Trivia / Entertainment Tonight

• Adored by the Network: Not only did John Goldhammer, who was Paramount Television's vice president for programming and production, green light ET, he also stepped in as the show's producer when the original producer, Andy Friendly, resigned.
• Executive Meddling: A rare positive example done in support of the creator's original vision. Originally, executives at Taft Broadcasting and Cox Enterprises, two television station groups whom, along with TeleRep, an advertising firm founded by Al Masini, originally co-produced ET alongside Paramount Television, had forced Masini into making the show more sensationalistic, as sort of a televised version of various tabloids. Thankfully, however, the Paramount executives countermeddled, and Masini's original vision of ET being a hip, fun, but serious news show ended up being used instead.^note  Ironically, both media companies were both founded by politicians who presumably preferred legitimate journalism to sensationalistic journalism. Cox's founder, James M. Cox, had previously served as representative for Ohio's 3rd district in the House of Representatives from 1909 to 1913 and governor of Ohio from 1913-1915 and from 1917-1921; and also served as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1920, while Taft's founder, Charles Phelps Taft, served as representative for Ohio's 1st district in the House of Representatives from 1895 to 1897 and was a half-brother of William Howard Taft.
• He Also Did: Long before being selected as co-anchor of Entertainment Tonight, Bob Goen previously hosted Blackout. Amusingly, the show was co-produced by Taft Broadcasting, which, as mentioned above in Executive Meddling, was also co-producing Entertainment Tonight at this time. He also served as host of Wheel of Fortune during its final years as a network daytime game show.
• Missing Episode: Going by the amount of "lost footage" ET has found over the years to hype in episodes, their archivist has no sense of how to organize the show's deep film library.
• Outlived Its Creator: The show has continued to run long after Al Masini's death in 2010 from melanoma.