Retro; NBC (W2XBS), New York, week of March 24-30, 1940

[Bob1370]

Source; New York Times. 3/24/40

W2XBS, Channel 1 (44-50 mHz) (experimentally licensed predecessor of present-day WNBC channel 4)

Sunday, March 24th
11:30AM – Protestant Easter service, Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, officiating; Westminster Choir, directed by Dr. John Finley Williamson.
12:00PM – Fifth Avenue Easter parade, at Fiftieth Street.
12:30PM – Roman Catholic Easter service, the Rt. Rev. Mgr. Fulton J. Sheen, officiating; Paulist Choristers, directed by Father William J. Finn.
3:00-3:30PM – Rockefeller Center Choristers, directed by John R. Jones, in an Easter concert at Rockefeller Center Plaza.
3:30-5:00PM – Film, “King of Kings.” Cecil B. DeMille’s production.
8:30-9:30PM – Pages and guides on Broadway, a minstrel show; also televues picture contest.

Monday, March 25th
No programming scheduled

Tuesday, March 26th
No programming scheduled

Wednesday, March 27th
3:30-4:30PM – Films, “Aesop’s Fables”; “Fighting Trooper,” with Kermit Maynard.
6:45-7:00PM – News, Lowell Thomas (simulcast with NBC Red radio network)
8:30-9:30PM – Digest of news events in March.
9:30-9:45PM – Television reporter.

Thursday, March 28th
3:30-4:30PM – Films, “Florida’s Golden Harvest,” an industrial short; “Yankee Doodle Goes to Town”; “Natchez,” a travelogue.
6:45-7:00PM – News, Lowell Thomas (simulcast with NBC Red radio network)
8:30-9:30PM – To be announced.

Friday, March 29th
3:30-4:30PM – Film, “Thanks for Listening,” with Pinky Tomlin.
6:45-7:00PM – News, Lowell Thomas (simulcast with NBC Red radio network)
8:30-9:30PM – “A Good Place to Visit,” documentary program on the history of a furniture dealer.

Saturday, March 30th
3:00-5:00PM – Baseball: Fordham University vs. St. Peter’s College, at Fordham Field.
7:30-8:00PM – “Art for Your Sake,” Dr. Bernard Myers.
8:30-9:00PM – Carveth Wells, explorer and lecturer, on “Tamest Africa, or Debunking Big Game Hunting.”
9:00-9:30PM – Variety show (hosts, guests not listed)

Sidebars;

The Easter Mass celebrant on March 24, Msgr. Fulton Sheen, becarme one of America's most famous and most admired religious broadcasters after World War II. He was host of the weekly series "Life is Worth Living" on the DuMont and ABC networks between 1951 and 1956, and its revival, "The Bishop Sheen Program," taped at WPIX New York and WOKR in Rochester, NY and seen in over 100 markets weekly in syndication between 1961 and 1970. (The later syndicated program, many episodes of which were taped in color, is still seen in re-runs on the EWTN Catholic cable/satellite network.)

CBS in 1940 also had a New York experimentally licensed TV station, W2XAB (predecessor of WCBS-TV), on what was then Channel 2 (60-66 mHz, now designated channel 3). Unlike NBC, CBS issued little in the way of a published schedule and offered few programs intended for the public on its New York television facility before the start of full commercial operation the next year. It appears to have had no programs announced in advance for Easter Week of 1940. CBS transmissions on W2XAB were more strictly experimental and designed to give CBS technicians and producers experience in preparation for full commercial operation--which came on July 1 of 1941 for both CBS and NBC.

Allen B. DuMont Laboratories, which were already making and selling TV receivers for home use, were also doing experiments and building facilities which would later become experimental W2XWV and eventually commercial WABD on Channel 4 (ultimately Fox flagship WNYW on channel 5). DuMont experimental programming would begin in 1941.

 

[everydayguy]

Awesome stuff, Bob -- thanks for sharing this. Too bad there weren't any kinescopes or videotape around in those days to capture the truly early days of TV.

 

[bpatrick]

Mrs. Carveth Wells was a fixture on W2XBS/WNBC for years
in the '40s, but I think she finally ran out of films. At any rate,
as Castleman and Podrazik point out in "Watching TV," she was
not the future of television even in the '40s; the short-lived 1946
variety show "Hour Glass" proved to be the way television was
heading--at least for the next couple of decades. In fact, someone
once found a picture of Ed Sullivan hanging around backstage--no
doubt envisioning a something-for-everyone-type show like 'Hour
Glass."

It is indeed too bad that no record of these early shows exists,
but there are some stills; there's a book (I think it's called "Please
Stand By") that's all about pre-1948 television, and there are pictures
of--among other things--a young Hugh Downs, then in Chicago, with
a mustache, yet--and a drama produced at WRGB and set in the passenger
section of an airliner. But even that book's author concedes that by 1948,
the immediate future of television lay with the likes of Sullivan, Berle, and
Ted Mack.

 

[oldschooler1]

Awesome stuff, Bob -- thanks for sharing this. Too bad there weren't any kinescopes or videotape around in those days to capture the truly early days of TV.

Actually....There is.

The book Please Stand By mentions a film someone made at their home, of a 1939 W2XBS broadcast - no sound. It is stored in the Paley Center in NYC. I've seen it.

However, on Youtube, you can watch a brief clip of TV film that predates that relic....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC-g-eB6Rjs

It's a 1949 presentation by NBC to The Society of Motion Picture Engineers, describing the kinescope process (although the narration doesn't look like a kinescope, though he claims it is). In it, is a clip from the NBC vaults of a 1938 W2XBS show!!!! Ya gotta see this. It's way cool!

It also contains a kinescope clip from 1946, of a prize fight. By then, the I-O cameras were in use. The kinescope process -- the actual machinery to faithfully record TV broadcasts on film -- wasn't invented until 1947, by Du Mont. So anything before that was an ad-hoc film recording.

There's also this stuff, from 1949 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wswTTxj8_ls&feature=related -- it has clips of the democratic convention from the summer of 1948.

And, this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ1gamhoH6k -- which is ABC simulcasting Don McNeil's Breakfast club, on WABD/Du Mont -- because WJZ, ABC's flagship station, wasn't on the air yet in NYC...And they're live in Philly, talking about the conventions, which would date it to the summer of 1948, which makes it pretty ancient stuff.
It's also cool because you can hear the top of the hour ID done by WABD's voice-over announcer.