This Week in Television History: August 2026 PART III

  

August 19, 1981

Charlie's Angels aired its final episode. 

The detective series featured crime-solving beauties instructed by a mysterious voice on a speaker phone known only as Charlie. Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Farrah Fawcett played the original Angels. Fawcett's blown-dry, feathered hair launched a national fad, and the actress left the show after a year to pursue a career in movies. Subsequent Angels included Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack, and Tanya Roberts. In 2000, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu played the Angels in a movie version of the show.

 

August 19, 1921

TV producer Gene Roddenberry, best known as the creator of Star Trek, is born in El Paso, Texas. 

His family moved to Los Angeles when Roddenberry was a toddler, and his father became a police officer. Roddenberry also studied criminal justice at Los Angeles City College but became a pilot instead through the Civilian Pilot Training Program. During World War II, Roddenberry flew bombing missions in the South Pacific with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Shot down during a raid, he survived and won a medal. A second crash, when he was working as a Pan Am pilot after the war, killed 14 people and convinced Roddenberry to give up flying. Instead, Roddenberry became a police officer like his father. But before long, he discovered that living the police life paid less than writing about it for TV, so he began writing scripts for Dragnet and other police TV dramas. In 1963, he produced a short-lived NBC show, The Lieutenant, about life in the U.S. Marines.

A lifelong science-fiction fan, Roddenberry wanted to try his hand making a sci-fi TV program. He convinced superstar Lucille Ball to fund a pilot. Although the first pilot was rejected, a second take was picked up, and Star Trek premiered in 1966.

Although the show ran for only three years and never placed better than No. 52 in the ratings, Roddenberry's sci-fi series became a cult classic and spawned four television series and nine movies.

Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, and was one of the first people to be "buried" in space.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: August 2026 PART II

  

August 11, 1921

Alex Haley, author of Roots (1976), was born in Ithaca, New York. 

After 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley retired and wrote books, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). In 1976, he published his best-known work, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The blend of fact and fiction, drawn largely from stories recited by Haley's grandmother, chronicles seven generations of Haley's family history, from the enslavement of his ancestors to his own quest to trace his family tree.

Roots became a TV miniseries in 1977. The eight-part series was aired on consecutive nights and became the most watched dramatic show in TV history. Some 130 million people-nearly half the country's population at the time--watched the final episode of the series. Haley died on Feb. 10, 1992.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: August 2026 PART I

 

August 3, 1941

Martha Helen Stewart (née Kostyra) was born. 

Business magnate, television host, author and magazine publisher. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she has gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, and merchandising. Stewart's syndicated talk show, Martha, is broadcast throughout the world, she has written numerous bestselling books, and she is the publisher of Martha Stewart Living magazine.

In 2001, Stewart was named the third most powerful woman in America by Ladies Home Journal. In 2004, she was convicted of lying to investigators about a stock sale and served five months in prison. Stewart began a strong comeback campaign in 2005, with her company returning to profitability in 2006.

August 5, 1956

Maureen Denise McCormick was born. 

Actress, reality show participant, and recording artist. She is best known as a child actor who played Marcia Brady in the television series The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974.

August 5, 1956

On August 5, 1957, TV's American Bandstand began broadcasting nationally 

Television, rock and roll and teenagers. In the late 1950s, when television and rock and roll were new and when the biggest generation in American history was just about to enter its teens, it took a bit of originality to see the potential power in this now-obvious combination. The man who saw that potential more clearly than any other was a 26-year-old native of upstate New York named Dick Clark, who transformed himself and a local Philadelphia television program into two of the most culturally significant forces of the early rock-and-roll era.

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The show that evolved into "American Bandstand" began on Philadelphia’s WFIL-TV in 1952, a few years before the popular ascension of rock and roll. Hosted by local radio personality Bob Horn, the original "Bandstand" "nevertheless established much of the basic format of its later incarnation. In the first year after Dick Clark took over as host in the summer of 1956, Bandstand remained a popular local hit, but it took Clark’s ambition to help it break out. When the ABC television network polled its affiliates in 1957 for suggestions to fill its 3:30 p.m. time slot, Clark pushed hard for Bandstand, which network executives picked up and scheduled for an August 5, 1957 premiere.

Renamed "American Bandstand," the newly national program featured a number of new elements that became part of its trademark, including the high school gym-like bleachers and the famous segment in which teenage studio guests rated the newest records on a scale from 25 to 98 and offered such criticisms as “It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.” But the heart of "American Bandstand" always remained the sound of the day’s most popular music combined with the sight of the show’s unpolished teen “regulars” dancing and showing off the latest fashions in clothing and hairstyles.

"American Bandstand" aired five days a week in live national broadcast until 1963, when the show moved west to Los Angeles and began a 24-year run as a taped weekly program with Dick Clark as host.

August 6, 1911

Lucille Ball was born. 

She became one of America's most beloved comic actresses, is born near Jamestown, New York. Her father, an electrician, died when Ball was two. By age 15, Ball had decided to attend drama school and become an actress. However, the shy, skinny teenager received little encouragement and was rejected at least four times from Broadway chorus lines before finally becoming a chorus girl in 1926. In 1933, she was hired as the Chesterfield cigarette girl and was featured in all the company's advertisements. Attracting attention with her Chesterfield ads, she finally began playing bit parts in Hollywood movies in 1933. By the late 1930s, the starlet had graduated to comic supporting roles. In 1940, she met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz while shooting Too Many Girls. The couple married the following year.

Ball continued to land movie roles that didn't fully showcase her talent. Frustrated, she turned to radio and starred as a ditzy wife in My Favorite Husband from 1948 to 1951. CBS decided to launch the popular series on the relatively new medium of TV. Lucy insisted Desi be cast as her husband in the TV version, though the network executives argued that no one would believe the couple were married. Desi and Lucy performed before live audiences and filmed a pilot, convincing network executives that audiences responded well to their act, and CBS cast Desi for the show.

I Love Lucy became one of the most popular TV situation comedies in history, ranking in the top three shows for six years and turning the couple's production company, Desilu, into a multimillion-dollar business. Ball became president of the company in 1960, after she and Desi divorced. She also starred in several other "Lucy" shows, including The Lucy Show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for six seasons, and Here's Lucy, in which she starred with her two children until the show was cancelled in 1974. A later show, Life with Lucy, featuring Lucy as a grandmother, was cancelled after only eight episodes. Ball worked little in the last years of her life. She died of congestive heart failure in 1989, at the age of 78.

August 8, 1956

The Dumont network made its final telecast. 

The DuMont Television Network was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being first overall in the USA. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned byDuMont Laboratories, a television equipment and set manufacturer. The network was hindered by the prohibitive cost of broadcasting, by regulations imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which restricted the company's growth, and even by the company's partner, Paramount Pictures. Despite several innovations in broadcasting and the creation of one of television's biggest stars of the 1950s (Jackie Gleason), the network never found itself on solid financial ground. Forced to expand on UHF channels during an era when UHF was not yet a standard feature on television sets, DuMont fought an uphill battle for program clearances outside of their three owned-and-operated stations in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh, finally ending network operations in 1956. DuMont's last broadcast, a boxing match, aired on August 6, 1956.

DuMont's latter-day obscurity, caused mainly by the destruction of its extensive program archive by the 1970s, has prompted TV historian David Weinstein to refer to it as the "Forgotten Network" or "Network Is Long Gone". A few popular DuMont programs, such as Cavalcade of Stars and Emmy Award winner Life Is Worth Living, appear in television retrospectives or are mentioned briefly in books about U.S. television history.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: July 2026 PART IV

August 1, 1971

The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuts. 

The popular variety show, featuring music, comedy routines and sarcastic banter between vertically challenged Sonny and his statuesque wife, Cher.

Sonny and Cher had been singing and performing comedy in nightclubs for more than a decade. They released several hit records in the 1960s, most notably "I Got You, Babe," before launching their show. The series rated well and showcased future comedy stars, including Teri Garr and Steve Martin.

Despite the show's popularity, the couple suffered marital problems and announced in the spring of 1974 that they were divorcing and would cancel the show. After divorcing in 1975, both Sonny and Cher tried and failed to launch solo comedy-variety shows. They revived their show together briefly in 1976 and 1977. Cher went on to a successful film career, winning the Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck (1987). Bono later became a politician, serving as mayor of Palm Springs and a U.S. congressman.

 

August 1, 1981

MTV launches. MTV: Music Television goes on the air for the first time ever, with the words (spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack): “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video to air on the new cable television channel, which initially was available only to households in parts of New Jersey. 

MTV went on to revolutionize the music industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels.

In MTV’s early days, its programming consisted of basic music videos that were introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and provided for free by record companies. As the record industry recognized MTV’s value as a promotional vehicle, money was invested in making creative, cutting-edge videos. Some directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Three Kings) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), worked on music videos before segueing into feature films. In the 1980s, MTV was instrumental in promoting the careers of performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.

By the late 1980s, MTV started airing non-video programming, geared toward teenagers and young adults. Its popular reality series The Real World launched in 1992 and was followed by such highly rated shows as The Osbournes, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, Laguna Beach, My Super Sweet 16 and The Hills. MTV also debuted animated series including Beavis and Butthead and Celebrity Deathmatch, as well as documentaries, news, game shows and public service campaigns on topics ranging from voting rights to safe sex. MTV developed a reputation for pushing cultural boundaries and taste; the airing of Madonna’s 1989 “Like a Prayer” video is just one famous example. In 1984, the channel launched the MTV Music Video Awards, which were followed in 1992 by the MTV Movie Awards. Today, MTV’s music-video programming is largely confined to one show, Total Request Live.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: July 2026 PART III

 

July 24, 1956

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together at New York's Copacabana Club. 

Born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, Martin started a nightclub act after working as a prizefighter and a steelworker in the 1940s. Lewis, the son of performers, debuted in comedy acts with his parents at age five and was working steadily as a comic by 1946, when he met Dean Martin. The pair performed an act in which screwball Lewis constantly interrupted straight man Martin's singing. They made their first appearance in 1946 at a club in Atlantic City and were an instant hit, soon in demand for radio and movie performances. The pair made 16 movies together, starting with My Friend Irma in 1949. By 1956, though, the pair decided to call it quits.

After the duo split up, Martin launched his own TV variety show, which ran from 1965 to 1974. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin teamed up with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop to perform in Las Vegas. The group quickly became known as the Rat Pack, a suave group of young, fast-living entertainers. The group made several movies together in the early 1960s, including Ocean's Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven Hoods. Martin died in 1995.

Lewis went on to sign one of the most lucrative film contracts of the day, a $10 million deal for 14 films with Paramount. Lewis' films, including Cinderfella (1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963), failed to attract much praise from American critics but made him a star in France, where he has long been considered a comic genius. After a long absence from film, he gave an acclaimed performance in the 1986 film The King of Comedy, co-starring Robert De Niro.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: July 2026 PART II

July 19, 1989

Rebecca Shaeffer (age 21) is murdered at her Los Angeles home by Robert John Bardo, a mentally unstable man who had been stalking her. Schaeffer’s death helped lead to the passage in California of legislation aimed at preventing stalking.

Schaeffer was born November 6, 1967, in Eugene, Oregon. She worked as a teenage model and had a short stint on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live, but was best known for co-starring with Pam Dawber in the television sitcom My Sister Sam. Bardo, born in 1970, had written Schaeffer letters and unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the set of My Sister Sam, before showing up at her apartment on July 19, 1989. The obsessed fan had reportedly obtained the actress’s home address through a detective agency, which located it through records at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. On the day of the murder, Schaeffer reportedly complied with Bardo’s request for an autograph when he appeared at her home and then asked him to leave. He returned a short time later and the actress, who reportedly was waiting for someone to deliver a script, answered the door again. Bardo then shot and killed her.

Arrested the next day in Tucson, Arizona, Bardo was later prosecuted by the Los Angeles County district attorney Marcia Clark, who later became famous as a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. In 1991, Bardo was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 1994, California passed the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles from releasing private addresses.

The 2002 film Moonlight Mile, loosely inspired by Schaeffer’s story, was written and directed by Brad Silberling, who had been dating the young actress at the time of her death.

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Tony Figueroa

Randolph Mantooth

People tell me this all the time...they come up to me and say, 'You're my hero,' I say no. I'm just the face. You're the body. You do the work. You're on the front line. Believe me, when I tell you from the bottom of my heart -- if you're a firefighter...an EMT...a paramedic -- you're my hero.

-Randolph Mantooth

Randy DeRoy Mantooth

September 19, 1945 – July 9, 2026

Randolph Mantooth was discovered in New York by a Universal Studios talent agent while performing the lead in the play Philadelphia, Here I Come! After signing with Universal and moving back to California, he slowly built up his resume with work on such dramatic series as Adam-12 (1968); Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969); McCloud (1970) and Alias Smith and Jones (1971).

He portrayed paramedic John Gage in the 1970s medical drama Emergency!. Randolph Mantooth spoke regularly at Firefighter and EMS conferences and symposia across the United States while maintaining an active acting career. He was a spokesperson for both the International Association of Firefighters [IAFF] and the International Association of Fire Chiefs [IAFC] for firefighter health and safety, and honored over the years with numerous awards and recognition.

Mantooth appeared in numerous films and television series in lead and supportive roles including miniseries adaptations of Testimony of Two Men (1977) and a starring role as Abraham Kent in The Seekers (1979). Through the 1990s and 2000s, he appeared in daytime soap operas, earning him four Soap Opera Digest Award nominations. He frequently returns to performing in theatrical productions. He serves as an associate artist at Jeff Daniels' Purple Rose Theatre. His performances include Mark Kaufman's Evil Little Thoughts, Black Elk Speaks, Carey Crim's Morning after Grace, Lanford Wilson's Rain Dance, and innumerable works by Native American playwrights including William S. Yellow Robe Jr.

Emergency +4 is a 1973–1974 American animated television series based on the live action prime-time series Emergency!, running concurrently for two seasons.

Good Night Mr. Mantooth

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: July 2026 PART I

July 12, 1976

Family Feud Premiered 

Family Feud is an American television game show created by Mark Goodson where two families compete to name the most popular responses to survey questions in order to win cash and prizes.

The program premiered on ABC on July 12, 1976, and ran as part of its daytime schedule until June 14, 1985. The program was re-launched by CBS on July 4, 1988, and ran until September 10, 1993. Three separate editions for syndication were also produced. The first aired from September 19, 1977 to September 6, 1985. The second aired from September 19, 1988 to September 8, 1995. The current syndicated series premiered on September 20, 1999.

The ABC network version of the show and the first syndicated series were hosted by Richard Dawson. Ray Combs hosted the CBS series and the first six seasons of the accompanying syndicated version, then was replaced by Dawson for the final season. The 1999 syndicated series has been hosted by Louie Anderson(1999–2002), Richard Karn (2002–06), John O'Hurley (2006–10), and Steve Harvey (2010–present). Announcers for the series have included Gene Wood (1976–95), Burton Richardson (1999–2010), Joey Fatone(2010–15), and Rubin Ervin (2015–present).

The program has spawned multiple regional adaptations in over 50 international markets outside the United States. Within a year of its debut, the original version became the number one game show in daytime television; however, as viewing habits changed, the ratings declined. Harvey's takeover in 2010 increased Nielsen ratingssignificantly and eventually placed the program among the top five most popular syndicated television shows in the country. In 2013, TV Guide ranked Family Feud third in its list of the 60 greatest game shows of all time.

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Tony Figueroa

Mental Sorbet: SchoolHouse Rock - No More Kings

Happy 4th of July

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: June 2026 PART V

 

July 1, 1941

NBC broadcasts the first TV commercial to be sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). 

The FCC began licensing commercial television stations in May 1941, granting the first license to NBC. During a Dodgers-Phillies game that was broadcast July 1, NBC ran its first commercial. Advertiser Bulova paid $9 to advertise its watches on the air.

Although the first TV license was issued by the Federal Radio Commission (which later became the FCC) in 1928, all licenses were noncommercial until 1941, meaning they were not allowed to sell air time for advertisements or other commercial purposes. However, several stations had already aired advertisements by the time the FCC began issuing commercial licenses.

Although the development of television had been eagerly pursued by radio companies for decades, World War II slowed the development process. Only in the late 1940s did the medium become widespread: Until 1947, no commercial TV stations were licensed west of the Mississippi. Geographically Speaking, the first commercially sponsored TV show, debuted in 1946 with the backing of Bristol-Myers. Many other sponsored shows debuted in the early 1950s.

 

July 1, 1981

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that candidates for federal office had an "affirmative right" to go on national television.

On October 11, 1979, the Carter-Mondale Presidential Committee(Committee) requested each of the three major television networks (petitioners) to provide time for a 30-minute program between 8 p. m. and 10:30 p.m. on any day from the 4th through the 7th of December, 1979. The Committee intended to present, in conjunction with President Carter's formal announcement of his candidacy, a documentary outlining the record of his administration. The petitioners refused to make the requested time available. CBS emphasized the large number of candidates for the Presidential nominations and the potential disruption of regular programming to accommodate requests for equal treatment, but offered to sell a 5-minute segment at 10:55 p.m. on December 8 and a 5-minute segment in the daytime; American Broadcasting Cos. replied that it had not yet decided when it would begin selling political time for the 1980 Presidential campaign, but later indicated that it would allow such sales in January, 1980; and National Broadcasting Co., noting the number of potential requests for time from Presidential candidates, stated that it was not prepared to sell time for political programs as early as December, 1979. The Committee then filed a complaint with the FCC, charging that the networks had violated their obligation to provide "reasonable access" under § 312(a)(7). The FCC ruled that the networks had violated the statute, concluding that their reasons for refusing to sell the time requested were "deficient" under the FCC's standards

Page 453 U. S. 368

of reasonableness, and directing the networks to indicate by a specified date how they intended to fulfill their statutory obligations. On the networks' petition for review, the Court of Appeals affirmed the FCC's orders, holding that the statute created a new, affirmative right of access to the broadcast media for individual candidates for federal elective office, and that the FCC has the authority to independently evaluate whether a campaign has begun for purposes of the statute. The court approved the FCC's insistence that, in responding to a candidate's request for time, broadcasters must weigh certain factors, including the individual needs of the candidate (as expressed by the candidate); the amount of time previously provided to the candidate; potential disruption of regular programming; the number of other candidates likely to invoke equal opportunity rights if the broadcaster granted the request before it; and the timing of the request. The court determined that the record supported the FCC's conclusion that the networks failed to apply the proper standards, and had thus violated the statute's "reasonable access" requirement. The court also rejected petitioners' First Amendment challenge to § 312(a)(7) as applied.

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Tony Figueroa