Retro: Network daytime Fall 1957

[bpatrick]

From Castleman and Podrazik's "The TV Schedule
Book," programming before 7 PM (Eastern) in the
fall of 1957:

MONDAY-FRIDAY

ABC 3 PM American Bandstand
4:30 Do You Trust Your Wife? (When
this show moves from CBS primetime,
original host Edgar Bergen says he'll
stay on, provided ABC does a primetime
version. ABC refuses, and Johnny Carson
gets the emcee's job. Within a year the
show airs at its more familiar time, 3:30,
Ed McMahon has replaced Bill Nimmo as
announcer, and the show has been retitled
Who Do You Trust?)
5 PM Fun At Five:
MON Adventures Of Superman
TUE Adventures Of Sir Lancelot
WED Wild Bill Hickok
THU Woody Woodpecker
FRI The Buccaneers
5:30 Mickey Mouse Club
6 PM (Local)

CBS 7 AM Jimmy Dean Show
7:45 CBS Morning News (believed to be
Richard Hottelet)
8 AM Captain Kangaroo
8:45 CBS Morning News (believed to be
Richard Hottelet)
9 AM (Local)
10 AM Garry Moore Show
10:30 Arthur Godfrey Time (Mon-Thu)/
Garry Moore Show (Fri)
11:30 Strike It Rich (Warren Hull)
12 N Hotel Cosmopolitan (the last new
15-minute soap)
12:15 Love Of Life
12:30 Search For Tomorrow
12:45 Guiding Light
1 PM (Local)
1:25 CBS News (believed to be Walter Cronkite)
1:30 As The World Turns
2 PM Beat The Clock (Bud Collyer)
2:30 Art Linkletter's House Party
3 PM Big Payoff (Randy Merriman, Bess Myerson)
3:30 The Verdict Is Yours (The original host,
or "court reporter," is Jim McKay, who
also does some sports reporting for CBS.
When he moves to ABC in 1961 another
sportscaster, Jack Whitaker, replaces him.)
4 PM Brighter Day
4:15 Secret Storm
4:30 Edge Of Night
5 PM (Local)
6:45 Douglas Edwards With The News (airs
at 7:15 in some markets)

NBC 7 AM Today (Dave Garroway)
9 AM (Local)
10 AM Arlene Francis Show
10:30 Treasure Hunt (Jan Murray)
11 AM The Price Is Right (Bill Cullen)
11:30 Truth Or Consequences (Bob Barker)
12 N Tic Tac Dough (Jack Barry)
12:30 It Could Be You (Bill Leyden)
1 PM Close Up
1:30 Howard Miller Show (a singer on this
show was Mike Douglas)
2:30 Bride And Groom
3 PM NBC Matinee Theater
4 PM Queen For A Day (Jack Bailey)
4:45 Modern Romances
5 PM Comedy Time
5:30 (Local)
6 PM Educational TV feeds to affiliates:
MON International Geophysical Year
TUE Mathematics
WED Arts And The Gods
THU Survival
FRI Camera On Washington
6:30 (Local)
6:45 Huntley-Brinkley Report (airs at 7:15
in some markets)

SATURDAY

ABC 4 PM All Star Golf
5 PM (Local)

CBS 9:30 Captain Kangaroo
10:30 Mighty Mouse Playhouse
11 AM Susan's Show (12-year-old Susan
Heinkel, a veteran of shows in
St. Louis and Chicago since she
was three)
11:30 Saturday Playhouse
12 N Jimmy Dean Show
1 PM The Lone Ranger (reruns)
1:30 (Local)
2:30 NHL Hockey
5 PM (Local, time approximate)

NBC 10 AM Howdy Doody
10:30 Andy's Gang (Andy Devine replacing
the late Smilin' Ed McConnell)
11 AM Fury
11:30 Captain Gallant
12 N True Story
12:30 Detective's Diary (Mark Saber reruns)
1 PM (Local)
1:45 NCAA Football Preview
2 PM NCAA Football
4:45 Kemper Football Scoreboard (time
approximate)
5 PM (Local)

SUNDAY

ABC 3 PM Johns Hopkins File 7
3:30 Dean James A. Pike
4 PM College Press Conference
4:30 Paul Winchell Show
5 PM Tales Of The Texas Rangers
5:30 Lone Ranger (new episodes)
6 PM (Local)

CBS 10 AM Lamp Unto My Feet
10:30 Look Up And Live
11 AM The UN In Action
11:30 Camera Three
12 N Let's Take A Trip
12:30 Wild Bill Hickok (apparently
new episodes)
1 PM Face The Nation
1:45 Pro Football Kickoff
2 PM NFL Football
4:45 World News Roundup (Robert Trout,
time approximate)
5 PM The Seven Lively Arts (See It Now
about once a month)
6 PM Beat The Clock
6:30 The Twentieth Century

NBC 1 PM Watch Mr. Wizard
1:30 Frontiers Of Faith
2 PM (Local)
2:30 Wisdom
3 PM Youth Wants To Know
3:30 Look Here! (When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was the guest, someone sneaked into the
transmitter site for WSFA/12 Montgomery, AL,
and knocked the station off the air until the
broadcast was over.)
4 PM Wide Wide World alternating with Omnibus
5:30 Outlook (Chet Huntley)
6 PM Meet The Press (Ned Brooks is moderator,
Lawrence Spivak a regular panelist, and
Tim Russert a second-grader in Buffalo.)
6:30 My Friend Flicka

 

[genius]

Thanks bpatrick!

Hotel Cosmopolitan? Never heard of that soap. Kind of odd that they were still introducing a 15-minute soap with the advent of As the World Turns and Edge of Night. Although, I read a review of As The World Turns from Variety at the time and they didn't like the 30-minute format. Still, Love of Life would expand to 30 minutes in the following year and NBC came up with From These Roots and Young Dr. Malone, their first successful soaps.

 

[bpatrick]

Strictly speaking, Hotel Cosmopolitan was not a
soap but rather a new five-part story played out
each week in the setting of a big-city hotel (NBC's
Modern Romances was the same basic format without
the hotel setting).

The show lasted only a year, then Love Of Life
expanded to 30 minutes. And yes, NBC struck gold
with From These Roots (1958) and Young Dr. Malone
(1959), both of which debuted as 30-minute soaps.

The Brighter Day and The Secret Storm expanded to
30 minutes each in 1962. Brighter Day got the worst
of it, moving to 11:30 AM. It was canceled September
28, 1962. As a rule (some of you who
get Guiding Light in the morning might argue this), soaps
don't perform well before noon; even Love Of Life lost
ground in the '70s after moving to 11:30.

Search For Tomorrow and Guiding Light were the last
soaps to go to 30 minutes, in 1968.

As for ABC, their first soap was General Hospital, in 1963.
The rationale was that soaps take at least a year and a
half to find an audience, and ABC needed some hits fast
having come into the daytime race so late (it didn't field
a full schedule until October 1958).
So in the late '50s and early '60s there were a lot of game
and variety shows on the ABC schedule, because they
either caught on quickly or not at all.

Irna Phillips, creator of GL, ATWT, Brighter Day, and (later)
Another World, had lobbied for the 30-minute soap as far
back as 1954, when she wanted to take GL to 30 minutes.
Procter & Gamble said no, but her persistence led them to
ask her to create a new show as a 30-minute soap.
That was ATWT. Before her death in 1973, she was predicting
that hour-long soaps were the future; she didn't live to see
one of her creations, Another World, become the first hour
soap in January 1975.,