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"
Mike Nelson (Lloyd Bridges) is a
free-lance scuba diver who has various adventures. Nelson, a
former U.S. Navy frogman (having left the service about four years before the
series began), is a well-known expert on diving who is often called on for
difficult or dangerous projects. Traveling on his boat the Argonaut,
Nelson outmaneuvers villains, salvages everything from a bicycle to a nuclear
missile, rescues children trapped in a flooded cave, and even a dog. In
the pilot episode, Mike rescues a downed Navy
pilot from his sunken jet. Since no dialogue was possible during the underwater
sequences, Bridges provided voice-over narration for all the installments.
Nelson also educated non-diving characters (and the audience) in various
aspects of diving and the underwater world.
The series made frequent references to Marineland of the Pacific, which
provided facilities, resources and technical advice to the production company.
At the end of each episode, Bridges would appear as
himself to deliver a brief comment. These comments sometimes included a plea to
viewers to understand and protect the marine environment, along with gems of
wisdom from Bridges' own experiences.
The show was aired on the network for four years.
January 11,
1963
The Beatles
made their first national TV appearance in the U.K.
They
performed the song "Please Please Me" on the show "Thank Your
Lucky Stars."
January 11, 1983
The Joy of
Painting aired for the first time.
The
half-hour instructional television show hosted by painter Bob Ross which
ran from January 11, 1983 until May 17, 1994. In each episode, Ross taught
techniques for landscape oil painting, completing a painting in each session.
The program followed the same format as its predecessor, The Magic
of Oil Painting, hosted by Ross's
mentor Bill Alexander. In its running it won three Emmy Awards.
January 13, 1928
Experimental
Television sets are installed in three homes in Schenectady, New York.
RCA and General Electric installed the sets, which
displayed a 1.5-inch-square picture. However, televisions did not become common
household appliances until the late 1940s.
January 13, 1973
ABC aired the final episode of Alias Smith and Jones.
1973 -
ABC aired the final episode of "Alias Smith and Jones."
January 15, 1993
Last episode of soap opera Santa Barbara airs.
“The worst program on television--maybe ever…” one
reviewer dubbed NBC’s daytime soap opera Santa Barbara upon its debut in
July 1984. Critics soon changed their tune about the show, however, and it
would run for more than eight years, garnering numerous Daytime Emmy Awards,
including the statuette for Best Drama Series in 1988, 1989 and 1990. The
show’s ratings never reached the level of its critical buzz, however, and NBC
finally pulled the plug, airing its final episode on January 15, 1993.
Created by the husband-and-wife team Bridget and Jerome Dobson, former head
writers at Guiding Light and As the World Turns, Santa Barbara
centered on four California families: the wealthy Capwells and Lockridges,
the middle-class Perkinses and the poorer Andrades. Channing Capwell Jr. was
killed five years before the action of the series began, and much of the show’s
drama revolved around unraveling the mystery surrounding his murder. After Santa
Barbara’s unimpressive debut--which could partially be blamed on its
coincidence with the 1984 Summer Olympic Games--the show’s writers took a
radical approach to boost ratings, killing off a number of characters with
earthquake and serial killer storylines. By the 1987 season, Santa Barbara was
earning more Daytime Emmy nominations than any other show, and had also earned
a following of devoted fans.
Among daytime soaps, Santa Barbara was notable for its generous $30
million budget and its unique blend of romance, melodrama and black comedy (one
popular character was killed when a giant neon letter “C” fell from the Capwell
Hotel sign, crushing her). It was also the first soap with prominent Hispanic
characters--notably Cruz Castillo (A. Martinez), who with Eden Capwell (Marcy
Walker) formed one of the show’s resident “power couples”--and even featured a
member of the British nobility, Dame Judith Anderson, as the grand dame Minx
Lockridge.
Despite the enthusiasm of such famous fans as President Ronald Reagan and
his wife, Nancy, Santa Barbara never finished above 10th place in the
ratings, and its popularity began to wane after the 1988 season. This trend
continued over the next few years, even as the show won its string of Emmy
Awards and became a smash hit in such far-flung locales as Eastern Europe and
post-Soviet Russia. After fiddling with airtimes in an effort to bolster
ratings, NBC made the decision to cancel Santa Barbara. In the supremely
unsubtle final shot of the finale, Paul Rauch, the show’s executive producer,
walked in front of the camera, smashed a cigar under his shoe and walked away.
