Richard Anderson

My idea of acting is based on what Spencer Tracy taught me. I saw him sitting on a bench at MGM. I walked up and said, “Acting?” He said, “Acting. Learn the lyrics and don’t bump into the furniture.”

-Richard Anderson

Richard Norman AndersonAugust 8, 1926 – August 31, 2017

Richard Anderson died today in Beverly Hills at the age of 91. On the big screen, his many films included The Student Prince as Lucas (1954), Forbidden Planet (1956), as Chief Engineer Quinn, and the World War I drama Paths of Glory (1957) directed by Stanley Kubrick, in which Anderson played the prosecuting attorney. He was Don Diego De La Vega's joke-playing best friend and romantic rival, Ricardo Del Amo, on the Disney television series Zorro (1958-1959). He was the object of the unrequited love of Clara Varner (Joanne Woodward) in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and a suspicious military officer in Seven Days in May (1964).

In the 1960s, Anderson made appearances in 23 episodes of Perry Mason during the series' final season as Police Lieutenant Steve Drumm, replacing the character of Lt. Tragg, played by Ray Collins who died in 1965. Before he became a Perry Mason regular, he made guest appearances in two 1964 episodes: as defendant Edward Lewis in "The Case of the Accosted Accountant", and Jason Foster in "The Case of the Paper Bullets".

Richard Anderson in an episode of The Rifleman

He also appeared on The Untouchables, Stagecoach West, The Rifleman, Daniel Boone, Thriller, The Eleventh Hour, Redigo, Combat!, Twelve O'Clock High, I Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Fugitive (as brother-in-law to the protagonist Dr. Richard Kimble), Bonanza, The Green Hornet, The Invaders, and The Big Valley. In 1961–62, Anderson co-starred with Marilyn Maxwell in an ABC production of Bus Stop. He guest-starred in the last episode of season 1 of Mission: Impossible (1966) as Judge Wilson Chase. 

Richard Anderson in an episode of The Fugitive

In 1965, he played Judge Lander, who clashes over courtroom fairness and frontier justice with a young woman, Kate Melville (Gloria Talbott), the daughter of a sheriff, Will Melville (Dick Foran), in the episode "Kate Melville and the Law" of the syndicated series, Death Valley Days.

Anderson first appeared as Oscar Goldman in episode 2 ("Wine, Women, and War") of The Six Million Dollar Man in 1974. He would portray the character through the series' end in 1978 as well as on the spinoff series The Bionic Woman for its entire run from 1976 to 1978. 

In addition, Anderson guest-starred on other TV series in the 1970s, including Hawaii Five-O, Gunsmoke, Ironside, Columbo and The Love Boat.

He appeared in the television movie, The Night Strangler as the villain, Dr. Richard Malcolm. Anderson was just as busy in the 1980s on Charlie's Angels, Matt Houston, Knight Rider, Remington Steele, Cover Up, The A-Team, The Fall Guy, Simon & Simon, and Murder, She Wrote. In 1985, he played murderer Ken Braddock in the first two-hour episode of Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr, titled "Perry Mason Returns". Anderson had a recurring role as Senator Buck Fallmont on Dynasty from 1986 to 1987. He portrayed President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1987 miniseries, Hoover vs. The Kennedys.

In the 1990s, he served as narrator and a recurring guest star for Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. He served also as a commercial spokesperson for the Shell Oil Company in the United States known as The Shell Answer Man. "The Shell Answer Man" appeared in commercials from 1976-82.

In 2007, Anderson was honored with a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.

Good Night Pal

Stay Tuned


Tony Figueroa

Michael Learned, plus an Outlaw Rock ’n’ Roll Photographer: Next on TVC

Actress Michael Learned and screenwriter, producer and author Julian David Stone will join us this weekend on TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Sept. 1-4 at the following times and venues:

Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 9/1
7pm ET, 4pm PT
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org
Use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV
Hear us on the KSAV channel on CX Radio Brazil
Hear us on your cell phone or landline number by dialing 712-432-4235

Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Saturday 9/2
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Sunday 9/3
10am ET, 7am PT
Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks

WON 920 The Apple
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday 9/3
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Streaming at www.920won.caster.fm

KSCO AM-1080 and FM-104.1
San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA
KOMY AM-1340
La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA
Sunday 9/4
9am ET, 6am PT
Also streaming at KSCO.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSCO

CROC Radio
Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday 9/3
1pm ET, 10am PT
Streaming at CROCRadio.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in CROC

KHMB AM-1710
KHMV-LP 100.9 FM
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 9/3
9pm PT
Monday 9/4
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com

RadioSlot.com
San Francisco, CA
Monday 9/4
10pm ET, 7pm PT
with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com

PWRNetwork
A member of the Truli Media Group
Ann Arbor, MI ~ Boston, MA ~ Chicago, IL ~ Melrose, FL ~ Los Angeles, CA
Various times throughout the week
on the Entertainment Channel on PWRNetwork.com
and the PWR channel on TuneIn

Best known as Olivia Walton, the matriarch on The Waltons, the long-running Emmy Award-winning series created by Earl Hamner that celebrates its 45^th anniversary on television this year, Michael Learned has an extensive career on stage, on and off Broadway, including productions of Steel Magnolias, The Best Man, The Sisters Rosenzweig, and the national tour of On Golden Pond. She is also part of the ensemble cast of the award-winning web series Life Interrupted, all six episodes of which are currently available on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

Michael Learned will also be co-starring with Charlie Robinson in a new stage production of Driving Miss Daisy at the New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas beginning Wednesday, Sept. 27. Michael will talk about her work on the stage, how she came to join Life Interrupted, plus she’ll share a few memories of her years on The Waltons as part of a freewheeling conversation that will air in our second hour.

Our first hour will include a return appearance by author, director and playwright Julian David Stone (The Strange Birth, Short Life and Sudden Death of Justice Girl). When he was a teenager in the early 1980s, Julian somehow managed, through moxie and ingenuity, to sneak his camera equipment into rock concerts at various venues throughout the country. As a result, he amassed a huge archive of more than 5,000 images of some of the biggest rock stars of the era, including Prince, U2, The Police, David Bowie, The Ramones, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Spinal Tap and many, many others. All of these photographs are up close and personal. None of them, however, have ever been published before—but they will be soon, as part of a forthcoming coffee table book called No Cameras Allowed: My Career as an Outlaw Rock and Roll Photographer.

Julian has started a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project, which you can learn more about by going to Kickstarter.com and typing in No Cameras Allowed. The Kickstarter campaign for No Cameras Allowed will continue through Thursday, Sept. 21.



TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Fri 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org and CX Radio Brazil
Sat 8pm ET, 5pm PT and Sun 6pm ET, 3pm PT on Indiana Talks (Marion, IN)
Sat 10pm ET, 7pm PT on WON 920 The Apple (Brooklyn, NY)
Sun 9am ET, 6am PT KSCO-AM 1080 (San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA)
Sun 9am ET, 6am PT KOMY-AM 1340 (La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA)
Sun 1pm ET, 10am PT CROC Radio (British Columbia, Canada)
Sun 9pm PT, Mon Mid ET on KHMB-AM and FM (Half Moon Bay, CA)
Mon 10pm ET, 7pm PT on The Radio Slot Network (San Francisco, CA)
Replays various times throughout the week on the Entertainment Channel at PWRNetwork
Tape us now, listen to us later, using DAR.fm/tvconfidential
Also available as a podcast via iTunes, FeedBurner, SoundCloud
and now on your mobile phone via Stitcher.com
Follow us online at www.tvconfidential.net
Follow us now on Twitter: Twitter.com/tvconfidential
Like our Fan Page at www.facebook.com/tvconfidential

This Week in Television History: August 2017 PART IV

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.

August 29, 1967

The final episode of The Fugitive aired. 

