WTMJ-TV Schedule, Week of December 28th, 1947

Here’s the schedule for station WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the week starting Sunday, December 28th, 1947, straight from the weekly television listings printed in The Milwaukee Journal [1]. The station was off the air on Mondays and Tuesdays and filled the bulk of its schedule with news programs, movies, short film programs and the occasional variety program.

A special half-hour variety program was broadcast on Thursday, January 1st, 1948–New Year’s Day–from 3-3:30PM. A special film program aired the same day from 2-2:30PM, but what it consisted of is unknown. Also broadcast during the week were two more installments of The Lost Jungle, a table tennis tournament, two basketball games, a wrestling match and, as part of Schuster’s Open House, news highlights of 1947.

Sunday, December 28th, 1947
8:00PM – Musical Film.
8:15PM – Newsreel.
8:30PM – Film Shorts.
8:45PM – Store Life.
9:00PM – Sunday Theater.

Wednesday, December 31st, 1947
2:00PM – Meet Your Neighbor.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Film Variety.
3:00PM – Surprise Package.
3:15PM – Movie Matinee: Lost Jungle, Chapter 5.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Schuster’s Open House: News High Lights of 1947.
8:15PM – Sportsreel.
8:30PM – Basketball: Marquette vs. Wisconsin at Auditorium.

Thursday, January 1st, 1948
2:00PM – Special Film Program.
2:30PM – Television Newsreel.
2:40PM – Film Shorts.
3:00PM – New Year’s Day Variety.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Armchair Travels, film.
8:30PM – Wrestling, from South Side Armory.

Friday, January 2nd, 1948
2:00PM – Meet Your Neighbor.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Film: Excursions in Science.
3:00PM – Surprise Package.
3:15PM – Movie Matinee: Lost Jungle, Chapter 6.
7:45PM – News and Views.
7:55PM – Basketball: Wauwatosa at West Allis Hale.

Saturday, January 3rd, 1948
2:00PM – Table Tennis Tournament.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Your Attention, Please.
3:00PM – Teen Age Time: North and Custer high schools, guests.
3:30PM – Wild West Theater.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:10PM – Basketball: Marquette vs. Springfield (Mass.) Y college, at Marquette gym.

Works Cited:

1 “Television Over WTMJ-TV.” Milwaukee Journal Screen-Radio. 28 Dec. 1947: 9.


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2 Replies to “WTMJ-TV Schedule, Week of December 28th, 1947”

  1. 1948 was the year commercial television “exploded”, big time. And WTMJ was on the “ground floor”, so to speak. Several hundred viewers had access to that channel at the end of 1947; by the fall of ’48, there were several thousand. And the schedule was about to undergo a dramatic change as well…it was a short walk from the local tavern, and your neighbor’s home, to the local radio/TV appliance store, although some people still enjoyed visiting their friends’ homes for evening’s worth of video entertainment…

  2. Milwaukee didn’t get network programing until late 1948 (from other Midwestern cities); it wouldn’t get live shows from the East Coast until January of 1949.

    I suspect it wasn’t even until mid-1948 that WTMJ got kinescopes of network programming, so for a few months, it may have gotten ABC, CBS, DuMont and NBC shows that way.

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