September 1: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on September 1. Discuss or comment as you please……

1922: Actress Yvonne DeCarlo (The Munsters) is born (as Margaret Yvonne Middleton) in Vancouver, British Columbia.

1928: Actor George Maharis (Route 66, The Most Dangerous Game) is born in Astoria, New York.

1939: The BBC’s London TV transmitter is shut down, and would remain silenced for the duration of World War II.

1950: Philip Calvin McGraw is born in Vinita, Oklahoma. He would grow up to become a psychologist, and is now known to TV viewers as the insufferable Dr. Phil.

1953: WTCN-TV and WMIN-TV begin broadcasting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on channel 11 in a share-time arrangement, alternating control of the channel in 2-hour shifts. (There were several such arrangements in early TV, due to the FCC having a backlog of contested and competing licenses on some channels.) The shotgun marriage would last for 19 months, with WTCN (later WUSA, now KARE) taking over the channel full-time in 1955.

1953: WNOK-TV (channel 67) debuts in Columbia, South Carolina. They would move way down the dial to channel 19 in 1961.

1955: KARD-TV (now KSNW) signs on in Wichita, Kansas on channel 3.

1957: WAVY-TV (channel 10) begins broadcasting in Portsmouth, Virginia.

1957: WIIC-TV (channel 11, now WPXI) signs on as the second commercial TV station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1957: WFGA-TV (channel 12, now WTLV) signs on in Jacksonville, Florida as an NBC affiliate. It was the first TV station in the country built and designed from the start with color broadcasting in mind.

1959: “10-4! 10-4!” Chief Dan Matthews (Broderick Crawford) catches his last bad guy as 1950’s syndicated TV staple Highway Patrol broadcasts its last (156th) original episode.

1964: WDSE-TV commences operations on channel 8, bringing educational TV to the Duluth, Minnesota area.

1965: WTWO-TV (channel 2) begins operations in Terre Haute, Indiana.

1967: WJRJ-TV (channel 17) hits the air as Atlanta’s first independent TV station. (Also one of the first indies in the South in general.) Saddled with a shoestring budget and frequent technical breakdowns, this flawed little acorn would nonetheless eventually grow into one of the biggest media conglomerates in the U.S., beginning with then unknown businessman Ted Turner’s acquisition of the struggling station in 1970.

1976: CKVU-TV (channel 21) signs on as Vancouver, British Columbia’s first UHF station.

1986: CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather begins his one-week attempt to initiate the use of the word "Courage" as a sign-off slogan. The gesture is an abject failure, as noted by comedians and fellow journalists alike.

1989: It’s a Living airs its final original episode, its 120th spread over a nonconsecutive network (ABC, 1980-82) and syndicated (1985-89) run,

2001: All four commercial television stations in Vancouver, British Columbia change network affiliations, the largest such simultaneous change in a single market in television history.

(Just a little featurette I hope to do as time permits…..don’t expect it every single day. 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…..)

 

[bpatrick]

In 1939, the BBC shut down in the middle of a
Mickey Mouse cartoon; an animated Greta Garbo
had just said, "I tink I go home" when the screen
went black.

When television resumed in Britain in 1946, "presenter"
Jasmine Bligh said something like, "As we were saying
before we were interrupted..." and picked up the cartoon
at the exact point where it had stopped seven years earlier.

At least that's the way I've heard it.

 

[Stanislav]

In 1939, the BBC shut down in the middle of a
Mickey Mouse cartoon; an animated Greta Garbo
had just said, "I tink I go home" when the screen
went black.

When television resumed in Britain in 1946, "presenter"
Jasmine Bligh said something like, "As we were saying
before we were interrupted..." and picked up the cartoon
at the exact point where it had stopped seven years earlier.

At least that's the way I've heard it.

It's been told that way for decades, though some believe it to be partly urban legend. (It's all a little too neat and tidy, you know.....) I find it hard to believe that the proper Brits would have just unceremoniously pulled the plug in mid-program, even in wartime -- it's not like letting the cartoon finish and doing a proper sign-off would have seriously endangered lives. I can believe Ms. Bligh's remark upon returning, as it sounds very much like the Brit style of ironic, tongue-in-cheek humor. Some sources say they merely showed the same cartoon from the start...not at the exact point it was interrupted. (Would they have even remembered that 7 years later, and taken the time to "dead roll" the film to that point before transmission? I doubt it.)

But it makes a nice story. Sometimes that's all that matters.

 

[landtuna]

I'd believe seeing Greta Garbo in a Warner Bros cartoon but not in Mickey Mouse.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

When television resumed in Britain in 1946, "presenter"
Jasmine Bligh said something like, "As we were saying
before we were interrupted..." and picked up the cartoon
at the exact point where it had stopped seven years earlier.
So that's where Jack Paar got the line!

 

[Ultimajock]

In 1939, the BBC shut down in the middle of a
Mickey Mouse cartoon; an animated Greta Garbo
had just said, "I tink I go home" when the screen
went black.

When television resumed in Britain in 1946, "presenter"
Jasmine Bligh said something like, "As we were saying
before we were interrupted..." and picked up the cartoon
at the exact point where it had stopped seven years earlier.

At least that's the way I've heard it.

It's been told that way for decades, though some believe it to be partly urban legend. (It's all a little too neat and tidy, you know.....) I find it hard to believe that the proper Brits would have just unceremoniously pulled the plug in mid-program, even in wartime -- it's not like letting the cartoon finish and doing a proper sign-off would have seriously endangered lives. I can believe Ms. Bligh's remark upon returning, as it sounds very much like the Brit style of ironic, tongue-in-cheek humor. Some sources say they merely showed the same cartoon from the start...not at the exact point it was interrupted. (Would they have even remembered that 7 years later, and taken the time to "dead roll" the film to that point before transmission? I doubt it.)

But it makes a nice story. Sometimes that's all that matters.

...it would seem to me that an engineer thinking to papercue the film reel at the point the station was shut down would be entirely plausible...

 

[RicoGregg]

I'd believe seeing Greta Garbo in a Warner Bros cartoon but not in Mickey Mouse.

Not to be contrary, but with all of his faults and foibles, Walt Disney did have a sense of humor, and there are at least two cartoons with celebrity lampoons on them, just as Warner Bros. had done on numerous occasions.

One of the cartoons centered around a celebrity polo game, with the stands also packed with stars. In one scene, Clarabelle Cow has a romantic conniption when she discovers that she's sitting next to Clark Gable, big ears and all.

Walt Disney was as well known as any celebrity. It stands to reason that he probably knew most, if not all of the stars that he poked a little fun at.

 

[bpatrick]

Which, as I've always heard the story, is what happened.

Yeah, I can imagine Greta Garbo with Bugs Bunny but Bugs
was still in embryonic form ("A Wild Hare," usually considered
the first "true" Bugs Bunny cartoon, wouldn't come out until
1940).

 

[therealjm12]

Not to be contrary, but with all of his faults and foibles, Walt Disney did have a sense of humor, and there are at least two cartoons with celebrity lampoons on them, just as Warner Bros. had done on numerous occasions.

One of the major differences between Disney cartoons and Warner Bros. is that many of the stars lampooned in the Warner Bros. cartoons were actually under contract to Warner Bros. or would work for the studio at some time. Disney didn't have any real life stars back then. He would have been open to the possibility of some kind of legal action.
Disney was well known for protecting his property and sued or threatened to sue many times over the years. So I have always been surprised he never went after Jay Ward & Bill Scott for repeatdly using his image in Fractured Fairy Tales. Myabe he just had a sense of humor about it or just realized Ward & Scott would have loved the publicity.

 

[Ultimajock]

I'd believe seeing Greta Garbo in a Warner Bros cartoon but not in Mickey Mouse.

...why Warner Brothers? Garbo was strictly a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star and never appeared in a live-action picture for Warner Brothers or any other American studio...

...anyway, I have a VHS of the first episode of Television, the 1980s PBS documentary series that Edwin Newman narrated. That first episode covers the 1930s pre-War BBC service, and in fact contains a clip of Cecil Madden, the BBC-TV programming chief at the time, discussing the sudden closedown. It also includes a clip of the cartoon in question, Mickey's Gala Premier (1933), which contains clear charicatures of Will Rogers, Boris Karloff (as Frankenstein's Monster), Eddie Cantor, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Chico Marx, John Barrymore (as Svengali) and Greta Garbo. The IMDb indicates that Disney product was distributed by United Artists at the time, so it may have been possible that the okeh for the use of those images was arranged by UA and the other studios considered them "loans" to UA (except for Chaplin, who had been a United Artists co-founder) in exchange for use of imagery based on UA releases in an M-G-M, Warner Brothers or Paramount-distributed cartoon of the future...

 

[landtuna]

I'd believe seeing Greta Garbo in a Warner Bros cartoon but not in Mickey Mouse.

...why Warner Brothers? Garbo was strictly a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star and never appeared in a live-action picture for Warner Brothers or any other American studio...

WB produced lots of cartoons over the years which had caricatures of famous human actors. Disney did much less, if any. What I meant was that any actor's likeness would be much more likely to appear in a WB than Disney production.

 

[Charles1]

Also on 9/1...

1996: The Birmingham market undergoes a massive affiliation swap involving six stations in the area. Longtime ABC affiliate WBRC-6 becomes a Fox affiliate; Fox affiliates WDBB-17 in Tuscaloosa and WTTO-21 in Birmingham become independents; Fox affiliate WNAL-44 in Gadsden becomes a CBS station; and CBS affiliates WCFT-33 in Tuscaloosa and WJSU-40 in Anniston merge to become the new ABC affiliate for central Alabama. In February '97, WDBB would become a rebroadcaster of WTTO and become the WB affiliate for central Alabama. In August '98, WPXH (the former WNAL) became the Pax affiliate for the Birmingham market.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

2006: Luxembourg becomes the first country to complete their transition to digital television.

 

[bpatrick]

And the second-worst day of my life (after my mom passed away):
my favorite ABC affiliate, WXIA/11 Alive, moves to NBC on Sept. 1,
1980, as WSB/2 becomes Atlanta's ABC affiliate. Things are no better
at 11 Alive today; with NBC's poor ratings the station sometimes ranks
behind WGCL, that joke of a CBS affiliate.

As I mentioned elsewhere, 11 Alive has been with NBC as long as it
was with ABC (1951-80). WSB has three more years before its tenure
with ABC equals its time with NBC (1948-80).

 

[Ultimajock]

1953: WTCN-TV and WMIN-TV begin broadcasting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on channel 11 in a share-time arrangement, alternating control of the channel in 2-hour shifts. (There were several such arrangements in early TV, due to the FCC having a backlog of contested and competing licenses on some channels.) The shotgun marriage would last for 19 months, with WTCN (later WUSA, now KARE) taking over the channel full-time in 1955.

...hmmm...what would be the latest example of such an arrangement taking to the air? I'm guessing it would be WPWR/60 Aurora splitting their channel with WBBS/60 West Chicago (WBBS using Channel 60 as a Spanish-language independent from 7:00 P.M. to 2:30 A.M., and WPWR using Channel 60 as an English-language independent with SportsVision pay programming for the remainder of the broadcast day) from 4 April 1982 to early 1986...

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1975: Australian actress/singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte (yes, that's the real last name ;D), the host of Australia's version of "So you Think You Can Dance," is born in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.

 

[bpatrick]

And the second-worst day of my life (after my mom passed away):
my favorite ABC affiliate, WXIA/11 Alive, moves to NBC on Sept. 1,
1980, as WSB/2 becomes Atlanta's ABC affiliate. Things are no better
at 11 Alive today; with NBC's poor ratings the station sometimes ranks
behind WGCL, that joke of a CBS affiliate.

As I mentioned elsewhere, 11 Alive has been with NBC as long as it
was with ABC (1951-80). WSB has three more years before its tenure
with ABC equals its time with NBC (1948-80).

To update that last paragraph, 11 Alive has now been with NBC longer than it
was with ABC (30 years vs. 29); WSB has two more years before its tenure
with ABC equals that with NBC.

 

[AH3RD]

1953: WVUE-TV (Channel 8) began broadcasting as WJMR-TV, the second TV station in New Orleans (behind WDSU-TV) and the third in Louisiana (behind WDSU and WAFB in Baton Rouge).