In the spring of 1978, weekly series based on both characters debuted. The Incredible Hulk premiered on Friday, March 10th, The Amazing Spider-Man on Wednesday, April 5th. The Incredible Hulk would stay on the air until November of 1981, with another two episodes burned off in May of 1982, while The Amazing Spider-Man wrapped its brief first “season” in May of 1978; a second batch of episodes were broadcast sporadically between September of 1978 and July of 1979.

In the sixth issue of its Man from Atlantis comic book, published in July of 1978 (meaning it was likely in stores sometime in April or perhaps late March), the “Bullpen Bulletins” page mentioned the premieres of both The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man. Here’s a scan:

Marvel Comics Bullpen Bulletins
Copyright © Marvel Comics Group, 1978 [1]

Dr. Strange, the made-for-TV movie said to be airing in April, wasn’t broadcast until Wednesday, September 6th, 1978. It starred Peter Hooten and ran from 8-10PM. Nothing ever came of the Savage Sub-Mariner special, perhaps because of NBC’s Man from Atlantis series, which was not only similar to the character of Namor the Sub-Mariner but also a failure. In 1979, CBS aired two made-for-TV movies based on Captain America, starring Reb Brown. The first, Captain America, aired on January 19th. The second, Captain America II: Death Too Soon, was aired in two parts on Friday, November 23rd from 8-9PM and Saturday, November 24th, also from 8-9PM.

It would be decades before Marvel Comics saw this much interest in its characters, only this time it was on the big screen.

Image Credits:

Related posts:

1. The Marvel Super Heroes Advertisements, Circa 1966
2. Bookshelf: Man from Atlantis #1
3. Watch a Japanese Version of Spider-Man

Thanks to its longevity, Gunsmoke is a perfect case study for the decrease in the number of episodes produced during a television season over the years. For its first five seasons — 1955 to 1960 — the show produced 39 new episodes and aired just 13 repeats and/or pre-emptions. Over the course of the next six seasons — 1960 to 1966 — the number of new episodes fluctuated between 32 and 38. The 1966-1967 season, Gunsmoke‘s 12th, produced just 29 episodes. For its final five seasons — 1970 to 1975 — only 24 new episodes were produced. That’s about the same number of episodes current drama series produce.

Here’s a chart:

Season 01 – 39 Episodes

Season 02 – 39 Episodes

Season 03 – 39 Episodes

Season 04 – 39 Episodes

Season 05 – 39 Episodes

Season 06 – 38 Episodes
Season 07 – 34 Episodes
Season 08 – 38 Episodes
Season 09 – 36 Episodes
Season 10 – 36 Episodes
Season 11 – 32 Episodes
Season 12 – 29 Episodes
Season 13 – 25 Episodes
Season 14 – 26 Episodes
Season 15 – 26 Episodes
Season 16 – 24 Episodes
Season 17 – 24 Episodes
Season 18 – 24 Episodes
Season 19 – 24 Episodes
Season 20 – 24 Episodes

Interestingly, during its first few seasons on the Law & Order produced 22 new episodes; later seasons would actually produce more, either 23 or 24 episodes. And even though it hasn’t produced as many episodes as Gunsmoke, 20 years on the air is nevertheless an incredible achievement.

Related posts:

1. The Mothers-In-Law Coming to DVD on July 27th
2. Gunsmoke, Rawhide and Have Gun, Will Travel Coming to Encore Westerns in 2010
3. Anne Roberts Nelson, 64-Year Veteran of CBS, Passes Away

There’s no reason to rehash the reasons why Channel 1 on the VHF spectrum was reallocated by the FCC in 1948 from television to certain radio broadcasts. In addition to the Wikipedia page linked to by Sean, there are plenty of articles available on the Internet explaining why the channel no longer exists: Snopes, Discovery Online, The Straight Dope and Tech-Notes are great places to start. But Sean raises another interesting question: how did television viewers react to the FCC’s plan to remove Channel 1?

According to John M. Kittross in Television Frequency Allocation Policy in the United States (his 1960 thesis, reprinted in 1979) the FCC only made public its intention to remove Channel 1 from the television spectrum on May 6th, 1948 [1]. The television industry was understandably upset but apparently felt that having 12 channels available was a better option than 13 channels, the bulk of which were shared with a variety of public services [2]. The removal itself took place on June 14th, 1948. Given that there were only an estimated 354,000 in use in the United States as of June 15th, 1948, it seems unlikely that there was a large public outcry, or really any outcry at all [3].

Furthermore, by 1948 there were few (if any) stations actually using Channel 1. In November of 1945 the FCC had announced its plan to reassign commercial television stations: “under the commission’s plan only Television Channel 1 will be designated as a community channel, all others being available for either metropolitan or rural stations. However, in the smaller cities, community stations will be assigned to these channels” [4]. The plan forced current stations to change their channels. For example, in New York City, station WNBT signed off on February 28th, 1946 as Channel 1 and returned in early May as Channel 4 (I don’t know the exact date).

Although television in 1948 was no longer an experimental medium, it had yet to reach a large portion of the nation and growing pains were understandable. It is my opinion that viewers were happy just to be able to watch something on their television sets, so the removal of a single channel — be it in 1946 when Channel 1 became a community channel or in 1948 when it was removed from the television spectrum altogether — wasn’t a huge problem.

As for other channels moving frequencies and being reassigned numerically (i.e. Channel 3 becoming Channel 4), as Sean suggests it appears that viewers simply called the repairman if their sets needed adjusting and waited until television stations returned to the air. According to The New York Times:

WNBT’s new channel No. 4 is the same frequency setting as the old channel No. 3, so no alterations need be made in existing video receivers to tune in the NBC station on Channel 4. Receiver adjustments, however, will be necessary for both WCBW and WABD. Television operating companies have notified present set owners that special service stations have been established to make the necessary adjustments.” [5]

In 1946, of course, there were even fewer television sets in use than in 1948. And while most of them were concentrated in New York City, according to an August 4th, 1946 article in The New York Times there were just 5,000 sets in use in the metropolitan area [6]. While it was probably annoying to be without television while WNBT, WABD and WBCW were off the air, radio was still huge at the time. If anyone knows of first-hand accounts from viewers regarding channel reassignments or the deletion of Channel 1 please let me know.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. Number of Television Sets in 1952
2. Cable Channel This TV on Comcast Cable
3. WJZ-TV Sign on Hooper Ratings

The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese took the United States by surprise on Sunday, December 7th, 1941. It was morning in Hawaii when the attack began and early afternoon on the East Coast. Of the two commercial television stations in New York City (DuMont’s W2XWV was still experimental) only NBC’s WNBT was operating. The CBS station, WCBW, took Sundays off. WNBT had only two programs scheduled:

3:30-4:30PM – Millionaire Playboy (Film)
8:40-11:15PM – Hockey: Rangers vs. Boston, at Madison Square Garden [1]

Ray Forrest, WNBT’s announcer, broke into the broadcast of Millionaire Playboy with news of the attack [2]. According to The Magic Window: American Television, 1939-1953, news of the attack on Pearl Harbor constituted television’s first bulletin and Sam Cuff of WNBT’s Face of the War stood in front of a map showing viewers where the Japanese attacks occurred [3]. That’s all I’ve been able to uncover about WNBT’s activity on December 7th, 1941. More information is available about WCBW’s broadcasts.

Over at WCBW, Richard Hubbell and Robert Skedgell served as newsreader and news writer, respectively, for the station’s two fifteen-minute newscasts that were broadcast Monday through Friday. In Now the News: The Story of Broadcast Journalism, Edward Bliss writes that Hubbell, Skedgell and WCBW program director Gilbert Seldese all rushed to the station after hearing that Pearl Harbor had been attacked; Adrian Murphy, WCBW’s president, called to say the station was going on the air with a special report [4]. Skedgell recalled that the station was on the air from 3:30PM in the afternoon on Sunday, December 7th until 1:30AM on Monday, December 8th. He had this to say about the special telecast:

There was not very much hard news that Sunday night, so much of our report was speculative: where the Japanese fleet was, what the Japanese intentions were, where the U.S. fleet had gone, how much damage it had suffered. Of course, the maps were brought out into considerable use, along with our usual graphics, during the long hours.” [5]

In Television News Reporting, written by CBS News Staff and published by McGraw-Hill in 1958, the following description of WCBW’s broadcast was given:

During that Pearl Harbor telecast, Hubbell showed on maps the location of islands like Wake and Midway, and pointed out the possible lines of attack against the Philippines and Singapore. The viewer saw the positions, at least as they were known on that day, of Unite States Pacific Fleet units.

The program, through diagrams, arrows, and other symbols, defined news in terms of the visual. Expert analyses [sic], again with maps as visual aids, were offered by Major General Fielding Eliot and Fletcher Pratt, while Linton Wells reported the fast-breaking political developments.” [6]

According to The Columbia History of American Television WCBW was the only television station in December of 1941 that subscribed to the United Press radio wire, suggesting that access to the UP wire gave the station unique information about the attacks. [7]. The official “CBS at 75” time line states that:

John Daly of CBS News interrupts network programming to announce that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. CBS experimental station WCBW in New York goes on the air with a nine-hour broadcast on the attack on Pearl Harbor, which is the first television news instant special.

In Stay Tuned: A History of American Television, Sterling and Kittross write that “WCBW produced a 90-minute documentary on the Pearl Harbor attack, only hours after it happened” [8]. I’m not sure whether that documentary was part of the nine-hour broadcast or not. And according to her biography at the Paley Center for Media’s “She Made It” website, Frances Buss, who served as scorekeeper for CBS Television Quiz, helped out during WCBW’s broadcast that afternoon.

Which station was on the air first? I would guess it was WNBT. Were any television stations outside New York City reporting the news of the Japanese attacks? Perhaps. Do any recordings of these broadcasts exist? Doubtful.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. WTMJ-TV Schedule, Week of December 7th, 1947
2. Aliens Have Our Early Television Broadcasts
3. Television on December 7th, 1941

The story begins in October of 1941 when fresh contacts between the CBS and NBC radio networks and ASCAP were signed, allowing the 1,250,000 songs in the ASCAP catalog to return to the airwaves (the contract would run through December 31st, 1949) [1]. According to The New York Times, while the new contract primarily impacted radio, “it also stipulated that ASCAP will provide its music free for television programs at the present time, but the right is reserved to cancel this service” [2]. I don’t know when the networks started paying for the right to use ASCAP music on television.

Negotiations to renew the contract began at least as early as May of 1947 between ASCAP and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) [3]. In early December of 1948, Billboard reported that ASCAP had announced it was canceling its licenses with the television networks within 30 days but was also offering sixty days past January 1st, 1949 for negotiations [4]. CBS initially announced it would stop using ASCAP music on recorded programs but never implemented the plan [5].

Negotiations continued for months until May 6th, 1949 when the NAB determined it could not accept the latest proposal from ASCAP; in return, ASCAP announced that as of June 1st the networks would need individual contracts with composers, authors and publishers for each and every song played on television, every single time [6]. On May 17th,The New York Times reported that the networks would no longer use ASCAP music “on programs which are kinescoped for delayed showings on stations not connected by coaxial cable” [7].

But on May 20th, ASCAP extended the contract through June 15th, allowing stations to use ASCAP music without paying because progress was underway on a new contract. Kinescoped programs thus began using ASCAP music right away. Regarding which programs were filmed without such music, The New York Times stated only that “the television networks earlier this week had started to omit such tunes on a number of their shows” [8].

ASCAP continued to extend the contract on roughly a monthly basis until October 17th when ABC, CBS and NBC signed a new five-year contract, retroactive to January 1st, 1949 [9]. It allowed for the blanket use of ASCAP music with rates roughly 10% above what was being paid for radio. DuMont and WOR-TV, according to The New York Times, would likely sign later on a “per-program” basis.