Among soap opera fans around the world, Santa Barbara remains a cult
favorite. Alumni of the series include Robin Wright Penn, star of such films as
The Princess Bride, Forrest Gump and Message in a Bottle;
soap opera mainstay Jack Wagner (Melrose Place) and executive producer
Mary Ellis-Bunim, the late co-creator of MTV’s The Real World.
The first episode of Star Trek - Deep Space Nine aired.
Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine (sometimes
abbreviated to DS9)
is a science
fiction television series set in
the Star Trek universe in the Milky Way galaxy, in the years 2369–2375. In contrast to other Star Trek TV
shows, it primarily takes place on a space station rather
than a starship, so as not to have two series with starships in the
same time period; the series ran concurrently with Star
Trek: The Next Generation during
its first two seasons and with Star Trek: Voyager for the remainder of its run. The starship USS Defiant was introduced in season 3, but the Deep
Space Nine space station
remained the show's primary setting.
The show is noted for its
well-developed characters, original and complex plots, religious themes, and
for starring the only black captain in any of the televised Star Trek incarnations.
Rather than following the classical Star Trek focus of space
exploration, the show often showcased complex and darker social themes, and in
later seasons, an emphasis on many aspects of war.
DS9 premiered in 1993 and ran for seven seasons
until 1999. Although rooted in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe, it was the first Trekspin-off created
without Roddenberry's direct involvement, although he did give the concept his
blessing shortly before his death in 1991.
DS9 began while Star
Trek: The Next Generation was
still on the air, and there were a few cameos featuring characters from either
show (such as Picard's appearance in the DS9 pilot). The
station appeared in TNG during the sixth-season episode "Birthright". In
addition, two Next Generation characters, Miles O'Brienand (from season 4 onwards) Worf, became regular members
of DS9. The station also appeared in the first part of the Voyager pilot
episode, "Caretaker".
DS9 centers on the formerly Cardassian space
station Terok Nor. After the Bajorans have liberated themselves from
the long and brutal Cardassian
Occupation, the United
Federation of Planets is invited
by the Bajoran Provisional Government to administer joint control of the
station, which initially orbits Bajor. The station is
renamed Deep
Space Nine, and a Starfleet crew
is assigned to manage it. Shortly after their arrival, the Starfleet crew
discovers a stable wormhole in
Bajoran space leading from
the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant,
and the station is moved to a strategic position near the wormhole's entrance
to safeguard it from the Cardassians. Deep Space Nine and Bajor quickly become
a center for exploration, interstellar trade, political maneuvering, and open conflict. Threats come not only from
Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans from
the Alpha Quadrant, but later from the Dominion, an alliance of alien species from the Gamma Quadrant
that take up arms alongside the Cardassians against the Federation and its
allies starting in Season 3. Deep Space Nine becomes a key military base for
the Federation in the Dominion War, and is assigned the starship USS Defiant to
aid in its protection.
According to co-creator
Berman, he and Piller considered setting the new series on a colony planet, but
they felt a space station would appeal more to viewers, and would save the money
required for a land-based show's on-location shooting. They did not want the
show set aboard a starship because Star Trek: The Next Generation was
still in production, and in Berman’s words, it "seemed ridiculous to have
two shows—two casts of characters—that were off going where no man has gone
before."
While its predecessors tended
to restore the status quo ante at the end of each episode, allowing
out-of-order viewing, DS9 contains story arcs that span
episodes and seasons. One installment often builds upon earlier ones, with
several cliffhanger endings. Michael Piller considered this one of
the series' best qualities, allowing repercussions of past episodes to
influence future events and forcing characters to "learn that actions have
consequences." This trend was especially noticeable toward the series
finale, by which time the show was intentionally scripted as a serial.
Unlike Star Trek: The
Next Generation, interpersonal conflicts were prominently featured in DS9.
This was at the suggestion of Star Trek: The Next Generation's
writers, many of whom also wrote for DS9, who felt that
Roddenberry's prohibition of conflicts within the crew restricted their ability
to write compelling dramatic stories. In Piller's words, "People who come
from different places—honorable, noble people—will naturally have
conflicts".
January 5, 1998
Sonny Bono, Congressman and former half of the singing
duo Sonny and Cher, is killed in a skiing accident.
Born in 1935, Bono rose to fame in the early 1970s as
the straight man to his wife in “The Sonny and Cher Show.” As a signer
and songwriter he received ten gold records during his career but his biggest
hit was undoubtedly 1965’s ”I Got You Babe.” He entered the political
world in 1988 when he was elected mayor of Palm Springs. He was elected to
Congress in 1994 as a Republican. He was 62.
