A few notes to begin:
- I'm a history teacher in training, so if I slip into lecture mode, please pardon me. It's just how my brain works.
- I can only review what I have. That collection will change over time as I add, so in some cases, I will be backtracking. I will always note dates and times in the minutia of each show.
- Here's the rub of my little project - each show will be done one episode at a time, since, especially in this period, the quality will vary greatly. I'll always note in what collection the episodes may be found for buyer discretion.
- As to what will be covered, it's pretty simple - if you can get it on DVD and it was broadcast on any of the four networks at any point between (currently) January 1st, 1948 and the present, it's eligible for coverage.
- Most importantly, if I have missed something, please feel free to say something. I'm smart, but not perfect. And besides, this is kind of intended to be a Stone Soup project, working best when people contribute.
I think that covers the plan well enough. But before we get into the shows, we begin with context.
If television has a popular and practical birth date, I'd pick the year 1946 as a starting mark. By this year, NBC and CBS did have a presence in broadcasting, although no fixed schedule, the focus still being on radio at the time. Keep in mind, roughly 7,000 set existed in the country versus a population of around 141, 388, 566 in the United States. The third network, ABC, was born when the FCC directed NBC to sell off one of it's two flagship networks, the Red network and the Blue network. Blue ended up becoming ABC while Red became NBC as we know it today.
Also in 1946 was the debut of the televised sporting event, a boxing match between Joe Lewis and Billy Conn with an estimated audience of 150,000 tuning in. Incidentally, boxing would be a television staple throughout the next decade on a weekly basis.
In 1947, two television staples would make their debuts. First being the NBC program Meet the Press, intended as a political round table. It continues to this day, the longest continuously running program on network television (take that, Vince). The other was a break though in children's programming as well as making the audience at home interact with what they saw on television for the first time. This show, of course, was the Howdy Doody Show, introducing legions of baby boomers to Buffalo Bill and Clarabelle the Clown. We'll get more into Howdy Doody a little later on.
1948 marked a sea change for television. Firstly was the advertising boom as sponsorship for television programming increased 515% over the year before. Second was the increase in number of television stations across the country. Three years before, in 1945, there were only 9 with 3 in New York City, two in Chicago, two in Los Angeles, one in Philadelphia and one in Schenectady, New York (I don't know why). By the end of 1948, 108 more had joined the core nine with hundreds more waiting to have their licenses processed.
Also in a sign that television was arriving was the number of radio shows that were now beginning to be broadcast on television. The microphones were not being abandoned just yet, but the new media was being explored as a possibility to continue to grow the audience. Stars like Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen and Milton Berle were all starting their sub-careers before the TV cameras while radio anthology shows like Suspense and Studio One were also beginning runs on the networks.
Which brings us (at last, no doubt), to our first show on DVD, which I will give an independent blog post momentarily.
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