What America was watching in prime time 50 years ago this fall (1956)

[bpatrick]

In "The Great TV Sitcom Book," Rick Mitz didn't
pick any outstanding new sitcoms for the 1956-57
season, but he listed shows of all kinds that aired
that year and proclaimed, "Not a bad season. Not
a bad season." If you're old enough, or have seen
some of these shows in reruns, see if you agree.
Source: Brooks and Marsh.

MONDAY

ABC: 7 PM Kukla, Fran And Ollie
7:15 News--John Daly
7:30 Bold Journey
8 PM Danny Thomas Show (last season
before moving to CBS)
8:30 Voice Of Firestone
9 PM Life Is Worth Living (Bishop Sheen)
9:30 Lawrence Welk's Top Tunes And
New Talent
10:30 (Local)

CBS: 7:15 News--Douglas Edwards (6:45 in
some markets)
7:30 Adventures Of Robin Hood
8 PM George Burns And Gracie Allen Show
8:30 Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts
9 PM I Love Lucy
9:30 December Bride
10 PM Studio One

NBC: 7:30 Nat King Cole Show
7:45 News--Chet Huntley and David
Brinkley become anchors this fall
8 PM Adventures Of Sir Lancelot
8:30 Stanley (Buddy Hackett plays the
operator of a hotel newsstand--
Carol Burnett and Paul Lynde are
also on this show.)
9 PM Medic (replaced in late November
by a game show, Can Do, hosted
by Robert Alda, Alan's dad)
9:30 Robert Montgomery Presents (he was
Elizabeth Montgomery's dad)
10:30 (Local)

TUESDAY

ABC: 7 PM Kukla, Fran And Ollie
7:15 News
7:30 Conflict/Cheyenne
8:30 Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp
9 PM Broken Arrow
9:30 DuPont Theater
10 PM It's Polka Time
10:30 (Local)

CBS: 7:15 News
7:30 Name That Tune (George DeWitt)
8 PM Phil Silvers Show
8:30 The Brothers (one is Gale Gordon)
9 PM Herb Shriner Show
9:30 Red Skelton Show
10 PM $64,000 Question
10:30 Do You Trust Your Wife? (later
Who Do You Trust?)

NBC: 7:30 Jonathan Winters Show
7:45 News
8 PM Big Surprise (Mike Wallace hosts a
big-money quiz show)
8:30 Noah's Ark (a rare failure for Jack Webb,
about two veterinarians)
9 PM Jane Wyman Show
9:30 Armstrong Circle Theater (moving to
CBS the next year)/
Kaiser Aluminum Hour
10:30 Break The $250,000 Bank (last version
of the original show, with Bert Parks)

WEDNESDAY

ABC: 7 PM Kukla, Fran And Ollie
7:15 News
7:30 Disneyland
8:30 Navy Log (picked up from CBS)
9 PM Adventures Of Ozzie & Harriet
9:30 Ford Theater
10 PM Wednesday Night Fights

CBS: 7:15 News
7:30 Giant Step (another Bert Parks show,
with kids competing for scholarships)
8 PM Arthur Godfrey Show
9 PM The Millionaire
9:30 I've Got A Secret
10 PM U.S. Steel Hour/20th Century-Fox Hour

NBC: 7:30 Eddie Fisher Show
7:45 News
8 PM Adventures Of Hiram Holliday (Wally Cox
as an unlikely globetrotting explorer)
8:30 Father Knows Best
9 PM Kraft Television Theater
10 PM This Is Your Life
10:30 Twenty-One (Van Doren beats Stempel
on Dec. 5, the show moves to Mondays
in January '57.)

THURSDAY

ABC: 7 PM Kukla, Fran And Ollie
7:15 News
7:30 Lone Ranger
8 PM Circus Time (Paul Winchell, Jerry Mahoney,
and Knucklehead Smith host a combination
of circus acts and rock 'n' roll stars.)
9 PM Wire Service
10 PM Ozark Jubilee

CBS: 7:15 News
7:30 Sgt. Preston Of The Yukon
8 PM Bob Cummings Show
8:30 Climax (drama anthology)
9:30 Playhouse 90 (to 11)

NBC: 7:30 Dinah Shore Show
7:45 News
8 PM You Bet Your Life
8:30 Dragnet
9 PM People's Choice (anyone remember
Cleo, the talking basset hound?)
9:30 Ford Show Starring Tennessee Ernie
Ford (named for the sponsor, Ford
Motor Company, and not for the Ol'
Peapicker)
10 PM Lux Video Theater

FRIDAY

ABC: 7 PM Kukla, Fran And Ollie
7:15 News
7:30 Adventures Of Rin Tin Tin
8 PM Adventures Of Jim Bowie
8:30 Crossroads (dramas about ministers)
9 PM Treasure Hunt (original, with Jan Murray)
9:30 The Vise
10 PM Ray Anthony Show (a more sophisticated
Lawrence Welk clone)

CBS: 7:15 News
7:30 My Friend Flicka
8 PM West Point Story
8:30 Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater
9 PM The Crusader
9:30 Schlitz Playhouse Of Stars
10 PM The Lineup
10:30 Person To Person (a more informal
Edward R. Murrow)

NBC: 7:30 Eddie Fisher Show
7:45 News
8 PM Life Of Riley
8:30 Walter Winchell Show (he tries a
variety show like that of rival
columnist Ed Sullivan)
9 PM On Trial
9:30 Big Story
10 PM Gillette Cavalcade Of Sports
10:45 Red Barber's Corner

SATURDAY

ABC: 7:30 Famous Film Festival (movies from
the UK)
9 PM Lawrence Welk Show
10 PM Masquerade Party
10:30 (Local)

CBS: 7 PM Beat The Clock
7:30 The Buccaneers
8 PM Jackie Gleason Show
9 PM Gale Storm Show
9:30 Hey Jeannie (Jeannie is Scottish
comedian Jeannie Carson)
10 PM Gunsmoke
10:30 High Finance

NBC: 7:30 People Are Funny
8 PM Perry Como Show
9 PM Caesar's Hour
10 PM George Gobel Show
10:30 Your Hit Parade

SUNDAY

ABC: 7 PM You Asked For It
7:30 Original Amateur Hour
8:30 Press Conference
9 PM Omnibus (Alistair Cooke)
10:30 (Local)

CBS: 7 PM Lassie
7:30 Jack Benny Show/Private
Secretary (Ann Sothern)
8 PM Ed Sullivan Show
9 PM G.E. Theater (Ronald Reagan
is host)
9:30 Alfred Hitchcock Presents
10 PM $64,000 Challenge
10:30 What's My Line?

NBC: 7 PM Tales Of The 77th Bengal Lancers
7:30 Circus Boy (Micky Dolenz of The Monkees,
then known as Mickey Braddock)
8 PM Steve Allen Show
9 PM Goodyear TV Playhouse/Alcoa Hour
10 PM Loretta Young Show
10:30 National Bowling Champions

 

[mbayus]

I was 4 years old in 1956 but I watched a lot of tv. Here are the shows I don't remember.

MONDAY:

NBC:
9 PM Can Do, hosted
by Robert Alda, Alan's dad


ABC:
10 PM It's Polka Time
10:30 (Local)

CBS:
8:30 The Brothers (one is Gale Gordon)

NBC:
8 PM Big Surprise (Mike Wallace hosts a
big-money quiz show)
Kaiser Aluminum Hour
10:30 Break The $250,000 Bank (last version
of the original show, with Bert Parks)

WEDNESDAY
CBS
7:30 Giant Step (another Bert Parks show,
with kids competing for scholarships)

NBC:
8 PM Adventures Of Hiram Holliday (Wally Cox
as an unlikely globetrotting explorer)
10:30 Twenty-One (Van Doren beats Stempel
on Dec. 5, the show moves to Mondays
in January '57.)

THURSDAY

ABC:
8 PM Circus Time (Paul Winchell, Jerry Mahoney,
and Knucklehead Smith host a combination
of circus acts and rock 'n' roll stars.)
9 PM Wire Service


FRIDAY

ABC:
8:30 Crossroads (dramas about ministers)
9 PM Treasure Hunt (original, with Jan Murray)
9:30 The Vise
10 PM Ray Anthony Show (a more sophisticated
Lawrence Welk clone)

CBS:
8 PM West Point Story
9 PM The Crusader

NBC:
8:30 Walter Winchell Show (he tries a
variety show like that of rival
columnist Ed Sullivan)
9 PM On Trial
9:30 Big Story

SATURDAY

ABC: 7:30 Famous Film Festival (movies from
the UK)

CBS:
7:30 The Buccaneers
9:30 Hey Jeannie (Jeannie is Scottish
comedian Jeannie Carson)
10 PM Gunsmoke
10:30 High Finance

NBC:

SUNDAY

ABC:
8:30 Press Conference
NBC
7 PM Tales Of The 77th Bengal Lancers
10:30 National Bowling Champions
I do remember Cleo, the talking basset hound?)

 

[bpatrick]

You don't remember Gunsmoke? Or you don't
remember watching it in 1956?

Except for Twenty-One, Treasure Hunt, and
The West Point Story, none of the shows
you listed made it back for the 1957-58 season.
(Treasure Hunt moved to NBC daytime.) And
if you lived in a two-station market, chances are
you didn't even get the ABC shows you mentioned.
So don't feel too badly; I suspect that most people
who were around then don't remember most of the
shows you named. Mike Wallace, for one, doesn't
want to remember The Big Surprise (or any other
game show he hosted).

 

[LKellerIII]

Fascinating - thanks for that list, bpatrick. I was also 4 years old, but my parents didn't have a TV until 57. ABC was a perennial 3rd place in the ratings at least until the late 1960s. It was obvious why - in 1956 at least.

 

[bpatrick]

The 1956-57 season was the last in which Bob Kintner
was running programming at ABC. Kintner had a taste
for highbrow programming such as Omnibus and Voice
Of Firestone (which he got from CBS and NBC, respectively).
He would go to NBC, take Omnibus with him, persuade Walt
Disney to change networks in 1961 because NBC had color,
and champion news and documentaries, especially after FCC
chair Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" speech in '61.

Kintner's replacement at ABC, Ollie Treyz, was a bread-
and-butter man. During his tenure (1957-62), he gave
America such hits as:

Maverick
Lawman
The Rifleman
Sugarfoot
77 Sunset Strip
Hawaiian Eye
Surfside 6
The Untouchables
The Real McCoys
The Donna Reed Show
Leave It To Beaver (taken from CBS)
The Flintstones
My Three Sons
Ben Casey

Around 1960 a special Nielsen survey of the 70 markets
in which all three networks had an affiliate showed ABC
to be first or second in nearly all of them. The result was
a mass overhaul of NBC's schedule for 1961-62.

ABC had a couple more stellar seasons in the '60s; it
became number two in 1964-65 on the strength of Bewitched,
Peyton Place, The Addams Family, Shindig, 12 O'Clock High,
and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. 1969-70 was another
good year; even though ABC remained in third it hit with
Marcus Welby, M.D., Movie Of The Week, The Brady Bunch,
The Courtship Of Eddie's Father, Room 222, Love, American Style,
and (in January '70) The Johnny Cash Show.

But in '69 ABC hired as head programmer Marty Starger, who,
like Kintner, had a taste for the highbrow (anyone remember
his 1973 summer series about the Strauss family of composers?).
After a disastrous 1973-74 season, Starger left to start his own
production company; Fred Pierce ran things until the summer of
'75 when Fred Silverman, a bread-and-butter man like Treyz,
became ABC's chief programmer. ABC finished the regular season
of 1975-76 a whisker behind a complacent CBS, then became
number one in the fall of '76, holding that position for three years,
even after Silverman went to NBC.

 

[nuzguy]

I was ten years old and remember the shows very well. Each represented a pioneering effort in television and was highly preferable to some of the garbage on the air today in the name of "entertinment and information."

 

[bpatrick]

Television was the poorer after Omnibus and
Voice Of Firestone left the airwaves in the
early '60s (never mind ABC's attempt to revive
Omnibus as a series of specials in the early '80s,
which critics likened to The Ed Sullivan Show).
In 1956 the era in which ABC programming resembled
the radio network it was originally, NBC-Blue, was
coming to an end. Ratings considerations, you know...

But looking at the schedules of all three networks,
I could have found far more to watch in prime time
then than I can with who-knows-how-many-hundred
channels now. Indeed, growing up in two-station
Raleigh/Durham in the late '50s and early '60s that was
exactly the case.

There's another reason why these '50s lineups seem
to have more diversity: demographics. Westerns, variety
shows, and game shows generally appeal to people over 50,
an audience advertisers don't want. Notice their virtual
disappearance from prime time during and after the '70s,
when "demographics" became THE buzzword at the networks.

 

[mbayus]

I do remember Gunsmoke, I just didn't get it off the list. As I said, I was 4, and was not likely to be up at that time, but if I had a bad dream, or for some reason I was up, well anyway, it was one of my dad's favorites, and it was always on our tv on saturday night.
just an intresting side note, my dad new how to fix tvs and always took care of ours when it broke.
Thanks for the info.

 

[LKellerIII]

I don't have anything to add, except to say Thanks for a very interesting discussion. As for staying up late - my parents went lax on bedtime on Friday and Saturday nights a couple of years later...1960-63. No Gunsmoke in my house - my father wouldn't watch westerns, but I have fond memories of staying up late Friday night to see Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock.

 

[Tim L]

FRIDAY

ABC:
8:30 Crossroads (dramas about ministers)

I was watching Sky Angel's (Christian Satellite Service) "Inside Sky Angel" show the other night as they were mentioning some new programming..Catholic Channel FamilyLand is airing a program called "Crossroads" And from the few preview clips I saw, It looked like it could very well be this particular ABC series..Black and White clips..definitely 1950's dress..Had beeen wondering where this show was from..

edit:The Classic TV archive has a page for this series..Very impressive casting in many of the episodes

http://ctva.freewebpage.org/US/Anthology/Crossroads.htm