News

Actor Joseph Campanella died on Wednesday, May 16. He was 93.

Campanella, who received a Tony Award nomination in 1962 for best supporting actor for his performance in "A Gift of Time" along with Emmy nominations for Days of our Lives and Mannix, died of natural causes, his daughter-in-law, Sandy Campanella, said.

Campanella received his first Emmy Award nomination for playing private eye Joe Mannix's boss on the first season of the 1967-75 CBS series Mannix. His character's name, Lew Wickersham, was a sly reference to then-McA head Lew Wasserman and Lankershim Boulevard, an entryway to Universal Studios.

However, Intertect, the heartless crime-fighting corporation that Wickersham headed, was written out after the first season as Mannix (Mike Connors) went out on his own, and Campanella's contract was not renewed.

The actor also appeared in the recurring role of Ed Cooper, the ex-husband and father on CBS' One Day at a Time,...

May 5, 2016 Nicolas Noxon, 1936-2016

The Ida mourns the passing of beloved former board member Nicolas Noxon, one of our original founding members, as well as an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker who wrote, directed and produced more than 40 National Geographic specials.

Noxon won the Ida's Strand Program Award in both 1998 and 1999, for his work on America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Goodbye and The Dragons of Galapagos.

Read more...

Bill Corbett of RiffTrax would like you to know that he and his colleagues do not dislike nature. Even if the RiffTrax crew will be bringing their hilarious commentary to a handful of National Geographic specials on Tuesday (April 1), it all comes from a place of love.

And let's face it -- some parts of nature are as weird as any of the bad movies usually spoofed by RiffTrax and by "Mystery Science Theater 3000" before it.

Zap2it spoke to Corbett about this new RiffTrax project, "Total Riff Off," and it's definitely something you do not want to miss.

Zap2i: How did this partnership with National Geographic happen, and what are you planning to do to them?

Bill Corbett: We're taking some of the programming that they already had. We left that sort of up to them -- they gave us a bunch of stuff that we could choose from.

Alec Baldwin expressed his displeasure and disappointment with reports that the National Security Agency has been collecting data on American citizens by monitoring phone records of millions of Verizon customers. “I think that the post-9/11 world is one in which people tell themselves that they’d rather be safe than sorry,” Baldwin told Buzzfeed at a New York press event promoting his new block of National Geographic specials. “And although I have an understanding of that and an appreciation of it, I do think that the democracy that we believe in and tell ourselves that we believe in, to preserve it,...

David L. Wolper, the groundbreaking producer who made television history with the miniseries "Roots" as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics, died at his home in Beverly Hills on Tuesday of congestive heart disease and complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 82.

Wolper won two Emmy Awards for 1977’s "Roots" and its 1979 "Roots: The Next Generations," the two miniseries based on Alex Haley’s novel about his African-American ancestors pioneered the docudrama genre. Broadcast in one-and-two hour segments over an eight-day period in early 1977, the first series won huge ratings, despite initial reservations that its focus on the history of African-Americans would not have wide appeal. It won a 44.9 Nielsen rating and garnered a 66% share of the national audience, becoming one of the most-watched programs in TV history.

Although he primarily turned out documentaries for TV and films, Wolper also produced several theatrical movies, including 1971's...

Give thanks. Because this isn't one of those Thanksgiving lists of things for which we should be grateful -- although health, family, friends, laughter, etc., would certainly all be on mine. And Jane Goodall. Yes, that Jane Goodall, the woman we all grew up with watching those National Geographic specials on TV as she communed with the chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe National Park in East Africa. Everyone I know seems especially to remember those scenes of chimps ingeniously utilizing straw and blades of grass to poke around in mounds hunting for termites, proof that they know how to make and use tools. I still have trouble opening a can of tuna. Goodall was interviewed by my colleague Bill Moyers for this week's edition of "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS. She began her work in Africa in 1960 at the age of 26, spurred...