Retro:Cleveland, Friday May 26, 1949

[TimL]

Source:Canton Repository

WNBK 4 NBC

5:10 Whispering Shadows
5:30 Howdy Doody
6PM Andy Clyde
6:30 Film
6:45 Bob Boyd Show
7PM Kukla, Fran And Ollie
7:30 American Song
7:45 Camel News Caravan-Swayze
8PM Admiral Brodway Revue
9PM Theatrical Agency
9:30 Show Time
10PM Gilette Cavalcade Of Sports
11PM Chesterfield Supper Club-Perry Como
11:15 Program Previews

WEWS 5 CBS/DuMont (Possibly ABC, but ABC wasnt as well establised as even DuMont at this time)

4PM Distaff-Women's Talk
5:30 Uncle Jake's House-Gene Carroll
6PM Small Fry Club-DuMont
6:30 Lucky Pup-CBS
6:45 Vincent Lopez-DuMont
7PM Sports Special
7:30 World News (Probably CBS News-Douglas Edwards)
7:45 Linn Sheldon Show
8PM Film
8:15 Dugout Interviews
8:25 Baseball:Chicago White Sox At Cleveland Indians (Indians won 4-0)
Bob Neal And Indians Legend Tris Speaker were the Broadcast team (Source:2005 Clevelamd Indians Media Guide)
11PM Coming Attractions

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Tim Lones takes us back to Cleveland on May 26th, 1949:

> WNBK 4 NBC

Later to move to Channel 3.

> 10PM Gilette Cavalcade Of Sports

Likely a professional boxing match, and probably from New York's Madison Square Garden, which hosted boxing cards (and periodic title bouts) almost every Friday night during the 1940'a dna 1950's.

> 11PM Chesterfield Supper Club-Perry Como

I think this was a simulcast with NBC Radio. Didn't it move to an early-evening slot after a few months?

It also appears that WNBK did not produce any local newscasts. The only newscast listed for WNBK was John Cameron Swayze's network newscast. Quite unusual for a network O&O.

> WEWS 5 CBS/DuMont (Possibly ABC, but ABC wasnt as well
> establised as even DuMont at this time)

> 8:25 Baseball:Chicago White Sox At Cleveland Indians
> (Indians won 4-0)
> Bob Neal And Indians Legend Tris Speaker were the Broadcast
> team (Source:2005 Clevelamd Indians Media Guide)

Seems to me that 8:25 P.M. would be an unusually-late start time for a night game in Cleveland, even back then. Could this have been the second game of a twi-night doubleheader with the first game having not been televised??

> 11PM Coming Attractions

And WEWS appears not to have done any local news either. I guess if you lived in Cleveland in May of 1949, and wanted local news, you had to read a newspaper or listen to the radio.

 

[bpatrick]

> Tim Lones takes us back to Cleveland on May 26th, 1949:
>
> > WNBK 4 NBC
>
> Later to move to Channel 3.
>
> > 10PM Gilette Cavalcade Of Sports
>
> Likely a professional boxing match, and probably from New
> York's Madison Square Garden, which hosted boxing cards (and
> periodic title bouts) almost every Friday night during the
> 1940'a dna 1950's.
>
> > 11PM Chesterfield Supper Club-Perry Como
>
> I think this was a simulcast with NBC Radio. Didn't it move
> to an early-evening slot after a few months?
>
> It also appears that WNBK did not produce any local
> newscasts. The only newscast listed for WNBK was John
> Cameron Swayze's network newscast. Quite unusual for a
> network O&O.
>
> > WEWS 5 CBS/DuMont (Possibly ABC, but ABC wasnt as well
> > establised as even DuMont at this time)
>
> > 8:25 Baseball:Chicago White Sox At Cleveland Indians
> > (Indians won 4-0)
> > Bob Neal And Indians Legend Tris Speaker were the
> Broadcast
> > team (Source:2005 Clevelamd Indians Media Guide)
>
> Seems to me that 8:25 P.M. would be an unusually-late start
> time for a night game in Cleveland, even back then. Could
> this have been the second game of a twi-night doubleheader
> with the first game having not been televised??
>
> > 11PM Coming Attractions
>
> And WEWS appears not to have done any local news either. I
> guess if you lived in Cleveland in May of 1949, and wanted
> local news, you had to read a newspaper or listen to the
> radio.
>
Local news was really a throwaway in TV's early days; stations
didn't see any profit potential in it, and really didn't begin
to do so until the '70s, when the ratings for Eyewitness News
and similar formats with their mix of information and entertainment
values really began to pay off in more ways than one.

Of course, that wasn't true everywhere. On one of my North
Carolina postings from the '50s there was a station in Winston-
Salem doing a half-hour local block from 6:30-7 each night. But
that had to be the exception rather than the rule.

And don't think this attitude stopped at the network level.
John Cameron Swayze and Douglas Edwards weren't there because
of their journalistic expertise as much as their ability to
make a good appearance on camera (and Swayze's flamboyance was
exactly what viewers wanted in 1949). Don't forget that Swayze,
Edwards, and ABC's John Daly also emceed game shows during their
years as anchors. That wouldn't begin
to change until the coming of Chet Huntley, David Brinkley,
and (especially) Walter Cronkite, when the news of the day
demanded anchors who sounded as if they knew what they were
talking about. (Forget that Cronkite was host of It's News To
Me; he didn't keep the job long enough to worry about sullying
his reputation.)

You are absolutely correct when you say that in 1949 people
had to depend on newspapers or radio to find out what was
going on. Local news was mostly "rip and read" off the press-
association teletypes; network news was a lot of footage of
beauty contests and the like supplied by movie newsreel companies.
When stations and networks decided they could do their own reporting,
the quality of news improved; when they realized how much money
they really were making, the quantity increased.

 

[TimL]

> Tim Lones takes us back to Cleveland on May 26th, 1949:
>
> > WNBK 4 NBC
>
> Later to move to Channel 3.

Which we have mentioned many times.
>
> > 10PM Gilette Cavalcade Of Sports
>
> Likely a professional boxing match, and probably from New
> York's Madison Square Garden, which hosted boxing cards (and
> periodic title bouts) almost every Friday night during the
> 1940'a dna 1950's.

Most regular readers of these schedules would know that which is why I did'nt mention it..
>
> > 11PM Chesterfield Supper Club-Perry Como
>
> I think this was a simulcast with NBC Radio. Didn't it move
> to an early-evening slot after a few months?

The TV show started 12-24-48 at 7PM and was probably a simulcast..in 3 months the TV show moved to 11PM but the Radio show stayed at 7PM based on a WTAM 1100 radio listing in the same source as the TV listing...It seemed Como did two live shows one for TV one for radio.more info here:

http://www.classictvhits.com/show.php?id=810



>
> It also appears that WNBK did not produce any local
> newscasts. The only newscast listed for WNBK was John
> Cameron Swayze's network newscast. Quite unusual for a
> network O&O.

WNBK had only been on the air since October 1948..Local news was still relatively rare on TV..Only network news and newsreels were prevalent
>
> > WEWS 5 CBS/DuMont (Possibly ABC, but ABC wasnt as well
> > establised as even DuMont at this time)
>
> > 8:25 Baseball:Chicago White Sox At Cleveland Indians
> > (Indians won 4-0)
> > Bob Neal And Indians Legend Tris Speaker were the
> Broadcast
> > team (Source:2005 Clevelamd Indians Media Guide)
>
> Seems to me that 8:25 P.M. would be an unusually-late start
> time for a night game in Cleveland, even back then. Could
> this have been the second game of a twi-night doubleheader
> with the first game having not been televised??

According to http://www.shrpsports.com where I get game scores, this was only a single game..Seemed Odd for a game to start that late to me too.
>
> > 11PM Coming Attractions
>
> And WEWS appears not to have done any local news either. I
> guess if you lived in Cleveland in May of 1949, and wanted
> local news, you had to read a newspaper or listen to the
> radio.

Dorothy Fuldheim was already established at WEWS and may have done commentary though not necessarily this night.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

I had thought that with some exceptions, local TV news until the early 1960's consisted of someone reading news into a camera, with no slides, newsreel film, etc.

I thought that WNBK and WEWS would have been able to mount early-evening and late-evening "an announcer reading news into a camera"-type news programs. They could have been done inexpensively, especially if the man reading the news into the camera also did off-camera station-break announcing in-between the early and late newscasts.