Retro: Boston - Saturday, May 20, 1950

[MCarney]

Source – Boston Globe, Saturday, May 20, 1950

4 – WBZ Boston (NBC/ABC/DuMont)
01:20p Teletape News
01:25p Lindy’s Lounge
01:50p Great Guy, film
01:55p Baseball – Braves vs. St. Louis
05:00p Western film
06:00p Unk and Andy
06:20p Mr. Fishtoosh, kiddies show
06:30p The Lone Ranger (ABC, delayed from Thursday @ 7:30p)
07:00p Teen Time
07:20p Shawmut Bank Newsteller
07:30p The Azaleas
08:00p Saturday Revue, Chicago (NBC, hosted by Jack Carter)
09:00p Your Show of Shows (NBC)
10:30p Wrestling Matches
11:00p News, views in N.E.

7 – WNAC Boston (CBS/ABC/DuMont)
01:30p Film Shorts
01:45p Races from Suffolk Downs
02:45p Test Pattern
04:30p Film Short
05:00p The Preakness (CBS) – 1st time the race was televised
05:30p Frontier Town
06:00p What’s My Line (CBS, delayed from Wednesday)
06:30p Warren Hull Show (most likely CBS – cannot find an entry for this show on Wikipedia or IMDB)
06:45p Lucky Pup, puppet show (CBS)
07:00p Buck Rogers
07:30p Hollywood Screen Test (ABC)
08:00p Beat the Clock (CBS)
09:00p Cavalcade of Stars (DuMont)
10:00p Wrestling Matches, Chicago (DuMont)
10:30p The Preakness, film
10:45p Wrestling, continued
12:00a Weather, News, Sports

 

[bpatrick]

The closest thing I can find on the "Warren Hull Show" is that
in January and February 1950 he replaced Ben Grauer as host
of an NBC show that aired Tuesdays from 11-11:15 PM. But
Grauer had returned to the show sometime in February and was
hosting it in May. During Hull's time on the show it was called
"The Warren Hull Show." I'd suggest you try the New York Times
for May 20, 1950, and see if his show aired on WCBS; that would
practically guarantee it was a CBS show.

 

[bpatrick]

The CBS show airing Saturdays 6:30-6:45 at the time was
"Kuda Bux, Hindu Mystic," a man from Kashmir who worked
a lot like Kreskin in the '70s. Rex Marshall acted as a sort
of host on this show. The NBC show listed in my previous
posting is the only "Warren Hull Show" I can find for 1950
that lasted 15 minutes, and being an NBC show, I can't
imagine it airing on Channel 7.

Maybe you can try the Boston newspapers for the weeks
before and after May 20; that may give you some sort of
lead.

 

[bpatrick]

The closest thing I can find on the "Warren Hull Show" is that
in January and February 1950 he replaced Ben Grauer as host
of an NBC show that aired Tuesdays from 11-11:15 PM. But
Grauer had returned to the show sometime in February and was
hosting it in May. During Hull's time on the show it was called
"The Warren Hull Show." I'd suggest you try the New York Times
for May 20, 1950, and see if his show aired on WCBS; that would
practically guarantee it was a CBS show.

NBC had a show, dating back to 1946, called "You Are An Artist," and according
to Wikipedia it had three hosts: Jon Gnagy, Ben Grauer, and (finally) Warren Hull,
at which point it became "The Warren Hull Show" in the 1949-50 season. This
is the show airing Tuesday 11-11:15. See if Channel 4 carried it; if not, then
possibly Channel 7 picked it up anyway.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

7 - WNAC Boston (CBS/ABC/DuMont)

05:00p The Preakness (CBS) – 1st time the race was televised

It was not the first Boston telecast of the race. The May 15th, 1949 Boston Globe listed WNAC as carrying live coverage of that year's Preakness. The May 15th, 1948 issue of The New York Times indicated that WCBS-2 televised the race. The '48 Preakness may be aired on CBS in other East Coast cities, especially in Baltimore. Of course, commercial TV in Boston was still a few weeks off.

The first live network telecast of the Kentucky Derby wasn't until 1952, but that was because Louisville wasn't connected to network lines until then. I'm pretty sure the Derby had been locally televised there for a few years prior to that.

By looking at vintage TV listings from the Boston Globe, I can tell you that WNAC carried the 1949, 1950, and 1951 Derby's on film the day after they were held.

 

[MCarney]

I was just going by the accompanying story in the Globe. Perhaps they meant the 1st time on the whole network.

 

[bpatrick]

The '48 Preakness would almost certainly have been carried
on WMAR, which signed on in '47 and was Baltimore's CBS
affiliate until 1981. As for the Derby, WAVE carried it in '49
(it signed on Thanksgiving Day 1948), but the Derby came to
be associated with WHAS after its sign-on in 1950; part of the
reason WHAS switched from CBS to ABC in 1990 was because
ABC had beaten out CBS for the rights to televise the race; when
ABC first got the Derby in the mid-'70s the Derby management insisted
that the Alphabet Network feed the race to WHAS, since it was on
Channel 11 and the ABC affiliate at the time, WLKY, was on Channel 32.
(Both stations carried ABC's telecast until CapCities bought ABC and decreed
it would not feed shows to a station affiliated with another network.) So
WHAS, which had pre-race coverage all day, was denied the main event
until the decision to change networks. That became a moot point in 2000
when the Derby moved to NBC and WAVE/3.

But back to '48: Baltimore was one of seven East Coast cities tied to the
coaxial cable (the others: Boston, Schenectady, New York City, Philadelphia,
Washington, and Richmond), so CBS could have fed the race to those cities.
Possibly, for reasons now lost, the '48 and '49 Preaknesses were not carried
in Boston, but the technical ability was there. After all, the seven cities that
I mentioned carried Milton Berle's first show in June of '48. And even earlier,
in January, WMAR carried the first telecast of "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour" on
DuMont. Point of all this rambling is that CBS may have indeed carried the '48
Preakness but some sort of management decision kept it off the air in Boston
until '50.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

1948 Triple Crown And Boston TV (Was: Re: Retro: Boston: Saturday, May 20, 1950)

The 1948 Kentucky Derby and Preakness took place before Boston's first two TV stations signed-on.

WBZ-4 signed-on June 9th; WNAC-7 started regular broadcasting on the 21st.

The 1948 Belmont Stakes took place on June 12th, but CBS carried the race and WBZ at the time was an NBC affiliate.

Although the Boston Globe of that date doesn't list WBZ as carrying the Belmont, I wonder if due to huge public interest (Citation was going for the Triple Crown Championship, which he would win by taking the Belmont Stakes), CBS might, too late for the morning papers to publicize the fact, have allowed WBZ to have carried the race given the huge public interest and that doing so would have been the only way for Boston viewers to have seen it.

Does anyone know if that ended up being the case??

(Otherwise, the only people in Boston who may have seen it might have been management and staff of WNAC who might have been able to watch the network feed at WNAC's studios, then located at 21 Brookline Avenue)