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"
After retiring, Uecker started a broadcasting career and served as a play-by-play announcer for Milwaukee Brewersradio broadcasts since 1971. Uecker became known for his self-deprecating wit and became a regular fixture on late night talk shows in the 1970s and 1980s, facetiously dubbed "Mr. Baseball" by TV talk show host Johnny Carson. He hosted several sports blooper shows and had an acting career that included his role as George Owens on the TV show Mr. Belvedere and as play-by-play announcer Harry Doyle in the film Major League and its two sequels.
The family was conceived by
Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with the producer James L. Brooks.
Groening created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after members
of his own family, substituting Bart for his own name. The shorts became a part
of The Tracey
Ullman Show on April 19,
1987. After a three-season run, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show
and was an early hit for Fox, becoming the network's first series to land in
the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).
Since its debut on December
17, 1989, the show has broadcast 561
episodes, and the 26th season began on September 28, 2014. The
Simpsons is thelongest-running American
sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and in 2009 it
surpassed Gunsmoke as
the longest-running American scripted primetime television series. The Simpsons Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters
worldwide on July 26 and 27, 2007, and grossed over $527 million. On October
28, 2014, executive producer Al Jean announced that Season 27 had started
production, renewing the series through the 2015–16 season.
Time magazine's December 31, 1999, issue named it the
20th century's best television series, and on January 14, 2000, the Simpson
family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame. It has won dozens of awards
since it debuted as a series, including 31 Primetime Emmy
Awards, 30 Annie Awards,
and a Peabody Award. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase "D'oh!"
has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has
influenced many adult-oriented animated sitcoms.
The show takes place during
the 2370s, and begins on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy, 75,000 light-years from Earth. It follows the adventures of theStarfleet vessel USS Voyager, which became stranded in the Delta
Quadrant while pursuing a
renegade Maquis ship. The two ships' crews merge aboardVoyager to
make the estimated 75-year journey home.
The show was created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor,
and is the fifth incarnation of Star Trek, which began with the
1960s series Star
Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry. It was produced for seven seasons, from 1995 to 2001, and is the
only Star Trek TV series with a female captain, Kathryn Janeway,
as a main character.
Star Trek: Voyager aired on UPN and was the network's second longest running
series, as well as the final show from its debut lineup to end.
January 17, 1975
The television show Baretta debuted on ABC.
Baretta is an American detectivetelevision series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder
version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as
chameleon-like, real-life New Jerseypolice officer David
Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the
time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence.
When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled asBaretta,
with Robert Blake in the title role.
Detective Anthony Vincenzo
"Tony" Baretta is an unorthodox plainclothes cop (badge #609) with
the 53rd precinct, who lives with Fred, his Triton sulphur-crested
cockatoo, in apartment 2C at the
run-down King Edward Hotel in an unnamed Eastern city (presumably Newark, New Jersey). Like his model David Toma, Tony Baretta wore many
disguises on the job. When not in disguise, Baretta usually wore a short-sleeve
sweatshirt, casual slacks, a brown suede jacket and a newsboy cap.
He often carried an unlit cigarette in his lips or behind his ear. His
catchphrases included "You can take dat to da bank" and "And
dat‘s the name of dat tune." When exasperated he would occasionally speak
in asides to his late father, Louie Baretta.
Baretta drove a rusted-out
Mist Blue 1966 Chevy Impala four-door
sport sedan nicknamed "The Blue Ghost" (license plate 532
BEN). In the series Baretta hung out at Ross’s Billiard Academy and referred to
his numerous girlfriends as his "cousins".
Supporting characters
include:
Billy Truman (Tom Ewell),
the elderly hotel manager/house detective, who used to work with Tony’s
father Louie at the 53rd Precinct.
A spin-off, the series had its "pilot"
episode air on All in the Family (on Jan. 11). The Jeffersons
began in a period in TV history when African-American characters were becoming
the leads of their own shows. Isabel Sanford, in fact, was the first
African-American Emmy winner as Best Actress in a Comedy Series (in 1981). The
series broke ground in its inclusion of an interracial marriage (in Tom and
Helen Willis) and explored the same types of topical issues as All in the
Family. Although, as the Museum of Broadcast Communications' Encyclopedia
of Television notes, "America's black community remained divided in
its assessment of the program," the show was unique in the television
landscape for its portrayal of an affluent African-American family.
January 19, 1955
Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the first president to
hold news conferences to be filmed by TV and newsreels.
On this day in 1955, Eisenhower gave a 33-minute
conference in the treaty room at the State Department, recorded by NBC and
shared with CBS, ABC, and the DuMont Network.
AM America was a morning news program produced by ABC in an attempt to compete with the highly
rated Today on NBC. The show never found an audience after its premiere
on January 6, 1975. Lasting just under ten months, its final installment
aired on October 31.
One notable episode of AM
America aired on April 25, 1975, when members of the British comedy
troupe Monty Python (with the exception of John Cleese,
who had temporarily left the group) made one of their earliest appearances on
American television.
Edwards quit the show by the
end of May, and Beutel followed her out a few months later. On November 3,
the Monday following its final broadcast, AM America was
replaced by Good Morning
America. Theme music written by
William Goldstein.
Some of the programs in the
series were videotaped at NBC Studios in Burbank, California. Most were taped in New York City either
at NBC's Studio 8H (built for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony
Orchestra and which would later
house Saturday Night
Live), or in NBC's color studio
in the Midwoodsection of Brooklyn.
Much of the series' color videotaped footage was later transferred over
to kinescope on film - as such copied in black and white.
Only three half-hour episodes are known to exist in their original color
videotaped form.
January
10, 1980
The
final episode of The Rockford Files aired on NBC.
Jim meets John Traynor while on a fishing trip in
Parma. When John takes ill Jim takes him to hospital where John gives Jim his
Proxy for the upcoming vote on the town’s Proposition 46D. Not knowing
what it is Jim registers the proxy with Mayor Sindell, the pharmacist. Jim is
then escorted out to see Henry Gersch at his mobile home. Gersch wants Jim to
vote “for” the proposition, so Jim agrees. Jim returns to his motel and is
visited by a mysterious figure who tells him to get out of town. This proves
difficult as the Firebird is stolen and later found at the Parma Mechanic’s who
believed Jim called and requested it fixed. Jim meets with Carrie Osgood, a
journalist, who saw Jim fishing and again at the pharmacy. Jim is taken to the
bus stop by the Sheriff, in an effort to have him leave town, but when the bus
stops at Santa Barbara, Jim is collected by Gersch’s goons and taken back to
Parma. Carrie recognises the mysterious figure as Stan Belding, a businessman
from Las Vegas. Jim and Carrie manage to read Proposition 46D, which is
identical to the previous legalisation which legalised gambling. Jim then finds
out that John Traynor discharged himself from hospital. Jim now realises that
John set him up, and figures out that John must be hiding out under canvas in
the hills. Using the local pizza boy as a distraction, Jim leaves his motel
room disguised as the pizza man to evade Gersch’s goons who are watching him.
Jim finds John in his tent – murdered, which cancels the proxy. Jim reports
this to the police, who find nothing, so arrest Jim for filing a false report –
without a body, the proxy is still valid. Jim is in a cell, while outside the
police hounds are barking at the trunk of the sheriff’s vehicle. Lee Melvin –
an official – grants Jim an amnesty so that he can vote. Jim works out where
Traynor’s body is, and goes to vote while Carrie calls the state police. They
enter just in time to arrest Sindell, the Sherriff, Belding and Gersch’s goons,
but Jim must lead the chase to catch Gersch himself, sitting in his mobile home
on the outskirts of town.
Wayne Osmond was the second-oldest of the original Osmond Brothers singers and the fourth oldest of the nine Osmond children. Starting in 1958, Wayne and three of his brothers (Alan,Merrill, andJayin their respective age orders) began singing as abarbershop quartet. They were later discovered in 1961 by Jay Emerson Williams, the father ofAndy Williams, at a performance atDisneylandwhich was being filmed for theDisneyland After Darkepisode ofWalt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. In 1962, the four Osmonds were cast over a seven-year period onNBC'sThe Andy Williams Show, a musical variety program. Each of these four Osmond brothers were also cast in nine episodes of the 1963–1964ABCWestern series,The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, with Wayne in the role of young Leviticus Kissel.
In the band's rock formation, Wayne played guitarand occasionally drums,among many other instruments, with Wayne recalling shortly before his death that he learned to play eight instruments during his time with the band.Wayne was found to haveperfect pitch.His last intended appearance with the Osmonds was October 13, 2018, although he made an additional appearance with his brothers a year later as a birthday present to their sister,Marie.
