Entry Category: Broadcasting - Starting with J

Joan of Arkansas was a 1958 unsold television pilot about a woman from Hot Springs (Garland County) who is selected by a government computer to be the first person on the moon. The pilot, written and directed by Philip Rapp, is the last filmed appearance of Josephine “Joan” Davis, a comedic actress who starred in a number of radio, film, and television projects in her life, most notably the television series I Married Joan. The episode opens with Dr. John Dolan (John Emery), Professor Henry Newkirk (Ben Wright), and Dr. Curtis Short (Wilton Graff) in an “impregnable vault” in Washington DC that houses Cerebright, a “top secret electronic brain” that is about to offer a “hope for peace” in the …

Billy Farrel Johnson of Conway (Faulkner County) is a well-known banker, broadcaster, and civic leader in Faulkner County. He has served as president of three financial institutions, broadcast athletic events on the radio since 1961, served as a justice of the peace, and sat on numerous local and state boards. Johnson is also a development associate for the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) athletic department and raises money for the Purple Circle Club, the primary source of outside funding for UCA athletics. Bill F. Johnson was born on May 15, 1939, in Conway, one of two children of Hulon Johnson and Norma Warbritton Johnson. Johnson attended Conway public schools from elementary through high school and graduated in 1957. He then …

Kenneth (Kenny) Culver Johnson Jr. is a television writer, producer, and director. He is the creator of numerous Emmy-winning projects including The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, the original miniseries V, and Alien Nation. Kenny Johnson was born on October 26, 1942, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to Kenneth Culver Johnson Sr. and Helene Maye Brown Johnson. His father was an electrical engineer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who helped build the Pine Bluff Arsenal. Johnson and his family left Pine Bluff after his father was transferred to the Pentagon near the end of World War II, and he was raised in Washington DC. His parents divorced in 1946, and his father moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County). …