September 20: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on September 20. Discuss or comment as you please……

1925: Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers is born in New York City.

1929: Comedian/actress Anne Meara (Archie Bunker’s Place, The King of Queens, others) is born in Queens, New York.

1951: Production begins of the first (and only) commercial color television set intended for reception of the CBS non-compatible field-sequential color system. The CBS-Columbia Model 12CC2 sold for $499.95. According to Allen B. DuMont, 200 of these sets were shipped and 100 were sold. (The UCLA Collection of Television Technology has one of the two models known to have survived.) The set received both the 525-line/60-Hz monochrome and 405-line/144-Hz field rate color standards, but the viewer had to manually switch between the two.

1952: The first commercial UHF television station in the world launches as KPTV begins broadcasting in Portland, Oregon on channel 27. Much has been written about this station: if you’ve been deprived of the history, start here and here.

1953: Make Room for Daddy premieres on ABC.

1954: KETC (channel 9) begins operations in St. Louis, Missouri.

1955: Cheyenne debuts on ABC.

1960: WFSU-TV (channel 11) signs on from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

1961: The Joey Bishop Show (the sitcom, not the talk show) debuts on NBC.

1967: Actress Kristen Johnston (3rd Rock from the Sun) is born in Washington, D.C.

1967: WCIX-TV (channel 6) signs on from Homestead, Florida, serving the Miami area. The channel was originally allocated to Islamorada (in the Florida Keys), but the owners persuaded the FCC to reassign the channel closer to Miami. WCIX would later swap channels with WTVJ (channel 4) in 1995, becoming WFOR-TV.

1968: The Name of the Game debuts as a weekly series on NBC. The series was based on the 1966 TV-Movie Fame is the Name of the Game.

1975: The original “Saturday Night Live” debuts on ABC: Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. This variety turkey lasted all of 4 months before getting the axe. It is because of this show that what we now know as Saturday Night Live started out as NBC’s Saturday Night, only adopting the SNL moniker after the Cosell show tanked.

1977: Lou Grant premieres on CBS.

1979: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century debuts on NBC.

1984: The Cosby Show premieres on NBC.

1991: The decline and fall of Western civilization is greatly accelerated as The Jerry Springer Show debuts in syndication.

2005: My Name is Earl premieres on NBC.

(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]

Also on this day in 1952, The Jackie Gleason Show premieres on CBS, and the debut show also bore witness to Audrey Meadows' first appearance as Alice Kramden (she replaced Pert Kelton, who was forced off the program due to the blacklist).

As for The Name of the Game: This was the second series where Gene Barry played a character that was played by someone else in the pilot. He previously had this distinction on the 1963-65 series Burke's Law, where his Captain Amos Burke character was first played by the late Dick Powell in a 1961 episode of the anthology show The Dick Powell Show called "Who Killed Julie Greer?" In the case of ...Game, Barry's character of magazine publisher Glenn Howard was played in the 1966 TV-movie/pilot by George Macready.

 

[RicoGregg]

1961: The Joey Bishop Show (the sitcom, not the talk show) debuts on NBC.

I've been told, but have never been able to confirm, that after the cancellation of this show, Joey Bishop bought every copy of his sitcom and burned them.

Does anyone know for sure?

 

[Stanislav]

1961: The Joey Bishop Show (the sitcom, not the talk show) debuts on NBC.

I've been told, but have never been able to confirm, that after the cancellation of this show, Joey Bishop bought every copy of his sitcom and burned them.

Does anyone know for sure?

They were run a few years back (on TVLand, maybe?), the color shows at least, so they're still around.

 

[wbhist]

1961: The Joey Bishop Show (the sitcom, not the talk show) debuts on NBC.

I've been told, but have never been able to confirm, that after the cancellation of this show, Joey Bishop bought every copy of his sitcom and burned them.

Does anyone know for sure?

They were run a few years back (on TVLand, maybe?), the color shows at least, so they're still around.

Actually, the second and third seasons were in color, while the fourth (which moved from NBC to CBS) was in black-and-white. It was those last three seasons that were shown on TV Land. The first season - also in B&W, but with a different format altogether - has never been shown. So if any season had been "burned" by Mr. Bishop, my money would've been on the first.

 

[mleach]

1961: The Joey Bishop Show (the sitcom, not the talk show) debuts on NBC.

I've been told, but have never been able to confirm, that after the cancellation of this show, Joey Bishop bought every copy of his sitcom and burned them.

Does anyone know for sure?

They were run a few years back (on TVLand, maybe?), the color shows at least, so they're still around.

Also the ads Joey did for Newport Filter Cigarettes who sponsored his show are still around as well.

 

[Ultimajock]

...on September 20, 1973, a charter plane crashed at Natchitoches, Louisiana, killing musicians Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens and pilot Robert Elliott. The NTSB report suggests that Elliott, who had overslept that evening and ran some of the three miles from his motel to the airport, had a heart attack related to his severe coronary artery disease seconds after the plane left the ground. Croce's 1971 recording, "Time in a Bottle," had been heard earlier that week on an ABC TV-movie, She Lives, and as a result was reissued by ABC Records as a single a few weeks later; it became the third posthumous release of the rock era to become a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (the previous ones were Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" and Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee"). The day after his death, Croce's album I Got a Name was released on schedule; the title track was also a major chart hit and had already appeared in a different mix on the soundtrack of the film The Last American Hero that July...

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1973: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in the famous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match at the Houston Astrodome, televised on ABC.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=57267

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

2010: Other than weekends, holidays, special programming, and news events, Sept. 20, 2010 is the first weekday since March 30, 1956 that "As the World Turns" is not part of the CBS daytime lineup.

 

[mleach]

...on September 20, 1973, a charter plane crashed at Natchitoches, Louisiana, killing musicians Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens and pilot Robert Elliott. The NTSB report suggests that Elliott, who had overslept that evening and ran some of the three miles from his motel to the airport, had a heart attack related to his severe coronary artery disease seconds after the plane left the ground. Croce's 1971 recording, "Time in a Bottle," had been heard earlier that week on an ABC TV-movie, She Lives, and as a result was reissued by ABC Records as a single a few weeks later; it became the third posthumous release of the rock era to become a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (the previous ones were Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" and Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee"). The day after his death, Croce's album I Got a Name was released on schedule; the title track was also a major chart hit and had already appeared in a different mix on the soundtrack of the film The Last American Hero that July...

I could very well be wrong about this but I seem to recall watching an interview with Croce's widow ( I believe it was VH1 ) where she claimed that she had no idea Croce was even in an accident..much less killed, that is until she received word by watching the Today show !!

If this was sadly the case, it was the same with Harriet Nelson and her son Rick's death. Many years ago there was a book out about the number of music stars who had died in plane crashes. Sadly I have since forgot the title of this. UGH !! In the chapter on the 1985 plane crash that killed Rick Nelson in the report in very small print it was noted that David Nelson was highly upset that his mother had found out of her son's death...getting the first news of it through a TV newscast meanwhile Rick's sons ( the band Nelson ), they too had no idea theirfather was dead, that is until they heard some radio announcer saying after he had played Garden party "..from the LATE Rick Nelson who was killed tonight a result of a plane crash..."

It seems the Nelsons didn't have a clue about Rick Nelson's death..until they heard about it the same way just about everyone else did..through the media.

 

[Prais]

Rick Nelson was killed late at night.

I was a dj at a New Years Eve Party, and it was probably 3am, on my way home, that I heard about it on wgn, Chicago,

I know what the book says, but NEW YEARS EVE....why didn't any friends call Harriet or David???

 

[Ultimajock]

...on September 20, 1973, a charter plane crashed at Natchitoches, Louisiana, killing musicians Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens and pilot Robert Elliott. The NTSB report suggests that Elliott, who had overslept that evening and ran some of the three miles from his motel to the airport, had a heart attack related to his severe coronary artery disease seconds after the plane left the ground. Croce's 1971 recording, "Time in a Bottle," had been heard earlier that week on an ABC TV-movie, She Lives, and as a result was reissued by ABC Records as a single a few weeks later; it became the third posthumous release of the rock era to become a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (the previous ones were Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" and Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee"). The day after his death, Croce's album I Got a Name was released on schedule; the title track was also a major chart hit and had already appeared in a different mix on the soundtrack of the film The Last American Hero that July...

I could very well be wrong about this but I seem to recall watching an interview with Croce's widow ( I believe it was VH1 ) where she claimed that she had no idea Croce was even in an accident..much less killed, that is until she received word by watching the Today show !!

...partially right; Jim and Ingrid Croce had just moved from Philadelphia to San Diego, and word of the plane crash hit the wire services around 2:00 A.M. Eastern Time. Jim's mother still lived in the Philadelphia area, and thus got Today about four hours before Ingrid would have. The Today mention of the crash was how Jim's mother heard about it, and she immediately called Ingrid, who was asleep in San Diego at just after 4:00 A.M. Pacific Time...