The two-part final episode, titled The Judgment

Part 1

The one-armed man, going by the alias "Fred Johnson," is arrested after tearing up a Los Angeles strip bar. When Kimble reads about it in a newspaper while working in Arizona, he travels to Los Angeles. However, Gerard has already arrived in Los Angeles and is working with the local police, convinced Kimble will come to LA. Gerard is spotted by an old friend of the Kimble family, a woman named Jean Carlisle (Diane Baker), who is working as a typist with the Los Angeles Police Department. She immediately contacts Kimble's sister Donna, who, after failing to reach Kimble at his last job in Tucson, manages to find out and tell Jean where Kimble might be arriving in Los Angeles. Jean manages to reach Kimble just as the police start searching the area and gets him safely away to her apartment. Later, she reveals that she has been fond of him since she was a child, when her father's arrest for embezzlement and disgrace left her family with no friends save the Kimbles. Meanwhile, Gerard interrogates Johnson and begins to question that Kimble may be telling the truth after all. (It is mentioned that Johnson worked near Stafford, two weeks before Helen Kimble was murdered.) After Kimble learns that Johnson has been arrested, he elects to turn himself in in a final hope of confronting Johnson and making him tell the truth. Before he can carry out his plan, Johnson is bailed out of jail by a corrupt bail bondsman who formulates a plan to blackmail the person who supplied the bail and who is himself killed by Johnson after revealing that the money came from someone in Kimble's home town of Stafford, IN. Kimble decides that he must leave Los Angeles and head back home immediately. Just as he is about to catch a taxi to the airport, Gerard moves in and arrests Kimble after years of pursuing him. "I'm sorry," Gerard tells him, "you just ran out of time."

Part 2

While taking the train back from Los Angeles to Stafford, Kimble informs Gerard that he found something that might lead him to the truth and that he believes Johnson is going to Stafford to use the information for which he killed the bail bondsman. He asks Gerard to allow him to try to find Johnson and prove his innocence. Gerard sets a 24-hour deadline for Kimble to do so once the train returns to Stafford, and Kimble vows to turn himself in if he does not find what he is looking for.

The key piece of evidence Kimble has is the bail bond slip signed by a man using the name "Leonard Taft," the name of Richard's brother-in-law, married to his sister Donna. The man is actually the Tafts's neighbor, Stafford city planner Lloyd Chandler (J. D. Cannon). Chandler learns from Donna that she had received a phone call from someone who claimed that he knew who really killed Helen Kimble and arranging a meeting that night at an abandoned riding stable. While Donna and Leonard dismiss the call as a prank, Chandler keeps the meeting. Even though Chandler is armed with a loaded pistol, Johnson easily overpowers and disarms him and blackmails him for $50,000. Later, after learning from Donna about the phone call, Kimble and Gerard investigate the stable, but find only a dropped, unfired cartridge from Chandler's gun.

Chandler tries to get the money while hiding it from his wife, Betsy (Louise Latham), even resorting to putting his house up for sale. Eventually, he cracks and tells her what he had done and why, revealing that he had actually witnessed the murder of Helen Kimble. In a frightful panic after her husband had driven off and after drinking heavily, Helen had called Chandler and he had come over to the house to try to calm her down. While upstairs with Helen, both she and Chandler heard Johnson breaking into the house and witnessed his attempted robbery. Chandler watched as Helen confronted Johnson, but he quickly turned on her and began beating her with a lamp. Frozen in shock and fear at what he saw Johnson did, Chandler watched Helen being beaten to death by the one-armed robber and did nothing to stop it from happening. Johnson spotted him as he was leaving, but seeing that Chandler was too stunned to act, he left the Kimble residence. Chandler never told anybody out of shame because he was afraid that his standing in the community would be ruined; he had fought in World War II and earned a Silver Star while in combat, and feared that if anyone found out about his moment of cowardice in the Kimble home he would never live it down.

Jean Carlisle returns to Stafford and she and Kimble are briefly reunited. However, because Kimble is unsuccessful in finding his evidence within the 24 hours he was given, he is about to leave with Gerard when Donna finds a bullet hidden in one of her sons's dresser drawers. Shown the bullet, Gerard identifies it as being identical to the one they found at the riding academy the night before. Donna tells her husband and the lieutenant that the bullet must have come from Chandler, who had taken a group of boys to a shooting range the day before. Kimble and Gerard head over to the Chandler residence and learn that Chandler has headed to an abandoned amusement park and is luring Johnson there so he can make up for his earlier unwillingness to talk by killing Johnson.

By the time Kimble and Gerard arrive at the amusement park, Chandler and Johnson are shooting at each other, Johnson's pistol against Chandler's rifle. Gerard is shot in the thigh by Johnson, temporarily disabling him. The lieutenant tosses Kimble his weapon, and Kimble heads off to finally confront his wife's murderer. Chandler is forced to help Gerard walk, and during the whole time Gerard tries to convince him to speak up so Kimble can be exonerated.

The climax takes place on top of a carnival tower where Kimble has chased Johnson. They engage in hand-to-hand fighting, while Gerard and Chandler watch from the ground. Kimble is able to extract a confession from Johnson, as he desired. Johnson then tells Kimble that he plans to kill him next, as he has grown tired of being chased. Johnson picks up Gerard's pistol, but before he can shoot, Gerard uses Chandler's rifle to hit Johnson with a well-placed shot from the ground, and Johnson falls to his death.

Kimble climbs down and informs Gerard that he was able to get Johnson to confess, but the confession is no good because nobody else heard it. As Kimble resigns himself to fate decreed to him four years earlier, Chandler after being prodded by Gerard decides to testify in court as to what he witnessed.

In the final scene of the series, an exonerated Kimble leaves the courthouse and, after hesitating, shakes Lt. Gerard's extended hand. Dr. Kimble walks off toward his new life, accompanied by Jean Carlisle. Narrator William Conrad intones, "Tuesday, September 5th. The day the running stopped."

According to Ed Robertson's book The Fugitive Recaptured (the first book written about the series), the final episode aired in Canada on September 5, 1967. The "Special Features" DVD states that the final episode was interrupted in some parts of the U.S. This version was also seen in some areas in syndication and was later released on VHS tape. Both versions are available on DVD.

Part two of the finale was the most-watched television series episode up to that time. It was viewed by 25.70 million households (45.9 percent of American households with a television set and a 72 percent share), meaning that more than 78 million people tuned in. That record was held until the November 21, 1980 episode of Dallas, titled "Who Done It," viewed by 41.47 million households (53.3 percent of households and a 76 percent share), which was later surpassed by the series finale of M*A*S*H, titled "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," on February 28, 1983, viewed by 50.15 million households (60.2 percent of households and a 77 percent share). According to producer Leonard Goldberg, the network was simply going to end the series with a regular episode without any kind of denouement, as network executives were totally oblivious to the concept that a television audience actually tuned in week after week and cared about the characters of a TV series. The timing of the broadcast was unusual: Rather than ending the regular season, the finale was held back while suspense continued through the summer reruns.

In 1997, "The Judgment, Part 2" was ranked No. 23 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

August 31, 1957

Children's show Kukla, Fran and Ollie airs its last episode on prime-time network TV. 

The show featured beloved puppets Kukla, Ollie (a dragon), and others, with live actress Fran Allison as host. The show began as a local Chicago program and moved to NBC in 1948. It was one of the two most important series made in Chicago, along with Garroway at Large, during the city's brief period as an important production center for network programs in the late 1940s. After its network cancellation, PBS revived the series from 1969 to 1971.

SEPTEMBER

September 1, 1922

Yvonne De Carlo, Canadian-born. 

American film and television actress, dancer and singer was born. Her most prolific appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as Salome Where She Danced and The Ten Commandments, opposite Charlton Heston. In the 1960s, she gained a whole new generation of fans, playing "Lily Munster" on CBS television series The Munsters, opposite Fred Gwynne.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Sesame Street: El Patito featuring Ernie and Rubber Duckie (Despacito Parody)

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" 

A little spark of madness

that we could use to momentarily forget about those

things that leave a bad taste in our mouths

Sesame Street: El Patito featuring Ernie and Rubber Duckie (Despacito Parody)

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Jay Thomas

Jay Thomas
July 12, 1948 - August 24, 2017

Jay Thomas died today of cancer. He was 69. He was born Jon Thomas Terrell in Kermit, Texas and worked as an actor, comedian, and radio talk show host. 

His notable television work includes his co-starring role as Remo DaVinci on Mork & Mindy (1979–81), the recurring role of Eddie LeBec on Cheers (1987–89), the lead character Jack Stein on Love & War (1992–95), and a repeat guest role as Jerry Gold on Murphy Brown. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 1990 and 1991 for portraying Gold.

In 1997, he starred in the television film Killing Mr. Griffin, based on the novel of the same name. In film, he co-starred in Mr Holland's Opus and portrayed The Easter Bunny in The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3. He was also an annual guest on The Late Show with David Letterman during the Christmas season, where he told a story about how he met Clayton Moore, who portrayed the self-titled character on The Lone Ranger. Since 2005, he has hosted The Jay Thomas Show on Sirius Satellite Radio, and is on every Friday afternoon on Howard 101.

