This Week in Television History: November 2014 PART I

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As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.


November 8, 1914
Norman Nathan Lloyd is born. 

Actor, producer, and director with a career in entertainment spanning roughly eight decades. Lloyd has appeared in over sixty films and television shows. 

In the 1980s, he gained a new generation of fans for playing Dr. Daniel Auschlander, one of the starring roles on the groundbreaking medical drama St. Elsewhere.


November 8, 1979
The program, "The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage", premiered on ABC-TV. 

The show was planned to be temporary, but it evolved into "Nightline" in March of 1980. The program had its beginnings on November 8, 1979, just four days after the Iran hostage crisis started. ABC News president Roone Arledge felt the best way to compete against NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was to update Americans on the latest news from Iran. At that time, the show was called The Iran Crisis–America Held Hostage: Day "xxx", where xxx represented each day that Iranians held hostage the occupants of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. 

Originally, World News Tonight lead anchor Frank Reynolds hosted the special report. Shortly after its creation, Reynolds stopped hosting the program. Ted Koppel, then ABC News's State Department Correspondent, took on the hosting duties. It was not until a few days later that a producer had the idea of displaying the number of days on America Held Hostage: Day 15, Day 50, Day 150, and so on.

November 8, 1994
Salvatore "Sonny" Bono is elected to the U.S. Congress.

If you had made a friendly wager back in 1974 as to which recent or current pop-music figure might go on to serve in the United States Congress in 20 years' time, you might have picked someone with an apparent political agenda, like Joan Baez, or at least one who was associated with some kind of cause, like nature-lover John Denver. 

You almost certainly wouldn't have placed your bet on Sonny Bono, a singer of arguably limited talents who appeared content to stand, literally and figuratively, in the shadow of his far more popular wife, Cher. It was indeed Salvatore "Sonny" Bono, however, who had a future in elective politics—a future that included his election to the United States House of Representatives from California's 44th Congressional District on this day in 1994.


To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

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Tony Figueroa