On March 11, 1903, musician and entertainer Lawrence Welk 
was born.

For the generation that grew up on the big bands of the 1930s
and ’40s, The Lawrence Welk Show was a blessed island of
calm in a world gone mad for rock and roll, and it aired like
clockwork every Saturday night from 1955 to 1982. On KTLA.
ABC and Syndication.

When ABC dropped The Lawrence Welk Show in 1971, Welk independently arranged a syndication deal that kept him on
the air for another 11 years and made him one of the richest
entertainers in America. 

Inside the historic William Penn Hotel in downtown
Pittsburgh, you can see Lawrence Welk’s original
bubble machine.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas," a beloved holiday television tradition for generations of American families, debuted to overwhelming popular acclaim despite CBS network fears
of failure on this day in history, Dec. 9, 1965.  (Fox News)         

Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz 
(November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000)

Walt Disney Productions (later The Walt Disney Company) has produced an
anthology television series under several different titles since 1954.

The original version of the series premiered on ABC on Wednesday, October
27, 1954. The show was broadcast weekly on one of the Big Three television
networks until 1990, a 36-year span with only a two-year hiatus from 1984 until
1985. The series was broadcast on Sunday for 25 of those years. From 1991
until 1997, the series aired infrequently and had only two hosts, Walt Disney
and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner. It is the second longest running prime-
time program on American television, behind rival film anthology, the Hallmark
Hall of Fame.

Film trade headline for January 11, 1954.

Walt Disney behind the camera.