Happy Friday! Sylvester and Tweety are up for an award, Mark-Paul Gosselaar recalls Saved by the Bell, The Early Show is getting a facelift, America’s Most Wanted returns, and some bits of TV history.
Looney Tunes
The new Warner Bros. cartoon that we mentioned yesterday, “I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat,” has made the shortlist for the Oscars’ Best Animated Short Film category. It’ll be competing against nine other animated short films, as well as eligible winners from the Student Academy Awards.
Saved by the Bell
Actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar recently told the ladies on The Talk why he and his fellow castmates stayed humble while shooting the NBC kids sitcom. He said, “When we were filming, we didn’t have Twitter, we didn’t have the paparazzi or the Internet. We had no idea that we were successful. So, we were just doing this little show that got cancelled every single year we did the show. We did six seasons but it was like, ‘Oh, they’re bringing you back because they have nothing on the schedule.’ And we’d do our little show and have fun but that was what kept us so grounded. We were just these six kids. We didn’t have big heads because we didn’t think we were doing anything that people were watching.”
CBS This Morning
After using The Early Show title for more than 10 years, CBS is retiring the name. When their latest incarnation of a morning program debuts on January 9th, it’ll be called CBS This Morning. That was the title that they used from 1987 until 1999, before giving it it’s current title. The new moniker fits well with the name of their long-running weekend program, CBS News Sunday Morning. Charlie Rose, Gayle King, and Erica Hill will co-host CBS This Morning and there won’t be any couches or cooking segments in sight.
America’s Most Wanted
Tonight marks the debut of the venerable catch-a-criminal series on Lifetime. FOX cancelled the series last May and committed to only airing quarterly specials. Lifetime is keeping the show going as a regular weekly program.
Host John Walsh, whose son was murdered 30 years ago, recently spoke out about why he thinks Penn State’s head coach, Joe Paterno, didn’t report football coach Jerry Sandusky’s conduct when he was told about it nine years earlier. Walsh said, “Penn State makes $15 million a year off football. This [scandal] affects donations, recruitment, the football program. If they would have dealt with it in the beginning, he’d be in jail and it would be over with. But it was all about protecting the mighty football program at Penn State. They’re getting what they deserve.”
ON THIS DAY
2007: Kitty and Robert were married on Brothers & Sisters.
2005: FOX pulled Killer Instinct off the air, leaving four episodes on the shelf.
2001: The filmmaking competition, Project Greenlight, debuted.
1988: ESPN aired its 10,000th Sports Center episode.
1969: Jeannie and Major Tony Nelson were married on I Dream of Jeannie.
What do you think? Did you watch Saved by the Bell? Do you think CBS will finally have a winner for their morning program? Will you be watching America’s Most Wanted’s return?
I watched Saved By the Bell, and the kids on the show were sort of my generation. It was everyone’s hidden/forbidden treasure. We all watched. If somebody mentioned something from the show, everyone would chime in. We all knew all the character names (even the early ones before they revamped the show) and everyone knew exactly what was going on from week to week. I love that the actors had no clue that everyone was watching them. I think it helped save them from going down the path of so many young stars (Well, Dustin Diamond wasn’t quite as lucky,… Read more »
Wow, I Dream of Jeanie, talk about a blast from the past. That’s cool about Saved by the Bell… the kids were probably the better for it, that they didn’t get big heads at the time.