January 9: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on January 9. Discuss or comment as you please……

1935: Actor Bob Denver (Gilligan’s Island, The Good Guys, Dusty’s Trail) is born in New Rochelle, New York.

1955: KEYD-TV (channel 9, later KMGM, now KMSP) begins broadcasting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The station’s first news anchor is a then-unknown young man by the name of Harry Reasoner.

1968: It Takes a Thief debuts on ABC.

1984: The original Clara Peller “Where’s the Beef?” commercial for Wendy’s airs for the first time.

1989: The Pat Sajak Show becomes the latest CBS attempt to break the Carson late-night juggernaut. Sajak leaves the daytime version of Wheel of Fortune (but continues hosting the nighttime edition). His guests on the debut show were Chevy Chase, Joan Van Ark, outgoing commissioner of baseball Peter Ueberroth, Michael Gross, and comic Dennis Wolfberg.

1996: 3rd Rock from the Sun debuts on NBC.

2000: Malcolm in the Middle premieres on Fox.

(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…..)

 

[Ultimajock]

1989: The Pat Sajak Show becomes the latest CBS attempt to break the Carson late-night juggernaut. Sajak leaves the daytime version of Wheel of Fortune (but continues hosting the nighttime edition). His guests on the debut show were Chevy Chase, Joan Van Ark, outgoing commissioner of baseball Peter Ueberroth, Michael Gross, and comic Dennis Wolfberg.

...and I distinctly recall the CBS ads for the premiere show in TV Guide had a quote from Jack Paar praising Sajak. Considering Paar also was a frequent guest during the first weeks of The Joey Bishop Show on ABC in 1967 and even did a show directly against Carson as part of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment, am I the only person wondering how many Christmas cards were exchanged by the Paar and Carson households?...

 

[WMC2006]

Sajak's show started as a 90 minute program but was eventually cut to the standard 60 minute format.

I do recall Vanna White coming in for a show or two as the guest announcer when regular announcer Dan Miller was out of town on personal business. (Daughter's graduation or something)

 

[bpatrick]

1961: The debut of the original Camouflage
on ABC (for my money it's still the best of the three
versions, mostly because I think Don Morrow was the
best of the three hosts).

 

[firepoint525]

I do recall Vanna White coming in for a show or two as the guest announcer when regular announcer Dan Miller was out of town on personal business. (Daughter's graduation or something)

She was also a regular guest at least once. I recall Pat showing footage of her as a contestant on The Price is Right back in 1980. It is probably on youtube now.

As for Dan Miller, I remember seeing him on TV here in Nashville when I first moved here in 1992, and wondering where I had seen him previously. Then it hit me that he had been Sajak's sidekick. He had moved back here to Nashville sometime after the Sajak show folded.

 

[RicoGregg]

1935: Actor Bob Denver (Gilligan’s Island, The Good Guys, Dusty’s Trail) is born in New Rochelle, New York.

Not that big a deal, but omitted from Denver's show list was the program that put him on the map, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, where he played Dobie's beatnik buddy, Maynard G. Krebs.

Hard to imagine to look at Fox nowadays, but back then, Dobie Gillis was the only thing in production at 20th, otherwise the Fox studios were a ghost town. The reason for this was the studio's colossal bomb, Cleopatra, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This film (and IMO, it was truly awful) single-handedly nearly destroyed 20th Century Fox once and for all. In order to try to keep afloat, Fox sold off it's backlot acreage, and that land became what we now know today as Century City.

1961: The debut of the original Camouflage
on ABC (for my money it's still the best of the three
versions, mostly because I think Don Morrow was the
best of the three hosts).

I LOVED the original Camouflage. IMO, it's still one of the most clever and creative game shows ever made. Don Morrow was a great host.

Does anyone remember another ABC game show, Make a Face? It's hard to describe in a nutshell, but it was a crazy show! A lot of laughs there.

 

[bpatrick]

I remember Make A Face. The idea was that
there were three rotating belts, each with different
parts of a face. The contestants would call a number
(1, 2, or 3), which would stop that particular belt. First
player to "make a face" won. It was funny, because a
player might get a chin at number 1, a nose at 3, and a
head at 2, to use a hypothetical. Bob Clayton was the
host of the show, which ran as both a daily daytime show
and a Saturday-morning kids' show.

 

[easttxtv]

Hard to imagine to look at Fox nowadays, but back then, Dobie Gillis was the only thing in production at 20th, otherwise the Fox studios were a ghost town. The reason for this was the studio's colossal bomb, Cleopatra, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This film (and IMO, it was truly awful) single-handedly nearly destroyed 20th Century Fox once and for all. In order to try to keep afloat, Fox sold off it's backlot acreage, and that land became what we now know today as Century City.

Lucky for Fox, that the release a few years later of "The Sound of Music" was a huge success.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1956: Actress Kimberly Beck is born in Glendale, CA. She played Nancy Bradford in the pilot episode of Eight is Enough (which later went to Dianne Kay), and also appeared on shows including Capitol, Fantasy Island, and Dynasty.