Just a few random TV related events that happened on April 21. Discuss or comment as you please……
1933: The first television entertainment/musical revue in the U.K., Looking In, is broadcast by the BBC. The first four minutes of this program actually survive on a Silvatone record, an early experimental process for home video recording. This surviving (and restored) disc of a 30-line mechanical broadcast stands as the earliest known recording of broadcast television.
1951: Actor Tony Danza (Taxi, Who’s the Boss?) is born (as Anthony Salvatore Iadanza) in Brooklyn, New York.
1961: Dave Garroway hosts NBC’s Today for the last time.
1975: Days of our Lives becomes the second U.S. soap opera to expand from thirty minutes to an hour in length.
1982: WTTO (channel 21) signs on in Homewood (Birmingham), Alabama. It is the market’s first indie, and the second in the state (signing on a few months after WPMI-TV in Mobile).
1982: The final first-run episode of WKRP in Cincinnati airs on CBS.
1982: WGXA-TV (channel 24) begins broadcasting in Macon, Georgia as an ABC affiliate (the last of the "Big 3" network affiliates to sign on in Middle Georgia after WMAZ-TV and WCWB-TV).
1983: WTWC-TV (channel 40) launches in Tallahassee, Florida as an NBC affiliate. The station has always struggled, with Albany, Georgia’s WALB-TV (channel 10) having (unofficially) previously been the de facto NBC outlet in Tallahassee for so long. (It is receivable OTA in much of the market, and continued to be on area cable systems for many years after WTWC’s launch.)
1993: Walker, Texas Ranger premieres on CBS.
1996: Bookie and TV sports commentator Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder dies of a heart attack in Las Vegas, aged 76.
(Just a little featurette I hope to do as time permits. It’s an entirely random selection based on a quick Net search, and is not meant to be comprehensive. So, don’t post nasty messages about “you forgot THIS” or “how could you not mention THAT?” Do so, and I’ll just take my keyboard and go home…..)
1933: The first television entertainment/musical revue in the U.K., Looking In, is broadcast by the BBC. The first four minutes of this program actually survive on a Silvatone record, an early experimental process for home video recording. This surviving (and restored) disc of a 30-line mechanical broadcast stands as the earliest known recording of broadcast television.
1951: Actor Tony Danza (Taxi, Who’s the Boss?) is born (as Anthony Salvatore Iadanza) in Brooklyn, New York.
1961: Dave Garroway hosts NBC’s Today for the last time.
1975: Days of our Lives becomes the second U.S. soap opera to expand from thirty minutes to an hour in length.
1982: WTTO (channel 21) signs on in Homewood (Birmingham), Alabama. It is the market’s first indie, and the second in the state (signing on a few months after WPMI-TV in Mobile).
1982: The final first-run episode of WKRP in Cincinnati airs on CBS.
1982: WGXA-TV (channel 24) begins broadcasting in Macon, Georgia as an ABC affiliate (the last of the "Big 3" network affiliates to sign on in Middle Georgia after WMAZ-TV and WCWB-TV).
1983: WTWC-TV (channel 40) launches in Tallahassee, Florida as an NBC affiliate. The station has always struggled, with Albany, Georgia’s WALB-TV (channel 10) having (unofficially) previously been the de facto NBC outlet in Tallahassee for so long. (It is receivable OTA in much of the market, and continued to be on area cable systems for many years after WTWC’s launch.)
1993: Walker, Texas Ranger premieres on CBS.
1996: Bookie and TV sports commentator Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder dies of a heart attack in Las Vegas, aged 76.
(Just a little featurette I hope to do as time permits. It’s an entirely random selection based on a quick Net search, and is not meant to be comprehensive. So, don’t post nasty messages about “you forgot THIS” or “how could you not mention THAT?” Do so, and I’ll just take my keyboard and go home…..)
