This Week in Television History: April 2022 PART I

April 4, 1967

Johnny Carson quit "The Tonight Show." 

Carson Quit the day after the NBC network had broadcast another rerun of one of his prior shows. Carson had not performed while the AFTRA strike continued against the American TV and radio networks. During the two weeks after the AFTRA strike failed, singer Jimmy Dean and comedian Bob Newhart took over hosting duties. Carson would receive a raise of $30,000 a week and return on April 24.

April 5, 1987

Married... with Children first aired. 

The show aired for 11 seasons and featured a dysfunctional family living in Chicago, Illinois. The show, notable for being the first prime time television series to air on Fox, ran from April 5, 1987, to June 9, 1997. The series was created by Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt. The show was known for handling non-standard topics for the time period, which garnered the then-fledgling Fox network a standing among the Big Three television networks.

The series' 11-season, 259-episode run makes it the longest-lasting live-action sitcom on the Fox network. The show's famous theme song is "Love and Marriage" by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, performed by Frank Sinatra from the 1955 television production Our Town.

The first season of the series was videotaped at ABC Television Center in Hollywood. From season two to season eight, the show was taped at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and the remaining three seasons were taped at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. The series was produced by Embassy Communications on its first season and the remaining seasons by ELP Communications under the studio Columbia Pictures Television (and eventually Columbia TriStar Television).

In 2007, it was listed as one of Time Magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time." In 2008, The show placed #94 on Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list.

The show follows the lives of Al Bundy, a once-glorious high school football player (who scored four touchdowns in a single game for Polk High School) turned hard luck salesman of women's shoes; his tartish, obnoxious wife Peg; their attractive but dimwitted and promiscuous daughter Kelly; and Bud, their unpopular, girl crazy, oily but comparatively smart son (and the only Bundy who ever attended college). Their neighbors are the upwardly mobile Steve Rhoades and his wife Marcy, who later gets remarried to Jefferson D'Arcy, a white-collar criminal who becomes Marcy's "trophy husband" and Al's sidekick. Most storylines involve a scheming Al being foiled by his cartoonish dim wit and bad luck. His rivalry with and loathing for Marcy play a significant role in most episodes.

April 5, 1987

The Tracey Ullman Show first aired.

The Tracey Ullman Show is an American television variety show starring Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987, as the Fox network's second prime-time series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show is produced by Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television. The show blended sketch comedy shorts with many musical numbers, featuring choreography by Paula Abdul.

The Tracey Ullman Show is known for producing a series of shorts featuring the Simpson family, which was adapted into the TV series The Simpsons, which is also produced by Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television (now 20th Television).

April 7, 1927

The first simultaneous telecast of image and sound takes place. 

Then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover read a speech in Washington, D.C., that was transmitted to the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City. The New York audience saw and heard a tiny televised image of Hoover that was less than 3 square inches.

April 7, 2012

Longtime “60 Minutes” journalist Mike Wallace dies at age 93 in New Canaan, Connecticut. 

During his career, Wallace interviewed everyone from world leaders to Hollywood celebrities to scam artists, and was well-known for his hard-nosed style of questioning.

Myron Leon Wallace was born on May 9, 1918, in Brookline, Massachusetts. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and his father worked as a wholesale grocer and insurance broker. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1939, Wallace was a radio news writer and announcer in Michigan and Chicago. He then enlisted in the Navy, serving as a communications officer during World War II.

In the 1950s, Wallace worked on TV talk shows and game shows in New York City, and also appeared in commercials and acted on Broadway. He developed his style as a tenacious interrogator on the TV interview show "Night Beat," which aired from 1956 to 1957. In 1962, the eldest of Wallace's two sons died at age 19 in a hiking accident in Greece, a tragedy that inspired Wallace to focus his career on serious journalism. In 1963, he became a correspondent for CBS News, and went on to report about theVietnam War, among other stories.

"60 Minutes" premiered on CBS on September 24, 1968, and was co-hosted by Wallace and Harry Reasoner.  The show, with its trademark opening sequence featuring a ticking stopwatch, became hugely popular and influential, spawning a slew of other newsmagazine programs, such as "20/20" and "Primetime Live," and ranking among the top 10 programs in the United States from 1977 to 2000. Wallace became known for investigative pieces in which he used ambush interviews and hidden cameras to uncover corruption and scams. He also conducted scores of memorable interviews with newsmakers ranging from Clint Hill, the former U.S. Secret Service agent who was in President John Kennedy's motorcade when he was assassinated, to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 American hostage crisis.

Some of Wallace's reporting proved controversial. In the 1980s, he and CBS were embroiled in a $120 million libel lawsuit brought against them by General William Westmoreland for the way he was portrayed in a 1982 documentary about the Vietnam War. The general dropped the lawsuit in 1985, but Wallace later revealed that the pressure of the situation caused him to suffer a deep depression and attempt suicide.  In another incident, Wallace's 1995 interview for "60 Minutes" with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand and CBS's controversial handling of the story served as the basis of the 1999 movie "The Insider."

Wallace retired from "60 Minutes" in 2006 at age 88, but continued to contribute occasionally to the program. His final piece aired in 2008--an interview with baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, who was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.

April 10, 1972

After a 20-year exile in Europe, Charlie Chaplin returned to Hollywood to receive an honorary Oscar. 

Chaplin, then 82, received probably the longest standing ovation in the history of the Oscar telecast as he walked slowly to the podium to pick up his Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century." Chaplin was quite literally speechless as he looked at the throng of stars whose cheers kept getting louder. He finally uttered "thank you so much," referring to the audience as "sweet people." And there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Jack Lemmon gave him his famous Little Tramp hat and cane.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART V

March 28, 1967

Raymond Burr starred in a TV movie titled "Ironside." 

The movie was later turned into a television series. The show revolved around former San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr), a veteran of more than 20 years of police service who was forced to retire from the department after a sniper's bullet, to the spine, paralyzed him from the waist down, resulting in him having to use a wheelchair. In the pilot episode, a TV movie, Ironside shows his strength of character and gets himself appointed a "special department consultant" by his good friend, Police Commissioner Dennis Randall. He does this by calling a press conference and then tricking Commissioner Randall into meeting his terms. In the pilot, Ironside eventually solves the mystery of the ambush. He requests Ed Brown and Eve Whitfield be assigned to him.

 March 30, 1962

Jack Paar films his final episode of The Tonight Show. 

Paar had hosted the show since July 1957, six months after Steve Allen stepped down. Paar was known for his emotional outbursts, which included walking off the set of The Tonight Show on February 11, 1960, to protest network censorship of his jokes. The unflappable Johnny Carson took over as host starting in October 1962.

March 31, 1992

Dateline NBC premieres. 

NBC had long attempted to catch up with popular newsmagazines on CBS and ABC, which consistently drew top ratings, but failed until the debut of Dateline NBC. In November 1992, the show caused a scandal when it was revealed that an expose on General Motors trucks was rigged to show a dramatic explosion.

Dateline NBC aired an investigative report on Tuesday, November 17th, 1992, titled “Waiting to Explode.” The 60 minute program was about General Motors pickup trucks allegedly exploding upon impact during accidents due to the poor design of fuel tanks. Dateline's film showed a sample of a low speed accident with the fuel tank exploding. In reality, Dateline NBC producers had rigged the truck’s fuel tank with remotely controlled explosives. The program did not disclose the fact that the accident was staged. GM investigators studied the film, and discovered that smoke actually came out of the fuel tank 6 frames before impact. GM subsequently filed an anti-defamation/libel lawsuit against NBC after conducting an extensive investigation. On Monday, February 8, 1993 GM conducted a highly publicized point-by-point rebuttal in the Product Exhibit Hall of the General Motors Building in Detroit that lasted nearly two hours after announcing the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled the same week by NBC, and Jane Pauley read a 3 minute 30 second on-air apology to viewers.

April 3, 1982

John Chancellor stepped down as anchor of the The NBC Nightly News. Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw became the co-anchors of the show. 

Chancellor anchored the Nightly News through April 2, 1982, when he was succeeded by a co-anchor team of Tom Brokaw and Roger Mudd. Brokaw became sole anchor a year and a half later. Chancellor remained on the program, providing editorial commentaries before retiring from NBC on July 9, 1993.

In 1992, 4 years prior to his death, Chancellor was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

Chancellor was the narrator of Baseball, an award winning documentary by Ken Burns. He also wrote a book, Peril and Promise, which was published in 1991. The John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism was established in 1995 and administered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center until 2004. It is now awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART IV

 

March 21, 1980

J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the character millions loved to hate on TV’s popular nighttime drama Dallas, was shot. 

The shooting made the season finale, titled A House Divided, one of television’s most famous cliffhangers and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” Dallas fans waited for the next eight months to have that question answered because the season premiere of Dallas was delayed due to a Screen Actors Guild strike. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national lexicon. Fan’s wore T-shirts printed with "Who Shot J.R.?" and "I Shot J.R.". A session of the Turkish parliament was suspended to allow legislators a chance to get home in time to view the Dallas episode. Betting parlors worldwide took bets as to which one of the 10 or so principal characters had actually pulled the trigger. J.R. had many enemies and audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting.

The person who pulled the trigger was revealed to be J.R.’s sister in law/mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby) in the "Who Done It?" episode which aired on November 21, 1980. It was, at the time, the highest rated television episode in US history. It had a Nielsen rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, and it was estimated that 83,000,000 people watched the episode. The previous record for a TV episode, not counting the final installment of the miniseries Roots, had been the 1967 finale for The Fugitive. "Who Shot J.R.?" now sits second on the list, being beaten in 1983 by the final episode of M*A*S*H but still remains the highest rated non-finale episode of a TV series.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART III

March 15, 1977

Three's Company first aired.  

