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"
On this day in
2000, Richard Hatch, a 39-year-old corporate trainer from Rhode Island, wins
the season-one finale of the reality television show Survivor and takes
home the promised $1 million prize. In a four-to-three vote by his fellow
contestants, Hatch, who was known for walking around naked on the island in
Borneo where the show was shot, was named Sole Survivor over the river raft
guide Kelly Wiglesworth. Survivor, whose slogan is “Outwit, Outplay,
Outlast,” was a huge ratings success and spawned numerous imitators in the
reality-competition genre.
Produced by Mark Burnett (The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th
Grader?), Survivor premiered on May 31, 2000, on CBS. The
showcenters around a group of sixteen strangers who are stranded for 39
days in a remote location where they must fend for food, water and shelter and
compete in various challenges to win rewards and immunity from being voted out
of the competition by their fellow contestants. The voting takes place at the
so-called “Tribal Council” ceremony and after a contestant is voted off, the
show’s host Jeff Probst informs that person that “the tribe has spoken” and
asks the evictee to extinguish his or her torch.
As of May 2008, Survivor had been on the air for 16 seasons. The show
has been filmed in a variety of locations around the world, including the
Australian Outback (season two), the Amazon (season six) and Fiji (season 14).
Season 13, which was set in the Cook Islands, stirred up controversy when the
contestants were initially divided by race into four competing tribes:
African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic.
In 2006, season-one winner Richard Hatch was found guilty of tax evasion for
failing to report his Survivor prize money to the IRS. He was sentenced
to more than four years in prison. Other former Survivor contestants
have gone on to reap more success from their appearance on the reality show:
Season one’s Colleen Haskell landed a co-starring role in the forgettable 2001
comedy The Animal, while season two’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck (nee
Filarski) went on to become a co-host of the daytime TV talk show The View.
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.
September 4, 1966
The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon
was an
annual telethon held
each Labor
Day in the United States to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
The show was founded and hosted by actor and comedian Jerry
Lewis, who hosted the broadcast from its 1966 inception until 2010.
The history of MDA's telethon dated back to the 1950s, when the Jerry
LewisThanksgiving Party for MDA raised
funds for the organization's New
York City area operations. The telethon was held annually on Labor Day
weekend beginning in 1966, and would raise $2.45 billion for MDA from its
inception through 2009.
The telethon aired up to 21½ hours, starting on the Sunday evening preceding
Labor Day and continuing until late Monday afternoon on the holiday itself. MDA
called its network of participating stations the "Love Network".
The show originated from Las
Vegas for 28 of the years it was broadcast.
Beginning in 2011, coinciding with Lewis's controversial departure, MDA
radically reformatted and shortened the telethon's format into that of a benefit
concert, shortening the length of the special each successive
year. The 2011 edition was seen exclusively on the Sunday evening
before Labor
Day for six hours; This edition, syndicated to approximately 160
television stations throughout the United States on September 4, 2011, Nigel
Lythgoe, Jann Carl, Alison
Sweeney and Nancy O'Dell were brought on as
co-hosts. shared hosting duties for the 2011 edition.
Successive telethons from 2012 to 2014 renamed the show as the MDA
Show of Strength and further cut its airtime. The 2012 edition
aired on Sunday, September 2, 2012; the job of renaming the new show was given
to MDA's advertising agency E.B. Lane (now LaneTerralever). Mark Itkowitz,
their Exec. Creative Director came up with the name MDA Show of Strength and it
quickly gained internal approval. The 2012 edition was reduced to three hours
as a primetime-only broadcast. The telethon aired at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific
Time, and was seen live in the Eastern and Central
time zones.
The 2012 edition did not refer itself as a "telethon". The
2013 Show of Strength discontinued the long-standing format of
being syndicated to individual stations of varying network
affiliation and aired on a major national network instead of being
syndicated to individual stations, airing on ABC on Sunday, September 1,
2013, and being reduced to two hours. While the 2012 edition did not refer
itself as a "telethon", it referred itself as such for the 2013
edition.
The final edition, for 2014, aired on ABC on August 31, again as a two-hour
special beginning at 9PM ET/PT. This was the final edition for the telethon,
as it was announced on May 1, 2015 that the MDA would be discontinuing the
annual event.
September 4, 1967
Gilligan's Island, The classic TV comedy about seven people stranded on a
deserted island, airs its last episode.
