A red-letter day today, sort of...

[bpatrick]

Not the premiere of a new show, but the
official premiere of a new network.

In 1941 the FCC ordered NBC to divest itself
of one of its two networks, the Red and the Blue,
on grounds that two networks gave NBC an unfair
advantage over CBS and Mutual. After an unsuccessful
two-year battle in the courts, NBC, in 1943, decided to
sell the Blue, which in a way was radio's equivalent of
PBS (only with commercials) and was less profitable than
the Red, which had most of the popular shows of the era.
(Blue had symphony orchestras, news commentators, and discussion
programs like America's Town Meeting and Author Meets The
Critics, some of which carried over into the next era--see
below).

Ed Noble, founder of the company that makes Life Savers
candy (or did then, at least), paid $8 million (a bargain
even at 1943 prices) and renamed the network Blue Network,
Inc. In the meantime, he attempted to secure the rights for
the name he really wanted, American Broadcasting Company, from
a small station group.

On the morning of June 15, 1945, Jim Gibbons of WMAL Washington
(longtime voice of the Redskins when I was growing up), closed
the network's 8 AM newscast by announcing, for the first time:
"This is the American Broadcasting Company."

So you could say that today is the 60th anniversary of the birth
of ABC as we know it (although some might say that ABC as we know
it wasn't born until 1953, when Leonard Goldenson took over the
network and gradually began to strip it of the highbrow Blue
programs Noble had retained, replacing them with young, urban-skewing
sitcoms, Westerns, and detective shows as the '50s progressed).

Yes, Goldenson had Omnibus, the Voice Of Firestone,
the U.S. Steel Hour, and the Kraft Television Theater. But eventually,
these came to be the exceptions rather than the rule at ABC.
Disneyland, Cheyenne, Maverick, Ozzie And Harriet (one carryover
from the Noble era), 77 Sunset Strip, etc., became the rule instead.

 

[oldiesfan]

> On the morning of June 15, 1945, Jim Gibbons
> of WMAL Washington (longtime voice of the
> Redskins when I was growing up), closed the
> network's 8 AM newscast by announcing, for the
> first time: "This is the American Broadcasting
> Company."

So in 1945 ABC radio did a TOH news? When did
they switch to :55? And after switching to :55
was it :55:00 or 54:30 as it became with ABC/C
in 1968?

 

[bpatrick]

> > On the morning of June 15, 1945, Jim Gibbons
> > of WMAL Washington (longtime voice of the
> > Redskins when I was growing up), closed the
> > network's 8 AM newscast by announcing, for the
> > first time: "This is the American Broadcasting
> > Company."
>
> So in 1945 ABC radio did a TOH news? When did
> they switch to :55? And after switching to :55
> was it :55:00 or 54:30 as it became with ABC/C
> in 1968?
>
This was a 15-minute newscast than ran from 8 to
8:15; CBS and NBC did the same thing at the time.
And of course none of them did news every hour;
in 1945 network radio was still structured very
much like television is today.

I can't answer your question about when ABC went
to an hourly newscast at :55. I do know that CBS
was doing some top-of-the-hour newscasts by the end
of the '40s; I have one from 1949.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

Happy 65th anniversary to ABC!

 

[wbhist]

Yes, Goldenson had Omnibus, the Voice Of Firestone, the U.S. Steel Hour, and the Kraft Television Theater. But eventually, these came to be the exceptions rather than the rule at ABC. Disneyland, Cheyenne, Maverick, Ozzie And Harriet (one carryover
from the Noble era), 77 Sunset Strip, etc., became the rule instead.

Another carry-over from the Noble era to the Goldenson era was a Goodson-Todman game show, The Name's the Same, which premiered on ABC in 1951 and lasted to 1955. Reruns of that show were aired on two different occasions on GSN in the overnight hours in the 2000's.

 

[bpatrick]

And also on GSN's "Sunday Night In Black And White." Still
another holdover from the Noble era was "The Lone Ranger,"
which ran from 1949 to 1957 on Thursday nights (Castleman
and Podrazik say that new episodes aired on Sunday afternoons
from 1957 to 1961).

But my point was that there was more emphasis on cultural
and discussion programs in the Noble era, none of which obtained
huge ratings. It was after Goldenson bought ABC that the network
became identified with young families; I singled out "Ozzie And Harriet"
because it was a Goldenson-type show that started in the Noble era.

 

[KML0224]

But was 1953 considered the debut of the TELEVISION network?

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

But was 1953 considered the debut of the TELEVISION network?

That's how ABC thought back in 2003--when they considered that year their "50th anniversary."

 

[KeithE4]

But was 1953 considered the debut of the TELEVISION network?

The ABC Television Network debuted on April 19, 1948, before it had any of its O&O stations on the air. ABC's O&O stations didn't come on the air until later in 1948.

The FCC approval of the ABC-United Paramount Theatres merger was on February 9, 1953.

 

[ixnay]

But was 1953 considered the debut of the TELEVISION network?

That's how ABC thought back in 2003--when they considered that year their "50th anniversary."

And in 1978 when they aired their evening-long 25th anniv. special, which this then-HS junior watched.

ixnay

 

[bpatrick]

Which is one of two reasons ABC likes to date the history
of the network (at least the television network) from 1953.
One is the merger with UPT; the other is the fact that NBC
had celebrated its 50th anniversary with an evening-long
special in 1976, and CBS spent an entire week celebrating
its golden anniversary in March 1978. ABC couldn't be left
out, so apparently somebody decided to date the network's
founding from the time Goldenson took over; hence, 25 years
in 1978.

But you wouldn't have known that ABC had a television network
in 1953: five o&os and nine full-time affiliates (and I'm not counting
primary CBS and NBC affiliates that cherry-picked a few ABC shows).

 

[Savage]

The old ABC Radio Network was split into four networks in the Spring of 1968: ABC Contemporary News, aimed at Top 40 format stations, aired before the hour (actual feed time was :54:30.)

The TOH newscast was ABC Information. There was a bottom-of-hour news feed called ABC Entertainment (ABC-E affiliates had to carry Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, a creaky morning variety show feed weekdays "from high atop the Hotel Allerton in Downtown Chicago." The Breakfast Club was a relic of the late 1940s and didn't long survive its migration to ABC-E.)

Then there was a fourth ABC product, The ABC FM Network, with a news feed at either :15 or :45 (can't recall which.) ABC got around the one-network FCC rule then in effect with the simple expedient of feeding all of its "networks" on a single line, so technically they weren't separate nets - ABC was really one net feeding four different products.

As time went on additional programming was added including Howard Cosell's "Speaking Of Sports" and feature material.

 

[Ultimajock]

But you wouldn't have known that ABC had a television network
in 1953: five o&os and nine full-time affiliates (and I'm not counting
primary CBS and NBC affiliates that cherry-picked a few ABC shows).

...or the ones, like WOKY-TV/19 Milwaukee, that split their time between ABC and Du Mont...