The sitcom The Monkees, which first aired on NBC in September of 1966, won two
Emmy Awards in 1967: Outstanding comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial
Achievement in Comedy (James Frawley).
Most of the episodes from the second season of the show didn’t use a laugh track,
which was the common practice at the time. The non-use of canned laughter was
used by NBC as one of several reasons for cancelling the series.
Scene from the final episode (#58)
Cast of The Guiding Light from 1937 (left – right) Arthur Peterson, Mercedes
McCambridge, Helen Behmiller, and Henrietta Ledro.
Guiding Light (known as The Guiding Light before 1975) is a television soap opera
the Guinness Book of World Records credits as the longest running drama in TV
and radio history. The program began as a NBC Radio serial on Monday, January
25, 1937 and moved to CBS radio on June 2, 1947. It started on CBS -TV, June 30,
1952 where it ran until 2009 when it was cancelled. Guiding Light was created by
schoolteacher Irna Phillips, who based it on her personal experiences.
Irna Phillips, mother of the Soap Opera
Shindig! is a musical variety series that aired on ABC-TV from Wednesday,
September 16, 1964 till Saturday, January 8, 1966. The show was cancelled
and it’s Thursday time slots replaced by Batman. The series was hosted by
Los Angeles DJ Jimmy O’Neill.
On April 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed legislation officially banning
cigarette ads on television and radio. By the early 1970s, a fight between the
tobacco lobby and public health interests began. Though the cigarette company’s continued to bombard unregulated print media with ads for cigarettes, tobacco companies lost the regulatory battle over television and radio.
The last televised cigarette ad ran at 11:50 p.m. during The Johnny Carson Show
on Friday, January 1, 1971. Tobacco ads representing $20 million dollars in
advertising were then officially banned from TV and radio broadcast.
Don McNeill (left) conducts an interview with Dean Mullaney of the Library
of American Comics in 1947.
The Breakfast Club was a long-run morning radio variety show heard on the NBC
Blue Network and ABC radio and also briefly aired on television (1950-51 prime-time
edition on ABC). It ran from June 23, 1933 through Friday, December 27, 1968 with
host Don McNeill. The show originated in Chicago, Illinois.
