Retro: NYC Tues. Aug. 26, 1958

[Gregg]

Some quick thoughts...

--Why is Channel 5 listed as part of the MBA Network? Is the M Metromedia, the owner? I didn't include it in these listings but Channel 43 Bridgeport CT is listed as ABC and Dumont. I thought 5 was Dumont too in those days.

--There were two American Bandstands on ABC... one with Jim Loinsbury at 3, one with Dick Clark at 4.

--Joe Franklin's Memory Lane was on 7 at 12:30pm. It later moved to 9 where it ran many years late at night. And Franklin is still active, doing celebrity interviews for WBBR Bloomberg Radio.

--Didn't know Shari Lewis had a weekday 9am show called Hi Mom. Is that local or network? I suppose it didn't last long, although her weekly Sat. morning show was on NBC many years and later she was on PBS.

--Ch. 9 doesn't sign on till 1:45, 11 at 2pm, 13 at 2:30... and here 13 is still a commercial independant station.

--Walter Cronkite has only a five minute newscast at 1pm. I suppose Douglas Edwards was still doing the CBS Evening News, although he's not listed at 7:15pm.

--Channel 4's Gabe Pressman is still doing political analysis for the station to this day. He's listed as the 6:30pm newscaster.

--Is the host of CBS's Verdict Is Yours at 3:30 the same Jim McKay who was a longtime ABC sportscaster?

--Didn't know Alan Freed had a daytime teen dance show on Ch. 5 at 5pm. He was a DJ on 1010 WINS credited with coining the phrase Rock and Roll.

--Ch. 9 repeats the same movie at 7:30 and 10pm. The Million Dollar Movie repeats two or three times a day all week long. What was the theory in that? Didn't 9 have enough movies in its library?

--------------------


2 WCBS-TV CBS 4 WRCA-TV NBC 5 WABD MBA 7 WABC-TV ABC
9 WOR-TV Ind. 11 WPIX Ind. 13 WNTA Ind.

Tues. Aug. 26, 1958
NY Journal American TV Magazine

6:30 4 Aqui Se Habla Ingles

7am 2 Follow That Man
4 Today--Dave Garroway

7:30 2 News
7 Cartoons

7:45 2 Laurel & Hardy

8am 2 Stu Erwin
5 Sandy Becker--Children

8:30 2 Topper--Comedy

9am 2 Susie--Comedy
4 Hi Mom--Shari Lewis
7 Beulah--Comedy

9:30 2 My Little Margie
7 Star Playhouse

10am 2 For Love or Money
4 Dough-Re-Mi
5 Movie "Background for Danger"
7 Movie "Pardon My French"

10:30 2 Play Your Hunch
4 Treasure Hunt

11am 2 Arthur Godfrey
4 Price Is Right--Bill Cullen

11:30 2 Top Dollar--Warren Hull
4 Concentration--Hugh Downs
5 Romper Room
7 Dramatically Yours

Noon 2 Love of Life
4 Tic Tac Dough--Jack Barry
7 Cartoons

12:30 2 Search for Tomorrow
4 It Could Be You--Bill Leyden
5 Cartoons--Fred Scott
7 Joe Franklin's Memory Lane

12:45 2 Guiding Light

1pm 2 News--Walter Cronkite
4 Dr. Joyce Brothers
5 Fannie Hurst

1:05 2 Our Miss Brooks

1:30 2 As The World Turns
4 Dial 4 for Drama
5 Movie "Background to Danger"
7 Movie "Romance of The Redwoods"

1:45 9 Health & Medicine

2pm 2 Beat The Clock--Bud Collyer
4 Truth or Consequences--Bob Barker
9 It's Fun to Travel
11 Man to Man

2:15 11 Modern Home

2:30 2 Art Linkletter's House Party
4 Haggis Baggis--Fred Robbins
9 Movie "Flesh & Blood"
11 Movie "Red Planet Mars"
13 Movie "Convoy"

3pm 2 Big Payoff
4 Today Is Yours--Serial
5 TV Reader's Digest
7 American Bandstand--Jim Loinsbury

3:30 2 Verdict Is Yours--Jim McKay
4 From These Roots--Serial
5 Bingo-at-Home--Monty Hall
7 Whom Do You Trust?--Johnny Carson

4pm 2 Brighter Day--Serial
4 Queen for A Day--Jack Bailey
7 American Bandstand--Dick Clark
9 Love Story
11 Movie "Once A Thief"
13 Junior Frolics--Fred Sayles

4;15 2 Secret Storm

4:30 2 Edge of Night
5 Mr. District Attorney--David Brian
9 Life with Elizabeth--Betty White

4:45 4 Modern Romances

5pm 2 I Led Three Lives
4 Movie "Life of The Party"
5 Alan Freed's Big Beat
7 Sir Lancelot
9 Janet Dean
13 Gunslingers

5:30 2 Early Show "Johnny Eager"
7 Mickey Mouse Club
9 I Am The Law
11 Abbott & Costello

6pm 5 Bugs Bunny
7 Little Rascals
9 Roy Rogers
11 Popeye
13 Richard Willis--Makeup & Grooming

6:30 4 News--Gabe Pressman
5 Looney Tunes--Sandy Becker
7 Foreign Legionnaire
11 Amos & Andy
13 Jungle--Animal Adventures

6:40 4 Weather--Pat Hernan

6:45 4 NBC News

7pm 2, 11 News
4 Jackie Gleason--Honeymooners
5 Judge Roy Bean
7 Sports--Howard Cosell
9 Terrytoon Circus--Claude Kirchner
13 Sports-a-Phone

7:05 2 NY Report--Ned Calmer

7:10 2, 11 Weather

7:15 2, 7, 11 News Programs

7:30 2 Name That Tune--George DeWitt
4 Win with A Winner
5 Waterfront--Drama
7 Cheyenne
9 Million Dollar Movie "Shall We Dance?"
11 Showcase of Sports--Red Barber

7:55 11 Baseball: Yankees vs. Kansas City A's

8pm 2 Mr. Adams & Eve
4 The Investigator--Lonnie Chapman
5 Sherlock Holmes
13 Wrestling

8:30 2 Keep Talking--Monte Hall
5 City Assignment
7 Wyatt Earp--Hugh O'Brian

9pm 2 To Tell The Truth--Bud Collyer
4 Summer Theater
5 Movie "The Magic Face"
7 Broken Arrow
9 Harness Racing
13 Sports Playhouse "The Knockout"

9:30 2 Spotlight Playhouse "Windfall"
4 Bob Cummings--Comedy
7 Pantomime Quiz--Mike Stokey

10pm 2 Bid 'n' Buy--Bert Parks
4 The Californians
7 Mystery Theater "Call The Police"
9 Million Dollar Movie "Shall We Dance?"
13 Victory Playhouse "Tunisian Victory"

10:30 2 Our Miss Brooks
4 Mike Hammer--Darren McGavin
5 Racket Squad
7 26 Men

10:50 11 Showcase of Sports--Red Barber

11pm 2, 4, 11 News Reports
5 Movie "Passport to Alcatraz"
7 Shock Theater "Murder Is News"

11:10 2 Weather & Sports
4 Weather--Tex Antoine

11:15 2 Late Show "Kentucky"
4 Tonight--Jack Paar
11 The Tracer

11:30 9 Times Sq. Playhouse "The Eyeglasses"
13 Combat

Midnight 9 Beat The Champions

1am 2 Late Late Show "Story of Louis Pasteur"

 

[wbhist]

A few things:
- "MBA" might have been a reference to what Channel 5's owner was called by this time - Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation. (Don't know what the A stood for, though.) The DuMont network was dead since 1955-56, and it was a few months prior to these listings that the board of what in the interim was the DuMont Broadcasting Corporation (with the two remaining stations, WABD and Washington, DC's WTTG, recast as independents) voted to change its name to the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation. (And it was in over a week after these listings - on Sept. 7 - that Channel 5 became WNEW-TV, in part to further distance itself from its DuMont past, and also to conform the calls to its 1130 AM sister station and their just-started FM outlet at 102.7 which signed on about Sept. 1.)
- From what I could tell, Hi Mom was local. Shari didn't last long, later on the Ritts puppets were the hosts. It lasted until about 1960-61.
- Million Dollar Movie ran the same movie all week - twice a night, plus "matinee" showings on weekends - from its 1954 debut up to September 1968. (Some weeks had what they called "album weeks" on which a different film was shown every night - but at this point, such times were rare.) After revamping its weeknight lineup sans "M$M" with the new syndicated What's My Line?, The Steve Allen Show, Twilight Zone reruns and a local-based talk show, Sound Off! hosted by Malachy McCourt, WOR by October 1968 ditched the McCourt show, moved TZ elsewhere in the schedule and restored M$M, reconstituting it as running a different film each night as it would remain until it finally ended by the late '80's. I think the theory behind WOR's programming M$M as from 1954 to '68 was they were treating the films as they would at a movie theatre which ran the same films for a fixed period. A few other WOR movie shows had this same theory (the 1960's late-afternoon/early evening Movie of the Week, and two movie programs from the 1970-71 season - one in the late morning, one in the early afternoon [can't say which title each such series went by] - that ran the same movie all week - except the movie at 10 A.M. was different from the one at 1 P.M.). I'd say WOR's film library, at its peak, was roughly half what WCBS had at its disposal (I think Channel 2 had about 2,000 films in its library at one point).
- From the late 1950's until 1962, WPIX had educational programming until 2 P.M. - after the 1961-62 school season ended, Channel 11 expanded its broadcast day to start at 8 A.M., while the educational shows moved to what was transformed into non-commercial WNDT.
- And shouldn't it be Jim Lounsbury, and the J-A did a typo? By the early 1970's Lounsbury was doing occasional sub-announcing work for both WABC-TV and WOR-TV - while working in radio exclusively for UPI, anchoring news hourlies. There's a clip on YouTube of a Channel 7 commercial break from Aug. 11, 1973 where Lounsbury was heard over the "zooming 7 animation" ID, promo'ing an upcoming edition of Like It Is.
- In those days WABC ran movies in AM and PM times (as The Morning Feature and The Afternoon Show, respectively); both shows ended in fall 1958 when ABC debuted its first daytime lineup.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

- From what I could tell, Hi Mom was local. Shari didn't last long, later on the Ritts puppets were the hosts. It lasted until about 1960-61.

Definitely local. The 9-10 AM ET hour was local for the east coast, as that
is when NBC refed the first hour of Today to the Central Time Zone,
where 7 CT was the second hour live and 8 CT the first hour refeed.

And speaking of shows with refeeds, where is Captain Kangaroo at 8 AM on
channel 2 (CBS)? The show was probably still being done live, so maybe
he was on vacation that week? Here too, CBS did a refeed of the show
9-10 AM ET for the midwest (and a few ET stations that carried it at 9).

 

[wbhist]

Another point: The film Channel 5 showed at 11 P.M. was under the Five Star Movie banner. The program started originally as an ostensible summer replacement for Night Beat which, in its final year on the air, was hosted by John Wingate; alas, come the fall, Five Star Movie remained (cheaper to show old movies, apparently). That title ended up becoming famous for being the first of a group of Sunday afternoon movies, where it would hold into the 1980's.

Their 10 A.M. skein was The 10 O'Clock Movie; the 1:30 repeat was as the Late Lunch Movie. Both titles remained in place well into the mid-1960's. I think the 9 P.M. movie was called the After Dinner Movie at this point.

As for Freed: It was around this point that his run at 1010 WINS ended, and he soon joined WABC (770 AM) in the period before it was moved full-time to Top 40. He lost both his WABC and WNEW-TV Big Beat jobs in 1959 in the wake of the payola scandals.

And oh yes, the Verdict Is Yours host was indeed the same one who later became famous for ABC's Wide World of Sports.

Furthermore, notice The Honeymooners on Channel 4? That station was the first to run the "Classic 39" in syndication, on Tuesdays during the 1957-58 season. It was in the fall of 1958 that the Kramdens and Nortons first took up permanent residence at (and on) WPIX (Channel 11).

It should also be noted that WOR was the first New York commercial independent VHF station to air in color, starting in 1960; WPIX didn't start airing in color until spring 1965, and WNEW was the last to do so, that fall.