I represent the first generation who, when we were born, the television was now a permanent fixture in our homes. When I was born people had breakfast with Barbara Walters, dinner with Walter Cronkite, and slept with Johnny Carson.
Read the full "Pre-ramble"
The Federal Radio Commission issues the first
television license.
The license went
to the Charles Francis Jenkins Laboratories for a television broadcast station
on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. The station later moved to Maryland
and operated until 1932.
Government regulation of
broadcasting has been in existence almost as long as the broadcast industry
itself. The Wireless Act of 1910 required American ships to carry a
broadcasting transmitter and qualified radio operator on all sea voyages. In
the early 1920s, laws were passed governing transmission power, use of
frequencies, station identification, and advertising. The Radio Act of 1927
shifted regulatory powers from the Department of Commerce to the new Federal
Radio Commission, which became the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in
1934.
Today, the FCC still
regulates broadcasting and communications. The U.S. president appoints its five
commissioners with the Senate's consent. The commission licenses and regulates
radio and TV broadcasters as well as other communications mediums, such as
telephone and cable television. It assigns frequencies and call signs to radio
stations and is responsible for ensuring rapid, efficient telephone and
telegraph service. The FCC also operates the Emergency Broadcast System, which
provides a vehicle for authorities to communicate with the public and
disseminate critical information immediately when national disaster strikes
(though the system can also be used to broadcast weather warnings and local
emergencies).
More
expansive policy issues under the purview of the commission include deciding
how much sex and violence is permissible on television. Deregulation of the
industry in the 1980s reduced the FCC's size from seven to five commissioners
and increased the term of radio and television station licenses. In the 1990s,
the FCC developed a television rating system, much like the one used in movies,
which helps people decide which shows are appropriate for the viewers in their
household.
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.
A video pirate
manages to override the satellite transmission of an HBO movie on this day in
1986. He interrupted the show with a message stating he did not intend to pay
for his HBO service.
April 29, 1961
ABC’s Wide
World of Sports premiered.
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the
thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic
competition... This is ABC's Wide
World of Sports!Wide World of Sports was the creation of Edgar
Scherick through his company, Sports Programs, Inc. After selling his
company to ABC, he hired a youngRoone
Arledge to produce the show.
During its initial season in the spring and summer of 1961, Wide
World of Sports was initially broadcast from 5:00 p.m. to
7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturdays. Beginning in
1962, it was pushed to 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., and later to 4:30 to
6:00 p.m. Eastern Time to allow ABC affiliates in the Eastern and Central
Time Zonesto carry local early-evening newscasts.
In 1964, Wide World of Sports covered the Oklahoma Rattlesnake
Hunt championships; the following year, ABC premiered outdoor program The American Sportsman, which
remained on the network for nearly 20 years.
In 1973, the Superstars was first televised as a segment
on Wide World of Sports; the following year, the Superstars debuted
as a weekly winter series that lasted for 10 years.
In later years, with the rise of cable
television offering more outlets for sports programming, Wide
World of Sports lost many of the events that had been staples of the
program for many years (many, although not all, of them ended up on ESPN, a sister network
to ABC for most of its existence). Ultimately, on January 3, 1998, Jim McKay
announced that Wide World of Sports, in its traditional anthology
series, had been cancelled after a 37-year run. The Wide World of Sportsname
remained in use afterward as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend sports
programming.
In August 2006, ABC Sports came under the oversight of ESPN, under the
relaunched banner name ESPN on ABC. The Wide World of Sports title
continues to occasionally be revived for Saturday afternoon sports programming
on ABC, most recently during the 140th Belmont Stakes as a tribute to Jim
McKay, following his death in June 2008. Most of ABC's sports programming
since Wide World of Sports ended as a program has been
displaced from ABC and moved to ESPN; the cable network began producing its own
anthology series on Saturday afternoons in 2010, ESPN Sports Saturday, which consists of
documentaries originally featured on ESPN's E:60 and 30 for 30 programs,
and a modified version of the ESPN interactive series SportsNation, titled Winners
Bracket.
May 1, 1931
President
Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City's Empire State Building.
Less than eight months later, a
television-transmitting antenna had been erected atop the structure (The top
was originally designed as a mooring mast for dirigibles). During the ensuing
36 years, television and FM radio signals have continued to be transmitted from
this location. Today, 22 stations share the site.
May 2, 1941
The Federal Communications
Commission agreed to let regular scheduling of TV broadcasts by commercial TV
stations begin on July 1, 1941.
The game show You Bet Your Life, starring host
Groucho Marx, airs its first TV episode.
The show had debuted on radio in 1947. Thanks to Marx's sarcastic humor and
improvised wisecracks, the show became a hit first on radio and then on
television. The show ran until 1961.
October 5, 1990
20/20 Buckwheat Hoax
The ABCnewsmagazine20/20 aired a segment purporting to be an
interview with Buckwheat, then a grocery bagger in Arizona. However, the interview was actually with a man named Bill English, who
claimed to be the adult Buckwheat. English's appearance prompted public
objections from George McFarland, who contacted media outlets following the
broadcast to declare that he knew the true Buckwheat to have been dead for 10
years. Confronted directly by McFarland on the television newsmagazine A Current Affair,
English refused to retreat from his claim, maintaining that he had originated
the role of Buckwheat, with other actors playing the character only after he
had left it. The next week, 20/20 acknowledged on-air
English's claim had been false and apologized for the interview. Fallout from
this incident included the resignation of a 20/20 producer, and
a negligence lawsuit filed by the son of William Thomas. English died in
1994.
October 6, 1960
Surfside 6 Priemired
Surfside 6 was one of four detective TV
series produced by Warner Bros. around that time, the others
being 77 Sunset Strip (set in Los
Angeles), Hawaiian Eye (set in Hawaii), and Bourbon
Street Beat (set in New
Orleans). Plots, scripts (changing the names and locales), characters, and
almost everything else crossed over from one series to another, not a difficult
feat since they were all actually shot on the studio's backlots in Los Angeles.
Surfside 6 had a memorable theme song, written by Jerry
Livingston and Mack David. The theme has often been parodied in popular
culture. The lyrics varied from week to week, but "Surfside 6" and
"In Miami Beach!" stayed intact. When the women were introduced, the
melody picked up with back-up singers singing "Cha Cha Cha" when the
announcer introduced Margarita Sierra, who vamped exaggeratedly and winked at
the camera during this brief weekly sequence.
The
series was originally slated to consist of thirteen variety episodes, thirteen
dramas starring Sinatra, and ten dramas hosted by Sinatra, filmed at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood rather
than broadcast live. Sinatra was paid $3 million for the series, and granted
near total artistic freedom.
The
drama segments of the show fared less well against the variety episodes in
ratings and the final total was fourteen live variety shows, eight filmed
variety shows, four dramas starring Sinatra, and six dramas hosted by Sinatra.
Rather than 36 episodes for the season, ABC cut its losses and reduced the
total number to 32.
Sinatra
hated rehearsing, and tried to make eleven shows in fifteen days; the series
subsequently received a critical mauling and was Sinatra's last attempt at a
television series.
October 7, 1960
Route
66 primered.
The show ran
weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964.
It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for
two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis
was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod was shown traveling
on his own. Tod met Lincoln Case, played by Glenn Corbett, late in
the third season, and traveled with him until the end of the fourth and final
season.
The series is best remembered for its Corvette convertible and its
instrumental theme song (composed and performed by Nelson
Riddle), which became a major pop hit.
Route 66 was a hybrid between episodic television drama, which has
continuing characters and situations, and the anthology
format (e.g., The Twilight Zone),
in which each week's show has a completely different cast and story. Route
66 had just three continuing characters, no more than two of whom appeared
in the same episode. Like Richard Kimble from The Fugitive, the
wanderers would move from place to place and get caught up in the struggles of
the people there. Unlike Kimble, nothing was forcing them to stay on the move
except their own sense of adventure, thus making it thematically closer to Run for Your Life,
Movin' On, and Then
Came Bronson. Later examples of this traveling protagonist
format are programs such as Bearcats!, Quantum Leap, The Incredible Hulk,
The
A-Team, and Supernatural.
This semi-anthology concept, where the drama is centered on the guest stars
rather than the regular cast, was carried over from series creator Stirling Silliphant's previous
drama Naked City (1958-1963).
Both shows were recognized for their literate scripts and rich
characterizations. The open-ended format, featuring two roaming
observers/facilitators, gave Silliphant and the other writers an almost
unlimited landscape for presenting a wide variety of dramatic (or comedic)
story lines. Virtually any tale could be adapted to the series. The two
regulars merely had to be worked in and the setting tailored to fit the
location. The two men take odd jobs along their journey, like toiling in a California
vineyard or manning a Maine
lobster boat, bringing them in contact with dysfunctional families or
troubled individuals in need of help.
Tod and Buz (and later, Linc) symbolized restless youth searching for
meaning in the early 1960s,
but they were essentially non-characters. We learn almost nothing about them
over the course of the series. All we are told is that, after the death of his
father, Tod Stiles inherits a new Corvette and decides to drive across America
with his friend Buz. Tod, portrayed by clean-cut Martin Milner, is the epitome
of the decent, honest, all-American type. He is the moral anchor of the series.
By contrast, the working-class Buz (George Maharis) is looser, hipper, more Beat
Generation in attitude. His third-season replacement, Lincoln Case
(Glenn Corbett), is a darker character, an army veteran haunted by his
past. He's more introspective with a sometimes explosive temper, but is
nonetheless a reliable companion on this soul-searching journey.
The series concluded in Tampa with the two-part episode "Where There's
a Will, There's a Way," in which Tod Stiles got married, and he and Linc
finally settled down. This made the series one of the earliest prime-time
television dramas to have a planned series finale resolving the fate of its
main characters.
The show was filmed and presented in black and white throughout its run.
This was not unusual for early 1960s episodic TV.
U.S.
Route 66 is well-remembered for its cinematography and location
filming. Writer-producer Stirling Silliphant traveled the country with a
location manager (Sam Manners), scouting a wide range of locales and writing
scripts to match the settings. The actors and film crew would arrive a few
months later. Memorable locations include a logging camp, shrimp boats, an
offshore oil rig, and Glen Canyon Dam, the latter
while still under construction. It is one of very few series in the history of
television to be filmed entirely on the road. This was done at a time when the United
States was much less homogeneous than it is now. People, their
accents, livelihoods, ethnic backgrounds and attitudes varied widely from one
location to the next. Scripted characters reflected a far less mobile society,
in which people were more apt to spend their entire lives in one small part of
the country. Similarly, the places themselves were very different from one
another visually, environmentally, architecturally, in goods and services
available, etc. Stars Martin Milner and George Maharis both mentioned this in
1980s interviews. "Now you can go wherever you want," Maharis added
by way of contrast, "and it's a Denny's."
The roster of guest stars on Route 66 includes quite a few actors who
later went on to fame and fortune, as well as major stars on the downward side
of their careers. One of the most historically significant episodes of the
series in this respect was "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing." It
featured Lon Chaney, Jr., Peter
Lorre and Boris Karloff as themselves,
with Karloff donning his famous Frankenstein monster make-up
for the first time in 25 years and Chaney reprising his role as the Wolfman.
The show was filmed at the O'Hare Inn, near O'Hare
Airport, Chicago, Illinois. Dutch
singer Ronnie Tober had a small guest role with Sharon Russo, Junior Miss
America.
In a 1986 interview, Martin Milner reported that Lee Marvin credited him
with helping his career by breaking Marvin's nose "just enough" to
improve his look. This happened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
during a scripted fistfight for "Mon Petit Chou," the second of two
episodes in which Marvin appeared.
Two late third-season episodes, which aired one week apart, each featured a
guest star in a bit part playing a character with a profession with which they
would later become associated as stars of their own respective mega-hit
television series. In "Shadows of an Afternoon," Michael
Conrad can be seen as a uniformed policeman, many years before he
became famous in his regular role as Police Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on Hill
Street Blues. And in "Soda Pop and Paper Flags," Alan
Alda guested as a surgeon, a precursor to his career-defining role
as Dr. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce on M*A*S*H. Also in the first
season episode The Strengthening Angels that aired November 4, 1960 Hal Smith, who played town
drunk Otis Campbell in The Andy Griffith Show,
also plays a drunk named Howard and is listed in the credits as
"Drunk".
A 4th season episode, "Is It True There Are Poxies at the Bottom of
Landfair Lake?", featured guest stars Geoffrey
Horne and Collin Wilcox. In the
episode's storyline, Wilcox's character pretended to get married to Horne's,
although it turned out to be a practical joke. A few years after appearing in
this episode, Horne and Wilcox would in real life be briefly married to each
other.
A noteworthy in-joke
occurs during the 4th season episode "Where Are the Sounds of Celli
Brahams?" In this segment, Horace
McMahon guests as a Minneapolis, Minnesota,
festival promoter. At one point, his character confesses to Linc his failed
ambition to be a policeman. Linc remarks that he looks like a policeman Linc
once knew in New York City. McMahon had
starred as Lt. Mike Parker on the New York-based police drama Naked City from 1958-63,
another television series overseen by the creative team of Stirling Silliphant and Herbert B. Leonard.
The original
working title of the series was The Searchers, according to George
Maharis. That title was also the title of the 1956 film The Searchers directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, so the series was renamed.
The
show actually had very little real connection with the US Highway providing its name. Most of the locations
visited throughout the series were far afield from the territory covered
by "The Mother Road." U.S. Route 66 the highway was briefly referred to in just
three early episodes of the series ("Black November," "Play
It Glissando," and "An Absence of Tears") and is shown only
rarely, as in the early first season episode "The Strengthening
Angels".
The
episode "I'm Here to Kill a King," which was originally
scheduled to air on November 29, 1963, was removed from the schedule
because of President John F. Kennedy's assassination one week earlier. It was not
aired until the series went into syndication. This episode, and "A
Long Way from St. Louie," are the only ones filmed outside the United
States. Both were filmed in Canada, the latter in Toronto.
Sam
Peckinpah wrote and directed an episode of season 2, "Mon Petit
Chou," in 1961.
Route 66 was devised by Stirling Silliphant, who wrote
the majority of the episodes. It was notable for its dark storylines and
exceptional realism. Tod and Buz would frequently become involved with
individuals whose almost nihilistic worldview made for
occasionally frightening television. Some 50 years after its premiere, Route
66 is still one of the few television series to offer such a range of
socially-conscious stories, including mercy
killing, the threat of nuclear annihilation, terrorism, runaways and
orphans. Other episodes dealt with the mentally ill, drug addiction or gang
violence. However, some stories were congenially lighthearted, such as a
memorable episode featuring Richard
Basehart as a folklorist trying to record the local music of an
isolated Appalachian
community, and a Halloween episode called "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's
Wing".
Even more unusual is the way it served up a kind of soaring dialog that has
been referred to as "Shakespearean" and
free-verse poetry. For instance, the boys encounter a Nazi hunter
named Bartlett on the offshore oil drilling rig where they work. Bartlett
describes the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust
thus: "Tod, I hope you live a long life and never know the blistering
forces that sear and destroy, turn men into enemies and sweep past the last
frontiers of compassion" and "once you've seen that dark, unceasing
tide of faces... of the victims...the last spark of dignity so obliterated that
not one face is lifted to heaven, not one voice is raised in protest even as
they died..." (from episode #4, "The Man on the Monkey Board").
The quirky, textured writing extended even to episode titles, which included
such oddities as "How Much a Pound is Albatross?" and "Ever Ride
the Waves in Oklahoma?". Other episode titles were drawn from a wide range
of literary sources, such as Shakespeare ("A Lance of Straw",
"Hell is Empty, All the Devils are Here") or Alfred
Tennyson ("A Fury Slinging Flame").
Many of the stories were character studies, like the above-mentioned one
featuring Richard Basehart as a man who uses people then tosses them away, as
if they are plastic spoons. The episode titled "You Can't Pick Cotton in
Tahiti" refers to small-town America as both a far-away, exotic Tahiti and
the "real America" compared to "phony-baloney" Hollywood,
and still offers food for thought. Many episodes offer moving soliloquies, into
which future Academy-Award-winning writer Stirling
Silliphant (In the Heat of the
Night) poured his deepest thoughts.
Despite all the adventure, travelogue, drama and poetry, the real subject of
the series was the human condition, with Tod and Buz often cast as a kind of
roving Greek
chorus, observers and mentors to broken-down prizefighters and rodeo
clowns, sadists and iron-willed matrons, surfers and heiresses, runaway kids
and people from all walks of life, forced by circumstances to confront their
demons.
One hallmark of the show was the way it introduced viewers, however briefly,
to new ways of life and new cultures. For instance, we get a glimpse of a
shrimper's life in episode 2 of season 1, "A Lance of Straw," and a
look at Cleveland, Ohio's Polish
community in episode 35, "First Class Mouliak". Here the young are
pushed by their parents into careers and even marriages they may not want, in
an effort to hold community and family together, albeit at the expense of the
happiness and well-being of the kids. This story featured Robert Redford, Martin
Balsam, Nehemiah Persoff and Nancy
Malone as guest stars.
One of the legacies Route 66 left behind is a dramatic and
photographic portrait of early-1960s America as a less crowded and less
complicated era—if not a less violent one—in which altruism and optimism still
had a place. That place was filled by two young men who seemed to represent the
best in us, the willingness to stand up for the weak, and who espoused
old-fashioned values like honesty and the physical courage necessary to fight
in their own and others' defense. In their role of wanderers, they appeared to
be peaceful rebels who seemed to reject, at least for a time, material
possessions and the American dream of owning a home. The boys were de facto
orphans adrift in American society; as such, they embodied facets of Jack
Kerouac's Beat Generation, a little bit
of Marlon
Brando's wild side from The
Wild One, James Dean's inability to
settle down and fit in from Rebel Without a Cause, and
the wanderlust of the above-mentioned Jim Bronson, the traveling writer and
loner who toured the USA on a motorcycle in the 1969-1970 series Then
Came Bronson. The use of the Corvette on Route 66, not
only as the boys' transportation but as their marquee and symbol of their
wandering spirit, created a link between America's Sports Car and America's
highways that endures to this day.
Given the unusual tenor of the show and the cost of keeping some 50 people
on the road filming for most of the year, it seems highly unlikely that
anything like Route 66 will ever be attempted again.
Nelson
Riddle was commissioned to write the instrumental theme when CBS
decided to have a new song, rather than pay royalties for the Bobby
Troup song "(Get
Your Kicks on) Route 66". Riddle's theme, however, offers an
unmistakable homage to the latter's piano solo (as originally recorded by Nat
King Cole) throughout the number. Riddle's Route 66
instrumental was one of the first television themes[1]
to make Billboard Magazine's Top 30,
following Henry Mancini's "Mr. Lucky Theme" in 1960. The song earned
two Grammy nominations in 1962.
George Maharis reported in a 1986 Nick
at Nite interview that people often ask him about "the red
Corvette." According to Maharis, the Corvette was never red. (The
misconception may partially stem from the box illustration on the official
board game, released by Transogram in 1962, which showed Tod and Buz in a
red-colored model.) It was light blue the first season, and fawn beige for the
second and third seasons. Both colors were chosen to photograph well in black
and white, but the show's cinematographer complained that the powder blue car
reflected too much light. The Corvette was replaced with a newer model annually
by series' sponsor General Motors but the show
itself never mentioned or explained the technicality.
October 10, 1950
The Federal Communications Commission issues the first
license to broadcast color television, to CBS.
However, RCA charged that CBS's color technology was
inadequate and contested the license, which was to go into effect November 3.
RCA's challenge worked: A restraining order was issued on November 15. Despite
this setback, CBS did broadcast the first commercial color TV program in June
1951. Color TV technology continued to evolve during the 1950s. In 1956, a
Chicago TV station became the first to broadcast entirely in color. Color
television sets, however, remained less popular than black and white sets until
the late 1960s. In 1968, color televisions outsold black and white televisions
for the first time.
October 10, 2010
Discovery Kids was
relaunched and rebranded as The Hub.
It was a joint operation by Discovery
Communications and Hasbro, Inc.
October 11, 1975
Saturday Night Live debuts.
The topical comedy sketch show featuring Chevy Chase,
John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and
Laraine Newman, makes its debut on NBC; it will go on to become the
longest-running, highest-rated show on late-night television. The 90-minute
program, which from its inception has been broadcast live from Studio 8H in the
GE Building at Rockefeller Center, includes a different guest host and musical
act each week. The opening sketch of each show ends with one actor saying, “Live
from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
Created by the Canadian-born comedy writer Lorne Michaels, SNL has
introduced a long list of memorable characters and catchphrases--from Gilda
Radner’s Roseanne Roseannada, to the Coneheads, to Billy Crystal’s Fernando
(“You look mahvelous”), to Dana Carvey’s Church Lady (“Isn’t that special?”),
to bodybuilders Hans and Franz (“We’re going to pump you up”), to Coffee
Talk host Linda Richman (“like buttah” and “I’m all verklempt”)--that have
become part of pop-culture history. The show, whose cast has changed
continually over the years, has also launched the careers of such performers as
Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley,
David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tina Fey. Some SNL
sketches have even been turned into feature films, the two most successful
examples being 1980’s The Blues Brothers and 1992’s Wayne’s World.
The show was originally known as NBC’s Saturday Night because
there was another show on ABC called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell.
However, NBC eventually purchased the naming rights, and since 1977 the edgy
comedy program has been called Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels
served as the show’s producer from 1975 to 1980, followed by Jean Doumanian
from 1980 to 1981. Dick Ebersol helmed the show from 1981 to 1985. Michaels
returned to the program that year, and has remained executive producer ever
since.
The influential comedian George Carlin hosted the debut episode of SNL.
Later that year, Candace Bergen became the first woman to assume SNL hosting
duties. She went on to host the program four more times. In 1982,
seven-year-old Drew Barrymore hosted the show, becoming the youngest person
ever to do so. Starting in 1976, Steve Martin has hosted SNL 14 times.
Since 1990, Alec Baldwin has hosted the show 13 times. John Goodman has hosted
the show a dozen times, beginning in 1989. Other frequent guest hosts include
Buck Henry, Chevy Chase, Tom Hanks and Christopher Walken. Musical guests
who’ve performed on SNL five or more times include Paul Simon, Tom Petty
& The Heartbreakers, James Taylor, Sting, Beck and the Foo Fighters.
February 25, 1928
