July 5, 1970-Sept. 23, 1979.
This broadcast featured Edward Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts. This was the first broadcast of the series. A recurring summer series, "Evening at Pops" presents the Boston Pops Orchestra, under the direction of Arthur Fiedler (until his death July 10, 1979).
Debut: A musical salute to America opens a 13-week series of concerts by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.
Announcer for the series is William Pierce.
Evening at Pops was a long-term television series produced by Boston's local PBS-affiliate station, WGBH. It aired from 1970-2005 (reaching much wider PBS audiences than the WGBH area), and was conducted by Arthur Fiedler from 1970-1979. He did one program, a 50th anniversary celebration in April 1979.
Evening At Pops included a wide variety of performances by the Boston Pops Orchestra, usually also featuring special guest performers.
The premiere broadcast had guest Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who read excerpts from the writings of President Lincoln as the orchestra played Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait."
Other selections included waltzes by Richard Rodgers and music from his "Victory at Sea"; John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever"; Morton Gould's "American Salute"; and a medley from Broadway's "Hair."
NOTE: There are 21 duplication Evening of Pops broadcasts listed in the Archival Television Audio library. All were recorded, direct line, at the time of the original broadcast. Most of the entire series (1970-1979) has been preserved as pristine audio air checks (Approximately 115 different broadcasts).
Representing Evening at Pops classic programs there are none extant at The Library of Congress, or UCLA Film & TV Archive. Only four broadcasts representing the entire nine year run of the series are archived at The Paley Center (May 23, 1973, July 14, 1974, August 22, 1976, & June 24 1977).
The Chicago Film Archives has one issue of the series, a black and white 1" reel to reel video tape recording of an off the air 1978 broadcast.
There are no complete broadcasts extant on YouTube with the exception of a May 1972 broadcast, with guest Leroy Anderson (still pictures seen over the audio track), and a poor video 46 minute excerpt of a broadcast with The Carpenters (Aug. 4, 1974).
Evening at Pops has never been released on VHS of DVD to the public. WGBH, the Boston Pops Philharmonic archival library, and PBS's own archives have indicated that they have no copies.
Arthur Fiedler was the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra for 50 years and one of the world's best‐known musical figures. He died July 10, 1979 at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts after a long illness. He was 84 years old.
After the death of Arthur Fiedler, to meet contractual obligations for the 1979 summer series of thirteen Evening At Pops broadcasts, seven re-runs were aired as well four new programs under Harry Ellis Dickson, Evening at Pops assistant conductor for 25 years. Dickson performed four new broadcasts, July 22, August 5th, 19th and September 9th.
One program during this final summer series was pre-empted (Aug. 26th). The last broadcast of this series was a re-run, televised September 23, 1979.
Evening at Pops remains a treasure trove of rich programming that portends to be forever locked away, as it has continued to be, the past forty years, with no potential in sight for its re-release in the future because of many factors, including music copyright issues.