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"
Singer, actor and dancer Ken Berry will join us on this weekend’s edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Jan. 12-15 at the following times and venues:
Share-a-Vision Radio San Francisco Bay Area Friday 1/12 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 1/13 8pm ET, 5pm PT Sunday 1/14 10am ET, 7am PT Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks
KSCO AM-1080 and FM-104.1 San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA KOMY AM-1340 La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA Sunday 1/14 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 1/14 1pm ET, 10am PT Streaming at CROCRadio.com or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in CROC
RadioSlot.com San Francisco, CA Monday 1/15 10pm ET, 7pm PT with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com
Once described as “a double-triple threat” because of his accomplishments as a singer, dancer and actor on stage, film, on television, Ken Berry has entertained audiences for more than six decades. That’s a claim that not every performer can make.
Ken will join us this week to share a few memories about his career in the entertainment industry, from his early years with the Billy Barnes Revue and working in Las Vegas alongside Abbott and Costello, to his successful runs on F Troop, Mayberry, R.F.D., and Mama’s Family. We’ll talk about his friendship with Buster Keaton (not to mention the major influence the silent film star had on his career), the important roles that Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball and Leonard Nimoy all played in various points in his career, his many appearance on top TV variety shows and specials, and a few other surprises. Ken Berry will join us in our second hour.
Greg Ehrbar will join us in our first hour for a new DVD report, plus Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen will bring us This Week in TV History.
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.
January 8, 1923
Lawrence Samuel
"Larry" Storch is born.
Actor best known for his comic television roles, including voice-over work for
cartoon shows, such as Mr. Whoopee on Tennessee
Tuxedo and His Tales, and his
live-action role of the bumbling Corporal Randolph Agarn on F Troop.
In 1975, Storch co-starred with Bob
Burns (who was disguised as a gorilla) and Forrest Tucker on the
short-lived but popular Saturday morning children's show The
Ghost Busters. He also appeared on The
Love Boat, was Al Bundy's childhood hero on Married... with Children, and was a
semi-regular on Car 54, Where Are You?. He co-starred on
the short-lived series The
Queen and I.
January 11, 1958
Seahunt debuted on
CBS-TV.
Mike
Nelson (Lloyd Bridges) is a free-lance scuba diver
who has various adventures. Nelson, a former U.S. Navy frogman (having left the
service about four years before the series began), is a well-known expert on
diving who is often called on for difficult or dangerous projects. Traveling on
his boat the Argonaut, Nelson outmaneuvers villains, salvages
everything from a bicycle to a nuclear missile, rescues children trapped in a
flooded cave, and even a dog. In the pilot
episode, Mike rescues a downed Navy pilot from his sunken jet. Since no dialogue was possible during the
underwater sequences, Bridges provided voice-over narration for all the
installments. Nelson also educated non-diving characters (and the audience) in
various aspects of diving and the underwater world.
The
series made frequent references to Marineland of the Pacific, which provided
facilities, resources and technical advice to the production company.
At
the end of each episode, Bridges would appear as himself to deliver a brief
comment. These comments sometimes included a plea to viewers to understand and
protect the marine environment, along with gems of wisdom from Bridges' own
experiences.
The
show was aired on the network for four years.
January 11, 1963
The Beatles made their first national TV appearance in
the U.K.
They performed the song
"Please Please Me" on the show "Thank Your Lucky Stars."
January 11, 1983
The Joy of
Painting aired for the first time.
The
half-hour instructional television show hosted by painter Bob Ross which
ran from January 11, 1983 until May 17, 1994. In each episode, Ross taught
techniques for landscape oil painting, completing a painting in each session.
The program followed the same format as its predecessor, The Magic of Oil Painting, hosted by
Ross's mentor Bill Alexander. In its running it won three
Emmy Awards.
January 13, 1928
Experimental
Television sets are installed in three homes in Schenectady, New York.
RCA and General Electric installed the sets, which
displayed a 1.5-inch-square picture. However, televisions did not become common
household appliances until the late 1940s.
January 13, 1973
ABC aired the final episode of Alias Smith and Jones.
Jerry McCord Van DykeJuly 27, 1931 – January 5, 2018
Jerry Van Dyke died yesterday at the age of 86.
Van Dyke pursued hisstand-up comedycareer while still inDanville High School, and was already a veteran of strip joints and nightclubs when he joined theUnited States Air ForceTops In Bluein 1954 and 1955.During the mid-1950s, Van Dyke worked atWTHI-TVinTerre Haute, Indiana.The Jerry Van Dyke Show, which included futureCBSNewsEarly Shownews anchor Joseph Benti, Nancee South and Ben Falber, was popular fare.In the service, he performed at military bases around the world, twice winning theAll Air Force Talent Show.
In 1963, Van Dyke was cast on an episode of the CBS anthology series, GE True, hosted by Jack Webb. When The Judy Garland Show was unsuccessfully revamped, Van Dyke left the program.He turned down the offer to play Gilligan on Gilligan's Island, a role which went instead to Bob Denver.He rejected as well an offer to replace Don Knotts as Sheriff Andy Taylor's deputy on The Andy Griffith Show.Van Dyke finally accepted the lead role of attorney David Crabtree in the short-lived sitcom, My Mother the Car (1965), the misadventures of a man whose deceased mother Gladys (voiced by Ann Sothern) is reincarnated as a restored antique car.Although the series was a commercial failure, Van Dyke continued to work steadily in supporting television and film roles through the rest of the decade.
He starred in another short-lived situation comedy, Accidental Family (1967), as widowed comedian Jerry Webster who buys a farm to raise his son while he is not away on professional tours.
In 1988, he made a guest appearance on Scott Baio's sitcom Charles in Charge as Jamie Powell's health teacher, Mr. Merkin.In 1989, Van Dyke began portraying Luther Van Dam, a beloved, yet befuddled assistant coach on the long-running series Coach.For this role, he received four consecutive Emmy Award nominations (1990 through 1993) for "Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series".In 1995, he appeared in a series ofHardee's commercials to promote the Big Hardee, then in the late 1990s acted as the spokesperson for Big Lots. He appeared in the 2000s sitcom Yes, Dear as a recurring character, Big Jimmy, the father of Jimmy Hughes.He made a guest appearance on a September 2008 episode of My Name Is Earl and in 2010, he made an appearance on the second-season episode, "A Simple Christmas" of the television series, The Middle, playing Frankie's father, Tag Spence. He returned in "Thanksgiving III" in November 2011, "Thanksgiving IV" in November 2012, "From Orson with Love" in May 2013, and "Thanksgiving V" in November 2013. Van Dyke also played the object of Maw Maw's affections on the 18th episode of the first season of the series Raising Hope. In a December 2013 episode of The Millers he played Bud Miller, father to Margo Martindale's character, Carol.In his final TV role in April 2015, he reprised his role as Frankie's father on The Middle, guesting along with real-life brother Dick Van Dyke to play brothers.
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.
The first episode of Star Trek - Deep Space Nine aired.
Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine (sometimes
abbreviated to DS9)
is a science
fiction television series set in
the Star Trek universe in the Milky Way galaxy, in the years 2369–2375. In contrast to other Star Trek TV
shows, it primarily takes place on a space station rather
than a starship, so as not to have two series with starships in the
same time period; the series ran concurrently with Star
Trek: The Next Generation during
its first two seasons and with Star Trek: Voyager for the remainder of its run. The starship USS Defiant was introduced in season 3, but the Deep
Space Nine space station
remained the show's primary setting.
The show is noted for its
well-developed characters, original and complex plots, religious themes, and
for starring the only black captain in any of the televised Star Trek incarnations.
Rather than following the classical Star Trek focus of space
exploration, the show often showcased complex and darker social themes, and in
later seasons, an emphasis on many aspects of war.
DS9 premiered in 1993 and ran for seven seasons
until 1999. Although rooted in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe, it was the first Trekspin-off created
without Roddenberry's direct involvement, although he did give the concept his
blessing shortly before his death in 1991.
DS9 began while Star
Trek: The Next Generation was
still on the air, and there were a few cameos featuring characters from either
show (such as Picard's appearance in the DS9 pilot). The
station appeared in TNG during the sixth-season episode "Birthright". In
addition, two Next Generation characters, Miles O'Brienand (from season 4 onwards) Worf, became regular members
of DS9. The station also appeared in the first part of the Voyager pilot
episode, "Caretaker".
DS9 centers on the formerly Cardassian space
station Terok Nor. After the Bajorans have liberated themselves from
the long and brutal Cardassian
Occupation, the United
Federation of Planets is invited
by the Bajoran Provisional Government to administer joint control of the
station, which initially orbits Bajor. The station is
renamed Deep
Space Nine, and a Starfleet crew
is assigned to manage it. Shortly after their arrival, the Starfleet crew
discovers a stable wormhole in
Bajoran space leading from
the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant,
and the station is moved to a strategic position near the wormhole's entrance
to safeguard it from the Cardassians. Deep Space Nine and Bajor quickly become
a center for exploration, interstellar trade, political maneuvering, and open conflict. Threats come not only from
Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans from
the Alpha Quadrant, but later from the Dominion, an alliance of alien species from the Gamma Quadrant
that take up arms alongside the Cardassians against the Federation and its
allies starting in Season 3. Deep Space Nine becomes a key military base for
the Federation in the Dominion War, and is assigned the starship USS Defiant to
aid in its protection.
According to co-creator
Berman, he and Piller considered setting the new series on a colony planet, but
they felt a space station would appeal more to viewers, and would save the
money required for a land-based show's on-location shooting. They did not want
the show set aboard a starship because Star Trek: The Next Generation was
still in production, and in Berman’s words, it "seemed ridiculous to have
two shows—two casts of characters—that were off going where no man has gone
before."
While its predecessors tended
to restore the status quo ante at the end of each episode, allowing
out-of-order viewing, DS9 contains story arcs that span
episodes and seasons. One installment often builds upon earlier ones, with
several cliffhanger endings. Michael Piller considered this one of
the series' best qualities, allowing repercussions of past episodes to
influence future events and forcing characters to "learn that actions have
consequences." This trend was especially noticeable toward the series
finale, by which time the show was intentionally scripted as a serial.
Unlike Star Trek: The
Next Generation, interpersonal conflicts were prominently featured in DS9.
This was at the suggestion of Star Trek: The Next Generation's
writers, many of whom also wrote for DS9, who felt that
Roddenberry's prohibition of conflicts within the crew restricted their ability
to write compelling dramatic stories. In Piller's words, "People who come
from different places—honorable, noble people—will naturally have
conflicts".
January 5, 1998
Sonny Bono, Congressman and former half of the singing
duo Sonny and Cher, is killed in a skiing accident.
Born in 1935, Bono rose to fame in the early 1970s as
the straight man to his wife in “The Sonny and Cher Show.” As a signer
and songwriter he received ten gold records during his career but his biggest
hit was undoubtedly 1965’s ”I Got You Babe.” He entered the political
world in 1988 when he was elected mayor of Palm Springs. He was elected to
Congress in 1994 as a Republican. He was 62.
January 6,
1963
Wild Kingdom premiered
on NBC.
The original Wild
Kingdom grew from discussions that started in 1962 between zoologistMarlin Perkins and
V. J. Skutt, the chairman and CEO of insurance company Mutual of Omaha.
The company had been the sponsor of an earlier animal-related show, Zoo Parade,
that Perkins had hosted from 1952 until 1957. Also intimately involved with the
creation of Wild Kingdom was Zoo Parade producer Don Meier, who was credited as the series' creator.Mutual
of Omaha sponsored and lent its name to the new program.
Liz and Henk Maartens, from
Irene, Pretoria in South Africa won five Emmy Awards for the documentary
series Wild Kingdom in 1970. One Emmy Award was for camerawork
while the other Emmy Awards were for aspects of production.
Wild Kingdom was first broadcast by NBC. The half-hour show aired on Sundays starting January
6, 1963 and continued until 1971, when the program entered first-run
syndication. As a prime-time
syndicated program, Wild Kingdom enjoyed great popularity.
Although most of the programs aired after 1971 were repeats, new shows
continued to be produced until 1987. Several episodes were filmed by
cameraman Roy Pinney. Perkins was the host for most of the show's history
until he was forced to retire in 1985 for health reasons. He died of cancer the
following year at age 81 and Jim Fowler,
Perkins' long-time assistant and sidekick,
became the host.
One of Wild Kingdom's
film editors, Bernard Braham, A.C.E., was offered membership with the American Cinema
Editors in 1979 and won a
prestigious EDDIE award in Hollywood for best documentary of the year, for the
episode "Desert Spring". His competition for the award was a National
Geographic episode titled "Gold". He was also nominated for several
other awards.
Perkins often introduced
commercial spots by tying them into the subject of the show. For example, at
the end of a segment about lions, he might say something like, "Just as
the mother lion protects her cubs, you can protect your children with an
insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha..."
The format of the show often
featured Perkins narrating off-camera, describing Fowler's on-camera work with
the wild animals. This was commonly parodied as Perkins saying "I'll wait
here [someplace safe] while Jim [does something or other with the dangerous
animal]". However, according to a 1997 interview with Fowler, Perkins
never said any such thing: according to Fowler, "Johnny Carson started
the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues".
Perkins often featured
pet chimpanzees in the studio: one named "W.K." (Wild
Kingdom); the other named "Mr. Moke", after the Mini Moke vehicle.
Wild Kingdom increased ecological and environmental awareness in the United States. Its exciting
footage brought the wilds of Africa,
the Amazon River and other exotic locales into the living rooms
of millions of Americans. It created an interest in commercial nature
programming that was a precursor to cable television networks such as the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
The original series has not
been seen since it went off the air. (Mutual of Omaha owns the rights to the
series.) However, several episodes have now been released on DVD from BCI
Eclipse (under license from Mutual of Omaha). Some episodes are also available
on an official YouTube channel.
The success of "Wild
Kingdom" led to several other wildlife documentary series going on the
air, including Animal World, Wild, Wild, World Of Animals. and Lorne
Greene's New Wilderness. But many
fans of wildlife documentaries still consider "Wild Kingdom" the
"gold standard" against which other such shows are compared.
January 6, 1973
The animated Saturday morning TV series of shorts
called Schoolhouse Rock premieres on ABC with Multiplication Rock.
The
short musical cartoons featured lessons in math, history, science, grammar, and
more, with classics like "Conjunction Junction,"
"Interjections," and "The Preamble to the Constitution."
Once described as “a double-triple threat” because of his accomplishments as a singer, dancer and actor on stage, film, on television, Ken Berry has entertained audiences for more than six decades. That’s a claim that not every performer can make. 