If anyone has any information about television programs that were filmed without ASCAP music please let me know, either by e-mailing me directly or using the comments section below.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. New Exhibit: Full Issue of 1949 Television Forecast
2. First National Hooper Ratings, May 1949
3. The Television Production Music Museum

On Sunday, January 30th, 1944, Jack Gould reported in The New York Times that “an era, or something, opens tonight when television’s first serial makes its bow” [1]. It ran from 9:40-10PM on W2XWV (Channel 4), the only station still on the air in New York City with regular programming, and was set to run 13 weeks. According to Gould the series, “which deals with performers in search of success,” was written by Jay Strong and Will Baltin; the cast included Jean Lewis, Loretta Schere, Marian Gardner, Toni Darney, John Kullers and Milton Stewart [2].

According to television listings in The New York Times, the second episode ran from 8:45-9:15PM (on February 6th) while the third aired from 9-9:30PM (on February 13th) [3], 4]. I can’t find any Sunday television listings in The New York Times after March 12th, 1944, which is when the seventh episode aired. Did the series continue for another six weeks? If so, it would have ended on April 23rd.

A letter to the editor of The New York Times on February 13th, 1944 explained that Theatre House wasn’t actually television’s first serial:

Back in 1941-42, WPTZ, Philco’s station in Philadelphia, under about the same experimental conditions as I understand the Dumont people are working under at present, did a weekly show called “Last Year’s Nest.” It was frankly soap without the suds or a sponsor–but it did get fan mail. it ran for ten weeks until WPTZ finally had to drop all its live shows in June, 1942. [4]

According to the letter, Last Year’s Nest was an “exhilarating undertaking because the cast had to be made up from what could practically be called volunteer talent” [5]. The director, Ernest Walling, was able to gather from “little theatre groups and college societies some nuggets of pure gold which his fine handling beat into the shape of skilled television actors–something else again from stage, screen and radio actors, as anyone in the game can tell you” [6].

How did the letter’s author, Claire Wallis, know about Last Year’s Nest? She wrote “the darn stuff” [7]. Nothing is known about Last Year’s Ends or, for that matter, Theatre House. A preview of the serial was broadcast on Sunday, January 23rd, 1944 [8].

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. The Televised Opera and Musical Comedy Database
2. Television’s First Act of Censorship
3. Television’s First Sports Delay

The Outsider began as a World Premiere Movie, also titled The Outsider, broadcast on November 21st, 1967. Darren McGavin starred as David Ross, an ex-con turned private detective working in Los Angeles. The plot of the telefilm saw Ross investigating a case of potential embezzlement involving a young woman. When she’s found murdered, Ross is the prime suspect (he spent time in jail for murder). Prolific writer/producer Roy Huggins created the series.

NBC gave the series the 10-11PM time slot on Wednesdays and production got underway. When Robert F. Kennedy was killed multiple episodes had been completed. And they were violent. In fact, according to Broadcasting, “no show has had a rougher time of it in the anti-violence climate” than The Outsider [1]. In late June, McGavin met with television editors about how the show would change; Clay Gowran reported on the meeting for The Chicago Tribune. Said McGavin:

We’ve all agreed, the people connected with the show and the network, to eliminate as much violence as we possibly can from the series, and we’re working on that right now. Just for one thing, the footage for the running title we had prepared for the series featured a gun, a small pistol I carry in a concealed leg holster–we’re reshooting the whole business and the gun is out. [2]

McGavin explained that nobody knew exactly how his character would be able to go up against bad guys without a gun (one editor asked if he would “freeze his adversaries with icy stares”) but noted that other shows were grappling with the same issue [3]. Another editor pointed out that one of McGavin’s earlier shows, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, was itself quite violent. McGavin felt that actors shouldn’t “be held responsible for what has already been done in the past” [4].

With regard to The Outsider, McGavin stated that ten episodes had been completed and three or four involved his character using a gun, “so we’re trying now to figure out how to redo pieces of them to get away from it” [5]. In August, Broadcasting also wrote about how the use of a gun would be toned down, stating that “the objective now is to make The Outsider more ‘cerebral’” [6]. Said producer Gene Levitt, “We absolutely have been taking each show, one at a time. They’ve been reviewed; we’ve made changes. Now the first eight shows are in dubbing and naturally you know if you make a change you have to redub a reel. Well, that’s what we’re doing—doing this morning—every day for the last seven weeks” [7].

Broadcastingsalso gave two examples of changes that had to be made. The first involved a knife fight:

Thus in an episode entitled “Love Is Under L,” the fight that the hero of the series has with a bad man has been significantly modified. The man has a knife, which he uses in the fight. In the last moment he dives at the hero, who ducks and flips him over a bar. The bad guy crashes down in the back. Then he stands up and the audience is made to think the fight is going to continue. But the man has a knife in the front of himself. When he went over the bar it stuck in him. He pulls the knife out and then he dies.

Only production insiders have seen that version. In the current charged atmosphere, the man is still shown going over the bar, but is not shown again. The camera pans to the hero for a reaction that leaves little doubt that the villain is done for. [8]

The second involved a car crash:

In another Outsider episode, this one called “A Wide Place in the Road,” a young man comes driving down the road of a wicked town (it has “A Bad Day at Black Rock” theme). A good lady in the town fires a rifle that makes him swerve the car and smash it. In the new edited version what is not seen is the close shot of the windshield shattering and the young man, face bleeding, collapsing over the steering wheel. [9]

These edits caused some episodes to run short and, because the cost of reshoots was prohibitive, Broadcasting revealed that the network would fill the remaining time (perhaps 15 seconds to a minute) with public service announcements [10]. A later Broadcasting article listed The Outsider (along with Mannix and Hawaii Five-O) as programs that would never be ordered in the post-Kennedy assassination environment [11].

The Outsider premiered on September 18th. A few critics mentioned the violence (or lack thereof) in their reviews. Dean Gysel of The Chicago Daily News wrote “it is one thing to avoid violence … another to avoid drama” [12]. Clay Gowran referred to his earlier article about the series and worried that viewers would be bored if the “comparatively peaceful plot-line” of the pilot reflected the series as a whole [13]. Gowran did call the premiere “slickly staged” and praised McGavin for his “first-rate” performance, calling the actor “among the best and most believable” [14].

Like The Outcasts, The Outsider ran for just one season. In reporting the cancellation, Cecil Smith wrote that “the first-rate private-eye show, The Outsider, gets the ax, possibly a victim of the current concern over TV violence, though its ratings have not been high” [15]. And like The Outcasts, I wonder what happened to the footage that was culled from episodes for being too violent.

UCLA’s Film & Television Archive has copies of every episode as broadcast (the Paley Center for Media has a few as well). At least two made-for-TV movies were created by editing a pair of episodes from the series. Could unaired footage have been reinserted to make these telefilms more exciting? Or perhaps for overseas syndication? I can’t say.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. DVD Tuesday: Dragnet 1968, Have Gun Will Travel, Rhoda
2. Show Spotlight: “T.H.E. Cat”
3. TV & Violence in 1968: The Outcasts

The networks — and the television industry as a whole — reacted by announcing new policies on violence. Summer repeats involving violent content were pulled while scripts for new and returning fall shows were rewritten. Over the next few days I’ll be discussing how various shows were impacted by the increased scrutiny of violence.

Recall that The Outcasts starred Don Murray as Earl Corey and Otis Young as Jemal David — a former slaveholder and a former slave, respectively — who become bounty hunters following the end of the Civil War. That certainly sounds like the basis for a violent program. Bounty hunting, at least as depicted on television, is a rough and tumble lifestyle. And as a western, The Outcasts would be expected to contain its fair share of shoot-outs and bar fights.

In the September 23rd, 1968 edition of Broadcasting, ABC President Elton Rule revealed that the network (with the cooperation of production company Screen Gems) had decided to rewrite parts of the first ten scripts and re-shoot portions of the six completed episodes of The Outcasts because of content that “might be considered excessive violence in today’s new climate” [1].

I don’t know if that means ten additional scripts after the first six episodes were rewritten or if the scripts for the six completed episodes were drastically — and completely — rewritten. In any event, according to Rule the changes made to the series “cost dearly,” although he doesn’t explain whether he meant it cost a lot of money or if it was creatively painful [2].

Interestingly, in a June 10th, 1968 article in The Los Angeles Times Don Murray was said to be a critic of violence on television; he even occasionally went more than a year without working because he wouldn’t take on a role that “glorified violence” [3]. But Murray didn’t think much of the way the television industry was “indulging” in “soul-cleansing” following RFK’s assassination:

It’s tokenism they’re practicing. There’s no difference between good and bad violence, I happen to think the violence on TV and in movies is destructive, but that must be proven scientifically. Then laws should be passed, just as there’s a law against selling or possessing heroin. If this is censorship, then let it be. I think the League of American Theaters and the three networks should set up rules on violence anyway. [4]

As for The Outcasts, Murray explained that it “may be contributing to the violence on TV, but I believe this is offset by [the] white-Negro relationship” and he revealed that so far he had only felt one scene was too violent and that scene was “fixed” (presumably rewritten to be less violent) [5].

In his review of the premiere, Clay Gowran noted that “‘Outcasts was one of the series partially reshot to exclude unnecessary violence. What is left in the first episode is a fight sequence [short, with background music that is light and gay], deaths of the two bad guys [from a distance without blood], and one shooting ["He only grazed me."]” [6]. Other reviews made no mention of violence.

The Outcasts was cancelled after its first season. A September 25th, 1969 article in The Los Angeles Times about violence on television stated that “shows like ABC’s Outcasts and NBC’s Outsider, which depended heavily on violence, were scrapped” [7]. However, I think it is far more likely that ABC cancelled the series mostly due to low ratings, with the issue of violence little more than an afterthought.

So what happened to the footage from those first six completed episodes that was excised? Was it thrown out? Probably. Why would the production company save it? Would could it possibly be used for? If The Outcasts were to be released on DVD (which is unlikely) the unused footage would make for an interesting special feature. But in 1968, it would have been all but useless. Unless, of course, someone thought it could be inserted back into the episodes for foreign syndication.

UCLA’s Film & Television Archive has a copy of the premiere episode and notes that it may have “been reworked and reshot for a subsequent episode, The long ride, broadcast on Apr. 28, 1969.” As luck would have it, The Museum of Broadcast Communications has that episode in its collection and the guest casts are totally different. Furthermore, television listings in The Los Angeles Times state that the April 28th, 1969 episode involved Earl and Jemal capturing a man who killed an Apache woman; the pilot episode, on the other hand, saw the two seeking a criminal helping to protect a shipment of gold.

Those are the only two episodes held at the four big television archives. Many others circulate among private collectors. If the series was syndicated internationally, it would be interesting to compare copies of those episodes with copies presumably from the United States.

Works Cited:

Related posts:

1. DVD Tuesday: Dragnet 1968, Have Gun Will Travel, Rhoda
2. TV & Violence in 1968: The Outsider
3. Q & A: The Outcasts, What Really Happened to the Class of ’65?

The soap premiered on June 30th, 1952. You can watch the March 4th, 1953 episode for free courtesy of the Internet Archive:

Related posts:

1. Another General Electric Theater Episode Found
2. CBS Cancels As the World Turns
3. Guiding Light to Go Dark After 57 Years on Television

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Television! Bloomingdale’s is your Headquarters (1939)
• The First Network! ANOTHER MILESTONE IN THE PROGRESS OF TELEVISION (1944)
• Television Network five years old today (1945)
• The Quiz Kids say: “DuMont Television Is Cosmic Legerdemain” (1945)
• Television, P.S.!!! “Daddy Wants A G-E Television Set” (1947)
• Draw your family circle closer with Magnavox Televisio (1949)
• Tops in TELEVISION (1950)
• See Faye Emerson Big-as-Life… on a new 19-inch Stromberg-Carlson! (1950)
• The Columbia Broadcasting System (1950)
• Don’t miss the political conventions in July. See them clearly on Westinghouse Television (1952)

Each advertisement is available in thumbnail, medium and large versions, so you can see plenty of detail.

Related posts:

1. 1939 New York World’s Fair Television Girl
2. W2XBS Schedule, Week of June 11th, 1939
3. Singers Adjust to Television in 1939