TV CONFIDENTIAL Archives: Show No. 244 with guests Kevin Sorbo and Douglas Lieblein

Show No. 244 with guests Kevin Sorbo and Douglas Lieblein


Original Airdate: Week of Aug. 13-18, 2014


First hour: Ed welcomes four-time Emmy nominated writer/producer Douglas Lieblein (Hannah Montana, Life With Boys, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn). Doug’s first novel, Flight of the Akero: The Book of Milo, is a subversively comic, action-packed, science fiction, fantasy adventure for young adults, and adults who still think of themselves as young adults. Also in this hour: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen remember the birth of Alfred Hitchcock and the 40^thanniversary of how television covered the resignation of President Nixon. 

Second hour: Ed welcomes Kevin Sorbo, the actor known around the world as the star of Hercules, the Legendary Journeys. Kevin’s latest film, God’s Not Dead, is an inspirational story that weaves together multiple perspectives on faith, doubt and disbelief before culminating in a call to action. God’s Not Dead is now available on DVD. Also in this hour: Greg Ehrbar on the recent release of Dark Shadows: The Beginning Collection.

Your Mental Sorbet: Valerie Harper's 75th Birthday

I am very happy to dedicate this week's "Mental Sorbet" to Valerie Harper who turns 75 today. 

This is a very special milestone considering that she announced on March 6, 2013 that she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread into the meninges, the membranes surrounding the brain. She said her doctors had given her as little as three months' life expectancy. Although the disease was reported to be incurable, her doctors said they were treating her with chemotherapy in an effort to slow its progress.

Watch more news videos | Latest from the US

So... Here is another "Mental Sorbet" a little spark of madness that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths. 

Rhoda's Wedding

Hot in Cleveland  hosted a historic Mary Tyler Moore Show reunion with Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Georgia Engel, and Betty White.

Happy Birthday Valerie

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

America’s First Talk Show Host, the Era of Live Television and More: Next on TVC

Broadcast legend Joe Franklin and author, playwright and director Julian David Stone will join us on a special encore edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Aug. 20-25 at the following times and stations:

WROM Radio
Detroit, MI
Wednesday 8/20
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Sunday 8/24
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net

Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 8/22
7pm ET, 4pm PT
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org
Use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV
or hear us on the KSAV channel on CX Radio Brazil

Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Saturday 8/23
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Sunday 8/24
7pm ET, 4pm PT
Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks

KSCO-AM 1080
San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA
KOMY-AM 1340
La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA
Sunday 8/24
11am ET, 8am PT
Also streaming at KSCO.com

Boost Radio Network
Paramus, NJ
Sunday 8/24
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Click on the On the Air button at BoostRadioNetwork.com

KHMB-AM 1710
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 8/24
9pm PT
Monday 8/25
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com
or use the Live365 app on your smartphone and type in KHMB

RadioSlot.com
San Francisco, CA
Monday 8/25
10pm ET, 7pm PT
with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com

Credited with bringing the talk show genre to the early days of television, Joe Franklin is also recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for hosting the longest-running talk show in TV history, Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, which aired on WABC-TV in New York, then later WWOR-TV (also in New York), for 41 consecutive years (1952-1993). It has been said that Joe Franklin has interviewed more than 300,000 people in his radio and TV career, ranging from top celebrities in the world of entertainment to local personalities, legendary stars from vaudeville and the silent movie era, and five U.S. presidents. That number continues to grow, because Joe is still very active today, hosting celebrity interviews every week for the Bloomberg Radio Network. Joe Franklin will join us in our second hour.

Also joining us for our conversation with Joe Franklin will be our friend Phil Gries. Phil helped put together Joe Franklin’s TV Audio Archives, a forthcoming CD that will feature more than 10 hours of highlights from the Memory Lane show. The CD will be released later in 2014, but you can pre-order it by contacting Rick Russo at this email address.

