The KNBC David Horowitz Incident

FROM THE NOW GONE NBC BURBANK STUDIOS - Say the name David Horowitz to almost anybody who grew up in Southern California and the reply is often, "Oh, remember that when he was held up on Channel 4?"

Here is probably the most infamous, bizarre moment in Los Angeles television history when on 4:42 p.m. on August 20, 1987, a mentally disturbed man walked onto the KNBC-TV news set in Burbank during a live broadcast, held a gun to the back of Fight Back consumer reporter David Horowitz and ordered him to read a rambling statement.


The audio on this is not all that great, but here is a KNBC news report later that day on what happened on their news set.

The gunman was Gary Stollman, who was the son of former KNBC pharmacist reporter Max Stollman. Max Stollman had recently left KNBC some months earlier.

The four-page letter the gunman demanded Mr. Horowitz read began with, "The man who has appeared on KNBC for the last three years is not my biological father. "He is a clone, a double created by the Central Intelligence Agency and alien forces." It was at that point KNBC News Director Tom Capra ordered the station off-the-air.

When KNBC went off-the-air Stollman noticed the brightly colored "One Moment Please" card on one of the television monitors, and the anchors, John Beard and Kirstie Wilde, along with the camera operators and floor director, had to convince Stollman that KNBC was really on-the-air. The deception seemed to work.

During the ordeal it is amazing to watch Mr. Horowitz appear, well, acting completely relaxed and carrying on like a regular interviewer, despite the fact he had a gun to his back.

Looks can always be a bit deceiving as Mr. Horowitz told the Los Angeles Times in 1987, "The guy came up and put a gun in my back [and] my first reaction was, 'I can't believe this is happening.' "His first words to me were, 'Read this or I'll shoot you!' "People later told me how calm I looked, but believe me, I wasn't!"

"I kept thinking of my wife and kids," Mr. Horowitz said to the Times. "I didn't know if the guy was a terrorist or a whacko or somebody trying to get even for something. "My fear was that if any police came into the studio, and there was a marksman there and he fired at this guy, I might be caught in the cross-fire or this guy might pop a shot off and get me through the back of the head or whatever because I was not aware of the fact that this guy had a toy gun."

With a gun pointed to his back Mr. Horowitz told United Press International in 1987, "who the hell was going to rescue me?"

At the end of the saga when it is reveal the weapon was no more than an unloaded pellet gun Mr. Horowitz shrugs his shoulders and gives something that could be best described as a, "you've got to be freaking kidding me!" look as Stollman was thanking him for reading his statement that lasted seven minutes.

Just as Stollman put the toy gun down on the news desk co-anchor Mr. Beard quickly grabbed the fake weapon and Burbank Police rushed onto the set and promptly arrested Stollman.

Mr. Beard later told reporters he had never felt his heart beat as fast as he did that afternoon. Most disturbingly to Mr. Beard was, "if he (Mr. Horowitz) is shot how am I going to explain to people at home what just happened."

On a site called SkepticFiles.org Stollman has a rambling manifesto written in 1991 titled, The Invasion of the Human Race.

There, Stollman says in part,

I never planned out my life to wind up on the set of KNBC in Los Angeles LIVE, standing behind TV consumer advocate David Horowitz holding a toy gun to his head, demanding that he read a statement about how space aliens and the CIA had replaced my father and family with clones. I had only planned on becoming a computer programmer and a good citizen. At least that was before I discovered I had somehow stumbled onto a vast plot to overthrow the human race.

So just how did Stollman get past security? Ms. Wilde, co-anchor with Mr. Beard during the incident, told the Times Mr. Stollman simply exploited his father's former position with KNBC.

Ms. Wilde told the Times, "He scoped the studio out before. "He came last Thursday and called me to get in. "He said he was Max Stollman's son and he lives in the East and he never had the opportunity to see his dad while he was on our air and could he come down and watch. "I felt kind of bad because Max's contract was terminated and he hadn't had a chance to see him, so I said come on down."

The impression left on Mr. Wilde prior to the incident was Stollman, "seemed a little unstable, or maybe not very bright."

Since the incident Stollman has been in and out of mental facilities and continues to post conspiracy thoughts on message boards, as noted above.

After the incident Mr. Horowitz launched a state and later national campaign to outlaw toy guns that look a little too much like the real thing.

Mr. Horowitz remained with KNBC until August 1992 when management declined to renew his contract. Many in the industry believe his 20-plus years at the NBC owned-and-operated station came to a sudden end because funds were needed to pay Paul Moyer's unprecedented $8 million contract. Mr. Moyer had come to KNBC from KABC-TV in August 1992. In August and into fall of 1992, in addition to Mr. Horowitz, a few on-air and many behind the scenes employees were also let go from KNBC.

During his time at KNBC, aside from being a consumer advocate and hosting his famed Fight Back program, Mr. Horowitz was the first television reporter on-the-air following the 1971 Sylmar Earthquake. During that event he was broadcasting sitting on a stool in a darken parking lot. Later joining him during that early morning coverage was fellow KNBC reporter Tom Brokaw.

For a time David Horowitz returned to television in 1994-95 on KCBS-TV, joining Jerry Dunphy and Dr. George Fischbeck.


Today Mr. Horowitz is still fighting back for you by way of FightBack.com. Photograph used under a Creative Commons license.

Timely enough just a short time later on October 1, 1987, KNBC would once again be in the national spotlight for another bizarre on-air incident, and this time with David Letterman making fun of the incident, when Kent Shocknek and Christopher Nance went under the news desk for an extended period of time during an aftershock of the Whittier Narrows Earthquake. Mr. Shocknek, who retired from KCBS/KCAL-TV in 2014, has said many times over there was a genuine threat with heavy studio lights swinging precariously overhead. Nonetheless this incident created an awkward moment and is, much to Mr. Shocknek's dismay, perhaps the second most unusual event in local television that is highly remembered.

(Editor's Note: This story has been updated and reedited, but originally appeared in the now defunct Southern California News Wire in 2010, and it seems parts of this story has been plagiarized in some places around the Internet. So goes life on the Internet.)

Now For Something Different: 1980s T-V-O-D Theme Songs

FROM THE TRANSMITTERS OF MOUNT WILSON -  Growing up in Southern California there is one thing that has seemingly bonded us whether we live in Anaheim, Compton, La Puente, East Los Angeles, Covina or Cudahy, and that is what has been broadcast in the airwaves from the transmitters of Mount Wilson to thousands of homes in Southern California. Local Southern California television is highly unique and very memorable for many of us, but this blurb is not about local television (that will, and MUST, have its own posting soon), but rather national network television of the 1980s.



Like ignoring much of a changing, and sometimes troubling, America in the 1980s network television hardly represented what was happening in diverse places like Southern California.

Television in 1970s America seem to reach a certain level social awareness, most notable with Norman Lear at the helm behind hits like "All in the Family," "Good Times," and "Sanford and Son," among others. The decade had its share of over-the-top, utterly inane programs as television should be an escape from the perhaps nerve-racking way of life, but it seem television in the decade that gave us the resignation of President Richard Nixon and election of Jimmy Carter had something to say. Come the new decade of the 1980s a seemingly cultural shift takes place, Ronald Reagan is elected president ushering in a new era of social conservatism, and this change is strongly reflected on television where programming moves from social awareness and gives way to absurd over-the-top escapism programs like a Texas oilman who is an international spy on the side. Despite their over-the-top appeal more times than not the shows, unlike many of the previous decade, were very decadent and non-offensive. 

All that said, this story is not really meant to be a social-culture study on 1980s television, and, despite that setup above, what follows is really a tongue-and-cheek post about one thing that really mattered in 1980s television, the theme song.

For all their blandness, the 1980s televisions show theme songs left a major impression on American pop culture, and frankly the theme songs were much better than the program itself.

In no particular order here is an assortment are some of the best and worst theme songs from the long gone era known as the 1980s.

Last Season of Happy Days
Okay, we know what you are probably thinking, Happy Days is considered to be more of a 1970s show, despite lasting until the summer of 1984, and surely Happy Days' best days were in the mid-70s, and so it is easy to understand why it is often associated being a "70s show." Come the dawn of the new decade seismic shifts in the Cunningham's world took place when Richie left to join the Army followed by his pal Ralph Mouth. Replacing Richie was some kind of distant family member played unexplainable by a modern 1980s bleached-blond hair Ted McGinley, and the always talked about but never seen Jenny Piccolo finally showed up. From that moment it was tantamount to that moment in your life where something changes and you know things will never be the same again. Indeed things were never the same again, but by their final season when the shark The Fonz jumped over had long died and sank to the bottom of the ocean the show truly reached its nadir by altering its beloved opening theme song.


If there ever was a television show that is the ethos of being a shell of its former self it is Happy Days. Come the final season there was no effort to at least give the show a proper sendoff and maybe try to go back to the program's roots, or at the very least develop a plot explaining why the style and feel of the show changed, and give what few viewers were left some closure.

Diff'rent Strokes
No need to make any improper Gary Coleman jokes, or such jokes concerning to travesties that would befall the cast of Diff'rent Strokes, all there is to say is, how can you not want to sing along with this song.



Like Happy Days the series' last season theme song in 1985-86 changed a bit with added synthesizers along with cast changes, and moved to ABC from NBC, but, unlike Happy Days, the show stayed the course without any major upsets to the series.

