October 16: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on October 16. Discuss or comment as you please……

1946: Actress Suzanne Somers (Three’s Company, Step by Step) is born (as Suzanne Marie Mahoney) in San Bruno, California.

1949: WDAF-TV (channel 4) signs on as Kansas City’s first TV station (and the 2nd in Missouri).

1951: RCA demonstrates an early prototype of a color projection TV, beaming an image onto a 9 x 12 foot theater screen at the Colonial Theater, New York.

1955: Actress Ellen Dolan (Guiding Light, As the World Turns) is born in Monticello, Iowa.

1962: Noncommercial KTXT-TV launches on channel 5 from the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

1972: Actor Leo G. Carroll (Topper, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) dies in Hollywood, aged 85.

1975: Actress Kellie Martin (Life Goes On, ER) is born in Riverside, California.

1981: Another one of the classic three-letter (and geographically displaced) TV calls goes bye-bye as Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s WMT-TV becomes KGAN-TV. (The historic calls still reside, however, with the original AM counterpart on 600 kHz.)

1988: Kids in the Hall premieres on CBC in Canada. It would soon become popular in the U.S. as well.

1997: Actress Audra Lindley (Three’s Company, The Ropers) dies in Los Angeles of leukemia, aged 79.

1999: Longtime WCBS-TV anchorman Jim Jensen dies, aged 72. His 29-year stint as lead anchor at the station is the longest of any NYC station.

2001: Smallville debuts on The WB.

(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…..)

 

[Smittian]

1972: Public television comes to South Texas for the very first time as KEDT (channel 16) signs on in Corpus Christi,TX. The station began broadcasting from an abandoned school building using donated equipment from a TV station in Galveston that went dark a few years earlier. The PBS feed was sent via telephone cables from KLRN in San Antonio.

 

[TexasTuner]

1972: Public television comes to South Texas for the very first time as KEDT (channel 16) signs on in Corpus Christi,TX. The station began broadcasting from an abandoned school building using donated equipment from a TV station in Galveston that went dark a few years earlier. The PBS feed was sent via telephone cables from KLRN in San Antonio.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think that most, if not all of their gear came from the defunct KVVV-TV, channel 16 in Galveston. The why and how of their failure escapes me, but I remember seeing listings in the local TV guide for the station.

Texas Tuner

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1999: Longtime WCBS-TV anchorman Jim Jensen dies, aged 72. His 29-year stint as lead anchor at the station is the longest of any NYC station.

Before going to WCBS in 1964, Jim Jensen "played in Peoria" as one of the first anchors (as a weatherman) of WMBD-31 (plus some work on then-sister station WMBD-AM 1470) from its January 1958 sign-on to 1964:

http://www.dougquick.com/othertelevisionhistory2.html (Scroll down to "Peoria TV History," then the WMBD section for an early Jim Jensen photo ad from his WMBD days--from an excellent Central Illinois television history site, mostly Springfield/Decatur/Champaign-oriented, but also includes Peoria TV info).

 

[wbhist]

1999: Longtime WCBS-TV anchorman Jim Jensen dies, aged 72. His 29-year stint as lead anchor at the station is the longest of any NYC station.

Before going to WCBS in 1964, Jim Jensen "played in Peoria" as one of the first anchors (as a weatherman) of WMBD-31 (plus some work on then-sister station WMBD-AM 1470) from its January 1958 sign-on to 1964:

http://www.dougquick.com/othertelevisionhistory2.html (Scroll down to "Peoria TV History," then the WMBD section for an early Jim Jensen photo ad from his WMBD days--from an excellent Central Illinois television history site, mostly Springfield/Decatur/Champaign-oriented, but also includes Peoria TV info).

However, that site doesn't seem to call into account Mr. Jensen's years (beginning around c.1960-61 and up to when WCBS hired him in '64) with Boston's WBZ-TV/AM/FM - plus that he was a pool reporter around the Kennedys' Hyannisport compound at the time of the JFK assassination, which was how WCBS took interest in him. In other words, he may've actually been with WMBD for about 2-3 years.

Not to mention his 29-year stint as WCBS anchor (which was a span rather than a consecutive length, as there were a few months in 1967 around the time of Israel's Six-Day War when Reid Collins - later one of the newsreaders heard on top-of-hour CBS Radio News broadcasts - was the 6 o'clock anchor; plus the 1989-90 period when Ernie Anastos temporarily took his place at the anchor desk, after Jensen - working in that interim as a "senior correspondent" - had had multiple hospitalizations connected with drug rehab and depression) being ultimately surpassed by WNBC's Chuck Scarborough.

I also have a disclosure: As a young kid, thanks to a former nursery-school teacher of mine having known Jensen, I saw a live broadcast of a 6 P.M. newscast at the CBS Broadcast Center in November 1976. (And as a side note, this was two weeks prior to WABC's Tex Antoine's on-air career at that station coming to a crashing halt with his infamous "rape" comments.) By this point, Mr. Jensen was partnered on the air with Rolland Smith (still with the moustache he wore at the point of the 1978 "Fighting the frizzies, at 11" teaser), as he would be up to Smith's departure from the station in 1986; and the set had the famous Star Trek transformer-style "pods" where anchors and reporters sat (an apparent knock at the futuristic NewsCenter4 set of WNBC-TV). Both men were consummate gentlemen, as were the other on-air talent at the station who were at the studio that night. I saw the newsroom up close, as well as the machine (probably Vidifont) used for the CG displays in use then. And of course, the early Norelco PC-70 cameras from the first half of 1966 (with the "round applied handles," per Chuck Pharis terminology and as on PC-60's, as opposed to the "square molded handles" of later PC-70's).

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1941: Former baseball player and current Fox Sports commentator Tim McCarver is born in Memphis, TN.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on October 16. Discuss or comment as you please……

1946: Actress Suzanne Somers (Three’s Company, Step by Step) is born (as Suzanne Marie Mahoney) in San Bruno, California.

Sixty-four, eh? Not too shabby!
Too bad John Ritter is no longer around. We could look forward to a Three's Company reprise set in a
Senior Citizen high-rise.

 

[dave73]

2010: Barbara Billingsley (Born Barbara Lillian Combes) dies at her home in Santa Monica California at the age of 94. She's most remembered for her role as June Cleaver in Leave It To Beaver.

 

[KentBrockman]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on October 16. Discuss or comment as you please……

1946: Actress Suzanne Somers (Three’s Company, Step by Step) is born (as Suzanne Marie Mahoney) in San Bruno, California.

1997: Actress Audra Lindley (Three’s Company, The Ropers) dies in Los Angeles of leukemia, aged 79.

That had to have been a bad birthday for Suzanne in 1997. How bizarre.