TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

TVC 631.6: Music and television historian Chuck Harter talks to Ed about some of the ways in which the second season of The Monkees (NBC, 1966-1968) differs from the first (to the point where the second season is almost an entirely different series), and how the success of the Monkees tour in 1967 changed the group’s attitude about doing the show. Chuck wrote Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees, the excellent Disney Channel documentary that explores the history of The Monkees, both the group and the series, and the ongoing impact of the Monkees phenomenon. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 630.1: Actor, comedian, and impressionist Jim Meskimen talks to Ed about his interest in charcoal sketch drawings; his early background as a cartoonist and work in animation; how he first discovered his gift for mimicry; and the online course he teaches, The Working Actor Method. Jim recently played talk show legend Phil Donahue in Welcome to Chippendales; he can also be seen in Gaslit, The Big Door Prize, and Hunter. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 630.2: Ed welcomes back Don Most, the actor known around the world as Ralph Malph on Happy Days, and an accomplished singer whose vocal style pays homage to the Swing Era and the music of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Bobby Darin. Don’s new album, New York High, is a collection of contemporary jazz standards (including covers of “Smoke from a Distant Fire,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “The Look of Love”), while the title track, “New York High,” is an original tune written by Mike Reed, “the Casey Kasem of Great Britain.” New York High is available wherever music is sold. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 630.3: Singer/actor Don Most gives Ed and his listeners an idea of the thought process behind putting together both a live show and an album such as New York High. Don's latest album, New York High, is available wherever music is sold. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 629.5: Ed welcomes back singer/actor Robert Davi (License to Kill, The Goonies, Profiler, Davi Sings Sinatra). Robert will perform his music show, Robert Davi: My Kind of Town, an evening of music that pays tribute to both the Great American Songbook and his idol and mentor, Frank Sinatra, at the Black Box Center for the Arts, 8221 Glades Road, Suite No. 10, in Boca Raton, Florida on Sunday, Dec. 3. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 629.6: Ed welcomes TJ Lubinsky, director and co-executive producer of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme: Memories of My Mom and Dad, a two-hour special, hosted by David Lawrence, that takes a joyful look at how television helped Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme become the most successful husband-and-wife singing duo of all time. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme: Memories of My Mom and Dad premieres the weekend of Saturday, Dec. 3 on PBS stations across the country. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 628.1: From November 2013: Part 2 of our special joint edition of The Sounds of Lost Television and This Week in TV History featuring Phil Gries, Tony Figueroa, and Donna Allen that looks back at how network television news covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963—a seminal moment in U.S. history and in the lives of many Baby Boomers and a seminal moment in the history of network TV news. In this segment, Phil plays audio from Aaron Brown’s interview with Walter Cronkite on CNN in November 2003 in which Cronkite recalls the moment when he briefly lost his composure on camera after he announced the death of President Kennedy. Also in this segment: More highlights from Phil’s exclusive interview with Don Pardo in May 1998 in which Pardo discusses his early career at NBC, including the times when he did play-by-play in 1946 as part of experimental TV broadcasts of Major League Baseball games at Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field, and the Polo Grounds. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 628.2: From November 2013: Phil Gries of Archival Television Audio discusses some of the various films and documentaries that have been made over the years about the assassination of President John K. Kennedy. Also in this segment: How the JFK assassination left a stigma on the city of Dallas for many years, and how that started to changed in the late 1970s with the emergence of the Dallas Cowboys as “America’s Team” and the popularity of the TV series Dallas. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 628.3: From November 2013: Phil Gries of Archival Television Audio shares some final thoughts on how network TV news covered the assassination of President Kennedy on 11/22/63, as well as how the 8mm color motion sequence shot by clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder became one of the most scrutinized pieces of film ever. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 628.4: Ed welcomes back John Barbour, five-time Emmy Award-winning talk show host, comedian, critic at large, and co-creator of Real People; author of Your Mother’s Not a Virgin, the story of his life and career in show business; and the only man who has produced three films on the JFK assassination, including John Barbour’s and William Shakespeare’s Last Word on the Murder of JFK, a 90-minute docu-presentation that will have its world premiere the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino, CA on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the sixtieth anniversary of the JFK assassination. For tickets and more information, call (818) 981-9847 or go to laemmle.com/film/john-barbours-and-wm-shakespeares-last-word-murder-jfk Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 628.5: Five-time Emmy Award-winning talk show host John Barbour talks to Ed about some of his heroes and mentors, including Redd Foxx, Dick Gregory, Earl “Fatha” Hines, and Jim Garrison, the Louisiana district attorney known for his investigation into the JFK assassination. John’s latest film, John Barbour’s and William Shakespeare’s Last Word on the Murder of JFK, is a 90-minute docu-presentation that is essentially a one-man show in three acts, with Act I recounting John’s efforts to allow Garrison to tell his story, in his own words, and John’s efforts to start a scholarship at Tulane University in Garrison’s memory; Act II revealing the one great disappointment in John’s life; and Act III telling the poignant story of John’s trip to Scotland in 1960, where, following a bittersweet reunion with his estranged father, John wins a residency with the Castle Theatre group in London and discovers the true meaning of Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be.” John Barbour’s and William Shakespeare’s Last Word on the Murder of JFK will have its world premiere at the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino, CA from Wednesday, Nov. 22 through Tuesday, Nov. 28. For tickets and more information, call (818) 981-9847 or go to laemmle.com/film/john-barbours-and-wm-shakespeares-last-word-murder-jfk. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 628.6: Five-time Emmy Award-winning talk show host John Barbour talks to Ed about he came to be Frank Sinatra’s personal writer for many years, and the circumstances that led to John’s appearance in what turned out to be the most-watched episode of Breaking Bad. John’s latest film, John Barbour’s and William Shakespeare’s Last Word on the Murder of JFK, will have its world premiere at the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino, CA from Wednesday, Nov. 22 through Tuesday, Nov. 28. For tickets and more information, call (818) 981-9847 or go to laemmle.com/film/john-barbours-and-wm-shakespeares-last-word-murder-jfk. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 627.1: From November 2013: A special joint edition of The Sounds of Lost Television and This Week in TV History featuring Phil Gries, Tony Figueroa, and Donna Allen that looks back at how network television news covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 and the events that followed over the next three days—a seminal moment in U.S. history and in the life of Phil Gries and many other Baby Boomers; a seminal moment in the history of network TV news; and, in many respects, a seminal moment in the history of Phil's company, Archival Television Audio. Phil happened to be home on the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, watching the NBC daytime documentary program Tell Us More on local NBC affiliate WNBC, when a news bulletin read by announcer Don Pardo interrupted regular programming at approximately 1:45pm ET and announced that President Kennedy had been “cut down by an assassin’s bullet.” However, due to the technical limitations of TV broadcasting at the time, NBC had no tape of either the Pardo bulletin or the opening minutes of its own news coverage. For more than twenty years, those moments were considered lost, until it was discovered circa 1988 that only Phil had the presence of mind to make an audio recording on his own that day while watching television at home. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 627.2: From November 2013: Phil Gries of Archival Television Audio recalls the moment, circa 1988, when he realized that he had something that NBC did not have—the audio of the first four minutes of the network’s national news coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963—and his decision to go public with that discovery, first to NBC News, then to the Library of Congress. Audio highlights this segment include the first news bulletin, read by Don Pardo (then-booth announcer for WNBC, the NBC affiliate in New York) at approximately 1:45pm ET on Nov. 22, 1963, announcing the shooting of President Kennedy. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 627.3: From November 2013: Phil Gries of Archival Television Audio plays audio of the first national news bulletin for NBC News, read by booth announcer Don Pardo at approximately 1:47pm ET on Nov. 22, 1963, announcing that President Kennedy had been “cut down by an assassin’s bullet.” Due to the technical limitations of TV broadcasting at the time, NBC had no tape of this bulletin or the first four minutes of its own news coverage. Those first four minutes were considered lost for more than twenty years, until it was discovered circa 1988 that only Phil had the presence of mind to make an audio recording on his own while watching television at home that day. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 627.4: Ed welcomes back legendary singer, actress, and philanthropist Ruta Lee (High Rollers, Witness for the Prosecution, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Consider Your Ass Kissed). Earlier this year, the former president of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, presented Ruta with Lithuania's highest honor at a magnificent ceremony in the Vilnius Presidential Palace in Lithuania, while the current president of Lithuania, Gitanas Nauseda, presented Ruta with another high honor during a visit to Ruta’s home in Hollywood—a legendary estate that was previously owned by Rita Hayworth and, later, Orson Welles. Both honors were bestowed upon Ruta in recognition for her lifelong advocacy for the advancement of Lithuania and its people. The Thalians, the charitable organization to which Ruta Lee has dedicated much of her life over the past sixty years, will honor actor Gary Sinise with its highest honor, the “Mr. Wonderful” Award (originally designed by Walt Disney) at its annual Winter Gala, which will take place Saturday, Dec. 2 at the Brentwood Country Club in Los Angeles, California. See TheThalians.org here for tickets and more information. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 627.5: Entertainment legend Ruta Lee shares a few memories from her life and career, including the epic story of how she helped her grandmother emigrate from Lithuania in 1963, and how Darren McGavin put down a deposit in Ruta’s name for a home in Palm Springs, early in Ruta’s career. Ruta’s memoir, Consider Your Ass Kissed, not only is the story of how a young girl—the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants—became one of the most legendary entertainers in Hollywood history through hard work and determination, but includes a treasure trove of authentic memories about the Golden Age of Entertainment, including her work opposite such leading men as Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson, James Garner, Fred Astaire, Robin Williams, Howard Keel, Bob Crane, and Frank Sinatra. Consider Your Ass Kissed is available right now at Amazon.com. Autographed editions are available exclusively at LarryEdmunds.com. For more about The Thalians, see Thalians.org Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 627.6: From November 2013: Phil Gries of Archival Television Audio plays excerpts from his May 1998 interview with longtime NBC announcer Don Pardo in which Pardo recalls the chaos that permeated the NBC newsroom on Nov. 22, 1963, in the moments immediately following the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot, and how he was pressed into becoming an interim news anchor, reading AP news bulletins hot off the wire, until the usual network news team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley was in place. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 626.1: Music and television historian Chuck Harter joins Ed for an in-depth look at The Monkees television series (NBC, 1966-1968) and why it still holds up today. Chuck interviewed Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, and many other key Monkees personnel for Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees, the excellent Disney Channel documentary, written by Chuck, that explores the history of The Monkees and the ongoing impact of the Monkees phenomenon. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TVC 626.2: Chuck Harter, music historian and writer of the acclaimed documentary Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees, talks to Ed about the three phases of The Monkees in 1967: television series, recording unit, and live performing ensemble. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices