April 4: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on April 4. Discuss or comment as you please……

1906: Actress Bea Benaderet (The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction) is born in New York City.

1906: Newsman and Timex shill John Cameron Swayze (Camel News Caravan) is born in Wichita, Kansas.

1916: Actor David White (Bewitched) is born in Denver, Colorado.

1928: Actress Estelle Harris (Seinfeld) is born (as Estelle Nussbaum) in New York City.

1949: WKRC-TV (channel 12) signs on in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1950: Actress Christine Lahti (Chicago Hope) is born in Birmingham, Michigan.

1953: WKST-TV (channel 45) signs on in New Castle, Pennsylvania as an ABC affiliate. The station would later move to channel 33, be relicensed to Youngstown, Ohio, and change calls to the current WYTV.

1953: KFDA-TV (channel 10) begins broadcasting in Amarillo, Texas.

1959: Actor Phil Morris is born (the son of actor Greg Morris) in Iowa City, Iowa. He is most famous for having portrayed the Cochran-esque lawyer Jackie Chiles in a recurring role on Seinfeld.

1968: The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Some bulletins interrupt regular TV programming, and the shooting is covered by the evening news shows, but the networks eschew the kind of wall-to-wall coverage that marked the 1963 JFK assassination (or the assassination of RFK 2 months later in 1968).

1969: The Wild Wild West airs its last original episode on CBS. Two TV-movies with the original cast would follow a decade later. (I won’t even mention the horrendous 1999 Will Smith-Kevin Kline movie....oops....dammit, I mentioned it....)

1969: Finally having a handy excuse, CBS network CEO and President William S. Paley abruptly cancels The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The reason given is the Smothers' refusal to meet the pre-air delivery dates as specified by the network in order to accommodate review by the censors before airing. (The Brothers later filed a successful breach of contract suit against the network.) It is announced that the time slot would be taken over by Hee Haw; however, special programming would run until the first Hee Haw episode was ready to air on June 15.

1970: The last guest checks out of the Shady Rest: Petticoat Junction airs its last episode on CBS.

1983: The Morning Show, hosted by Regis Philbin and Cyndy Garvey, premieres on New York’s WABC-TV. Over a successful five-year local run, Philbin’s partner would change to Ann Abernathy, then Kathy Lee Johnson (not yet Gifford). In 1988, the show would go national, syndicated by Buena Vista Television, under the new title Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.

1984: Local and national media, as well as a capacity-plus audience, jam Studio One at WGN-TV (Chicago) to watch Bob Bell tape his final show as Bozo the Clown. After a nationwide search, Joey D’Auria would replace Bell as Chi-town’s Bozo, taping his first show five months later and playing the role for 17 years.

(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…..)

 

[wbhist]

1906: Actress Bea Benaderet (The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction) is born in New York City.

1970: The last guest checks out of the Shady Rest: Petticoat Junction airs its last episode on CBS.

Talk about a tie-in, or whatever . . . (though reruns of PJ would continue to air through Sept. 12, 1970).

1983: The Morning Show, hosted by Regis Philbin and Cyndy Garvey, premieres on New York’s WABC-TV. Over a successful five-year local run, Philbin’s partner would change to Ann Abernathy, then Kathy Lee Johnson (not yet Gifford). In 1988, the show would go national, syndicated by Buena Vista Television, under the new title Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.

This show was a successor to a series of local morning programs that WABC-TV had aired beginning in 1970, including: AM New York (whose first host, up to 1972, was future commercial pitchman John Bartholomew Tucker), The Stanley Siegel Show, and Good Morning New York (whose hosts, at different times, included future Good Morning America weatherman Spencer Christian, former WNEW-TV 10 O'Clock News co-anchor Judy Licht, and Channel 7 Eyewitness News correspondent Doug Johnson).

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

1974 - TV stations in Kentucky & Ohio interrupt late afternoon programming to warn of a tornados. One twister moves up the Ohio River from Louisville, then crosses the river west of Cincinnati and is shown live on WCPO-TV, Channel 9. After moving through the western suburbs of Cincinnati, the tornado moves east of Dayton, Ohio and smashes through the City of Xenia.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1974 - TV stations in Kentucky & Ohio interrupt late afternoon programming to warn of a tornados. One twister moves up the Ohio River from Louisville, then crosses the river west of Cincinnati and is shown live on WCPO-TV, Channel 9. After moving through the western suburbs of Cincinnati, the tornado moves east of Dayton, Ohio and smashes through the City of Xenia.

The Xenia tornado actually occurred on April 3. The April 4 events in the "Super Outbreak" were limited to Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

 

[mleach]

1974 - TV stations in Kentucky & Ohio interrupt late afternoon programming to warn of a tornados. One twister moves up the Ohio River from Louisville, then crosses the river west of Cincinnati and is shown live on WCPO-TV, Channel 9. After moving through the western suburbs of Cincinnati, the tornado moves east of Dayton, Ohio and smashes through the City of Xenia.

To go along with this and how WCPO had shown the tornado "live", on the flip side there was the 6/15/88 tornado that touched down in Denver. Despite the fact that the not only did KCNC, KMGH annd KUSA at the time had their own choppers but so did radio's KOA, KHOW, KRZN and KOOL 105 as well, the story I have been told time and time again from friends who had live/worked in Denver was that not one local station ( radio or TV ) felt it was important enough to tape ( much less show live ) the tornado actually touching down right in their own city.

Even though the tornado was rather small, still though I was surprised to hear of that "so what..who cares" attitude...that is if this was really the case. I do remember hearing the KOOL 105 aircheck years ago recorded the day after and they did seem to have that attitude about that tornado.

 

[KyDXIn]

1974 - TV stations in Kentucky & Ohio interrupt late afternoon programming to warn of a tornados. One twister moves up the Ohio River from Louisville, then crosses the river west of Cincinnati and is shown live on WCPO-TV, Channel 9. After moving through the western suburbs of Cincinnati, the tornado moves east of Dayton, Ohio and smashes through the City of Xenia.

The Xenia tornado actually occurred on April 3. The April 4 events in the "Super Outbreak" were limited to Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

When this tornado came thru Louisville, WHAS' traffic reporter, Dick Gilbert, followed the tornado from near the airport northeastward to the Northfield subdivision, which was completely destroyed, Gilbert was told by traffic controllers at the airport that he was the only aircraft in the air around Louisville for 300 miles. He tracked the location of the tornado through the city via the exploding electrical transformers. After touching down at the airport, the tornado hit Freedom Hall, punching 3 holes in the roof, and sucking chairs into the cyclone. Ironically, these chairs were found in Xenia Ohio. They were easily identified cause they said "Freedom Hall" on their backs. If you want to listen to radio coverage of this go to http://lkyradio.com/WHASairchecks.htm#tornado and look for WHAS Radio News Covers the April 3, 1974 Tornado Disaster. Having lived through this, its still spooky listening to this all these years later.