But as much fun as it is to find out the dude who plays a rough and tumble cowboy isn't half the athlete the guy playing a dopey teacher getting dunked on by his students everyday is, the best part of Battle of the Network Stars was the fact that most of the female TV temptresses were clad in little more than flimsy spandex swimming suits. Mainstays of the competitions were the pride of ABC, Welcome Back, Kotter's Gabe Kaplan, CBS' Kojak, Telly Savalas, and NBC's star of The Wild Wild West, Robert Conrad. Why would that possibly matter? Who knows, but it was a big hit that lasted for over a decade.

Thus, ABC decided they'd take male and female stars from their network and put them against the best CBS and NBC had to offer to see who had the most athletic onscreen talent. After ABC's Superstars, which pitted athletes from different sports against each other in unrelated to their sport competitions, became a huge hit, some network executive figured that they could do the same thing but with TV stars instead of athletes.

Truly one of the stranger television concepts to ever blow up on the small screen, beginning in 1976 audiences could flip on the boob tube and be greeted with the strange sight of their favorite television stars going head-to-head in relay races, tug-of-war, obstacle courses, and the like.

Battle network stars dunk tank