TV History

Flashback! Studio 50 Marquee Lives Again! Thanks to our friends at David Letterman’s Ed Sullivan Theater, the famous marquee has been transformed into a replica of the Studio 50 marquee of fifty years ago…at least for this weekend. Not long ago, Paul and Ringo visited the theater with Letterman, remembering the night of February…

50,000 Requests For 728 Seats… Andrea Tibbits got one of them. Here’s Anthony Mason’s story on her night with The Beatles from last night’s CBS Evening News. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-beatles-fan-recalls-the-bands-american-debut-and-her-tiny-part-of-their-history/ 50 years later — A fan recalls watching the Beatles’ American debut The then 13-year-old scored a ticket to famed group’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…3 Days This extremely rare photo goes a long way in clearing up some long lost details of the day’s rehearsals on February 9, 1964. This photo was taken at the 2:30 dress rehearsal at Studio 50 for that night’s live show, which was to be followed at 4:30…

Mitzi Gaynor…Headline Act For Beatles Miami Show Tells All This is a wonderful five minute clip of Mitzi talking about her appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ on February 16 which would be the Beatles second time on the show. In an earlier post, I mentioned the heat in the Deauville Hotel’s ballroom and…

Guess What Else Was Happening 50 Years Ago Today… The Winter Olympics From Innsbruck, Austria The 1964 Winter Games marked the beginning of the ABC era of Olympic broadcasting, encouraged by the man who would pioneer the coverage of sports on television, Roone Arledge. ABC paid $597,000 for the broadcast rights, which produced 17.5…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…4 Days Notice the lady in the glasses behind George Harrison…that is Barbara Forster. At the time, she was Barbra Smith, secretary to Ed’s son in law, and producer Bob Precht. Here’s an interesting story she told me Sunday. Only two production secretaries traveled to Miami for the second…

The “Other Shoe” Drops In Burbank Entire ‘Tonight Show’ Staff Laid Off as Jimmy Fallon Moves Show From Burbank to NYC – TheWrap All 164 employees are being encouraged to apply for positions in New York Source

This Weekend, The Marque Changes! This weekend, CBS will recreate the February 9, 1964 theater marque for Studio 50. It’s part of the Sunday night celebration on the web and on the air. CBS live stream the show that starts at 6:30 Sunday afternoon from the show’s original home. From 8 till 10, the…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…5 Days There was only thing the Ed Sullivan staff and crew knew for sure…they were on at 8 and off at 9! Everything else…well, it was up to Ed! I’ve talked to about half a dozen people that worked on the Sullivan show, and aside from the opening…

THIS IS A HUGE DISCOVERY!!! Over the years, I have seen the occasional reference to Saturday rehearsals of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ and have wondered if that was correct and here’s why…Jackie Gleason. Since signing with CBS in 1952, his live shows always came from Studio 50 and always aired on Saturday nights. Only…

Sullivan/Beatles Schedule, Shows 1, 2 and 3 I’ve had this for a few weeks, but until now, I could not vouch for it’s accuracy. The problem has always been the Saturday, February 8 rehearsal for camera blocking. I’ll go into detail in another of today’s posts on why I resisted believing in the Saturday…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…6 Days Mayhem in Miami. The photo on the left was shot during the dress rehearsal and is a mirror reflecting the Beatles over the head of the audience of 2,500. One camera is shooting the crowd and one cameraman with his back to us is shooting the band.…

Preparing Studio 6B For The Return Of The Tonight Show (A) This is a photo of NBC 6B in mid November looking toward the audience seating end of the studio. This shows the new floor and new walls with a new light grid in place. The walls and ceiling have been redone and the…

Preparing Studio 6B For The Return Of The Tonight Show (B) Several months back, Jimmy Fallon moved to 6A so that crews could do a major overhaul of 6B before the ‘Tonight Show’ moved back to New York. For many years, the column you see in the photo on the right had been a…

KNBC Leaves Only Leno At Burbank, But Only Till Thursday Last night, KNBC did their last broadcast from what we used to call, the NBC Burbank Studios. Today, they are broadcasting from the NBC Universal complex. The last true NBC network show left there is ‘Tonight With Jay Leno’ and as we all know,…

February 1969…The First RCA TK44s Delivered In the first week of February 1969, WBAP took delivery of four RCA TK44As with the serial numbers 001 through 004. These camera were for their new mobile unit and I think near the end of the year, they bought four more for their studios.Three of the cameras…

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun… Here’s the Chapman built double header that will be on the sidelines for Fox today at the Super Bowl game. Looks like they caught a break with the weather today. Hopefully the commercials won’t be the only entertaining part of today’s broadcast. Source

FINALLY! I’ve Found It & Why I Was Looking For It. It took me forever, but I’ve finally found out the exact dates on Jackie Gleason’s move to Miami. In 1957, Gleason took a break from doing a weekly series but on September 29, 1962 he returned to CBS with ‘Jackie Gleason’s American Scene…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…7 Days The more I dig into the details, the more interesting this story becomes. Most of us never knew George Harrison was very sick with the flu and up till the last minute, it was 50/50 on whether he would be able to perform. As I had posted…

Very, Very Cool Tribute To NBC Burbank! Some wonderful soul has inserted a present day video trip down the same path of Steve Allen’s original 1958 singing stroll through the halls of NBC Burbank. The original clip was part of a Steve Allen special taped at NBC Burbank and is performed to an Allen…