It is based on the British sitcom Man About the House.

The story revolves around three single roommates: Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt), Chrissy Snow (Suzanne Somers), and Jack Tripper (John Ritter), who all platonically live together in a Santa Monica, California apartment building owned by Stanley Roper (Norman Fell) and Helen Roper (Audra Lindley). Following Somers' departure in late 1981, Jenilee Harrison joined the cast as Cindy Snow, who was soon replaced by Priscilla Barnes as Terri Alden. After Norman Fell and Audra Lindley left the series for their own sitcom, Don Knotts joined the cast as the roommates' new landlord Ralph Furley.

The show, a comedy of errors, chronicles the escapades and hijinks of the trio's constant misunderstandings, social lives, and financial struggles, such as keeping the rent current, living arrangements and breakout characters. A top ten hit from 1977 to 1983, the series has remained popular in syndication and through DVD releases.

After crashing a party and finding himself passed out in the bathtub, cooking school student Jack Tripper meets Janet Wood, a florist, and Chrissy Snow, a secretary, in need of a new roommate to replace their departing roommate Eleanor. Having only been able to afford to live at the YMCA, Jack quickly accepts the offer to move in with the duo.

However, due to overbearing landlord Stanley Roper's intolerance for co-ed living situations, even in a multi-bedroom apartment, Jack is allowed to move in only after Janet tells Mr. Roper that Jack is gay. Although Mrs. Roper figures out Jack's true sexuality in the second episode, she does not tell her husband, who tolerates but mocks him. Frequently siding with the three roommates instead of her husband, Mrs. Roper's bond with the roommates grows until the eventual spinoff The Ropers.

Jack continues the charade when new landlord Ralph Furley takes over the apartment complex because Mr. Furley insists that his hard-nosed brother Bart (the building's new owner) would also never tolerate such living situations.

 March 15, 1977

Eight Is Enough First Aired.

The show was modeled on the life of syndicated newspaper columnist Thomas Braden, a real-life parent with eight children, who wrote a book by the same title. The show centers on a Sacramento, California, family with eight children (from oldest to youngest: David, Mary, Joanie, Susan, Nancy, Elizabeth, Tommy, and Nicholas). The father, Tom Bradford, was a newspaper columnist for the fictional Sacramento Register. His wife Joan (Diana Hyland) took care of the children. Hyland was only in four episodes before falling ill; she was written out for the remainder of the first season and died five days after the second episode aired.

The second season began in the fall of 1977 with the revelation that Tom had become a widower. Tom fell in love with Sandra Sue "Abby" Abbott, (Betty Buckley) a schoolteacher who came to the house to tutor Tommy who had broken his leg in a football game. They were married in one of the series' TV movie broadcasts on November 9, 1977. The role went to Buckley after being approved by network chief Brandon Tartikoff, who felt the character of the sympathetic teacher she had played in the 1976 film Carrie would also be great for the series. In another TV movie event in September 1979, David and Susan were both married in a double wedding. As the series progressed, Abby got her Ph.D. in education and started a job counseling students at the local high school, oldest sister Mary became a doctor, while second-youngest son Tommy became a singer in a rock-and-roll band.

March 19, 1977

The Last Show (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) 

The 168th episode and series finale of the television sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and was written by Allan Burns, James L. Brooks, Ed Weinberger, Stan Daniels, David Lloyd and Bob Ellison. It was first broadcast on CBS on March 19, 1977. The episode won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series." In executive producer Allan Burns' "Outstanding Comedy Series" acceptance speech at the 29th annual prime time Emmy Awards, he stated, "We kept putting off writing that last show; we frankly didn't want to do it. I think it said what we wanted it to say. It was poignant, and I believe The Mary Tyler Moore Show was, in the long run, important for many women."

Plot summary

The new owner of WJM-TV is firing people left and right, and wants to do something about the Six O'Clock News' low ratings. Surprisingly, Lou, Mary, Murray, and Sue Ann are fired, but the person widely perceived as the cause of the Six O'Clock News' low ratings, Ted, is retained.

Mary takes the news particularly hard. To cheer her up, Lou arranges for old friends Rhoda and Phyllis to fly to Minneapolis for a surprise visit at Mary's apartment.

After their final news broadcast together, in which Ted gives a sincere but comical sendoff to his colleagues on the air, the Six O'Clock News' staff, along with Georgette, gather in the newsroom to say goodbye to each other. The memorable and oft parodied scene culminates in an emotional huddle, during which nobody wants to let go, and, needing some tissues, the group shuffles en masse toward a box on Mary's desk. After final goodbyes, everyone exits the newsroom singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." Finally, a very emotional Mary looks back, then bucks up and smiles before turning off the lights and closing the door.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa