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"
Nixon, who enjoyed
the occasional cigar, supported the legislation at the increasing insistence of
public health advocates.
Alarming health studies emerged as early as 1939 that linked cigarette
smoking to higher incidences of cancer and heart disease and, by the end of the
1950s, all states had laws prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to minors. In
1964, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) agreed that advertisers had a responsibility to warn the
public of the health hazards of cigarette smoking. In 1969, after the surgeon
general of the United States released an official report linking cigarette
smoking to low birth weight, Congress yielded to pressure from the public
health sector and signed the Cigarette Smoking Act. This act required cigarette
manufacturers to place warning labels on their products that stated “Cigarette
Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health.”
By the early 1970s, the fight between the tobacco lobby and public health
interests forced Congress to draft legislation to regulate the tobacco industry
and special committees were convened to hear arguments from both sides. Public
health officials and consumers wanted stronger warning labels on tobacco
products and their advertisements banned from television and radio, where they
could easily reach impressionable children. (Tobacco companies were the single
largest product advertisers on television in 1969.) Cigarette makers defended
their industry with attempts to negate the growing evidence that nicotine was
addictive and that cigarette smoking caused cancer. Though they continued to
bombard unregulated print media with ads for cigarettes, tobacco companies lost
the regulatory battle over television and radio. The last televised cigarette
ad ran at 11:50 p.m. during The Johnny Carson Show on January
1, 1971.
Tobacco has played a part in the lives of presidents since the country’s
inception. A hugely profitable crop in early America, Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Jackson owned
tobacco plantations and used tobacco in the form of snuff or smoked cigars.
Regulation of the tobacco industry in the form of excise taxes began during
Washington’s presidency and continues to this day. In 1962, John F.
Kennedy became the first president to sponsor studies on smoking and
public health.
Tobacco has not been the only thing smoked at the White House. In 1978,
after country-music entertainer Willie Nelson performed for President
Carter there, he is said to have snuck up to the roof and
surreptitiously smoked what he called a big fat Austin torpedo, commonly known
as marijuana.
Chamberlain's singing ability also led to some hit singles in the early 1960s, including the "Theme from Dr. Kildare", titled "Three Stars Will Shine Tonight", which struck No. 10 according to theBillboardHot 100 Charts.Dr. Kildareended in 1966, after which Chamberlain began performing on the theater circuit. In 1966, he was cast oppositeMary Tyler Moorein the ill-fated Broadway musicalBreakfast at Tiffany's, co-starringPriscilla Lopez, which, after an out-of-town tryout period, closed after only four previews. Decades later, he returned to Broadway in revivals ofMy Fair LadyandThe Sound of Music.
At the end of the 1960s, Chamberlain spent a period of time in England, where he played in repertory theater and in the BBC's Portrait of a Lady (1968), becoming recognized as a serious actor. The following year, he starred opposite Katharine Hepburn in the film The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969).[11] While in England, he took vocal coaching and in 1969 performed the title role in Hamlet for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, becoming the first American to play the role there since John Barrymore in 1925. He received excellent notices and reprised the role for television in 1970 for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. A recording of the presentation was released by RCA Red Seal Records and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Since the 1990s, Chamberlain has appeared mainly in television films, on stage, and as a guest star on such series as The Drew Carey Show and Will & Grace. in 1991, he appeared in a TV movie version of Davis Grubb's The Night of the Hunter that received mixed reviews. He starred as Henry Higgins in the 1993–1994 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. In the fall of 2005, Chamberlain appeared in the title role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the Broadway National Tour of Scrooge: The Musical. In 2006, Chamberlain guest-starred in an episode of the British drama series Hustle, as well as season 4 of Nip/Tuck. In 2007, Chamberlain guest-starred as Glen Wingfield, Lynette Scavo's stepfather in episode 80 (Season 4, Episode 8, "Distant Past") of Desperate Housewives.
In 2008 and 2009, Chamberlain appeared as King Arthur in the national tour of Monty Python's Spamalot. In 2010 and 2012, he appeared as Archie Leach in season 3, episode 3 and season 4, episode 18 of the series Leverage, as well as two episodes of season 4 of Chuck where he played a villain known only as The Belgian.Chamberlain has also appeared in several episodes of Brothers & Sisters, playing an old friend and love-interest of Saul's.[17] He also appeared in the independent film We Are the Hartmans in 2011. In 2012, Chamberlain appeared on stage in the Pasadena Playhouse as Dr. Sloper in the play The Heiress.
The
late-night news program Nightline, anchored by Ted Koppel, airs for the
first time on ABC.
The show that
would become Nightline first aired during the 1979 Iranian hostage
crisis, during which Iranians seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, taking 66
Americans hostage. To cover the story as it unfolded, ABC debuted a late-night
news show called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, which was
normally anchored by Fred Reynolds. When the crisis ended, the show became a
more general news show called Nightline and Koppel, who had already
worked for ABC News in various capacities since 1963, became its anchor.
Throughout its tenure on
television, Nightline has aired five nights a week at 11:30 p.m.,
competing with NBC’s The Tonight Show and CBS’s Late Show with David
Letterman for viewers during much of that time. Despite some threats of
cancellation over the years, Koppel’s professionalism and the show’s unique mix
of long-format interviews and investigative journalism kept the show popular
with audiences. Nightline remains the only news show of its genre to air
every weeknight.
In
November 2005, Ted Koppel left Nightline; he was replaced by the
three-anchor team of Martin Bashir, Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran. The
program also introduced a new multi-topic format. In the past, each show had
concentrated on a single topic.
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.
March 21, 1995
The first episode of NewsRadio aired on NBC.
Focusing on the work lives of
the staff of an AM news station. The series was created by executive
producer Paul Simms, and was filmed in front of a studio audience
at CBS Studio Center and Sunset Gower
Studios. The show's theme tune was
composed by Mike Post, who also scored the pilot (Ian Dye and Danny Lux did
subsequent episodes).
The show placed #72 on Entertainment
Weekly 's "New TV
Classics" list. The series is set at WNYX, a fictional AMnews radio station
in New York City, populated by an eccentric station owner and staff.
The show begins with the arrival of a new news director, level-headed Dave
Nelson (Dave Foley). While Dave turns out to be less naive than his
youthful appearance suggests, he never fully gains control of his co-workers.
The fast-paced scripts and
ensemble cast combined physical humor and sight gags with
smart dialogue and absurd storylines. Plots often involved satirical takes on
historical events, news stories, and pop culturereferences.
The third- and fourth-season finales took the absurdity to the extreme,
setting the characters in outer space and aboard the Titanic.
There are a total of 97 episodes. Reruns continued in syndication for several years
before disappearing in most markets, but the show has aired on A&E Network, Nick at Nite and TBS network
in the United States, andTVtropolis and
the Comedy Network in Canada. In the United States, the show occasionally airs
as a filler onWGN America and runs regularly on Reelz Channel.
The program became available in syndication to local stations again starting in
July 2007 through The Program
Exchange. NBC briefly canceled NewsRadio in
May 1998, after its fourth season, but the decision was reversed two weeks later, with
an order of 22 episodes placed for afifth season. Ten days after its renewal, Phil Hartman was
killed by his wife, and his absence cast a pall over the fifth season. NBC left
the series "on the bubble" until the day the final episode of the
fifth season aired, months after production had wrapped. The fifth season
ending storyline where Jimmy James buys a radio station in a small New
Hampshire town was intended to provide a new setting for a potential sixth
season, but NBC later decided to officially cancel the series after poor
ratings and reviews.
A decade later it moved to television on CBS. Contestants on the show were asked trick questions
which they almost always failed to answer correctly. If they answered
incorrectly, or failed to come up with any answer in a short time, Beulah the
Buzzer went off. The host then told them that since they had failed to tell the
truth, they would have to pay the consequences. Consequences consisted of
elaborate stunts, some done in the studio and others done outside, some
completed on that week's episode and others taking a week or more and requiring
the contestant to return when the stunt was completed. Some of the stunts were
funny, but more often they were also embarrassing, and occasionally they were
sentimental like the reunion with a long-lost relative or a relative/spouse
returning from military duty overseas, particularly Vietnam. Sometimes, if that
military person was based in California, his or her spouse or parents were
flown in for that reunion.
The spa city of "Hot Springs" in Sierra
County, New Mexico took the name Truth or Consequences in1950, when host Ralph Edwards announced that he
would do the program from the first town that renamed itself after the show.
Ralph Edwards came to the town during the first weekend of May for the next
fifty years.
The original TV version of this series, with Edwards as host, lasted only a
single season.
When in returned three years later on NBC, Jack
Bailey was the host, later replaced
by Steve Dunne.
NBC aired a daytime version of the show from 1956 to 1965, first with Jack
Bailey again as host, succeeded by Bob
Barker. Barker remained with the show
through the rest of the daytime run and on into the original syndicated run
from 1966 to 1974. During Barker's run as host, "Barker's Box" was
played. Barker's Box was a box with four drawers in it. A contestant able to
pick the drawer with money in it won a bonus prize. Bob Hilton hosted a
short-lived syndicated revival from 1977 to1978 and in the fall of 1987, comic
Larry Anderson became the host of another short-lived version.
March 23, 1950
Beat the Clock premiered on
CBS-TV.
Beat
the Clock is a Goodson-Todmangame show that
aired on American television in several versions since 1950.
The original show, hosted
by Bud Collyer, ran on CBS from 1950 to 1958 and ABC from 1958 to 1961. The show was revived in
syndication as The New Beat the Clock from 1969 to 1974,
with Jack Narz as host until 1972, when he was replaced by the
show's announcer, Gene Wood. Another version ran on CBS from 1979 to 1980
(as The All-New Beat the Clock, and later as All-New
All-Star Beat the Clock), with former Let's Make a Deal host Monty Hall as
host and Narz as announcer. The most recent version aired in 2002 on PAX (now
ION) with Gary Kroeger and Julielinh Parker as co-hosts. The series was
also featured as the third episode ofGameshow
Marathon in 2006. Ricki Lake hosted
while Rich Fields announced.
In 2013, the show appeared
in TV Guide's list of the 60 greatest game shows ever.
Best most known for playing Alex Rieger on the
television comedy series Taxi, John Lacey on the NBC series Dear
John, and Alan Eppes on the CBS series Numb3rs.
He was born in The Bronxborough of New York City, New York, the son of Sally (née Kitzis) and Joseph Sidney Hirsch, an electrician. His father was also born in New York[2] where the family had lived since the mid-1800s. Sally
(Sarah) Kitzis was born in Russia. Hirsch was raised Jewish.
Hirsch's first major television appearance was in the
mini-series The Law (1974).
For his performance in Taxi, in 1981 and again in 1983, Judd Hirsch won the Emmy Award for Lead Actor In a Comedy Series. Hirsch went on to
play the title character on the modestly successful sitcom Dear
John and in 1989 won a Golden
Globe Award for Best Actor in a
Television Series in a Comedy or Musical for this role.[4] He later teamed with Bob Newhart in the short-lived comedy George and Leo. He had also previously starred for one season in the
series Delvecchio, playing a police detective (1976–1977).
After a three-month-long criminal trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a
jury acquits Robert Blake, star of the 1970s television detective show Baretta,
of the murder of his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.
Blake,
who was born Mickey Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, made his movie debut at the
age of six, in MGM’s 1939 movie Bridal Suite; the studio soon featured him in
its Our Gang series of short films. After changing his name to Robert Blake, he
starred in the 1960 gangster movie The Purple Gang and numerous other films. In
1967, Blake memorably portrayed Perry Smith, one of two real-life murderers at
the center of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, when the book was adapted for the
big screen. As an actor, Blake was best known for his Emmy-winning work as the
street-smart plainclothes policeman Tony Baretta in the ABC series Baretta. The
show ran from 1975 to 1978, and Blake won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a
Drama Series at the end of its first season.
During
his criminal trial, Blake’s defense team portrayed the aging actor as a rather
pathetic figure and argued that Bakley had a pattern of sending letters and
nude photos of herself to famous men and had trapped Blake into marrying her by
becoming pregnant. The couple’s daughter, Rose, was born in June 2000, and
though Bakley initially claimed that the child was fathered by Christian
Brando, son of the celebrated actor Marlon Brando, a paternity test proved the
baby was Blake’s. Blake and Bakley married that November. Their brief, unhappy
union lasted until May 4, 2001, when Bakley was shot to death as she sat in a
car outside a Los Angeles restaurant.
Blake
was arrested for the murder, and the prosecution produced two former stunt
doubles who claimed the actor had recruited them to kill his wife. During
cross-examination, the stuntmen were revealed to be cocaine and methamphetamine
users. In their acquittal of Blake, the jury made it clear they didn’t believe
the stuntmen’s statements, and also concluded that the prosecution had failed
to place the murder weapon in Blake’s hands.
In
November 2005, eight months after the criminal trial ended, Robert Blake was
found guilty in a civil trial of “intentionally” causing Bonny Lee Bakley’s
death; he was ordered to pay $30 million to Bakley’s children. Rose remained in
the care of Blake’s eldest daughter, Delinah. Though he did not testify in the
criminal trial, Blake did take the stand during his civil trial to deny the
accusations.