And speaking of the early days of television, Julian David Stonewill join us in our first hour as we look back at the era of live TV, from complex dramas such as the anthology series Playhouse 90 to boisterous comedy/variety shows such as The Colgate Comedy Hour and Texaco Star Theatre. If you get a chance to watch some of the live shows from the Golden Age of Television, while everything seemed calm and controlled on camera, beyond the scenes there was usually craziness and drama going on that was often as compelling as the program themselves.

Julian captures that sense of madness and wonder in The Strange Birth, Short Life and Sudden Death of Justice Girl, an epic novel that not only brings to life the golden age of live television, but also explores the underside of early network TV and, particularly, the era of McCarthyism and the blacklist.

Plus: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen with an expanded edition of This Week in TV History that includes a birthday salute to Barbara Eden.

TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Wed and Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT on WROM Radio
Wed 9pm ET, 6pm PT on WYYR: Yesteryear Radio
Fri 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org and CX Radio Brazil
Sat 8pm ET, 5pm PT and Sun 7pm ET, 4pm PT on IndianaTalks.com
Sun 11am ET, 8am PT KSCO-AM 1080 (San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA)
Sun 11am ET, 8am PT KOMY-AM 1340 (La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA)
Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT Boost Radio Network
Sun 9pm PT, Mon Mid ET on KHMB-AM 1710 (Half Moon Bay, CA)
Mon 10pm ET, 7pm PT on The Radio Slot Network
Replays various times throughout the week on the Entertainment Channel at PWRNetwork
Tape us now, listen to us later, using DAR.fm/tvconfidential
Also available as a podcast via iTunes, FeedBurner
and now on your mobile phone via Stitcher.com
Follow us online at www.tvconfidential.net
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Don Pardo

Don Pardo

(February 22, 1918 – August 18, 2014)

Legendary Radio and Television announcer Don Pardo died today.

He was born Dominick George "Don" Pardo  was an American radio and television announcer, who was best known for his work on the long-running late night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. He was the announcer of Saturday Night Live for all but one of its seasons. He continued to provide voice over services during the program's opening montage, several years after his retirement from NBC.

A member of the Television Hall of Fame, Pardo was noted for his long association with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as The Price Is Right, Jackpot, Jeopardy!, Three on a Match, Winning Streak and NBC Nightly News.

Pardo was hired for his first radio position at WJAR in Providence in 1938.

He joined NBC as an in-house announcer in 1944, remaining on the network staff for 60 years. Among the radio programs he worked on as an announcer were Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, the sci-fi shows X Minus One and Dimension X among others.

During World War II, Pardo worked as a war reporter for NBC Radio.

In the early 1950s, he served as announcer for many of RCA's and NBC's closed-circuit color television demonstrations.

Pardo made his mark on game shows for NBC as the voice of the original The Price Is Right from 1956 until it moved to ABC in 1963. Pardo's next show was Jeopardy!, which he announced from 1964 until the original version of the series ended in 1975.Pardo reprised that role with a cameo voiceover in "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1984 song "I Lost on Jeopardy" (a parody of The Greg Kihn Band's 1983 hit song "Jeopardy"). He also announced New York–based NBC game shows such as Three on a Match, Winning Streak, and Jackpot!, all three of which were Bob Stewart productions.

Pardo squeezed in many other assignments at NBC, including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (until 1999), WNBC-TV's Live at Five, and NBC Nightly News.

Pardo was the on-duty live booth announcer for WNBC-TV in New York and the NBC network on November 22, 1963, and he was first to announce to NBC viewers that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas.

In January 1986,^{[citation needed]} Pardo replaced Hal Simms as announcer on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, four years after it had moved from CBS to NBC. He was the announcer until the final episode, on December 26, 1986.

His best known announcing work is for the television series Saturday Night Live. His was the fourth voice heard on the show's premiere episode in 1975, after the first cold open sketch featuringMichael O'Donoghue, John Belushi, and Chevy Chase. Pardo has remained the program's announcer except for one season (1981–1982), when it was announced by Mel Brandt or Bill Hanrahan. After "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", which is cried out at the end of the cold open , Pardo announces the show's title, then names the cast members and musical guest(s) in a voice-over during the opening montage. According to Pardo his SNL announcing booth in Studio 8-H, is almost exactly where Arturo Toscanini stood when conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Rockefeller Center from 1937 to 1950.

