Just a few random TV related events that happened on January 15. Discuss or comment as you please……
1913: Actor Lloyd Bridges (Sea Hunt) is born in San Leandro, California.
1931: Actress Patricia Blair (The Rifleman, Daniel Boone) is born in Fort Worth, Texas.
1947: Actress Andrea Martin (SCTV) is born in Portland, Maine. (The only non-Canuck among the original SCTV cast, I believe...)
1955: The Benny Hill Show premieres on BBC Television.
1959: Tyne Tees Television, the ITV franchise for North East England, goes on air.
1967: The inaugural Super Bowl (then known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game) is broadcast on both CBS and NBC. The reason for the dual-network simulcast of the historic Green Bay-Kansas City matchup is that CBS held the rights to nationally televise NFL games while NBC had the rights to broadcast AFL games. As the game is being played at the L.A. Coliseum (the home of the NFL’s Rams), CBS mans the cameras and technical facilities and provides the video feed, while each network uses their own announcers (Ray Scott, Jack Whitaker, and Frank Gifford for CBS; Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman for NBC. One odd moment occurs when an in-progress kickoff is halted by officials and restarted because NBC was late rejoining the game from a commercial break! Despite a TV blackout in the L.A. area, the game was not a sellout (the only non-sellout in Super Bowl history). Angelinos were put off by the then-exorbitant $12 ticket price (imagine!) and newspapers guided viewers in picking up the game from stations outside the L.A. area. Only a couple of brief clips of the game survive – the master videotape of the entire contest is believed to have been wiped. (However, NFL Films did cover the game in their own inimitable style.)
1967: Following the Super Bowl, The Rolling Stones are guests on CBS’ The Ed Sullivan Show. The group is forced to alter the lyric of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.” The censorship is reluctantly agreed to by the group, but Mick Jagger clearly conveys his feelings on camera, blatantly rolling his eyes whenever he sings the bastardized line.
1968: “Close Channel D” – The Man From U.N.C.L.E. airs its final first-run network episode.
1972: Emergency! premieres on NBC.
1974: Happy Days, inspired by the success of the movie “American Graffiti” (and the back-door pilot “Love and the Happy Days,” aired as a segment on Love, American Style) premieres on ABC.
1977: Bill Murray joins the cast of Saturday Night Live, replacing Chevy Chase.
1978: For the first time, the Super Bowl is played (and broadcast, by CBS) during prime time.
1980: The first episode of the three-part miniseries The Martian Chronicles (adapted from the Ray Bradbury novel of the same name), starring Rock Hudson, airs on NBC.
1981: Hill Street Blues debuts on NBC.
1993: Santa Barbara airs its 2137th and final episode on NBC. While garnering respectable, but by no means major ratings in the U.S., the soap would become wildly popular internationally, becoming “must see TV” in many European countries, including Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, as well as being the first U.S. daytime soap to be broadcast in the U.K. It would also be the first U.S. show broadcast in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Croatia after the fall of the Communist regime. (In many of these countries, the show became so popular and made such an impression that “Santa Barbara” would become generic slang for any soap opera-like real-life situation.)
1995: A short-lived (and deservedly so) revival of Get Smart premieres on Fox. It would last just 7 episodes before getting the hook. Compared to the original, watching this ill-conceived debacle was akin to listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony performed on banjo and kazoo. (Views expressed are not necessarily those of the management...)
2007: Meteorologist Percy Saltzman dies in Toronto, Ontario, aged 92. He was the first weatherman in Canadian television history, starting with the CBC at its inception in 1952. He became the first Canadian weatherman to present satellite and radar images, as well as reports on road conditions and forest fires. He also hosted numerous public affairs programs and, with Lloyd Robertson, hosted ten days of coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 for the CBC. Through it all, he also maintained his position with the Environment Canada Weather Office, initially as job security because he didn’t think TV would last.
2009: Today, Hawaii is scheduled to become the first state in the United States to completely eliminate its analog TV transmissions, one month ahead of the federally mandated deadline. The purpose of the early switch is to both alleviate ongoing interference with astronomy equipment, as well as to dismantle old towers atop Mt. Haleakala before bird nesting season begins!
(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…..)
1913: Actor Lloyd Bridges (Sea Hunt) is born in San Leandro, California.
1931: Actress Patricia Blair (The Rifleman, Daniel Boone) is born in Fort Worth, Texas.
1947: Actress Andrea Martin (SCTV) is born in Portland, Maine. (The only non-Canuck among the original SCTV cast, I believe...)
1955: The Benny Hill Show premieres on BBC Television.
1959: Tyne Tees Television, the ITV franchise for North East England, goes on air.
1967: The inaugural Super Bowl (then known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game) is broadcast on both CBS and NBC. The reason for the dual-network simulcast of the historic Green Bay-Kansas City matchup is that CBS held the rights to nationally televise NFL games while NBC had the rights to broadcast AFL games. As the game is being played at the L.A. Coliseum (the home of the NFL’s Rams), CBS mans the cameras and technical facilities and provides the video feed, while each network uses their own announcers (Ray Scott, Jack Whitaker, and Frank Gifford for CBS; Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman for NBC. One odd moment occurs when an in-progress kickoff is halted by officials and restarted because NBC was late rejoining the game from a commercial break! Despite a TV blackout in the L.A. area, the game was not a sellout (the only non-sellout in Super Bowl history). Angelinos were put off by the then-exorbitant $12 ticket price (imagine!) and newspapers guided viewers in picking up the game from stations outside the L.A. area. Only a couple of brief clips of the game survive – the master videotape of the entire contest is believed to have been wiped. (However, NFL Films did cover the game in their own inimitable style.)
1967: Following the Super Bowl, The Rolling Stones are guests on CBS’ The Ed Sullivan Show. The group is forced to alter the lyric of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.” The censorship is reluctantly agreed to by the group, but Mick Jagger clearly conveys his feelings on camera, blatantly rolling his eyes whenever he sings the bastardized line.
1968: “Close Channel D” – The Man From U.N.C.L.E. airs its final first-run network episode.
1972: Emergency! premieres on NBC.
1974: Happy Days, inspired by the success of the movie “American Graffiti” (and the back-door pilot “Love and the Happy Days,” aired as a segment on Love, American Style) premieres on ABC.
1977: Bill Murray joins the cast of Saturday Night Live, replacing Chevy Chase.
1978: For the first time, the Super Bowl is played (and broadcast, by CBS) during prime time.
1980: The first episode of the three-part miniseries The Martian Chronicles (adapted from the Ray Bradbury novel of the same name), starring Rock Hudson, airs on NBC.
1981: Hill Street Blues debuts on NBC.
1993: Santa Barbara airs its 2137th and final episode on NBC. While garnering respectable, but by no means major ratings in the U.S., the soap would become wildly popular internationally, becoming “must see TV” in many European countries, including Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, as well as being the first U.S. daytime soap to be broadcast in the U.K. It would also be the first U.S. show broadcast in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Croatia after the fall of the Communist regime. (In many of these countries, the show became so popular and made such an impression that “Santa Barbara” would become generic slang for any soap opera-like real-life situation.)
1995: A short-lived (and deservedly so) revival of Get Smart premieres on Fox. It would last just 7 episodes before getting the hook. Compared to the original, watching this ill-conceived debacle was akin to listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony performed on banjo and kazoo. (Views expressed are not necessarily those of the management...)
2007: Meteorologist Percy Saltzman dies in Toronto, Ontario, aged 92. He was the first weatherman in Canadian television history, starting with the CBC at its inception in 1952. He became the first Canadian weatherman to present satellite and radar images, as well as reports on road conditions and forest fires. He also hosted numerous public affairs programs and, with Lloyd Robertson, hosted ten days of coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 for the CBC. Through it all, he also maintained his position with the Environment Canada Weather Office, initially as job security because he didn’t think TV would last.
2009: Today, Hawaii is scheduled to become the first state in the United States to completely eliminate its analog TV transmissions, one month ahead of the federally mandated deadline. The purpose of the early switch is to both alleviate ongoing interference with astronomy equipment, as well as to dismantle old towers atop Mt. Haleakala before bird nesting season begins!
(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…..)