January 6,
1963
Wild Kingdom premiered
on NBC.
The original Wild
Kingdom grew from discussions that started in 1962 between zoologistMarlin Perkins and
V. J. Skutt, the chairman and CEO of insurance company Mutual of Omaha.
The company had been the sponsor of an earlier animal-related show, Zoo Parade,
that Perkins had hosted from 1952 until 1957. Also intimately involved with the
creation of Wild Kingdom was Zoo Parade producer Don
Meier, who was credited as the
series' creator.Mutual of Omaha sponsored and lent its name to the
new program.
Liz and Henk Maartens, from
Irene, Pretoria in South Africa won five Emmy Awards for the documentary
series Wild Kingdom in 1970. One Emmy Award was for camerawork
while the other Emmy Awards were for aspects of production.
Wild Kingdom was first broadcast by NBC. The half-hour show aired on Sundays starting January
6, 1963 and continued until 1971, when the program entered first-run
syndication. As a prime-time
syndicated program, Wild Kingdom enjoyed great popularity.
Although most of the programs aired after 1971 were repeats, new shows
continued to be produced until 1987. Several episodes were filmed by
cameraman Roy Pinney. Perkins was the host for most of the show's history
until he was forced to retire in 1985 for health reasons. He died of cancer the
following year at age 81 and Jim Fowler,
Perkins' long-time assistant and sidekick,
became the host.
One of Wild Kingdom's
film editors, Bernard Braham, A.C.E., was offered membership with the American Cinema
Editors in 1979 and won a
prestigious EDDIE award in Hollywood for best documentary of the year, for the
episode "Desert Spring". His competition for the award was a National
Geographic episode titled "Gold". He was also nominated for several
other awards.[citation
needed]
Perkins often introduced
commercial spots by tying them into the subject of the show. For example, at
the end of a segment about lions, he might say something like, "Just as
the mother lion protects her cubs, you can protect your children with an
insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha..."
The format of the show often
featured Perkins narrating off-camera, describing Fowler's on-camera work with
the wild animals. This was commonly parodied as Perkins saying "I'll wait
here [someplace safe] while Jim [does something or other with the dangerous
animal]". However, according to a 1997 interview with Fowler, Perkins
never said any such thing: according to Fowler, "Johnny Carson started
the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues".
Perkins often featured
pet chimpanzees in the studio: one named "W.K." (Wild
Kingdom); the other named "Mr. Moke", after the Mini Moke vehicle.
Wild Kingdom increased ecological and environmental awareness in the United States. Its exciting
footage brought the wilds of Africa,
the Amazon River and other exotic locales into the living rooms
of millions of Americans. It created an interest in commercial nature
programming that was a precursor to cable television networks such as the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
The original series has not
been seen since it went off the air. (Mutual of Omaha owns the rights to the
series.) However, several episodes have now been released on DVD from BCI
Eclipse (under license from Mutual of Omaha). Some episodes are also available
on an official YouTube channel.
The success of "Wild
Kingdom" led to several other wildlife documentary series going on the
air, including Animal World, Wild, Wild, World Of Animals. and Lorne
Greene's New Wilderness. But many
fans of wildlife documentaries still consider "Wild Kingdom" the
"gold standard" against which other such shows are compared.
January 6, 1973
The animated Saturday morning TV series of shorts
called Schoolhouse Rock premieres on ABC with Multiplication Rock. The
short musical cartoons featured lessons in math, history, science, grammar, and
more, with classics like "Conjunction Junction,"
"Interjections," and "The Preamble to the Constitution."
January 8, 1923
Lawrence Samuel
"Larry" Storch is born.
Actor best known for his comic television roles, including voice-over work for
cartoon shows, such as Mr. Whoopee on Tennessee
Tuxedo and His Tales, and his
live-action role of the bumbling Corporal Randolph Agarn on F Troop.
In 1975, Storch co-starred with Bob Burns (who
was disguised as a gorilla) and Forrest Tucker on the short-lived but popular
Saturday morning children's show The Ghost Busters. He also appeared on The Love Boat, was Al Bundy's childhood hero on Married...
with Children, and was a
semi-regular on Car 54, Where
Are You?. He co-starred on the
short-lived series The Queen and I.
During her childhood her father managed theLatin Quarternightclub. This club was owned in partnership with E. M. Loew and was initially located in Boston. In 1942, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter. He also worked as a Broadway producer where he produced theZiegfeld Follies of 1943.He also was the Entertainment Director for theTropicana Resort and Casinoin Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergère" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom.Walters's brother, Burton, died in 1944 ofpneumonia.Walters's elder sister, Jacqueline, was bornmentally disabledand died ofovarian cancerin 1985.
According to Walters, her father made and lost several fortunes throughout his life in show business. He was a booking agent, and unlike her uncles who were in the shoe and dress business, his job was not very safe. During the good times, Walters recalls her father taking her to the rehearsals of the nightclub shows he directed and produced. The actresses and dancers would make a huge fuss over her and twirl her around until she was dizzy. Then she said her father would take her out for hot dogs, their favorite.
According to Walters being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them. When she was a young woman, Walters's father lost his night clubs and the family's penthouse on Central Park West. As Walters recalled, "He had a breakdown. He went down to live in our house in Florida, and then the government took the house, and they took the car, and they took the furniture." Of her mother, she said, "My mother should have married the way her friends did, to a man who was a doctor or who was in the dress business."During her childhood in Miami, Walters briefly lived with the mobster Bill Dwyer.
Walters attended Lawrence School, a public school in Brookline, Massachusetts, to the middle of fifth grade, when her father moved the family to Miami Beach in 1939, where she also attended public school. After her father moved the family to New York City, she went to eighth grade atEthical Culture Fieldston School, after which the family moved back to Miami Beach. Then, she went back to New York City, where she attendedBirch Wathen Schoolfrom which she graduated in 1947. In 1951 she received a B.A. in English fromSarah Lawrence Collegeand immediately looked for work in New York City. After about a year at a small advertising agency, she began working at the NBC network affiliate in New York City, WNBT-TV (nowWNBC), doing publicity and writing press releases. She began producing a 15-minute children's program,Ask the Camera, directed byRoone Arledgein 1953. She began producing for TV hostIgor Cassini(Cholly Knickerbocker). However she left the network after her boss pressured her to marry him and engaged in a fistfight with a man she preferred to date. Then she went to WPIX to produce theEloise McElhone Show; it was canceled in 1954.She became a writer onThe Morning ShowatCBSin 1955.
After a few years as a publicist with Tex McCrary Inc. and a job as a writer at Redbook magazine, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961.She moved up becoming the show's regular "Today Girl," handling lighter assignments and the weather. In her autobiography, she describes this era before the Women's Movement as a time when it was believed that nobody would take a woman seriously reporting "hard news." Previous "Today Girls" (whom Walters called "tea pourers") included Florence Henderson, Helen O'Connell, Estelle Parsons and Lee Meriwether. Within a year, she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. One very well-received film segment was "A Day in the Life of a Novice Nun," edited by then-first assistant film editor Donald Swerdlow (now Don Canaan), who was subsequently promoted to become a full film editor at NBC News.She had a great relationship with host Hugh Downs for years. When Frank McGee was named host, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first three questions. She was not named co-host of the show until McGee's death in 1974 when NBC officially designated Walters as the program's first female co-host. Beginning in 1971, she also hosted her own local NBC affiliate show, Not for Women Only, which ran in the mornings after The Today Show.
Walters and Harry Reasoner co-anchored the ABC Evening News from 1976 to 1978. Reasoner had a difficult relationship with Walters because he disliked having a co-anchor, even though he worked with former CBS colleague Howard K. Smith nightly on ABC for several years. Walters said that the tension between the two was because Reasoner did not want to work with a co-anchor and also because he was unhappy at ABC, not because he disliked Walters personally. In 1981, five years after the start of their short-lived ABC partnership and well after Reasoner returned to CBS News, Walters and her former co-anchor had a memorable (and cordial) 20/20 interview on the occasion of Reasoner's new book release.
Walters was also known for her years on the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 where she reunited with former The Today Show host Downs in 1979. Throughout her career at ABC, Walters appeared on ABC news specials as a commentator, including presidential inaugurations and the coverage of the September 11 attacks. She was also chosen to be the moderator for the third and final debate between candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, held on the campus of the College of William and Mary at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the 1976 presidential election. In 1984, she moderated a presidential debate held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.
Walters was known for "personality journalism" and her "scoop" interviews.In November 1977, she landed a joint interview with Egypt's president, Anwar Al Sadat, and Israel's Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. According to The New York Times, when she went mano a mano with Walter Cronkite to interview both world leaders, at the end of Cronkite's interview, he is heard saying: "Did Barbara get anything I didn't get?" Her interviews with world leaders from all walks of life are a chronicle of the latter part of the 20th century.They include the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, the Empress Farah Pahlavi; Russia's Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin; China's Jiang Zemin; the UK's Margaret Thatcher; Cuba's Fidel Castro, as well as India's Indira Gandhi, Czechoslovakia's Václav Havel, Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, King Hussein of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, among many others. Other interviews with influential people include pop icon Michael Jackson, actress Katharine Hepburn, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and in 1980 Sir Laurence Olivier. Walters considered Robert Smithdas, a deaf-blind man who spent his life improving the lives of other individuals who are deaf-blind, as her most inspirational interview.
Walters was widely lampooned for asking actress Katharine Hepburn, "If you were a tree, what kind would you be?" On the last 20/20 television episode in which she appears, Walters showed a video of the Hepburn interview, showing the actress saying that she felt like a strong tree in her old age. Walters followed up with the question, "What kind of a tree?", and Hepburn responded "an oak" because they don't get Dutch elm disease.According to Walters for years Hepburn refused her requests for an interview. When Hepburn finally agreed to one she said she wanted to meet Walters first. Walters walked in all smiles and ready to please, while Hepburn was at the top of the stairs and barked, "You're late. Have you brought me chocolates?"
Walters hadn't but said she never showed up without them from then on. They had several other meetings later, mostly in Hepburn's living room where she would give Walters her opinions. These included that careers and marriage did not mix as well as her feelings that children and careers were out of the question as a combination. Walters said Hepburn's opinions stuck with her so much, she could repeat them almost verbatim from that point onward.
Her television special about Cuban leader Fidel Castro aired on ABC-TV on June 9, 1977. Although the footage of her two days of interviewing Castro in Cuba showed his personality, in part, as freewheeling, charming, and humorous, she pointedly said to him, "You allow no dissent. Your newspapers, radio, television, motion pictures are under state control." To this, he replied, "Barbara, our concept of freedom of the press is not yours. If you asked us if a newspaper could appear here against socialism, I can say honestly no, it cannot appear. It would not be allowed by the party, the government, or the people. In that sense we do not have the freedom of the press that you possess in the U.S. And we are very satisfied about that." She concluded the broadcast saying, "What we disagreed on most profoundly is the meaning of freedom—and that is what truly separates us." At the time, Walters kept quiet about seeing New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, pitcher Whitey Ford, and several coaches in Cuba who were there to assist Cuban ballplayers.
On March 3, 1999, her interview with Monica Lewinsky was seen by a record 74 million viewers, the highest rating ever for a news program. Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children when you have them?" Lewinsky replied, "Mommy made a big mistake," at which point Walters brought the program to a dramatic conclusion, turning to the viewers and saying, "And that is the understatement of the year."
Walters was a co-host of the daytime talk show The View, of which she also was co-creator and co-executive producer with her business partner, Bill Geddie. It premiered on August 11, 1997.
In the original opening credits Walters said the show is a forum for women of "different generations, backgrounds, and views." "Be careful what you wish for..." was part of the opening credits of its second season. On The View, she won Daytime Emmy Awards for Best Talk Show in 2003 and Best Talk Show Host (with longtime host Joy Behar, moderator Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Sherri Shepherd) in 2009.
Walters retired from being a co-host on May 15, 2014. Although retired, Walters returned as a guest co-host on an intermittent basis throughout 2014 and 2015.
After leaving her role as 20/20 co-host in 2004, Walters remained a part-time contributor of special programming and interviews for ABC News until 2016. On March 7, 2010, Walters announced that she would no longer hold Oscar interviews, but will still be working with ABC and on The View.
On March 28, 2013, numerous media outlets reported that Walters would retire in May 2014 and that she would make the announcement on the show four days later. However, on the April 1 episode, Walters neither confirmed nor denied the retirement rumors; she said "if and when I might have an announcement to make, I will do it on this program, I promise, and the paparazzi guys—you will be the last to know".Walters confirmed six weeks later that she would be retiring from television hosting and interviewing in May 2014, as originally reported; she made the official announcement on the May 13, 2013, episode of The View while also announcing that she will continue as the show's executive producer for as long as it's on the air.
On June 10, 2014, it was announced that she would be "coming out of retirement" to do a special 20/20 interview with Peter Rodger, the father of the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings, Elliot Rodger.In 2015, Walters hosted special 20/20 episodes featuring interviews with Mary Kay Letourneauand Donald and Melania Trump. In 2015, Walters hosted the documentary series American Scandals on Investigation Discovery.
Walters continued to host her 10 Most Fascinating People series on ABC in 2014 and 2015. Her last on-air interview was with Donald Trump for ABC News in December 2015, and she made her final public appearance in 2016.