Thomas made his annual Christmastime appearance with David Letterman for the first time in December 1998. Letterman and one of his other guests that evening, then-New York Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde, took turns tossing footballs at the Christmas tree across the stage, atop which sat a large meatball. As the two tried to knock off the meatball and failed repeatedly, Thomas came out and decided to join in the festivities and knocked the meatball off of the tree.

When Letterman talked with Thomas later on, he told a story about when he was a young disc jockey at a radio station in Charlotte, North Carolina. Thomas had been making a promotional appearance at a local car dealership. This dealership had also booked Clayton Moore to make an appearance, dressed in his Lone Ranger costume.

As the story goes, after the appearance Thomas, who at the time sported what he referred to as a "white man's Afro", and his friend, who was wearing high heeled shoes, tight pants, and a tiedyed shirt, went off to get "herbed up" (smoke marijuana) behind a dumpster, after the broadcast ended. When they returned to pack up their equipment, they discovered that Moore was still there, as the car that was supposed to drive him to the Red Roof Inn never arrived. Thomas offered Moore a ride in his old Volvo and he accepted. As they were sitting in traffic, an impatient middle-aged man driving a Buick, backed into the front end of Thomas' car, broke a headlight and drove away. Thomas gave chase to the Buick through heavy traffic, finally caught up to the man and confronted him about the damage. The indignant driver denied breaking the headlight and Thomas threatened to call the police. The man said nobody would believe their story because Thomas and his friend looked like "two hippy freaks". At that moment, Thomas said that Moore, who was still in costume as the Lone Ranger, got out of the car and said to the man, "They'll believe me, citizen!"

For every year thereafter, with the exception of 2013, Thomas appeared to re-tell the Lone Ranger story and once again attempt what Letterman calls the "Late Show Quarterback Challenge". For the final appearance of the story in 2014, Thomas was again successful in knocking the meatball off the top of the tree. Thomas missed the 2013 Late Show Christmas episode due to surgery on his throat; John McEnroe took his place and told the Lone Ranger story, then tried to knock the meatball off the tree by hitting tennis balls at it but failed.

Thomas fathered J. T. Harding in an out-of-wedlock relationship and the child was adopted by another family in Michigan.

Good Night Jay

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Nichelle Nichols: Next on TVC

Actress, singer, voice artist and author Nichelle Nichols will join us this weekend on TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Aug. 25-28 at the following times and venues:

Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 8/25
7pm ET, 4pm PT
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org
Use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV
Hear us on the KSAV channel on CX Radio Brazil
Hear us on your cell phone or landline number by dialing 712-432-4235

Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Saturday 8/26
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Sunday 8/27
10am ET, 7am PT
Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks

WON 920 The Apple
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday 8/26
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Streaming at www.920won.caster.fm

KSCO AM-1080 and FM-104.1
San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA
KOMY AM-1340
La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA
Sunday 8/27
9am ET, 6am PT
Also streaming at KSCO.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSCO

CROC Radio
Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday 8/27
1pm ET, 10am PT
Streaming at CROCRadio.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in CROC

KHMB AM-1710
KHMV-LP 100.9 FM
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 8/27
9pm PT
Monday 8/28
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com

RadioSlot.com
San Francisco, CA
Monday 8/28
10pm ET, 7pm PT
with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com

PWRNetwork
A member of the Truli Media Group
Ann Arbor, MI ~ Boston, MA ~ Chicago, IL ~ Melrose, FL ~ Los Angeles, CA
Various times throughout the week
on the Entertainment Channel on PWRNetwork.com
and the PWR channel on TuneIn

Known around the world as Lieutenant Uhura, communications officer of the Starship Enterprise on the original Star Trek and the first six Star Trek movies, Nichelle Nichols is not only the first African-American woman to have a continuing role on a prime time network television series, but a vital role model and inspiration to three generations of African-American girls and African-American women.

What you may not know about Nichelle Nichols is that, long before Star Trek, she was an accomplished singer and dancer who toured the U.S., Canada and Europe with both the Duke Ellington and the Lionel Hampton bands, while her accomplishments beyond Star Trek include a recruitment effort on behalf of NASA that resulted in more than 8,000 applicants in just six months, including more than 1,600 female applicants and more than 1,000 applicants from minorities. Among Nichelle’s most notable recruits: Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut; Sally Ride, the first female American astronaut; Judith Resnik, one of the original set of female astronauts, who tragically died during the launch of the Challenger on January 28, 1986; and Ronald McNair, the second African-American astronaut, and who also perished in the Challenger accident.

We will talk about Nichelle’s life and career before, during and after Star Trek when she joins us during our second hour.

For our listeners in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nichelle Nichols will be appearing at Comic Con San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 1 through Sunday, Sept. 3 at the Moscone Center West, 800 Howard St. in San Francisco. Nichelle is scheduled to appear all three days. For tickets and more information, go to SanFranComicCon.com. You can also follow Nichelle Nichols on Facebook and on Twitter.

And speaking of Space: The Final Frontier, Phil Gries will join us in our first hour for a look back at how network TV news covered the Mercury Friendship 7 mission, the 4-hour, 52-minute flight by John Glenn on Feb. 20, 1962 that made him the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, and just the fifth person overall to navigate space successfully. Some of you may remember watching coverage of the Friendship 7 mission on television while you were in school—a rare occurrence, indeed, but at the same time an early indication of how the powers of television can unify the country through a single event.

But the Friendship 7 mission, not to mention the coverage of the event by CBS News, was not without its challenges. We’ll talk about that with Phil, plus we’ll play rarely heard audio highlights of the coverage itself, during our first hour.

TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Fri 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org and CX Radio Brazil
Sat 8pm ET, 5pm PT and Sun 6pm ET, 3pm PT on Indiana Talks (Marion, IN)
Sat 10pm ET, 7pm PT on WON 920 The Apple (Brooklyn, NY)
Sun 9am ET, 6am PT KSCO-AM 1080 (San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA)
Sun 9am ET, 6am PT KOMY-AM 1340 (La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA)
Sun 1pm ET, 10am PT CROC Radio (British Columbia, Canada)
Sun 9pm PT, Mon Mid ET on KHMB-AM and FM (Half Moon Bay, CA)
Mon 10pm ET, 7pm PT on The Radio Slot Network (San Francisco, CA)
Replays various times throughout the week on the Entertainment Channel at PWRNetwork
Tape us now, listen to us later, using DAR.fm/tvconfidential
Also available as a podcast via iTunes, FeedBurner, SoundCloud
and now on your mobile phone via Stitcher.com
Follow us online at www.tvconfidential.net
Follow us now on Twitter: Twitter.com/tvconfidential
Like our Fan Page at www.facebook.com/tvconfidential

If you listen to TV CONFIDENTIAL, and like what you’ve heard, please consider supporting our efforts by becoming a patron of our show through Patreon. It’s easy to do, it does not cost much, plus you can receive some cool rewards (such as coupons that will allow you to download up to six free programs every month from the TV CONFIDENTIAL Archives store). For more information, please visit www.Patreon.com/tvconfidential... and thanks!

This Week in Television History: August 2017 PART III

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.

August 22, 1932

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) began its first TV broadcast in England. 

The BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of Broadcasting House, London, on 22 August 1932. The studio moved to larger quarters in 16 Portland Place, London, in February 1934, and continued broadcasting the 30-line images, carried by telephone line to the medium wave transmitter at Brookmans Park, until 11 September 1935, by which time advances in all-electronic television systems made the electromechanical broadcasts obsolete.

August 27, 1952

Paul Reubens is born Paul Rubenfeld. 

Actor, writer, film producer, game show host, and comedian, best known for his character Pee-wee Herman. 

Paul Reubens (born Paul Rubenfeld; August 27, 1952) is an American actor, writer, film producer, game show host, and comedian, best known for his character Pee-wee Herman. Reubens joined the Los Angeles troupe The Groundlings in the 1970s and started his career as an improvisational comedian and stage actor. In 1982, Reubens put up a show about a character he had been developing for years. The show was called The Pee-wee Herman Show and it ran for five sold-out months with HBO producing a successful special about it. Pee-wee became an instant cult figure and for the next decade, Reubens would be completely committed to his character, doing all of his public appearances and interviews as Pee-wee. In 1985 Pee-wee's Big Adventure, directed by the then-unknown Tim Burton, was a financial and critical success, and soon developed into a cult film. Big Top Pee-wee, 1988's sequel, was less successful than its predecessor. Between 1986 and 1990, Reubens starred as Pee-wee in the CBS Saturday-morning children's program Pee-wee's Playhouse.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa