December 9: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on December 9. Discuss or comment as you please……

1911: Actor Broderick Crawford (Highway Patrol) is born (as William Broderick Crawford) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1928: Actor Dick Van Patten (Eight is Enough) is born in New York City.

1930: Actor/writer/director and frequent SNL guest host Buck Henry is born (as Henry Zuckerman) in New York City.

1932: Pioneering “trash TV” talk show host Morton Downey, Jr. is born (as Sean Morton Downey) in Los Angeles.

1952: Actor Micharl Dorn (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) is born in Luling, Texas.

1957: Singer Donny Osmond is born in Ogden, Utah.

1965: A Charlie Brown Christmas airs on CBS for the first time. The new special preempts The Munsters, and follows the Gilligan's Island episode "Don't Bug the Mosquitos."

1967: Singer Otis Redding appears on the WEWS-TV (Cleveland) music show Upbeat. It would be his last performance: the following day, Redding, his manager, the pilot, and four members of The Bar-Kays (Redding’s back-up band) were killed when their chartered Beechcraft plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin

1979: Pioneering religious broadcaster Bishop Fulton J. Sheen dies, aged 84.

1992: Actor Vincent Gardenia (All in the Family) dies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aged 70.

(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…..)

 

[bpatrick]

It's the other way around. Charlie Brown did
pre-empt "The Munsters" at 7:30, but "Gilligan's
Island" aired at 8, so Gilligan followed Charlie Brown.

 

[Tim L]

J
1965: A Charlie Brown Christmas airs on CBS for the first time. The new special preempts The Munsters, and follows the Gilligan's Island episode "Don't Bug the Mosquitos."

1967: Singer Otis Redding appears on the WEWS-TV (Cleveland) music show Upbeat. It would be his last performance: the following day, Redding, his manager, the pilot, and four members of The Bar-Kays (Redding’s back-up band) were killed when their  chartered Beechcraft plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin

I remember watching Charlie Brown Christmas on this night,,It was expected to be a flop, but has been shown for 43 consecutive years..

According to Upbeat host Don Webster, while that was Redding's last TV performance, he did headline a show at Leo's Casino in Cleveland's "Flats" entertainment district that evening.  Many of the Motown acts preformed there after taping Upbeat..Webster also says that one person that was supposed to be on the plane with Redding and his band "fell in love" with a girl that night or he might have been killed too,,

 

[bpatrick]

Frank Stanton had cultivated a friendship with
Charles Schulz and had told him he hoped the
Charlie Brown specials would be on CBS. He
overruled his program department, put the
Christmas special on, and the rest is history.

That same year, 1965, the CBS programmers
thought the National Geographic specials would
flop as well. Again, Stanton overruled them, and
we know the result: the specials were a huge success,
and now we have a National Geographic channel.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Frank Stanton had cultivated a friendship with
Charles Schulz and had told him he hoped the
Charlie Brown specials would be on CBS. He
overruled his program department, put the
Christmas special on, and the rest is history.
And he had a LOT of overruling to do! The CBS suits hated the crude animation, the untrained kids doing the voices, the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, and especially Linus reading from the Second Chapter of Luke.

 

[mleach]

Frank Stanton had cultivated a friendship with
Charles Schulz and had told him he hoped the
Charlie Brown specials would be on CBS. He
overruled his program department, put the
Christmas special on, and the rest is history.
And he had a LOT of overruling to do! The CBS suits hated the crude animation, the untrained kids doing the voices, the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, and especially Linus reading from the Second Chapter of Luke.

I guess that explains why those Peanuts specials hadn't aired earlier than 65.

Over the years I have read online ( and in books ) where "A Charlie Borwn Christmas" was the first time the Peanuts gang ever apperared on TV. Not true since the characters were used in ads for the Ford Motor Company YEARS before "A Charlie Brown Christmas".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne_NODSqohA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MByy_f8QK0&feature=related ( Peanuts in B&W )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne_NODSqohA&feature=related ( 1961 )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdjBY6LB9EU&feature=related ( 1960 )

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1960: "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran is born in Chicago.

 

[ixnay]

Those spots for the Ford Falcon (or Furd Foulcar, as Mad magazine spoofed it) and the controversy over ACBC can be read about in David Michaelis's Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, which also discusses Sparky's circuitous spiritual journey (and the deterioration of his first marriage; at one point he philandered with the girl who played Lucy in the San Francisco production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown).

ixnay

 

[LKellerIII]

Those spots for the Ford Falcon (or Furd Foulcar, as Mad magazine spoofed it) and the controversy over ACBC can be read about in David Michaelis's Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, which also discusses Sparky's circuitous spiritual journey (and the deterioration of his first marriage; at one point he philandered with the girl who played Lucy in the San Francisco production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown).
ixnay

I'm neither a big fan or detractor of Charles Schulz, but we should probably note that the "girl who played Lucy" in the Charlie Brown stage version would have been an adult woman.

quote author=Corky Marlowe link=topic=115685.msg928442#msg928442 date=1228861990]
Frank Stanton had cultivated a friendship with
Charles Schulz and had told him he hoped the
Charlie Brown specials would be on CBS. He
overruled his program department, put the
Christmas special on, and the rest is history.
And he had a LOT of overruling to do! The CBS suits hated the crude animation, the untrained kids doing the voices, the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, and especially Linus reading from the Second Chapter of Luke.

[/quote]

Really? That's a laugh. The animation in the Charlie Brown specials is no more crude - a bit less crude, if anything - than most of the animated shows that ran on the networks of that era. My father worked in the cartoon biz during that period, and the producers he worked for were constantly fighting the networks and sponsors to come up with more money so they could improve the quality of the animation on their shows. In those days (way pre-computer) high quality animation was labor intensive and expensive.

Many producers were forced by budgets to have their shows animated off-shore where the labor was cheaper. Jay Ward shows prior to George of the Jungle were animated by Gamma Productions in Mexico, and it wasn't by choice.

 

[ixnay]

Lkeller, I said "girl" in case *some* R-I'er got it in his/her head, "a 30-something playing a Peanuts character?" if I had said "woman". I thought it was obvious to you that I meant "young woman".

Moving back closer to the topic, or at least the OP's list, it's interesting that Otis Redding's plane should crash in Wisconsin on its way from Cleveland. Was Redding headed for a gig in the Twin Cities the night of the crash? I always thought for some reason that an upper midwest lake was the least likeliest place for a soul singer to meet his end.

ixnay

 

[Ultimajock]

Moving back closer to the topic, or at least the OP's list, it's interesting that Otis Redding's plane should crash in Wisconsin on its way from Cleveland. Was Redding headed for a gig in the Twin Cities the night of the crash? I always thought for some reason that an upper midwest lake was the least likeliest place for a soul singer to meet his end.

...Redding was booked to play a club in Madison, Wisconsin, that night; the plane crashed into Lake Monona on its approach to Truax Field. The opening act that night was to have been a regional band called Grim Reaper (which eventually morphed into Cheap Trick)...

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1960: The first episode of the long-running British soap opera, "Coronation Street" airs on ITV.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

This event in my backyard (not exactly as the actual incident occurred in Chicago) would lead to eventual television infamy for this disgraced politician--on the likes of "The View" and "Celebrity Apprentice," among other appearances I would quickly change the channel from whenever he came on:

2008: Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is arrested on federal corruption charges, including accusations of trying to sell the then-President-Elect Barack Obama's Senate seat, among other charges including conspiracy to commit mail fraud and solicitation of bribery. He would eventually be impeached and removed from office by the Illinois General Assembly on Jan. 29, 2009.

 

[RadioDaze]

1989-Uneven thawing of ice build-up on the guy wires supporting the 2000-foot towers of Raleigh's WRAL-TV/WRAL-FM and WPTF-TV (now WRDC) sent both crashing to the ground at the Raleigh Antenna Farm near Garner. The third 2000-footer in the area, supporting Durham's WTVD, survived the disaster and still stands. The dual-collapse would put WRAL's CBS programming on Fayetteville independent station WKFT-TV 40 for almost a year, while WPTF (then an NBC affiliate) aired their programming on Goldsboro's WYED-TV 17(ironically, now NBC affiliate WNCN) and Fayetteville's WFCT-TV 62 (now WFPX) until reactivating their old 1,300-foot tower in Apex. In 1990, the two stations built a common tower. Ten years later, a digital candleabra tower would rise from near the spot where the WPTF tower stood.