Just a few random TV related events that happened on February 26. Discuss or comment as you please……
1887: Actor William Frawley (I Love Lucy) is born in Burlington, Iowa.
1920: Actor Tony Randall (Mr. Peepers, The Odd Couple, Love Sidney, The Tony Randall Show) is born (as Arthur Leonard Rosenberg) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1932: Musician Johnny Cash is born in Kingsland, Arkansas.
1942: Schenectady, New York’s W2XB receives a commercial license and becomes WRGB, the fourth commercial TV station in the nation and only the second one outside of New York City. At the time, it operates at a frequency of 66-72 MHz (then known as channel 3, but re-designated as channel 4 post-war).
1953: Bishop Fulton Sheen, on his TV program Life Is Worth Living, reads Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar,” but with the names of high-ranking Soviet officials replacing the key characters. At the end of the reading, Sheen opines that "Stalin must one day meet his judgment." Stalin died one week later. (Hmmm....)
1984: KDRV (channel 12) signs on in Medford, Oregon. The new station was made possible by an unusual FCC move: adding the channel 12 “drop-in” allocation even though no one had formally requested it.
1993: A 1500 lb. car bomb explodes in the basement of Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City. The device was intended to knock the North Tower (Tower One) into the South Tower, bringing both buildings down, but it was not strong enough to do so. 6 people were killed, and 1,042 injured. In a foreshadowing of the far more destructive WTC attacks 8 years later, the blast knocks NYC TV stations based in the WTC off the air for over a week, with only WCBS-TV able to quickly resume OTA broadcasting from their backup transmitter at the Empire State Building.
1997: Actor David Doyle (Charlie’s Angels) dies in Los Angeles of a heart attack, aged 67. In his later years, he also did some cartoon voice work, primarily as Grandpa Lou Pickles on the Nickelodeon animated series Rugrats.
2008: Meteorologist Dick Fletcher dies in St. Petersburg, Florida, aged 65. His career of four decades plus included stops in Cedar Rapids, Denver, Corpus Christi, Omaha, and finally 28 years (1980-2008) at St. Petersburg’s WTSP-TV.
(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…..)
1887: Actor William Frawley (I Love Lucy) is born in Burlington, Iowa.
1920: Actor Tony Randall (Mr. Peepers, The Odd Couple, Love Sidney, The Tony Randall Show) is born (as Arthur Leonard Rosenberg) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1932: Musician Johnny Cash is born in Kingsland, Arkansas.
1942: Schenectady, New York’s W2XB receives a commercial license and becomes WRGB, the fourth commercial TV station in the nation and only the second one outside of New York City. At the time, it operates at a frequency of 66-72 MHz (then known as channel 3, but re-designated as channel 4 post-war).
1953: Bishop Fulton Sheen, on his TV program Life Is Worth Living, reads Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar,” but with the names of high-ranking Soviet officials replacing the key characters. At the end of the reading, Sheen opines that "Stalin must one day meet his judgment." Stalin died one week later. (Hmmm....)
1984: KDRV (channel 12) signs on in Medford, Oregon. The new station was made possible by an unusual FCC move: adding the channel 12 “drop-in” allocation even though no one had formally requested it.
1993: A 1500 lb. car bomb explodes in the basement of Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City. The device was intended to knock the North Tower (Tower One) into the South Tower, bringing both buildings down, but it was not strong enough to do so. 6 people were killed, and 1,042 injured. In a foreshadowing of the far more destructive WTC attacks 8 years later, the blast knocks NYC TV stations based in the WTC off the air for over a week, with only WCBS-TV able to quickly resume OTA broadcasting from their backup transmitter at the Empire State Building.
1997: Actor David Doyle (Charlie’s Angels) dies in Los Angeles of a heart attack, aged 67. In his later years, he also did some cartoon voice work, primarily as Grandpa Lou Pickles on the Nickelodeon animated series Rugrats.
2008: Meteorologist Dick Fletcher dies in St. Petersburg, Florida, aged 65. His career of four decades plus included stops in Cedar Rapids, Denver, Corpus Christi, Omaha, and finally 28 years (1980-2008) at St. Petersburg’s WTSP-TV.
(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…..)