This Week in Television History: September 2025 PART I

     

September 1, 1970

The last episode of "I Dream of Jeannie" aired on NBC-TV. 

Jeannie and Tony's cousin want to make Tony the chili king even though NASA forbids its astronauts to make commercial endorsements.The show premiered was on September 18, 1965. 

September 7, 1950

Radio game show Truth or Consequences comes to television. 

The show required erring quiz show contestants to perform outrageous stunts as the consequence for wrong answers. As we mentioned in an earlier episode (This week in Television History: The Start of Something Big) the radio version of the show ran from 1940 to 1956. The TV version of the series launched on CBS in 1950, but the network dropped the show after only one season. In 1954, NBC revived the game show, running it in prime time until 1958. Meanwhile, the network also created a daytime version of the show, hosted by Bob Barker, which ran from 1956 to 1965. NBC dropped the show altogether in 1965, but it continued as a syndicated series until 1974, with Barker staying on as host.

September 7, 1950

Julie Kavner, voice of Marge Simpson, is born. 

Best known as the voice of Marge Simpson on The Simpsons, the longest-running animated show in TV history, is born in Los Angeles. Before taking on the role of the famously blue-haired housewife, Kavner played Brenda Morgenstern on Rhoda, a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show that originally aired from 1974 to 1978. In 1978, Kavner won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Brenda, the younger sister of the show’s lead character, played by Valerie Harper. She won another Emmy in 1992, for Outstanding Voice-over Performance, for an episode of The Simpsons. On the big screen, Kavner has been a frequent performer in the films of the writer-director Woody Allen, including Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987) and Shadows and Fog (1992). Among her other film credits are Awakenings (1990) and Judy Berlin (1999).

The Simpsons began as a series of animated shorts created by cartoonist Matt Groening (who reportedly based some of the main characters on members of his family) that aired on The Tracey Ullman Show starting in 1987. On December 17, 1989, The Simpsons debuted as primetime program on Fox with a Christmas special titled “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.”

Set in the fictional town of Springfield, The Simpsons skewers American culture and society with its chronicles of a middle-class family comprised of the buffoonish husband and father Homer Simpson, a safety inspector at a nuclear power plant; his well-meaning, sometimes gullible wife Marge; and their troublemaker son Bart, precocious daughter Lisa and baby Maggie. The Simpsons is known for its sharp writing (Conan O’Brien used to write for the show before he became a late-night TV host) and features a large cast of supporting characters, including Homer’s boss and nemesis, Mr. Burns; the Simpsons’ neighbor Ned Flanders, a devout Christian; and Krusty the Clown. In addition to providing the voice of Marge Simpson, Julie Kavner also voices the characters Patty and Selma, Marge’s chain-smoking twin sisters. A long list of celebrities, including Kelsey Grammer, Larry King, Sting, Hugh Hefner, Ringo Starr, J.K. Rowling, Tony Blair, Stephen Hawking, 50 Cent and Mel Gibson have made guest appearances on the show as themselves or fictional characters.

The Simpsons has been an enormous commercial and critical hit--in 1999, Time dubbed it the greatest TV show of the 20th century--and images of the yellow-skinned Simpson characters have appeared on everything from T-shirts to video games. As a pop phenomenon, the show paved the way for other popular animated comedies, including Beavis and Butt-head and South Park, and has been a source of popular catchphrases,

including Homer’s “D’oh!” which was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001. A big-screen version of the show, The Simpsons Movie, debuted July 27, 2007, and was a box-office hit.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: August 2025 PART IV

    

August 31, 1957

Children's show Kukla, Fran and Ollie airs its last episode on prime-time network TV. 

The show featured beloved puppets Kukla, Ollie (a dragon), and others, with live actress Fran Allison as host. The show began as a local Chicago program and moved to NBC in 1948. It was one of the two most important series made in Chicago, along with Garroway at Large, during the city's brief period as an important production center for network programs in the late 1940s. After its network cancellation, PBS revived the series from 1969 to 1971.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Loni Anderson

As a brunette, I had previously been this serious actress.

Then I became a blonde and got to play a completely different, comic role.