In December 1976 Pardo participated in a musical performance by Frank Zappa, reciting a verse of the song "I'm the Slime". Pardo subsequently reprised this role on the live-recorded version of the song for the Zappa in New York album (it was not featured on the first release in 1978, but it appears on the 1993 CD re-release). He also provided narration for the songs "The Illinois Enema Bandit" and "Punky's Whips" (a business dispute between Zappa and his record company of the time led to "Punky's Whips" being removed from the 1978 album, but the song was reinstated on the 1993 CD).

Pardo also participated in the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "I Lost on Jeopardy," from his second album, "'Weird Al' Yankovic in 3-D," a parody of "Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band, and its refrain "Our love's in jeopardy." The song became the fourth music video released by Yankovic, and featured a number of cameo appearances including Kihn, Fleming, Yankovic's mentor Dr. Demento, Pardo, and Yankovic's parents.

Pardo retired from NBC in 2004, but continued to provide the introductions for SNL. In 2006, he began prerecording his announcements from a studio in his Arizona home. That arrangement lasted only a few episodes before producers insisted that they needed him in Studio 8H, and he resumed weekly flights to New York. On Saturday, February 23, 2008, Pardo appeared at the closing of SNL to blow out the candles of his 90th birthday cake. Upon his induction into the Rhode Island Radio Hall of Fame on May 14, 2009, Pardo suggested that the May 16, 2009, episode of Saturday Night Live would be his last. However, he did subsequently return for the show's 35th season.

Starting with the 36th season, Pardo once again began pre-recording his parts from his home in Arizona instead of performing live in New York City.

In 2010, Pardo was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

Good Night Mr. Pardo

Stay Tuned


Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: August 2014 PART IV

Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:

CLICK HERE for a list of Stations

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 20, 1989

Saved by the Bell first aired. A retool of the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the show follows a group of friends and their principal. Primarily focusing on lighthearted comedic situations, it occasionally touches on serious social issues, such as drug use, driving under the influence, homelessness, divorce, death, and environmental issues.

Saved by the Bell starred Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies, Dennis Haskins, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley, and Mario Lopez.

Saved by the Bell was named one of the "20 Best School Shows of All Time" by AOL TV. 

The show spawned two spin-off series: Saved by the Bell: The College Years (1993–94), a primetime series that follows several of the characters to college, and Saved by the Bell: The New Class (1993–2000), a Saturday morning series that follows a new group of students at Bayside High School. 

The series also spawned two TV movies, Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style in 1992 and Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas in 1994.

Saved by the Bell aired in Australia on Channel Seven, and from 1990 until 2004 on Nickelodeon. Reruns have aired in local syndication and on TBS,MTV2 and E!.

Special Thanks to Me-TV for wishing a Happy Birthday to Valerie Harper! who turns 75 today. 

This is a very special milestone considering that 

she announced on March 6, 2013 that she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread into the meninges, the membranes surrounding the brain. She said her doctors had given her as little as three months' life expectancy. Although the disease was reported to be incurable, her doctors said they were treating her with chemotherapy in an effort to slow its progress. 

August 22, 1939

Valerie Kathryn Harper was born.

The actress known for her roles as Rhoda Morgenstern in the 1970s television seriesThe Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off, Rhoda, and later as Valerie Hogan in Valerie.

August 23, 1934

Barbara Eden is born Barbara Jean Morehead in Tucson, Arizona.

