The Famous Chicken Plays What's My Line? To Honor The Opening Of Petco Park On TV Time Machine

On April 8, 2004, Petco Park hosted its first regular season major league baseball game (The San Francisco Giants vs. The San Diego Padres).

View a Larger Image

To honor this event, the TV Time MachineTM recreated, to the minutest detail, the classic TV panel game show What's My Line? (Click here to get the .wav audio.) The TV Time Machine (hosted by television historian Jim Benson) is a weekly one-hour radio program, dedicated to exploring the finest programs and celebrities from the Golden and Silver Age of television. Each week, a different classic TV show or topic is highlighted, and celebrity guests featured, supplemented by vintage audio clips and caller questions.

What’s My Line?, aired on the CBS Television Network from 1950-1967, and in syndication from 1967-1975. The roles of panelists Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, Fred Allen, and Bennett Cerf were performed by a group of local actors (Liv Kellgren, Randi Waddell, John Field, Duane Dimock), with TV Time Machine host Jim Benson in the role of John Charles Daly.

View a Larger Image

What’s My Line? was one the longest running game shows in history, eclipsed only by The Price is Right. For twenty-five years, What’s My Line? was a television staple, and part of the fabric of American culture. The show serves as one of the most comprehensive video time capsules the medium has ever produced. The panelists and guests who appeared over that two-decade span, read like a who’s who of Americana. From Willie Mays to Groucho Marx, Frank Lloyd Wright to Raquel Welch, Jimmy Carter to Johnny Carson, Liberace to Lassie, Ronald Reagan to Sugar Ray Robinson, Vidal Sassoon to Frank Zappa, What’s My Line? presented a vast video landscape of American history.

View a Larger Image

In this context, The TV Time Machine (in the guise of What's My Line?) invited San Diego citizens who had a direct or indirect connection to the opening of Petco Park, to appear as contestants in studio on a special edition of the program, one day prior to the opening of the new ballpark.

Contestants included Chef Thomas Beatty (representing The Field Restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter), John Cinonois from San Diego Sheet Metal Works (representing the ballpark construction), and radio host "Coach" John Kentera, representing The Mighty 1090, The San Diego Padres new flagship station.

CONTINUED >