Here are the television listings for NBC’s experimental station W2XBS in New York City, published in The New York Times during April 1941. Notice that by the middle of the month it seems the station had settled upon a fairly regular Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule had developed, featuring baseball, boxing and wrestling. There were, of course, a good number of test patterns throughout the month and even a parade on April 5th.
W2XBS Schedule, March 1941
Thursday, April 3rd, 1941 [1]
7:30-8:30PM – Test Pattern
8:30PM – Program of short Film Subjects
Saturday, April 5th, 1941 [2]
1-2PM – Test Pattern
2PM – Pick Up of Army Parade on Fifth Ave.
Wednesday, April 9th, 1941 [3]
7:30PM – Test Pattern
8:30PM – Selected Films
Friday, April 11th, 1941 [4]
3-5PM – Baseball: Dodgers-Yankees at Ebbets Field
Monday, April 14th, 1941 [5]
8-9PM – Test Pattern
9-10:30PM – Amateur Boxing Bouts, Jamaica Arena
Wednesday, April 16th, 1941 [6]
2PM – Test Pattern
3-5PM- Baseball: Dodgers-Giants, Ebbets Field
Friday, April 18th, 1941 [7]
7:30PM – Test Pattern
8:30PM – Wrestling Bouts at Jamaica Arena
Monday, April 21st, 1941 [8]
8-9PM – Test Pattern
9-10:30PM – Amateur Boxing Bouts, Jamaica Arena
Wednesday, April 23rd, 1941 [9]
2:30PM – Test Pattern
3:30PM – Baseball: Fordham vs. St. John’s University, from Fordham Field
Friday, April 25th, 1941 [10]
7:30PM – Test Pattern
8:30PM – Wrestling Bouts at Jamaica Arena
Monday, April 28th, 1941 [11]
8-9PM – Test Pattern
9-10:30PM – Amateur Boxing Bouts, Jamaica Arena
Wednesday, April 30th, 1941 [12]
2:30PM – Test Pattern
3:30PM – Baseball: Dodgers-Reds, at Ebbets Field
I continue to enjoy these early schedules and look forward to ones that contain live performances of plays or scripted material. We think of TV beginning with the networks in 1947, but local station programming existed before that. Programs were regional with stations all over the country trying new and different things.
Anything from Chicago or Los Angeles/San Francisco?
This was during the period when W2XBS slowly began to expand its schedule again, after being off the air the previous few months. No studio-based programming as yet, so there were mostly an hour of “test patterns” in the afternoon (and possibly other unscheduled material- who knows? Maybe someone “slipped in” an hour- or more- of “Citizen Kane” before its initial release during this period!), and live sport “remotes” (or other events) at night.