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 back to 100 Years of Television. This is episode number 37, countdown number 70, the entire world as it happens 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 first appeared on Earth.
I'm Paul Shatzkin, 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 watched television wrestle with some of America's oldest contradictions. Cast as a television comedy in Amos and Andy and Today Is well today Sylvester L. Pat Weaver, Jr. Was born in Los Angeles in 1908 and grew up amid the creative new industries of the 20th century, film and radio.
His father, Sylvester Sr. Was a retired US Naval officer who operated a roofing business, but his mother was Eleanor Isabel Dixon, a former silent film actress with strong ties to Hollywood.
After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1930 with a degree in English, Pat returned to Los Angeles, but it didn't take him long working for his father to realize that he much preferred the creative life he had discovered in college.
He returned east to New York and found work writing advertising copy for radio programs, where he quickly demonstrated a knack for combining the arts of persuasion and Entertainment.
By the 1940s, Pat Weaver was working for Young and Rubicam, one of Madison Avenue's most influential advertising agencies.
During the period when broadcasting was still dominated by single sponsor programming, Weaver began advocating what he called the magazine approach, wherein multiple advertisers could buy commercial segments, which gave the networks more creative control over their content.
In 1949, NBC President Niles Trammell hired Weaver to be the network's vice president of programming.
A long tenured veteran of the network, Trammell had barely survived the Paley raids that that lured top talent and hit shows like Amos and Andy to cbs. But rather than stay on to rebuild, he stepped down in 1951.
Having already established his bona fides, Weaver was elevated to president of NBC, leaving him free to implement his approach to programming and sponsorship.
Broadcasting has always been perceived by the public as a programming medium, a source of entertainment news and information.
But the true mission of commercial broadcasting has always been not to deliver programs to the audience, but to deliver the audience to the advertisers.
With advertising in the driver's seat, it was often the ad salesman who rose through the industry's executive ranks.
Weaver was not strictly an ad salesman, but his grasp of the underpinnings of the business put him in a unique position to redefine the industry.
By the time of Pat Weaver's ascent, the major networks at the time NBC, CBS and dumont had established video beachheads through much of the broadcast day.
The evenings, prime time were filled with prestige dramas, variety shows and the big name performers who drew large national audiences.
The afternoons offered the soaps and game shows aimed squarely at homemakers.
Late nights occasionally aired experimental programming.
That left the early mornings an empty corridor randomly filled with test patterns, local news, old movies or low budget talk shows. The networks had yet to crack the code that could switch televisions on at sunrise and keep them glowing all day.
That unclaimed frontier is where Pat Weaver's magazine model found fertile ground.
The challenge was figuring out what kind of program would appeal to the morning audience.
Weaver figured it should be credible enough to deliver the news, yet light enough to accompany breakfast, nimble enough to pivot from a political interview to a cooking demonstration, and intimate enough to feel like a friend had just dropped in for coffee.
With that formula on the drawing board, Pat Weaver decided that on January 14, 1952, every day on on NBC would begin with the Today show.
To give his new morning program a touch of gravitas, Weaver built a set with the kinetic aesthetic of a bustling newsroom inside the RCA Exhibition hall on West 49th street in Manhattan.
Floor to ceiling windows facing the street turned passers by into an informal outside. The studio audience in the background, clacking typewriters, ringing phones and reporters roving between desks conjured the illusion that Today was plugged into the news cycle. Lending just the right jolt of up and at em, Weaver hoped, would get people tuning into NBC first thing in the morning.
To host the inaugural episodes of Today, Weaver turned to Dave Garraway, by then a veteran of radio and television with a relaxed conversational style who one critic the man with the soft sell.
Garraway started his career as a page at NBC in New York before returning to his native Chicago in the late 1930s, where he became a popular radio announcer and disc jockey.
In 1948, NBC tapped him to host Garraway at large, a primetime TV variety show out of Chicago that showcased his innate ability for putting guests at ease.
Looking to set a tone closer to a conversation over coffee than a formal newscast, Garraway's gift for projecting warmth through the camera made him Weaver's first and only choice to launch Today.
When Today went on the air at 7am Eastern, Garraway welcomed viewers to a new kind of program, a day to day picture of the entire world. As it happens, with that first morning broadcast, Weaver's magazine model went into high gear.
Segments rotated between news and commentary, human interest features, kitschy homemaking tips and fluffy entertainment.
All of the content was under NBC's direct editorial control, and multiple advertisers bought time in blocks, just like they would purchase pages in a glossy weekly like Life or Look.
Companies like General Electric and American Tobacco were quick to buy in and eager to reach the new audience Today promised to deliver.
However, despite all of Pat Weaver's meticulous planning, today's dawning was less than stellar.
In 1952, Americans, mostly attuned to TV in the evenings had yet to adopt the habit of switching their set on before breakfast.
Mornings were still for coffee and radio, newspapers or just getting out the door.
Many NBC affiliates didn't even carry the program, still preferring their own local content.
Some critics lauded the new format but doubted it would change long established household habits. Weaver had created a new day part but still had to convince people to try.
Turned out that what he needed was not a congenial, cultured host, but a monkey.
About a month after Today launched, a Garraway brought on his first co host, a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs.
Dressed in miniature suits, Muggs posed with celebrities who gamely took part in his antics.
The gimmick worked, ratings climbed, advertisers warmed to the show, and J. Fred Muggs became a merchandising phenomenon.
Garraway reportedly resented being upstaged by a simian, but but Muggs brought TODAY the time it needed to establish a footprint in Weaver's new realm.
The mix of news, interviews, features, remotes and the occasional spectacle became the template for all the network morning shows that followed, like ABC's Good Morning America and CBS's Morning News.
It provided the template for local variations as well.
By the late 1950s, Today had rearranged America's morning routines, further tightening television's grip on the country and its post war culture.
What began as a gamble in an empty quarter of the broadcast day reigns as one of the longest running programs in television history.
Like its older sibling Meet the Press for more than 70 years, Today has anchored NBC's Mornings Through wars, elections, cultural shifts and technological changes.
Hosts from Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters to Bryant Gumbel and Savannah Guthrie have come and gone, but the format has remained remarkably resilient.
For some 30 years, today's juggernaut remained unchallenged to top the morning ratings.
ABC's Good Morning America first overtook to date in the early 1980s, and the top spot has traded hands several times since.
Pat Weaver had set out to fill a neglected day part and in so doing, created an institution. But in his mind, mornings were just the beginning. There was still one more frontier to conquer. Late night. And we'll get to that in a future installment of the Countdown to the Centennial.
This brings us to the end of number 70 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when America's favorite family comes to the screen in the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
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 production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:12:04] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy. They laughed at us and ha.
But ho ho ho, who got the lives right now.
