On September 25, 1970, in the 8:30 p.m. time slot immediately
following "The Brady Bunch," ABC premiered a program that
would give television production company Screen Gems its
second TV-to-pop-chart smash: "The Partridge Family."

Unwilling to rest as a one-hit wonder when its first big hit,
"The Monkees," went off the air in 1968, Screen Gems was
wasting no time in trying to repeat its success.

The series follows the lives of a fictional pop music band
formed by the titular family, including Shirley (Shirley Jones),
Keith (David Cassidy), Laurie (Susan Dey), and Danny (Danny
Bonaduce), as well as their manager Reuben Kincaid (Dave
Madden).

The family was loosely based on the real-life musical family
the Cowsills, a popular band in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

(June/July 1986)

Twenty-three years after its 1948 premiere, "The Ed Sullivan
Show" had its final broadcast on June 6, 1971.

For more than two decades, Sullivan’s variety show was the
premiere television showcase for entertainers of all stripes,
including borscht-belt comedians, plate-spinning vaudeville
throwbacks and, most significantly, some of the biggest and
most current names in rock ‘n’ roll.

In its first eight years of existence, there was no such thing as
rock ‘n’ roll to be featured on the program originally called
"Toast of the Town," yet even its first broadcast made music
history when Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein II gave the world its first taste of the score
from their upcoming musical, South Pacific.

Comedian Carol Burnett played both dramatic and comedic roles
on stage and screen. She has received numerous awards and
accolades, including seven Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy
Award, seven Primetime Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards,
and a Tony Award.

Burnett was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
in 2005.

Jay North, who starred as the young mischief maker with the characteristic blond cowlick on the 1959-63 CBS comedy
Dennis the Menace, has died.

North died Sunday at his home in Lake Butler, Florida, after
years of battling colon cancer.