Just a few random TV related events that happened on January 20. Discuss or comment as you please……
1920: Actor DeForest Kelly (Star Trek) is born (as Jackson DeForest Kelly) in Atlanta, Georgia. DYK: He is the only cast member of the original Star Trek series never to have written or published an autobiography.
1953: Mississippi’s first TV station, WJTV, begins broadcasting in Jackson on channel 25. (The station would move to channel 12 two years later.)
1956: Comedian/commentator Bill Maher (Politically Incorrect, Real Time with Bill Maher) is born in New York City.
1961: CFCF-TV (channel 12) signs on in Montreal, Quebec, the second independently owned English station in the province. Its first day on-air is marred by problems. A power failure takes the station off-air during the opening ceremony, the newscast is beset with noise problems from a ballroom located beneath the station’s second-story studio, with the icing on the cake being a very loud and raucous police raid on said ballroom later that night.
1961: NBC broadcasts an Inauguration (that of President John F. Kennedy) in color for the first time.
1961: One of the biggest bombs in TV history drops as You’re in the Picture airs its one and only true episode. Hosted by Jackie Gleason, the game show involves a panel of 4 celebrities who stick their heads into a life-sized illustration of a famous scene or song lyric, and then take turns asking yes/no questions to Gleason to try to figure out what scene they are a part of. The show is almost universally panned; so much so that the following week (still under the same title), Gleason would spend the entire half-hour apologizing for the previous week’s show. Beginning with the 3rd show, the program would become a talk show, with the title changed to The Jackie Gleason Show. (For trivia buffs, the celebrity panel on the only episode consisted of Pat Harrington, Jr., Pat Carroll, Jan Sterling, and Arthur Treacher.)
1966: Actor Rainn Wilson (Six Feet Under, The Office) is born in Seattle, Washington.
1968: The “Game of the Century” in college basketball takes place in the Houston Astrodome pitting the #1 ranked UCLA Bruins (riding a 47-game winning streak) and the #2 Houston Cougars, with the latter team pulling off a 71-69 upset. The hype and promotion surrounding the game, and the nationwide broadcast by the ad hoc TVS Network (the first nationwide broadcast of a college basketball game) combine to heighten interest in college hoops, and the game is credited as the turning point when a sport of primarily regional interest began to become a national obsession.
1975: KOZK (channel 21) launches in Springfield, Missouri, bringing PBS to the Ozarks.
1980: President Jimmy Carter, appearing on Meet the Press, announces the United States' boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.
1998: Dawson’s Creek premieres on The WB.
2000: The cable channel SOAPnet launches.
2008: The studios of KREX-TV (channel 5 analog, 2 DTV) in Grand Junction, Colorado are destroyed in a massive fire. (The transmitter, located in an old bomb shelter, survives.) The station and its satellites would be off the air for 10 days. The transmitter was reassembled in a new outbuilding, with master control running from a mobile home, and news operations temporarily relocated to the PBS broadcasting studio at Western Colorado Community College.
(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…..)
1920: Actor DeForest Kelly (Star Trek) is born (as Jackson DeForest Kelly) in Atlanta, Georgia. DYK: He is the only cast member of the original Star Trek series never to have written or published an autobiography.
1953: Mississippi’s first TV station, WJTV, begins broadcasting in Jackson on channel 25. (The station would move to channel 12 two years later.)
1956: Comedian/commentator Bill Maher (Politically Incorrect, Real Time with Bill Maher) is born in New York City.
1961: CFCF-TV (channel 12) signs on in Montreal, Quebec, the second independently owned English station in the province. Its first day on-air is marred by problems. A power failure takes the station off-air during the opening ceremony, the newscast is beset with noise problems from a ballroom located beneath the station’s second-story studio, with the icing on the cake being a very loud and raucous police raid on said ballroom later that night.
1961: NBC broadcasts an Inauguration (that of President John F. Kennedy) in color for the first time.
1961: One of the biggest bombs in TV history drops as You’re in the Picture airs its one and only true episode. Hosted by Jackie Gleason, the game show involves a panel of 4 celebrities who stick their heads into a life-sized illustration of a famous scene or song lyric, and then take turns asking yes/no questions to Gleason to try to figure out what scene they are a part of. The show is almost universally panned; so much so that the following week (still under the same title), Gleason would spend the entire half-hour apologizing for the previous week’s show. Beginning with the 3rd show, the program would become a talk show, with the title changed to The Jackie Gleason Show. (For trivia buffs, the celebrity panel on the only episode consisted of Pat Harrington, Jr., Pat Carroll, Jan Sterling, and Arthur Treacher.)
1966: Actor Rainn Wilson (Six Feet Under, The Office) is born in Seattle, Washington.
1968: The “Game of the Century” in college basketball takes place in the Houston Astrodome pitting the #1 ranked UCLA Bruins (riding a 47-game winning streak) and the #2 Houston Cougars, with the latter team pulling off a 71-69 upset. The hype and promotion surrounding the game, and the nationwide broadcast by the ad hoc TVS Network (the first nationwide broadcast of a college basketball game) combine to heighten interest in college hoops, and the game is credited as the turning point when a sport of primarily regional interest began to become a national obsession.
1975: KOZK (channel 21) launches in Springfield, Missouri, bringing PBS to the Ozarks.
1980: President Jimmy Carter, appearing on Meet the Press, announces the United States' boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.
1998: Dawson’s Creek premieres on The WB.
2000: The cable channel SOAPnet launches.
2008: The studios of KREX-TV (channel 5 analog, 2 DTV) in Grand Junction, Colorado are destroyed in a massive fire. (The transmitter, located in an old bomb shelter, survives.) The station and its satellites would be off the air for 10 days. The transmitter was reassembled in a new outbuilding, with master control running from a mobile home, and news operations temporarily relocated to the PBS broadcasting studio at Western Colorado Community College.
(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…..)