November 8: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on November 8. Discuss or comment as you please……

1914: Actor Norman Lloyd (St. Elsewhere) is born in Jersey City, New Jersey. In case you were wondering, the good Dr. Auschlander is still with us, turning 94 today.

1920: Actress Esther Rolle (Maude, Good Times) is born in Pompano Beach, Florida.

1924: Actor Joe Flynn (McHale’s Navy) is born in Youngstown, Ohio.

1931: Journalist Morley Safer (60 Minutes) is born in Toronto, Ontario.

1932: W2XAB New York (later WCBW, then WCBS-TV) transmits the first televised election returns.

1950: TV hostess Mary Hart (Entertainment Tonight) is born (as Mary Johanna Harum) is born in Madison, South Dakota.

1956: A small airplane hits the top of the inactive former WOR-TV tower in North Bergen, New Jersey before crashing into an apartment building, killing 6. The town threatens WOR with a lawsuit if the unused tower is not dismantled, and the station complies, completing the teardown the following year. An interesting account of the brief history of this facility can be found here on Jim Hawkins’ Radio and Broadcast Technology Page.

1959: KLYD (channel 17) starts broadcasting in Bakersfield, California. Later KJTV, KPWR-TV, and now KGET-TV, the station has the unusual history of having been at one time or another a primary affiliate of all three of the classic TV networks: ABC (1959-74), CBS (1974-84), and NBC (1984-present).

1965: Days of Our Lives debuts on NBC.

1967: Actress Courtney Thorne-Smith (Melrose Place, Ally McBeal, According to Jim) is born in San Francisco.

1969: The pilot episode of Night Gallery is broadcast as a TV-Movie on NBC. It features the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg, and one of the last acting performances by Joan Crawford.

1972: HBO launches. At first distributed via microwave (not satellite), the inaugural broadcast is fed to a single CATV system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The first program seen is the movie “Sometimes a Great Notion,” followed by an NHL hockey game from Madison Square Garden (New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks).

1994: Writer/performer Michael O’Donoghue (Saturday Night Live) dies in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 54.

(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…..)

 

[RicoGregg]

1994: Writer/performer Michael O’Donoghue (Saturday Night Live) dies in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 54.

Michael O'Donoghue is arguably the most underrated comedy/humor writer of all time. In addition to helping make SNL great, he also played a large part in the creation and growth of The National Lampoon.

"Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy." - Michael O'Donoghue

 

[Corky Marlowe]

1994: Writer/performer Michael O’Donoghue (Saturday Night Live) dies in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 54.
Nobody could do a better impression of Mike Douglas having 12 inch steel needles with razor sharp points jammed into his eyes than Michael O'Donoghue. A maybe apocryphal, maybe not story aout him: One day, his father called him with some bad news...The conversation supposedly went something like this...

"Mike, there's been an accident. Your mother's lost her toe."

"Did you look behind the refrigerator?"

 

[mleach]

1972: HBO launches. At first distributed via microwave (not satellite), the inaugural broadcast is fed to a single CATV system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The first program seen is the movie “Sometimes a Great Notion,” followed by an NHL hockey game from Madison Square Garden (New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks).

Either the next night or perhaps the same week...HBO aired a Pennsylvania Polka dance "from Harrisburg". When HBO turned 10 in 1982 during one of those HBO Sneak Preview shows with Dick Cavett, they actually showed clips of this. Not really much to see other than older folks dancing to polka music but the thing that got me was that brief shot of a man holding this very small video camera going into the crowd of dancers. So mini-cams existed in 1972?

 

[Stanislav]

1972: HBO launches. At first distributed via microwave (not satellite), the inaugural broadcast is fed to a single CATV system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The first program seen is the movie “Sometimes a Great Notion,” followed by an NHL hockey game from Madison Square Garden (New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks).

Either the next night or perhaps the same week...HBO aired a Pennsylvania Polka dance "from Harrisburg".

Talk about being desperate for programming.....at least they didn't have to resort to Australian Rules Football to fill the hours like some early cable outlets who shall remain nameless.... ;D

When HBO turned 10 in 1982 during one of those HBO Sneak Preview shows with Dick Cavett, they actually showed clips of this. Not really much to see other than older folks dancing to polka music but the thing that got me was that brief shot of a man holding this very small video camera going into the crowd of dancers. So mini-cams existed in 1972?

I'm sure small color cameras existed and were in use by then; however, they were not quite ready for broadcast TV's standards for resolution, etc. I imagine they could get away with using one on a cable show. Wasn't it around '74 or '75 that broadcast stations started using mini-cams in their ENG arsenal?

 

[Stanislav]

1994: Writer/performer Michael O’Donoghue (Saturday Night Live) dies in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 54.

Michael O'Donoghue is arguably the most underrated comedy/humor writer of all time. In addition to helping make SNL great, he also played a large part in the creation and growth of The National Lampoon.

Let's not forget that he and Belushi were the first faces seen on the cold opening of the very first SNL (the surreal and now legendary "Wolverines" sketch). I don't think you could have picked a better sketch to open the first show that was guaranteed to elicit a massive "WTF?" in the viewers (exactly what they were going for).

 

[RicoGregg]

So mini-cams existed in 1972?

They existed earlier than that. In the 1964 film "The Best Man", starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson as presidential candidates in a power struggle at an unnamed political party's convention, there are scenes with ABC News' Howard K. Smith portraying himself. There are clear convention site scenes with an ABC News cameraman toting an early mini-cam.

 

[bpatrick]

I was living in Florida when the Tampa stations
began using mini-cams (around 1974), and I feel
certain it was about that time that they came into
general use.

And does anyone remember the Vidifont and the
early electronically-generated graphics? I first
saw this around 1972. It seemed like every station's
graphics looked alike; I remember Chs. 5 and 11 in
Atlanta had identical-looking graphics until 11 changed
theirs in 1976.

 

[wbhist]

It was also on this day in 1965 that newspaper columnist and What's My Line? panelist Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her apartment in New York, only a few hours after a WML? episode. In a macabre irony, on this afternoon in 1965, an episode of the daytime To Tell the Truth aired where she and fellow WML? panelist Arlene Francis were impostors passing themselves off as Joan Crawford (yes, the same Joan Crawford who was in the Night Gallery TV-movie/pilot that aired exactly four years to the day after Miss Kilgallen died). After the airing of this episode (which, sadly, no longer exists), the regular five-minute news update was broadcast where Dorothy's death was mentioned.

I will now leave it at that.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

It was also on this day in 1965 that newspaper columnist and What's My Line? panelist Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her apartment in New York, only a few hours after a WML? episode. In a macabre irony, on this afternoon in 1965, an episode of the daytime To Tell the Truth aired where she and fellow WML? panelist Arlene Francis were impostors passing themselves off as Joan Crawford (yes, the same Joan Crawford who was in the Night Gallery TV-movie/pilot that aired exactly four years to the day after Miss Kilgallen died). After the airing of this episode (which, sadly, no longer exists), the regular five-minute news update was broadcast where Dorothy's death was mentioned.

I will now leave it at that.

Concerning the news brief, didn't the anchor (Douglas Edwards, maybe?) even say, "Dorothy Kilgallen, who you just saw on "To Tell The Truth"...

Also, does anyone else remember the format of the TTTT game in question? IIRC, it was the "What's My Line?" mystery guest segment turned sideways...The celebrity and the 2 impostors came out wearing what looked like beekeeper's hats so the panel wouldn't recognize them. That, coupled with the obit during the newsbrief, was one creepy dose of daytime TV.

 

[LKellerIII]

1994: Writer/performer Michael O’Donoghue (Saturday Night Live) dies in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 54.
Nobody could do a better impression of Mike Douglas having 12 inch steel needles with razor sharp points jammed into his eyes than Michael O'Donoghue. A maybe apocryphal, maybe not story aout him: One day, his father called him with some bad news...The conversation supposedly went something like this...

"Mike, there's been an accident. Your mother's lost her toe."

"Did you look behind the refrigerator?"

As a big fan of the National Lampoon as far back as the late 60s, I remember that O'Donoghue was very clever. I believe he did a number of celebrity "impressions" on SNL in which said celebrities had razor sharp pokers in their eyeballs..the joke of course being that they all writhed on the floor and shrieked in exactly the same way.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1975: Actress Tara Reid is born in Wyckoff, NJ. Her TV roles included occassional appearances on the 1982-83 Bill Cullen game show "Child's Play" (CBS), "Saved By the Bell: The New Class," "All My Children," and "Scrubs."

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

It was also on this day in 1965 that newspaper columnist and What's My Line? panelist Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her apartment in New York, only a few hours after a WML? episode. In a macabre irony, on this afternoon in 1965, an episode of the daytime To Tell the Truth aired where she and fellow WML? panelist Arlene Francis were impostors passing themselves off as Joan Crawford (yes, the same Joan Crawford who was in the Night Gallery TV-movie/pilot that aired exactly four years to the day after Miss Kilgallen died). After the airing of this episode (which, sadly, no longer exists), the regular five-minute news update was broadcast where Dorothy's death was mentioned.

I will now leave it at that.

And the other irony in New York--the following day (Nov. 9, 1965) was the Northeast Blackout.

 

[davalvideo]

Also on November 8th, 1960, the three networks began their election coverage at 7pm EST. The coverage of the Kennedy-nixon Presidential race would last all night and into the following morning. It wasn't until after JFK's victory statement at the hyannis Armory at noon, that the networks finally signed off.