T.H.A.T.
(Television History and Trivia)from
www.hologlobepress.com
by
Victor Edward Swanson,
Publisher
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- - - T.H.A.T., Edition No. 216 - - -
Okay, here I have Television History and Trivia #216. It is another very special edition. Before you see it, I have to make some points. I talk about "entertainment series" in this document. "Entertainment series" are series of fiction and made-up stuff, and the term covers such things as detective stories and science-fiction stories and mystery stories. "Entertainment series" are not, for example, documentaries or sports shows or newsreels or newscasts. I had to make that clear. In addition, I have to report that, when I talk about the television networks in this document, such as the start of television networks, I am talking about television networks once they were officially connected up for live broadcasts, using telephone lines and such, and the telephone lines and such connected television stations to origination points for or of live broadcasts. And a "series" is a product that has at least two episodes, and it was commonplace for real series to have 13, 26, or 39 episodes in the early days of television; a one-shot half-hour film, such as pilot for a television, is not a "series" in relation to this document.
The previous edition of Television History and Trivia was mostly devoted to talking about a fairly new book entitled Soupy Sales and the Detroit Experience: Manufacturing a Television Personality, and I made the case about why the book, which had been written by Fran Shor, should not be bought, and because the talk was long, I put off talking about another subject. Now, I can cover the subject that I have put off, and the subject is a television series of the late 1940s and early 1950s. If you were going to look for information about the series on the Internet today, you would find a lot of wrong information, and a couple of the places with wrong information are Wikipedia and The Paley Center for Media (the name of which is tied to a man--William S. Paley--who was instrument in creating the Columbia Broadcasting System, which, in history, is tied to such things as the CBS Radio Network, CBS-TV, and CBS Film Sales (a television and radio syndication unit)). The series is--The Cases of Eddie Drake. Look at the first two paragraphs of a document about "The Case of Eddie Drake" that I found in Wikipedia on January 23, 2022--"The Cases of Eddie Drake is an American crime drama series which aired on the DuMont Television Network. The series ran during 1952, and was a crime drama originally filmed for CBS Television by Imppro, a small outfit in 1949. The TV series was adapted from the radio series The Cases of Mr. Ace (1945-1947) starring George Raft, with both series written by Jason James. Don Haggerty played the lead in the new series. However, the nine TV episodes were never broadcast on CBS. In 1952, these episodes were purchased by DuMont and aired on that network instead. (For an example of a DuMont-filmed series which aired on CBS, see The Honeymooners.) DuMont also filmed four additional episodes to round out the series to the standard 13-episode season....". Okay, the DuMont idea and the 1952 idea are wrong. Even today, The Paley Center for Media uses the DuMont idea and the 1952 idea to describe the series. Yes, both themes are defective. And I report that a bunch of websites that I came across in my search for information had or have wrong information about the series. By the way, my documents entitled Television History and Television documents do not list footnotes, since that would make the documents longer and less smooth in presentation, and I note that, when I get information from, for instance, past newspaper articles or magazine articles, I put the footnote material on index cards in my history files, such as those tied to the title of a given television show or movie, and if I were taken to court to show from where such-and-such information came, I could show where.
Now, I have a bit of history to pass along. Generally speaking, connected-up broadcast television networks, such as CBS-TV, were developed in the last half of the 1940s, such as starting in 1946, and there would be four main broadcast networks between 1946 and 1954, which is the period that this section of the document (guided by the theme of The Cases of Eddie Drake) is involved with. [Note: Keep in mind, when I talk about the television networks and distribution, I am also talking about indirectly the physical stuff to make networks work, such as telephone lines and switching stations owned and operated by the AT&T telephone system and the Bell System Telephone system.] In January 1949, the East Coast network parts (involving the various television companies and telephone-equipment stuff) and Midwest network parts were finally connected for live broadcasts--that is, live shows from the East, such as New York, could be broadcast live in Detroit and Chicago, and shows from the Midwest could be seen live in the East. On January 11, 1951, connections were made, such as through AT&T telephone lines (coaxial cables and such), to make it possible for live shows from East Coast to be seen live on the West Coast and for live shows of the West Coast to be seen on the East Coast. I report that, in relation to the West Coast, television networks that were physically connected did not show up till 1949 [well after January 1949, which is a date that you have to keep in mind while reading this document.] When the country was not so connected, some shows were distributed on film of some type; for instance, shows broadcast live in the East were filmed through a process in which a film camera photographed a television monitor (to make a film) of a live show, and the developed film (called a Kinescope) could then be transported to the West and be shown in the West (on a delayed basis). In the 1940s, the television syndication business was firing up in the country, and the syndication business for television involved having a distributor of a product (a television show) contact stations to see if they would buy the product and air it, such as a weekly television series, and the distributor may be actually involved in making the product or may be only involved in distributing a product, which had been made or was being made by some other entity. In the 1940s, a television network could have a unit (a part of the whole company) that distributed syndicated films, such as NBC Newsreel (which was a product of NBC-TV). In the late 1940s, there were not a lot of television stations in the country, and, basically, a broadcast network had few affiliates, and some were connected through television lines to the hubs at first and some stations were stand-alone for a while). For example, commercial television started up in Detroit in June 1947, and the first station was WWJ-TV, Channel 4, which was an affiliate of NBC-TV, and two more stations for Detroit did not fire up till the fall of 1948, and in 1948, there was a Midwest network (of telephone lines and such), and television programs made in, for example, Chicago could be seen live in Detroit, and programs made in Detroit could be aired live in Chicago, and if a program was made at one city, it would not necessarily air in another city unless a station in the other city decided to carry it (through some type of contract arrangement). So that gives you some necessary history to know.
I will soon get to The Cases of Eddie Drake, but I have some more bad information to show you that comes from Wikipedia (and it was found on January 29, 2022), and it is related to a television series called Your Show Time. The bad information is tied to a Wikipedia page called "Your Show Time", and the page has at least this material--"Your Show Time is an American anthology drama series that debuted on NBC Television on the East Coast in September 1948 and then on both the East and West Coasts, as a network show, on January 21, 1949.". That is a big gum-up. There were yet no connected television networks in January 1949 on the West Coast. I have not been able to find Your Show Time being broadcast on any station in the East in 1948, such as in the fall of 1948, and I see no reason why a filmed series would get broadcast on some stations, such as one station, in the East in 1948, when it looks as if the series was scheduled to be on NBC-TV in January 1949. If the series would have been a live show, then it might have been running on the station where it was produced before going network. Your Show Time was a film show and not a Kinescope show (each episode of which was designed to run in a 30-minute block of time). I report that Your Show Time started to run in prime time on NBC-TV-affiliated television stations in the East on the evening of Friday, January 21, 1949. The show was sponsored--tied to a contract that had been signed around late October 1948, between NBC-TV and American Tobacco (the maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes)--and the episodes were made by Marshall Grant Productions. In the West, KNBH-TV, Los Angeles, California, began to run the series weekly on January 27, 1949, and the show was sponsored by American Tobacco, which, by the way, had a one-year contract to have the show to sponsor in the country, and the show may have been broadcast on other stations in the West starting at some point in January 1949 (on a case-by-case basis).
Finally, I can get to The Cases of Eddie Drake. In August 1948, there was already the Columbia Broadcast System (CBS, for short), which had a television network and a syndication unit, and there was a company called IMPPRO Inc., one location for which was in California (IMPPRO Inc. would be known for making shorts (films) and other films (such as television series) in at least the late 1940s and early 1950s), and in August 1948, CBS and IMPPRO Inc. came together through contract to have a television series made, and that television series was scheduled to be called The Cases of Eddie Drake, which would be a private-eye-type series and which was based on a radio program called The Cases of Mr. Ace (of the middle of the 1940s), which had had George Raft playing Eddie Ace. At the start, CBS and IMPPRO planned to make 13 episodes (and maybe more later, it seems), and the programs were to be filmed with 35mm film, but prints, when used in syndication, would be n 16mm form (since television stations only had 16mm showing equipment then). The contract originally was set up so that, once the episodes were made, the two companies would share in profits on a 50-50 basis. Each episode was scheduled to be about 30-minutes long (or for a 30-minute block of time, which would include time for commercials and such), and, really, the programs proper were, in essence, scheduled to be 27-minutes long. Around November 1948, it was reported that a company called American Tobacco (the maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes) had paid some money to make the series (or had paid about 25-percent of a total that American Tobacco was scheduled to pay out), and it looked as if the commercials for that company would be seen during broadcasts of the series (wherever and whenever that would take place) and, at that time, each episode was being made for about $7,500. In around November 12, 1948, one of the executives of IMPPRO Inc., who was Harland Thompson, was on a journey from California to New York to deliver the first five finished episodes to CBS, and, at that time, four more episodes were being filmed and edited, and it was reported that the four final episodes would begin to be filmed on November 17, 1948. I note that, generally speaking, four episodes were being made in a batch over about a ten-day period, and it was taking about two days or three days to produce each episode. The main performers of the first nine episodes were Don Haggerty, who as Eddie Drake, Patricia Morison, who was Dr. Karen Gayle, and Theodore von Eltz, who was Lt. Walsh. At one point, it looked as if the first episode of the series would be shown on CBS-TV on Saturday, January 8, 1949, and the series would also be seen in the country through the syndication process (such as on CBS-TV-affiliated stations and other stations). By the way, in the late 1940s, most television stations had limited broadcast schedules, and, for example, in Detroit, there had yet to be regular broadcasting in the mornings, such as at 8:00 a.m., and one reason for that is there was a limited amount of programming that could be broadcast and there was a limited amount of money from advertisers that could be used to support the production and airing of programs, and I note that, in the 1940s and early 1950s, it was commonplace for an advertising company to be involved in making a program for television (which it could own and place on a television station or network and which it might later switch to a different television station or network, if it wanted to), and a television station or a television network might make a program and air it without commercials while hoping to attract an advertiser (and such a program was informally called a "sustainer"). Between November 1948 and January 1950, The Cases of Eddie Drake never showed up on network television or in syndication. Incidentally, I came across an article that hinted that the series might show up on NBC-TV on Fridays at 9:00 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. starting in January 1949, and since the show never showed up anywhere between November 1948 and January 1950, that information about NBC-TV is useless. Why did the series not show up for anyone in 1949? I have no correct idea, but I have some thoughts about why it did not. It looks as if 13 episodes were completed by December 1949, but I found information that hinted that the 13 episodes were done in February 1949. At some point, it looks as if American Tobacco bowed out of the production process of the show; maybe after only a few episodes of the series had been made, American Tobacco dropped out of the picture, and so money to produce whatever shows were not supported by American Tobacco had to come from CBS or IMPPRO Inc.. Remember: In January 1949, American Tobacco was the sponsor of Your Show Time on NBC-TV and that show was airing on Fridays (at least in the East), and that suggests to me that American Tobacco had bowed out of The Cases of Eddie Drake project, and in the process of leaving the project, American Tobacco could have had some production money returned or it could have ended up getting compensated in some way for having paid money to get production on The Cases of Eddie Drake started. I note that, today, the series is described as being nine episodes (set one) and four episodes (set two), the latter of which did not have Patricia Morison in the cast. Since all 13 episodes existed in completed form in December 1949, it was, in late 1948 or in 1949, when the final four episodes had been made. Today, it looks as if, for the second set of shows, an actress named Lynne Roberts sort of took over the place held by Dr. Karen Gayle's character (who was a psychologist who was writing a book), but the name of the character was different, and it looks as if Lynne Roberts did not play in all the final episodes (the final four). Since there were few stations in the country in 1948 and even in 1949, the owners of The Cases of Eddie Drake probably let The Cases of Eddie Drake sit on the shelf till there would be more stations in the country to air the series and pay for the series, which would allow the owners to better recoup costs of making the series. I can find no information that DuMont was involved in paying money to make the series, and there was no reason for DuMont to be involved in making the series, given, for example, Columbia Broadcasting System surely had enough money to make the final episodes in either 1948 or 1949. So, now I come to another idea--syndication. I can say that, generally speaking, The Cases of Eddie Drake was finally seen in the country through syndication in 1951, such as on WJBK-TV, