As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
June 1, 1980
CNN (Cable News Network), the world's first 24-hour
television news network, makes its debut.
The network signed on at 6 p.m. EST from its headquarters in Atlanta,
Georgia, with a lead story about the attempted assassination of civil rights
leader Vernon Jordan. CNN went on to change the notion that news could only be
reported at fixed times throughout the day. At the time of CNN's launch, TV
news was dominated by three major networks--ABC, CBS and NBC--and their nightly
30-minute broadcasts. Initially available in less than two million U.S. homes,
today CNN is seen in more than 89 million American households and over 160
million homes internationally.
CNN was the brainchild of Robert "Ted" Turner, a colorful,
outspoken businessman dubbed the "Mouth of the South." Turner was
born on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and as a child moved with his
family to Georgia, where his father ran a successful billboard advertising
company. After his father committed suicide in 1963, Turner took over the
business and expanded it. In 1970, he bought a failing Atlanta TV station that
broadcast old movies and network reruns and within a few years Turner had
transformed it into a "superstation," a concept he pioneered, in
which the station was beamed by satellite into homes across the country. Turner
later bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks basketball
team and aired their games on his network, TBS (Turner Broadcasting System). In
1977, Turner gained international fame when he sailed his yacht to victory in
the prestigious America's Cup race.
In its first years of operation, CNN lost money and was ridiculed as the
Chicken Noodle Network. However, Turner continued to invest in building up the
network's news bureaus around the world and in 1983, he bought Satellite News
Channel, owned in part by ABC, and thereby eliminated CNN's main competitor.
CNN eventually came to be known for covering live events around the world as
they happened, often beating the major networks to the punch. The network
gained significant traction with its live coverage of the Persian Gulf War in
1991 and the network's audience grew along with the increasing popularity of
cable television during the 1990s.
In 1996, CNN merged with Time Warner, which merged with America Online four
years later. Today, Ted Turner is an environmentalist and peace activist whose
philanthropic efforts include a 1997 gift of $1 billion to the United Nations.
June 7, 1955
$64,000
Question premieres.
TV
game show The $64,000 Question debuts on this day in 1955. The show was
a spin-off of radio game show The $64 Question and spun off The $64,000
Challenge. The show started with contestants answering a
question worth $64, with each subsequent question worth double the amount of
the previous one. The show was an instant hit, knocking I Love Lucy out
of first place in the ratings. Rumors of rigging plagued this and other
big-money game shows in the mid-1950s causing The $64,000 Question and The
$64,000 Challenge to be yanked off the air within three months of the quiz show scandal's eruption. Challenge went first, in September 1958, with Question –
once the emperor of Tuesday night television – taking its Sunday night
time slot, until it was killed in November, 1958.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned
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