Red-letter day: November 7, 1948

[bpatrick]

One of the drama series that are synonymous with the
"Golden Age" of television debuts on CBS this date:
"Studio One." Originally it airs on Sundays against "Ted
Mack's Amateur Hour" on DuMont, and CBS has a time
getting clearances; most of its affiliates (which have
multiple affiliations in those early days) are running Mack.
"Studio One" is unsponsored until Westinghouse picks it
up in 1949; it gets the Monday 10 PM slot, where it stays
to the end in 1958, because that's the only time the one
station in Pittsburgh, Westinghouse's headquarters, WDTV
(now KDKA), a DuMont o&o, will give it.

The first drama that comes to mind when I think of "Studio
One" is "Twelve Angry Men," later made into a movie.

 

[oldschooler1]

And keep in mind, too, how few stations could actually carry it live when it debuted, and in it's early months. The coaxial/microwave network extended to only about a dozen cities: as far south as Richmond, and as far west as Pittsburgh. Others saw Studio One on kine delay.

Another red-letter day is coming up in January (January 11, I want to say?):when the midwest was connected to the east, and the "golden spike" was driven into the network's coaxial/microwave network in Pittsburgh. That would be sixty years of television networking reaching as far west as Omaha and St. Louis.

 

[oburn]

what stations carried it when it started

 

[bpatrick]

No doubt WCBS New York and WCAU Philadelphia
carried it live; WTVR Richmond carried it on delay
(in some late-night time slot, IIRC). WMAR Baltimore
carried Ted Mack on Sundays, so I don't know if or
when "Studio One" aired there.

I do know that by the middle of 1949, Mack had
about 26 stations and probably half of them were
CBS affiliates. CBS approached him about moving his
show there, but DuMont threatened to disaffiliate any
station that carried him instead of the replacement
they were planning (a few years later those stations
could have told DuMont to take their affiliation and shove
it, but in 1949 they needed DuMont shows to fill out their
schedules). NBC then offered him the seat next to the
head of the table, Tuesdays after Milton Berle (actually
an hour after Berle, at 10 PM). Mack did have one primetime
run on CBS on Friday nights in the summer of 1959 but his
CBS years were primarily the Sunday-afternoon run of the '60s.

 

[oburn]

amatuer hour dumont was live on wfil wttg wabd wmar at least from jan 1948 -may 1948 i saw an article where ford theater was live on wcbs wrgb wcau wmar wmal wtvr wnac and on kines wjbk kfi in nov 1948

 

[bpatrick]

I'd be interested in your source; it might tell
where "Studio One" aired on Sundays in the
1948-49 season.

An interesting side note about "Studio One"
which I heard on Bob Moke's XM radio show
"Moments To Remember" this week. On the
broadcast of November 15, 1954, which concerned
the record industry, the writers had come up with a
song that was to play at various points in the play.
They approached Mitch Miller, then the head of artists
and repertoire at Columbia Records (owned by CBS), to
find a singer. The singer was 19-year-old Joan Weber;
the song, which went to the top of the charts, was
"Let Me Go, Lover," sung in a highly-emotional style.
That show aired on a Monday; on Tuesday the record
stores were inundated with requests for "the song that
girl sang on TV last night." The rest is history, although
I don't think Ms. Weber ever had another hit; she died
young, only in her 40s.