Early-early TV: Felix, Franklin and Farnsworth

(This is the third chapter in a book-in-progress, “Television, and How It Got That Way.” For the previous chapters, scroll down in “Stories.”)
When it comes to naming the first TV star, choices vary.
Some people might choose the American president (Franklin Roosevelt) or the British postmaster general. Some could say Elma Farnsworth or Betty White or Adele Dixon or Gertrude Lawrence or (shown here) folks at the 1939 World’s Fair. They could also say David Sarnoff; he would.
But for now, we’ll say Felix the Cat.
Back in 1928, General Electric engineers were scrambling to develop a TV system. For two years, Marc Robinson wrote, “a small Felix the Cat figurine was used as the subject. The lighting was too hot for a human to tolerate.” Read more…

(This is the third chapter in a book-in-progress, “Television, and How It Got That Way.” For the previous chapters, scroll down in “Stories.”)
When it comes to naming the first TV star, choices vary.
Some people might choose the American president (Franklin Roosevelt) or the British postmaster general. Some could say Elma Farnsworth or Betty White or Adele Dixon or Gertrude Lawrence or (shown here) folks at the 1939 World’s Fair. They could also say David Sarnoff; he would.
But for now, we’ll say Felix the Cat.
Back in 1928, General Electric engineers were scrambling to develop a TV system. For two years, Marc Robinson wrote, “a small Felix the Cat figurine was used as the subject. The lighting was too hot for a human to tolerate.”
Overseas, things happened in 1936. In the summer, Germans televised parts of the Olympics; on Nov. 2, BBC Television debuted. It had a talk by the postmaster general, a showing of Movietone News and then a very short variety show – Adele Dixon singing, the Buck and Bubbles duo playing stride piano and tap-dancing (thus launching Black TV) and the BBC Television Orchestra.
Still, Americans might point to Felix in ‘28. Or to the moment Philo Farnsworth transmitted an image of his wife in 1929. Or to 1938, when RCA showed Gertrude Lawrence in scenes from Broadway’s “Susan and God.”
The next year, two fresh graduates from Beverly Hills High, Betty White and Harry Bennett, were asked to sing a mini-version of “The Merry Widow,” for an experimental broadcast in Los Angeles.
“I wore my graduation dress,” White wrote, “a fluffy white number held up by a sapphire blue velvet ribbon halter, which I fervently hoped would be enchanting …. The lights were excruciatingly hot. The beads of perspiration served to give us luster.”
It was a success, apparently – but the only people who saw it were the teens’ parents and a few others, all watching a monitor six floors away. It would be another decade before Los Angeles got its first TV station.
A few weeks before that, however, TV had its first big moment. The New York World’s fair, drawing 45 million people, had television exhibits from RCA and General Electric.
Roosevelt gave a TV address at the opening day of the fair. Ten days earlier, Sarnoff (the RCA chairman) had his own televised announcement.
This would be, he said, “the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in a troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind.”
Mankind would have mixed feelings about that “torch of hope.” But TV was here to stay.
The first two stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission were RCA’s WNBT and CBS’ WCBW. That was on July 1, 1941; WNBT promptly offered a newscast with Lowell Thomas, a baseball game (Dodgers-Phillies) and a simulcast of the radio quiz show “Truth or Consequences.”
Five months later, Pearl Harbor came and the TV world paused. Throughout the war, WNBT was limited to four hours a week.
But as the war ended in 1945, the station was back:
— On Aug. 14, it aired 15 hours of victory celebrations. The signal linked to the GE station in Schenectady and the Philco one in Philadelphia, creating a sort of network.
— On Dec. 10, the station started airing six days a week.
— And the next Feb. 12, it linked with three nearby stations, to form NBC.
TV was ready to soar … sort of. The line-up, Robinson wrote, was “generally amateurish, populated with cooking shows, B movies and watch-the-artist-paint kinds of programming.”
The evening line-up was no improvement. As Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh pointed out in “The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable Shows” (Ballantine, 2007):
“Boxing was an institution in early television for several reasons: It was easy to produce, the camera-coverage area was limited … and it had tremendous appeal to the first purchasers of television sets in the late 1940s – bars.”
Also, it paused every three minutes, leaving room for razor-blade commercials. In the fall of 1946, NBC listed only eight hours of prime time; over half went to boxing – four hours of “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports” and 15 minutes of “Fight Film Filler.”
NBC did have one variety hour (called “Hour Glass”) and a half-hour “Television Screen Magazine.” At first, Brooks and Marsh wrote of the latter, guests were “seemingly anyone who could be lured into the studio. NBC employee Walter Law and his stamp collection were an early favorite.”
Other shows were only 15 minutes, twice a week (“Esso Newsreel”) or once:
— “Face to Face.” An artist tried to draw someone, strictly from descriptions.
— “Geographically Speaking.” This had travel films narrated by Mrs. Carveth Wells, Brooks and Marsh wrote. “It ended when she ran out of film.”
— Also, “I Like to Eat,” “You Are an Artist” and (with short documentaries) “Voice of Firestone” and “The World in Your Home.”
That sounds unimpressive – except the only competing network (Dumont, with two stations) had only three hours a week. There was a short cowboy movie, plus two quiz shows (“Cash and Carry” and “Play the Game”), some education (“Serving Through Science”) and “Faraway Hill,” the first grasp at bringing soap-operas to TV.
Those didn’t incite a rush to the stores. In 1945, the median income for non-farm families was just under $50 a week; an RCA TV set cost $385.
The ‘47 line-ups didn’t create much more of a rush.
DuMont still had its cowboy movie. Now it added four half-hours a week of the sweet-spirited “Small Fry Club,” plus a few other half-hours (“Doorway to Fame,” “Birthday Party,” “Charade Quiz”) and a 15-minute comedy with the married duo of Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns.
NBC still had its four hours of boxing, plus “You Are the Artist,” “The World in Your Home” and a couple newsreels. It had dropped the variety hour, but added a half-hour “Musical Merry-Go-Round.” It also added “Americana” (a history game show), “Eye Witness” (a show about TV itself), “Campus Hoopla” and (really) “In the Kelvinator Kitchen.”
Still, NBC had two signs of better times ahead – specials on Sundays and “Kraft Television Theatre” on Wednesdays.
The latter was a drama anthology, with top writers and actors. A year later, there were two more anthologies.
That year (1948) was when CBS and ABC arrived. So did Ed Sullivan, Arthur Godfrey and Milton Berle. TV would sort of be worth watching.

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