CHILD OF TELEVISION

Mental Sorbet: Strike Force Five Is And Always Will Be: Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers, Oliver and Colbert

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:59:54 -0700

Strike Force Five was a limited series podcast hosted by American comedians and talk show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. Each episode features conversations between the comedians on different subjects defined by an alternating leading host. Running 12 episodes from August 30 to October 10, 2023, it was created to support the five hosts' employees who were all temporarily out of work due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, and its improvised nature aimed to demonstrate their importance to their shows.

On May 11, 2026 Stephen Colbert reunites with his Strike Force Five podcast co-hosts for a rowdy group interview that went far too long for one broadcast episode. Watch the entire segment here then keep an eye out for a special emergency episode of the Strike Force Five podcast dropping soon wherever you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver! 

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Tony Figueroa

Rex Reed

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:36:11 -0700

In Hollywood, if you don't have happiness you send out for it.

Rex Reed

Rex Taylor Reed

October 2, 1938 – May 12, 2026

Good Night Rex

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: May 2026 PART II

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700

May 17, 1974
LAPD raid leaves six SLA members dead
In Los Angeles, California, police surround a home in Compton where the leaders of the terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) are hiding out.
The SLA had kidnapped Patricia Hearst, of the fabulously wealthy Hearst family publishing empire, months earlier, earning headlines across the country. Police found the house in Compton when a local mother reported that her kids had seen a bunch of people playing with an arsenal of automatic weapons in the living room of the home.
The LAPD's 500-man siege on the Compton home was only the latest event in a short, but exceedingly bizarre, episode. The SLA was a small group of violent radicals who quickly made their way to national prominence, far out of proportion to their actual influence. They began by killing Oakland's superintendent of schools in late 1973 but really burst into society's consciousness when they kidnapped Hearst the following February.
Months later, the SLA released a tape on which Hearst said that she was changing her name to Tania and joining the SLA. Shortly thereafter, a surveillance camera in a bank caught Hearst carrying a machine gun during an SLA robbery. In another incident, SLA member General Teko was caught trying to shoplift from a sporting goods store, but escaped when Hearst sprayed the front of the building with machine gun fire.
Although law enforcement officials began talking about the SLA as if they were a well-established paramilitary terrorist organization, the SLA had only a handful of members, most of who were disaffected middle class youths.
On May 17, Los Angeles police shot an estimated 1,200 rounds of ammunition into the tiny Compton home as six SLA members shot back. Teargas containers thrown into the hideout started a fire, but the SLA refused to surrender. Autopsy results showed that they continued to fire back even as smoke and flames were searing their lungs; they clearly chose suicide and martyrdom over jail. Randolph Hearst, Patty's father, remarked that the massive attack had turned "dingbats into martyrs." The raid left six SLA members dead, including leader Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque. Patty Hearst was not inside the home at the time. She was not found until September 1975.

Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape, isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA. Prosecutors believed that she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst's sentence after she had served almost two years. Hearst was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.

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Tony Figueroa

Ted Turner

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Wed, 6 May 2026 11:23:25 -0700

If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect.

Ted Turner

Robert Edward Turner III

November 19, 1938 – May 6, 2026

In the late 1960s Turner began buying several Southern radio stations. In 1969, he sold his radio stations to buy a struggling television station in Atlanta, UHF Channel 17 WJRJ (now WPCH). At the time, UHF stations did well only in markets without VHF stations, like Fresno, California, or in markets with only one station on VHF. Independent UHF stations were not ratings winners or that profitable even in larger markets, but Turner concluded that this would change as people wanted more than several choices. He changed the call sign to WTCG, erroneously claimed to have stood for "Watch This Channel Grow" but in actuality stood for Turner Communications Group. Initially, the station ran old movies from prior decades, along with theatrical cartoons and bygone sitcoms and drama programs. As a better syndicated product fell off the VHF stations, Turner would acquire it for his station at a very low price. WTCG ran mostly second- and even third-hand programming of the time, including fare such as Gilligan's Island, I Love Lucy, Star Trek, Hazel, and Bugs Bunny. Other low-cost content included humorist Bill Tush reading the news at 3 a.m., prompting Turner to jokingly comment that, "we have a 100% share at this time". Tush once delivered the news with his "co-anchor" Rex, a German Shepherd. The dog (who belonged to an associate) was shown next to Tush on set, wearing a shirt and tie while eating a peanut butter sandwich. Rex appeared only on one episode, but a myth grew where many people thought the dog was a nightly guest. By 1972, WTCG had acquired the rights to telecast Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks games. Turner would go on to purchase UHF Channel 36 WRET (now WCNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina, and ran it with a format similar to WTCG.

In 1976, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed WTCG to use a satellite to transmit content to local cable television providers around the nation. On December 17, 1976, the rechristened WTCG-TV Super-Station began to broadcast old movies, situation comedy reruns, cartoons, and sports nationwide to cable-television subscribers. As cable systems developed, many carried his station to free their schedules, which increased his viewers and advertising. The number of subscribers eventually reached 2 million and Turner's net worth rose to $100 million. He bought a 5,000-acre (2,000 ha) plantation in Jacksonboro, South Carolina, for $2 million.

In 1976, Turner bought the Atlanta Braves, and in 1977, he bought the Atlanta Hawks, partially to provide programming for WTCG. Using the rechristened WTBS superstation's status to broadcast Braves games into nearly every home in North America, Turner turned the Braves into a household name even before their run of success in the 1990s and early 2000s. At one point, he suggested to pitcher Andy Messersmith, who wore number 17, that he change his surname to "Channel" to promote the television station.

In 1978, Turner struck a deal with a student-operated radio station at MIT, Technology Broadcasting System (now WMBR), to obtain the rights to the WTBS call sign for $50,000. Such a move allowed Turner to strengthen the branding of his "Super-Station" using the initials TBS. Turner Communications Group was renamed Turner Broadcasting System and WTCG was renamed WTBS.

In 1986, Turner founded the Goodwill Games with the goal of easing tensions between capitalist and communist countries. Broadcasting the events of these games also provided his superstation the ability to provide Olympic-style sports programming.

Turner Field, first used for the 1996 Summer Olympics as Centennial Olympic Stadium and then converted into a baseball-only facility for the Braves, was named after him.

In 1978, Turner contacted media executive Reese Schonfeld about his plans to launch a 24-hour news channel (Schonfeld had previously approached Turner with the proposition in 1977 but was rebuffed). Schonfeld responded that it could be done with a staff of 300 if they used an all electronic newsroom and satellites for all transmissions. It would require an initial investment of $15 million–$20 million and several million dollars per month to operate.

In 1979, Turner sold his North Carolina station, WRET, to fund the transaction and established its headquarters in lower-cost, non-union Atlanta. Schonfeld was appointed first president and chief executive of the then-named Cable News Network (CNN). CNN hired Jim Kitchell, former general manager of news at NBC as vice president of production and operations; Sam Zelman as vice president of news and executive producer; Bill MacPhail as head of sports, Ted Kavanau as director of personnel, and Burt Reinhardt as vice president of the network. In 1982, Schonfeld was succeeded as CEO by Turner after a dispute over Schonfeld's firing of Sandi Freeman; and was succeeded as president by CNN's executive vice president, Burt Reinhardt.

In 1981, Turner Broadcasting System acquired Brut Productions from Fabergé Cosmetics After a failed attempt to acquire CBS, Turner purchased the film studio MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from Kirk Kerkorian in 1986 for $1.5 billion. Following the acquisition, Turner had amassed enormous debt and sold parts of the acquisition; Kerkorian bought back MGM/UA Entertainment. The MGM/UA Studio lot in Culver City was sold to Lorimar/Telepictures. Turner kept MGM's pre-May 1986 and pre-merger film and television library.

Turner Entertainment Co. was established in August 1986 to oversee film and television properties owned by Turner thanks to the deal with Kerkorian.

Having acquired MGM's library of 2,200 films that were made before 1986, Turner syndicated them to television stations across the country. When broadcasting some older films originally filmed in black-and-white, he aired colorized versions of them. Opposition to Turner's colorization arose among cinephiles, film critics, actors, and directors. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that broadcasting a colorized Casablanca "will be one of the saddest days in the history of the movies. It is sad because it demonstrates that there is no movie that Turner will spare, no classic however great that is safe from the vulgarity of his computerized graffiti gangs." Due in part to Turner's colorization, the Library of Congress established the National Film Registry with the aim to preserve American films in their original formats.

In 1988, Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions. He renamed it World Championship Wrestling (WCW), which became the main competitor to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF). This rivalry became known as the Monday Night War, and would last throughout the 1990s. In 2001, under AOL Time Warner, WCW was sold to the WWF.

Also in 1988, Turner introduced Turner Network Television (TNT) with Gone with the Wind. TNT, initially showing older movies and television shows, added original programs and newer reruns. Turner would later create Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 1994, airing Turner's library of pre-1986 MGM films, Warner Bros. films made before 1948, and all RKO films, as well as license to 1000 other films, though it has expanded its library since.

In 1989, Turner created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for fiction offering positive solutions to global problems. The winner, from 2500 entries worldwide, was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.

In 1990, he created the Turner Foundation, which focuses on philanthropic grants concerning issues pertaining to the environment and overpopulation. In the same year he created Captain Planet, an environmental superhero. Turner produced the television series Captain Planet and the Planeteers and its later sequel series with Captain Planet as the featured character.

In 1992, the pre-May 1986 MGM library, which also included Warner Bros. properties including the early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies libraries and also the Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons from Paramount (and then United Artists), became the core of Cartoon Network. A year before, Turner's companies purchased Hanna-Barbera Productions (whose longtime parent, Taft/Great American Broadcasting, had been headquartered in Turner's original hometown of Cincinnati), beating out several other bidders including MCA Inc. (whose subsidiaries included Universal Pictures and Universal Destinations & Experiences) and Hallmark Cards. With the 1996 Time Warner merger, the channel's archives gained the later Warner Bros. cartoon library as well as other Time Warner-owned cartoons.

In 1993, Turner and Russian journalist Eduard Sagalajev founded the Moscow Independent Broadcasting Corporation (MIBC). This corporation operated the sixth frequency in Russian television and founded the Russian channel TV-6. Turner pulled out in 1994, at the insistence of local executives. He considered re-entering the market in 2001, during a challenging period of independent NTV.

In 1993, Turner also considered acquiring Paramount Pictures, but withdrew from this endeavor following a meeting with then-QVC head Barry Diller.

Time Warner merger

Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner on October 10, 1996, with Turner as vice chairman and head of Time Warner and Turner's cable networks division. Turner was dropped as head of cable networks by CEO Gerald Levin but remained as Vice Chairman of Time Warner. He would be succeeded in March 2001 as head of Turner Broadcasting by Jamie Kellner, who was also greatly responsible for cancelling WCW's television contracts on networks which Turner previously ran. He resigned as AOL Time Warner vice chairman in 2003 and then from the Time Warner board of directors in 2006.

On January 11, 2001, Time Warner was purchased by America Online (AOL) to become AOL Time Warner, a merger which Turner initially supported. However, the burst of the dot-com bubble hurt the growth and profitability of the AOL division, which in turn dragged down AOL Time Warner's performance and stock price. At a board meeting in fall 2001, Turner's outburst against AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin eventually led to Levin's announced resignation effective in early 2002, being replaced by Richard Parsons. In contrast to Levin, who as CEO isolated Turner from important company matters, Parsons invited Turner back to provide strategic advice, although Turner never received an operational role that he sought. Time Warner dropped "AOL" from its name in October 2003. In December 2009, AOL was spun off from the Time Warner conglomerate as a separate company.

Turner was Time Warner's biggest individual shareholder. It is estimated he lost as much as $7 billion when the stock collapsed in the wake of the merger. When asked about buying back his former assets, he replied that he "can't afford them now". In June 2014, Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox made a bid for Time Warner valuing it at $80 billion. The Time Warner board rejected the offer and it was formally withdrawn on August 5, 2014.

Turner had a long-running feud with fellow cable magnate Rupert Murdoch for years. This originated in 1983 when a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with the yacht skippered by Turner, Condor, during the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, causing it to run aground 6.2 miles (10.0 km) from the finish line. At the post-race dinner, a drunken Turner verbally assaulted Murdoch, afterward challenging him to a televised fistfight in Las Vegas.

Murdoch's Fox News, established in 1996, became a rival to Turner's CNN, a channel that Murdoch regarded with disdain for its "liberal slant" in news coverage. Time Warner declined to carry it on their New York City cable network in response, who in the midst of a merger, Turner said would "squash Rupert Murdoch like a bug."

In 2003, Turner challenged Murdoch to another fistfight, and later on accused Murdoch of being a "warmonger" for his support and backing of President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

However, in an interview with Variety in 2019, Turner said he and Murdoch had since made amends.

For most of his first decade as owner of the Braves, Turner was a very hands-on owner. This peaked in 1977, his second year as owner.

Turner was suspended for one year by Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn on January 3, 1977, for his actions while pursuing the signing of free agent outfielder Gary Matthews from the San Francisco Giants. Matthews signed a five-year, $1.875 million contract with the Braves on November 18, 1976. Kuhn's actions stemmed from remarks made by Turner to then-Giants owner Bob Lurie during the 1976 World Series. In addition, the Braves were also stripped of their first-round selections in the June 1978 draft of high school and college players. Turner, however, successfully appealed the suspension and Kuhn relented and reinstated the draft selections, one of which would turn out to be Bob Horner from Arizona State University.

On May 11, 1977, with the team mired in a 16-game losing streak, Turner sent manager Dave Bristol on a 10-day "scouting trip" and Turner himself took over as interim manager – the first owner/manager in the majors since Connie Mack. He ran the team for one game (a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates) before National League president Chub Feeney ordered him to stop running the team. Feeney cited major league rules which bar managers and players from owning stock in their clubs. Turner appealed to Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn, and showed up to manage the Braves when they returned home. However, Kuhn turned down the appeal, citing Turner's "lack of familiarity with game operations."

In the mid-1980s Turner began leaving day-to-day operations to the baseball operations staff, and the team (still under Turner's ownership) won the 1995 World Series.

The Atlanta Braves were sold by Time Warner (which had assumed control after the merger with Turner Broadcasting System) to Liberty Media in 2007.

Good Night Captain Outrageous

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: May 2026 PART I

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 4 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700

May 8, 1976

The theme song from Welcome Back, Kotter is the #1 song in America
In 1975, John Sebastian, former member of the beloved 60s pop group the Lovin' Spoonful, was asked to write and record the theme song for a brand-new ABC television show with the working title Kotter. As any songwriter would, Sebastian first tried working that title into his song, but somehow the rhymes he came up with for "Kotter"—otter, water, daughter, slaughter—didn't really lend themselves to a show about a middle-aged schoolteacher returning to his scrappy Brooklyn neighborhood to teach remedial students at his own former high school. So Sebastian took a more thoughtful approach to the task at hand and came up with a song about finding your true calling in a life you thought you'd left behind. That song, "Welcome Back," not only went on to become a #1 pop single on this day in 1976, but it also led the show's producers to change its title to Welcome Back, Kotter.

What Sebastian's sweet, wistful and playfully nostalgic tune did not do, however, was influence the tone and content of the show. To listen to "Welcome Back," you'd think that Welcome Back, Kotter was a seriocomic slice-of-life program in the mold of, say, The Courtship of Eddie's Father—another 70s TV show with a theme song by a great 60s songwriter (Harry Nilsson). Instead, Welcome Back, Kotter was little more than a flimsy platform for catchphrase-spouting caricatures, albeit an insanely successful one. Arnold Horshack's "Oooh, oooh, oooh," Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington's "Hi therrre," Vinnie Barbarino's "What? What?" and Gabe Kotter's "Up your nose with a rubber hose" were the pop-cultural coin-of-the-realm in 1975-76, and though they bore little relation in tone or spirit to the song that topped the charts on this day in 1976, the disconnect did nothing to hinder the popularity of all things Kotter-related. Indeed, if you weren't wearing an Uncle Sam or King Kong T-shirt in the summer of America's bicentennial year, you were probably wearing one with a picture of "the Sweathogs" and a colorful phrase like "Off my case, toilet face" on it.

"Welcome Back" was the first and only television theme song that John Sebastian ever wrote, but it was far from the only television theme song of the mid-1970s to become a legitimate pop hit. Only weeks earlier in 1976, the instrumental "Theme From S.W.A.T." had topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the excellent Mike Post-written theme The Rockford Files had made the top 10 the previous summer.

May 9, 1971

**Last Honeymooners episode airs.**

The last original episode of the sitcom The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason as Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, airs.

Although a perennial rerun favorite in syndication, The Honeymooners actually aired only 39 episodes in its familiar sitcom format, running for just one season in 1955-56. The show debuted on October 5, 1951, as a six-minute sketch on the variety show Cavalcade of Stars, hosted by Jackie Gleason. Cavalcade of Stars evolved into The Jackie Gleason Show in 1952, and Gleason continued the sketches, playing the blustery Ralph Kramden. Regular cast member Audrey Meadows soon replaced the original casting choice, Pert Kelton, as Ralph’s long-suffering wife, Alice, who deflated his get-rich-quick schemes but often saved the day. Art Carney played Gleason’s friend and sidekick, Ed Norton, from the beginning, and Joyce Randolph was the most memorable incarnation of Ed’s wife, Trixie.

In 1955, Gleason had tired of the hour-long variety-show format and wanted to try something new. He suggested creating two half-hour programs: The Honeymooners and Stage Show, a musical-variety show, which Gleason would produce. Among Stage Show’s many musical guests was the first-time TV performer Elvis Presley, who visited the show in January 1956.

In a departure from most TV shows of the time, The Honeymooners was filmed in front of a live audience and broadcast at a later date. To allow Gleason more time to pursue other producing projects, he taped two episodes a week, leaving him free for several months at the end of the season. Shows were taped at New York’s Adelphi Theatre in front of around 1,000 people.

Unfortunately, the two shows did not appeal to audiences as much as Gleason had hoped. He soon returned to his hour-long variety format, occasionally including Honeymooners skits. He sold the full Honeymooners episodes to CBS for $1.5 million, and they would go on to earn the network a windfall in syndication. In 1966, Gleason began creating hour-long Honeymooners episodes, which he aired in lieu of his usual variety format. From 1966 to 1970, about half of Gleason’s shows were these hour-long episodes. In 1971, the episodes were rebroadcast as their own series, until May 9, 1971, when the final episode aired.

Despite its brief life as a traditional sitcom, The Honeymooners remains one of the most memorable TV comedies of all time, rivaled only by I Love Lucy in its pioneering role in television history. Its influence has stretched into modern-day sitcom classics such as Roseanne (also a show focused on a working-class American family) and Seinfeld (another sitcom about wacky New York neighbors). The devotion of Honeymooners fans throughout the years has bordered on cultish worship, including the formation of a club known as RALPH: Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of the Honeymooners.
May 9, 1991
**Michael Landon appeared on the Tonight Show and talked about condition with cancer.**

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: April 2026 PART IV

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

April 27, 1986

Video pirate disrupts HBO signals.
A video pirate manages to override the satellite transmission of an HBO movie on this day in 1986. He interrupted the show with a message stating he did not intend to pay for his HBO service.
April 29, 1961
**ABC’s Wide World of Sports premiered.**
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition... This is ABC's Wide
World of Sports!Wide World of Sports was the creation of Edgar Scherick through his company, Sports Programs, Inc. After selling his company to ABC, he hired a youngRoone Arledge to produce the show.
The series' April 29, 1961 debut telecast featured both the Penn and Drake Relays. Jim McKay (who hosted the program for most of its history) and Jesse Abramson, the track and field writer for the New York Herald Tribune, broadcast from Franklin Field with Bob Richards as the field reporter. Jim Simpson called the action from Drake Stadium with Bill Flemming working the field.
During its initial season in the spring and summer of 1961, Wide World of Sports was initially broadcast from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturdays. Beginning in 1962, it was pushed to 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., and later to 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time to allow ABC affiliates in the Eastern and Central Time Zonesto carry local early-evening newscasts.
In 1961, Wide World of Sports covered a bowling event in which Roy Lown beat Pat Patterson. The broadcast was so successful that in 1962, ABC Sports began covering the Professional Bowlers Tour.
In 1964, Wide World of Sports covered the Oklahoma Rattlesnake Hunt championships; the following year, ABC premiered outdoor program The American Sportsman, which remained on the network for nearly 20 years.
In 1973, the Superstars was first televised as a segment on Wide World of Sports; the following year, the Superstars debuted as a weekly winter series that lasted for 10 years.
In 1963, ABC Sports producers began selecting the Athlete of the Year. Its first winner was track and field star Jim Beatty for being the first to run a sub-4-minute mile indoors. Through the years, this award was won by such now legendary athletes of Muhammad Ali, Jim Ryun, Lance Armstrong, Mario Andretti,Dennis Conner, Wayne Gretzky, Carl Lewis and Tiger Woods. The award was discontinued in 2001.
In later years, with the rise of cable television offering more outlets for sports programming, Wide World of Sports lost many of the events that had been staples of the program for many years (many, although not all, of them ended up on ESPN, a sister network to ABC for most of its existence). Ultimately, on January 3, 1998, Jim McKay announced that Wide World of Sports, in its traditional anthology series, had been cancelled after a 37-year run. The Wide World of Sportsname remained in use afterward as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend sports programming.

In August 2006, ABC Sports came under the oversight of ESPN, under the relaunched banner name ESPN on ABC. The Wide World of Sports title continues to occasionally be revived for Saturday afternoon sports programming on ABC, most recently during the 140th Belmont Stakes as a tribute to Jim McKay, following his death in June 2008. Most of ABC's sports programming since Wide World of Sports ended as a program has been displaced from ABC and moved to ESPN; the cable network began producing its own anthology series on Saturday afternoons in 2010, ESPN Sports Saturday, which consists of documentaries originally featured on ESPN's E:60 and 30 for 30 programs, and a modified version of the ESPN interactive series SportsNation, titled Winners Bracket.
May 1, 1931

President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City's Empire State Building. Less than eight months later, a television-transmitting antenna had been erected atop the structure (The top was originally designed as a mooring mast for dirigibles). During the ensuing 36 years, television and FM radio signals have continued to be transmitted from this location. Today, 22 stations share the site.

May 2, 1941

The Federal Communications Commission agreed to let regular scheduling of TV broadcasts by commercial TV stations begin on July 1, 1941. This was the start of network television.
May 2, 1996
Phil Donahue taped the final edition of his talk show "Donahue." On July 15, 2002, he returned to television with a talk show under the same name.

May 3, 1991
**Prime-time soap opera Dallas airs its last episode.** The episode was watched by 33.3 million viewers (38% of all viewers in that time slot)
The show debuted in April of 1978, and broke ratings records in 1980 when 83.6 million viewers tuned in to find out "Who Shot J.R.?". In the final episode, titled Conundrum (An homage to It's a Wonderful Life) J.R. is contemplating committing suicide. The drunk J.R. walks around the pool with a bourbon bottle and a loaded gun, when suddenly another person appears, a spirit named Adam (portrayed by Joel Grey), whose "boss" has been watching J.R. and likes him. Adam proceeds to take him on a journey to show him what life would have been like for other people if he had not been born. At the end of the episode Adam encourages J.R. on to kill himself. J.R. will not do it, as he does not want Adam to be sent back to heaven with his job incomplete. At this point Adam reveals that he's not an angel, but a minion of Satan. Bobby has returned home. The gun goes off while Bobby is in the hallway, and he rushes to J.R.'s room. He looks at what has gone down, gasps, "Oh, my God," and the series ends on that note with the fate of J.R. never settled (although it eventually would be five years later, in the reunion movie, Dallas: J.R. Returns.).
In 2010, cable network TNT announced they had ordered a pilot for the continuation of the Dallas series. After viewing the completed pilot episode, TNT proceeded to order a full season of 10 episodes.
The new series premiered on June 13, 2012, centering primarily around John Ross and Christopher Ewing, the now-grown sons of J.R. and Bobby. Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray returned in full-time capacity, reprising their original roles. The series is produced by Warner Horizon Television, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., which holds the rights to the Dallas franchise through its acquisition of Lorimar Television and is a sister company to TNT, both under the ownership of TimeWarner.

The new series is a continuation of the old series, with the story continuing after a 20-year break. It does not take the events of the TV movies Dallas: J.R. Returns or Dallas: War of the Ewings as canon. Instead we find the characters as they are today, 20 years after the events of the Season 14 cliffhanger.[29] In an interview with UltimateDallas.com, Cynthia Cidre was asked to describe the new Dallas. She responded, "I tried to be really, really respectful of the original Dallas because it was really clear to me that the people who love Dallas are [like] Trekkies, really committed to that show and I really did not understand that before, so I never wanted to violate anything that had happened in the past. On the other hand that was the past, twenty years had gone by, so at the same time I think we're properly balanced between the characters of Bobby Ewing, J.R. and Sue Ellen. I also have the new cast and it's John Ross and Christopher, the children of Bobby and J.R., and their love interests. Total respect and a balance of old and new."

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Alan Osmond

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:35:09 -0700

I might have MS, but MS doesn't have me.

-Alan Osmond

Alan Ralph Osmond

June 22, 1949 – April 20, 2026

Alan Ralph Osmond was born on June 22, 1949, in Ogden, Utah, the son of Olive May (née Davis; 1925–2004) and George Virl Osmond (1917–2007). He was the oldest of the seven siblings who could sing, as the two oldest brothers, Virl and Tom, are hearing impaired.

Starting in 1958, Alan and three of his younger brothers (Wayne, Merrill, and Jay in their respective age orders) began singing as a barbershop quartet. In 1961, the group headed to Los Angeles to audition for The Lawrence Welk Show, only for host Lawrence Welk to refuse to hear them sing; they met The Lennon Sisters at this audition, who directed them to Disneyland, where they found paying work as performers.^[3] It was at Disneyland that Jay Emerson Williams, Andy Williams's father, discovered the group. In 1962, the four Osmonds were cast over a seven-year period on NBC's The Andy Williams Show, a musical variety program. They also appeared in nine episodes of the 1963–1964 ABC western television series, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, with Alan in the role of young Micah Kissel.

During much of the Osmonds' career, Alan, being the oldest of the group, was the band's creative leader, playing piano and guitar, co-writing many of their songs with Merrill, co-producing most of their recordings, and arranging the dance choreography. He nevertheless seldom sang anything more than backing vocals, in contrast to his younger brothers. Leading The Osmonds at a young age, Alan was called "No. 1" by his brothers.

He mostly stopped performing with the group after 2007, and what he professed to be his final performance with them was October 13, 2018, at Neal Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu, although, Alan did appear for a get-together with Jay, Wayne and Merrill in 2019, as per request for their sister Marie Osmond's 60th birthday. He was still writing songs at the time of his last performances, including a composition to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Orem, Utah.

Alan, like all the Osmonds, was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Alan enlisted in the California Army National Guard in the late 1960s. He served at Fort Ord in northern California as a 144th artillery unit clerk. During his time in the service, he was known as the Mormon Dream. Osmond was also known to sing Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash songs during his time in the California Army National Guard – his favorites being Hound Dog and Country Pie.

In 1980, Alan Osmond, along with his brother Merrill Osmond, created Stadium of Fire, which has become one of the largest Independence Day celebrations in the United States. He stated that this, along with his move into country music in the early 1980s, was a reflection of their patriotic values: "we're kind of flag-wavers. You find that in the country area, too."

In September 2024, Osmond released his autobiography, One Way Ticket.

Good Night Allen

Osmond began to experience dysfunction in his right hand during an Osmond Brothers concert in 1987. He was later diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), which he publicly announced during the MDA Labor Day Telethon in 1994. The Osmond Brothers initially adjusted their routines to accommodate Alan's condition before he was forced to retire from the road in the late 1990s. Osmond credited his faith, and belief in the preexistence of the soul, with giving him hope and optimism for the future in the face of his condition.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: April 2026 PART III

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

April 22, 1926

Charlotte Rae is born Charlotte Rae Lubotsky.
The of stage, comedienne, singer and dancer, who in her six decades of television is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life (in which she starred from 1979 to 1986). She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy in 1982. She also appeared in two Facts of Life television movies: The Facts of Life Goes to Paris in 1982 and The Facts of Life Reunion in 2001. She voiced the character of "Nanny" in 101 Dalmatians: The Series.

Her first significant success was on the sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? (1961–1963), in which she played Sylvia Schnauzer, the wife of Officer Leo Schnauzer (played by Al Lewis). She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role in the 1975 drama Queen of the Stardust Ballroom. In January 1975, Rae became a cast member on the ABC television comedy Hot L Baltimore, wherein she played Mrs. Bellotti, whose dysfunctional adult son Moose, who was never actually seen, lived at the "hot l" (the hotel was so bad the "E" on the sign never worked). Mrs. Bellotti, who was a bit odd herself, would visit Moose and then laugh about all the odd situations that Moose would get into with the others living at the hotel. Rae also appeared in early seasons of Sesame Street as Molly the Mail Lady.

Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life

In 1978, NBC was losing to both CBS and ABC in sitcom ratings, and Fred Silverman, future producer and former head of CBS, ABC, and NBC, insisted that Norman Lear produce Diff'rent Strokes. Knowing that Rae was one of Lear's favorite actresses, he hired her immediately for the role of housekeeper Edna Garrett, and she co-starred with Conrad Bain in all 24 episodes of the first season. Her character proved to be so popular that producers decided to do an episode that could lead to a spinoff. That episode (called "The Girls School") was about girls attending a fictional school called Eastland. In July 1979, Rae proposed the idea for the spinoff. NBC approved the show, to be called The Facts of Life, which would portray a housemother in a prestigious private school and dealt with such issues facing teenagers as weight issues, depression, drugs, alcohol, and dating.

After working as a character actress/comedienne in supporting roles or in guest shots on television series and specials, The Facts Of Life gave Rae not only her best-known role but it finally made her a television star. The role of Edna Garrett was the unifying center of attention of the program as well as a warm, motherly figure for the girls. Rae's role was very similar to that of Kate Bradley on the 1960's CBS-TV series Petticoat Junction, which also gave radio and television actress Bea Benaderet late stardom.

The Facts of Life had marginal ratings at first but after a major restructuring and time change, the show became a ratings winner between 1980 and 1986. Midway throughout both the 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons, she missed several episodes because she was planning on leaving the show, and the story lines focused more on the other characters. At the beginning of the eighth season, Rae left the show and Cloris Leachman was then brought in as Mrs. Garrett's sister, Beverly Ann Stickle, for the show's last two years, until the show was canceled in 1988.

In 2001, Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn, and Kim Fields were reunited in a TV movie, The Facts of Life Reunion. In 2007, the entire cast was invited to attend the TV Land Awards where several members of the cast, including Rae, sang the show's theme song. On April 19, 2011, the entire cast was reunited again to attend the TV Land Awards, where the show was nominated and won the award for Pop Culture Icon. The same day, Nancy McKeon and Kim Fields (who played Jo & Tootie, respectively) also gave a speech in honor of her 85th birthday. The cast did likewise on ABC's Good Morning America, where at the end of the segment, reporter, Cynthia McFadden wished Rae a happy birthday, and the cast sang the show's theme song.

April 22, 1976

Barbara Walters signs $5 million contract.
Barbara Walters signs a record-breaking five-year, $5 million contract with ABC. The contract made her the first news anchorwoman in network history and the highest paid TV journalist to date.
April 24, 1936

A group of firemen responding to an alarm in Camden, New Jersey, is televised.
It was the first time an unplanned event was broadcast on television, anticipating the development of live TV news coverage. Fortunately, the event would not inspire anyone to create reality programming.

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Tony Figueroa

Sid Krofft

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:57:00 -0700

When you're weird, you gotta be weird all the way!

-Sid Krofft

Sid Krofft born Cydus Yolas

July 30, 1929 – April 10, 2026

This is my favorite tribute to the Krofft Brothers

Good Night Sid

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: April 2026 PART II

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

April 13, 1986

Return to Mayberry airs on NBC.
The cast of the popular Andy Griffith Show is reunited for a one-time television special. Besides stars Andy Griffith and Don Knotts, the original show featured little Ronny Howard, who grew up to become a star of television's Happy Days and, later, a famous film director. The Andy Griffith Show ran from 1960 to 1968.

April 14, 1956

First video camera for sound and pictures demostrated.
The first videotape recorder is demonstrated. The machine, invented by Ray Dolby, Charles Ginsberg, and Charles Anderson, recorded both images and sound. CBS purchased three of the video tape recorders for $75,000 each in 1956.
April 18, 1971
The Jackson 5 and Bill Cosby were guests on Diana Ross' solo TV special Diana!

Diana! is American singer Diana Ross' first solo TV special, which aired on ABC on April 18, 1971, choreographed by David Winters of West Side Story fame, who at that time choreographed all of Ross' stage and TV shows. The special featured performances by The Jackson 5, and also included Jackson 5 lead singerMichael Jackson's solo debut. Michael Jackson performed Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year", which drew laughter as its adult-themed lyrics were changed to fit his age. Other guests included Danny Thomas andBill Cosby, who would be featured on a similar TV special by the Jackson 5 (Goin' Back to Indiana) a few months later.
Since this was right at the beginning of her solo career, she took the opportunity to promote the two hits from her debut, the gold audience participant "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" and the number 1 song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". She also performed a cover of The Carpenters "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and the top-20 gold single "Remember Me" released that previous December 1970 included on her forthcoming album "Surrender" to be released later that summer. (Though she performed "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" on the special, it was not included on the soundtrack).

The television special, and its subsequent soundtrack, was a Neilsen's ratings winner, hitting the top 20 (number 17) of shows that week and garnering Emmy nominations for Ross and Bob Mackie and in technical categories.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: April 2026 PART I

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 6 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

April 12, 1941
Life of Riley radio show debuts.
An unrelated radio show with the name Life of Riley was a summer replacement show heard on CBS from April 12, 1941 to September 6, 1941. The CBS program starred Lionel Stander as J. Riley Farnsworth and had no real connection with the more famous series that followed a few years later staring William Bendix as a bullheaded family man. The show ran for 10 years on radio and about six years on television.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2026 PART V

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

March 30, 1966

Barbra Streisand's "Color Me Barbra" special aired on CBS-TV.

April 3, 1956

**Elvis sings his first RCA recording, "Heartbreak Hotel," on NBC's Milton Berle Show.
An estimated 25 percent of America's population saw him sing that night; by April 21, the song had become Elvis' first No. 1 single.

April 4, 1971
The final episode of Hogan's Heroes aired.**
Rockets Or Romance: Three mobile rocket launchers are aimed at London and awaiting detonation, or destruction. With radio detection trucks patrolling the area and one rocket sitting inside Stalag 13, directing the Allied bombers could turn into a suicide mission. Timeline: Klink tells Hogan the Germans will stop the Allies from Capturing Munich-which was captured in March 1945.

April 4, 1986

**The final episode of Knight Rider aired.**
Voo Doo Knight: Michael tries to stop a voodoo woman who is using mind control on innocent people and forcing them to commit crimes for her.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2026 PART IV

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Happy 100th Birthday, Gene Shalit!

March 26, 1971
Cannon the CBS detective television series produced by Quinn Martin primered.

Frank Cannon was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, however he retired after the deaths of his wife and son in a car accident and later became a private detective. The series begins at the point where Cannon is just beginning this new career (the pilot film picks up after Cannon has just spent 2 1/2 months overseas on an investigation). The cause of death of Cannon's wife and child was not clear through the first four seasons of the show. However, the first episode of the fifth and final season revolves around Cannon's investigation of the deaths, and he finally finds out the reason they were killed.
The noticeably overweight Frank Cannon had expensive tastes, especially in food and cars. (His primary vehicle was an ice-blue '72Lincoln Continental Mark IV.)During the series' run, his car would range from a Lincoln 1971 Mark III to a 1976 Mark IV in various color schemes, all dark over light blue exteriors, with interiors ranging from red velour to dark-blue leather... Cannon's investigations were mostly for clients in the Southern California area, although on occasion he was called in for investigations much farther away (e.g., New Mexico in the pilot).
Cannon occasionally would get hurt (shot or beaten) and knocked unconscious. He carried a gun for self-defense, usually a snub-nosed.38 Special revolver (which appeared to be a Colt Detective Special). Sometimes he used other guns (Including an M1911 and a B.A.R). He was known to subdue suspects with karate chops, judo holds, and occasionally he would thrust and knock down adversaries with his huge abdomen.

In the first two seasons Cannon was a pipe smoker. In the third season, the pipe was seen occasionally; it was subsequently dropped altogether.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2026 PART III

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

March 18, 1981
The Greatest American Hero flew onto the small screen for the first time.
The series that aired for three seasons from1981 to 1983 on ABC. Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour pilot movie on March 18, 1981.The series features William Katt as teacher Ralph Hinkley ("Hanley" for the latter part of the first season), Robert Culp as FBI agent Bill Maxwell, and Connie Sellecca as lawyer Pam Davidson.
The series chronicles Ralph's adventures after a group of aliens gives him a red suit that grants him superhumanabilities. Unfortunately for Ralph, who hates wearing the suit, he immediately loses its instruction booklet, and thus has to learn how to use its powers by trial and error, often with comical results.

The main character's name was originally Ralph Hinkley, but after the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. on March 30, 1981, the character's last name was changed to "Hanley". For the rest of the first season, he was either "Ralph" or "Mister H". In the episode where Ralph is given a promotion and his own office space, we see the name "Ralph Hanley" on the door plaque. At the start of season two, the name had changed back to Hinkley. In the season three episode "Live At Eleven", Ralph is given a name tag at a political rally with his last name spelled "Hunkley" and Ralph gives up saying "it's close enough for politics".
March 20, 1931
Hal Linden is born Harold Lipshitz in New York City.
He is the youngest son of Frances (née Rosen) and Charles Lipshitz, a Lithuanian Jew who immigrated to the United States in 1910 and later worked owned his own printing shop. His older brother, Bernard, became a professor of music at Bowling Green State University. Raised in The Bronx, Linden attended the High School of Performing Arts and went on to study music at Queens College, City University of New York. He later enrolled in City College of New York where he received a Bachelor of Arts in business.
During his youth, Linden aspired to be a big band bandleader. Before embarking on a career in music, he decided to change his name stating, "'Swing and Sway with Harold Lipshitz' just didn't parse." During the 1950s, he toured with Sammy Kaye, Bobby Sherwood, and other big bands of the era. Linden played the saxophone and clarinet and also sang. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1952 where he was sent to Fort Belvoir and played in the United States Army Band. While in Fort Belvoir, a friend recommended that he see the touring production of Guys and Dolls playing in Washington, D.C. After seeing the show, Linden decided to become an actor. Linden found success on Broadway when he replaced Sydney Chaplin in the musical Bells Are Ringing. In 1971, he won a Best Actor Tony Award for his portrayal of Mayer Rothschild in the musical The Rothschilds.
In 1975, Linden landed the starring role in the ABC television police comedy Barney Miller. Linden portrayed the titular captain of the beleaguered 12th Precinct in bohemian Greenwich Village, dealing with mordant wit, compassion and occasional frustration at the comedy-of-manners misfits brought in for arrest or questioning, or who came to lodge a complaint or stop by on bureaucratic business or to just say hi. He earned seven Emmy Award nominations for his work on the series, one for each season. Linden also earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. The series aired from 1975 to 1982. During the series' run, Linden also hosted two educational series, Animals, Animals, Animals and FYI. He won two special Daytime Emmy Awards for the latter series. Linden won a third Daytime Emmy Award for a guest starring role on CBS Schoolbreak Special in 1995. Linden has since continued his career on the stage, in films and guest starring roles on television. He released his first album of pop and jazz standards, It's Never Too Late, in 2011.
After Barney Miller ended its run, Linden appeared in several television films including I Do! I Do! (1982), the television adaptation of the musical of the same name, and Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (1983). In 1984, he co-starred in the television film Second Edition. The film was intended to be a series but was not picked up by CBS. The following year, Linden portrayed studio head Jack Warner in the television biopic My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn.
Linden returned to episodic television in the NBC series Blacke's Magic in 1986. He played the lead character, Alexander Blacke, a magician who solves mysteries with the help of his assistant Leonard (Harry Morgan). The series was canceled after 13 episodes. In 1988, he co-starred in the romantic comedy A New Life, directed by Alan Alda. In 1992, Linden tried his hand at television again with the leading role in the comedy-drama series Jack's Place. In the series, Linden portrayed Jack Evans, a retired jazz musician who ran a restaurant that was frequented by patrons who learned lessons about love. The show was often compared to the The Love Boat by critics as it featured a different weekly guest star. The series premiered as a mid-season replacement but did well enough in the ratings for ABC to order additional episodes. Viewership soon declined and ABC chose to cancel the series in 1993. The next year, Linden appeared in the CBS sitcom The Boys Are Back. That series was also low rated and canceled after 18 episodes. In 1995, Linden won his third Daytime Emmy Award for his 1994 guest starring role as Rabbi Markovitz on CBS Schoolbreak Special.^]
In 1996, Linden had a supporting role in the television film The Colony, opposite John Ritter and June Lockhart. The role was a departure for Linden as he played the villainous head of a home owner's association of a gated community. He continued his career in the late 1990s and 2000s with guest roles on Touched by an Angel, Gilmore Girls, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Hot in Cleveland. He also narrated episodes of Biography and The American Experience, and voiced the role of "Dr. Selig" on the animated series The Zeta Project. In 2002, Linden received a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars.
Linden continues to have an active stage career. He appeared in the Toronto production of Tuesdays with Morrie in 2009. In July 2011, he appeared opposite Christina Pickles in the Colony Theatre's production of On Golden Pond. Linden also starred in Under My Skin, which premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse on September 19, 2012 and ran through October 2012. In 2013, Linden guest starred in an episode of comedy series The Mindy Project.
After the success of Barney Miller, Linden decided to revive his music career with a night club act. In his act, Linden plays the clarinet, performs pop and Broadway standards backed by a big band, and discusses his life and career. He has continued touring with various night club and cabaret acts since the early 1980s.

In March 2011, he began touring with his cabaret show An Evening with Hal Linden: I'm Old Fashioned. The show, which ran through 2012, was later released on DVD. In April 2011, Linden released his first album, It's Never Too Late. The album features a collection of jazz, Broadway and pop standards that Linden began recording around the time he was touring in the early 1980s. Due to a lack of interest, he shelved the songs. Linden decided to finish the album on the advice of his tour booker. Linden is the spokesperson for the Jewish National Fund, a position he has held since 1997. Linden met dancer Fran Martin while doing summer stock in 1955. They married in 1958 and had four children. Martin died in 2010.
March 22, 1931

William Shatner was born. The Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author and film director.
He gained worldwide fame and became a cultural icon for his portrayal of James T. Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise, in the science fiction television series, Star Trek, from 1966 to 1969; Star Trek: The Animated Series from 1973 to 1974; and in seven of the subsequent Star Trek feature films from 1979 to 1994. He has written a series of books chronicling his experiences playing Captain Kirk and being a part of Star Trek, and has co-written several novels set in the Star Trek universe. He has also authored a series of science fiction novels called TekWar that were adapted for television.

Shatner also played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker from 1982 to 1986. Afterwards, he hosted the reality-based television series, Rescue 911 from 1989 to 1996, which won a People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Dramatic Series. He has since worked as a musician, author, producer, director and celebrity pitchman. From 2004 to 2008, he starred as attorney Denny Crane in the television dramas The Practice and its spin-off Boston Legal, for which he won two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2026 PART II

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 9 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

March 9, 1976

**ABC premiered Family, a weekly prime-time drama about a Pasadena California suburban family.**
The show was created by novelist and screenwriter Jay Presson Allen, directed by film director Mark Rydell, and produced by film director Mike Nichols, as well as television moguls Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.
The show featured James Broderick and Sada Thompson as Doug and Kate Lawrence. Doug was an independent lawyer, and Kate was a housewife. They had three children: Nancy (portrayed by Elayne Heilveil in the original mini-series and later by Meredith Baxter Birney), Willie (Gary Frank), Letitia, nicknamed "Buddy" (Kristy McNichol) and the family later adopted a girl named Annie Cooper (Quinn Cummings). The show attempted to depict the "average" family, warts and all. Storylines were very topical, and the show was one of the first to feature shows to be termed as "very special episodes." In the first episode, Nancy, who was pregnant with her second child, walked in on her husband Jeff (John Rubinstein) making love to one of her friends. Other topical storylines included Kate having to deal with the possibility that she had breast cancer. In the later seasons, there were instances in which Buddy had to decide whether or not to have sex (She always chose to wait, most notably in an episode with guest star/teen idol Leif Garrett). One episode featured guest-star Henry Fonda as a visiting elderly relative who was beginning to experience senility.

During its five seasons Family received fourteen Emmy Award nominations, three of them for Outstanding Drama Series. The show won four awards all in acting categories: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Sada Thompson in 1977), Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Kristy McNichol in 1976 and 1978) and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Gary Frank in 1976).

March 9, 1996

Comedian George Burns dies at age 100.
Born Nathan Birnbaum in New York City, Burns was one of 12 children. As a young child, he sang for pennies on street corners and in saloons, and at age 13, he started a dance academy with a friend. In 1922, Burns was performing the latest in a string of song-and-dance acts in Newark, New Jersey, when he teamed up with a fellow performer, Gracie Allen. Though Allen began as the straight one in their partnership, her natural comedic ability prompted Burns to rewrite their material to give her most of the punch lines. From then on, Burns played the straight man to Allen’s ditz, with hilarious results.

By the time Burns and Allen married in 1926 (his brief first marriage, to the dancer Hannah Siegel, ended in divorce), they had already become known on the vaudeville circuit. The 1920s were a golden era for vaudeville performers, and Burns and Allen were only two of a number of greats--their peers included Milton Berle, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Bert Lahr and Jack Benny (Burns’ close friend)--who successfully made the transition to other forms of entertainment. After making their radio debut in 1929, the pair landed a regular show, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, which aired from 1932 to 1950 on the NBC network. In the late 1930s, the program’s audience numbered more than 40 million people and NBC paid Burns and Allen $10,000 per week, an enormous sum for the time. The couple also played themselves on the big screen in a number of films, including International House (1933), Many Happy Returns (1934), A Damsel in Distress (1937) and College Swing (1938).

In 1950, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show made a seamless transition to television, airing on CBS and becoming one of the top-ranked programs for the duration of the decade. The Burns-Allen team remained in the public eye until Allen’s retirement in 1959. She died of a heart attack in 1964, at the age of 58. Though Allen was a Roman Catholic, Burns buried her with Episcopal rites, explaining that as a Jewish man he couldn’t be buried in Catholic-consecrated ground, and he wanted to be buried beside her.

After Burns underwent major heart surgery in 1975 at the age of 79, his career got a second wind. That year, he played a retired vaudevillian in the film adaptation of Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys, co-starring Walter Matthau and Richard Benjamin. Burns won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role. After that, there was no shortage of movie parts for the octogenarian actor, who played God in Oh God! (1977) and its sequels, Oh God! Book II (1980) and Oh God! You Devil (1984), in which Burns was featured as both God and the Devil. He also starred in Just You and Me, Kid (1979), Going in Style (1979) and Eighteen Again (1988).

In 1988, Burns won an award for lifetime achievement from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He wrote two best-selling autobiographical works, including Gracie: A Love Story (1988) and All My Best Friends (1989), along with eight other books that earned him his well-deserved reputation as an invaluable first-hand observer of the history of 20th century entertainment.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2026 PART I

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0800

March 3, 1986
**The pilot episode of Matlock aired on NBC.**
The show centers on widower Benjamin Leighton "Ben" Matlock, a renowned, folksy and popular though cantankerous attorney. Usually, at the end of the case, the person who is on the stand being questioned by Matlock is the actual perpetrator, and Matlock will expose him, despite making clear that his one goal is to prove reasonable doubt in the case of his client's guilt or to prove his client's innocence.
Matlock studied law at Harvard, and after several years as a public defender, established his law practice inAtlanta, living in a modest farmhouse in a neighboring suburb. He is known to visit crime scenes to discover clues otherwise overlooked and come up with viable, alternative theories of the crime in question (usually murder). Matlock also has conspicuously finicky fashion sense; he generally appears in court wearing a trademark light gray suit and, over the series' entire run, owned three generations of the Ford Crown Victoria—always an all-gray model (Griffith's character had always driven Ford products in his 1960s series, The Andy Griffith Show). Some Mayberry alumni—Don Knotts, Aneta Corsaut, Betty Lynn, Jack Dodson and Arlene Golonka—made guest appearances on Matlock.
Matlock is noted for his thrift and a fondness for hot dogs. After the series ended, his penchant for hot dogs was explained in the 1997 episode "Murder Two" of Joyce Burditt's Diagnosis: Murder. Matlock blames Dr. Mark Sloan (Dick Van Dyke) for recommending a disastrous investment in 8-track cartridges, in which he lost his savings of $5,000 in 1969, forcing him into wearing cheap suits and living on hot dogs. Despite his thrift, Matlock's standard fee is $100,000, usually paid up front, but if he or his staff believe strongly enough in the innocence of a client, or if the client is unable to pay immediately (if at all), he will have them pay over time, or will reduce the fee significantly or waive it entirely, albeit reluctantly in some cases. He will also, reluctantly, take a pro bono case occasionally, and at least on one occasion, he has worked as the prosecuting attorney in a trial.
These traits, and the demands he placed upon his investigators, were often points of comic relief in the series. Andy Griffith's prior career as a comic often showed through in things Matlock did or said.

Matlock generally defended his clients in the Fulton County Courthouse, which was actually the Second Church of Christ, Scientist located at 948 West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles.
March 4, 1996

Minnie Pearl dies.
A longtime fixture of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, comedian Minnie Pearl dies on this day. Pearl was famous for her comic monologues about hillbilly life, and was featured on the long-running syndicated show Hee Haw from 1970 to 1990.
March 5, 2006
Jon Stewart hosts 78th annual Academy Awards ceremony.
By early 2006, Jon Stewart, the irreverent host of The Daily Show, a fake television news program on Comedy Central, had seen the ratings for his show jump dramatically as a result of its coverage of the 2004 presidential election. The show spawned a popular spin-off, The Colbert Report, starring Daily Show regular Stephen Colbert, and a best-selling parody of a social studies textbook, America (The Book). On March 5, 2006, however, Stewart took on his highest-profile gig to date--hosting the 78th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.
In preparation for the Oscars, Stewart enlisted a team of writers from The Daily Show led by Ben Karlin, a former editor of the satirical newspaper The Onion and the then-executive producer of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. After the stars swanned down the red carpet, the ceremony began with a filmed segment suggesting Stewart was the last possible choice for the hosting gig and showing a series of former hosts refusing the job.
While Stewart’s deadpan humor might have had audiences laughing at home, his constant poking fun at Hollywood and the stars themselves seemed to meet with a less friendly reception from the Kodak Theatre audience. Jokes about Scientology and Hollywood’s liberal politics fell flat, but the audience did warm up to Daily Show-style fake ads mocking Oscar-campaigning tactics and Stewart’s ad-libbed running joke about the exuberant acceptance speech given by the rap group Three 6 Mafia, who won an Oscar for Best Song for “It’s Hard Out There For a Pimp” (from Hustle & Flow).
In the post-show media analysis the next morning, the consensus seemed to be that Stewart struggled; his hosting performance and its reception by the audience was compared with less-successful hosts from the past, such as David Letterman and Chris Rock, as opposed to Oscar favorites like Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. He was praised, however, for poking fun at the bloated, self-important nature of the Academy Awards ceremony itself, with its often-overdone production numbers and political posturing by the stars themselves. Stewart earned a second Oscars hosting gig--and better reviews--in 2008, in the wake of Hollywood’s writers’ strike and in the midst of the presidential campaign season.

The 78th annual Oscars were also memorable for the surprising upset victory of the ensemble drama Crash in the Best Picture category. After the Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee took home the Best Director Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, that film’s string of awards seemed to have given it the front-runner’s momentum to win Best Picture, the last statuette of the night. The New York Times called Crash’s selection as Best Picture a “stunning twist” to the evening, while Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times observed that some Academy voters may have been uncomfortable with the subject matter of Brokeback Mountain, which starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as sheepherders who fall in love while working in Wyoming in the early 1960s. Acting awards went to Rachel Weisz (Best Supporting Actress for The Constant Gardener), George Clooney (Best Supporting Actor for Syriana), Reese Witherspoon (Best Actress for Walk the Line) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Best Actor for Capote).
March 7, 1986
**The final episode of Different Strokes was aired.**
Arnold's feature story about his high school football team threatens to turn into a controversial expose for the school newspaper when he witnesses team members buying steroids.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2026 PART IV

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

February 28, 1931
Gavin MacLeod is born Allan George See.
Character actor, mayor, and ship's ambassador, who in his six decades of television is notable for playing Joseph "Happy" Haines on McHale's Navy, Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and for his lead role as Captain Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2026 PART III

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

February 20, 1946
Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan is born.
The singer, dancer, comedienne and actress of stage and television, recognized through a blonde, pixie cut hairstyle and perky demeanor. She is best known for her performances in the Broadway revival of Peter Pan and in the sitcom The Hogan Family.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2026 PART II

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 9 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

February 9, 1971
The 1971 San Fernando earthquake (also known as the Sylmar earthquake).
The quake occurred in the early morning of in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California. The unanticipated thrust earthquake had a moment magnitude of 6.5 or 6.7 (as determined by several independent institutions) and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). The event was one in a series that affected the Los Angeles area in the late 20th century, and a study of the Sierra Madre Fault during that time indicated that more substantial thrust earthquakes had occurred near the Transverse Ranges in the past. Damage was locally severe in the northernSan Fernando Valley, and surface faulting was extensive to the south of the epicenter in the mountains, as well as urban settings along city streets and neighborhoods. Uplift and other effects affected private homes and businesses.
February 10, 2006
Final episode of Arrested Development airs on Fox.
Celebrated by critics and beloved by its relatively small but devout fan base, the Fox television series Arrested Development airs its last episode on this day in 2006. Arrested Development, created by Mitchell Hurwitz, premiered in November 2003. It was almost universally acclaimed by critics, who praised its sharp, complicated writing and stellar acting, as well as the multi-layered plotlines and interesting camera work that set it apart from run-of-the-mill network sitcoms.
Arrested Development was narrated by Ron Howard, the former Happy Days star-turned-Oscar-winning movie director (2001’s A Beautiful Mind), in an uncredited performance. Jason Bateman starred as Michael Bluth, by far the most responsible member of a madcap family whose patriarch, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), has been sent to jail for dubious accounting procedures. With George Sr. in prison, Michael is forced to take over management of the Bluth Company and provide a much-needed stabilizing force for the rest of the Bluth clan: his manipulative mother (Jessica Walter); his magician older brother (Will Arnett); his self-obsessed sister (Portia de Rossi) and her aspiring actor husband (David Cross); and his child-like youngest brother (Tony Hale), who still clings to the hem of his mother’s fur coat. Rounding out the comedy, Michael’s sensitive son (Michael Cera) harbors a crush on his cousin (Alia Shawkat), with whom he is forced to share a room after the clan starts sharing a model home on one of the Bluth Company’s developments.
At the 2004 Emmy Awards, Arrested Development won no fewer than four statuettes-- for directing, writing, casting and for Outstanding Comedy Series. Bateman also won a Golden Globe Award in 2005 for Best Actor in a Television Series--Musical or Comedy. Despite critics’ rapture and the enthusiasm of its fan base, the series earned low ratings from the beginning. While Fox renewed Arrested Development for a second season, it shortened its run to only 18 episodes--a fact that was worked into the jokes on the show, along with jokes about its corporate sponsor, Burger King, and jokes about its much higher-rated Sunday-night competition (ABC’s Desperate Housewives). A few of the memorable guest stars during the show’s three-year run included Liza Minnelli, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Henry Winkler, Scott Baio and Charlize Theron.
During its third season, Arrested Development’s audience averaged around 4 million viewers, compared with 6 million during the previous season. With the threat of cancellation hovering, rumors flew that Arrested Development might be picked up by HBO or Showtime--either of which might have been a better fit for its offbeat, often racy humor. References to these rumors were also worked into the script.
In February 2006, to the dismay of fans, Fox pulled the plug on Arrested Development for good. The following month, it was reported that Hurwitz had closed long-running negotiations with Showtime and determined that Arrested Development as a TV series was over. With the program named as one of the 100 Best Shows of All Time by Time magazine, buzz began to grow about an Arrested Development movie--exciting news for the show’s loyal fans.
February 11, 1926

Leslie William Nielsen, was born on in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Nielsen appeared in over 100 films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career beginning with dramatic roles on television appearing in almost 50 live programs in 1950 alone during what is now known as "The Golden Age".

Nielsen first appeared in films in 1956 when he made his feature film debut in the Michael Curtiz-directed musical film The Vagabond King. His lead roles in the films Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) received positive reviews as a serious actor.
Although Nielsen's acting career crossed a variety of genres in both television and films, his deadpan delivery as a doctor in Airplane! (1980) marked a turning point in his career, one that would make him, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, "the Olivier of spoofs." Nielsen enjoyed further success with The Naked Gun film series, based on his short-lived television series Police Squad!.

His portrayal of serious characters seemingly oblivious to (and complicit in) their absurd surroundings gave him a reputation as a comedian. He was recognized with a variety of awards throughout his career and was inducted into both the Canada and Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nielsen married four times and had two daughters from his second marriage. Nielsen died in his sleep in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida hospital of complications from pneumonia.
February 11, 1936

Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds, Jr. is born.
Actor, director and voice artist. Some of his notable roles include Bo 'Bandit' Darville in Smokey and the Bandit, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Bobby "Gator" McCluskey in White Lightning and sequel Gator, Charlie B. Barkin in All Dogs Go to Heaven, Paul Crewe then Coach Nate Scarborough in The Longest Yard and Jack Horner in Boogie Nights.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2026 PART I

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 2 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

February 6, 1966

The final episode of "Mr. Ed" aired on CBS.

Wilbur pleads with Ed to stick to being a horse, especially when Ed wants to go to college to become a Doctor.
February 8, 1996
The U.S. Telecommunications Bill was signed into law.
The bill included provisions that required TV manufacturers to install V-chip devices in all television sets with a 13 inch screen or larger. The chips would allow consumers to block "sexual, violent, and other material about which parents should be informed before it is displayed to children".
February 8, 2006

Kelly Clarkson became the first participant on "American Idol" to win a Grammy.
The awards were for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Since U Been Gone" and Best Pop Vocal Album for "Breakaway". She also performed "Because of You" at the show.

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Tony Figueroa

Demond Wilson

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:07:00 -0800

Sanford and Son' transcended politics and race.

It was a show about a son and a father who have a love-hate relationship but yet need one another to get by in life.

-Demond Wilson

Grady Demond Wilson

October 13, 1946 – January 30, 2026

Demond Wilson was born in Valdosta, Georgia, on October 13, 1946, and grew up in New York City, where he studied tap dance and ballet. He made his Broadway debut at age four and danced at Harlem's Apollo Theater at age 12. Wilson was raised as a Catholic and served as an altar boy. He would spend summers with his grandmother Ada Mitchell, who was Pentecostal. Wilson briefly considered becoming a Catholic priest. At age 13, Wilson's appendix ruptured, almost killing him, but he vowed to serve God as an adult in some ministerial capacity.

He served in the United States Army from 1966 to 1968 and was in the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam, where he was wounded. Upon returning home in the late 1960s, Wilson was featured in several Broadway and off-Broadway stage productions before moving to Hollywood, where he performed guest roles on several television series such as Mission: Impossible and All in the Family and acted in films such as The Organization (1971) and Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972).

Later in 1971, after appearing as a robber on All in the Family with Cleavon Little, Wilson won the role of Lamont Sanford in the NBC sitcom Sanford and Son. Johnny Brown was considered for that role, but because of his commitment to Laugh-In, Wilson got the role instead. Wilson played Lamont through the run of the series, and became the star when Redd Foxx walked off the show in 1974 over a salary dispute with the producers and his character was written out for the rest of the season. Foxx returned the following year, and the pair worked together until 1977 when the show was cancelled. In 1980–1981, Foxx attempted to revive the show with the short-lived sitcom Sanford, but Wilson refused to reprise his role for the new series.

When asked in 2014 if he kept in touch with anybody from Sanford & Son, especially Foxx (who died on October 11, 1991), he responded:

No. I saw Redd Foxx once before he died, circa 1983, and I never saw him again. At the time I was playing tennis at the Malibu Racquet Club and I was approached by some producers about doing a Redd Foxx 50th Anniversary Special. I hadn't spoken to him since 1977, and I called the club where (Redd) was playing. And we met at Redd's office, but he was less than affable. I told those guys it was a bad idea. I never had a cross word with him. People say I'm protective of Redd Foxx in my book (Second Banana, Wilson's memoir of the Sanford years). I had no animosity toward Foxx (for quitting the show in 1977) because I had a million dollar contract at CBS to do Baby... I'm Back!. My hurt was that he didn't come to me about throwing the towel in - I found out in the hallway at NBC from a newscaster. I forgave him and I loved Redd, but I never forgot that. The love was there. You can watch any episode and see that.

Wilson also appeared in the films Full Moon High (1981), Me and the Kid (1993), and Hammerlock (2000).

Wilson later starred as Raymond Ellis in the short-lived CBS comedy series Baby... I'm Back! and as Oscar Madison, opposite actor Ron Glass (who co-starred as Felix Ungar) in the ABC sitcom The New Odd Couple, a revamped black version of the 1970–75 series The Odd Couple on the same network which starred Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, which was in turn based on the 1965 play.

Wilson wrote several Christian books concerning the New Age Movement and the hidden dangers he believed it holds for society. New Age Millennium was released by CAP Publishing & Literary Co. LLC on December 1, 1998. Wilson, who also authored children's books, called the book an "exposé" of certain New Age "symbols and slogans".

His memoir Second Banana: The Bittersweet Memoirs of the Sanford & Son Years was released on August 31, 2009. Wilson said, "It's just a documented truth, behind the scenes factual account of what happened during those years. Redd (Foxx) and I were making history back in those days. We were the first Blacks to be on television in that capacity and we opened the door for all those other shows that came after us."

Wilson also made numerous guest appearances on the Praise the Lord program aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and was a good friend of Clifton Davis. He also appeared as a guest star on the UPN sitcom Girlfriends, playing Lynn's biological father.

In the summer of 2011, Wilson started appearing with actress Nina Nicole in a touring production of the play The Measure of a Man by playwright Matt Hardwick. The play is described as "a faith-based production" and is set in a small town in south Georgia.

Wilson began work in 2010 to produce and act in a melodramatic family film based on the play Faith Ties. Says Wilson of the project: "I play a broken down old drunk whose wife and daughter are killed and he's given up on life. The protagonist is a pastor who is in the middle while he watches the lives of people crumbling around him."

Good Night Mr. Wilson

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Tony Figueroa

Catherine O'Hara

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 11:18:00 -0800

I'm pretty much a good Catholic girl at heart and I believe in family. I also have a basic belief that God takes care of me.

I believe in prayer, even though I'm not that religious.

I just have that foundation from my family.

I mean when you think that you're just a human being and one of God's creatures, you can't take anything that seriously.

-Catherine O'Hara

Catherine Anne O'Hara

March 4, 1954 – January 30, 2026

Catherine O'Hara started her career in the sketch comedy series Second City Television (1976–1984) where she won the Primetime Emmy Award.

She gained acclaim acting in films such as After Hours (1985), Heartburn (1986), Beetlejuice (1988), Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).

She collaborated with Christopher Guest acting in his mockumentary films Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006). She also voiced roles in films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Chicken Little (2005), Over the Hedge (2006), Monster House (2006), Where the Wild Things Are (2009), Frankenweenie (2012), and Elemental (2023).

She gained a career resurgence for her role as Moira Rose in the CBC sitcom Schitt's Creek (2015–2020), earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. She was Emmy-nominated for her portrayal of Temple Grandin's aunt in the HBO film Temple Grandin (2010). She also acted in the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (2003–2005), the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2018), the Apple TV+ comedy series The Studio (2025), and the HBO post-apocalyptic drama series The Last of Us (2025).

Good Night Catherine

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: January 2026 PART IV

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800

January 26, 1926

John Logie Baird gave the world's first demonstration of true television before 50 scientists in an attic room in central London.
In 1927, his television was demonstrated over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company. (BTDC). In 1928, the BTDC achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship in mid-Atlantic. He also gave the first demonstration of both colour and stereoscopic television.
January 27, 1976

The Happy Days spin-off Laverne and Shirley, featuring two Milwaukee women who work on a brewery assembly line preimers.
The show starred Penny Marshall, sister of producer Garry Marshall, and Cindy Williams. Fierce rivalry erupted between the two stars, and Williams left the show in 1982. The show lasted only one more season before its cancellation in 1983.
January 28, 1936
Alan Alda is born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo.
A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his roles as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series MASH and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Journalism and a member of the advisory board of The Center for Communicating Science.
Family and early life
Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in The Bronx, New York City. His father, Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), was an actor and singer, and his mother, Joan Browne, was a former showgirl. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His adopted surname, "Alda," is a portmanteau of ALphonso and D'Abruzzo. When Alda was seven years old, he contracted poliomyelitis. To combat the disease, his parents administered a painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny that consisted of applying hot woollen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles. Alda attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York. In 1956, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in English from Fordham College of Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV. Alda's half-brother, Antony Alda, was born the same year and would also become an actor.
During Alda's junior year, he studied in Paris, acted in a play in Rome, and performed with his father on television in Amsterdam. In college, he was a member of the ROTC, and after graduation, he served for a year at Fort Benning, Georgia, then joined the U.S. Army Reserve, and served for six months as a gunnery officer. A year after graduation, he married Arlene Weiss, with whom he has three daughters: Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. Two of his 7 grandchildren are aspiring actors. The Aldas have been longtime residents of Leonia, New Jersey. Alda frequented Sol & Sol Deli on Palisade Avenue in the nearby town of Englewood, New Jersey—a fact mirrored in his character's daydream about eating whitefish from the establishment, in an episode of MASH in which Hawkeye sustains a head injury.
Career
Early acting
Alda began his career in the 1950s, as a member of the Compass Players comedy revue. In 1966, he starred in the musical The Apple Tree on Broadway; he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for that role.
Alda made his Hollywood acting debut as a supporting player in Gone are the Days! – a film version of the highly successful Broadway play Purlie Victorious, which co-starred veteran actors Ruby Dee and her husband, Ossie Davis. Other film roles would follow, such as his portrayal of author, humorist, and actor George Plimpton in the film Paper Lion (1968),^[4] as well as The Extraordinary Seaman (1969), and the occult-murder-suspense thriller The Mephisto Waltz, with actress Jacqueline Bisset. During this time, Alda frequently appeared as a panelist on the 1968 revival of What's My Line?. He also appeared as a panelist on I've Got a Secret during its 1972 syndication revival.
MASH Series (1972–83)
In early 1972, Alda auditioned for and was selected to play the role of "Hawkeye Pierce" in the TV adaptation of the 1970 film MASH.^[4] He was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards, and won five. He took part in writing 19 episodes, including the finale, and directed 32. When he won his first Emmy Award for writing, he was so happy that he performed a cartwheel before running up to the stage to accept the award. He was also the first person to win Emmy Awards for acting, writing, and directing for the same series. Richard Hooker, who wrote the novel on which MASH was based, did not like Alda's portrayal of Hawkeye Pierce (Hooker, a Republican, had based Hawkeye on himself, whereas Alda and the show's writers took the character in a more liberal direction).^[^{citation
needed}^] Alda also directed the show's 1983 2½-hour series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", which remains the single most-watched episode of any television series.^[4] Alda is the only series regular to appear in all 251 episodes.
The cast of MASH from Season 2, 1974 (clockwise from left): Loretta Swit, Larry Linville, Wayne Rogers, Gary Burghoff, McLean Stevenson, and Alda
The cast of MASH from Season 8 onwards (clockwise from left): Mike Farrell, William Christopher, Jamie Farr, David Ogden Stiers, Loretta Swit, Alda, Harry Morgan
Alda commuted from Los Angeles to his home in New Jersey every weekend for 11 years while starring in MASH. His wife and daughters lived in New Jersey, and he did not want to uproot his family to L.A., especially because he did not know how long the show would last.
Alan Alda, father Robert Alda, and half-brother Antony Alda appeared together in an episode of MASH, "Lend a Hand", during Season 8. Robert had previously appeared in "The Consultant" in Season 3.
During the first five seasons of the series, the tone of "MASH" was largely that of a traditional "service comedy", in the vein of shows like "McHale's Navy". However, as the original writers gradually left the series, Alda gained increasing control, and by the final seasons had become a producer and creative consultant. Under his watch, MASH retained its comedic foundation, but gradually assumed a somewhat more serious tone, openly addressing political issues. As a result, the 11 years of MASH are generally split into two eras: the Larry Gelbart/Gene Reynolds "comedy" years (1972–1977), and the Alan Alda "dramatic" years (1977–1983).
In his 1981 autobiography, Jackie Cooper (who directed several early episodes) wrote that Alda concealed a lot of hostility beneath the surface, and that the two of them barely spoke to each other by the time Cooper’s directing of MASH ended.
During his MASH years, Alda made several game-show appearances, most notably in The $10,000 Pyramid and as a frequent panelist on To Tell the Truth.
His favorite episodes of MASH are "Dear Sigmund" and "In Love and War".
In 1996, Alda was ranked #41 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time".
Writing and Directing Credits
The following is a list of MASH episodes written and/or directed by Alda.
Season One

Episode 19: "The Long John Flap" (Written)

Season Two

Episode 5: "Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde" (Written with Robert Klane)

Episode 23: "Mail Call" (Directed)

Season Three

Episode 16: "Bulletin Board" (Directed)

Season Four

Episode 4: "The Late Captain Pierce" (Directed)

Episode 7: "Dear Mildred" (Directed)

Episode 8: "The Kids" (Directed)

Episode 16: "Dear Ma" (Directed)

Season Five

Episode 2: "Margaret's Engagement" (Directed)

Episode 7: "Dear Sigmund (Written and Directed)

Episode 12: "Exorcism" (Directed)

Episode 19: "Hepatitis" (Written and Directed)

Season Six

Episode 2: "Fallen Idol" (Written and Directed)

Episode 4: "War of Nerves" (Written and Directed)

Episode 7: "In Love and War" (Written and Directed)

Episode 12: "Comrades in Arms, Part 1" (Written; Directed with Burt Metcalfe)

Episode 13: "Comrades in Arms, Part 2" (Written; Directed with Burt Metcalfe)

Season Seven

Episode 5: "The Billfold Syndrome" (Directed)

Episode 8: "Major Ego" (Directed)

Episode 14: "Dear Sis" (Written and Directed)

Episode 16: "Inga" (Written and Directed)

Episode 25: "The Party" (Written with Burt Metcalfe)

Season Eight

Episode 3: "Guerilla My Dreams" (Directed)

Episode 11: "Life Time" (Written with Walter D. Dishell, M.D.; Directed)

Episode 15: "Yessir, That's Our Baby" (Directed)

Episode 20: "Lend a Hand" (Written and Directed)

Episode 22: "Dreams" (Teleplay; Story with James Jay Rubinfier; Directed)

Season Nine

Episode 4: "Father's Day" (Directed)

Episode 12: "Depressing News" (Directed)

Episode 15: "Bottoms Up" (Directed)

Episode 20: "The Life You Save" (Written with John Rappaport; Directed)

Season Ten

Episode 6: "Communication Breakdown" (Directed)

Episode 10: "Follies of the Living—Concerns of the Dead" (Written and Directed)

Episode 16: "Where There's a Will, There's a War" (Directed)

Season Eleven

Episode 1: "Hey, Look Me Over" (Written with Karen Hall)

Episode 16: "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" (Written with Burt Metcalfe, John Rappaport, Dan Wilcox, Thad Mumford, Elias Davis, David Pollock and Karen Hall; Directed)

Post-MASH
Alda's prominence in the enormously successful MASH gave him a platform to speak out on political topics, and he has been a strong and vocal supporter of women's rights and the feminist movement.^[4] He co-chaired, with former First Lady Betty Ford, the Equal Rights Amendment Countdown campaign. In 1976, The Boston Globe dubbed him "the quintessential Honorary Woman: a feminist icon" for his activism on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.^[13] As a liberal and often progressive activist, he has been a target for some political and social conservatives.
Alda played Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the play QED, which had only one other character. Although Peter Parnell wrote the play, Alda both produced and inspired it. Alda has also appeared frequently in the films of Woody Allen, and was a guest star five times on ER, playing Dr. Kerry Weaver's mentor, Gabriel Lawrence. During the later episodes, it was revealed that Dr. Lawrence was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Alda also had a co-starring role as Dr. Robert Gallo in the 1993 TV movie And the Band Played On.
During MASH's run and continuing through the 1980s, Alda embarked on a successful career as a writer and director, with the ensemble dramedy The Four Seasons being perhaps his most notable hit. Betsy's Wedding is his last directing credit to date. After MASH, Alda took on a series of roles that either parodied or directly contradicted his "nice guy" image.^[4] His role as a pompous celebrity television producer in Crimes and Misdemeanors was widely seen as a self-parody, although Alda has denied this.
In 1993, he co-starred with Woody Allen (also the director), Diane Keaton, and Anjelica Huston in the comedy/mystery Manhattan Murder Mystery. The four play a quartet of amateur crime solvers who become entangled in a murder plot possibly perpetrated by Keaton and Allen's neighbor. Alda's character is Ted, a playwright secretly in love with Keaton's character Carol, but who eventually falls for Huston's character Marcia.
In 1995, he starred as the President of the United States in Michael Moore's political satire/comedy film Canadian Bacon. Around this time, rumors circulated that Alda was considering running for the United States Senate in New Jersey, but he denied this. In 1996, Alda played Henry Ford in Camping With Henry and Tom, based on the book by Mark St. Germain, and Ben Stiller's father in the comedy film Flirting with Disaster.
Beginning in 2004, Alda was a regular cast member on the NBC program The West Wing, portraying Republican U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Arnold Vinick, until the show's conclusion in May 2006. He made his premiere in the sixth season's eighth episode, "In The Room," and was added to the opening credits with the thirteenth episode, "King Corn." In August 2006, Alda won an Emmy for his portrayal of Arnold Vinick in the final season of The West Wing. Alda had been a serious candidate, along with Sidney Poitier for the role of President Josiah Bartlet, before Martin Sheen was ultimately cast in the role.
In 2004, Alda portrayed conservative Maine Senator Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese's Academy-Award winning film The Aviator, in which he co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Throughout his career, Alda has received 31 Emmy Award nominations and two Tony Award nominations, and has won seven People's Choice Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, and three Directors Guild of America awards. However, it was not until 2005, after a long acting career, that Alda received his first Academy Award nomination, for his role in The Aviator.
Alda also wrote several of the stories and poems that appeared in Marlo Thomas's television show Free to Be... You and Me.
Alda starred in the original Broadway production of the play 'Art', which opened on March 1, 1998, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. The play won the Tony Award for best original play.
Alda also had a part in the 2000 romantic comedy What Women Want, as the CEO of the advertising firm where the main characters worked.
In the spring of 2005, Alda starred as Shelly Levene in the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Throughout 2009 and 2010, he appeared in three episodes of 30 Rock as Milton Greene, the biological father of Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin).
In 2011, Alda was scheduled to guest star on Law & Order: LA, portraying former police and naval officer John Winters, the father of the former main character Rex Winters. It is unknown whether he filmed his role before the series was redesigned and Rex Winters written off.
After the release of the movie Tower Heist, Alda was devastated when on December 7, 2011, he lost his idol and decades-long friend Harry Morgan, who played opposite Alda as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on MASH. Upon Morgan's death, Alda released a statement: "We had just a wonderful time reminiscing. That was the last time I saw Harry."
Charitable work and other interests
Alda has done extensive charity work. He helped narrate a 2005 St. Jude's Children's Hospital produced one-hour special TV show Fighting for Life.^[15] He and his wife, Arlene, are also close friends of Marlo Thomas, who is very active in fund-raising for the hospital her father founded. The special featured Ben Bowen as one of six patients being treated for childhood cancer at Saint Jude. Alda and Marlo Thomas had also worked together in the early 70s on a critically acclaimed children's album entitled Free to Be You and Me, which featured Alda, Thomas and a number of other well-known character actors. This project remains one of the earliest public signs of his support of women's rights.
In 2005, Alda published his first round of memoirs, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned. Among other stories, he recalls his intestines becoming strangulated while on location in Chile for his PBS show Scientific American Frontiers, during which he mildly surprised a young doctor with his understanding of medical procedures, which he had learned from MA*SH. He also talks about his mother's battle with schizophrenia. The title comes from an incident in his childhood, when Alda was distraught about his dog dying and his well-meaning father had the animal stuffed. Alda was horrified by the results, and took from this that sometimes we have to accept things as they are, rather than desperately and fruitlessly trying to change them.
In 2006, Alda contributed his voice to a part in the audio book of Max Brooks' World War Z. In this book, he voiced Arthur Sinclair Jr., the director of the United States Government's fictional "Department of Strategic Resources (DeStRes)".
His second memoir, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, weaves together advice from public speeches he has given with personal recollections about his life and beliefs.
Alda also has an avid interest in cosmology, and participated in BBC coverage of the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN, Geneva, in September 2008.
After years of interviews, Alda helped inspire the creation of the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in 2009. He remains on the advisory board as of 2012.
Alda has been a feminist activist for many years. He co-chaired, with former First Lady Betty Ford, the Equal Rights Amendment Countdown campaign. In 1976, The Boston Globe dubbed him "the quintessential Honorary Woman: a feminist icon" for his activism on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Religious views
In Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, Alda describes how as a teen he was raised as a Roman Catholic and eventually he realized he had begun thinking like an agnostic or atheist:
For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn’t go back. Not that I lost the urge to pray. Occasionally, even after I stopped believing, I might send off a quick memo to the Master of the Universe, usually on a matter needing urgent attention, like Oh, God, don’t let us crash. These were automatic expulsions of words, brief SOS messages from the base of my brain. They were similar to the short prayers that were admired by the church in my Catholic boyhood, which they called “ejaculations.” I always liked the idea that you could shorten your time in purgatory with each ejaculation; what boy wouldn’t find that a comforting idea? But my effort to keep the plane in the air by talking to God didn’t mean I suddenly was overcome with belief, only that I was scared. Whether I’d wake up in heaven someday or not, whatever meaning I found would have to occur first on this end of eternity.
Speaking further on agnosticism, Alda goes on to say:
I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I'd said in a book I wrote that I wasn't a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people's holding beliefs other than their own?
Alda made these comments in an interview for the 2008 question section of the Edge Foundation website.
January 28, 1956

Young country-rock singer Elvis Presley makes his first-ever television appearance on the TV musical-variety program Stage Show.
Presley sang "Heartbreak Hotel," which quickly became a hit single. In total, Elvis appeared on six shows. The program was hosted by swing band leaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Elvis went on to appear on Ed Sullivan's immensely popular variety show, Toast of the Town, in the fall of 1956. The appearance made Elvis a household name.

January 28, 1986
Challenger explodes
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC). Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB aft field joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB's aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank.Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.

January 28, 1996
Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman, dies at age 81.
Writer Sisgel created Superman with artist friend Joe Shuster when they were both teenagers in the 1930s. All the major newspaper syndicates rejected the character, who was born on the doomed planet Krypton and bundled off by his parents in a space capsule to Smallville USA, where he's raised by kindly earthlings. In 1938, however, Seigel and Shuster finally landed a comic book deal, and Superman's adventures as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent moonlighting as the Man of Steel became an instant hit. The comic book spawned a newspaper strip that ran for 28 years, as well as a radio series that ran from 1940 to 1951.
The character, along with his friends cub reporter Jimmy Olson and ace newswoman Lois Lane, who never seem to penetrate Superman's Clark Kent disguise, appeared in movie serials from 1948 to 1950, and in a feature film in 1951. A popular Superman TV series ran from 1951 to 1957. Filmed on a shoestring budget, the show's special effects were limited to Superman crashing through walls, flying around, and witnessing fiery explosions. The same flying sequences were used repeatedly. Actor George Reeves was so well-known as Superman that he couldn't find other work when the series ended.
The Man of Steel reappeared on the big screen in 1978, with Christopher Reeves in the role. The hit film launched three follow-ups. In 1993, Superman appeared again in the TV comedy Lois and Clark.

February 1, 1951

TV Shows Atomic Blast, Live.

For the first time, television viewers witness the live detonation of an atomic bomb blast, as KTLA in Los Angeles broadcasts the blinding light produced by a nuclear device dropped on Frenchman Flats, Nevada. One of a hundred above-ground nuclear tests conducted between 1951 and 1962 in the Nevada desert, the A-bomb telecast found its way into the history books (and blogs) when cameramen secretly positioned on top of a Las Vegas hotel focused on the blast. The images were relayed to the station’s transmitter on Mount Wilson Observatory about 200 miles away, and early-bird viewers saw their television screens fill with white light at 5:30 in the morning.

Witnessing the blast telecast first-hand was KTLA reporter Stan Chambers. In a YouTube interview, Chambers described how station manager Klaus Landsberg pulled off the unauthorized broadcast. “We couldn’t get near the field, because it was all top secret. Klaus sent a crew to Las Vegas and put them on top of one of the hotels…. They kept the camera open for the flash of light that would come on when the blast went off.”
Los Angeles viewers tuned in for the one-off event. “We had a rating that was very large for 5:30 in the morning,” Chambers recalled. In the pre-videotape era, there were of course no replays as newsmen Gil Martin, anchoring from Las Vegas, and station staffer Robin Lane at Mount Wilson reported the incident. Chambers continued:
We stayed on the air, they waited for the right time, and all of a sudden there was the flash. The people watched it, Gil described it, Lane talked about it, and that was our telecast. That one flash. You just see this blinding white light. It didn’t seem real. We didn’t have videotape. You couldn’t say, “Let’s look at it again.”
1951’s Ranger Easy bomb was designed to test compression against critical mass in the Demon core, so-called because the plutonium mass became unstable and caused the radiation-poisoning death of a Los Alamos scientist. A B-50 bomber plane dropped the test weapon above the Nevada Test Site about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Part of the Department of Energy’s Operation Ranger program, “Easy” delivered a 1-kiloton payload.
In the decade that followed Operation Ranger, A-bomb tests from Buster-Jangle, Tumbler-Snapper, Upshot-Knothole, Plumbbob, Nougat, Sunbeam and other programs became so commonplace that watching mushroom clouds turned into a Las Vegas tourist attraction.

In 1952, KTLA set up the first live, national feed for a Nevada atomic bomb explosion. That one was carried by the major networks.
February 1, 1976
Sonny and Cher resumed on TV despite a real life divorce.
In February 1976, the bitterness of their divorce behind them, the couple reunited for one last try with The Sonny and Cher Show. This incarnation of the series was produced by veteran musical variety-show writers, Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth. It was basically the same as their first variety series but with different writers to create new sketches and songs. The duo's opening conversations were markedly more subdued and made humbled references to the couple's divorce and Cher's subsequent marriage to Gregg Allman (during production Cher was pregnant with and eventually bore Allman's son, Elijah). (Some jokes would get awkward. In one opening segment Cher gave Sonny a compliment and Sonny jokingly replied "That's not what you said in the courtroom.") Despite these complications, the revived series garnered enough ratings to be renewed for a second season, finally ending its run in 1977. (By this time, the variety show genre was already in steep decline, and Sonny and Cher was one of the few successful programs of the genre remaining on the air at the time.)

Some of the guests who appeared on The Sonny and Cher Show included Frankie Avalon, Muhammad Ali, Raymond Burr, Ruth Buzzi, Charo, Barbara Eden, Neil Sedaka,Farrah Fawcett, Bob Hope, Don Knotts, Jerry Lewis, Tony Orlando, The Osmonds, Debbie Reynolds, The Smothers Brothers, Tina Turner, Twiggy, and Betty White.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: January 2026 PART III

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800

January 25, 1949

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presents its first industry award at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles. The Emmy for most popular program went to Pantomime Quiz Time, and puppeteer Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet Judy Splinters won an award for Outstanding TV Personality. Most of the awards were for programs produced by TV station KTLA. The station also won an award for Outstanding Overall Achievement.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: January 2026 PART II

TDFig@aol.com (Tony Figueroa) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800

January 12, 1926
Original Amos n Andy debuts on Chicago radio
The two-man comedy series "Sam 'n' Henry" debuts on Chicago's WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to "Amos 'n' Andy," the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history.
Though the creators and the stars of the new radio program, Freeman Gosden and Charles Carrell, were both white, the characters they played were two black men from the Deep South who moved to Chicago to seek their fortunes. By that time, white actors performing in dark stage makeup--or "blackface"--had been a significant tradition in American theater for over 100 years. Gosden and Carrell, both vaudeville performers, were doing a Chicago comedy act in blackface when an employee at the Chicago Tribune suggested they create a radio show.
When "Sam 'n' Henry" debuted in January 1926, it became an immediate hit. In 1928, Gosden and Carrell took their act to a rival station, the Chicago Daily News' WMAQ. When they discovered WGN owned the rights to their characters' names, they simply changed them. As their new contract gave Gosden and Carrell the right to syndicate the program, the popularity of "Amos 'n' Andy" soon exploded. Over the next 22 years, the show would become the highest-rated comedy in radio history, attracting more than 40 million listeners.
By 1951, when "Amos 'n' Andy" came to television, changing attitudes about race and concerns about racism had virtually wiped out the practice of blackface. With Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams taking over for Gosden and Carrell, the show was the first TV series to feature an all-black cast and the only one of its kind for the next 20 years. This did not stop African-American advocacy groups and eventually the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from criticizing both the radio and TV versions of "Amos 'n' Andy" for promoting racial stereotypes. These protests led to the TV show's cancellation in 1953.

The final radio broadcast of "Amos 'n' Andy" aired on November 25, 1960. The following year, Gosden and Carrell created a short-lived TV sequel called "Calvin and the Colonel." This time, they avoided controversy by replacing the human characters with an animated fox and bear. The show was canceled after one season.
January 12, 1966
Batman aired it’s first episode.
Based on the DC comic book character of the same name, which stars Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City. It aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network for two and a half seasons from January 12, 1966 to March 14, 1968. Despite its short run, a total of 120 episodes were produced based on having two weekly installments for most of its tenure.
In the early 1960s, Ed Graham Productions optioned the TV rights to the comic strip Batman, and planned a straightforward juvenile adventure show, much like Adventures of Superman and The Lone Ranger, for CBS on Saturday mornings.Mike Henry was set to star as Batman. Reportedly, D.C. Comics commissioned publicity photos of Henry in a Batman costume. Around this same time, the Playboy Club in Chicago was screening the Batman serials (1943's Batman and 1949's Batman and Robin on Saturday nights. It became very popular, as the hip party goers would cheer and applaud the Dynamic Duo, and boo and hiss at the villains. East coast ABC executive Yale Udoff, a Batman fan in childhood, attended one of these parties at the Playboy Club and was impressed with the reaction the serials were getting. He contacted ABC executives Harve Bennett and Edgar J. Scherick, who were already considering developing a TV series based on a comic strip action hero, to suggest a prime time Batman series in the hip and fun style of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. When negotiations between CBS and Graham stalled, DC quickly re-obtained rights and made the deal with ABC, who farmed the rights out to 20th Century Fox to produce the series.
In turn, 20th Century Fox handed the project to William Dozier and his Greenway Productions. ABC and Fox were expecting a hip and fun—yet still serious—adventure show. However, Dozier, who loathed comic books, concluded the only way to make the show work was to do it as a pop art camp comedy. Originally, espionage novelist Eric Ambler was to write the motion picture that would launch the TV series, but he dropped out after learning of Dozier's camp comedy approach. By the time, ABC had pushed up the debut date to January 1966, thus foregoing the movie until the summer hiatus, Lorenzo Semple, Jr. had signed on as head script writer. He wrote the pilot script, and generally kept his scripts more on the side of pop art adventure. Stanley Ralph Ross, Stanford Sherman, and Charles Hoffman were script writers who generally leaned more toward camp comedy, and in Ross' case, sometimes outright slapstick and satire. Instead of producing a one-hour show, Dozier and Semple decided to have the show air twice a week in half-hour installments with a cliffhanger connecting the two episodes, echoing the old movie serials. Eventually, two sets of screen tests were filmed, one with Adam West and Burt Ward, the other with Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, with West and Ward winning the roles.
The typical story began with a villain (often one of a short list of recurring villains) committing a crime, such as stealing a fabulous gem or taking over Gotham City. This was followed by a scene inside Commissioner Gordon's office where he and Chief O'Hara would deduce exactly which villain they were dealing with. Commissioner Gordon would press a button on the Batphone, a bright red telephone located on a pedestal in his office. The scene then cut to stately Wayne Manor where Alfred the butler would answer the Batphone, which sat like a normal everyday telephone on the desk in Bruce Wayne's study. Frequently, Wayne and his ward, Dick Grayson, would be found talking with Dick's Aunt Harriet, who was completely unaware of Bruce and Dick's identities as Batman & Robin, respectively. Alfred would discreetly interrupt so they could excuse themselves and go to the Batphone. Upon learning which criminal he would face this time, Bruce would push a button concealed within a bust of Shakespeare that stood on his desk causing a bookcase to slide back and revealing two poles. "To the Batpoles!" Wayne would exclaim, at which he and Grayson would slide down to the Batcave, activating an unseen mechanism on the way that dressed them as their alter egos. The title sequence often began at this point.
Similar in style and content to the 1940s serials, they would arrive in the Batcave in full costume and jump into the Batmobile, Batman in the driver's seat. Robin would say, "Atomic batteries to power...turbines to speed." Batman would respond, "Roger, ready to move out." And the two would race off out of the cave at high speed. As the Batmobile approached the mouth of the cave, actually a tunnel entrance in Los Angeles's Bronson Canyon, a hinged barrier dropped down to allow the car to exit onto the road. Scenes from the Dynamic Duo sliding down the batpoles in the Batcave, to the arrival at Commissioner Gordon's building via the Batmobile (while the episode credits are shown), are reused footage that is used in nearly all part 1 and single episodes.
After arriving at Commissioner Gordon's office, the initial discussion of the crime usually led to the Dynamic Duo conducting their investigation alone. During the investigation, a meeting with the villain would usually ensue, with the heroes getting involved in a fight and the villain getting away, leaving a series of unlikely clues for the Duo to investigate. Later, the Duo would face the villain again, and he or she would capture one or both of the heroes and place them in a deathtrap with a cliffhanger ending which was usually resolved in the first few minutes of the next episode.
The same pattern was repeated in the following episode until the villain was defeated in a major brawl where the action was punctuated by superimposed onomatopoeic words, as in comic book fight scenes ("POW!", "BAM!", "ZONK!", etc.). Not counting five of the Penguin's henchmen who disintegrate or get blown up in the associated Batman theatrical movie, only three criminal characters die during the series: the Riddler's moll Molly (played by Jill St. John in Episode 2) who accidentally falls into the Batcave's atomic pile, and two out-of-town gunmen who shoot at the Dynamic Duo toward the end of the "Zelda The Great/A Death Worse Than Fate" episode, but end up killing each other instead. In "Instant Freeze," Mr. Freeze freezes a butler solid and knocks him over, causing him to smash to pieces, although this is implied rather than seen, and there is a later reference suggesting the butler survived. In "Green Ice," Mr. Freeze freezes a policeman solid; it is left unclear whether he survived or not. In "The Penguin's Nest," a policeman suffers an electric shock at the hands of the Penguin's accomplices, but he apparently survived as he appeared in some later episodes. In "The Bookworm Turns," Commissioner Gordon appears to be shot and falls off a bridge to his death, but Batman deduces that this was actually an expert high diver in disguise, employed by The Bookworm as a ruse (implying that the diver survived the fall).
Robin, in particular, was especially well known for saying "Holy (insert), Batman!" whenever he encountered something startling.
The series utilized a narrator (producer William Dozier, uncredited) who parodied both the breathless narration style of the 1940s serials and Walter Winchell's narration of The Untouchables. He would end many of the cliffhanger episodes by intoning, "Tune in tomorrow — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!"
Only two of the series' guest villains ever discovered Batman's true identity: Egghead by deductive reasoning, and King Tut on two occasions (once with a bug on the Batmobile and once by accidentally mining into The Batcave). Egghead was tricked into disbelieving his discovery, as was Tut in the episode when he bugged the Batmobile. In the episode when Tut tunnelled into the Batcave, he was hit on the head by a rock which made him forget his discovery and jarred him back into his identity as a mild-mannered Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. (He didn't even recognize Batgirl, asking her, "Why are you wearing that purple mask, lady?")
In Season 1, the dynamic duo, Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward), are super crime-fighting heroes, contending with the villains of Gotham City. It begins with the two-parter, "Hi Diddle Riddle" and "Smack in the Middle", featuring Frank Gorshin as The Riddler.
In Season 2, the show suffered from repetition of its characters and formula. In addition, critics noted that the series' delicate balance of drama and humor that the first season maintained was lost as the stories became increasingly farcical. This, combined with Lorenzo Semple Jr. contributing fewer scripts and having less of an influence on the series, caused viewers to tire of the show and for critics to complain, "If you've seen one episode of Batman, you've seen them all."
By Season 3, ratings were falling and the future of the series seemed uncertain. A promotional short featuring Yvonne Craig as Batgirl and Tim Herbert as Killer Moth was produced. The short was convincing enough to pick up Batman for another season, and introduced Batgirl as a regular on the show in an attempt to attract more female viewers. Batgirl's alter ego was Barbara Gordon, a mild-mannered librarian at the Gotham Library and Commissioner Gordon's daughter.^[3] The show was reduced to once a week, with mostly self-contained episodes, although the following week's villain would be in a tag at the end of the episode, similar to a soap opera. Accordingly, the narrator's cliffhanger phrases were eliminated, but most episodes would end with him saying something to the effect of "Watch the next episode!"
Aunt Harriet was reduced to just two cameo appearances during the third season because of Madge Blake's poor health. (Aunt Harriet was also mentioned in another episode, but was not seen; her absence was explained by her being in shock upstairs.) The nature of the scripts and acting started to enter into the realm of the surrealistic. For example, the set's backgrounds became mere two-dimensional cut-outs against a stark black stage. In addition, the third season was much more topical, with references to hippies, mods, and distinctive 1960's slang, which the previous seasons avoided.

Near the end of the third season, ABC planned to cut the budget even further by eliminating Robin and Chief O'Hara, and making Batgirl Batman's full-time partner. Both Dozier and West vetoed this idea, and ABC cancelled the show. Weeks later, NBC offered to pick the show up for a fourth season and even restore it to its original twice-a-week format, if the sets were still available for use. However, NBC's offer came too late: Fox had already demolished the sets a week before. NBC had no interest in paying the $800,000 for the rebuild, so the offer was withdrawn.
January 12, 1971
The controversial situation comedy All in the Family debuts.
The show, which was one of TV's top hits for much of its run, starred Carroll O'Connor as bigoted Archie Bunker; Jean Stapleton as his wife, Edith; and Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner as the couple's liberal daughter and son-in-law. The show changed the course of television by portraying the harsh realities of bigotry and racism and dealing with controversial subjects like birth control, rape, and politics. The show changed its name to Archie Bunker's Place in 1979, when the action shifted from the Bunkers' living room to the bar Archie owned.

January 12, 1981
Dynasty premieres on ABC.
The oil tycoon Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) prepares to marry his former secretary, the beautiful and innocent Krystle (Linda Evans), in the three-hour television movie that kicks off the prime-time ABC soap opera Dynasty.
Over the next eight years, the Carringtons, a rich Denver oil clan, and another wealthy family, the Colbys, would form the center of the campy, glamorous universe that was Dynasty. Envisioned as bitter rivals, in the style of the Montagues and Capulets of Romeo and Juliet, the two families intermarried and plotted against each other with equal enthusiasm. At the beginning of the second season, as buzz around the show began to grow, the British actress Joan Collins entered the mix as Blake Carrington’s evil ex-wife, Alexis; her clash with the good girl Krystle became one of the central plotlines of the show. In one of the series’ more memorable moments, Alexis and Krystle had a catfight in a lily pond.
Dynasty’s elaborately melodramatic plot lines resembled those of the daytime soap operas (kidnappings, amnesia, characters returning from the dead, etc.) and its style fit perfectly with the over-the-top excesses of the 1980s. It was no wonder, as the show was produced partially by Aaron Spelling, the man behind such hit shows as The Mod Squad, Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. By the end of the 1982-83 season, Dynasty was fifth in the top-rated programs; it climbed to third place in 1983-84 and grabbed the number one spot in 1984-85. Its success spawned a short-lived spin-off, Dynasty II: The Colbys, and an entire line of licensed products such as clothing, bedding and perfume.

The over-the-top cliffhanger ending to the fourth season in May 1985 marked the beginning of the end, as the entire Carrington family gathered for a wedding in the fictional country of Moldavia. The festivities were disrupted by a terrorist attack, and while all of the main characters emerged unscathed, the show’s ratings began to drop precipitously. During its final season, 1988-89, Dynasty fell to a dismal 57th place and was unceremoniously dropped from the ABC lineup. Various plot lines were left unresolved, but disappointed fans got their long-awaited closure two years later, when ABC aired a two-part movie Dynasty: The Reunion in October 1991.
January 13, 1966

Elizabeth Montgomery’s character, Samantha, on Bewitched, had a baby. The baby's name was Tabitha.

January 14, 1976
Bionic Woman debuted on ABC.
The Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin-off from The Six Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars as tennis pro Jaime Sommers who is nearly killed in a skydivingaccident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) and Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks), by bionic surgical implants similar to those of The Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin. As the result of Jaime's bionics, she has amplified hearing in her right ear, a greatly strengthened right arm, and stronger and enhanced legs which enable her to run at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour.

The series proved highly popular worldwide, gaining high ratings in the US and particularly so in the UK (where it became the only Science fiction programme to achieve the No.1 position in the ratings during the 20th Century). The series ran for three seasons from 1976 to 1978 and was first shown on the ABC network and then the NBC network for its final season. Years after its cancelation, three spin-off TV movies were produced between 1987 and 1994. Reruns of the show aired on Sci-Fi Channel from 1997 to 2001. A remake of the series was produced in 2007.
January 15, 1981
Hill Street Blues begins run.
When the series first appeared, the police show had largely been given up for dead. Critics savaged stodgy and moralistic melodramas, and scoffed at lighter fare like Starsky and Hutch. Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, Hill Street Blues invigorated television, paving the way for more realistic and gritty fare.
Hill Street Blues was set in an anonymous northern city (the exteriors were actually filmed in Chicago) and was the first real attempt by television to portray police officers as fallible human beings. Each episode began with the 7 a.m. roll call led by Sergeant Esterhaus. He closed the roll call with his trademark refrain, "Let's be careful out there."
The series not only changed the way that Americans viewed police officers, it also revolutionized the television drama itself. The show resisted formula and introduced the ensemble cast. Whereas early cop shows like Dragnet and Adam-12 were centered around a couple of officers who always got their man by the end of the hour, the full squad house of regulars on Hill Street Blues rarely resolved cases in one episode.

Hill Street Blues was acclaimed through its entire run. When it ended in May 1987, it had set the records for most Emmys won in a single season and most nominations in one year.
January 16, 1976

Donny and Marie premieres.
Music variety show Donny and Marie premieres, starring 18-year-old Donny Osmond and his 16-year-old sister, Marie. The show ran for only three years, but the brother and sister were reunited in 1998 with a daytime talk show.
January 17, 1966
NBC Television greenlights The Monkees.
The inspiration came from the Beatles, the financing came from Screen Gems, the music came from Don Kirshner and the stars came from an exhaustive audition process that began with this ad in Daily Variety in September 1965:
Madness!!
Auditions
Folk & Rock Musicians-Singers
For Acting Roles in New TV Series
Running Parts for 4 Insane Boys, Age 17-21
The ad drew more than 400 young men to the offices of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the young Hollywood producing team that would later make Easy Rider, but who for now were trying to milk the establishment rather than defy it. They spent the next four months shooting, cutting, market-testing, re-cutting and re-market-testing a comedy pilot they hoped would land them a network television deal. They got their green light on January 17, 1966, when the National Broadcasting Corporation ordered 32 episodes of The Monkees for its upcoming fall schedule.
The next eight months were a bit of a whirlwind for Rafelson and Schneider, for the team of songwriters and studio musicians assembled by Don Kirschner and, not least, for the four "insane boys" chosen to become the Monkees. Mickey Dolenz had never played a drum prior to being cast as "Mickey," and Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith had no acting experience prior to becoming "Peter" and "Mike." Davy Jones was already a triple-threat in the areas of acting, singing and being cute, but it had never been Rafelson and Schneider's intention to find such all-around professionals. "We wanted guys who could play themselves," Schneider explained to the press ahead of the NBC premiere of The Monkees in September 1966. "We didn't even look at actors, and we didn't look for experienced rock and roll groups."

The strategy, and indeed the entire grand scheme behind The Monkees, succeeded beyond all expectations. Not only did the television show find success against formidable competition in its time slot from Gilligan's Island, but the group that was a made-for-television knockoff of the Beatles soon had actual records that were outselling the Beatles themselves. Vincent Canby of the New York Times foresaw the commercial success of Rafelson and Schneider's creation the moment he witnessed the reaction of a crowd of preteen girls during a promotional appearance by the Monkees just three days before their network debut. "The Monkees' appearance yesterday afternoon at the Broadway," Canby wrote, "was just part of an elaborate campaign...to capture the teen-age imagination. The thoroughness of the campaign, as shown yesterday, might prompt renewed debate on the age-old question of free will. Do the teen-agers have a chance these days?"

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Tony Figueroa