what is the exact date of 25th anniv?

Can someone tell me the exact date of the 25th anniversary?

thanks

No one can say the exact date of the anniversary, because The Muppet Show was syndicated to different stations across the country -- which means that they could air it any time during the week that they wanted.

The first Muppet Show was made available the first full week of October 1976, from what I've heard. It would have been available Mon., Oct. 4. However, many stations aired it on Saturdays, so in a lot of the areas the first episode would have aired on Oct. 9, 1976 -- which is ultra-cool, because I was turning 2 years old that very day.

Technically speaking, the 25th anniversary should have been in 2001. But the Henson company wasn't able to get everything moving quickly enough for that, so they made it the INAGURAL year extending into the next (2001-02). It basically started with MF in Dec. 2001 and ended with the NBC movie in Nov. 2002.

Hope that helped.

Whoops

The MC episode guide says that the Jim Nabors episode (which introduced Scooter) aired September 27, 1976 (New York) and October 2, 1976 (LA). That was a little earlier than I had previously heard.

Did it air in the USA before the UK then ? I thought being as they shot it here, it might have been shown first.

It's possible, but you'd know more info about that then I would, Luke. ;-) Jim and his original team were American (till the Elstree studio opened, anyway), but the financier Lord Grade was British. So I'm not sure who the primary audience was originally expected to be. Obviously, its reach became global.

It was shwon first in the UK, but I didn't think it came here until 1977. I'm probably wrong. But, I know it was in the UK first. If not only a couple months ahead of the US.

Heck i would have no idea - i wasn't even born. I guess if it was aired first in the UK then the anniversary would be the date it first aired here so maybe we can pin it down a bit more. At times like these Michael would usually jump in and i could relax and talk about Penguins.

Maybe Kermitage will eventually straighten all this out for us. We definitely need more time for penguin talk. ;-)

Here's one thing maybe you can answer: when do they start showing new shows in the UK? In the US we have TV "seasons" that run between September thru May, so new programming wouldn't air before that here. (That's not counting the recent success of cable shows in the summer or network stunt programming during that time.) But TMS started filming (regularly) in May 1976, so they could have started airing in probably July or so over there. The question is, how likely is that?

Super Scooter: I checked the episode guide on this website, and the show did air here in the fall of 1976, at least. I think what's confusing you is that, since the episodes were aired out of order, Juliet Prowse (the first episode filmed) wasn't aired till April 1977.

BTW, on a completely unrelated note: have I told you how much I like your sig? Very cool.