TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime, please enjoy this Blast from the Past, featuring an excerpt from our August 2020 tribute to Regis Philbin in which our colleague Greg Ehrbar shares some memories of working with Regis, Joan Lunden, and Mayim Bialik behind the scenes of the annual Disney Christmas Parade telecasts from the early 1990s.

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime, please enjoy this Blast from the Past clip from December 2013 in which Tony, Donna, and Ed discuss "The Big Little Jesus," the second of two Christmas episodes that Jack Webb produced for Dragnet, which aired on Dec. 24, 1953, both on television as well as for the radio version of Dragnet.

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime, please enjoy this Blast from the Past clip from October 2020 in which Ed, Tony, and Donna ask eight-time Emmy Award winner Ed Asner how he approached playing both Santa Claus and God.

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime, please enjoy this Blast from the Past clip from December 2010 in which Tony, Donna, and Ed remember the premiere of the Rankin-Bass animated special Frosty the Snowman (CBS, 1969).

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime, please enjoy this Blast from the Past clip from December 2018 in which Greg Ehrbar and Ed discuss the then-new DVD release of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town; how the various mythologies that screenwriter Romeo Muller created specifically for Santa Claus is Comin' to Town has since become part of the lore of Santa; and why the casting of Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire and Keenan Wynn were all inspired choices.

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime, please enjoy this Blast from the Past clip from December 2013 in which Tony, Donna, and Ed discuss "The Big .22 Rifle for Christmas," an episode of Dragnet that originally aired on Dec. 18, 1952. An adaptation of an episode of the Dragnet radio series that originally aired in December 1949, this was the first of two Christmas episodes that Jack Webb produced for the original Dragnet TV series.

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime (and in light of Dick Van Dyke's 99th birthday last week), please enjoy this Blast from the Past featuring an excerpt from our September 2016 conversation with Vince Waldron, author of The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book. In this segment Vince talks about why Reiner and Sheldon Leonard cast Dick Van Dyke because he embodied all three aspects of the Rob Petrie character: the introverted writer, the devoted husband and caring father, and the ability to break out and perform sketches when needed.

TVC 670.1: Ed welcomes Nick Nugent, author of The Knight Rider Companion: Abridged Edition, everything you wanted to know about the classic TV series starring David Hasselhoff, Edward Mulhare, and the voice of William Daniels. Topics this segment include how series creator Glen Larson's original concept for Knight Rider was much different from what we eventually saw portrayed in the NBC series; why Knight Rider was essentially about a show about a character—a character that just happened to be a car; and why the original mythology of Knight Rider continues to resonate with millions of fans today.The Knight Rider Companion Abridged Edition is available from Black Pawn Press and includes new and updated interviews with series creator Glen Larson, series stars David Hasselhoff, William Daniels, and Rebecca Holden, and many other key personnel; an updated Hall of Fame Autograph Guide, Vehicle States Guide, Knight Rider Fonts Guide, Knight Rider Logos Guide, Knight Equipment Guide, and a complete series episode guide; several pages of one-of-a-kind artwork created exclusively for the abridged edition.

TVC 670.2: Ed welcomes back film and television historian Steve Randisi (The Merv Griffin Show: The Inside Story, Behind the Crimson Cape: The Cinema of George Reeves). Steve's latest book, Penny Singleton: A Biography, chronicles the life and career of the actress who not only achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s and '40s at the star of the Blondie movie series from Columbia Pictures (and, later, to TV audiences as the voice of Jane Jetson on the original Jetsons TV series and, later, the Jetsons movie), who but who made history in 1958 when she became the first female president of an AFL-CIO union, the American Guild of Variety Artists. Topics this segment includes how much of Singleton's personal history as an entertainer coincides with the history of show business at large in the 20th century. Penny Singleton: A Biography is available from Bear Manor Media.

TVC 670.3: Steve Randisi, author of Penny Singleton: A Biography, talks to Ed how about Singleton came to adopt her screen name; why Singleton had a lot of the Blondie character as a person; and why the Blondie movies continue to endure after ninety years. Penny Singleton: A Biography is available from Bear Manor Media.