Brace Beemer, center, with The Lone Ranger cast in the
WXYZ studios.

With the stirring notes of the William Tell Overture and a shout
of “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” "The Lone Ranger" debuts on Detroit’s
WXYZ radio station on January 31, 1933.

The creation of station-owner George Trendle and writer Fran
Striker, the “masked rider of the plains” became one of the most
popular and enduring western heroes of the 20th century.

Joined by his trusty steed, Silver, and Native American scout,
Tonto, the Lone Ranger battled western outlaws and rebel
Native Americans.

Fred Foy’s ‘Lone Ranger’ lead-in became the best-known introduction in radio history. He died of natural causes
in 2010 at age 89.

On January 27, 1965, the Shelby GT 350, a version of a Ford
Mustang sports car developed by the American auto racer
and car designer Carroll Shelby,was launched.

Carroll Hall Shelby
(January 11, 1923 – May 10, 2012)

On January 26, 1979, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a television
comedy about two cousins in the rural South and their
souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee,
debuted on CBS.

The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered
around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke
(Tom Wopat) and their ongoing efforts to elude their nemeses,
the crooked county commissioner “Boss” Jefferson Davis Hogg
(Sorrell Booke) and the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
(James Best).

“The Dukes of Hazzard” was known for its car chases, stunts
and the General Lee.

The General Lee in action.

The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held on January 25, 1949
at the Hollywood Athletic Club.

The awards recognize excellence in television (which in the
1940s was a novel medium).

Hollywood’s first television academy had been founded three
years earlier by Sydney Cassyd, a former film editor for Frank
Capra who later worked as a grip at Paramount Studios and
an entertainment journalist.

Sydney Cassyd (1908 – 2000) 

       

On January 12, 1926, the two-man comedy series “Sam ‘n’
Henry” debuted on Chicago  radio station WGN. 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.