This Week in Television History: June 2025 PART IV

       

July 2, 1955

The long-running musical-variety program The Lawrence Welk Show debuts on ABC. 

Welk, a bandleader from North Dakota known for light dance music, had launched his own show in 1951 on KTLA in Los Angeles. The show remained a network hit for some 16 years, then became a syndicated series. Welk retired in 1982 and died in 1992.

July 3, 1950

TV game show Pantomime Quiz Show debuts as a network series on CBS. The program, a variation of charades, ran for 13 years, although it changed networks several times. 

The show began as a local program in Los Angeles in 1947. In 1949, the show was one of TV's first programs to win an Emmy, first awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences that year.

July 5, 1970

PBS began airing concerts by the Boston Pops Orchestra. 

Evening at Pops is an American concert television series produced by WGBH-TV. It is one of the longest-running programs on PBS, airing from 1970 to 2005.^[1] The program was a public television version of a variety show, featuring performances by the Boston Pops Orchestra. It was taped at Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts.

Most shows featured a guest star, usually a well known singer or musician, most commonly within popular music or sometimes rock, folk, jazz or other musical genres. After one or two opening numbers by the Pops, the guest would be brought onstage. Usually the guest would sing several their own hits or songs associated with them, with accompaniment by the Pops. After concluding their set, the guest artist would leave the stage, and the Pops would play one or two closing numbers. The three men who served as Boston Pops Conductor during the show's run – Arthur Fiedler (1970-79), John Williams (1979-95) and Keith Lockhart (1996-2005) – appeared. Gene Galusha provided narration and announced most of the pieces played.

Evening at Symphony, a companion series produced by WGBH and featuring performances of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa, aired on PBS from 1974 to 1979.

July 6, 1925

Mervyn "Merv" Edward Griffin, Jr. the American television host and media mogul is born. 

He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in movies and on Broadway. During the 1960s, Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show, and created the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. A billionaire at his death, he is considered an entertainment business magnate.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: June 2025 PART III

      

June 26, 1975

Sonny and Cher's divorce becomes final. 

With a string of pop hits in the mid-1960s that began with the career-defining "I Got You Babe" (1965), Sonny and Cher Bono established themselves as the most prominent and appealing married couple in the world of popular music. Hipper than Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and far more fun than John and Yoko, Sonny and Cher projected an image of marital harmony that a lot of people could relate to—an image not so much of perfect bliss, but of a clearly imperfect yet happy mismatch. Mr. and Mrs. Bono traded on that image professionally for a solid decade, even several years past the point that it was true. After 13 years together as a couple and six years of marriage—the last three for the cameras—Sonny and Cher were legally divorced on this day in 1975.

By the time they were divorced, Sonny and Cher were primarily known as television stars thanks to their hugely successful NBC variety show, but their romantic and professional relationships started in the Southern California music industry in the early 1960s. In 1962, Salvatore "Sonny" Bono was working as a producer, gofer and sometime percussionist for the legendary producer Phil Spector when he met Cherilyn Sarkasian in a Los Angeles coffee shop. Just 16 years old and recently dropped out of her Fresno, California, high school, Cherilyn was soon singing backup on such legendary Spector-produced hits as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (Righteous Brothers, 1964), "Da Doo Ron Ron" (The Crystals, 1963) and "Be My Baby" (Ronettes, 1963). The couple released one unsuccessful single under the name "Caesar and Cleopatra" before landing a #1 pop hit in 1965 with "I Got You Babe" under their new name, Sonny and Cher.

Ultimately, Sonny and Cher had only a few memorable hits after their first, the biggest of them being 1967's "The Beat Goes On." By 1968, in fact, Sonny and Cher were essentially finished as a viable recording act, and Sonny's efforts to establish a film career for the pair were foundering. A move to Las Vegas, where they developed a nightclub act featuring playful, between-song bickering, is what ultimately resurrected Sonny and Cher's career. By 1971, they were starring in a top-10 television program built around that act that would run off and on, in various incarnations, until 1977. Two years later, they would be living in separate homes and with new romantic partners, but it was not until two years after that that their split became public and their divorce final on June 26, 1975. 

June 27, 1945

FCC allocates TV channels. 

