Here’s the schedule for station WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the week starting Sunday, January 4th, 1948, 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. This week was more or less identical to previous weeks, suggesting WTMJ-TV was either comfortable with its programming or wasn’t getting any feedback and didn’t know what to change.
Sunday, January 4th, 1948
8:00PM – Choral Concert.
8:15PM – Television Newsreel.
8:30PM – Selected Film Subjects.
8:45PM – Store Life.
9:00PM – Sunday Evening Theater, film.Wednesday, January 6th, 1948
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 7.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Schuster’s Open House.
8:15PM – Film Program.
8:30PM – Paul Skinner’s Music Room.Thursday, January 7th, 1948
2:00PM – Meet Your Neighbor.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Film Shorts.
3:00PM – Surprise Package.
3:15PM – Movie Matinee.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Armchair Travels: Film.
8:30PM – Wrestling from South Side Armory.Friday, January 8th, 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 8.
7:45PM – News and Views.
7:55PM – Basketball, Cudahy vs. West Allis Central.Saturday, January 9th, 1948
2:00PM – Table Tennis Tournament.
2:30PM – Let’s Look at the News.
2:45PM – Your Attention, Please.
3:00PM – Teen Age Time: Shorewood and Whitefish Bay High Schools, guests.
3:30PM – Wild West Theater.
7:45PM – News and Views.
8:00PM – Variety Club.
Works Cited:
The programmimg choices WTMJ had to make at this early stage of their existance were somewhat slim: either they featured live variety, discussion, sporting events, science, cooking/homemaking and “audience participation” programs…or OLD Westerns and “B”-“C” [and sometimes “D”, for “dreadful”] movies produced by obscure Hollywood “Poverty Row” studios or independent producers; most of them were out of buisness by the time their product was shown on commercial TV in the late ’40s. There were no “syndicated” or “coast-to-coast” network programs available at the time [although producer Jerry Fairbanks was about to introduce his first “syndie”, in collaboration with NBC, John Howard’s “PUBLIC PROSECUTOR”], and Hollywood’s more recent films were off limits to broadcast television because the major studios considered TV “the enemy”…and they were correct. Within three years, TV, local and network, had cut into weekly movie attendance by almost a third.
However, most people at that time were enchanted by the idea of seeing or owning a TV set that could send pictures “through the air” for free. As soon as some got their first look at TV in an appliance store window- or their friendly neighborhood tavern- or their neighbor’s homes…that’s when the deluge began.