Television's First Christmas

You likely aren’t thinking about it as you tune in a bowl game, or a newscast with footage from Manger Square, or a rerun of a comedy featuring—uh, oh!—a Santa mix-up.

Homes have had the TV set beaming at eyes on Present Unwrapping Day for generations. But when did it all begin? When was the first TV show on Christmas Day?

It’s a lot farther back than you think. The answer is 1928.

This wasn’t some ad-hoc, random decision. Christmas fell on a Tuesday, and so did regularly-scheduled late-night TV broadcasts on WGY, the General Electric station in Schenectady, New York. The television transmission was in the radio listings for the 25th compiled by the Associated Press but, more importantly, it was also published in the Schenectady Gazette that day. You can see the complete day’s schedule to the right. TV was the last thing the station aired.

What was broadcast? The answer may be in the Gazette of January 14, 1929.

Parents of R. D. Kelly, assistant to Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson, consulting engineer of the General Electric Company in his work on television, had the unusual experience of seeing their son by radio, during the Christmas holidays. Mr. and Mrs. E. T. Kell live in Gary, Ind., about 900 miles from this city where their son sat before the television camera. The image was received on a set constructed by the son while on his summer vacation with his parents. So clearly was the image received that friends of Mr. and Mrs. Kell, who had seen the young man but once, immediately recognized the received picture.

It was close to the final TV broadcast on the station. The Gazette also reported on the 14th:

WGY, the Schenectady station of the General Electric Company and the first station anywhere to offer television on a regular schedule, discontinued television transmissions on January 1. However, experimenters interested in receiving television signals will continue to find them on WGY’s two short wave transmitters, W2XAF and W2XAD, operating on 31.48 meters and 19.56 meters, respectively. The present schedule calls for afternoon transmissions, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 1:30 to 2 o'clock and Sunday night 11:15-11:45 o'clock by W2XAD, and Tuesday night 11:30 o'clock to midnight by W2XAF.

1928 was an important time in radio as well. NBC had developed enough in two years that it had star announcers. You see them to the right: Milton Cross, John Daniel, Marley Sherris, Curt Peterson, Alwin Bach, Norman Sweetser, Ralph Wentworth, Ed Thorgersen, John Young and Tiny Ruffner in the stockings and Graham McNamee and Phillips Carlin on either side of the mike.

But a competition—later in television as well as radio—was emerging at the end of 1928. There’s no byline on this story found in a number of papers.

Columbia System and United Independent Broadcasters to Merge
New York, Dec. 29.—The opening of the world's largest regular radio network and the purchase of Station WABC of New York to be the eventual key station of the Columbia Chain were approved today at a meeting of the Board of Directors of the United Independent Broadcasters, Inc., the company which owns and operates the Columbia Broadcasting System.
Following upon these two indications of important expansion projects the Board also passed a recommendation for the change of name of the United Independent Broadcasters, Inc., to the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., the latter corporation to take over and perform all the services formerly conducted by the two separate organizations.
The executive management of the greatly expanded Columbia System is to remain in the same hands. William S. Paley, who recently assumed the duties of president of the United Independent Broadcasters Inc., will continue in that capacity for the new Columbia Broadcasting System. Major J. Andrew White, who has successfully guided the destinies of Columbia as its president, becomes managing director. The board of directors of the new company is unchanged.
It was stated that Columbia has dispensed with the unwieldy functioning with two companies, a holding company and an operating company, so as to clear the way for an unprecedented expansion program, which has already been passed upon by the directors of the corporation.
The plan to purchase WABC from the Atlantic Broadcasting Company was approved by the board of directors, according to the statement of the president, William S. Paley, who said that final steps to acquire the station would be taken without delay. It is understood that the Atlantic Broadcasting Company will be continued as a subsidiary of the Columbia Broadcasting System.
According to plans ratified at today's meeting, steps will be taken to increase the power of WABC, and, through the presentation of exceptional programs, to raise its standard of popularity, to a point above that enjoyed by any other Metropolitan station. A new set of studios will be constructed for WABC, which are expected to surpass any in existence.
According to present arrangements Columbia will take full possession of the Atlantic Broadcasting Company and Station WABC sometime in January.
WABC will not serve as the sole key station of the Columbia Broadcasting System until after September 1929, contracts with WOR as a part time key for the Columbia Broadcasting System network being in force until that date. The Columbia Broadcasting System has been using WABC as key station on a part time basis since last September, utilizing WABC and WOR on alternate nights. The station is one of the oldest in the Metropolitan district in term of service, having operated under the call letters of WHAG for several years prior to assuming its present call letters when shifting to operation under the Atlantic Broadcasting Company.
Enlargement of the present Columbia Broadcasting System to include the world's largest regular network of broadcasting stations with the addition of 22 stations to bring the total number of broadcasters operating under the Columbia banner up to 49, was also approved by the board. The new stations are arranged in four groups covering the South, Southwest, Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast districts, and will be added to the present basic Columbia Broadcasting System with which 27 stations located in 20 population centers of the Atlantic seaboard, New England, the Middle West and Northwestern areas are already affiliated. Operation on this new monster chain will be inaugurated with a gala program on January 8th.
The growth of the Columbia Broadcasting System in the first year of its existence has been another of those miracles so common in the radio industry. Inaugurated in September last year, only fifteen stations carried the programs of the new chain for a limited period of ten hours a week. In the limited space of fifteen months, the number of stations affiliated with the Columbia System has been trebled and the amount of time devoted to their programs weekly have been more than doubled, the broadcasting schedule now being twenty one and a half hours weekly, with an announcement of expansion in this direction expected momentarily. This growth although rapid, has been perfectly natural, being stimulated solely by the popular demand for broad cast programs of this network as expressed in the form of numerous applications to associate with the chain received from independent stations, and also requests from stations already affiliated, for mora periods of broadcast entertainment sponsored by the Columbia Broadcasting System.
WOR will assume the hours vacated by Columbia next September and they are already formulating ambitious plans to keep them up to WOR standards.

Within a couple of years, CBS would be in the television business as well with experimental station W2XAB, but that is a story for another time. Kind of like a late Christmas present.