September 29: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

Just a few random TV related events that happened on September 29. Discuss or comment as you please……

1939: Actor Larry Linville (M*A*S*H) is born in Ojai, California.

1948: TV comes to the Deep South as Atlanta’s WSB-TV (channel 8, later channel 2) begins broadcasting. It is the second-oldest station south of Washington, D.C. (only Richmond’s WTVR is older.)

1952: During a break in an NBC telecast of Studio One, Westinghouse spokeswoman Betty Furness explains UHF and demonstrates the use of a UHF adapter.

1954: KALB-TV (channel 5) signs on in Alexandria, Louisiana. The same day, downstate, KPLC-TV (channel 7) debuts in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

1960: My Three Sons debuts on ABC.

1963: The Judy Garland Show premieres on CBS.

1967: The Prisoner premieres in the U.K. on 2 ITV franchisees: ATV and Grampian Television.

1969: The little-remembered soap opera (it only ran 2 ½ years) Bright Promise debuts on NBC.

1969: Love, American Style debuts on ABC.

1970: Actor Edward Everett Horton dies in Los Angeles, aged 84. TV geeks of a certain age no doubt first heard his unmistakable voice narrating the “Fractured Fairy Tales” segments on Rocky & Bullwinkle.

1974: WBTB-TV (channel 68) begins broadcasting in Newark, New Jersey. It is possible that this station with such a checkered history may have just have the record for call letter changes. As a construction permit, it carried the calls WWRO-TV (but signed on as WBTB-TV). It subsequently became WTVG, WWHT, WHSE and, currently, WFUT-TV. That’s six different sets of calls, five of which actually aired. (But see tomorrow’s TDITVH for another claim to the title...)

1975: The first African-American owned TV station, WGPR-TV (“Where God's Presence Radiates”) begins broadcasting on channel 62 in Detroit, Michigan.

1983: PBS finally comes to Reno, Nevada with the sign-on of KNPB (channel 5).

1985: MacGyver premieres on ABC.

1986: Designing Women debuts on CBS.

1987: All yuppies, all the time: Thirtysomething premieres on ABC.

1988: Cartoonist Charles Addams (The Addams Family) dies, aged 76.

(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…..)

 

[bpatrick]

Re "Bright Promise": first, NBC had the temerity
to cancel "You Don't Say!" and put this against
"One Life To Live" (ABC) and "Edge Of Night" (CBS);
second, another NBC soap ("Days Of Our Lives") starred
a Hollywood veteran, Macdonald Carey, so the producers
of this show got one of his contemporaries, Dana Andrews.

And the show that replaced it, "Return To Peyton Place,"
was even less successful, running less than two years
(and facing "Match Game '73" on CBS in its last few months).

 

[daryll]

This Day in TV History - WSB-TV

Channel 2 is running a really classy 60th anniversary promo featuring some of their old news sets, news talent and that wonderful big red 2 logo. They last changed logos in October 1985 when they went to the gold 2 on a blue field.

 

[bpatrick]

Stanislav mentioned WBAP (KXAS) as signing on
September 28, 1948. Unless I misread the Broadcasting
Yearbook, I think it signed on September 29, the same
day as WSB.

Stanislav, don't forget that September 30, 1951, was
the sign-on date for what is now WXIA/11 Alive in
Atlanta. At the time it was WLTV on Ch. 8 (the Cox
family had bought the Atlanta Constitution and WCON
on Ch. 2, then moved WSB to Ch. 2), the 108th and
last "pre-freeze" station to sign on. In 1953 Channel 8
was reassigned to the University of Georgia, and WLTV
(now WLW-A) moved to Ch. 11.

 

[Stanislav]

Stanislav mentioned WBAP (KXAS) as signing on
September 28, 1948. Unless I misread the Broadcasting
Yearbook, I think it signed on September 29, the same
day as WSB.

You know, the whole subject of sign-on dates is rife with frustration for me. I have seen more than one example where 2 or 3 different sources will give 2 or 3 different dates. Sometimes, I guess it's differing definitions of what constitutes a start date -- is it the first time the transmitter was fired up, even if briefly? Is it the beginning of regular test transmissions? Or the start of an actual first full programming day? I prefer the latter definition, but I don't always assume the latest date is the best (it may just be in error). In the case of WBAP, I saw more than one source with the 28th date. It might well be one of those cases where they were testing only (TP) on the 28th, and actually started a program schedule on the 29th. Whatever.....close enough for jazz, as they say.....

 

[wbhist]

Also on this day in 1962, Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine debuts on CBS, marking The Great One's return to the Saturday night time slot where he truly became famous (in the process, dislodging Perry Mason which ran there in the five years Gleason was off Saturday night TV). In the first two years of its run (1962-64), the show opened with Johnny Olson intoning, "From New York City, The Entertainment Capital of the World . . . " It wasn't until the show moved to Miami Beach in 1964 that the now famous phrase, "The Sun-and-Fun Capital of the World," was coined.

 

[Kurt Toy]

Studio One was on CBS.

 

[wbhist]

Studio One was on CBS.

True. However, starting in the 1970's Miss Furness was on NBC as a consumer reporter, not just contributing to the Today show, but also on WNBC-TV in New York. But that's a whole different animal from Studio One.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Also on this day in 1962, Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine debuts on CBS
Only Gleason could recover from a flop the size of his failed game show from a year and a half earlier, "You're In The Picture".

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1923: Children's author Stan Berenstain is born in Philadelphia. He authored the Berenstain Bears children's book series with his wife, Jan, which were also adapted for television on CBS Saturday mornings (1985-87) and on PBS since 2003, plus yearly NBC holiday specials between 1979-83.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1944: Composer Mike Post is born (as Leland Michael Postil) in Berkeley, CA. He is best known for his compositions of many TV theme songs, some of which include "Hill Street Blues," "Rockford Files," "L.A. Law," "The Greatest American Hero," "A-Team," "Magnum P.I.," and "Doogie Howser, M.D."

 

[bpatrick]

September 29, 1969: NBC did a massive overhaul of its
daytime schedule. Larry Blyden's "Personality" was replaced
by "Sale Of The Century" with original host Jack (Bart Maverick)
Kelly; "Name Droppers" with LA DJs Al Lohman and Roger Barkley
replaced "Eye Guess"; "Letters To Laugh-In" replaced the original
"Match Game"; and the aforementioned "Bright Promise" replaced
"You Don't Say!" Larry Blyden replaced Bill Leyden as host of
"You're Putting Me On," and Bob Clayton became permanent host
of "Concentration".

That night on ABC, the premieres of "The Survivors," one of the
shows that always gets mentioned in lists of "the worst TV shows
ever," and "Love, American Style," which wouldn't catch on until
it moved to Friday nights.

 

[mleach]

That night on ABC, the premieres of "The Survivors," one of the
shows that always gets mentioned in lists of "the worst TV shows
ever," and "Love, American Style," which wouldn't catch on until
it moved to Friday nights.

When it comes to shows that make the list as to being the worst of all time, it just makes me want to check it out just to see just how bad they really were and/or are such shows put there by those who had never seen them in the first place. Or even pehaps had the timing and/or network would that had played a role as well.

Just before her death a few months back, my wife and I did catch online 10 minutes of the "infamous" Turn-ON show with Tim Conway. From what we saw we felt it was actually very funny HOWEVER .we both totally understood why Turn-ON was cancelled so fast in the first place. A show with sex jokes at a time when people were still into watching Bewitched and Ed Sullivan. Maybe had Turn-ON waited until 1979 the results would had been different. Meamwhile there is that other "bad" show..Hello, Larry. I never did find that show to be, well all that bad but I do wonder had Hello, Larry would had aired say on CBS or ABC rather than NBC..would people still call Hello, Larry one of TV's worst?

Pink Lady & Jeff I believe would had done better at syndication rather than NBC though yeah..it was a bad show even though at the time I heard the same thing about the then-crop of British shows like Doctor In the House and even Benny Hill..today many consider those shows, well..hmmmm..classics.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1944: Composer Mike Post is born (as Leland Michael Postil) in Berkeley, CA. He is best known for his compositions of many TV theme songs, some of which include "Hill Street Blues," "Rockford Files," "L.A. Law," "The Greatest American Hero," "A-Team," "Magnum P.I.," and "Doogie Howser, M.D."

He also composed the circa-1977 discoesque theme to "Donahue" which runs from about 0:50-2:40 on this YouTube video (YouTube once had a portion of a 1977 Donahue opening with the Post theme and the Chicago skyline, but apparently it has been deleted):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVtKZNMpL9I&feature=related