WTMJ-TV Schedule, Week of December 14th, 1947

Here’s the schedule for station WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the week starting Sunday, December 14th, 1947, straight from the weekly television listings printed in The Milwaukee Journal. 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. On Wednesday, December 17th, the station broadcast the first chapter of the 1934 film serial The Lost Jungle. The second chapter was shown on Friday, December 19th. I haven’t been able to figure out what sort of program Your Attention, Please was. Probably variety.

Sunday, December 14th, 1947 [1]
8:00PM – Choral concert.
8:15PM – Television newsreel.
8:30PM – Film.
8:45PM – How To Do It.
9:00PM – Sunday Evening Theater, full length feature film.

Wednesday, December 17th, 1947 [2]
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.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Schuster’s Open House.
8:15PM – Film Feature: Myra Hess, pianist.
8:30PM – Television Showcase.

Thursday, December 18th, 1947
2:00PM – Meet Your Neighbor.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Film: Cartoon Comedy.
3:00PM – Paul Skinner’s Music Room.
3:15PM – Baseball Film: 1943 World Series Review.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Armchair Travels, film.
8:30PM – Wrestling, South Side Armory.

Friday, December 19th, 1947
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 II.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:10PM – Basketball: Michigan Central at Milwaukee State Teachers.

Saturday, December 20th, 1947
2:00PM – Table Tennis Tournament.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Your Attention, Please.
3:00PM – Teen Age Time: Holy Angels and Marquette high schools, guests.
3:30PM – Wild West Theater: Thunder Over Texas.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:10PM – Sportsreel.
8:25PM – Basketball: Marquette vs. Michigan.

Works Cited:

1 “Television Over WTMJ-TV.” Milwaukee Journal Screen-Radio. 7 Dec. 1947: 13.
2 “Television Over WTMJ-TV.” Milwaukee Journal Screen-Radio. 14 Dec. 1947: 13.


Related Posts

Become a Patron Today

Are you a fan of obscure television? Please support Television Obscurities on Patreon by becoming a patron today.

4 Replies to “WTMJ-TV Schedule, Week of December 14th, 1947”

  1. As in the case of New York’s W2XBS between 1939 and ’41, WTMJ also broadcast several “obscure” B-movies to fill their initial schedules during 1947-’48; one of them, on Saturday the 20th, was 1934’s “Thunder Over Texas” (from the independent “Beacon Productions”), starring Guinn “Big Boy” Williams. It lasted a little over an hour- whether commercials were inserted during the film, I don’t know. “The Lost Jungle” was a 12 chapter Mascot serial starring famed animal trainer Clyde Beatty. If the station continued to telecast two chapters a week, they would have finished showing it on January 23, 1948. The “Cartoon Comedy” on the 18th might very well have been one of the Van Beuren shorts from the early ’30s (as W2XBS occasionally scheduled during 1940).

    1. You are both clearly quite knowledgeable about early television programming! I am putting together doctoral dissertation, albeit now during a long medical leave, on the history of radio and TV space and astronomy coverage. The earliest radio example I have located (re USA) is from KHJ in Los Angeles in June 1923. The earliest tv examples are from the CBS experimental station in NYC at 2230 ET on 1 March 1932 (the night of the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping in NJ), featuring Edward Pendray discussing rockets and space travel, and then possibly the CBS TV Johns Hopkins Science Review episode of 17 December 1948 (the 45th anniversary of the NC First Flight by the Wright Brothers in an aeroplane), though I am still not solid on the details. Detroit and DC TV stations apparently did live TV special broadcasts on a lunar eclipse in early 1949. Any information and leads would be much appreciated! My master’s thesis from 2005, Televising The Space Age, is available free online via the UMCP DRUM Web site.
      Alfred Robert Hogan, M.A
      [email protected]

  2. There seems to be a date error in the Milwaukee WI listings. These are correct matches but Christmas Eve 1947 fell on Wednesday 24 December 1947, not on Friday, as indicated on that log. Thanks ever so much for these and your other fascinating entries on television history! Just thought you would want to fix this small discrepancy. :-)

  3. Really wish we knew what those”Excursions in Science” films were about specifically. I know that Encyclopedia Britannica, based in Chicago, did produce some short educational films– including on science –circa mid-20th century, but that is just a speculative hunch.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.