Days of our Lives
If you were a kid in this decade of the 1980s home sick, or pretending to be sick, you knew your free rein of watching the morning fare of network game shows and old cartoons on maybe KTLA or KTTV was over when you heard this creepy theme, and suddenly you were not so sick as going outside now seems like a better option. Yes, for you young kids today it is hard to imagine when parents demanded the television your only option until you could get the TV back was playing outside, playing with toys that you have played with several times before, or maybe, listening to records alone in your room.


This opening was used from 1972 until 1993 when McDonald Carey died as Mr. McDonald's family requested the show no longer use his likeness. Did you care to know, the sand falling into the hourglass was just a string.

Hunter and Magnum P.I.
If fast cars, guns drawn, explosions, steamy romances and morally rogue within the law cops sounds like several programs from the 1980s, you would be right. Two of the more successful shows of this genre were Hunter and Magnum P.I., which followed unconventional, but really conventional, cops and their sidekicks around to catch the evil bad guy. (Okay, Magnum P.I. was some kind of private eye and quasi-cop.) Each show followed the trail of the bad guy that always led to explosions, car chases, sometimes preventing a time-bomb from destroying the city, catching "urban" drug dealers, dealing with a steamy romantic interest, who sometimes becomes a hostage, which sometimes caused a dramatic plot twist by revealing she once had a relationship with the bad guy, and all accompanied by humorous jabs towards the partner. Rinse, wash and repeat. The complexity of thwarting some criminal mastermind always took just a hour every week with officers of the law who would never think of colluding with the enemy like Officer Vic Mackey.


The moral goodness of LAPD officer Richard Hunter is a long way from the boys at The Shield.


Oh Tom Selleck, in the 1980s women wanted to be with you and you made men grow mustaches to assert their masculinity.

Silver Spoons
So the premise of Silver Spoons was Ricky Stratton, who's mother threw him into a military boarding school after she remarried thinking her son would interfere with her new life, somehow manages to track down his father he never met, and as luck would have it his dad is not only super wealthy, but basically the CEO of his own toy company. It gets better, the father's home, aside from being an sprawling mansion, is filled with toys. With all that there is one question, or plot hole, many have wondered, where in the hell did that train go to when it left the house?


It could be argued Silver Spoons was a good refection of the Reagan era showing excessive wealth and creating a desire for audiences to dream and just maybe obtain such wealth.

Punky Brewster
In many "remember these theme song" stories Punky Brewster often seems to be left out, much like Punky's mother did to her and her dog Brandon. It is true, in the plot for some reason Punky's mother just utterly abandoned her and Brandon at a supermarket one day and this old unmarried man named Henry who she never met, who also happens to owns a photography shop, picks her up and they live together. Yes, read the plot synopsis again, because it does sound a bit creepy and something that would be in one of those Lifetime channel movie reenactments.


It is a very endearing theme song accompanied by Punky dressed in very bright, totally gnarly clothes. It would seem Henry did not mind so much shopping inside the woman's section at Chess King for his adoptive daughter.

It's Garry Shandling's Show
Finally, there was one show that broke through the absurdity of the era with witty comedy, but more times than not the show itself is often overlooked for the show's very catchy theme song, and it is easy to understand.


Just like the show the theme to It's Garry Shandling's Show was ridiculous, but cleaver. The show truly pointed out the absurdity of television comedies during this era.

While we look back at plenty of television shows from the 1980s with campy eyes one must remember that was pretty much want you had to choose from. Yes, there was bit of a broad brush painted here as there were a handful of interesting shows in this era, and if you were lucky you had HBO or some other cable channel, like the Z Channel, showing unique fare uncommon for its time, but there were a lot of places in Southern California that well into 1990s were still not wired for cable. Whatever thought-provoking, compelling unique television did exist in this time most shows were often, if not quickly, met with a cancellation notice. There were no internet forms or YouTube to find the series and create a new fanbase in hopes of having the show reinstated, or at the very least have a web revival. This was the era of "the big three" and those suits in New York who decided what America was going to watch.

Today, despite the nonstop glut of so-called reality shows there is much better television than in the 1980s. Hard to believe? Well, just compare some of the best scripted shows on television today to that of the 1980s. Of course the trade off is we no longer have many of the catchy themes today as we did back then, and we have to wade through more moronic television to find the good stuff, and that is too bad.

The past is always fun to visit, but trust us when we say you never want to live there.

Confessions: Secrets of The Local Newsroom

LOS ANGELES - So you are watching the news, or maybe have it on as background noise, and suddenly you hear that jarring end of the World breaking news jingle and a for a few seconds your full attention is to the television, or radio. Other times, and less dramatically, you will hear the anchor say, "This just coming into the newsroom." Well, have you ever wondered just how Southern California newsrooms hear and learn about most of the news that they report to you?

Whether you watch channel 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 22, 34, 52 or 62, listen to 1070 AM or 89.3 FM, or read certain articles in local newspapers, here is a secret as to where local Southern California newsrooms obtains most of its news leads.

While our local news organizations have a lot of original reporting what a lot of readers and viewers probably do not know is our newsrooms receive most of their news leads from two sources, City News Service and Metro Networks.

City News Service is the better known of the two and in local media circles is known as CNS (this CNS is not to be confused with a separate website called CNSNews as the two are not related).

Here is how most local news gets to the newsroom. It starts with CNS sending out what amounts these days to be a glorified instant message to the newsroom that, for example, a fire is burning a commercial building at 3333 Magnolia Avenue in Burbank, or a major court verdict is about to be announced, or a bomb threat has been reported at L.A. City Hall.

A lot of times breaking news or developing news comes into CNS by scanner, and often when they send the first report to the newsroom it is accompanied by the words atop of the report, "NOT FOR PUBLICATION, BROADCAST OR DISTRIBUTION."

Often these are the first scanner reports CNS passes to the newsroom. At that point what is suppose to happen despite CNS' bold statement not to broadcast it, provided the newsroom has not been gutted in the name of budget cuts, is the person at the news desk, which could be the producer or editor (sometimes even the intern), calls the proper agency, like Los Angeles Police for example, and confirm the report, and if it is confirmed to try to get some more information, and sometimes, depending on the media outlet, get the official on-the-air right away. Ideally CNS is suppose to quickly send a follow-up either confirming the incident is true with more information, and that it is allowed for distribution, or that it is nothing, and maybe even a false call.

Of course if you are an on the ball producer/editor, or an intern showing great initiative, you call the LAPD Watch Commander thinking you have a great lead for the 4 o'clock news and urgently inquire about the information CNS just sent only to be told by the LAPD Watch Commander that they have no idea what you are talking about. You read verbatim to the officer what CNS sent you, and you hear the Watch Commander clicking through the computer, and still the Watch Commander has no idea what you are going on about. You say, "Thank you" to the Watch Commander, and hang up. You feel annoyed, but in keeping your cool you telephone CNS and let them know nothing is up. Then amid the normal chaos in the newsroom you discover CNS sends out a correction that made you look foolish with the LAPD Watch Commander, and you note it only took CNS a hour to send the correction.

This is one way developing and breaking news is sent to the newsroom. Other times throughout the day CNS will send information that other local news organizations are reporting.

Aside from breaking news events there are planned events throughout the week in Southern California that are often covered by local media.

Ever wonder how local newsrooms know when certain events are happening, like what day somebody will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, or what day the LAPD will honor certain officers, or when Metrolink holds a rail safety campaign, or when a high school holds a special event? Well, CNS sends what is called "The Budget" to the newsrooms. Despite the name "The Budget" has absolutely nothing to do with money, but its an old newspaper saying as "budget" means the budgeting or allocation of space in a newspaper. The CNS budget gives leads to local newsrooms, and in these budget leads are contact numbers for the reporter or producer.

For example, here is a typical CNS budget (The following events, names and telephone numbers in this example are completely fictitious):

ORANGE COUNTY BUDGET FOR TUESDAY, APRIL 12
By City News Service

8:30 a.m. ANAHEIM - Anaheim High School students to be honored by Anaheim Police, and the state's department of education. 123 w. Lincoln Ave. Contact: Jim Jimbo, Anaheim High School Affairs Program, (714) 555-5555; Bob Smith, Anaheim PD PIO, (714) 555-5555.

9 a.m. FULLERTON - Jury verdict is expected in the trial of Bobby Robert, who is accused of fatally shooting a man during a birthday party in Anaheim. Dept. C34, Central Justice Center, 700 W. Civic Center Drive. Contact: (714) 555-5555.

In addition to providing breaking news and leads CNS provides full stories much like the Associated Press and Reuters. Some newspapers and broadcast news websites put the full CNS story on their website with full credit to the wire service. Other times certain media outlets take some liberties with the full CNS story adding or deleting paragraphs and giving no credit to CNS.


Old AP teletype machine; date unknown. Along with AP and Reuters before they moved to computers to send news CNS also used the teletype machine. Shown for historic and educational purposes; no copyright infringement intended.

Now CNS is nothing new as it has been apart of the local newsroom landscape for many decades, and CNS for a very long time was the equivalent of Twitter news feeds for many newsrooms.

Many Twitter feeds of police, fire departments and other officials, along with reader's and viewer's Twitter feeds, in addition to local blogs and micro-local blogs, have made news gathering maybe a little less reliant on CNS. However CNS is still, and will be for sometime, the dominate local news wire and news sharing service. 

On that note, CNS has been sharing and reporting news reported on certain blogs in recent times.

A service like CNS is nothing unique to Southern California as other major markets, like New York and San Francisco, have similar news sharing services like CNS. 

Now you know a little bit how news gets to the newsroom.