Here’s the schedule for NBC’s experimental station W2XBS in New York City for the week beginning Sunday, March 24th, 1940, a day filled with Easter celebrations. Surprisingly, the week offered only one sporting event, a baseball game on Saturday, March 30th.
I’d be interested in learning more about two programs shown on Wednesday, March 27th: something called a “digest of news events in March” and something else called “television reporter.”
There was also a variety show on Saturday as well as another installment of “Art for Your Sake” with Dr. Bernard Myers.
Sunday, March 24th, 1940
11:30AM – Protestant Easter service, Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, officiating; Westminster Choir, directed by Dr. John Finley Williamson.
12:00PM – Fifth Avenue Easter parade, at Fiftieth Street.
12:30PM – Roman Catholic Easter service, the Rt. Rev. Mgr. Fulton J. Sheen, officiating; Paulist Choristers, directed by Father William J. Finn.
3:00-3:30PM – Rockefeller Center Choristers, directed by John R. Jones, in an Easter concert at Rockefeller Center Plaza.
3:30-5:00PM – Film, “King of Kings.” Cecil B. DeMille’s production.
8:30-9:30PM – Pages and guides on Broadway, a minstrel show; also televues picture contest.Wednesday, March 27th, 1940
3:30-4:30PM – Films, “Aesop’s Fables”; “Fighting Trooper,” with Kermit Maynard.
6:45-7:00PM – News, Lowell Thomas.
8:30-9:30PM – Digest of news events in March.
9:30-9:45PM – Television reporter.Thursday, March 28th, 1940
3:30-4:30PM – Films, “Florida’s Golden Harvest,” an industrial short; “Yankee Doodle Goes to Town”; “Natchez,” a travelogue.
6:45-7:00PM – News, Lowell Thomas.
8:30-9:30PM – To be announced.Friday, March 29th, 1940
3:30-4:30PM – Film, “Thanks for Listening,” with Pinky Tomlin.
6:45-7:00PM – News, Lowell Thomas.
8:30-9:30PM – “A Good Place to Visit,” documentary program on the history of a furniture dealer.Saturday, March 30th, 1940
3:00-5:00PM – Baseball: Fordham University vs. St. Peter’s College, at Fordham Field.
7:30-8:00PM – “Art for Your Sake,” Dr. Bernard Myers.
8:30-9:00PM – Carveth Wells, explorer and lecturer, on “Tamest Africa, or Debunking Big Game Hunting.”
9:00-9:30PM – Variety show.
Some comments:
Lowell Thomas’ nightly 15 minute radio news and commentary program on NBC (for Sun Oil’s “Sunoco” gasoline) was “simulcast” on W2XBS [soon to become WNBT on July 1, 1941] during this period. It was just Lowell reading the news of the day before an NBC microphone, with an occasional visual aid here and there; if you were listening on your radio at the same time, you weren’t missing much. These programs were televised to about a few hundred people in the New York area- those who had TV sets.
“Thanks For Listening” was a B-movie, released only three years before, starring singer/songwriter Pinky Tomlin {his most famous song was “The Object Of My Affection”}, who later co-starred in a syndicated TV series, “WATERFRONT”, during the mid-’50s.
NBC had access to those kind of films, as well as “experimental” short subjects, industrial and commercial films, and old silent cartoons and comedies, as well as several silent features, including the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille version of “King Of Kings”. The major movie studios wouldn’t allow NBC or CBS access to their more “recent” feature films because, even during this “experimental period”, they perceived TV as a possible threat to their box office profits and weekly theater attendance…and when TV finally “expanded” into a major entertainment medium by 1948, the studios were correct, as they saw weekly movie attendance shrivel as much as one-third by 1953. It wasn’t until Walt Disney made his famous (and profitable) deal with ABC to produce “DISNEYLAND” in the fall of 1954 did most of the major studios realize that going into TV production wasn’t such a bad idea, after all…and neither was the idea they should “lease” most of their pre-1948 features to TV by 1956….that, however, was in the future.
“King Of Kings”, the 1927 silent DeMille version, was recently shown just before Christmas, on Turner Classic Movies, with a new score.