Let's Watch Some 1947 Television

In the days before kinescope, almost the other way a television show would be recorded if it was the subject of a movie short or an industrial film.

There were attempts to come up with TV recording devices and at least one was tested.

Remarkably, snippets of recordings from 1947 and 1948 have survived. And someone has posted a compilation on the internet.

The first of these were tests made for WNBT. Two of the dates on the slates are from these days:

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1947
WNBT (NBC), Channel 4, New York City
8:00—“Author Meets the Critics,” The World Within.
8:30—NBC Television Newsreel.
8:40—Musical Merry-Go-Round, with Jack Kilty.
9:00—“You Are an Artist,” with John Gnagy, sponsored by Gulf.
9:10—“Eyewitness,” sponsored by RCA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1947
WNBT (NBC), Channel 4, New York City
1:00—Swift Home Service Club with Tex and Jinx.
1:30—NBC Television Newsreel.
6:30—Children’s Hallowe’en Party.
8:00—Campus Hoopla, with Bob Stanton and coach Lou Little, sponsored by U.S. Rubber.
8:20—The World in Your Home, sponsored by RCA Victor.
8:42—Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, Boxing at Madison Square Garden, Gus Lesnevich vs. Tami Mauriello.

Below is footage of Bob Emery talking to young race drivers, John Gnagy drawing, Tex and Jinx being Tex and Jinx, portions of several episodes of Kraft Television Theatre (your announcer is Ed Herlihy), and Bert Parks being over-the-top (with Raymond Scott’s “Dinner Music For a Pack of Hungry Cannibals” in the background of one sequence). And the sketch on the Campus Hoopla show may have made the sponsor say "I paid for THIS??".

But there isn’t just WBNT programming on this reel. There’s a wrestling match from W6XAO called by the great Dick Lane. An Arkansas Mule Kick!

Jason Merrick passed along this link to me, so I thank him.