This Week in Television History: January 2024 PART V

 January 29, 1969

The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour debuted on CBS-TV. 

January 31, 1949

These Are My Children, the first daytime soap opera, debuts on NBC. The show, only 15 minutes long, aired weekdays at 5 p.m. in January and February 1949.

January 31, 1984

NBC Newsman Edwin Newman retired after 35 years with the network.

February 1, 2004

Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy.

Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast live on from Houston, Texas on the CBS television network in the United States, was noted for a controversial halftime show in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a second, in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction". The incident, sometimes referred to as Nipplegate, was widely discussed. Along with the rest of the halftime show, it led to an immediate crackdown and widespread debate on perceived indecency in broadcasting. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined CBS a record $550,000 which was fought in Supreme Court, but that fine was appealed and ultimately voided by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2011 ruling, and a case to reinstate the fine was refused in 2012.

The incident was ridiculed both abroad and within the United States, with some American commentators seeing the incident as a sign of decreasing morality in the national culture; others considered the incident harmless and felt that it received an undue amount of attention and backlash. The increased regulation of broadcasting raised concerns regarding censorship and free speech in the United States, and the FCC increased the fine per indecency violation from $27,500 to $325,000 shortly after the event. The show was produced by MTV and was themed around the network's Rock the Vote campaign due to the event occurring during an election year. Following the wardrobe incident, the NFL announced that MTV, which also produced the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXV, would never be involved in another halftime show. The exposure was broadcast to an audience of 143.6 million viewers in total.

According to YouTube creator Jawed Karim, Janet's Super Bowl incident led to the creation of YouTube. The launch of Facebook commenced within three days of the incident to capitalize on its controversy through social networking. The incident also made "Janet Jackson" the most searched term, event and image in Internet history, as well as the most searched person and term of the year 2004 and also for the following year. The incident also broke the record for "most searched event over one day". Jackson was later listed in the 2007 edition of Guinness World Records as "Most Searched in Internet History" and the "Most Searched for News Item". It became the most watched, recorded and replayed television moment in TiVo history and "enticed an estimated 35,000 new [TiVo] subscribers to sign up". The incident also coined the phrase "wardrobe malfunction", which was later added to the dictionary.

Following the incident, media conglomerates involved with the broadcast who were fined by the FCC, including Viacom and CBS, and subsidiaries MTV, Clear Channel Communications, and Infinity Broadcasting, enforced a blacklist of Jackson's singles and music videos on many radio formats and music channels worldwide. The blacklisting and denouncement of Jackson was considered to be "one of the saddest things in pop music over the last decade". In January 2014, former FCC chairman Michael Powell stated the controversy, fines, and reaction to the incident were overblown, and also said Jackson did not deserve the harsh treatment and blacklisting she had received in the media. Powell also considered it "unfair" that Timberlake did not receive the same effect and backlash that Jackson had endured.

February 2, 2014

The End of NBC Burbank

RCA's decision to expand television studio facilities required moving to the real estate market in the San Fernando Valley-Burbank area, with land purchased from Jack Warner. The newly-christened NBC Color City Studios opened in March 1955, as the first television studio designed specially for the origination of color television broadcasting, although their rivals, ABC and CBS would gradually add color broadcasting to their studio facilities in later years.

KNBC moved to a new building in 1962. In 1964, the Radio City Hollywood building was demolished, as NBC moved more of their West Coast television operations to the Burbank facility. The site is now occupied by a bank.

This studio hosted production of many of the best-remembered game and variety shows from the 1950s through the 1990s, including Hollywood Squares from 1966 to 1980, Wheel of Fortune from 1975 to 1989, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in from 1968 to 1973, and The Tonight Show beginning in 1972. The latter two shows would frequently reference their home in "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" though Tonight would invariably begin each episode with the technically incorrect announcement, "From Hollywood...") During the late 1960s, Carson's Tonight Show would move for periods to Burbank, using studio 1. After the permanent move to Burbank in 1972, Bob Hope's shows taped in studio 1, with The Tonight Show taking a hiatus while Hope produced his specials. In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced Henry Kissinger's secret negotiations with Zhou Enlai and his impending visit to China from the studio.

The Tonight Show would stay in Burbank through Johnny Carson's retirement, Jay Leno's ascendency to host until the end of his first run in 2009, when it moved to an all-digital studio on the Universal lot in 2009 for the short-lived The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. The show moved back to the Burbank Studios when Leno returned as host of The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010. The show used studio 11 until Leno stepped down as host on February 6, 2014. After that, The Tonight Show moved back to New York City's Rockefeller Center when Jimmy Fallon replaced Leno as host, marking the end of the 42-year era in which the show had recorded in Southern California.

 

February 4, 1924

Janet Waldo is born. 

Actress and voice artist with a career encompassing radio, television, animation and live-action films. She is best known in animation for voicing Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop and Josie McCoy in Josie and the Pussycats. She was equally famed for radio's Meet Corliss Archer, a title role with which she was so identified that she was drawn into the comic book adaptation.

 

February 4, 1974

Patty Hearst kidnapped.

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two black men and a white woman, all three of whom are armed. Her fiance, Stephen Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.

Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that it was holding Hearst as a "prisoner of war." Four days later, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to every needy person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done, said the SLA, negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia Hearst. Randolph Hearst hesitantly gave away some $2 million worth of food. The SLA then called this inadequate and asked for $6 million more. The Hearst Corporation said it would donate the additional sum if the girl was released unharmed.

In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when a surveillance camera took a photo of Hearst participating in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank, and she was also spotted during a robbery of a Los Angeles store. She later declared, in a tape sent to the authorities, that she had joined the SLA of her own free will.

On May 17, Los Angeles police raided the SLA's secret headquarters, killing six of the group's nine known members. Among the dead was the SLA's leader, Donald DeFreeze, an African American ex-convict who called himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Patty Hearst and two other SLA members wanted for the April bank robbery were not on the premises.

Finally, on September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors--or conspirators--for more than a year, Hearst, or "Tania" as she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. Despite her claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976, and sentenced to seven years in prison. She served 21 months before her sentence was commuted by President Carter. After leaving prison, she returned to a more routine existence and later married her bodyguard. She was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa