February 25, 1946: The Beginning of VHF TV

February 25, 1946, 80 years ago: The prewar U.S. 18-channel VHF (Very High Frequency) allocation is officially ended in favor of a new 13-channel VHF allocation, due to the appropriation of some frequencies by the military and the relocation of FM radio. Only five of the old channels are the same as new channels in terms of frequency, and none have the same number as before.

This opens the door for the 2 through 13 system that most of us would come to know. As known here in New Jersey while I was growing up:

* Channel 2 in New York: WCBW from 1941 to 1946, then WCBS; on CBS.

* Channel 3 in Philadelphia: WPTZ from 1941 to 1956, then WRCV until 1965, then KYW; NBC until 1995, then on CBS. This station, along with KDKA, Channel 2 in Pittsburgh, are the only CBS-affiliated stations east of the Mississippi River with "K" call signs.

* Channel 4 in New York: WNBT from 1941 to 1954, then WRCA until 1960, then WNBC; on NBC.

* Channel 5 in New York: WABD from 1944 to 1958, then WNEW until 1986, then WNYW; on DuMont until 1956, then Metromedia until 1986, then Fox.

* Channel 6 in Philadelphia: WFIL from 1947 to 1971, then WPVI; on ABC.

* Channel 7 in New York: WJZ from 1948 to 1953, then WABC; on ABC.

* Channel 8: None.

* Channel 9 in New York: WOR from 1949 to 1987, then WWOR; an "independent" station until 1995, then UPN until 2006, then MyNetwork TV. Studios moved from Manhattan to Secaucus, New Jersey in 1983.

* Channel 10 in Philadelphia: WCAU from 1948 onward; on NBC until 1995, then on CBS.

* Channel 11 in New York: WPIX from 1948 onward; Tribune Broadcasting until 1995, then The WB until 2006, then The CW.

* Channel 12 in Philadelphia: WHYY from 1957 onward; NET until 1970, then PBS. Moved to nearby Wilmington, Delaware in 1961.

* Channel 13 in New York: Actually based in Newark, New Jersey for its entire history. WATV from 1948 until 1958, then WNTA until 1962, then WNDT until 1970, then WNET. Independent through 1962, then NET until 1970, then PBS.

The nearest Channel 8 to New York was WTNH, an ABC affiliate in New Haven, Connecticut. The New York edition of TV Guide would list their programming, and also that of WFSB, Channel 3, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut.

When I was growing up, closer to New York than to Philly, we were able to get the New York stations: 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. The Philly stations were nearly impossible, although, if I turned the TV's antenna right, we got a fuzzy picture on Channel 6. In contrast, my grandparents lived down the Shore, about equidistant from the 2 cities, and got both cities' channels. On rare occasions, I was able to get a similarly fuzzy picture of the New Haven Channel 8.

Channels 14 to 83 were relegated to Ultra High Frequency (UHF). Many of these stations became public, and eventually part of PBS. In the New York area, the New Jersey Network was a subset of PBS, and had Channels 23 in Trenton, 50 in Camden, 52 in Montclair and 58 in New Brunswick. And there were 2 Spanish-language stations: Channel 41, Univision, and Channel 47, Telemundo, which has since entered into an agreement with NBC-4. Channel 68 became the 1st movies-only station, before deregulation in the 1980s made the cable explosion possible.

So what happened to Channel 1? It was removed from service in 1948. During the experimental era of TV operation, Channel 1 was moved around the lower VHF spectrum repeatedly, with the entire band displaced upward at one point due to an early 40 megaherz allocation for the FM broadcast band. After FM was moved to its current frequencies in 1946, TV Channel 1's last assigned band was 44 to 50 MHz. This allocation was short-lived.

Until 1948, Land Mobile Radio and television broadcasters shared the same frequencies, which caused interference. This shared allocation was eventually found to be unworkable, so the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reallocated the Channel 1 frequencies for public safety and land mobile use, and assigned TV channels 2 through 13 exclusively to broadcasters.

Aside from the shared frequency issue, this part of the VHF band was, and to some extent still is, prone to higher levels of radio-frequency interference RFI than even Channel 2 (System M).

As cable TV became a thing, more and more channels meant a greater spreading of the TV audience. TV ratings will never again be what they were in 1953, when more people watched the episode of I Love Lucy where "Little Ricky" was born than watched President Eisenhower's Inauguration the next day; or in 1964, when 73 million people watched The Beatles' debut on The Ed Sullivan Show; or in 1983, when 121 million people watched the final episode of M*A*S*H.

Eventually, depending on where people lived, Channels 2, 3 and 4 were made available for video game systems -- in the cases of New York and North and Central Jersey, 3; in those of Philadelphia and South Jersey, 2. Later, Channel 8 became used for very local programming, with "EBTV" running out of the East Brunswick Public Library starting in 1977. This later changed to Channel 3, until becoming Channel 26 on our local cable system.

Dilbert and the Galloping Gourmet

Scott Adams has died. Graham Kerr, as of this writing, is still alive.

It won't surprise me if you don't recognize either name. Neither has been famous for a long time.

As far as I know, they never met.

*

Graham Victor Kerr was born on January 22, 1934 in Brondesbury, North London. His Scottish parents ran hotels. In one of his books, he said, "My name is pronounced 'care' -- not 'cur,' as in the case of Bill Kerr; and not 'car," as in the case of Deborah Kerr." (Bill Kerr was an Australian actor, and Deborah Kerr a Scottish actress.)

He grew up in East Sussex, in the south of England, and learned to cook while serving in the British Army's Army Catering Corps. Upon his discharge, with the rank of Lieutenant, he went into the family business, managing hotels. He moved to New Zealand, and hosted a television show there, winning an award as "Personality of the Year." He was brought over to Australia, and became a star there.

In 1968, he moved to Canada, with a show on CJOH-Channel 13, a CTV show in the national capital of Ottawa. It was named The Galloping Gourmet, for the book he and wine expert Len Evans had recently written. The show was produced by Graham's wife, the former Treena Van Doorne.

The nickname was the result of a 35-day worldwide trek to the finest restaurants around the globe. The show was taped in front of a live audience. The title was echoed in the opening of each episode, where Kerr entered the stage area by running in and leaping over a chair in the dining room set, a stunt conceived by Treena. Many episodes featured a prerecorded segment with Kerr in a part of the world wherein that episode's dish originated.

The foods he presented were not exactly healthy: Like PBS host Julia Child, he used liberal amounts of butter, cream, fat and wine. He even drank the wine during his demonstrations. PBS picked the show up, and it was a hit all over North America.

The show came to an end in 1972, after the Kerrs were hurt in a car crash, and needed time to recover. Treena later suffered from tuberculosis, after a misdiagnosis of lung cancer. These setbacks convinced both of them to get religion in 1975.

Shortly thereafter, his new show, Take Kerr, debuted, but his newfound faith changed things. The hymn "This Is the Day the Lord Has Made" became his theme song, he quoted Scripture, and switched to healthier recipes, including no more wine. He later confessed that he blamed himself for a part in America's obesity epidemic, and apologized for his former on-air habits of slightly naughty language and drinking. People realized the new Graham Kerr wasn't so funny without the naughtiness, and the show did poorly, and was canceled.

He bided his time, and allowed the audience to catch up with him, as the 1980s were a more conservative decade in his target countries: America elected Ronald Reagan, Canada elected Brian Mulroney, and Britain elected Margaret Thatcher. Later shows such as The Graham Kerr Show and Graham Kerr's Kitchen did better than Take Kerr, making him something of an elder statesman. He lightened up a little, and stopped objecting to old episodes of The Galloping Gourmet appearing on cable networks like The Food Network. Treena passed away in 2015. Graham remarried in 2024, and lives in the suburbs of Seattle. If he makes it to January 22, he will be 92 years old.

*

Scott Raymond Adams was born on June 8, 1957 in Windham, Greene County, in the Catskill Mountains of the Hudson Valley of New York State. He was a fan of the comic strip Peanuts, but was also interested in economics, and got a degree in that subject from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. He went west, and earned a Masters of Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley.

(Anybody old enough to be shocked that a Trump fan went to that famously leftist school should be reminded that it's not as leftist as it was in the 1960s.)

He rose to management at Pacific Bell, but saw how inefficient the corporate world could be. On April 16, 1989, while still working there, he launched his comic strip Dilbert with United Media. Dilbert was an "office drone," resembling comedian Drew Carey, except that, like comic strip character Little Orphan Annie, he had no eyeballs (though, unlike Annie, he wore glasses). A distinguishing feature was Dilbert's turned-up tie.

By 1995, he was successful enough that he was able to leave Pac Bell and write the strip full-time. That same year, he developed what became the title of his first book, The Dilbert Principle: Companies tend to promote incompetent employees to management, to minimize their ability to harm productivity. The Dilbert Principle is inspired by the Peter Principle, which is that employees are promoted based on success until they attain their "level of incompetence," and are no longer successful. UPN ran an animated Dilbert series in the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 TV seasons.

Liberals loved Dilbert, because most of them hated their bosses and jobs, too. That's why it seemed to be such a betrayal when Adams seemed to turn right: He endorsed Mitt Romney for President in 2012, and Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. It was flabbergasting: How the hell could the guy who wrote Dilbert endorse for President two of the biggest asshole businessmen in American history?

It got worse. In 2016, he said that Hillary Clinton's candidacy for President would "lower the status of men in America." In 2020, he said that if Joe Biden won, "Republicans would be hunted." Biden won, and Republicans were not hunted. On February 22, 2023, on his podcast Real Coffee with Scott Adams, he described black people as a "hate group," and said, "the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people; just get the fuck away." Dilbert was canceled 32 days later, on March 26, 2023.

He married and divorced twice, with each wife bringing 2 children to the marriage, but he had no biological children.

On May 19, 2025, he announced on his podcast that he had prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, and that he didn't think he had long to live. He had tried taking ivermectin, one of the drugs that Trump had recommended to prevent COVID in 2020, which had failed completely in that regard, and Adams said that it failed to help his cancer, too. He tried a more proven treatment, and it reduced his pain significantly, but by the end of 2025, the cancer had spread to his spine, and he was paralyzed.

He also claimed that, after years of atheism and mockery of religion, he had become a born-again Christian. It did not help him in life as much as it helped Graham and Treena Kerr, as he died today, January 13, 2026, at the age of 68, in the Bay Area community of Pleasanton, California. Whether his conversion has helped him in death, I am, as yet, in no position to know.

The reaction online to his death was not kind. Many people said that he had sold his soul to Trump and the MAGA movement, and that they had no sympathy for him.

Having gone through a lot of pain in my life -- thankfully, none of it due to cancer so far -- I do have some sympathy for him. But, while he was still healthy, I would have liked to have asked him, "What the hell is the matter with you? You know what this guy is like. How can you still support him?"

Graham Kerr got religion, changed because of it, was criticized for that, and had the good grace to step back from the public eye for a while, and not make a nuisance of himself.

 

Scott Adams did not.

Graham Kerr is still alive, and is still fondly remembered.

Scott Adams is no longer the former, and is unlikely to become the latter.

November 24, 1983: "Sesame Street" Says Goodbye to Mr. Hooper

November 24, 1983, 40 years ago: Sesame Street airs its best-remembered episode, perhaps its most important, and certainly its saddest.

William Lee (no middle name) was born on August 6, 1908 in Brooklyn. He was a member of the Group Theatre and then the Federal Theatre in New York in the 1930s, and was later blacklisted as a result of being an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He recovered from this, and in 1956, began appearing on the soap opera As the World Turns, as Grandpa Hughes -- already playing a grandfather at the age of 48.

He taught at the American Theatre Wing, and then, in 1969, at the age of 61, he got the part of Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street. Show co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney said, "He gave millions of children the message that the old and the young have a lot to say to each other." He said of the role:

I was delighted to take the role of Mr. Hooper, the gruff grocer with the warm heart. It's a big part, and it allows a lot of latitude. But the show has something extra, that sense you sometimes get from great theater, the feeling that its influence never stops.

Mr. Hooper operated Hooper's Store, across from 123 Sesame, the signature building on the show's set. In a 1974 episode, "Mr. Hooper" (everybody called him that, except Big Bird -- more on that in a moment) was, like his portrayer, canonically revealed to be Jewish, when his phone rang, and he began speaking Yiddish. In a 1977 episode, he told Big Bird, "I grew up in a neighborhood where that was the only language a lot of people spoke."

In the 1978 special Christmas Eve On Sesame Street, Mr. Hooper came through to provide a happy ending. Muppet roommates Bert and Ernie unwittingly recreated the O. Henry story The Gift of the Magi: Neither one of them had enough money to buy the other a Christmas present, so Ernie traded his beloved rubber duckie to Mr. Hooper for a cigar box, so Bert would have a good place to store his beloved paper clip collection; and Bert traded that collection to Mr. Hooper for a soap dish, so the rubber duckie wouldn't keep slipping off the edge and into the bathtub.

In one of the rare appearances by one of the show's human characters in Bert and Ernie's apartment, Mr. Hooper gave Ernie a present. He unwrapped it, and it was his rubber duckie. And he gave Bert a present. He unwrapped it, and it was a box containing his paper clip collection. The boys realized what had happened. Then they felt guilty that they hadn't gotten Mr. Hooper anything. He said, "I got the best Christmas present ever: I got to see that everybody got exactly what they wanted!"

A quirk in Big Bird's character was that he always mispronounced Mr. Hooper's name, usually coming out "Mister Looper." I remember a "Mr. Dooper" and a "Mr. Stooper" -- that last one really annoyed Mr. Hooper. When Mr. Hooper got his GED, we finally learned his first name, when he was introduced at the ceremony -- by a grownup -- as "Harold Cooper."

On November 24, 1982, at the age of 74, Will Lee taped an episode of Sesame Street -- as it turned out, for the last time. He didn't feel well that day, and barely spoke to the cast. The next day, he appeared live on national television as part of Sesame Street's float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. There was no indication at that time that he was ill. But, just 12 days later, on December 7, 1982, he died of a heart attack. 

The Children's Television Workshop, producers of Sesame Street, had a dilemma. They based their whole show on the fact that kids were smart enough to learn things. So they knew that kids would notice if Mr. Hooper were played by a different actor, or if he stopped appearing altogether, and would need an explanation. They considered saying that the character had retired and moved away. In the end, they decided to tell the truth -- or, rather, to write the actor's truth into the character's story.

On November 24, 1983, one year to the day after his last taping -- Thanksgiving Day, a day when families were together, to help explain anything that the show might not have properly covered to the kids watching -- the episode aired, at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, hence the time of this post. It was revealed that Mr. Hooper had died some time earlier (no cause was given), but that Big Bird still didn't grasp what this meant. He had to be told that it means, "Mr. Hooper's not coming back."

Bob McGrath, who played music teacher Bob Johnson, said of the human cast, "We barely got through that show." Carroll Spinney, who both wore the Big Bird costume and operated the Oscar the Grouch Muppet, said, "The best episode we ever did was Mr. Hooper's death. Those were real tears. Will was the sweetest man."

Big Bird, played by Carroll Spinney, surrounded by, left to right:

Maria (Sonia Manzano), Bob (Bob McGrath),

Susan (Loretta Long) and Gordon (Roscoe Orman)

For a few years by that point, Northern Calloway had played David (his last name was never mentioned), a young black man who had been Mr. Hooper's assistant. David inherited Hooper's Store. After that, David hired Gina Jefferson, a teenage girl played by Alison Bartlett-O'Reilly. But Calloway fell victim to mental illness, left the show in 1989, and died a year later.

The store was then bought by Mr. Handford, a black retired firefighter played by Leonard Jackson for one season, then by David L. Smyrl. Jackson played Mr. Handford as a grumpy old man, while Smyrl found the same balance between grumpy old man and kindly old gentleman that Lee had. (David's disappearance was explained as the character simply moving away, while the change in actor for Mr. Handford was less drastic, since the character wasn't original and beloved, as Mr. Hooper and, to a lesser extent, David were.)

In 1998, Smyrl left the show, and it was explained that Mr. Handford had sold the store to Alan (whose last name has never been revealed). Alan is played by Japanese-American actor Alan Muraoka, and has run the store ever since -- his 25 years in charge nearly twice as long as the 13 years we saw Mr. Hooper run it, although we have no way of knowing how long it was open before 1969.

But, to this day, the drawing of Mr. Hooper that Big Bird made, and showed in the farewell episode, rests adjacent to Big Bird's nest, as a reminder of Mr. Hooper, and of Will Lee.

Carroll Spinney, in his 80s, began to pull back, allowing Eric Jacobson to take over as Oscar in 2015, and Matt Vogel to replace him as Big Bird 2018. Spinney died the following year. But, like Oscar, Bert and Ernie, Grover, Cookie Monster, The Count, and all the rest, Big Bird lives. Which means he'll never see Mr. Hooper again -- barring the invention of a Star Trek-style holodeck or the intervention of an artificial intelligence setup that can simulate the character.

October 25, 1971: The Electric Company Premieres

Back row, left to right: Rita Moreno, Jim Boyd, Judy Graubart,

Morgan Freeman, Hattie Winston, Luis Ávalos,

Danny Seagren as Spider-Man, Skip Hinnant.

Front row, The Short Circus, left to right:

Réjane Magloire, June Angela, Janina Mathews,

Rodney Lewis, Todd Graff.

October 25, 1971, 50 years ago: The Electric Company premieres on PBS. A companion piece to Sesame Street, it is geared toward kids a little older who were, by then, learning to read. As the closing tagline say, it is produced by the same production company: "The Electric Company gets its power from The Children's Television Workshop."

It is also backed by many of the same foundations that funded Sesame Street, including The Ford Foundation and The Carnegie Corporation of New York. And by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), founded in 1953, and split in 1980 to form the Department of Education (DOE), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Included in the original cast of this show are 2 performers who are already legends, Rita Moreno, 39; and Bill Cosby, 34. Not yet a star was Morgan Freeman, 34. Also in the original cast: Judy Grabuart, 28 and a veteran of the Second City comedy troupe; Lee Chamberlin, 33; and Joseph "Skip" Hinnant, 31.

All had done stage work in New York. Of note: Hinnant had appeared in the Broadway musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, based on Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts: He had played Schroeder, the piano-playing catcher, while his brother, Bill Hinnant, played Snoopy, Charlie Brown's beagle who played shortstop and pretended to be a World War I flying ace.

Not onscreen, but providing voices, was Jim Boyd, about to turn 38. He, Wayland Flowers (the ventriloquist for Madame) and Cleavon Little (later Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles) had done puppetry and voices for The Surprise Show, a local New York kids' show.

The performers would often imitate the already-defunct mode of vaudeville, using routines that emphasized a particular letter, group of letters, or sound to help kids with reading. Other sketches would be used for this as well. For example, on a few occasions, they would demonstrate that the letters "ie" could be pronounced like the letter E, or the letter I, as in "a piece of pie." Which, as you've probably guessed, involved someone getting hit in the face by a pie.

Freeman played a comic version of Count Dracula, who, like Sesame Street's Cookie Monster, would bite anything. (Although only once did I ever see Cookie Monster bite a person, and a Muppet at that.) He also played Mel Mounds, a disc jockey who would play songs by The Short Circus (more about whom later).

Most of all, he played Easy Reader, whose name was a play on Easy Rider. At first, Easy was an out-and-out hippie, looking like he had raided the wardrobe of the recently deceased Jimi Hendrix. As the show went on, he developed a look that was more urban cool cat: Shorter hair, sunglasses (sometimes even indoors), leather shoes, and a jacket-pants combo that was originally blue denim, and later brown suede with a flower on the back.

Freeman also played Marcello, the perpetually-abused cue card man employed by Otto, a parody of an old-time movie director (named after Otto Preminger) played by Moreno. She also played Pandora, a naughty little girl.

She also played Millie the Helper (named after Millie Helper, a character from The Dick Van Dyke Show), whom Cosby kept trying and failing to train at various jobs. It seemed the only thing she was competent at was yelling, "Hey, you guys!"

It became the show's first catchphrase, and was even incorporated into the show's opening segment. When my sister was the age at which it was appropriate to start watching the show, she thought its name was Hey You Guyyyyyyyys! To this day, people who have never seen West Side Story or any other of Rita's roles see her and say, "Hey, you guys!"

In Season 2, 1972-73, Boyd became an onscreen performer for the first time, although not always recognizable. In Season 1, in a play on both "crank calling" and on the British film producer J. Arthur Rank, he played the angry voice of J. Arthur Crank.

In Season 2, the character of Crank was seen for the first time. His face, hair and mustache resembled those of Rank, but he dressed and acted like a slob, but not really a bad guy. Essentially, Crank was a parody of All In the Family's Archie Bunker, minus the bigotry, which was important on a show with black actors Cosby, Freeman and Chamberlin, and Hispanic actress Moreno.

Boyd also put on a gorilla suit to play Paul the Gorilla, alongside Graubart's Jennifer of the Jungle, a parody of both Tarzan and George of the Jungle, in which "Tarzan" and "Jane" were basically the same person, and Paul was her "Cheeta." 

Boyd also played a bumbling superhero named Blue Beetle, not connected to any of the 3 heroes who have used that name in comic books. He also continued to voice Maurice the talking plant and a talking chicken named Loreli Loverly. In addition to Jennifer, Graubart played a parody of Julia Child, Julia Grownup.

Also joining the cast at this time was Luis Ávalos, a Cuban-born actor then just 26, but already distinctively bald, but sometimes (not always) with a mustache. The mustache enabled his best-known character: A parody of the name of Dr. Dolittle and the characters played in 1930s film comedies by Groucho Marx, Dr. Doolots had a gigantic orange Afro. He also teamed with Morgan Freeman, as Igor to Freeman's Mad Scientist.

Boyd as Paul, Ávalos as Dr. Doolots, Graubart as Jennifer

Boyd and Ávalos could be added because Cosby left the show after Season 1, to devote more attention to his CBS Saturday morning cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Chamberlin, best known for playing Vi (presumably, short for Violet) of Vi's Diner -- as the song went, "and the homemade pies, and that is why we go to Vi's" -- left after Season 2 as well. Nevertheless, segments with each of them would appear on the show for the rest of its run.

Chamberlin as Vi, singing to a visiting Grover from Sesame Street

Hinnant played Fargo North, Decoder. He wore a trenchcoat and a fedora like a 1940s private detective, but the fedora was pink. And he was a bit of a bumbler, in the mold of Maxwell Smart, the spy played by Don Adams on Get Smart. Like Easy, Fargo had his own theme music. Once, Fargo visited Dr. Doolots, and the sketch ended with Fargo's theme playing, and, in his best Groucho impression, Ávalos said, "What's your music doing in my office?"

Hinnant as Fargo, with a visiting Big Bird from Sesame Street

In Season 3, Chamberlin was replaced by another black New York stage actress, Hattie Winston, 28. She became Valerie the Librarian, who had playful banter with Easy Reader, suggesting (but never outright saying) that they might have been a couple.

Freeman and Winston as Easy and Valerie

Season 4 introduced Spidey Super Stories, with Danny Seagren, 31, a professional dancer who had previously appeared on Sesame Street, as the first ever live-action version of the Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man. This Spidey didn't exactly "talk": Instead, his words were put on the screen in "word balloons," followed by a pause for the kids watching at home to try to read, before whoever he was talking to repeated it. Instead of Spidey's usual rogues' gallery -- no Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, Electro and so on -- the various castmembers played one-shot villains, never seen before or since.

One edition showed Spidey attending Fargo's birthday party, along with Easy, Jennifer and Paul, interrupted by Ávalos as The Blowhard, a villain with destructive super-breath that Fargo -- apparently considerably more competent when we're not watching -- had once put in prison, and was seeking revenge. Just as he was about to blow them all away, Paul hit him in the face with Fargo's birthday cake, giving Spidey the chance to sling his web and trap him.

While Spidey's civilian persona, Peter Parker, was established as living in Queens, The Electric Company and Spider Super Stories was the initial establishment of him as a fan of the New York Mets, who (then as now) played in Queens. Marvel ran with it, and made Peter's Met fandom comic canon. 

Boyd played The Wall, disrupting a Met game that Spidey attended in costume: "Well, if it isn't the Wall-Crawler himself! Well, this is one Wall you'll never crawl!" Hinnant played an ill-fated outfielder, and Freeman a typically vision-impaired umpire.

I said the stories were titled "Super." I didn't say they were good.

There were animated segments as well. One had a character who never got an official name, so they just called him "Blond-Haired Cartoon Man." Mel Brooks did his voice. Satirical singer Tom Lehrer wrote and sang a series of songs featuring the "ly" and "sn" sounds, and "Silent E." Warner Brothers contributed some animated shorts featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

And before Spidey or the Blue Beetle were ever on the show, there was The Adventures of Letterman. Letterman was dressed like an old-time football player, with a "varsity letter" on his chest, which always happened to be just the letter needed to restore a word that had been changed by The Spellbinder, a villain who would use his magic wand to change a word and turn an item into something dangerous, or at least upsetting. Letterman was voiced by Gene Wilder, The Spellbinder by Zero Mostel, and the narrator was Joan Rivers, all of whom had worked with Brooks.

Faster than a rolling O, stronger than Silent E,

able to leap Capital T in a single bound!

It's a word! It's a plan! It's Letterman!

And there was the band, 5 teenagers named The Short Circus, a play on "short circuit." The original band of 1971 was June Angela, 12, as Julie, on tambourine; Irene Cara, 12, as Iris, on keyboards; Melanie Henderson, 14, as Kathy, on guitar; Douglas Grant, 12, as Zach, on guitar; and Steve Gustafson, 12, as Buddy, on drums.

Angela couldn't play an instrument, but, as the best singer they auditioned, they had to keep her, so she selected a tambourine, possibly a nod to Eddie Brigati of The Rascals and/or Mark Volman of The Turtles. She named her character after Julie Andrews. Gustafson, being a drummer, named his after Buddy Rich.

Since Cosby and Moreno were already stars, and Freeman didn't become a big star for many more years, until Driving Miss Daisy was released in 1989, Cara got the biggest boost to her career of any castmember, appearing in both the film Fame and the subsequent TV show based on it, and having Number 1 hits from the themes from Fame and the film Flashdance.

Part of the problem with having teenage actors is that they grow up too fast, and sometimes it became hard for the little kids to relate to them. Cara left the show after the 1st season, and was replaced on keyboards by Denise Nickerson, 15 and already known for playing Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, as Allison. In 1973, the keyboard position was eliminated, and Nickerson was replaced by Bayn Johnson, 15, as guitarist Kelly; and Grant was replaced by Gregg Burge, 14, as bass guitarist Dwayne.

In 1975, the entire band was replaced, except for Angela: Being short meant that she could still appear on the show at age 18. Henderson was replaced on guitar by Réjane Magloire, 11, as Samantha; 

Johnson on guitar by Janina Mathews, 12, as Gail; Burge on bass by Rodney Lewis, 12, as Charlie; and Gustafson on drums by Todd Graff, 16, as Jesse. 

Angela was the show's only Asian-American regular, while Cara was Hispanic, and Henderson, Grant, Burge, Magliore and Lewis were black.

On occasion, Short Circus members would interact with the adult castmembers, such as when they went to see Vi at the diner or Valerie at the library. Sometimes, a Spidey Super Story would be narrated by Angela, or feature another bandmember as the younger version of the villain, telling the brief origin story.

The show made new episodes until 1977, and remained on the air in reruns until 1985. In 2009, PBS began airing a new show with the title, but, aside from the title and the use of Moreno's catchphrase, "Hey you guyyyyyyyys!" it bore no resemblance to the original. It lasted only 2 years.

Ironically, from the original show, the first castmember to die was one of The Short Circus, Burge, in 1998. Boyd died in 2013, Ávalos and Chamberlin in 2014, Grant in 2018, and Nickerson in 2019. The rest of the cast has lived to see the show's 50th Anniversary -- although there will always be a cloud over Cosby, no matter how long he lives.

UPDATE: Irene Cara died in 2022.

November 10, 1969: "Sesame Street" Premieres

November 10, 1969, 50 years ago: Sesame Street premieres on PBS. It became the greatest show in the history of children's television.

Three years earlier, TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice president Lloyd Morrisett met to discuss creating a children's television show that would "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them." In 1968, they founded the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), and received grants from the Carnegie Foundation (later the Carnegie Corporation of New York), the Ford Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The original title for the show was 123 Avenue B. Get it? 1, 2, 3, A, B: Counting and the alphabet. But this idea was discarded, because people would have sought out the actual address, off East 8th Street, across from Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. At the time, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was a pretty rough neighborhood: No person aware of its conditions would have wanted to know how to get there, but kids, not knowing, would have begged their parents to take them.

So the title became Sesame Street. Sesame is a seed that is a source of oil, but, at this time, while McDonald's had introduced the Big Mac burger with its famed "sesame seed bun," the jingle mentioning it didn't debut until 1974. So most people knew the word "sesame" from "Open sesame," a line used in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. People would associate "sesame" with "open," with the idea that they were opening children's minds to learning.

Since what became known as "The Street" (Capital T, Capital S) was supposed to be in a generic neighborhood in New York City, where it was taped, the show was big on diversity from the start. The first character to appear on the show was Gordon Robinson, played by Matt Robinson. Gordon was a science teacher, who was married to Susan, a nurse, played by Loretta Long. Together, they owned the building that was the centerpiece of the show, with the address of 123 Sesame Street.

They wanted to show a black couple as successful and stable. Well, they got most of what they wanted: Long remained on the show until retiring in 2016, and the Gordon character was retired the following year; but there were 3 separate actors playing him. Matt Robinson left in 1972, ironically because he was behind the times: He left because of a creative difference, namely that he did not want Susan to be depicted as working outside the home. He was replaced by Hal Miller, who left in 1974 because he didn't like being on a children's show. Roscoe Orman then played the character for the next 43 years.

In 1976, Alaina Reed joined the cast as Olivia Robinson, Gordon's sister and a photographer. In 1985, Miles Orman, Roscoe's real-life son, joined the cast as Miles, the adopted son of Susan and Gordon.

Another original castmember was Will Lee, as Harold Hooper, operator of Hooper's Store, across from 123 Sesame. In a 1974 episode, "Mr. Hooper" (everybody called him that, except Big Bird -- more on that in a moment) was, like his portrayer, canonically revealed to be Jewish, when his phone rang, and he began speaking Yiddish. In a 1977 episode, he told Big Bird, "I grew up in a neighborhood where that was the only language a lot of people spoke." In the 1978 special Christmas Eve On Sesame Street, Bob wished him a Happy Hanukkah.

Bob Johnson, a music teacher, was played by Bob McGrath. Along with Loretta Long, he was the last remaining original castmember, also retiring in 2016. Bob was white, and, aside from being as talented as the other characters, had nothing to make him stand out.

One particular song he sang was "I'm Going Somewhere," and challenged the audience: "Can you guess where?" He rattled off pretty much every way you could get there, concluding with subway and jeep, before sitting on the stoop of 123 Sesame, and singing, "I'm going... to sleep," and dozing off.

In 1971, in recognition of America's growing Hispanic community, Mexican-American actor Emilio Delgado was added, as Luis Rodriguez, owner of The Fix-It Shop, next-door to Hooper's Store. That same year, Bronx native Sonia Manzano was added as teenager Maria. In 1979, to celebrate the character's 21st birthday, the cast, Muppets included, when to Puerto Rico to meet Maria's family and celebrate.

The show combined human characters, both adults and children, with Jim Henson's "Muppet" puppets. It taught letters and the words those letters stood for, and numbers. Just as every episode began with the eventually iconic theme song (starting with "Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away" and concluding with "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?"), every episode ended with a castmember saying, in a parody of sponsorship, that the show was brought to you by 2 letters and a number that were featured in it. Example: "Sesame Street has been brought to you today by the letters M and P, and by the number 4." (M and P are my initials, and 4 has always been my favorite number.)

Some of the Muppet characters became icons. Carroll Spinney both wore the costume as Big Bird, who represented childlike wonder (to this day, even after Spinney's retirement and replacement, the character is said to be 6 years old), and operated the character of Oscar the Grouch.

(UPDATE: Since the show's 50th Anniversary, Caroll Spinney has died. So has Emilio Delgado.)

Several "monster" Muppets were introduced, to show kids that just because someone is different -- even a monster -- doesn't mean they're bad. Okay, Cookie Monster is a glutton, and Grover is a klutz, but they mean well.

There were Bert and Ernie. Contrary to popular belief, they are not a gay couple, and were never meant to be. (The Stonewall Riot happened just 5 months earlier.) Contrary to another popular belief, they were not named after Bert the cop and Ernie the cabdriver in the film It's a Wonderful Life.

But they were based on The Odd Couple, which had already been a Broadway play and a movie, but not yet a TV show: Bert was the "Felix," uptight with some strange hobbies; and Ernie was the "Oscar," sloppy and immature. The name and personality of Oscar the Grouch, who loved trash and lived in a trash can, may also have been a nod to Oscar of The Odd Couple.

Occasionally, Kermit the Frog, an original Jim Henson Muppet, would make an appearance. In 1976, Kermit became the "host" of The Muppet Show, which, at first, confused the heck out of me: I thought the Muppets meant Sesame Street, but he was the only Sesame Street character who appeared on it. (Eventually, Big Bird would make an appearance, and Bert and Ernie also would, but those were rare exceptions.)

And except for Kermit, no Muppet Show characters -- not Miss Piggy, not Fozzie Bear, and, thankfully, not Statler and Waldorf -- crossed over onto Sesame Street. At that age, I didn't know that the Muppets, including Kermit himself, went all the way back to 1955, and were regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s.

Some Muppets would be re-used. For example, TV game show host Guy Smiley was re-dressed as The Muppet Show's anchorman: "Here is a Muppet News Flash!" There was also a "Fat Blue" that was used for several early characters, including the bald, mustachioed restaurant customer who drove Grover, playing a waiter, crazy.

Let's see, I've mentioned Big Bird, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Grover, Bert, Ernie, Kermit, Guy and Fat Blue. That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Nine nifty Muppets! Ah ah ah ah! (BOOM!) Oh yes, there was also "The Count": "Do you know why they call me The Count? Because I love to count things!" He was later given the full name of Count Von Count. He was a purple guy who looked like Count Dracula, but didn't bite anybody. (Come to think of it, while Cookie Monster would eat almost anything, not just cookies, he didn't bite anybody, either. Except for that one time when he tried to eat Guy Smiley's hand.)

