Just a few random TV related events that happened on April 30. Discuss or comment as you please……
1908: Actress Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks, The Mothers-in-Law) is born (as Eunice M. Quedens) in Mill Valley, California.
1923: Actor Al Lewis (Car 54, Where Are You?; The Munsters) is born (as Albert Meister) in New York City.
1926: Actress Cloris Leachman (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis) is born in Des Moines, Iowa.
1938: Actor Gary Collins (The Sixth Sense, Hour Magazine, The Home Show) is born in Venice, California.
1939: NBC officially begins regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts in New York over W2XBS with a transmission of the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair. The next day, four models of RCA television sets would go on sale to the general public in various New York City department stores, promoted in a series of splashy newspaper ads. (Though it is to be noted that DuMont - and others - actually began offering home sets in 1938 in anticipation of NBC's announced April 1939 start-up.)
1941: The FCC announces approval of the NTSC black-and-white broadcast standards (525 lines, 30 fps) and authorizes the service to begin commercial operation starting July 1.
1947: RCA demonstrates a simultaneous color system at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Color images are projected on an 8x10 foot screen using a closed circuit pickup from a film/slide scanner.
1948: Actor Perry King (Riptide) is born in Alliance, Ohio.
1954: A genre is born.....KABC-TV Los Angeles airs Dig Me Later, Vampira, a special introducing the character portrayed by actress Mala Nurmi. The following night would see the first regular broadcast of The Vampira Show, in which Nurmi would host (and mock) horror films. An instant cult hit, the show established the basic concept and format for many local horror movie shows to come. When KABC nonetheless canceled Vampira in late 1955 (primarily because Nurmi refused to sell the rights to her character to ABC), she took the character across town to independent KHJ-TV (where it aired briefly in 1956). She later appeared in movies, most famously in Ed Wood’s legendary bomb “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”
1957: In Portland, Oregon, Both KLOR (channel 12) and KPTV (channel 27) sign off the air. The following day, the two stations would merge into one, under KPTV's license and call letters and using KLOR's channel 12 assignment.
1959: Actor Paul Gross (Due South) is born in Calgary, Alberta.
1964: In the U.S., television sets manufactured as of this day are required to include UHF tuners.
1970: Actress Inger Stevens (The Farmer’s Daughter) dies in Hollywood, California, aged 35, due to an overdose of Tedral (a combination drug of theophylline, ephedrine and phenobarbital) washed down with alcohol. The death is ruled a suicide.
1972: Roger Mudd ends a 6-year stint as the weekend anchor of The CBS Evening News.
1974: Actress Agnes Moorhead (Bewitched) dies in Rochester, Minnesota of uterine cancer, aged 74.
1984: That’s Incredible! ends its 4-season ABC run.
1990: The long lost pilot film to I Love Lucy is broadcast for the first time (as a special on CBS).
1992: Eight years of colorful sweaters, rubbery faces, fatherly wisdom, and an impossibly perfect family come to an end with the final original episode of The Cosby Show on NBC.
1998: A bizarre and ultimately gruesome spectacle unfolds live on Los Angeles TV stations (and is picked up in the latter stages by some national cable news networks). A distraught man, Daniel V. Jones, suffering from cancer and HIV, leads police on a lengthy high-speed chase. He ends up on a deserted, barricaded stretch of freeway, holding police at bay. He proceeds to unfurl a large banner (apparently with the TV helicopter cameras in mind) criticizing his HMO’s coverage practices, then retreats to the cab of his pick-up truck where he sets off an incendiary device, engulfing the vehicle (and, briefly, himself) in flames. After frantically stripping off his burning outer clothes, he grabs his shotgun, calmly walks to a concrete barrier, braces the weapon...and blows his head off. The live coverage with its bloody finale begets a flurry of heated criticism aimed at the L.A. stations, both for interrupting (in some cases) afternoon programming aimed at children to carry the incident live, and for not cutting away when it became apparent that it was going to end so horribly. (The general explanation is that there wasn’t sufficient time for directors to anticipate the suicide. Yet at least one station’s helicopter crew did realize what was about to happen, quickly zooming the camera out seconds before the gunshot, and many believed the coverage should have been cut off even earlier, when the truck and Mr. Jones were set ablaze.)
2002: ABC broadcasts the last first-run episodes of Dharma & Greg and Spin City.
2007: Actor Tom Poston (The Steve Allen Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Mork & Mindy, Newhart) dies in Los Angeles of respiratory failure, aged 85.
(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…..)
1908: Actress Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks, The Mothers-in-Law) is born (as Eunice M. Quedens) in Mill Valley, California.
1923: Actor Al Lewis (Car 54, Where Are You?; The Munsters) is born (as Albert Meister) in New York City.
1926: Actress Cloris Leachman (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis) is born in Des Moines, Iowa.
1938: Actor Gary Collins (The Sixth Sense, Hour Magazine, The Home Show) is born in Venice, California.
1939: NBC officially begins regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts in New York over W2XBS with a transmission of the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair. The next day, four models of RCA television sets would go on sale to the general public in various New York City department stores, promoted in a series of splashy newspaper ads. (Though it is to be noted that DuMont - and others - actually began offering home sets in 1938 in anticipation of NBC's announced April 1939 start-up.)
1941: The FCC announces approval of the NTSC black-and-white broadcast standards (525 lines, 30 fps) and authorizes the service to begin commercial operation starting July 1.
1947: RCA demonstrates a simultaneous color system at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Color images are projected on an 8x10 foot screen using a closed circuit pickup from a film/slide scanner.
1948: Actor Perry King (Riptide) is born in Alliance, Ohio.
1954: A genre is born.....KABC-TV Los Angeles airs Dig Me Later, Vampira, a special introducing the character portrayed by actress Mala Nurmi. The following night would see the first regular broadcast of The Vampira Show, in which Nurmi would host (and mock) horror films. An instant cult hit, the show established the basic concept and format for many local horror movie shows to come. When KABC nonetheless canceled Vampira in late 1955 (primarily because Nurmi refused to sell the rights to her character to ABC), she took the character across town to independent KHJ-TV (where it aired briefly in 1956). She later appeared in movies, most famously in Ed Wood’s legendary bomb “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”
1957: In Portland, Oregon, Both KLOR (channel 12) and KPTV (channel 27) sign off the air. The following day, the two stations would merge into one, under KPTV's license and call letters and using KLOR's channel 12 assignment.
1959: Actor Paul Gross (Due South) is born in Calgary, Alberta.
1964: In the U.S., television sets manufactured as of this day are required to include UHF tuners.
1970: Actress Inger Stevens (The Farmer’s Daughter) dies in Hollywood, California, aged 35, due to an overdose of Tedral (a combination drug of theophylline, ephedrine and phenobarbital) washed down with alcohol. The death is ruled a suicide.
1972: Roger Mudd ends a 6-year stint as the weekend anchor of The CBS Evening News.
1974: Actress Agnes Moorhead (Bewitched) dies in Rochester, Minnesota of uterine cancer, aged 74.
1984: That’s Incredible! ends its 4-season ABC run.
1990: The long lost pilot film to I Love Lucy is broadcast for the first time (as a special on CBS).
1992: Eight years of colorful sweaters, rubbery faces, fatherly wisdom, and an impossibly perfect family come to an end with the final original episode of The Cosby Show on NBC.
1998: A bizarre and ultimately gruesome spectacle unfolds live on Los Angeles TV stations (and is picked up in the latter stages by some national cable news networks). A distraught man, Daniel V. Jones, suffering from cancer and HIV, leads police on a lengthy high-speed chase. He ends up on a deserted, barricaded stretch of freeway, holding police at bay. He proceeds to unfurl a large banner (apparently with the TV helicopter cameras in mind) criticizing his HMO’s coverage practices, then retreats to the cab of his pick-up truck where he sets off an incendiary device, engulfing the vehicle (and, briefly, himself) in flames. After frantically stripping off his burning outer clothes, he grabs his shotgun, calmly walks to a concrete barrier, braces the weapon...and blows his head off. The live coverage with its bloody finale begets a flurry of heated criticism aimed at the L.A. stations, both for interrupting (in some cases) afternoon programming aimed at children to carry the incident live, and for not cutting away when it became apparent that it was going to end so horribly. (The general explanation is that there wasn’t sufficient time for directors to anticipate the suicide. Yet at least one station’s helicopter crew did realize what was about to happen, quickly zooming the camera out seconds before the gunshot, and many believed the coverage should have been cut off even earlier, when the truck and Mr. Jones were set ablaze.)
2002: ABC broadcasts the last first-run episodes of Dharma & Greg and Spin City.
2007: Actor Tom Poston (The Steve Allen Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Mork & Mindy, Newhart) dies in Los Angeles of respiratory failure, aged 85.
(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…..)
