This Week in Television History: September 2019 PART II

September 11, 1974

Little House on the Prairie Pilot movie airs.

Charles (Michael Landon) and Caroline Ingalls (Karen Grassle) move with their three young daughters, Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), Laura (Melissa Gilbert) and Carrie (Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush) from the big woods of Wisconsin to the open prairies of Kansas. Their closest neighbor, Isaiah Edwards (Victor French), helps them settle on the prairie as they encounter fierce storms, destructive fires, and hostile Native American tribes. Ultimately, the government forces the family off the land in Kansas.

Note: The events in this pilot are based on the true story recorded by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her Little House series of books. The dramatic portrayals by the actors in the dynamics between Charles and Caroline are romanticized and modernized, but the personalities of Laura and Mary are exactly as they were in life, and the line where Mary wanted to save her peppermint candy (brought to her from Santa Claus by Mr. Edwards) while Laura bit into hers right away was directly from Wilder's writing. 

September 11, 1979

The last Wonder Woman episode (The Phantom of the Roller Coaster: Part II) aired on CBS-TV. 

September 13, 1969

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! the first in a series of Scooby-Doo cartoons premiered on CBS. 

The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, CBS executive Fred Silverman, and character designer Iwao Takamoto. The show centers around four kids, whom were unofficially called "Mystery Inc." whose hobby was mystery solving. The basic premise remained unchanged through the many series of the franchise: criminal activities were covered up as faux supernatural events with red herrings and clues leading up to the eventual undoing. The meddlesome kids were Fred Jones is the stocky, straight-laced member; Daphne Blake, beautiful but danger-prone red-head; Velma Dinkley, the pudgy, bespectacled brains of the outfit; Norville "Shaggy" Rogers, the pencil-thin chow hound and the star of the show, the gangly, bow-legged Great Dane Scooby-Doo.

The original voice cast featured veteran voice actor Don Messick as Scooby-Doo, Top 40 radio DJ Casey Kasem as Shaggy, actor Frank Welker as Fred, actress Nicole Jaffe as Velma, and musician Indira Stefanianna Christopherson as Daphne.

September 13, 1974

The first episode of "Police Woman" aired on NBC. 

Based on an original screenplay by Lincoln C. Hilburn, the show revolves around Sgt. "Pepper" Anderson (Angie Dickinson), an undercover police officer working for the Criminal Conspiracy Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. Sergeant William "Bill" Crowley (Earl Holliman) was her immediate superior, and Pete Royster (Charles Dierkop) and Joe Styles (Ed Bernard) were the other half of the undercover team that investigated everything from murders to rape and drug crimes. In many episodes, Pepper went undercover (as a prostitute, nurse, teacher, flight attendant, prison inmate, dancer, waitress, etc.) in order to get close enough to the suspects to gain valuable information that would lead to their arrest.


September 13, 1974

The first episode of "The Rockford Files" aired on NBC. 

The Rockford Files stared James Garner and aired on NBC between September 13, 1974, and January 10, 1980, and has remained in syndication to the present day. Garner portrays Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford with Noah Beery, Jr., in the supporting role of his father, a retired truck driver nicknamed "Rocky".

The show was created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell. Huggins created the television show Maverick (1957–1962), which starred Garner, and he wanted to recapture that magic in a "modern day" detective setting. He teamed with Cannell, who had written for Jack Webb productions such as Adam-12 and Chase (1973–1974, NBC), to create The Rockford Files.

The show was credited as "A Public Arts/Roy Huggins Production" along with Universal Studios and in association with Cherokee Productions. Cherokee was owned by Garner, with partners Meta Rosenberg and Juanita Bartlett, who doubled as story editor during most of The Rockford Files run.

The series theme music by composers Mike Post and Pete Carpenter was released as a single and went to #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining on the chart for 16 weeks. and won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement for 1975. In 2002, The Rockford Files was ranked #39 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. 

September 13, 2004

TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey gives a brand-new Pontiac G-6 sedan, worth $28,500, to everyone in her studio audience: a total of 276 cars in all.) 

Oprah had told her producers to fill the crowd with people who “desperately needed” the cars, and when she announced the prize (by jumping up and down, waving a giant keyring and yelling “Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!”), mayhem–crying, screaming, delirium, fainting–broke out all around her. It was, as one media expert told a reporter, “one of the great promotional stunts in the history of television.”

Alas, scandal wasn’t far behind. For one thing, the gift wasn’t really from Oprah at all. Pontiac had donated the cars, paying the hefty price tag out of its advertising budget, because the company hoped that that the giveaway would drum up some enthusiasm for its new G-6 line. (To this end, during the segment, Winfrey herself took a tour of a Pontiac plant, gushing over the cars’ satellite radios and fancy navigation systems.) The car company also paid the state sales tax on each of the automobiles it donated. However, that still left the new-car recipients with a large bill for their supposedly free vehicles: Federal and state income taxes added up to about $6,000 for most winners. Some people paid the taxes by taking out car loans; others traded their new Pontiacs for cheaper, less souped-up cars. “It’s not really a free car,” one winner said. “It’s more of a 75 percent-off car. Of course, that’s still not such a bad deal.”

Two months later, Oprah hosted another giveaway episode, this one for teachers from around the country. Their gifts were worth about $13,000 and included a $2,249 TV set, a $2,000 laptop, a $2,189 washer/dryer, sets of $38 champagne glasses and a $495 leather duffel bag. This time, the show’s producers had learned their lesson: they also gave each audience member a check for $2,500, which they hoped would cover the tax bill for all the loot. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite–most people in the audience owed the Internal Revenue Service between $4,500 and $6,000–but the PR gimmick worked: Oprah’s giveaways have earned some of the highest ratings in the program’s history.

September 14, 1984 

The MTV Awards are held for the first time. Bette Midler and Dan Ackroyd co-hosted the show honoring the best music videos from May 2, 1983, to May 2, 1984. The show was hosted by Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Herbie Hancock was the night's biggest winner, taking home five awards, followed by Michael Jackson, who won three. The night's main award, though, went to The Cars for "You Might Think," making this the first of a very small number of times in which the winner of Video of the Year did not take home any other awards that night.

In terms of nominations, Hancock's "Rockit" and The Police's "Every Breath You Take" were the year's most nominated videos, with each receiving eight nominations apiece. Meanwhile, the most nominated artist of 1984 was Cyndi Lauper, who aside from winning the Best Female Video Moonman received nine nominations that year for two of her videos: six for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and three for "Time After Time."

Other major nominees that night included the aforementioned Michael Jackson and The Cars, both of whom received six nominations for their videos "Thriller" and "You Might Think," respectively; ZZ Top, who also received six nominations between their videos for "Legs," "Sharp Dressed Man," and "Gimme All Your Lovin';" and Billy Idol, who got five nominations for "Dancing with Myself" and "Eyes Without a Face." Lastly, David Bowie had four nominations for his "China Girl" and "Modern Love" videos, and he was also one of the night's honorees for the Video Vanguard award.

September 15, 1964

Peyton Place first aired on ABC. 

Based upon the 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious, the series was preceded by a 1957 film adaptation. A total of 514 episodes were broadcast, in black-and-white from 1964 to 1966 and in color from 1966 to 1969. At the show's peak ABC ran three new episodes a week. Produced by 20th Century Fox Television. A number of guest stars appeared in the series for extended periods, among them Dan Duryea, Susan Oliver, Leslie Nielsen, Gena Rowlands, and Lee Grant, who won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama for her role of tough-as-nails Stella Chernak. The series served as the springboard for such performers as Mia Farrow, Ryan O'Neal, Chris Connelly, David Canary, Mariette Hartley, and Lana Wood.

September 15, 1949

The Lone Ranger premiered on ABC. 

Clayton Moore was the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels was Tonto. The television series aired from 1949 to 1957, withClayton Moore in the starring role. Jay Silverheels, a member of the Mohawk tribe of Canada played The Lone Ranger's Indian companion, Tonto.

From 1952 to 1954. due to a contract dispute, John Hart replaced Moore in the title role. The live-action series initially featured Gerald Mohr as the narrator. Fred Foy was both narrator and announcer of the radio series from 1948 until its ending and then became announcer of the television version, for which narration of the story was dropped. The Lone Ranger was the highest-rated television program on ABC in the early 1950s and its first true "hit".

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

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa