January 21: This Day in TV History

[easttxtv]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on January 21. Discuss or comment as you please……

1922: Actor Aristotelis “Telly” Savalas (Kojak) is born in Garden City, New York. He would die exactly one day after his 72nd birthday.

1924: (Cue “Yakity Sax” music...) Comedian Benny Hill is born (as Alfred Hawthorne Hill) in Southampton, England. (Presumably all the attending nurses were dressed in lingerie, garters and 5-inch heels...) DYK: He took the stage name “Benny” because he was a great admirer of U.S. comedian Jack Benny.

1947: Actress Jill Eikenberry (L.A. Law) is born New Haven, Connecticut.

1956: Actress Geena Davis (Commander in Chief) is born in Wareham, Massachusetts.

1956: WCOS-TV (channel 25) in Columbia, South Carolina, is taken off the air. The station, which debuted in April 1953, was never able to effectively compete once VHF WIS-TV (channel 10) had signed on in November 1953. The channel would remain dark for several years, then be resurrected as WCCA-TV (now WOLO-TV) in October 1961.

1970: Nanny and the Professor debuts on ABC.

1972: The first organized convention of Star Trek fans is held at New York's Statler-Hilton hotel.

1983: The religious anthology series Insight airs its final (250th) original syndicated episode. Created by a Paulist priest, the show attracted many “name” guest stars (including such actors as Ed Asner, Jack Albertson, Beau Bridges, Patty Duke, Jack Klugman, Robert Lansing, Walter Matthau, Bob Newhart, John Ritter, and Martin Sheen) and won many awards.

1989: Simon & Simon airs its final original network episode on CBS.

1998: Actor Jack Lord (Hawaii Five-O) dies in Honolulu, Hawaii of heart failure, aged 77.

2004: Longtime local Chicago TV personality Ray Rayner dies in Fort Myers, Florida of complications from pneumonia, aged 84.

(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…..)


For the original thread (accidentally marked '24' instead of '21') and it's responses:
http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,118776.0.html
(you're welcome, Stanislav)

 

[Stanislav]

Appreciate it. Just send me your bill...

 

[Ultimajock]

...Ray Rayner was probably my favourite of the WGN-TV/9 kiddie hosts (tho I never got to see Bill Jackson's short-lived "B.J. and Dirty Dragon" revival on Channel 9, and I loved the WFLD/32 original). Ringmaster Ned Locke was almost as much a favourite; Frazier Thomas didn't impress me as much as he did the other Kenosha kids I knew...

 

[Stanislav]

One ironic note---for years channel 25 tried to persuade the FCC to allow them to move to more desirable VHF channel 8. They finally got their wish when they were awarded DTV channel 8.

Wonder how they figured to do that pre-DTV? Just off the top of my head, you have Waycross, Athens, and High Point on the channel, plus the Morehead City allocation (that wasn't actually occupied until the late 80's, I believe). Seems like a channel 8 plopped down in Columbia would have been pretty much short-spaced to most or all of those. Unless they were willing to live with some power/height restrictions, and would have been happy if just the metro and burbs were covered, not the cows and chickens farther out. (That's one thing about South Carolina -- in-between the major towns and cities, there ain't much "there" there...)

Actually, a channel 8 transmitter could have been sited in the Columbia area which would have been short-spaced to only High Point OR Athens, depending on location. The other stations you mention are 300 or more miles from Columbia.

I couldn't let sleeping dogs lie, and plugged WOLO's coordinates into the ol' analog database. Assuming for the moment a channel 8 allocation at the same coordinates, for the record the distances to the four cited channel 8 tower sites would be:

Morehead City - 248
Waycross - 226
Athens - 195
High Point - 128

That's awfully close spacing to High Point, especially with the relatively flat terrain of the Carolina Piedmont. And then if you specified a site restriction well to the S.E. of Columbia to sufficiently protect WGHP, you'd be getting pretty uncomfortably close to Waycross. Maybe it could have been done with the right site, and some power restrictions and/or directional shading, but it would be a tight fit.

{BTW, posting this in both the erroneous "January 24" thread as well as the reposted January 21 thread...)

 

[daryll]

The transmitter location for the Athens/Atlanta channel 8 is on Stone Mountain, just 10 miles east of Atlanta. I don't know how that affects the spacing to Columbia.

 

[Stanislav]

The transmitter location for the Athens/Atlanta channel 8 is on Stone Mountain, just 10 miles east of Atlanta. I don't know how that affects the spacing to Columbia.

That's taken into account -- those are the distances to the actual transmitter sites.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1989: British actress Katie Griffiths (BBC's Waterloo Road) is born in Chigwell, Essex.

 

[Stanislav]

Weird, I though to myself...looks like a bunch of posts are missing from this thread (which is why some of the replies are seemingly non-sequiters, or responding to posts that aren't there). Then I saw this:

(BTW, posting this in both the erroneous "January 24" thread as well as the reposted January 21 thread...)

...and realized I'm the culprit. ;D

 

[FreddyE1977]

1998: Actor Jack Lord (Hawaii Five-O) dies in Honolulu, Hawaii of heart failure, aged 77.

Born December 30, 1920 in Brooklyn, NY as John Joseph Patrick Ryan (Faith and Begorrah!)