NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration
On the evening of May 12th, 1986, NBC broadcasted a 3-hour "60th Anniversary Celebration" The executive producer was Alexander Cohen and the writer and co-producer was Hildy Parks. The same team assembled such famous-faces TV specials as Night of 100 Stars. The 1979 NBC Logo "The Proud N" was still used throughout this special, up until the very end.
Summary
The opening scene was staged in the corridors of corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where many NBC stars like Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Barbara Eden, Doris Roberts and two kids from The Cosby Show arrive on the eighth floor via an elevator. They enter just in time to witness a perky musical number featuring "peacock" dancers and NBC tour guides all singing and dancing an opening theme titled Hey Did You Know? within the lobbies of the building. The program quickly gets to a parade of stars in which, as an unseen announcer bellows out their individual names, formally dressed performers appear from behind a curtain, smilingly walk toward the television camera, and disappear to a warm ovation of what has to be canned applause (although, perhaps for contractual reasons, Johnny Carson seems to get more whistles than anybody else). The roster proceeds, alphabetically, from Steve Allen and Harry Anderson to Jane Wyatt and Robert Young. Heading the list of the significantly absent is the always judicious Bill Cosby, whose then-current show has been the main reason that NBC has that season become the top-rated network for the first time in its history.
The rest, for the most part, consists of clips from shows down through the years, loosely arranged around categories and themes. A rambling plot features two of the youngsters from The Cosby Show, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Keshia Knight Pulliam, being given a tour of NBC's facilities in New York and in Burbank, Calif. Much hinges on the question of whether little Keshia will ever get to see Johnny Carson in person. In this sea of faces captured in tight closeups, some unusual points of interest do bob to the surface every once in a while. There is Steve Allen, for instance, on the very first broadcast of the Tonight show in 1954, telling the audience what the format was supposed to be. It's not a Spectacular, he said, it's going to be a kind of a Monotonous. Later, the new host named Jack Paar would explain that it's a telethon, but I can't figure out who it's for. Both comments could apply just as nicely to this Anniversary Celebration.
The entire special itself pays tribute to each and every one of NBC television themes from late-night to daytime programming, radio days, early entertainment, comedy, drama, sitcoms, specials, movies, sports, and news, just to name a few. In the end, Knight and Pullium meet up with Johnny Carson himself on a stage full of NBC's guest stars singing a closing version of the opening theme, Hey Did You Know? As the camera pans outward to reveal all the stars on screen, a new version of the NBC peacock logo is unvailed, this time with six feathers. This marks the debut of the now "current" NBC logo we're all familiar with today.