TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

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 h...

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 Cow...

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...

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...

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-present...

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 La...

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 G...

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...

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 firs...

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 pr...

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...

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 n...

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...

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 progra...

TVC 626.3: Ed welcomes Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author; creator of the Harry Bosch, Renee Ballard, and Lincoln Lawyer novel series; and the executive producer of both Bosch and Bosch: Legacy , the two Amazon Prime series starring Titus Welliver that are based on the Harry Bosch novels, and The Lincoln Lawyer , the Netflix series starring Manual Garcia-Rulfo as Mickey Haller, th...

TVC 626.4: Michael Connelly, creator of the Harry Bosch, Renee Ballard, and Lincoln Lawyer novel series, talks to Ed about collaborating with David E. Kelley on the Netflix series adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer ; how Harry Bosch, the book character, differs from the character that Titus Welliver plays on Bosch and Bosch: Legacy ; and why the Musso and Frank Grill is one of his favorite restauran...

TVC 626.5: Part 2 of a conversation that began last week with Jon Burlingame, nationally renowned music journalist and the author of Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television and Scoring that not tells the back story of every great TV theme music or TV theme song, but gives readers a portraits of the many great composers who made those themes so memorable, including John Williams, Ben...

TVC 626.6: Jon Burlingame, author of Music for Prime Time , talks to Ed about the three eras of music for television, and how the role of music supervisors on a television series has become particularly important today, when many shows use pre-existing songs to convey the theme and mood of a series. Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring is available in bookstore...

TVC 625.1: Part 2 of a conversation that began on our last program with actor, author, and comedian Nick Santa Maria ( The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster ). Nick's new book, The Annotated Abbott and Costello: A Complete Viewer's Guide to the Comedy Team and Their 38 Films (a collaboration with Matthew Coniam), not only provides a film by film, scene by scene look at all thirty-eight movies s...

TVC 625.2: Nick Santa Maria, co-author of The Annotated Abbott and Costello: A Complete Viewer's Guide to the Comedy Team and Their 38 Films , talks to Greg and Ed about the many famous character actors who co-starred with Abbott and Costello in the movies and on television, including Shemp Howard, Errol Flynn, Martha Raye, Dick Powell, Charles Lane, Joey Faye, and Gale Gordon. Available from McFa...

TVC 625.2b: Nick Santa Maria, co-author of The Annotated Abbott and Costello: A Complete Viewer's Guide to the Comedy Team and Their 38 Films , talks to Greg and Ed about the "Ultimate Abbott and Costello Top Ten," one of the extra features of The Annotated Abbott and Costello , and a scientifically put-together Top Ten that includes input from such luminaries as Leonard Maltin, Joe Dante, John La...

TVC 625.3: Ed welcomes singer and dancer Shelly Clark , one of the founding members of Honey Cone , the legendary R&B and soul girl group from the late 1960s and early 1970s that was also the premier female group for Hot Wax Records, the label operated by the famed writing team Holland-Dozier-Holland. Honey Cone was also the very first act to appear on the debut episode of Soul Train in 1971, perf...

TVC 625.5: Ed welcomes back Jon Burlingame, longtime music journalist and our nation's leading writer on the subject of music for films and television. Jon's latest book, Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television and Scoring , not only includes more than 450 interviews with composers, orchestrators, producers, editors, and musicians who are or who were active in the field of music for...

TVC 625.4: Shelly Clark , one of the founding members of the legendary R&B and soul girl group Honey Cone , talks to Ed about how the empowering lyrics of Honey Cone's songs help usher in a new mindset for female groups and solo female artists. She also shares a few memories of performing as an Ikette with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue in the 1960s, including how she bonded with Tina Turner immediat...

TVC 625.6: Jon Burlingame, author of Music for Prime Time , talks to Ed about the television work of renowned composers Jerry Goldsmith ( Barnaby Jones, Police Story, The Loner ) and Patrick Williams ( The Streets of San Francisco, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Lou Grant, The Magician ). Topics this segment include why Goldsmith was reluctant to score the pilot for Barnaby Jones...