Here’s some of what was doing in show business and the media this week in history…

On January 25 1937, the daytime drama The Guiding Light premiered on NBC radio from Chicago. In 1952, it moved to CBS and television, where it remained until its last episode in September of 2009.

The first Emmy Awards were presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club on January 25 1947.

The same day in 1960, The National Association of Broadcasters reacted to the Payola scandal by imposing fines for any disc jockey who accepted money for record airplay.

January 25 1961: President John F. Kennedy hosts the first live television news conference.

Filming began on producer David O. Selznick’s Gone With the Wind on January 26, 1939. Though the film was set in Civil War-era Georgia, it was shot in Culver City, California.

“To all who come to this happy place, welcome …” Disneyland breaks ground in Anaheim, California on January 26 1954.

CBS premiered The Dukes of Hazzard on January 26 1979. The series was inspired by an obscure 1975 United Artists film called Moonrunners.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway at New York’s Majestic Theatre on January 26, 1988.

Hello, Larry (McLean Stevenson’s third series since leaving M*A*S*H), premiered on NBC on January 26 1979. Creatively weak, the show quickly became a regular punchline in Johnny Carson’s nightly Tonight Show monologue.

On January 27 1940, 20th Century Fox’s production of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath opened in Los Angeles.

NBC chose January 27 1961 as the day to premiere Sing Along with Mitch, wherein amateur singers stepped on stage to sing along with Conductor Mitch Miller and his all-male choral group while the lyrics flashed across the TV screen. This home version of karaoke was sponsored by Ballantine Beer.

January 27 1970: After two years of confusing moviegoers, the Motion Picture Association of America modified its rating system and changed “M” to “PG”.

Opening with a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant, Laverne and Shirley (a spin-off from Happy Days) premieres on ABC on January 27 1976 TV. By its second season it had become the America’s most-watched TV show.

During the January 27 1984 shooting of a TV commercial for Pepsi, a pyrotechnics device explodes early and Michael Jackson’s head catches on fire.

On January 28 1956, Elvis Presley made his national TV debut on CBS on Stage Show. It was he first of six appearances for Elvis on the Jackie Gleason-produced variety series.

Buddy Ebsen became a private detective on January 28 1973 with the CBS premiere of Barnaby Jones. Originally intended as an episode of Cannon, the pilot features that series’ star, William Conrad. Three years later, Jones and Cannon would team up again for the two-part crossover “The Deadly Conspiracy”

On January 28 1975, filmmaker George Lucas completed a second draft of what he had titled Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode One of The Star Wars.

CBS News Sunday Morning premiered on CBS the Sunday Morning of January 28 1979.

For its January 29 1953 premiere, 20th Century Fox’s The Robe was billed as the first movie in Cinemascope. In truth, many theaters were not set up for CinemaScope. Two versions of The Robe were actually shot and edited, one in standard screen and one in widescreen.

Peter Sellers appeared in three different roles when Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opened on January 29 1964.

NBC bought some football on January 29 1964, when it paid $36 million for the TV right to the American Football League for the next five years.

January 29 1986: The nation watches as the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes and breaks apart, live on television. All seven astronauts aboard are killed.

On January 301931, motion picture producer David O. Selznick and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz exchanged in fisticuffs at a Hollywood Biltmore dance.

Radio’s masked rider of the plains, The Lone Ranger, was heard for the first time on January 30 1933. The production team behind the famous radio western would create 2,956 episodes over the next 21 years.

On January 301961, 25-year-old Bobby Darin became the youngest performer to headline a TV special, NBC’s Bobby Darin and Friends.

If you were awake late at night on January 30 1978, you heard the premiere of The Larry King Show on Mutual Broadcasting Network.

On January 30 1995, Kevin Eubanks officially becomes the leader of The Tonight Show band, replacing Branford Marsalis.

January 31 1936: The Green Hornet was first heard on radio via WXYZ in Detroit. The show stayed on the air for 16 years.

Television’s very first soap opera, NBC’s These Are My Children, was broadcast from Chicago on January 31 1949.

Baseball Hall of Fame legend Leo Durocher had himself a great January 31 in 1958. That’s when he debuted as the host of Jackpot Bowling on NBC.

After 35 years with the network, Edwin Newman retired from NBC News on January 31 1984.

The Cure for Insomnia, a film with an 87-hour running time, premiered at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Illinois on January 31 1987.

ABC Sports’ legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell retired on January 31 1992.

January 31 1992: Homicide: Life on the Street debuts on NBC, starting a seven-season run.

BORN THIS WEEK: Newscaster Edwin Newman (NBC News); actor Dean Jones (The Love Bug); actor Gregory Sierra (Barney Miller); director Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist); actress Leigh Taylor-Young (Soylent Green); actress Dinah Manoff (Empty Nest); writer Philip José Farmer (Greatheart Silver); philanthropist and actor Paul Newman (The Verdict); film director Roger Vadim (Barbarella); cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge); film critic Gene Siskel; actor David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck); Playboy Bunny and Playmate Janet Lupo; comedian and TV host Ellen DeGeneres; newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Jr.; Donna Reed (The Donna Reed Show); actress Mimi Rogers (Lost in Space); comic book creator and movie director Frank Miller (Sin City) newscaster Keith Olbermann (Countdown); actress Bridget Fonda (Scandal); comedian and actor Patton Oswalt (The King of Queens); director Ernst Lubitsch (To Be or Not to Be); actor John Banner (Hogan’s Heroes); director Jack Hill (Foxy Brown); actor, writer, director Alan Alda (M*A*S*H); actress and Playboy icon Barbi Benton; Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings); John Forsythe (Dynasty); writer Paddy Chayefsky (Network); actor and producer Tom Selleck (Magnum, PI); talk show host Oprah Winfrey; actress Heather Graham (Boogie Nights); David Wayne (Ellery Queen); actor John Ireland (Farewell, My Lovely); director Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run); Dick Martin (Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In); actor Gene Hackman (The French Connection); actor Christian Bale (The Dark Knight); actor John Agar (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon); writer and journalist Norman Mailer (The Armies of the Night);animation producer Norm Prescott (Fantastic Voyage); actor James Franciscus (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Longstreet); actress Suzanne Pleshette (The Bob Newhart Show); actress Jessica Walter (Arrested Development); actor Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace); actress Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy); actress Portia de Rossi (Ally McBeal); comedian Bobby Moynihan (Saturday Night Live).

DIED THIS WEEK: Al Capone, iconic gangster of fact and fiction (Scarface, Capone, The Untouchables); actress Ava Gardner (On the Beach); author and TV astrologer Jeane Dixon (A Gift of Prophesy); pulp fantasy writer A. E. van Vogt (Slan, Empire of the Atom); Christian Brando, actor and son of Marlon Brando; producer and writer Bill Walsh (Disney’s Flubber series); actor Claude Akins (Battle for the Planet of the Apes); Tonight Show host Jack Paar; actor Tige Andrews (The Mod Squad); actor Hal Smith (Otis the Drunk of The Andy Griffith Show); writer Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman; cartoonist Burne Hogarth (Tarzan of the Apes); journalist H. L. Mencken; actor Alan Ladd (This Gun for Hire); comedian/actor Freddie Prinze (Chico and the Man); actor and comedian Jimmy Durante; actor Leif Erickson (The High Chaparral); Dead End Kid and Bowery Boy Huntz Hall; Tonight Show announcer Ed Herlihy; author A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh); film producer Samuel Goldwyn (The Best Years of Our Lives); comic book artists and writer Gil Kane (Blackmark, His Name is Savage).