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.
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Showing posts with label This week in Television History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label This week in Television History. Show all posts
The Honeymooners was introduced during Jackie Gleason's first variety
series Cavalcade of Stars.
It
originally aired on the DuMont network's Cavalcade of Stars, Jackie Gleason's variety show and subsequently on the CBS network's The Jackie Gleason Show, which was filmed in front of a live audience.
It debuted as a half-hour series on October 1, 1955. Although initially a ratings success—becoming the #2 show in the
United States during its first season—it faced stiff competition from The Perry Como Show, and eventually
dropped to #19, ending its production after only 39 episodes (now referred
to as the "Classic 39"). The final episode ofThe Honeymooners aired
on September 22, 1956. Creator/producer Jackie Gleason revived the series
sporadically until 1978.The Honeymooners was one of the first U.S.
television shows to portray working-class married couples in a gritty,
non-idyllic manner (the show is set mostly in the Kramdens' kitchen, in a
neglected Brooklyn apartment building). The program is also popular internationally,
particularly in Canada, Poland and Scandinavian
countries Norway and Sweden.
October 5, 1986
Business World began airing on ABC-TV.
An ABC News Sunday-morning
review of economic and financial stories was the first regularly scheduled
weekly business series on network TV.
October 9, 1986
Joan Rivers debuted her
new The Late Show on the FOX network.
After
a moderate start, ratings for the talk show soon
sagged. The ratings struggles also made it hard for Fox to attract affiliates
for its primetime launch on April 5, 1987. Some prospective affiliates, such
as Milwaukee's WCGV-TV, would only sign with the
network if they did not have to carry The Late Show.KPTMin Omaha refused outright out of loyalty to Carson, who
hailed from Corning,
Iowa, east
of Omaha and started his career on local radio and television. The network
acquiesced to allow some stations out of that obligation so that the network
launched in primetime with as many affiliates as possible, at the cost of
ratings and access to The Late Show. For instance, at the time the
show launched Fox had not closed on its purchase of its Boston station, WXNE-TV (nowWFXT). That station's previous owners, the Christian Broadcasting Network, objected to the show's
content and refused to clear it. As a result, until Fox took control of the
station in January, its audio feed aired on a low-rated AM station.
The
behind-the-scenes relations between Rivers and network executives quickly
eroded, and Rivers was eventually fired in May 1987. For the final show, which
aired May 15, 1987, the set was vandalized with toilet paper, slime, and
shaving cream. Her guests were Howie Mandel, Pee-Wee Herman, then-fledgling
comedian Chris
Rock, Wendy O. Williams, and show stage manager
Michelle Aller as her alter-ego Mavis Vegas Davis.[3][4] Soon afterward the
program was renamed The Late Show and featured rotating guest
hosts including Suzanne Somers, Richard Belzer, and Robert Townsend. After firing prospective guest host Frank Zappa, producer John Scura
replaced him with Arsenio Hall, who made his debut as a talk show host.
Eventually, Hall was named the permanent replacement host in mid-1987.
During the peak of its popularity in the 1950s and
1960s, Sullivan’s programshowcased a wide range of entertainers,
including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Rudolf Nureyev, Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope.
Sullivan worked as a newspaper reporter and columnist in New York during the
1920s and 1930s and also hosted and produced vaudeville shows and benefits. In
1948, he became the master of ceremonies of a weekly TV variety show dubbed Toast
of the Town. In 1955, the program, which aired Sunday nights on CBS, was
renamed The Ed Sullivan Show. Although Sullivan was often awkward and
self-conscious on camera, he was a hit with audiences and his program had broad
appeal. In addition to big-name entertainers, the show featured animal acts,
athletes, comedians, dancers and opera singers, along with such regulars as
Topo Gigio, a mouse puppet with an Italian accent, and a ventriloquist named
Senor Wences.
Notable moments in the history of The Ed Sullivan Show include its
broadcast on January 6, 1957, when Elvis Presley appeared on the program and
the cameras shot him from the waist up because his gyrating hips were
considered too scandalous for family television. On February 9, 1964,
more than 70 million viewers tuned in to the show for the American TV debut of
the Liverpool-based rock quartet The Beatles.
Sullivan was also notable for featuring African-American performers on his
program. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications: “At a time when
virtually all sponsors balked at permitting black performers to take the stage,
Sullivan embraced Pearl Bailey over the objections of his sponsors. He also
showcased black entertainers as diverse as Nat “King” Cole, Leontine Price,
Louis Armstrong, George Kirby, Richard Pryor, Duke Ellington, Richie Havens and
the Supremes.”
The Ed Sullivan Show was cancelled in 1971. Sullivan died of cancer
at the age of 73 on October 13, 1974. In 1967, CBS renamed the Billy Rose
Theater, from which Sullivan broadcast his show, the Ed Sullivan Theater. Since
1993, David Letterman has hosted his late-night talk show from the Ed Sullivan
Theater, which is located at Broadway and 53rd Street in Manhattan.
September 28, 1961
Dr. Kildare premiered on NBC-TV.
Dr. Kildare is an NBCmedical
drama television series which originally ran from September 28, 1961
until August 30, 1966, for a total of 191 episodes over five
seasons. Produced by MGM
Television, it was based on fictional
doctor characters originally created by author Max Brand in
the 1930s and previously used by MGM in a
popular film series and radio
drama. The TV series quickly achieved success and made a star of Richard Chamberlain, who played the title
role. Dr. Kildare (along with an ABC medical drama, Ben Casey,
which premiered at the same time) inspired or influenced many later TV shows
dealing with the medical field.
September 28, 1961
Hazel premiered on NBC-TV.
Hazel is an American sitcom about a
fictional live-in maid named
Hazel Burke (Shirley Booth) and her employers, the Baxters. The
five-season, 154-episode series aired in prime time from September 28, 1961, to
April 11, 1966, and was produced by Screen
Gems. The show aired on NBC for its first four seasons. Season 1 was broadcast
in black-and-white for all but one episode and
seasons 2–4 were aired in color. The fifth and final season was broadcast in
color on CBS.
The show was based on the
popular single-panel comic strip by cartoonistTed Key, which
appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.
September 29, 1986
The first episode of Designing Women aired on CBS.
Designing
Women is an
American sitcom created by Linda
Bloodworth-Thomason that
aired on CBS from September 29, 1986, until May 24, 1993, producing seven
seasons and 163 episodes. The comedy seriesDesigning Women was a
joint production of Bloodworth/Thomason Mozark Productions in association withColumbia
Pictures Television for
CBS.
The series
centers on the lives of four women and one man working together at an interior
designing firm inAtlanta,
Georgia called
Sugarbakers & Associates. It originally starred Dixie Carter as president of the design firm Julia
Sugarbaker, Delta Burke as her ex-beauty queen sister Suzanne
Sugarbaker, Annie Potts as head designer Mary Jo Shively,
and Jean Smart as office manager Charlene Frazier.
Later in its run, the series received recognition for its well-publicized
behind-the-scene conflicts and cast changes. Julia Duffy and Jan Hooksreplaced Burke and Smart for season six, but
Duffy was not brought for the seventh and final season, and she was replaced
by Judith Ivey.
October 3, 1951
CBS-TV aired the first coast-to-coast telecast of a
prizefight.
Dave Sands defeated Carl Olson at Soldier Field in Chicago.
The two main settings
show the work and home life of Rob Petrie (Dick Van
Dyke),
the head writer of a comedy variety show filmed in Manhattan. Viewers are given
an "inside look" at how a television show (the fictitious The Alan Brady Show) was
written and produced. Many of the show's plots were inspired by
Reiner's experiences as a writer for Your Show of Shows, but though he based the
character of Rob Petrie on himself, Rob's egocentricboss Alan Brady is less Sid
Caesar
(host of Your Show of Shows) than a combination of the more abrasiveMilton
Berle
and Jackie Gleason, according to Reiner himself.[3] Many scenes deal with
Rob and his coworkers, writers Buddy Sorrell (Morey
Amsterdam) and Sally Rogers (Rose Marie). Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon), a balding straight man and
recipient of numerous insulting one-liners from Buddy, was the show's producer
and the brother-in-law of the show's star, Alan Brady (Carl
Reiner).
As Rob, Buddy, and Sally write for a comedy show, the premise provides a
built-in forum for them to be making jokes constantly. Other scenes focus on
the home life of Rob, his wife Laura (Mary
Tyler Moore), and son Richie (Larry
Mathews),
who live at 148 Bonnie Meadow Road in suburban New Rochelle, New York. Also often seen are
their next-door neighbors and best friends, Jerry Helper (Jerry
Paris),
a dentist, and his wife Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert).
Carl Reiner originally
planned to produce and star in the series, which was going to be titled Head
of the Family. The pilot episode was written by Reiner in 1960, but it was
unsuccessful.
October 4, 1956 -
"Playhouse 90" debuted on CBS-TV.
October 4, 1976
Barbara Walters joined
Harry Reasoner at the anchor desk of the "ABC Evening News" for the
first time.
Harry
Reasoner,
formerly of CBS
News and 60 Minutes, joined ABC News in 1970 to
co-anchor the relaunchedABC Evening News with Smith, beginning that
December, replacing Reynolds. In 1975, Howard K. Smith was moved to a
commentator role, and Reasoner briefly assumed sole-anchor responsibilities
until he was paired with Barbara Walters, who became the first
female network anchor when she joined the program in 1976.Ratings for the nightly news
broadcast declined shortly thereafter, possibly due in part to the lack of
chemistry between Reasoner and Walters. Reasoner would eventually return to CBS
and 60 Minutes, while Walters became a regular on the
newsmagazine 20/20.
October 4, 1981
Bruce Jenner and Harry
Belafonte debuted in their first dramatic roles in NBC-TV's Grambling's
White Tiger (also released as White Tiger in Europe) The true story of Jim
Gregory (played by Bruce Jenner) the first white quarterback at Grambling College, a historically black college in 1962.
While
walking along Park
Avenue to
his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and
punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the
frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant
pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the
incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I
didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now.
I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the
crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led
some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and
building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events.
In
1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the
alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1⁄2 to
25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery
outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no
doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney
Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who
attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my
office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming
signals into his brain when he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to
force his way into a CBS studio with a weapon, in order to find out the
frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. As
to why he said "Kenneth", Tager was Jewish, and may have actually
been using the Yiddish word
"goniff", meaning "thief". Tager was paroled in
October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City.
Created by Steven
Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of
Bochco's trademark features including an ensemble
cast, large number of parallel storylines, social drama, and off-the-wall
humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and
early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic
issues such as capital punishment, abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual
harassment, AIDS,
and domestic violence. The series often also
reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and
their less well-paid junior staff.
The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won
15 Emmy
Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama
Series.
September 17, 1951
Cassandra Peterson is born.
The actress s best known for her on-screen
horror hostess character Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles
television station KHJ wearing a black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing
gown as host of Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation. Her wickedly
vampish appearance was offset by her comical character, quirky/quick-witted
personality, and valley girl-type
speech.
September 17, 1966
Mission: Impossible Premiered:
Interesting that Star
Trek and Mission: Impossible were Desilu productions
premiering so close together, and today they both continue to be major
Hollywood franchises for Bad Robot Productions. The pilot is of note because
the self-destructing message was delivered on a vinyl LP, not a tape. It was
also the only episode to be written by creator Bruce Geller.
September
17, 1991
The
first episode of "Home Improvement" aired on ABC.
The series centers on the Taylor family, which
consists of Tim (Tim
Allen), his wife Jill (Patricia Richardson)
and their three children: the oldest child, Brad (Zachery
Ty Bryan), the middle child Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas)
and youngest child, Mark (Taran
Noah Smith). The Taylors live in suburban Detroit,
and have a neighbor named Wilson Wilson (Earl
Hindman) who is often the go-to guy for solving the
Taylors' problems.
Tim is a stereotypical American male, who
loves power tools, cars and sports.
In particular, he is an avid fan oflocal
Detroit teams. In numerous instances Tim wears Lions, Pistons,
and Tigers clothing, and many
plots revolve around the teams. He is a former salesman for the fictional
Binford Tool company, and is very much a cocky, overambitious,
accident-prone know-it-all. Witty but flippant, Tim
jokes around a lot, even at inappropriate times, much to the dismay of his
wife. However, Tim can sometimes be serious when necessary. Jill, Tim's wife,
is loving and sophisticated, but not exempt from dumb moves herself. in later
seasons she returns to college to study psychology. Family life is boisterous
for the Taylors with the two oldest children, Brad and Randy, tormenting the
much younger Mark, all while continually testing and pestering each other. Such
play happened especially throughout the first three seasons, and was revisited
only occasionally until Jonathan Taylor Thomas left at the beginning of the
eighth season. During the show's final season, Brad and Mark became much closer
due to Randy's absence.
Brad, popular and athletic, was often the moving
factor, who engaged before thinking, a tendency which regularly landed him in
trouble. Randy, a year younger, was the comedian of the pack, known for his
quick-thinking, wisecracks, and smart mouth. He had more common sense than Brad
but was not immune to trouble. Mark was somewhat of a mama's
boy, though later in the series (in the seventh
season) he grew into a teenage outcast who dressed in black clothing.
Meanwhile, Brad became interested in cars like his father and took up soccer.
Randy joined the school drama club, and later the school newspaper; in the
eighth season, he left for Costa
Rica.
Each episode includes Tim's own Binford-sponsored
home improvement show, called Tool Time, a
"meta-program," or show-within-a-show.
In hosting this show, Tim is joined by his friend and mild-mannered
assistant Al Borland (Richard
Karn), and a "Tool Time girl" — first Lisa (Pamela
Anderson) and later Heidi (Debbe
Dunning) — whose main duty is to introduce the pair at the
beginning of the show with the line "Does everybody know what time it
is?" The Tool Time girl also assists Tim and Al during the show by
bringing them tools.
