November 10: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on November 10. Discuss or comment as you please……

1924: Actor Russell Johnson (Gilligan’s Island) is born in Ashley, Pennsylvania.

1948: TV journalist Aaron Brown is born in Hopkins, Minnesota. He is best known for his coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on CNN, on what happened to be his first day at that network.

1958: WUFT-TV (channel 5) begins broadcasting from the University of Florida in Gainesville. (Some sources list November 17 as the sign-on date.)

1963: A pilot episode of the American version of That Was The Week That Was (colloquially known as “TW3”) airs on NBC. The show would begin a 17-month run as a regular series beginning the following January.

1964: Actor Jimmie Dodd (The Mickey Mouse Club) dies of cancer in Honolulu, Hawaii, aged 54.

1968: Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock) is born in The Bronx, New York.

1969: The venerable children’s show Sesame Street debuts on NET.

1975: The producers of the long running soap The Guiding Light change the show's name to Guiding Light “in an attempt to modernize the show's image.” (The show's announcer, however, would continue to call the series The Guiding Light until the early 1980s.) [Someone please explain to me how dropping “The” from the title “modernizes” the show’s image?!?]

1982: KOOD (channel 9) signs on in Hays, Kansas. It would become the flagship (joined later by KSWK Lakin, KDCK Dodge City, and KWKS Colby) of Smoky Hills Public Television, serving 52 mostly rural counties of western Kansas that had previously been unserved or poorly served by PBS programming.

1986: Actor Josh Peck (Drake & Josh) is born in New York City.

1990: The final original episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse airs on CBS. Reruns of the show would continue, but only until July of the following year when star Paul Reubens would have his little run-in with the police at an adult theater in Sarasota, Florida, and CBS would immediately pull the show from its schedule.

1992: Actor Chuck Connors (The Rifleman, Branded, Cowboy in Africa) dies in Los Angeles, aged 71.

1995: The final episode of the soap opera Loving airs on ABC.

2007: That’s So Raven airs its 100th and final original episode on The Disney Channel.

(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…..)

 

[wbhist]

It was either on this day or the 17th in 1968 that Eyewitness News premiered on WABC-TV in New York. The initial anchors were John Schubeck at 6:30 P.M., Roger Grimsby at 11 P.M., and Gil Noble on the late-evening weekend editions prior to the late movie (called The Best of Broadway in those days). Howard Cosell and Lou Boda handled sports, and Tex Antoine was weatherman. Mr. Schubeck later went on to anchor at all three network O&O's in Los Angeles (KABC-TV, KNBC and KNXT/KCBS-TV), and Mr. Grimsby's on-air partnership with Bill Beutel didn't first take effect until Sept. 28, 1970.

 

[WMC2006]

1975: The producers of the long running soap The Guiding Light change the show's name to Guiding Light “in an attempt to modernize the show's image.” (The show's announcer, however, would continue to call the series The Guiding Light until the early 1980s.) [Someone please explain to me how dropping “The” from the title “modernizes” the show’s image?!?]

Dumping 'Guiding' and calling it 'The Light' might have been better. But, seriously, this soap was one of my grandmother's favorite shows (she called them 'stories') so there was no way it could ever be modernized. ;D

 

[bpatrick]

Not that the producers don't keep trying, with a
lot of young characters (some of whom were children
15-20 years ago) and more exterior scenes that,
ostensibly, are supposed to make us see what Springfield
looks like.

 

[Prais]

Notes from an old fart;

"The Guiding Light" started as something like what "Pacific Garden Mission" still produces; a story where someone finds God - or prays and the prayer is answered...God is the Guiding Light.

Created in 1937 by Irna Phillips, The Guiding Light ran successfully for fifteen years on the CBS radio network, detailing the lives and loves of Reverend Rutledge and his daughter, Mary.

Phillips based the program on personal experiences. After giving birth to a still-born baby at age 19, she found spiritual comfort listening to the on-air sermons of Preston Bradley, a very famous Chicago preacher and founder of the Peoples Church, a church which promoted the brotherhood of man. It was these sermons that formed the nucleus of the creation of The Guiding Light/

I really enjoyed the organ music theme and bg for the show.

The show's title came from the Friendship Lamp Reverend Rutledge left in his window as a sign to his parishoners that his doorstep was open for advice and counsel. By the late forties, though, the reverend and his daughter gave way to the Baum family, renamed the Bauers, who would go on to become the show's main core family for decades to come.

Though the transition to television was successful, The Guiding Light continued to be broadcast on radio for a number years. The cast had to race down the street from the CBS television studio, where they shot the live broadcast, to the radio station where they broadcast the same program later that day. By the mid-fifties, the radio broadcast of The Guiding Light was canceled, but the television version continued.

Google and see family trees and lots more history.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

I really enjoyed the organ music theme and bg for the show.
Somehow, the soaps just aren't the same without organ music.

 

[RicoGregg]

I really enjoyed the organ music theme and bg for the show.
Somehow, the soaps just aren't the same without organ music.

Neither is baseball.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1969: The venerable children’s show Sesame Street debuts on NET.

In honor of tomorrow's 40th anniversary of "Sesame Street," here are the first clips from the premiere episode of Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, and Oscar, as posted on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoVOaf9DOj8 (Big Bird, and later Ernie in the background at the end of the clip)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTgPmSTgbqc (Ernie and Bert, where Ernie calls his bathtub "Rosie")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxVLlaV6v7w&feature=related (Oscar in Orange)

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

By the mid-fifties, the radio broadcast of The Guiding Light was canceled, but the television version continued.

That is, until Sept. 18, 2009.