Great Moments In Television History #41: Christopher Lee Introduces Meat Loaf

Posted on October 30, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

On March 25th, 1978, the host of Saturday Night Live was horror actor Christopher Lee. The musical guest was Meat Loaf. It led to one of the best introductions in the history of the show, even if Meat Loaf himself was reportedly not amused by it.

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Great Moments In Television History #40: Johnny Carson Talks To Vincent Price

Posted on October 23, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

I saw that today is the 100th birthday of one of the few men to have actually earned the right to be called the “King of Late Night,” Johnny Carson. In honor of the occasion and the month, here’s Johnny interviewing Vincent Price.

This clip is from the September 27th, 1973 episode of The Tonight Show. Vincent was on the show to promote his upcoming movie, Theatre of Blood. During the interview, he also discussed Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. This clip features two class acts at their best.

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Great Moments In Television History #39: The Wolverines

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

50 years ago tonight, the first episode of Saturday Night Live opened with Michael O’Donoghue giving a language lesson to John Belushi.

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Great Moments In Television History #38: The Twilight Zone Premiers On CBS

Posted on October 2, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

“There is a sixth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.”

66 years ago today, viewers heard those words for the first time when The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS. Those words were delivered by the show’s creator and the writer of its first episode, Rod Serling. (In future episodes, “the sixth dimension” would be relabeled “the fifth dimension.”)

The first episode of The Twilight Zone starred Earl Holliman as a man who finds himself walking down a dirt road with no memory of how he got there. He sees signs of civilization — a police station, a diner, and a movie theater — but no people. The isolation and the loneliness threaten to drive him mad but, at the end of the episode, it’s revealed to have all been a simulation performed by the military to test whether the man, as astronaut, will be able to mentally handle being alone in space.

The barrier of loneliness: The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting… in The Twilight Zone.

With no supernatural or extraterrestrial elements, this episode was not typical of what The Twilight Zone would eventually become. But, on October 2nd, 1959, it was enough to launch the show and make television history. It was truly a great moment in television history.

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Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland: Great Romances of the 20th Century – Season 3, Episode 10 (Aired April 24th, 2001)

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Bradley Crain

Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends! Today I celebrate my own valentine, my wife Sierra. I bought her a beautiful bouquet of roses, as well as a card, on which I wrote my true feelings of love and appreciation for her. It made me very happy to see the joy on her face as she received her roses and read her card.

I’m also celebrating my favorite film valentines, Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland. I’ve been blessed to have a few opportunities over the years to talk to people who were friends or family with Bronson and Ireland. They always say the same types of things… “they were so in love,” “Charlie would light up whenever she was around,” “she always softened him up.” That’s one of the reasons I enjoy watching them on screen together. There’s something about knowing how much they love each other that just makes me happy. Back in 2001, the TV series “Great Romances of the 20 Century” featured Bronson and Ireland. One of the most interesting parts of the episode showed Charlie and Jill being interviewed on the set of the film BREAKOUT (1975). Bronson was notoriously prickly in interviews, and he seemed to be heading that way on this particular day. But when Jill started talking about her husband to the person conducting the interview, you could just see the impact her words had on his mood and countenance. She made him smile and his entire mood changed, confirming everything I’ve been told. It’s quite beautiful to see.

If you’re interested, I’ve linked to the episode below.

https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/bb5e43736ee3d63cc3370ae4495d977b/great-romances-of-the-20th-century-s3-e10-charles-bronson-and-jill-ireland

Great Moments In Television History #37: Eisenhower Hosts The First Televised Press Conference

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

“Well, I see we’re trying a new experiment this morning. I hope that doesn’t prove to be a disturbing influence.”

With those words, President Dwight D. Eisenhower opened the first ever televised (though pre-taped) presidential news conference. For the first time, viewers at home could watch as the President took questions from the members of the press and answered them in his own words. Today, we take it for granted and we even get bored with televised news conferences and speeches. But seventy years ago today, on January 19th, 1955, what Eisenhower did was considered to be revolutionary and a little dangerous. How would the public react to actually seeing the man who led the country answering questions in person.

Eisenhower was asked about the dangers of Communist China, the new budget bill, and his own opinion about how his first term had gone and whether had any plans for a potential second term. Eisenhower laughed at the last query, saying, “It looks like a loaded question.”

Obviously, the new experiment worked. The pubic continued to like Ike and, when he did run for a second term, he was elected just as easily as the first time. The Democrats didn’t even bother to put a new candidate and instead just brought back Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower would be succeeded by John F. Kennedy, who went on to perfect Eisenhower’s “new experiment.”

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Great Moments In Television History #36: The Sopranos Premieres On HBO

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

On this day, 26 years ago, The Sopranos premiered on HBO and television (not to mention organized crime) would never be the same. Today, it can be easy to forget just how revolutionary that first season of The Sopranos was. What originally sounded like a joke — a gangster goes into therapy (a plot that had already been used in the film Analyze This) — turned out to be a powerful portrait of American society at the crossroads.

And it all started on January 10th, 1999.

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Great Moments In Television History #35: The 33rd NFL Championship Game Is Broadcast In Color

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

60 years ago today, the Cleveland Browns and the Green Bay Packers met in the 33rd Championship Game of the National Football League. The Packers were led by Vince Lombardi while the returning champions, the Browns, were coached by Blanton Collier and had all-star fullback Jim Brown on its offensive roster. The game was played at Lambeau Field in Wisconsin, in the middle of a snowstorm that soon turned the field into a mud pit. 50,777 fans showed up for the game, braving freezing weather and paying ten dollars per ticket. The Packers defeated the Browns, 23-12.

This game was significant for many reasons. It was the last NFL Championship Game to be played before the Super Bowl era. With the exception of that year’s Probowl, it was Jim Brown’s final game before he retired to concentrate on his acting career. It was Lombardi’s 3rd NFL Championship. (The next year, he would catch the Packers to victory at the first Super Bowl.)

It was also the first NFL title game to be broadcast in color. Airing on CBS and announced by Ray Scott, Ken Coleman, and Frank Gifford, the game was broadcast into American household in full, glorious color. It was both a worthy send-off to the Championship Game era and a welcome to the future of the NFL.

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Great Moments In Television History #34: The Hosts of Real People Say “Get High On Yourself!”

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

In the fall of 1981, producer Robert Evans and NBC collaborated on Get High On Yourself week. For one week, the network featured its stars encouraging viewers to “Get High On Yourself!:” It all led up to a Get High On Yourself special, which Evans supervised as a part of the community service to which he was sentenced after he was caught getting high on cocaine.

In this clip, the hosts of an early reality show called Real People encourage viewers to “get high on yourself.” Of the hosts, Fred Willard was probably the only one who wasn’t high when this was filmed. Seen today, it’s impossible to watch this without feeling like Willard is doing a bit in an unreleased Christopher Guest movie.

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Great Moments In Television History #33: The Thighmaster Commercial Premieres

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Rest in peace, Suzanne Somers. Whether she was mouthing “I Love You” to Richard Dreyfuss in American Graffiti or playing Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company or playing the mother of a blended family on Step By Step, Suzanne Somers was long a part of our shared pop culture.

In 1991, after having been out of the spotlight for a few years, Suzanne Somers made a comeback with The Thighmaster.

Today, it’s hard to explain just how popular this commercial was in 1991. Adding to its notoriety was that many stations would not play the commercial except as a part of their late night programming. In the days before YouTube and DVRs, people would actually stay up late to catch the Suzanne Somers Thighmaster commercial. For a while, this commercial revived Somers’s career as an actress and a talk show host. Needless to say, it also sold a lot of Thighmasters.

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