-Loni Anderson

Loni Anderson

(August 5, 1945 – August 3, 2025)

Loni Anderson's acting debut came with a bit part in the film Nevada Smith (1966), starring Steve McQueen. After that, she was mostly unemployed as an actress for nearly a decade, then she received guest roles on television series in the mid-1970s. 

She appeared in two episodes of S.W.A.T., then on the sitcom Phyllis, and the detective series Police Woman and Harry O.
She auditioned for the role of Chrissy on the sitcom Three's Company. She did not win the role, but in 1978 guest-starred as Susan Walters on a season two episode,^[4] an appearance that brought her to the attention of the ABC network.^{[citation needed]}
Anderson's most famous acting role came as the sultry receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982). She was offered the role when producers saw a poster of her in a red swimsuit—a pose similar to Farrah Fawcett's famous 1976 poster. Hugh Wilson, the sitcom's creator, later said Anderson got the role because her body resembled Jayne Mansfield's and because she possessed the innocent sexuality of Marilyn Monroe. For her role, she was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Awards.

Although the series suffered in the Nielsen ratings throughout most of its four-year run, it had a strong following among teens, young adults, and disc jockeys. Owing to her rising popularity as the series' so-called "main attraction", Anderson walked out on the sitcom during the 1980 summer hiatus, requesting a substantial salary increase. While she was renegotiating her contract, she starred in the television film The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980). When the network agreed to her requests, she returned to the series and remained until its cancellation in 1982.
Aside from her acting career, Anderson has become known for her colorful personal life, particularly her relationship with and marriage to actor Burt Reynolds. They starred in the comedy film Stroker Ace (1983), which was a critical and box-office failure. She later appeared as herself in the romantic comedy The Lonely Guy (1984), starring Steve Martin. She voiced Flo, a collie in the animated film All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989).

In the mid-to-late 1980s, Anderson was teamed with Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter in the television series Partners in Crime (1984), and starred in short-lived comedy series Easy Street (1986–1987). She appeared in television adaptations of classic Hollywood films, such as A Letter to Three Wives (1985) with Michele Lee, and Sorry, Wrong Number (1989), both of which received little attention. After starring in Coins in the Fountain (1990), Anderson received considerable praise for her portrayal of comedian actress Thelma Todd in the television movie White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd (1991). In the early 1990s, she attempted to co-star with her husband Burt Reynolds on his sitcom Evening Shade, but the network was not fond of the idea, thus replacing Anderson with Marilu Henner. After Delta Burke was fired from the sitcom Designing Women in 1991, producers offered Anderson a role as Burke's replacement, which never came to pass because the network refused to pay Anderson the salary she had requested. She agreed to return as Jennifer Marlowe on two episodes of The New WKRP in Cincinnati, a sequel to the original series. In 1993, Anderson was added to the third season of the sitcom Nurses, playing hospital administrator Casey MacAffee. Although her entering the series was an attempt to boost the series' ratings, the series was canceled shortly thereafter.
In April 2018, Anderson was seen promoting WKRP in Cincinnati and other television series on the MeTV television network.
Though less frequent since the start of the 21st century, Anderson continued to act in television series, and played a lead role in the 2016–2020 web series My Sister is So Gay.

On October 3, 2023, it was announced that Anderson would feature in the Lifetime film Ladies of the '80s: A Divas Christmas. According to the official synopsis, the movie follows five soap opera divas readying for a reunion show who take on playing cupid during Christmas to bring together their director and producer as they all learn the meaning of the true Christmas spirit. The ensemble cast is made up of Anderson, Linda Gray, Morgan Fairchild, Donna Mills, and Nicollette Sheridan.

Good Night Loni

Stay Tuned 

Tony Figueroa

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

Theater is my favorite platform. Television is my favorite paycheck. The more television I can do, the more theater I can do.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

August 18, 1970 – July 20, 2025

Malcolm-Jamal Warner was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on August 18, 1970. He was named after Malcolm X and jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. He was raised in Los Angeles from age five. At the age of nine, he demonstrated an interest in show business that led to enrollment in acting schools. His career as a child performer later led him to graduate high school from The Professional Children's School in New York City, New York.

With appearances and roles on many television shows and films, he landed his most successful role as Theo Huxtable, the only son of Heathcliff Huxtable, who was played by Bill Cosby on the NBC sitcom, The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. Warner auditioned for the role on the final day of the nationwide search. In 1986, he was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series at the 38th Primetime Emmy Awards.

Warner guest starred in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, playing the role of Hilary Banks' boyfriend. Warner hosted the literacy-promoting children's show CBS Storybreak in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, Warner appeared as a homeless man on Touched by an Angel.^[8] He also portrayed U.S. Marshal Terry Nessip in the film Drop Zone (1994), and Leroy Cappy in the HBO film The Tuskegee Airmen (1995).

From 1996 to 2000, Warner co-starred with comedian Eddie Griffin on the UPN sitcom Malcolm & Eddie.^[11] He went on to co-star as Kurdy Malloy in Jeremiah (2002–2004), was the voice of The Producer character on The Magic School Bus, and appeared in the 2004 CBS sitcom Listen Up with Jason Alexander.

In 2008, he portrayed Cordell in the Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson rom-com film Fool's Gold.

In 2009 he guest starred in an episode in the TNT series HawthoRNe. In 2011 and 2012, he guest starred in four episodes of the NBC series Community as Andre, the ex-husband of Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown). His character subtly referenced his Cosby Show past by wearing a "Cosby sweater" that he stated was from his dad.

Warner co-starred in BET's 2011 scripted comedic television series Reed Between the Lines. He played the role of Alex Reed, an English professor married to Carla Reed, a psychologist played by former Girlfriends star Tracee Ellis Ross. The couple had three children: Kaci and Kenan Reynolds, Carla's children from a previous relationship, and Alexis Reed, their child together.^[19] The show highlighted the couple's ups and downs together as a blended family. In 2012, Warner was nominated for Outstanding Actor in a comedy series at the NAACP Image Awards for his role in Reed Between the Lines.

On the third season (2014–2015) of TNT police procedural Major Crimes, Warner portrayed Lt. Chuck Cooper, a member of the LAPD's Special Investigation's Section. Warner portrayed Al Cowlings in the 2016 crime series American Crime Story production The People v. O.J Simpson, based on the events of the O. J. Simpson trial. Warner played prison counselor Julius Rowe on the sixth season (2016–2017) of USA's Suits. He also played the role of parole officer James Bagwell on Amazon Prime's show Sneaky Pete. In 2018, he appeared as Dr. AJ "The Raptor" Austin on FOX's The Resident.

During his tenure on The Cosby Show, Warner turned his hand to directing, making music videos including New Edition's "N.E. Heart Break" (1989), rapper Special Ed's "I'm the Magnificent" (1989) and British R&B group Five Star's "I Love You For Sentimental Reasons" (1994). He directed episodes of sitcoms including The Cosby Show, All That, Kenan & Kel, Malcolm & Eddie, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Warner also directed the teen-oriented public health video Time Out: The Truth About HIV, AIDS, and You (1992), which featured Arsenio Hall and Earvin "Magic" Johnson discussing the realities of HIV and AIDS and the best ways to prevent its spread.

In 2003, Warner released his debut jazz-funk EP, The Miles Long Mixtape. In 2007, Warner followed up with his second CD entitled Love & Other Social Issues. In 2015, he received a Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Performance for his contribution to a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Jesus Children of America". Warner performed a poem on the track, dedicated to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, along with musicians Robert Glasper Experiment and Lalah Hathaway.

Warner played bass guitar, performing in a band where he recited his poetry over the music.

Warner performed at the National Black Theatre Festival from 2003 onwards, in addition to hosting its Poetry Jam. Warner's 2022 spoken word poetry album Hiding in Plain View was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album in the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, the first year the category was included in the awards.

In June 2024, Warner and cohosts Weusi Baraka and Candace Kelley created the Not All Hood (NAH) podcast to discuss the lives and experiences of Black Americans.

Good Night Malcolm

Stay Tuned 


Tony Figueroa

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.

Stay Tuned

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