The show also produced legendary songs. Kermit's "Bein' Green," meant to say that it's okay to be different; Ernie's bathtime song "Rubber Duckie"; and "Mah Na Mah Na" actually became hit records. (It was 1970. There were some considerably stranger songs on the charts in those days.) All were sung by Henson himself, who operated and voiced the corresponding Muppets.

(Officially, the hippie-looking guy who sings "Mah Na Mah Na" is named Bip Bippadotta, but everybody ended up calling him "Mahna Mahna," so that became his official name when he appeared on The Muppet Show, with "Bip" still being his Sesame Street name.)

Other songs that were featured on Sesame Street included Big Bird's alphabet song "Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" (pronounced "AB-ka-DEF-gee-JECK-le-min-OP-qwer-STOOV-wix-iz"), Cookie Monster's "C is for Cookie," Oscar's "I Love Trash," "Sing (Sing a Song)" and "One of These Things Just Doesn't Belong Here."

I was born just 38 days after Sesame Street debuted. The show and I grew up together. By 1978, it was big enough to get its own Christmas special, with Bert and Ernie having a storyline paralleling O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi, except that Mr. Hooper came through to provide a happy ending. Also, Cookie Monster tried to contact Santa Claus, but every method -- his pencil, his typewriter, his phone -- reminded him of cookies, and he ate them.

And, in an unusual instance of Spinney's characters interacting, Oscar asked Big Bird how big fat Santa got down those skinny little chimneys on the roofs of city apartment buildings. Big Bird got worried that Santa might not be able to come to Sesame Street, and nobody would get any presents. Spoiler Alert: The presents showed up, and Big Bird was told that it didn't matter how it happened.

Also by that point, there were international versions of the show. It became Plaza Sesamo in Spanish-speaking countries; 1, rue Sésame in French-speaking countries; Sesam Strasse in German-speaking countries; and, from 1983 to 2015, in Israel, Rechov Sumsum, with the street in question being a safe place for Jewish and Muslim children to play together, a "neutral zone" apart from "the real world." Today, Sesame Street has variations shown in 150 different countries, in 70 languages.

Big Bird occasionally had a difficult relationship with the show's grownups. Starting in 1971, he had a friend, Mr. Snuffleupagus. This was a big thing with orange hair that looked like an elephant, with a long trunk, but without the large ears. He did, eventually, get a first name: Aloysius Snuffleupagus. But Big Bird usually just called him "Snuffy." Snuffy called him "Bird."

The Muppets and the show's kids could see him, but the grownups never did. Since they'd never heard of a snuffleupagus, and Snuffy never seemed to show up when Big Bird needed him to, they said there is no snuffleupagus, usually followed by, "Big Bird, you sure have some imagination!"

Times change, and the show had to change with it. By the mid-1980s, it began to dawn on the CTW's people that children might see that the grownups didn't believe Big Bird when he said Snuffy was "real," so they might not be believed about important things -- good or bad. So the decision was made to have them definitively see Snuffy.

The episode where it happened aired on November 18, 1985, the premiere of the show's 17th season. This was also the episode that introduced the character of Elmo, the little red monster Muppet, and he turned out to be instrumental in Snuffy's revelation. This is what I call the show's "hinge episode": Elmo proved so popular that he came to dominate the show. "Elmo's World" became a segment, but, at times, it seemed like the entire show was Elmo's world.

A quirk in Big Bird's character was that he always mispronounced Mr. Hooper's name, usually coming out "Mister Looper." I remember a "Mr. Dooper" and a "Mr. Stooper" -- that last one really annoyed Mr. Hooper. Even when Mr. Hooper got his GED, he was introduced at the ceremony -- by a grownup -- as "Harold Cooper."

On December 7, 1982, Will Lee died at age 74. The CTW had a dilemma. They based their whole show on the fact that kids were smart enough to learn things. So they knew that kids would notice if Mr. Hooper were played by a different actor, or if he stopped appearing altogether, and would need an explanation. Since it had been established on the show that he had a brother living in Chicago, they toyed with the idea of saying the character had retired and moved away.

In the end, they decided to tell the truth -- or, rather, write the actor's truth into the character's story. On November 24, 1983 -- Thanksgiving Day, a day when families were together, to help explain to the kids watching anything that the show might not have properly covered -- it was revealed that Mr. Hooper had died some time earlier (no cause was given), but that Big Bird still didn't grasp what this meant. He had to be told that it means, "Mr. Hooper's not coming back."

McGrath said of the human cast, "We barely got through that show." Spinney said, "The best episode we ever did was Mr. Hooper's death. Those were real tears. Will was the sweetest man."

In 1986, Manzano got married in real life. In 1988, she got pregnant. Now, the CTW had a very different adult issue on their hands. They couldn't have Maria disappear from the show until after Sonia's baby was born: Again, kids would notice, and ask what was going on.

So, since it had long been established that Maria worked for Luis at The Fix-It Shop, the writers wrote a story that had Luis and Maria falling in love, getting married, and having a baby. It was all above-board. It was a story that could have been told on TV, even 20 years earlier.

Except, by this point, I was an adult, and I thought it was kind of a creepy way around it. Sure, they were both Hispanic (the term "Latinx" for Hispanics of every gender identity wasn't used yet), and they already knew and liked each other. But Luis was old enough to be Maria's father! (Or so I thought. As it turned out, Manzano was 38 when the baby was born, and only 10 years younger than Delgado. But I didn't know that then.)

So, in the 1990s, Gordon and Susan's son Miles and Luis and Maria's daughter Gabi became the representatives of what could have been called Sesame Street: The Next Generation. By this point, with Northern Calloway, who played Mr. Hooper's assistant David, also having left the show (it wasn't a story I'd like to share, and he died soon thereafter), Hooper's Store was run by Alan, a Japanese-American played by Alan Muraoka, and Miles and Gabi went on to work there.

I guessed that the show would eventually write in a romance between them. This hasn't happened: When they graduated from high school (together, despite Miles being introduced as a baby 4 years earlier), and went off to college, the characters were written out of the show. 

Other difficult subjects were introduced. Deaf actress Linda Bove introduced the show's viewers to sign language and the difficulties of hearing impairments. Aristotle was introduced in 1981 as a blind Muppet, Julia in 2017 an autistic one, and Lily in 2011 as a poor one, revealed in 2018 to be homeless. Because he depended on his hearing more than any other character on the show, Aristotle is one of the few monster Muppets to have visible ears.

After September 11, 2001, an episode was written with as close a parallel to the terrorist attacks as the writers could safely come up with: Maria and Elmo are in Hooper's Store when a grease fire breaks out. Although Alan is able to put it out with his fire extinguisher, Maria still has to get Elmo out, and Elmo is traumatized by the event. And when the firefighters, wearing their full equipment, making them look bigger than people their size would normally be, try to talk to him, he's scared further. They explain things to them, and invite him to their firehouse, and he calms down.

Joan Ganz Cooney is still alive, and is scheduled to turn 90 on November 30. Lloyd Morrisett is also still alive, and turned 90 on November 2. He also co-created The Electric Company, which The CTW also ran, from 1971 to 1977.

Sesame Street was originally taped at Reeves Teletape Studios, at 81st Street and Broadway, formerly CBS Studio 72. Also taped there were The Electric Company, and several other shows, for kids and adults alike. In 1986, Reeves Teletape was demolished, and Sesame Street moved production to Unitel Video, at 515 W. 57th Street, off 10th Avenue. Since 1993, they have taped at Kaufman Astoria Studios, on a block in Astoria, Queens bounded by 35th and 36th Avenues, and 35th and 36th Streets.

In 2000, The Children's Television Workshop was renamed Sesame Workshop. In 2016, Sesame Street left PBS, and moved to HBO, where it just began its 51st season. It remains relevant.

Sabathia Rehabs Self, Yanks; Mets' Moment Over

Toward the end of last season, CC Sabathia left the Yankees, and checked himself into rehab for alcoholism.

It didn't make a difference as far as the American League Wild Card game went: Masahiro Tanaka was the ace last season, and if he was able to pitch that game, he was going to pitch it, and he did. Whether CC's absence would have made a difference had the Yankees gone on to the AL Division Series and beyond, we'll never know.

Because of a scheduled day off yesterday, and a rainout the day before, the Yankees' most recent game was last Saturday, at Comerica Park, against the Detroit Tigers, who came into the game undefeated at 3-0.

CC made his 1st start for the Yankees since his rehab. After 4 games, split evenly, 2-2, with no Yankee starter having finished 6 innings, and with the gametime temperature being 31 degrees, the coldest in Comerica Park's 16-year history, a lot of people were worried that the Big Fella, known as an eater of innings (among other things), but now within 3 months of his 36th birthday, would also not last long.

But he did. He went 6 innings, allowing 3 runs on 4 hits and 4 walks, plus 3 strikeouts. He pitched to a batter in the 7th before Joe Girardi replaced him with Kirby Yates, who allowed a 4th run. But Chasen Shreve, Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller went the last 2 1/3rd innings, allowing only 1 baserunner.

In contrast, the Yankee bats, which had been as cold as the weather on Friday afternoon, heated up. In the 1st inning, Alex Rodriguez took former Met Mike Pelfrey deep for his 1st home run of the season, the 688th of his career. Didi Gregorius brought home runs in the 2nd with a single and the 4th with a sacrifice fly. Jacoby Ellsbury tripled home 2 runs in the 4th. Carlos Beltran capped the Yankee scoring (of course he did, he wasn't batting with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th, down by a run, with a man on base) when he hit a 2-run homer in the 5th, his 394th career dinger.

Yankees 8, Tigers 4. WP: Sabathia (1-0 -- Thank you, Big Man). No save. LP: Pelfrey (0-1). Escaping from Detroit with a split isn't bad at all, especially given the Yankees' record there since the Tigers left Tiger Stadium in the ghetto for Comerica Park downtown.

*

Tonight, the Yankees start a 3-game series in Toronto against those pesky Blue Jays, who, for the 1st time since 1994 (or 1995, if you consider the '94 Division title to have been unawarded), are defending American League Eastern Division Champions. All 3 games have an official starting time of 7:07 PM. Here are the scheduled starting pitchers:

* Tonight: Masahiro Tanaka vs. Aaron Sanchez.

* Tomorrow: Michael Pineda vs. J.A. Happ.

* Thursday: Nathan Eovaldi vs. Marcus Stroman.

Then the Yankees come home, and begin a series against the Seattle Mariners. Friday is April 15, Jackie Robinson Day, when the universal retirement of Jackie's Number 42 is reversed for a day, and every major league player wears his number, so that every person in the ballpark, and every person watching on television, must see Jackie's legacy.

Speaking of Jackie, last night, as part of its American Experience series, PBS aired Part I of the new documentary Jackie Robinson, by Ken Burns, who focused heavily on Jackie during his 1994 miniseries Baseball.

It will air Part II tonight, and will repeat the series on the weekend. DVR it. I insist. It's about more than baseball: It casts some perspective on the state of American politics in the last 60 years, including our current racial debates.

*

Has anybody noticed that the Mets are 2-4? They got beat 2 out of 3 at home by the Philadelphia Phillies, "the worst team in baseball," over the weekend. They got shut out on Saturday, and Matt Harvey got beat on Sunday. Then, last night, Steven Matz got clobbered by the Miami Marlins -- again, in Flushing.

Remember Bull Durham? These words should stick in the mind of any Met fan who wants to remind any Yankee Fan about last year's Pennant:

Nuke: Can't you just let me enjoy the moment?
Crash: Moment's over.