The National Association of Broadcasters will induct comedy-variety show
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In into its Hall of Fame April 8 in Las
Vegas.
Laugh-In aired on NBC from 1968 through 1973 and starred comedy team Dan
Rowan, Dick Martin and a regular cast of sketch comedians including Lily Tomlin,
Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson and Henry Gibson.
The show introduced a number of phrases into the popular vocabulary of the
day, including 'Sock it to me' (famously uttered by, among others,
then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon) and 'Look that up in your Funk and
Wagnalls.'
Its sketch-comedy format was rooted in the variety shows of its day, and its
jokes were often more Fanny Brice than Lenny Bruce, but its new take on old
vaudeville had a counterculture hipness that prefigured shows like Saturday
Night Live and SCTV.
Past program Hall of Fame inductees include SNL, Star Trek,
M*A*S*H and The Honeymooners.
Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