On this day in 1945, the FCC allocates airwaves for 13 TV stations. Before World War II, a few experimental TV shows had been broadcast in New York, but the war postponed the development of commercial television. With the allocation of airwaves, commercial TV began to spread. The first regularly scheduled network series appeared in 1946, and many Americans viewed television for the first time in 1947, when NBC broadcast the World Series. Since privately owned television sets were still rare, most of the series' estimated 3.9 million viewers watched the games from a bar.

June 28, 1975

Rod Serling dies at age 50 after open-heart surgery. 

Born in 1924 in Syracuse, New York, Serling became one of early television's most successful writers, best known for the anthology series The Twilight Zone, which he created, wrote, and hosted.

In 1959, CBS aired the first episode of The Twilight Zone. Serling fought hard for creative control, hiring writers he respected (such as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont) and launched himself into weekly television. He stated in an interview that the science fiction format would not be controversial and would escape censorship unlike the earlier Playhouse 90. In reality the show gave him the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context.

Serling drew on his own experiences for many episodes, with frequent stories about boxing, military life and aircraft pilots, which integrated his firsthand knowledge. The series also incorporated Serling's progressive social views on racial relations and the like, which were somewhat veiled by the science fiction and fantasy elements of the shows. Occasionally, however, Serling could be quite blunt, as in the episode "I Am The Night — Color Me Black", where racism and hatred causes a dark cloud to form in the American South before eventually spreading elsewhere. Serling was also progressive on matters of gender, with many stories featuring quick-thinking, resilient women, although he also wrote stories featuring shrewish, nagging wives.

The show lasted five seasons (four using a half-hour format, with one half-season using an hour-long format), winning awards and critical acclaim for Serling and his staff. While having a loyal fan base, the program never had huge ratings and was twice canceled, only to be revived. After five years and 156 episodes, 92 of them written by Serling himself, he wearied of the show. In 1964, he decided to let the third cancellation be final.

Serling sold his rights to the series to CBS. His wife later claimed that he did this partly because he believed the studio would never recoup the cost of the show, which frequently went over budget.

In 1969, NBC aired a Serling-penned pilot for a new series, Night Gallery. Set in a dimly lit museum which was open after hours, the pilot film featured Serling (as on-camera host) playing the part of curator introducing three tales of the macabre, unveiling canvases that would appear in the subsequent story segments (its brief first season rotated as one spoke of a four-series programming wheel titled Four in One), focused more on gothic horror and the occult than did The Twilight Zone. Serling, no longer wanting the burden of an executive position, sidestepped an offer to retain creative control of content—a decision he would come to regret. Although discontented with some of producer Jack Laird's script and creative choices, Serling maintained a stream of creative submissions and ultimately wrote over a third of the series' scripts. By season three however, Serling began to see many of his script contributions rejected. With his complaints ignored, the disgruntled host dismissed the show as "Mannix in a cemetery". Night Gallery lasted until 1973.

Subsequent to The Twilight Zone, Serling moved onto cinema screens and continued to write for television. In 1964, he scripted Carol for Another Christmas, a television adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It was telecast only once, December 28, 1964, on ABC.^[3]

On May 25, 1962, Serling guest starred in the episode "The Celebrity" of the CBS sitcom Ichabod and Me with Robert Sterling and George Chandler.

He wrote a number of screenplays with a political focus, including Seven Days in May (1964) about an attempted military coup against the President of the United States; Planet of the Apes (1968); and The Man (1972) about the first African American President.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: June 2025 PART II

     

June 16, 2002

The first episode of The Dead Zone aired. 

The Dead Zone, a.k.a. Stephen King's Dead Zone (in USA) is an American/Canadian science fiction drama television series starring Anthony Michael Hall as Johnny Smith, who discovers he has developed psychic abilities after a coma. The show, credited as "based on characters" from Stephen King's 1979 novel of the same name, first aired in 2002, and was produced by Lionsgate Television and CBS Paramount Network Television (Paramount Network Television 2002-06) for the USA Network.

The show was originally commissioned for UPN, but the network later dropped the show and it was picked up instead by USA. 03nmThe series was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for its first five seasons. The sixth and last season was billed as "The season that changes everything" and production was moved to Montreal.

The Dead Zone was expected to be renewed for a seventh season; however, due to low ratings and high production costs the series was canceled in December 2007, without a proper series finale.

Some rumors spread that Syfy would pick up the series after it was canceled by USA, but it did not happen. Rumors of a made-for-TV movie have all but faded with time.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: June 2025 PART I

    

June 9, 1961

Michael J. Fox was born, in Canada. 

He first became known for his role as Alex P. Keaton on the popular sitcom Family Ties, and went on to star in such films as Back to the Future and Teen Wolf as well as the TV series Spin City. In 1999, he announced that he was battling Parkinson's Disease. He left Spin City in 2000 but later guest starred on such shows as Scrubs and Boston Legal.

Quotes

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.

– Michael J. Fox

Early Career

Actor. Born Michael Andrew Fox, on June 9, 1961, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Fox began using the middle initial 'J' (presumably smoother-sounding than 'A') professionally to distinguish himself from another acting "Michael Fox." Michael J. Fox first achieved stardom in 1982, as the acquisitive Reagan-era poster-boy Alex P. Keaton on the popular television sitcom Family Ties.

Hailing from Canada, where he grew up the youngest of five children to Bill and Phyllis Fox, Michael struggled in school and was too small - he is five feet, four inches tall - to compete in his favorite activity, ice hockey. He found an outlet in drama class, and in 1976 made his professional debut in the CBS series Leo and Me at age 15 (playing a 10-year-old). After starring in the CBS movie Letters from Frank (also filmed in Canada), Fox dropped out of high school and drove to Los Angeles with his father. There, he found work in the series Palmerstown, U.S.A. before landing the role in Family Ties, where he wooed audiences with his confident charm and impeccable comic timing for seven years.

Big Screen Success

He also had enormous success on the big screen, playing Marty McFly in Robert Zemeckis' zany romp, Back to the Future (1985). After playing comic roles in Teen Wolf and The Secret of My Success, Fox wanted to broaden his range and took some unlikely dramatic turns, playing a factory worker in Light of Day, a cocaine-snorting fact checker in Bright Lights, Big City, and earning critical acclaim for his starring role alongside Sean Penn in Brian DePalma's Vietnam saga Casualties of War.

Spin City

Audiences applauded Fox's return to Back to the Future, for sequels II and III in 1989 and 1990. His pitch-perfect portrayal of a George Stephanopoulos-type character in The American President (1995) earned Fox accolades once again, but it was his ceremonious return to prime time television in the ABC sitcom Spin City, which launched in 1996, that put Fox back where he belonged - delighting audiences on a weekly basis with a schedule that allowed him more time with his family. In 1999, he contributed his trademark voice and comic flare as the title character (a little white mouse) in the film adaptation of E.B. White's Stuart Little. Fox was honored with a star on the fabled Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 2002.

Battle with Parkinson's Disease

In late 1999, Fox made the startling announcement that he had been battling Parkinson's disease since 1991, and had even undergone brain surgery to alleviate tremors. Despite Spin City's incredible success and a showering of Emmy and Golden Globe awards, Fox announced in early 2000 that he would leave the show, which he also executive produced, to spend time with his family, and to concentrate on raising money and awareness for Parkinson's disease - including the May 2000 launch of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Fox won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his final season on Spin City, along with the respect and support of the entire Hollywood community.

In 2004, Fox guest starred in the television comedy Scrubs as Dr. Kevin Casey, a surgeon with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2006, he appeared in a recurring role on the drama Boston Legal. Fox was nominated for an Emmy Award for best guest appearance. In 2009, he appeared on the dark drama, Rescue Me, and his television special Michael J. Fox: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist, based on his best-selling book by the same title, aired on ABC.

Fox married the actress Tracy Pollan (who played Ellen, Alex Keaton's girlfriend, on Family Ties) in 1988. The couple has four children: son Sam, twin girls Aquinnah and Schuyler, and daughter Esmé Annabelle.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: May 2025 PART IV

   

June 7, 1955

$64,000 Question premieres.

TV game show The $64,000 Question debuts on this day in 1955. The show was a spin-off of radio game show The $64 Question and spun off The $64,000 Challenge. The show started with contestants answering a question worth $64, with each subsequent question worth double the amount of the previous one. The show was an instant hit, knocking I Love Lucy out of first place in the ratings. Rumors of rigging plagued this and other big-money game shows in the mid-1950s causing The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge to be yanked off the air within three months of the quiz show scandal's eruption. Challenge went first, in September 1958, with Question – once the emperor of Tuesday night television – taking its Sunday night time slot, until it was killed in November, 1958.

 

June 8, 2010

The pilot episode of Pretty Little Liars aired on ABC Family. 

Pretty Little Liars premiered on June 8, 2010 the United States, becoming ABC Family's highest-rated series debut on record across the network's target demographics. It ranked number one in key 12–34 demos and teens, becoming the number-one scripted show in Women 18–34, and Women 18–49. The premiere was number two in the hour for total viewers, which generated 2.47 million unique viewers, and was ABC Family's best delivery in the time slot since the premiere of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

The second episode retained 100% of its premiere audience with 2.48 million viewers, despite the usual downward trend following a premiere of a show, and built on its premiere audience. It was the dominant number one of its time slot in Adults 18–49, and the number one show in female teens. Subsequent episodes fluctuated between 2.09 and 2.74 million viewers. The August 10, 2010 "Summer Finale" episode drew an impressive 3.07 million viewers.

Set in the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, the series follows the lives of four girls, Aria Montgomery, Hanna Marin, Emily Fields, and Spencer Hastings, whose clique falls apart after the disappearance of their leader, Alison DiLaurentis. One year later, the estranged friends are reunited as they begin receiving messages from a mysterious figure named A who threatens to expose their deepest secrets, including ones they thought only Alison knew. At first, they think it's Alison herself, but after her body is found, the girls realize that someone else is planning on ruining their perfect lives.

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Tony Figueroa

Loretta Swit

M*A*S*H offered real characters and everybody identified with them because they had such soul.

The humor was intelligent and it always assumed that you had an intellect.

-Loretta Swit

Loretta Jane Swit born Loretta Jane Szwed

November 4, 1937 – May 30, 2025

Loretta Swit performed guest roles in various television series, including Hawaii Five-O (her first TV credit), Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix.

Starting in 1972, Swit played the extremely capable head nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the television series M*A*S*H, a comedy set in a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. Swit inherited the star-making role from actress Sally Kellerman, who had portrayed Houlihan in the feature film. In the first few seasons, her character was single and blindly patriotic, and she had no friends among the camp surgeons and nurses, with the notable exception of her married lover, Major Frank Burns, portrayed by Larry Linville. Over time, her character was considerably softened. She married a lieutenant colonel but divorced soon after. She became good friends with her fellow officers, and her attitude towards the Koreans in and around the camp became more enlightened. The change reflected that of the series in general, from absurdist dark humor to mature comedy-drama. Swit was one of only four cast members to stay for all 11 seasons of the show, from 1972 to 1983 (the others are Alan Alda, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher).

Swit and Alda were the only actors to have been in both the pilot episode and the finale; she appeared in all but 11 of the total of 256 episodes. Swit received two Emmy Awards for her work on M*A*S*H.

Her favorite episodes were "Hot Lips and Empty Arms", "Margaret's Engagement", and "The Nurses".

She also had a close relationship with Harry Morgan, who played Colonel Sherman T. Potter. They became neighbors after the series ended, until his death on December 7, 2011. Swit remained close to Alda, along with his wife, three daughters, and seven grandchildren.

In 1981, Swit played the role of Christine Cagney in the movie pilot for the television series Cagney & Lacey but was precluded by contractual obligations from continuing the role. Actress Meg Foster portrayed Cagney for the first six episodes of the television series, then Sharon Gless took over the role.

Swit also guest-starred in television shows such as Bonanza; The Love Boat; Win, Lose or Draw; Password; Gunsmoke; Match Game; Pyramid; The Muppet Show; and Hollywood Squares. She also starred in Christmas programs such as the television version of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and 1987's PBS special A Christmas Calendar. In 1988, she hosted Korean War—The Untold Story, a documentary on the true events of the war, and went to South Korea to film it, becoming the first M*A*S*H cast member to actually visit the country, outside of Jamie Farr who served there in the mid-1950s while a member of the U.S. Army. In 1992, she hosted the 26-part series Those Incredible Animals on the Discovery Channel. Swit's last appearance was on GSN Live on October 10, 2008.

Good Night Ms. Swit

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: May 2025 PART III

  

May 31, 1930

Clint Eastwood born. 

Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable screen incarnations--San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan--the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint Eastwood is born on this day in 1930, in San Francisco, California.

