October 4: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on October 4. Discuss or comment as you please……

1953: KGBT-TV (channel 4) signs on in Harlingen, Texas. It has maintained the same calls and primary affiliation (CBS) to this day.

1954: CFPA-TV (later CFJC-TV, now CKPR-TV) debuts on channel 2 in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

1956: The venerable Playhouse 90 debuts on CBS.

1957: Leave It to Beaver premieres on CBS.

1961: The Alvin Show debuts on CBS.

1962: The Saint premieres in the U.K. on ITV.

1969: 20-year-old Diane Linkletter, daughter of TV personality Art Linkletter, jumps out the window of her high-rise West Hollywood apartment to her death. At the time, it was rumored that she had been taking LSD, and her father attributed her act to the effects of the drug, and became a prominent anti-drug campaigner. However, the Coroner's Office would determine that Linkletter had no drugs in her system at the time of her death.

1970: NET (National Educational Television) breathes its last as a network. The following day, PBS would officially begin programming, and NET will have merged with WNDT-TV (now WNET) and ceased network operations.

1973: WDTB-TV (channel 13, now WMBB) hits the air in Panama City, Florida.

1976: The beginning of a failed experiment: Barbara Walters joins Harry Reasoner as co-anchor of ABC’s evening newscast. It will not be a happy marriage.

1980: That “other” orange cat from the comics hits TV as Heathcliff debuts on ABC. It boasts the great Mel Blanc as the voice of Heathcliff, and features three other classic voice artists (June Foray, Paul Winchell, and Henry Corden).

1985: The short-lived series Misfits of Science debuts on NBC. Its main claim to fame was featuring a young Courtney Cox in her first TV role.

1989: Actor/comedian Graham Chapman (Monty Python’s Flying Circus) dies of cancer in Maidstone, Kent, England, aged 48.

1990: Beverly Hills 90210 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…..)

 

[landtuna]

Although I was a regular viewer (as a young teen) I nominate LITB as the second-most stiffly-acted TV show ever....behind only Jack Webb's original Dragnet.

 

[Ultimajock]

Although I was a regular viewer (as a young teen) I nominate LITB as the second-most stiffly-acted TV show ever....behind only Jack Webb's original Dragnet.

...the 1952-59 Dragnet was stiffly-acted, all right. But it doesn't hold a candle to the 1967-70 Dragnet, which was also not only stiff but stale as well...

...regarding Diane Linkletter, she appears with her father in a commercial for Circus brand Mixed Nuts that can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU9n8q4YlGg; this was apparently a spot shown only on AFRTS stations around the world (I thought AFRTS didn't carry commercials -- or was that, like CBC, radio only?). She and her father were awarded the "Spoken Word" Grammy award in 1970 for a posthumously-released Capitol single, "We Love You, Call Collect"/"Dear Mom and Dad." An edited version of the two tracks into a single file can be heard at http://tinyurl.com/4l9bmm on the blog site of Jersey City radio station WFMU. It had been recorded well before her death, and in fact I was told by someone claiming to be a Capitol engineer who worked on the recording session that two versions of the Diane Linkletter side were made, one with Diane and one with an actress not related to the Linkletters. This guy told me it was the version by the actress that was eventually released. The tapes sat on a shelf in the Capitol vaults for a long time before Diane died, but were rush-released about a month after her death and charted during the last six weeks of 1969 (#42 in Billboard, #44 in Cash Box). Word Records reissued the 45 shortly afterwards (Ralph Carmichael, who produced the single, was on the staff of both labels at the time). There was also an interesting column that Harlan Ellison wrote for the 11/28/69 Los Angeles Free Press about the Art and Diane Linkletter tragedy that can be found in his book The Glass Teat*. In it, Ellison says, "Here is a man who helped build a multi-million dollar show business career in large part from the cute sayings of children who never managed to glean...enough perceptivity or perspective to help his own daughter as she crawled inexorably toward her own death"...


*available through better public libraries throughout North America. Surely, y'all recall public libraries, they're the places y'all used to go to read good stuff like this before Al Gore created the Internets ;D ...

 

[Stanislav]

*available through better public libraries throughout North America. Surely, y'all recall public libraries, they're the places y'all used to go to read good stuff like this before Al Gore created the Internets ;D ...

Yeah, yeah...I went into one of those places. Tried to use one of those "book" things. No mouse, no keyboard -- how the hell are you supposed to login to use it?

 

[wbhist]

1969: 20-year-old Diane Linkletter, daughter of TV personality Art Linkletter, jumps out the window of her high-rise West Hollywood apartment to her death. At the time, it was rumored that she had been taking LSD, and her father attributed her act to the effects of the drug, and became a prominent anti-drug campaigner. However, the Coroner's Office would determine that Linkletter had no drugs in her system at the time of her death.

This occurred between the end of CBS's The Linkletter Show after a 24-year run, starting on radio and continuing to TV (known up to 1968 as Art Linkletter's House Party), and the start of a daytime show on NBC, Life with Linkletter, that lasted up to fall 1970.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1957: Leave It to Beaver premieres on CBS.

"Leave It to Beaver" launched on the same day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I.

Also on Oct. 4:

1988: Televangelist Jim Bakker (PTL Club) is indicted on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.

 

[mleach]

1969: 20-year-old Diane Linkletter, daughter of TV personality Art Linkletter, jumps out the window of her high-rise West Hollywood apartment to her death. At the time, it was rumored that she had been taking LSD, and her father attributed her act to the effects of the drug, and became a prominent anti-drug campaigner. However, the Coroner's Office would determine that Linkletter had no drugs in her system at the time of her death.

There is actually strong debate that exist to this day that Diane Linkletter was actually murdered. One chief reason is of course her death by "falling" but also due to the fact that the person who was with Diane when she died was Robert Durston who BTW was with Carol Wayne the night SHE died and Wayne, like Linkletter died under some rather bizarre circumstances.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1945: Actor, songwriter and minister Clifton Davis ("Amen") is born in Chicago.

 

[Stanislav]

1945: Actor, songwriter and minister Clifton Davis ("Amen") is born in Chicago.

Been catching a few eps of Amen on RTV (missed it in its network days) -- a pleasant, if run of the mill sitcom. Basically "George Jefferson" as a church deacon. (There's not a whole lot of distance between Jefferson and Deacon Frye, personality-wise.) The church setting is almost incidental -- most episodes are standard sitcom plots, with the characters just happening to be staff and congregants of a church. And it does boast character actor Jester Hairston in a great supporting role as the resident sarcastic deadpan snarker.

I find it interesting that both Clifton Davis (who IRL is a minister and has often guest-hosted shows on TBN) and Andrae Crouch (the noted gospel musician who composed the show's infectious theme music) were involved in a show that doesn't paint a very positive image of church life, especially in the character of Ernie Frye, who is dishonest, self-centered, and about as "spiritual" as Ernie Bilko.