The show starred:
Bob Denver
as Gilligan, the bumbling, dimwitted, accident-prone crewman of
the S.S. Minnow. None of the show's episodes ever specified
Gilligan's full name, nor clearly indicated whether "Gilligan" was
the character's first name or his last. On the DVD collection, series creator Sherwood Schwartz states that he preferred the full name of "Willie Gilligan"
for the character. On Rescue from Gilligan's Island,
the writers artfully dodge the recitation of Gilligan's full name, when the
other names are announced.
Alan Hale, Jr. as Jonas Grumby, the "Skipper".
A longtime actor in B-westerns and
the lookalike
son of Alan Hale, Sr., a legendary movie character actor,
Hale so loved his role that, long after the show went off the air, he would
still appear in character in his Los Angeles restaurant, Alan Hale's Lobster
Barrel. Although the Skipper was a father figure to Gilligan, Hale was only 14
years older than Denver. It is alluded in one episode that Gilligan pushed the
Skipper out of the way of a loose depth-charge when they were both serving in
the United States Navy.
Jim Backus
as Thurston Howell,
III, the condescending millionaire.
Backus was already a well-known actor when he took the part. He was perhaps
best known as the voice of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo.
He reused some of the voice inflections and mannerisms of Magoo in the role. He
was well known for his ad-libs on the set.
Natalie Schafer as Eunice "Lovey" Wentworth Howell, Thurston's wife. Schafer had it written into her
contract that there were to be no close-ups of her, perhaps due to her advanced
age. Schafer was 63 when the pilot was shot although, reportedly, no one on the
set or in the cast knew her real age, and she refused to divulge that
information. Originally, she only accepted the role because the pilot was
filmed on location in Hawaii. She looked at the job as nothing more than a free
vacation, as she was convinced that a show this silly would "never
go".
Tina Louise
as Ginger Grant, the movie star. When regular shooting began, Louise
clashed with the producers, because she believed that she was to be the main
focus of the show (despite its title). Her character was originally written as
a sarcastic and sharp-tongued temptress, but Louise argued that this was too
extreme and refused to play it as written. A compromise was reached; Louise
agreed to play her as a cross between Marilyn Monroe
and Lucille Ball. The evening gowns and hair style used were designed
to re-create the look of Myrna Loy. Louise continued to clash with producers and was the
only cast member who refused to return for any of the TV movies
that followed the series' cancellation, and the fourth season, which was later
canceled to make room for Gunsmoke, saying that the role had destroyed her career as a
serious actress. However, she did appear in a reunion of the cast on a late
night TV talk show in 1988 and on an episode of Roseanne in 1995. In the first season, Ginger often wore gowns
that looked as if they were tailored from S.S. Minnow tarps or similar ersatz
cloth (some had the name of the vessel stenciled on them). Later on, she wore
regular evening gowns with high heels, though it was never explained why she
brought so many changes of clothing on a "three-hour tour".
Russell Johnson as Roy Hinkley (The
Professor). Incongruously, "the
Professor" was in fact a high school
science teacher, not a university professor. In the first episode, the radio
announcer described him as a research scientist and well-known Scoutmaster.
Johnson stated that he had some difficulty remembering his more technically-oriented
lines.
Dawn Wells
as Mary Ann Summers. Wells was a former Miss Nevada
when she auditioned for the role. Her competition included Raquel Welch
and Pat Priest.
She wrote The Gilligans Island Cookbook and starred as Lovey Howell in the
musical stage adaption of the show.
Although the show ran for only three years, it aired in reruns for decades. The
characters were resurrected in three TV movies.
On this day in 2002, Kelly
Clarkson, a 20-year-old cocktail waitress from Texas, wins Season One of American
Idol in a live television broadcast from Hollywood’s Kodak Theater.
Clarkson came out on top in the amateur singing contest over 23-year-old runner-up
Justin Guarini after millions of viewers cast their votes for her by phone. She
was awarded a recording contract and went on to sell millions of albums and
establish a successful music career. (Clarkson and Guarnini also co-starred in
the 2003 box-office bomb From Justin to Kelly, which was nominated for a
Golden Raspberry Award for that year’s worst film but lost to the Jennifer
Lopez-Ben Affleck vehicle Gigli.) Starting with its first season, American
Idol became one of the most popular TV programs in U.S. history and spawned
a slew of talent-competition shows.
American Idol was based on a British TV show called Pop Idol,
which was developed by the English-born entertainment executive Simon Fuller
and debuted in the U.K. in 2001. The Idol concept was shopped around in
the United States and reportedly rejected by several TV networks before Fox
picked it up. The American Idol premiere, which aired on June 11, 2002,
was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman (who was dropped from the
program after Season One) and starred a trio of judge--the acerbic British
music executive Simon Cowell, the singer-choreographer Paul Abdul and the
musician-producer Randy Jackson. The show followed the judges as they selected
contestants, who were required to be teens or young adults, from open auditions
around the United States. Contestants who made the cut were flown to Hollywood,
where they were eventually narrowed to 10 finalists, who performed live on
television and were critiqued by the judges. Home viewers phoned in their votes
for their favorite performers and each week the contestant who received the
lowest number of votes was eliminated from the competition.
Following Clarkson’s Season One victory, subsequent American Idol
winners--Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks,
Jordin Sparks and David Cook--have had varying degrees of success in their
music careers. In some cases, American Idol runner-ups, such as Clay
Aiken (Season Two, second place) and Chris Daughtry (Season Five, fourth place),
have sold more records than certain A.I. winners. Jennifer Hudson, who
finished seventh in Season Three of the show, later won an Academy Award for
her supporting performance in Dreamgirls (2006), the film adaptation of
the hit Broadway musical.
September 4, 2002
Joan Rivers, one
of the best-known comedians of her era, dies at age 81 in a New York City
hospital, a week after she went into cardiac arrest while undergoing a medical
procedure on her vocal cords at a Manhattan clinic.
During a showbiz career that spanned more than five
decades, Rivers blazed a trail for women in stand-up comedy and turned “Can we
talk?” into a national catchphrase. No topic was taboo for the irreverent,
sharp-tongued performer, who poked fun at her personal life and affinity for
plastic surgery, skewered Hollywood celebrities and once said, “I succeeded by
saying what everyone else is thinking.”
Born Joan Molinsky on June 8, 1933, to Russian immigrants in Brooklyn, New
York, the entertainer graduated from Barnard College in 1954. Interested in
becoming an actress, she scored parts in Off-Broadway plays and worked office
temp jobs to support herself. In the late 1950s, she started performing
stand-up comedy in nightclubs as a means to earn money; at the time, there were
few other female stand-up comics. In the early 1960s, she did a stint with the
Chicago-based Second City comedy troupe. Along the way, at the suggestion of an
agent, she changed her last name to Rivers. In 1965, her career took off after
she made her first appearance on “The Tonight Show,” hosted by Johnny Carson,
who told her she was going to be a star. Rivers went on to rack up numerous
guest spots on the program, while also appearing on other TV comedy shows and
doing her stand-up act around the country.
In 1983, Rivers was tapped as the permanent guest host on “The Tonight
Show.” Three years later, she inked a deal for her own late-night TV show on
another network. Afterward, Carson, who reportedly felt betrayed, never spoke
to Rivers again (she was blacklisted from “The Tonight Show” until 2014, when
host Jimmy Fallon invited her on as a guest). “The Late Show Starring Joan
Rivers” debuted in October 1986 but soon sank in the ratings, and Rivers was
fired in May 1987. That August, Rivers’ husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who served as
a producer of her show, committed suicide.
Rivers’ career temporarily stalled but she eventually signed on to host her
own daytime talk show, “The Joan Rivers Show,” which aired from 1989 to 1993.
Next, the raspy-voiced comedian added fashion maven to her resume and helped
revolutionize red-carpet coverage and popularize the question “Who are you
wearing?,” after she and her daughter, Melissa, began hosting E!
Entertainment’s pre-award shows for the Golden Globes, Academy Awards and other
events, starting in the mid-1990s. From 2010 until her death, Rivers was a
co-host of the TV program “Fashion Police,” on which she cattily critiqued the
style choices of celebrities. Rivers also published a dozen books during her
career, produced a jewelry line for TV shopping channel QVC and supported a
variety of charitable causes. After starting out in the 1950s with dreams of
working in theater, she earned a Tony Award nomination in the best actress
category in 1994 for her role in the Broadway play “Sally Marr…and her
escorts,” which she co-wrote.
Rivers gave what turned out to be her last stand-up
performance, in Manhattan, on August 27, 2014, the night before the medical
procedure that led to her death on September 4. Three days later, the legendary
funny woman was memorialized at a star-studded service in New York City. As
Rivers had noted in her 2012 book “I Hate Everyone … Starting With Me,” she
wanted a send-off that was “a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras,
action.”
Although Susan Harris had
planned for five seasons of Soap, the program was abruptly canceled
by ABC after its fourth season. Therefore the final one-hour episode, which
originally aired on April 20, 1981, did not serve as a series finale and instead ended with
several unresolved cliffhangers. These involve a suicidal Chester preparing to
kill Danny and Annie (his son and wife) after catching them in bed together, an
irreversibly hypnotized Jodie believing himself to be a 90-year-old Jewish man,
Burt preparing to walk into an ambush orchestrated by his
political enemies, and Jessica about to be executed by a Communistfiring squad. Vlasic Foods pulled their
sponsorship of the program shortly after this episode aired and ABC announced
that the program was not picked up for its planned fifth season. The official
reason given by the network was its declining ratings. However, according to
the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Soap "ended under
suspicion that resistance from ad agencies may have caused ABC to cancel [it]
at that point" because its still controversial content was negatively
affecting its relationship with sponsors. A 1983 episode of Benson mentions Jessica's disappearance, noting the Tate family is seeking
to have her declared legally dead. In the episode, Jessica appears as an
apparition that only Benson can see or hear and reveals to him that she is not
dead, but in a coma somewhere in South America. No other incidents from the
final episode of Soap are mentioned.
Her first significant success was on the sitcom Car 54, Where
Are You? (1961–1963), in which
she played Sylvia Schnauzer, the wife of Officer Leo Schnauzer (played by Al Lewis). She was nominated for an Emmy Award
for her supporting role in the 1975 drama Queen
of the Stardust Ballroom. In
January 1975, Rae became a cast member on the ABC television comedy Hot L Baltimore, wherein she played Mrs. Bellotti, whose dysfunctional adult son
Moose, who was never actually seen, lived at the "hot l" (the hotel
was so bad the "E" on the sign never worked). Mrs. Bellotti, who was
a bit odd herself, would visit Moose and then laugh about all the odd
situations that Moose would get into with the others living at the hotel. Rae
also appeared in early seasons of Sesame Street as Molly the Mail Lady.
Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life
In 1978, NBC was losing to both CBS and ABC in sitcom
ratings, and Fred Silverman, future producer and former head of CBS, ABC, and NBC, insisted that Norman Lear
produce Diff'rent Strokes. Knowing that Rae was one of Lear's favorite
actresses, he hired her immediately for the role of housekeeper Edna
Garrett, and she co-starred with Conrad Bain
in all 24 episodes of the first season. Her character proved to be so popular
that producers decided to do an episode that could lead to a spinoff. That
episode (called "The Girls School") was about girls attending a
fictional school called Eastland. In July 1979, Rae proposed the idea for the
spinoff. NBC approved the show, to be called The
Facts of Life, which would
portray a housemother in a prestigious private school and dealt with such
issues facing teenagers as weight issues, depression, drugs, alcohol, and
dating.
After working as a character actress/comedienne in
supporting roles or in guest shots on television series and specials, The Facts
Of Life gave Rae not only her best-known role but it finally made her a
television star. The role of Edna Garrett was the unifying center of attention
of the program as well as a warm, motherly figure for the girls. Rae's role was
very similar to that of Kate Bradley on the 1960's CBS-TV
series Petticoat Junction, which also gave radio and television actress Bea Benaderet late stardom.
The Facts of Life had marginal ratings at first but
after a major restructuring and time change, the show became a ratings winner
between 1980 and 1986. Midway throughout both the 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons,
she missed several episodes because she was planning on leaving the show, and
the story lines focused more on the other characters. At the beginning of the
eighth season, Rae left the show and Cloris Leachman
was then brought in as Mrs. Garrett's sister, Beverly
Ann Stickle, for the show's last two
years, until the show was canceled in 1988.
In 2001, Rae, Lisa Whelchel,
Mindy Cohn,
and Kim Fields
were reunited in a TV movie, The Facts
of Life Reunion. In 2007, the
entire cast was invited to attend the TV Land Awards
where several members of the cast, including Rae, sang the show's theme song.
On April 19, 2011, the entire cast was reunited again to attend the TV Land
Awards, where the show was nominated and won the award for Pop Culture Icon.
The same day, Nancy McKeon and Kim Fields (who played Jo & Tootie,
respectively) also gave a speech in honor of her 85th birthday. The cast did
likewise on ABC's Good Morning
America, where at the end of the
segment, reporter, Cynthia McFadden wished Rae a happy birthday, and the cast sang the show's theme song.
April 22, 1976
Barbara
Walters signs $5 million contract.
Barbara Walters signs a record-breaking five-year, $5 million contract with
ABC. The contract made her the first news anchorwoman in network history and
the highest paid TV journalist to date.
April 24, 1936
A group of
firemen responding to an alarm in Camden, New Jersey, is televised.
It was the first time an unplanned event was
broadcast on television, anticipating the development of live TV news coverage.
Fortunately, the event would not inspire anyone to create reality programming.
The hit reality-based television show COPS premieres on the Fox television
network, and audiences hear the reggae beat of its distinctive theme song,
Inner Circle's "Bad Boys," for the very first time.
Created by the producing team of John Langley and
Malcolm Barbour, COPS placed cameras and production crews in the car
with real patrol officers around the country as they went on raids and did
whatever was necessary to catch the perpetrators of various drug-related
crimes. The pilot episode, like the rest of that debut season, was based in
Broward County, Florida, and followed members of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. The
actor Burt Lancaster provided the voice-over for the pilot episode, but the
rest of the show, shot documentary-style, was not accompanied by any narration.
At the time, Fox was only a fledgling television
network, having launched in October 1986. The network took a chance on COPS
after other major networks passed on it, leaping on Langley and Barbour's idea
in the middle of a five-month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA)
during the summer of 1988. A reality-based show was ideal for the network at
the time, as it would require no writers and was relatively inexpensive to
produce.
COPS
surprised the industry by becoming a hit; it is now one of the longest-running
TV shows in history, with more than 700 episodes airing between 1989 and 2008.
Its success spawned an entire new genre of reality programming that would gain
traction during the 1990s and become a major cultural phenomenon by the next
decade. Like any touchstone of popular culture, COPS has inspired
numerous imitators--including the John Langley-produced series Jail and Street
Patrol--and has been parodied extensively, most notably by the Comedy
Central series Reno 911!
In February 2008, producers released a special
two-disc DVD set to celebrate the 20th anniversary of COPS.
March 12, 1974
Wonder Woman debuted on
ABC-TV.
The show later went to CBS-TV.
Wonder Woman's first broadcast
appearance in live-action television was a television movie made in 1974 for ABC. Written by John D. F. Black, the TV movie resembles the Wonder Woman of the
"I Ching" period. Wonder Woman (Cathy Lee Crosby) did not wear the comic-book uniform, demonstrated no
apparent super-human powers, had a "secret identity" of Diana Prince
that was not all that secret, and she was also depicted as blonde (differing
from the brunette image established in the comic books). This 1974 film follows
Wonder Woman, assistant to government agent Steve Trevor (Kaz Garas) as she
pursues a villain named Abner Smith (Ricardo Montalban) who has stolen a set of code books containing
classified information about U.S. government field agents. Along the way, she
has to outwit Smith's chief assistants: the handsome yet dangerous George
(Andrew Prine) and a rogue Amazon, Angela (Anitra Ford), who Smith has taken on
as a bodyguard; a brief duel between Wonder Woman and Angela is the film's only
significant action sequence, which occurs during the final third of the story.
March 16, 1949
Henry Enrique
"Erik" Estradais born.
Actor and reserve police officer, known for his co-starring lead role in the
1977–1983 United States police television seriesCHiPs.He later became known for his work in
Spanish language telenovelas, and in more recent years, his appearances in reality
television shows and infomercials and as a regular voice on the Adult Swim series Sealab 2021.
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.
August 23, 2000
First Survivor finale airs.
On this day in 2000, Richard Hatch, a 39-year-old corporate trainer from Rhode Island, wins the season-one finale of the reality television show Survivor and takes home the promised $1 million prize. In a four-to-three vote by his fellow contestants, Hatch, who was known for walking around naked on the island in Borneo where the show was shot, was named Sole Survivor over the river raft guide Kelly Wiglesworth. Survivor, whose slogan is “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast,” was a huge ratings success and spawned numerous imitators in the reality-competition genre.
Produced by Mark Burnett (The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?), Survivor premiered on May 31, 2000, on CBS. The showcenters around a group of sixteen strangers who are stranded for 39 days in a remote location where they must fend for food, water and shelter and compete in various challenges to win rewards and immunity from being voted out of the competition by their fellow contestants. The voting takes place at the so-called “Tribal Council” ceremony and after a contestant is voted off, the show’s host Jeff Probst informs that person that “the tribe has spoken” and asks the evictee to extinguish his or her torch.
As of May 2008, Survivor had been on the air for 16 seasons. The show has been filmed in a variety of locations around the world, including the Australian Outback (season two), the Amazon (season six) and Fiji (season 14). Season 13, which was set in the Cook Islands, stirred up controversy when the contestants were initially divided by race into four competing tribes: African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic.
In 2006, season-one winner Richard Hatch was found guilty of tax evasion for failing to report his Survivor prize money to the IRS. He was sentenced to more than four years in prison. Other former Survivor contestants have gone on to reap more success from their appearance on the reality show: Season one’s Colleen Haskell landed a co-starring role in the forgettable 2001 comedy The Animal, while season two’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck (nee Filarski) went on to become a co-host of the daytime TV talk show The View.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