With his father, Eastwood wandered the West Coast as a boy during the Depression. Then, after four years in the Army Special Services, Eastwood went to Hollywood, where he got his start in a string of B-movies. For eight years, Eastwood played Rowdy Yates in the popular TV Western series Rawhide, before emerging as a leading man in a string of low-budget “spaghetti” Westerns directed by Sergio Leone: Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). All three were successful, but Eastwood made his real breakthrough with 1971’s smash hit Dirty Harry, directed by Don Siegel. Though he was not the first choice to play the film’s title role--Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman all reportedly declined the part--Eastwood made it his own, turning the blunt, cynical Dirty Harry into an iconic figure in American film.

Also in 1971, Eastwood moved behind the camera, making his directorial debut with the thriller Play Misty for Me, the first offering from his production company, Malpaso. Over the next two decades, he turned in solid performances in films such as The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979) and Honkytonk Man (1982), but seemed to be losing his star power for lack of a truly great film. By the end of the 1980s, after four Dirty Harry sequels, released from 1973 to 1988, Eastwood was poised to escape the character’s shadow and emerge as one of Hollywood’s most successful actor-turned-directors. In 1992, he hit the jackpot when he starred in, directed and produced the darkly unconventional Western Unforgiven. The film won four Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Film Editing, Best Director and Best Picture, both for Eastwood. He also found box-office success as a late-in-life action and romantic hero, in In the Line of Fire (1993) and The Bridges of Madison County (1995), respectively.

As a director, Eastwood worked steadily over the next decade, making such films as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Absolute Power (1997) and, most notably, the crime drama Mystic River (2003), for which he was again nominated for the Best Director Oscar. The following year, he hit a grand slam with Million Dollar Baby, in which he also starred as the curmudgeonly coach of a determined young female boxer (Hilary Swank, in her second Oscar-winning performance). In addition to Swank’s Academy Award for Best Actress, the film won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman) and Eastwood’s second set of statuettes for Best Director and Best Picture.

In 2006, Eastwood became only the 31st filmmaker in 70 years to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America (DGA). That year, he directed a pair of World War II-themed movies, Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006). The latter film, which featured an almost exclusively Japanese cast, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and a fourth Best Director nomination for Eastwood (his 10th nomination overall).

Off-screen, Eastwood has pursued an interest in politics, serving as mayor of Carmel, California, from 1986 to 1988. He was married to Maggie Johnson in 1953, and the couple had two children, Kyle and Alison (who co-starred in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), before separating in 1978 and divorcing in 1984. Eastwood also had long-term relationships with the actresses Sondra Locke and Frances Fisher (with whom he had a daughter, Francesca). He married his second wife, Dina Ruiz Eastwood, in 1996. Their daughter, Morgan, was born that same year.

June 1, 1980

CNN (Cable News Network), the world's first 24-hour television news network, makes its debut. 

The network signed on at 6 p.m. EST from its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, with a lead story about the attempted assassination of civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. CNN went on to change the notion that news could only be reported at fixed times throughout the day. At the time of CNN's launch, TV news was dominated by three major networks--ABC, CBS and NBC--and their nightly 30-minute broadcasts. Initially available in less than two million U.S. homes, today CNN is seen in more than 89 million American households and over 160 million homes internationally.

CNN was the brainchild of Robert "Ted" Turner, a colorful, outspoken businessman dubbed the "Mouth of the South." Turner was born on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and as a child moved with his family to Georgia, where his father ran a successful billboard advertising company. After his father committed suicide in 1963, Turner took over the business and expanded it. In 1970, he bought a failing Atlanta TV station that broadcast old movies and network reruns and within a few years Turner had transformed it into a "superstation," a concept he pioneered, in which the station was beamed by satellite into homes across the country. Turner later bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and aired their games on his network, TBS (Turner Broadcasting System). In 1977, Turner gained international fame when he sailed his yacht to victory in the prestigious America's Cup race.

In its first years of operation, CNN lost money and was ridiculed as the Chicken Noodle Network. However, Turner continued to invest in building up the network's news bureaus around the world and in 1983, he bought Satellite News Channel, owned in part by ABC, and thereby eliminated CNN's main competitor. CNN eventually came to be known for covering live events around the world as they happened, often beating the major networks to the punch. The network gained significant traction with its live coverage of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the network's audience grew along with the increasing popularity of cable television during the 1990s.

In 1996, CNN merged with Time Warner, which merged with America Online four years later. Today, Ted Turner is an environmentalist and peace activist whose philanthropic efforts include a 1997 gift of $1 billion to the United Nations.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa