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 20 countdown number 87.
Say kids, what time is it?
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 of the day television was invented.
I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode we covered the premiere of the Kraft Television Theater and all the sliced cheese it sold starting in 1947.
Today we're returning to 1947 for one of the first significant milestones in television for children.
In the afternoon of December 27, 1947, a genial 30 year old man with dark wavy hair and a broad smile, wearing a fringed cowboy shirt and a bolo tie, looked into a television camera at the WNBC Studio 3A in Rockefeller center and called out, say kids, what time is it?
And then from across the stage, about 40 children between the ages of 4 and 10 responded enthusiastically.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Okay gang, let's go.
It's howdy duty time.
It's howdy duty time.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: The host was Bob Smith, a veteran radio announcer from Buffalo, New York, who assumed the moniker of Buffalo Bob alongside a freckle faced marionette in a checkered cowboy shirt and a kerchief known as Howdy Doody.
Children's programming had arrived on television.
Like a lot of early TV, the Howdy Doody show was imported from radio.
In 1946, the NBC Radio network carried a show for kids called the Triple B Ranch. Created by Bob Smith for WGR in Buffalo. The Sunday afternoon broadcast featured songs, western themed stories and comic skits performed by the host as Buffalo Bob. A character called Howdy Doody the All American Boy was the breakout hit of the show, bringing young listeners back every Sunday for his earnest personality and cowboy spirit.
Smith's agent, Martin Stone, quickly recognized the TV potential of his client's squeaky voiced alter ego and arranged a meeting with NBC programming executive Warren Wade. Legend has it that Stone brought along his six year old daughter, whose unfiltered enthusiasm for Howdy, Duty helped persuade Wade to begin planning the show's transition to television.
The Howdy Doody show premiered on Sunday, December 27, 1947 as part of NBC's Puppet Playhouse before shifting to a daily schedule Monday through Friday at 5:30pm conveniently placing the popular show well after school and before the typical American dinner hour.
Puppeteer Frank Paris built the first Howdy puppet. The more familiar version of the puppet was created by Velma Dawson and Howdy's voice was at first performed by Buffalo Bob himself.
The show was sponsored by Colgate Palmolive, which used the platform to advertise toothpaste and shampoo in one of corporate America's first efforts to use television to target its products for children.
In addition to Howdy and Buffalo Bob, the show assembled a colorful cast of characters from the fictional town of Dutyville.
Clarabelle, the silent clown who spoke only with a horn and a seltzer bottle, who was first portrayed by Bob Keeshan, who later found his own stardom as Captain Kangaroo.
Chief Thunder Thud, a Native American known for the catchphrase Cowabunga Princess Summerfall Winter Spring, originally a female Native American puppet who eventually became a live action character.
Sadly, the princess's birthday fell on leap year February 29, so even though she was 16 years old, she'd only had four birthdays.
Mr. Bluster, the pompous mayor of Dutyville known for his loud self serving decrees.
Other characters bore silly names like Dilly Dally, Flub A Dub and Inspector John H. Fadoozle. But none of the characters was more important than the kids in the peanut gallery.
Kids from all over the country could easily imagine themselves in those bleachers.
Howdy Doody proved the viability of programming for and advertising to children and paved the way for other pioneering shows.
Kukla, Fran and ollie premiered on January 12, 1949 on NBC in Chicago. Created by puppeteer Burr Tilstrom and and hosted by singer actress Fran Allison, the show's ad lib gentle humor found a robust following among adults as well as their kids.
The Small Fry Club, hosted by Bob Emery, another former radio personality known for his warm low key style, Junior Jamboree and Telecomics were other early experiments in children's programming. Though mostly local and short lived, Howdy Doody was broadcast live on NBC for 13 years, airing 2,343 episodes from 1947 to 1960.
It was also one of the first shows to be broadcast in color, providing NBC and its parent company with another vehicle to entice consumers to buy RCA's pricey new color TVs when they first went on the market in the mid to late 1950s.
Like Kraft Television Theater before it, Howdy Doody was instrumental in demonstrating the commercial viability of television.
The show provided a daily destination for both children and the advertisers who sought to reach them, proving that kids were a profitable audience.
The template Howdy Doody established lasted for decades, a mix of character driven storytelling, participatory interaction, product tie ins and live performance.
For 2,342 episodes, Clarabelle the Clown remained silent. But at the very end of the show's final broadcast, he spoke his first and only words, whispering goodbye kids.
This brings us to the end of number 87 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode, the premiere of the longest and still running program in television history. Meet the Press.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027.
For more, aim your gizmo to 100yearstv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin and is a producer production of farnovision.
Com.
If it was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:08:30] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy. They laughed at us and how.
But how who got to laugh at now.
