January 30: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

[Since, for the moment, the site appears to be working -- no error messages, 404 screens, or notices that the domain has expired -- let me get today's TDITVH up quick...]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on January 30. Discuss or comment as you please……

1922: Comedian/actor/director Dick Martin (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) is born in Battle Creek, Michigan.

1933: Economist Louis Rukeyser (Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser) is born in New York City.

1946: CBS installs a 1 kw (20 kw ERP) UHF (a 10 kHz wide channel at 490 mHz) transmitter on the Chrysler Building in New York for a February 1 demonstration of a 525-line, 120 field sequential color system.

1951: Actor Charles S. Dutton (Roc) is born in Baltimore, Maryland.

1956: KRMA-TV (channel 6) signs on in Denver, Colorado. Initially owned by the Denver Public Schools (and broadcasting just 2 hours per day at first), KRMA would eventually become the flagship station of the Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting Network.

1958: Comedienne/actress Brett Butler (Grace Under Fire) is born (as Brett Anderson) in Montgomery, Alabama.

1961: After 11 seasons (8 on CBS, 3 on ABC), the original version of Beat the Clock airs its last episode.

1961: KAET launches on channel 8 in Phoenix, Arizona, initially offering solely educational programming directed at students of Arizona State University.

1965: Model/actress Julie McCullough (Growing Pains) is born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

1976: Live from Lincoln Center premieres on PBS.

1980: Actor Wilmer Valderrama (That 70’s Show) is born in Miami, Florida.

2007: Writer Sidney Sheldon (The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, Hart to Hart) dies in Rancho Mirage, California, aged 89, from complications arising from pneumonia.

2008: It is announced that The Montel Williams Show will stop production on new episodes at the end of the 2007-08 television season, the end of a 17-year syndicated run. The show lives on in reruns in selected markets.

(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]

The show that replaced Beat The Clock was
also hosted by Bud Collyer: Number Please.
The show was scheduled to debut January 30, 1961,
but the premiere was delayed a day by JFK's State
of the Union address (they were delivered in daytime
back in the day).

 

[KeithE4]

1946: CBS installs a 1 kw (20 kw ERP) UHF (a 10 kHz wide channel at 490 mHz) transmitter on the Chrysler Building in New York for a February 1 demonstration of a 525-line, 120 field sequential color system.

10 kilohertz? If CBS could stuff a full television channel into that, they were good. I assume you meant 10 Megahertz. ;D

But I thought the CBS system was 405 lines so it could fit into a standard 6 MHz channel with the increased field rate.

 

[Stanislav]

1946: CBS installs a 1 kw (20 kw ERP) UHF (a 10 kHz wide channel at 490 mHz) transmitter on the Chrysler Building in New York for a February 1 demonstration of a 525-line, 120 field sequential color system.

10 kilohertz? If CBS could stuff a full television channel into that, they were good. I assume you meant 10 Megahertz. ;D

But I thought the CBS system was 405 lines so it could fit into a standard 6 MHz channel with the increased field rate.

Yes, I meant to type mHz. The CBS system eventually was cobbled and compromised so as to fit in a 6 mHz wide channel. Originally, they were looking at dividing up the then "experimental" UHF spectrum for color TV, and not long after the test cited above, CBS was even for a time proposing a 16 mHz wide channel for color.

 

[wbhist]

1961: KAET launches on channel 8 in Phoenix, Arizona, initially offering solely educational programming directed at students of Arizona State University.

In the mid-1960's (around 1965-66), KAET began using a test pattern, the slide of which is featured here, as from the Broadcasting 101 site. However, the site has this pattern in black-and-white; if shown in their original colors, the tints may well have looked as on this re-creation.

This is the only known instance of a station west of the Mississippi (with 'K' calls) using this test pattern design; if there are others, please let us know. Most other stations that used this design were east-of-the-Mississippi 'W' stations.

 

[Charles1]

Also on this date, in 1999: During Super Bowl XXXIII, arguably the worst, and certainly one of the most offensive Super Bowl ads is aired. Just For Feet, attempting to become a national brand, features an ad showing an African runner who is captured, then drugged by two white men. When the runner wakes from his drug-induced stupor, he realizes he has a pair of new shoes on, presumably from Just For Feet. The backlash from the ad is immediate, as media critics roundly pan it. Not related to the ad, Just For Feet would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November, and then for Chapter 7 in January 2000. After being bought by Footstar, the parent company of Footaction USA, in February 2000, Just For Feet continued for another four years before all stores were closed in 2004.

At the time the ad ran, Just For Feet had approximately 135 stores, primarily in the Southeast and Southwest, with stores also located in the Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C. and San Diego metro areas.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1969: Businesswoman Carolyn Kepcher (The Apprentice) is born in Westchester County, NY.