August 16: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on August 16 (another busy day, with lots of births and deaths for some reason). Discuss or comment as you please……

1924: Actor Fess Parker (Daniel Boone) is born in Ft. Worth, Texas.

1930: Actor Robert Culp (I Spy, The Greatest American Hero) is born in Oakland, California.

1930: Football player and sports commentator Frank Gifford is born in Santa Monica, California.

1933: Actress Julie Newmar (My Living Doll, Batman) is born (as Julie Newmeyer) in Los Angeles.

1936: Actress and game show panelist Anita Gillette (What’s My Line, The Match Game, others) is born in Baltimore, Maryland.

1943: Actress/dancer Sharon Baird (The Mickey Mouse Club) is born in Seattle, Washington. In addition to her childhood fame as one of the original Mouseketeers, Ms. Baird also went on to perform many costumed “live puppet” roles in such children’s shows as New Zoo Revue, H.R. Punfnstuf, and Land of the Lost.

1944: John Logie Baird gives the world's first demonstration of a fully electronic color television display. His 600-line system utilized triple interlacing, using six scans to build each picture.

1944: One week before the liberation of Paris, the German TV service Fehrensender Paris goes dark. Originating from the Eiffel Tower, the transmitter had broadcast anti-British propaganda to occupied France. Transmissions had been closely monitored by the RAF for close to 2 years.

1952: Actor Reginald VelJohnson (Family Matters) is born in Queens, New York.

1953: WTVP (channel 17) signs on for the first time in Decatur, Illinois. It is the first TV station in central Illinois, and the second UHF in the state. It is also one of the first 14 primary ABC affiliates, and one of the few UHF ABC outlets to survive past the 1950’s. Calls changed to WAND in 1966, and in 2005 the station ended a more than half-century relationship with ABC, switching affiliation to NBC.

1953: Actress/singer Kathie Lee Gifford (Live with Regis and Kathie Lee) is born (as Kathryn Lee Epstein) in Paris, France.

1959: Actress Laura Innes (ER) is born in Pontiac, Michigan.

1977: The King is Dead: Elvis Presley expires ignominiously in the bathroom of Graceland at the age of 42. (BTW, it’s just an urban myth that he actually died while on the crapper – in reality, he was found on the floor several feet from the “throne.”) Sadly, 24-hour cable news channels do not yet exist, so fans have to survive without wall-to-wall “All Elvis All the Time” TV coverage of the tragedy.

1982: Madame’s Place, featuring Wayland Flowers’ famous “bitchy old broad” puppet, begins its syndicated run. It is one of the few original sitcoms to be conceived, marketed, and syndicated as a 5 day per week show.

1989: Miss Kitty goes to the Great Saloon in the Sky: Actress Amanda Blake (Gunsmoke) dies in Sacramento,California, aged 60.

2006: Just Shoot Me! airs the last of 148 original episodes on NBC.

(Just a little featurette I hope to do as time permits…..don’t expect it every single day. 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…..)

 

[Davros2006]

I'll add to that list the following...

1958: Veteran pop star (and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer) Madonna is born in Michigan. (Not necessarily a moment in TV history but she has been a major influence on upcoming singers/dancers.)

1999: The U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire premieres on ABC. After three years on network TV (and two short-run special series in 2004 with increased stakes), the show settles into syndication.

 

[LKellerIII]

So the two Giffords were born on the same day. Cute.

And Madonna is 50.

 

[Ultimajock]

1943: Actress/dancer Sharon Baird (The Mickey Mouse Club) is born in Seattle, Washington. In addition to her childhood fame as one of the original Mouseketeers, Ms. Baird also went on to perform many costumed “live puppet” roles in such children’s shows as New Zoo Revue, H.R. Punfnstuf, and Land of the Lost.

...Baird also appeared on several Gallagher (or was it Gallagher II?) cable specials and videos...

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1953: WTVP (channel 17) signs on for the first time in Decatur, Illinois. It is the first TV station in central Illinois, and the second UHF in the state. It is also one of the first 14 primary ABC affiliates, and one of the few UHF ABC outlets to survive past the 1950’s. Calls changed to WAND in 1966, and in 2005 the station ended a more than half-century relationship with ABC, switching affiliation to NBC.

Then interestingly, five years after the WTVP-WAND switch in 1966, Peoria (just 70 miles northwest of Decatur) received the WTVP calls (and still hold them today) for the public TV station at Channel 47, which signed on in June 1971.

Still hard to get used to reading old TV listings and articles referring to WAND's old WTVP calls without thinking of the present WTVP in Peoria.

 

[wbhist]

1977: The King is Dead: Elvis Presley expires ignominiously in the bathroom of Graceland at the age of 42. (BTW, it’s just an urban myth that he actually died while on the crapper – in reality, he was found on the floor several feet from the “throne.”) Sadly, 24-hour cable news channels do not yet exist, so fans have to survive without wall-to-wall “All Elvis All the Time” TV coverage of the tragedy.

But even without the 24-hour news cycle, Elvis' death, and the mourning which followed, was of such magnitude that it dwarfed the coverage of Groucho Marx's death only three days later.

 

[firepoint525]

Who was it who actually discovered Elvis unconscious? Was it Ginger Alden, his girlfriend at the time, or was it Joe Esposito, his road manager? I have heard claims from both of them that each claims to have discovered Elvis in his bathroom, but I never knew which one was telling the truth.

 

[bpatrick]

Interestingly, Elvis' death was ABC's lead story that
night, while CBS buried it deep in the broadcast. Yet
when Bing Crosby died a couple of months later, it
was CBS's lead story. Go figure.

 

[Ultimajock]

Interestingly, Elvis' death was ABC's lead story that
night, while CBS buried it deep in the broadcast. Yet
when Bing Crosby died a couple of months later, it
was CBS's lead story. Go figure.

...well, one can always note that Presley was at best no more than a guest on CBS programs and never recorded for the Columbia Records division of CBS, while Crosby had hosted several programs on CBS Radio and Columbia Records owned Crosby's Brunswick (pre-Decca) Records backlog...

 

[wbhist]

Interestingly, Elvis' death was ABC's lead story that night, while CBS buried it deep in the broadcast. Yet when Bing Crosby died a couple of months later, it was CBS's lead story. Go figure.

...well, one can always note that Presley was at best no more than a guest on CBS programs and never recorded for the Columbia Records division of CBS, while Crosby had hosted several programs on CBS Radio and Columbia Records owned Crosby's Brunswick (pre-Decca) Records backlog...

Not only that . . . NBC Nightly News led off with Presley's death. NBC at the time was affiliated with RCA Records (Presley's label), as both were then owned by RCA. And of course, Elvis' 1968 comeback special aired on NBC.

As for Der Bingle, he did return to Columbia in 1959-60 to record some new singles (including the title track for his 1959 movie Say One for Me).

 

[only1moore]

I remember the news that day about Blake's passing, and the cause of death that would make more headlines when it was found out that she died from a AIDS-related illness (Cytomegalovirus, or CMV hepatitus) even though she was also battling oral cancer and didn't know she had contracted it for a year and was unaware that her husband Mark Spaeth, who she married in 1984, had died from AIDS in 1985.

 

[Ultimajock]

Interestingly, Elvis' death was ABC's lead story that night, while CBS buried it deep in the broadcast. Yet when Bing Crosby died a couple of months later, it was CBS's lead story. Go figure.

...well, one can always note that Presley was at best no more than a guest on CBS programs and never recorded for the Columbia Records division of CBS, while Crosby had hosted several programs on CBS Radio and Columbia Records owned Crosby's Brunswick (pre-Decca) Records backlog...

Not only that . . . NBC Nightly News led off with Presley's death. NBC at the time was affiliated with RCA Records (Presley's label), as both were then owned by RCA. And of course, Elvis' 1968 comeback special aired on NBC.

As for Der Bingle, he did return to Columbia in 1959-60 to record some new singles (including the title track for his 1959 movie Say One for Me).

...Bing certainly skipped around to a lot of different labels after leaving Decca. I recall he also cut sides for Warner Brothers, Capitol, Reprise, M-G-M and London, with that posthumous release of the duet with David Bowie coming out on Bowie's then-label RCA Victor...

...a point of irony is that now RCA Victor (and the Elvis Presley catalogue) and Columbia are not co-owned with either CBS or NBC (they're part of Sony/BMG), but the record label that *is* co-owned with NBC is Universal Music, which grew out of Decca Records, the American wing of which had its first major success with Bing's releases of the '30s...

 

[wbhist]

...Bing certainly skipped around to a lot of different labels after leaving Decca. I recall he also cut sides for Warner Brothers, Capitol, Reprise, M-G-M and London, with that posthumous release of the duet with David Bowie coming out on Bowie's then-label RCA Victor...

Actually, one of Bing's post-Decca albums, Join Bing and Sing Along, was issued on both RCA Victor and Warner Bros. One of a handful of LP's to have that distinction.

...a point of irony is that now RCA Victor (and the Elvis Presley catalogue) and Columbia are not co-owned with either CBS or NBC (they're part of Sony/BMG), but the record label that *is* co-owned with NBC is Universal Music, which grew out of Decca Records, the American wing of which had its first major success with Bing's releases of the '30s...

Actually, I.I.N.M., Universal Music no longer has any connection to Universal Pictures, which is co-owned with NBC. Unless there's something I missed . . . in addition, BMG has bailed out of its partnership with Sony, which now has full ownership of Elvis' catalogue.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1999: The U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire premieres on ABC. After three years on network TV (and two short-run special series in 2004 with increased stakes), the show settles into syndication.

Also now you can add the special 10th anniversary run of "Millionaire" to the above quote. Can't believe it was 10 years ago tomorrow the phrase "Is that your final answer?" first entered the American lexicon.

IMO an unexpected, but eventual, offshoot of Millionaire's popularity was the development of the modern "reality show" genre in addition to the Millionaire imitators on the game show circuit that followed (e.g. "Greed," "Twenty-One," and later on "Deal or No Deal")--particularly with the creation of the Fox fiasco "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire" in early 2000, then followed by CBS' "Survivor" in summer 2000--and what hath Millionaire hath wrought!

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1953: WTVP (channel 17) signs on for the first time in Decatur, Illinois. It is the first TV station in central Illinois, and the second UHF in the state. It is also one of the first 14 primary ABC affiliates, and one of the few UHF ABC outlets to survive past the 1950’s. Calls changed to WAND in 1966, and in 2005 the station ended a more than half-century relationship with ABC, switching affiliation to NBC.

Then interestingly, five years after the WTVP-WAND switch in 1966, Peoria (just 70 miles northwest of Decatur) received the WTVP calls (and still hold them today) for the public TV station at Channel 47, which signed on in June 1971.

Still hard to get used to reading old TV listings and articles referring to WAND's old WTVP calls without thinking of the present WTVP in Peoria.

At the end of this page (a comprehensive history of television stations in the Springfield/Decatur/Champaign market created by a Champaign weathercaster), which covers WAND's history from 1986-2005 (to the switch), is the story behind the Big Switch of '05: with WAND moving from ABC to NBC, and ABC going to former NBC affiliates and sister Sinclair stations WICS-20 Springfield and WICD-15 Champaign (WICD is now essentially a repeater of WICS except that it does have its own local news and commericals). From the article, it appears that NBC was essentially wanting to dump their Sinclair-owned affiliates in Springfield and Champaign (similar to what happened in Dayton at that time):

http://www.dougquick.com/wanddecatur5.html

 

[tantric38]

Sadly? Those were the good old days before CNN and all those other obnoxious, conjecture-and-innuendo laden 24/7 news channels and entertainment shows. I remember some extended coverage and at least NBC preempted some shows. There wasn't much else going on back then, so yeah. You can just imagine if those things were around in '77 that it would just be Elvis in your face for days or even weeks on end like w/ Michael Jackson. Ever notice how they suck at multitasking?
And the Giffords born on the same day is more unsettling than cute. Is it just me?