Although revealed to be an excellent salesman and
TV personality, Tim is spectacularly accident prone as a handyman, often
causing massive disasters on and off the set, to the consternation of his
co-workers and family. Many Tool Time viewers assume that the
accidents on the show are done on purpose, to demonstrate the consequences of
using tools improperly. Many of Tim's accidents are caused by his devices being
used in an unorthodox or overpowered manner, designed to illustrate his mantra
"More power!". This popular catchphrase would not be uttered
after Home Improvement's seventh season, until Tim's last line
in the series finale.
Tool
Time was conceived as a parody of the PBS
home-improvement show This Old House. Tim
and Al are caricatures of the two principal cast members ofThis Old House,
host Bob Vila and master
carpenter Norm Abram. Al Borland has a
beard and always wears plaid shirts when taping an episode, reflecting Norm
Abram's appearance on This Old House. Bob Vila appeared as a
guest star on several episodes of Home Improvement, while Tim Allen
and Pamela Anderson both appeared on Bob Vila's show Home Again.
The Tool Time theme music, an
early 1960s-style saxophone-dominated instrumental rock tune, was sometimes
used as the closing theme music for Home Improvement, especially
when behind the credits were running the blooper scenes that took place during
the taping of a Tool Time segment.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy
show together at New York's Copacabana Club.
Born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, Martin started a
nightclub act after working as a prizefighter and a steelworker in the 1940s.
Lewis, the son of performers, debuted in comedy acts with his parents at age
five and was working steadily as a comic by 1946, when he met Dean Martin. The
pair performed an act in which screwball Lewis constantly interrupted straight
man Martin's singing. They made their first appearance in 1946 at a club in
Atlantic City and were an instant hit, soon in demand for radio and movie
performances. The pair made 16 movies together, starting with My Friend Irma
in 1949. By 1956, though, the pair decided to call it quits.
After the duo split up,
Martin launched his own TV variety show, which ran from 1965 to 1974. In the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin teamed up with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop to perform in Las Vegas. The group quickly
became known as the Rat Pack, a suave group of young, fast-living entertainers.
The group made several movies together in the early 1960s, including Ocean's
Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven
Hoods. Martin died in 1995.
Lewis
went on to sign one of the most lucrative film contracts of the day, a $10
million deal for 14 films with Paramount. Lewis' films, including Cinderfella
(1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963), failed to attract much praise
from American critics but made him a star in France, where he has long been
considered a comic genius. After a long absence from film, he gave an acclaimed
performance in the 1986 film The King of Comedy, co-starring Robert De
Niro.
The detective series
featured crime-solving beauties instructed by a mysterious voice on a speaker
phone known only as Charlie. Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Farrah Fawcett
played the original Angels. Fawcett's blown-dry, feathered hair launched a national
fad, and the actress left the show after a year to pursue a career in movies.
Subsequent Angels included Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack, and Tanya Roberts. In
2000, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu played the Angels in a movie
version of the show.
August 19, 1921
TV producer Gene Roddenberry, best known
as the creator of Star Trek, is born in El Paso, Texas.
His family moved to Los Angeles when Roddenberry was
a toddler, and his father became a police officer. Roddenberry also studied
criminal justice at Los Angeles City College but became a pilot instead through
the Civilian Pilot Training Program. During World War II, Roddenberry flew
bombing missions in the South Pacific with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Shot down
during a raid, he survived and won a medal. A second crash, when he was working
as a Pan Am pilot after the war, killed 14 people and convinced Roddenberry to
give up flying.Instead,
Roddenberry became a police officer like his father. But before long, he
discovered that living the police life paid less than writing about it for TV,
so he began writing scripts for Dragnet and other police TV dramas. In
1963, he produced a short-lived NBC show, The Lieutenant, about life in
the U.S. Marines.
A
lifelong science-fiction fan, Roddenberry wanted to try his hand making a
sci-fi TV program. He convinced superstar Lucille Ball to fund a pilot.
Although the first pilot was rejected, a second take was picked up, and Star
Trek premiered in 1966.
Although
the show ran for only three years and never placed better than No. 52 in the
ratings, Roddenberry's sci-fi series became a cult classic and spawned four
television series and nine movies.
Roddenberry
died on October 24, 1991, and was one of the first people to be
"buried" in space.
Alex Haley, author of Roots
(1976), was born in Ithaca, New York.
After 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley retired and wrote books,
including The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). In 1976, he published
his best-known work, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The blend of
fact and fiction, drawn largely from stories recited by Haley's grandmother,
chronicles seven generations of Haley's family history, from the enslavement of
his ancestors to his own quest to trace his family tree.
Roots became a TV miniseries
in 1977. The eight-part series was aired on consecutive nights and became the
most watched dramatic show in TV history. Some 130 million people-nearly half
the country's population at the time--watched the final episode of the series.
Haley died on Feb. 10, 1992.
