Mama
Mama is a weekly Maxwell House and Post-sponsored CBS television comedy-drama series that ran from July 1st, 1949 until March 17th, 1957. It is based on the memoir Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes, which was also adapted for the 1944 John Van Druten play and the subsequent 1948 film I Remember Mama, and told […]
Stop the Music
Stop the Music was a prime time television game show that aired for an hour on Thursday evenings on ABC from May 5th, 1949 to April 24th, 1952, and again for a half-hour from September 7th, 1954 to June 14th, 1956. The show had also been broadcast on radio from 1948 to 1949. http://archive.org/download/stopTheMusic-Misc1955Episode/StopTheMusic1955.mp4 The program aired at 9 pm ET on Thursdays for […]
Jane Wyman’s Fireside Theater
Fireside Theater is an American anthology drama series that ran on NBC from 1949 to 1958, and was the first successful filmed series on American television. Stories were low budget and often based on public domain stories or written by freelance writers such as Rod Serling. While it was panned by critics, it remained in the top ten most popular shows for most of its run. It […]
Camel News Caravan
The Camel News Caravan was a 15-minute American television news program aired by NBC News from February 14th, 1949, to October 26th, 1956. Sponsored by the Camel cigarette brand and anchored by John Cameron Swayze, it was the first NBC news program to use NBC filmed news stories rather than movie newsreels. On February 16, 1954, the Camel News Caravan became the first news program broadcast in color, making use of 16mm color film.In early […]
Arthur Godfrey and His Friends
Arthur Godfrey and His Friends is an American television variety show hosted by Arthur Godfrey. The hour-long series aired on CBS Television from January 1949 to June 1957 (as The Arthur Godfrey Show after September 1956), then again as a half-hour show from September 1958 to April 1959. Many of Godfrey’s musical acts were culled from Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, which was airing on […]
Kukla, Fran, and Ollie
Kukla, Fran and Ollie is an early American television show using puppets, originally created for children but soon watched by more adults than children. It did not have a script and was entirely ad-libbed. It first aired from 1947 to 1957. Burr Tillstrom was the creator and only puppeteer on the show, which premiered as […]
The Jack Benny Program
The Jack Benny Program, starring Jack Benny, is a radio-TV comedy series that ran for more than three decades and is generally regarded as a high-water mark in 20th-century American comedy. Jack Benny made his TV debut in the 1949 season. There is a kinescope of his later November 1949 TV appearance on the intermittent Jack Benny Program special […]
The Perry Como Show
Perry Como made the move to television when NBC initially televised the Chesterfield Supper Club radio program on December 24th, 1948. A very special guest on that first television show was Como’s eight-year-old son, Ronnie, as part of a boys’ choir singing “Silent Night” with his father. The show was the usual Friday night Chesterfield Supper Club with an important […]
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (also known as Talent Scouts) is an American radio and television variety show which ran on CBS from 1946 until 1958. Sponsored by Lipton Tea, it stars Arthur Godfrey, who was also hosting Arthur Godfrey and His Friends at the same time. The concept for the show was that Godfrey had several “talent scouts” who brought their discoveries onto […]
Studio One
Studio One is an American radio–television anthology series, created in 1947 by Canadian director Fletcher Markle, who came to CBS from the CBC. In 1948, Markle made a quantum leap from radio to television. Sponsored by Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the television series was seen on CBS (which Westinghouse owned between 1995 and 2000), from 1948 through 1958, under several variant titles: Studio One […]
Break the Bank
Break the Bank is an American quiz show which aired variously on Mutual Radio and ABC, CBS and NBC television from 1945 to 1957. From October 1956 to January 1957, NBC Television aired a short-lived prime-time version called Break the $250,000 Bank. Sponsored by Vicks, the series began on radio October 20, 1945, heard Saturdays on Mutual until April 13th, 1946. Initially, it featured different hosts each week, including John […]
Ford Television Theater
Ford Theatre, spelled Ford Theater for the radio version and known as Ford Television Theatre for the TV version, was a radio and television anthology series broadcast in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. At various times the television series appeared on all three major television networks, while the radio version was broadcast on two separate networks and on two separate […]
The Milton Berle Show
Milton Berle was an American comedian and actor. As the host of NBC’s Texaco Star Theater (1948–55), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as “Uncle Miltie” and “Mr. Television” during TV’s golden age. Berle would revive the structure and routines of his vaudeville shows for his debut on TV. His first TV series was The […]
Douglas Edwards with the News
Douglas Edwards was America‘s first network news television anchor, anchoring CBS‘s first nightly news broadcast from 1948–1962, which was later to be titled CBS Evening News. In 1948, as CBS’s top correspondents and commentators shunned the fledgling medium of television, Edwards was chosen to present regular CBS television news programs and to host CBS’s television coverage of the 1948 Democratic […]
Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television (1952–56), it became one of the medium’s earliest hits. Our Miss Brooks was considered groundbreaking for showing […]
The Ed Sullivan Show
Edward Vincent “Ed” Sullivan (September 28th, 1901 – October 13th, 1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the television variety program The Toast of the Town, now usually remembered under its second name, The Ed Sullivan Show. Broadcast for 23 years from 1948 to 1971, it set […]
The Original Amateur Hour
The Original Amateur Hour is an American radio and television program. The show was a continuation of Major Bowes Amateur Hour which had been a radio staple from 1934 to 1945. The television debut came on January 18th, 1948 on the DuMont Television Network with Mack as the host. The regular staff for the television […]
Kraft Television Theatre
Kraft Television Theatre is an American drama/anthology television series that began May 7th, 1947 on NBC, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that time slot until 1958. Initially produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the live hour-long series offered television plays […]
Gillette Cavalcade of Sports
The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports is an American network radio program and later television program that included broadcasts of a variety of sports, although it is primarily remembered by many for its focus on boxing. The diversified field of sporting events continued onto television, reportedly including at least two golfing tournaments as well (beginning in 1958) with football’s Rose Bowl. With all of this, however, […]
The Voice of Firestone
The Voice of Firestone is a long-running radio and television program of classical music. The show featured leading singers in selections from opera and operetta. Originally titled The Firestone Hour, it was first broadcast on the NBC Radio network on December 3rd, 1928 and was later also shown on television starting in 1949. The program […]
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