This Was Television On November 22
2005: Koppel signs off
After 42 years with ABC news, Ted Koppel anchored his final edition of Nightline. The late night newsmagazine sprung from the network’s coverage of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and endured in a time slot which increasingly became the province of comic talk shows. Much credit for that resilience goes to Koppel, Nightline‘s chief anchor for a quarter century and one of the most respected TV journalists of his era. -A.D.
Also on November 22
1968: The Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” features a kiss between William Shatner’s Capt. James T. Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’s Lt. Uhura, frequently credited as the first interracial kiss in a scripted program.
Today’s Birthdays: Jamie Lee Curtis, magazine columnist (54); Rodney Dangerfield, comic (d. 2004); Terry Gilliam, Python (72); Richard Kind, wacky coworker (56); Steven Van Zandt, mobster (62); Robert Vaughn, spy (80); Michael Kenneth Williams, man with a code (46).
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