• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

TV urban legends which could be false.

Sometime ago I reading about a man who was about to retire from Denver's KUSA. He was there for so long that when he started work for Denver's channel 9 the station was known as KBTV. Anyway the subject of Turn-On was brought up. He claims that KBTV aired the show in full for that one night back in 1969 and did not announce that the rest of Turn-On would not be seen and cut away to some woman playing the piano. Many of books that were published over the years says that KBTV did just that. He had no idea where they got THAT bit of information.

Soupy Sales went to his grave denying that he did not say " hey kids what begins with F and ends with K ?? Firetruck !!". Oh he would also deny a similar remark about pies too. Yet many people claim to have heard Soupy say those things. Reminds me of two djs when I worked in radio. Story goes one night when one dj was on the air the other dj walked in the studio and says "I was sucking on a Camel" as in cigarette but the other dj says on the air "...I know what you rather suck !!". Anyway the two announcers were fired for that even though they claim they never said such a thing. Even the aircheck of that night in question proved to be false but people swear they heard it.

When Chris Chubbuck took her own life on the set of her program Suncoast Digest there are still those who to this day claim that have seen the tape of her suicide. Even those who have never been to Sarasota, Florida where the incident took place. Never mind the fact that the police took the tape and was never re-broadcasted.

Any other examples ??
 
Last edited:
Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game vs the NY Knicks on March 2, 1962.

It was supposedly seen or viewed by thousands all over Pennsylvania and New York. The fact was, the game was played in Hershey PA, rather than Philadelphia (it was considered a Warriors home game), and was not televised anywhere, local or national. The attendance at the game was just over 4000.
 
Off the top of my head, people claimed for years that the President of Proctor and Gambla appeared on the Phil Donahue Show admitting to being a member of the Church of Satan. This rumor persisted for years, and even resulted in a lawsuit against Amway distributors spreading the rumor. Here is Snopes take: http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/procter.asp

You mean I've been boycotting Crest toothpaste, Bounty paper towels, and Charmin toilet paper for no reason? I always thought Mr. Whipple seemed a bit satanic. :rolleyes:
 
The cast of Green Acres DID NOT roast Arnold the pig after the final episode.

Joan Crawford did not appear on Batman--that stemmed from a video arcade trivia question that claimed that she "played the Devil" on the show. The actual truth was that JOHN Crawford played "Printer's Devil," one of Bookworm's henchmen in a pair of episodes.
 
The famous one about Raquel Welch appearing as a guest on the Tonight Show and
bringing her cat. Then asking Johnny Carson "Would you like to pet my *****?" to which
Carson replied "Sure, put down the cat."

That has been circulating for 40 years.....never happened!
 
The famous one about Raquel Welch appearing as a guest on the Tonight Show and
bringing her cat. Then asking Johnny Carson "Would you like to pet my *****?" to which
Carson replied "Sure, put down the cat."

That has been circulating for 40 years.....never happened!

Another Carson legend: that Arnold Palmer's wife was on The Tonight Show, and said that she always kisses Arnold's (golf) balls for good luck. Carson reportedly said, "That must straighten out his putter," or something similar. Never happened. Palmer's wife was never on the show.

Here's Palmer's version - when he spoke to Jay Leno:


Leno: … apparently Johnny said, “Is there anything your wife does to bring you good luck?”

Palmer: No, Johnny said, “Does your wife kiss your balls before you go to play?” and I said, “I don’t even go to bed without pajamas.”

Leno: I thought that was a tactful way … but thanks for getting right to the point. So we cleared that up. That’s like a famous one, like Jack Benny’s, “Your money or your life … I’m thinking it over.” I wanted to find out … so it is true?

Palmer: There you’ve got it. And I don’t want to hear about it any more.
 
Ahh, the "Move that d*** cat" story...Other versions have it about Zsa Zsa Gabor, and that it happened on the Dick Cavett Show. Cavett's show was the source of another "I swear I saw it" incident, the supposed on-air death of one of his guests, Dr. James Rodale, the founder of Prevention magazine. (He really did die on-set during a taping of the show, but it never aired, of course.)

One I only heard about recently (in an article on Deadspin) was the rumored incident a day or 2 after 9/11 on Mike Francesa and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo's show on WFAN, where they were supposedly calling for Jewish Americans to take a loyalty oath. (I'm thinking their show may have been simulcast on the YES Network by that time.) At this point, no audio or video has surfaced indicating that they actually made that comment.
 
Zsa Zsa was actually responsible for ending live broadcasts of The Mike Douglas Show. She was telling a joke and Morey Amsterdam interrupted him, which caused her to call him an S.O.B.

Speaking of watching things that were never on the air, when the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination came around, Skip Bayless (then with ESPN) talked about how he spent that weekend. He said on Sunday morning that he and his family went to church and after coming home, he watched the Cowboys play in Cleveland. Except for the fact that the game wasn't being televised, he was completely accurate...
 
Such legends are not confined to television. When Bill Mazeroski hit the home run that lifted the Pittsburgh Pirates to a World Series Championship over the New York Yankees in 1960, Forbes Field held around 36,000 people.

Yet for decades everyone in town who would have been old enough at the time swore they were at the
game and saw him hit it. 300,000 people at least.
 
Back in the 70s and 80s there were those who swear that they seen something but didn't and a lot of those went public. In 1977 I can remember seeing the ABC-TV flick "Curse of the Black Widow". My teacher at the time saw it too but I am pretty sure we saw different films. In class I can remember him telling the other teachers about this "trash". He claimed he saw nude bodies, graphic sex and constant four letter words.....on ABC ????

Our preacher at the time went after another made of TV movie this being Flesh and Blood on CBS. In his words which he said on our local radio at the time the movie was about incest. A mother in love with her own son and the two had sex. We saw the movie and if there was any incest we didn't see it. Another pastor at the time always talked bout "HBO Porn" on his show. My dad knew him and he didn't have HBO and besides HBO didn't show porn but it still didn't stop him from talking about it I am not going to begin to talk about those who swear they saw nudity on Benny Hill.
 
...of course, there are still people claiming to have seen Arthur Godfrey fire Julius LaRosa on CBS-TV. Godfrey fired LaRosa on the air, all right, but it was on CBS Radio, not a television show...
 
My grandmother told me once that she heard Godfrey fire LaRosa on the air, and that she was not happy about it. She never told me that it was on TV; she *always* listened to Godfrey on the radio.
 
When Chris Chubbuck took her own life on the set of her program Suncoast Digest there are still those who to this day claim that have seen the tape of her suicide. Even those who have never been to Sarasota, Florida where the incident took place. Never mind the fact that the police took the tape and was never re-broadcasted.

Well, somehow, that tape just got leaked to YouTube.

http://www.adweek.com/tvspy/long-lo...chors-on-air-suicide-posted-to-youtube/185702
 
Last edited:
We just passed the 40th anniversary of the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Northern Kentucky, in which around 160 people were killed. People claim to have been there who couldn't possibly have been old enough. Did young 20 somethings go see John Davidson in 1978?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom