Catherine O’Hara (March 4, 1954 – January 30, 2026)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian
comic actor and “SCTV” alum who starred as Macaulay
Culkin’s harried mother in two “Home Alone” movies and
created the dramatically ditzy character of Moira Rose in
the Emmy-winning comedy “Schitt’s Creek,” died Friday.

O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief
illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative
Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.
She was 71.

1980

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 was consistently among the top-viewed television
series in the late 1970s and early 1980s (at one point, ranking
second only to Dallas, which immediately followed the show
on CBS’s Friday night schedule).

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

January 23, 1977 saw the premiere of Roots, a groundbreaking
television program. The eight-episode miniseries, which was
broadcast over eight consecutive nights, follows a family from
its origins in West Africa through generations of slavery and
the end of the Civil War.

Roots was one of the most-watched television events in U.S.
history and a major moment in mainstream American culture’s
reckoning with the legacy of slavery.

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley
(August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992)

A critical and ratings success over the course of its run,
Roots received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations
and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody
Award.

Zany, satirical and brimming with countercultural energy,
"Rowan & Martin’s  Laugh-In" sketch comedy TV show
premiered on NBC and ran until July 23, 1973, on the
NBC television network , launching the careers of Lily
Tomlin and Goldie Hawn.  

Gary Owens

SANDY KOZEL