Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly.
They told Marconi wireless was a phony. It's the same old cry.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to 100 Years of Television. This is episode number 19, Countdown 88. The phones lit up for 100 weeks that started in October 2025.
This podcast is going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary of the day television as we know it was invented.
I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode we talked about the image Orthicon, the video tube that combined all the scientific advances from over a decade into a camera worthy of TV's post war boom.
Today we're going to start taking a closer look at the programming that all that tech sophistication enabled.
On the evening of May 7, 1947, RCA made image Orthicon. Powered television cameras came to Life at NBC's Studio 9H in Rockefeller center, the same studio where a decade earlier maestro Arturo Toscanini had made NBC a cultural force with live broadcasts of the NBC Symphony.
The new show was called Craft Television Theater and represented a turning point for the new medium in two respects.
First, it was live theater. Like Broadway on the air, it was not filmed, canned or recycled from radio.
Kraft Television Theater was written and produced for tv, performed live by marquee actors and broadcast into American living rooms in real time.
It was also American advertising first serious foray into the new realm of television.
The FCC had permitted commercial television to begin on July 1, 1941. That was covered in Countdown 91 Bulova Time. But the war put the whole proposition on hold.
Before the advent of television, advertising had a long history with radio that reflected the medium's rudimentary origins, with none of which were overtly commercial.
Radio started in the early 20th century with amateur wireless experiments before finding its way into military and maritime applications.
There was initially no demand for home Entertainment.
But by 1920, with the addition of the circuitry pioneered by the likes of Edwin Armstrong and Reginald Fessenden, radios were finding their way into American homes. And companies like Westinghouse, General Electric and RCA began broadcasting regular programming to stimulate radio sales.
The first radio station to offer regular programming KDKA in Pittsburgh went on the air on November 2, 1920, broadcasting the results of that day's presidential election.
This established a precedent for broadcasting as a public service, not a source of revenue. The precedent didn't last very long.
On August 28, 1922, radio station WEAF in Queens, New York broadcast the first paid for content transmitted over the airwaves.
WEAF was operated by AT&T, the company that made its money transmitting signals over wires, not air.
Envisioning radio as an extension of its existing business, the company proposed to engage in toll broadcasting, where organizations could pay to use the airwaves just as they paid to use telephone lines.
WEAF's first paid for broadcast was a 10 minute segment paid for by the Queensborough Corporation, a real estate developer promoting properties in Jackson Heights.
The ad, if you can really even call it that, wasn't a jingle or a hard sell pitch. It was a spoken essay read by an announcer extolling the virtues of a new suburban lifestyle.
Though the effort was modest by modern standards, this moment was pivotal. For the first time, a third party had paid a radio station to reach a mass audience.
That broadcast from Queens in 1922 set the model for the decades that followed.
In 1924, AT&T leased weaf to RCA, which folded it into the national broadcasting company, NBC in 1926. The first true national radio network, NBC was structured around a sustaining sponsor model where advertisers would fund entire programs in exchange for on air promotions.
The result was a slate of programs like the A and P Gypsies sponsored by the grocery chain Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. The Ipana Troubadours, sponsored by Ipana Toothpaste from Bristol Myers, the Voice of Firestone, sponsored by the Firestone tire and Rubber Co. And the city Service Concerts sponsored by City Service Oil Company, which is today known as Citgo.
These and dozens of other programs promoted America's most familiar brands. Even RCA got into the act, sponsoring the prestigious Arturo Toscanini in the NBC Symphony Orchestra as a vehicle for promoting both the NBC network and RCA's own line of radios and phonographs.
At the center of this web of broadcasters and advertisers, one firm ruled the roost. J. Walter Thompson.
From its roots in print advertising in the 1860s, JWT became the dominant force in radio. In the 1920s and 30s, JWT crafted radio programs around clients like Kraft Foods, Lever Brothers, the Ford Motor Company, General Foods and Westinghouse, seamlessly embedding advertising to broadcast entertainment.
With such single sponsor programming, advertisers not talent, controlled the tone, style and even the casting of radio shows.
The agency's success in radio dramas and music programs like the Kraft Music hall and the Lux Radio Theater made JWT the go to firm for brands looking to advertise on the air.
JWT's access to all the essential talent producers, writers, announcers put the agency in the driver's seat for any future shifts in the industry.
When television came out of the gate after the war, JWT remained cautious.
Early broadcasts were clunky, production costs were high, the audiences were minuscule and the visual demands of the new medium posed creative challenges that neither radio producers nor ad agencies were fully prepared for.
But once the technology was proven and TV sets began to sell, audience surveys revealed that viewers recalled more than just the shows. They remembered the sponsors.
While JWT and NBC tested several formats, Kraft's own ad team pushed JWT to mount a full hour show firm in their conviction that high minded drama would appeal to viewers and elevate their brand.
Keen to promote a new line of processed cheese products, the individually wrapped Kraft cheese slices, the company agreed to foot the bill for a 13 week trial starting in the spring of 1947.
The debut episode of Kraft Television Theater was an adaptation of Elizabeth McFadden's 1933 Broadway play Double Door. Directed by Fred Coe and Delbert Mann and and featuring actors John Barrowgray and Eleanor Wilson.
The program was narrated by Ed Hurlihy, whose voice would become familiar to TV viewers over the next 30 years.
Trade magazines reported a tremendous surge in demand for Kraft cheese slices immediately after the debut of Kraft Television Theater.
In oral histories archived by the Television Academy, ad executives recalled the phones lit up at Kraft headquarters.
A television magazine reader poll noted that Kraft Television Theater had achieved the highest sponsor recall of any program on the air, effectively dispelling whatever doubts Madison Avenue may have still harbored for the potential of Television.
For 11 years from 1947 to 1958, Kraft Television Theater ran more than 650 live episodes on NBC and ABC and showcased a memorable array of actors, directors and writers.
Future stars like James Dean, Grace Kelly, Rod Steiger, Helen Hayes and Paul Newman all made appearances during the salad days of their careers.
Future Hollywood directors like Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman and George Roy Hill cut their teeth learning how to choreograph actors and block cameras across a tight studio floor. Starting with the adaptations of existing plays or short stories, the form quickly evolved to inspire original writing better suited for the small screen's intimacy and immediacy.
Stories of marriage war, ambition, politics and crime offered viewers something more substantial than puppets, pratfalls and vaudeville style hijinks.
The success of Kraft Television Theater inspired what some look back on fondly as the golden age of live television.
Its success spawned a wave of imitators Filco Television Playhouse, Studio One, Goodyear Television Playhouse and Playhouse 90 and other shows that gave television a style distinct from radio, film or theater.
But despite the highbrow intentions, let's not forget that it all started with the imperative and to sell more cheese.
This brings us to the end of number 88 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when we look at TV for children with the premiere of Howdy Doody in 1947.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7th, 2027. For more, aim the gizmo of your choice to 100 Years tv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:12:02] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy. They laughed at us and how but ho ho ho who got the lives out now.