Her parents divorced when she was three; she and her mother, Alice, moved to San Francisco, where later her mother married Harrison Connor Huffman, a telephone lineman. Her first public performance was singing in the church choir, where she sang the solos. When she was 14 she sang in local bands for $10 a night in night clubs. At age 16, she became a member of Actor's Equity. She studied singing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and acting with the Elizabeth Holloway School of Theatre. She graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco in the Spring Class of 1949 and studied theater for one year at City College of San Francisco. She was then elected Miss San Francisco, as Barbara Huffman, in 1951. Barbara also entered the Miss California pageant, but did not win. Eden made featured appearances on television shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (as "Barbara Morehead" and "Barbara Huffman"), The West Point Story, Highway Patrol, Private Secretary, I Love Lucy, The Millionaire, Target: The Corruptors!, Crossroads, Perry Mason,Gunsmoke, December Bride, Bachelor Father, Father Knows Best, Adventures in Paradise, The Andy Griffith Show, Cain's Hundred, Saints and Sinners,The Virginian, Slattery's People, The Rogues, and the series finale of Route 66 playing the role of Margo.

In 1965, Eden signed a contract with Sidney Sheldon to star on his up-and-coming fantasy sitcom I Dream of Jeannie that would air on NBC. After various brunette starlets and beauty queens unsuccessfully tried out for the role she was approached by Sheldon who had seen her in The Brass Bottle and had been recommended by various colleagues. Eden played Jeannie, a beautiful genie set free from her bottle by astronaut and United States Air Force captain (later major) Anthony Nelson, played by Larry Hagman. Hoped to be a blockbuster like its rival-show Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie was only a mild ratings success, topping off its first year at #27, tying withLassie. The series spent its second, third, and fifth seasons out of the top thirty programs. Season four proved to be the sitcom's most successful year, ending at #26.

In the series, Eden wore her trademark "Jeannie Costume", a costume that was designed by Gwen Wakeling with the colors pink and red chosen by Eden. During the second season reporters visiting the set would joke that Eden had no navel as it was almost never visible when in costume. The story picked up momentum and as it did the network censors began to insist that her navel remain hidden. In the fourth season George Schlatter the creator of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In expressed a desire to premiere Eden's navel on his show. As soon as his intentions were revealed the network held a meeting of executives to discuss his idea and it was deemed inappropriate to do so. However, her navel is glimpsed in a few season four and season five episodes, much to the dislike of the censors. After four years of dating, Jeannie and Anthony got married in the show's fifth season, a decision that was forced by the network. 

Eden complained to the network about the two marrying, claiming that this change in the plotline would take away from the show's humor and the sexual tension between Jeannie and Anthony. However, even after the change, the network had grown tired of the series by the end of the 1969-1970 television season and canceled the show after five seasons and 139 episodes. The series became hugely popular during decades of syndication and has had two spin-off reunion movies. The first, I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later a 1985 television movie, starred all the original cast excluding Larry Hagman, who was unavailable due to the shooting schedule of his then-current series, "Dallas". The role of Anthony Nelson was played by Wayne Rogers for this film only. The second television spin-off movie of the series aired in 1991 and was called I Still Dream of Jeannie, in which Hagman was still absent—Anthony Nelson doesn't appear in this film at all. There was talk of a third I Dream of Jeannie movie but, with the death of Larry Hagman, no projects have been cast or even written.

In 1978, she starred in the feature film Harper Valley PTA, based on the popular country song. This led to a namesake television series in 1981; in both the movie and the TV series, she played the show's heroine, Stella Johnson. The show won 11 of its 13 time slots during its first season. It was a comedy version of Peyton Place with Anne Francine playing wealthy villain Flora Simpson Reilly. In one episode Stella dressed in a blue and gold genie costume and in another she played both Stella and her cousin Della Smith (similar to Jeannie's evil twin-sister character). The show Harper Valley PTA began January 16, 1981, and was renamed simply Harper Valley when the show began its second season on October 29, 1981. The show ran until August 14, 1982, producing 29 episodes for NBC and Universal MCA, which were rerun in 2000 by TV Land.

n 1990, Eden had a recurring role of a billionairess seeking revenge against J. R. Ewing in five episodes of the final season of Dallas, playing the captivating character Lee Ann De La Vega, reuniting her with her I Dream of Jeannie costar Hagman. In her final episode, the character admits that her maiden name was "Lee Ann Nelson", which was a production gag, as "Nelson" was the surname of Hagman's character, and Eden's character's married name, in I Dream of Jeannie.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa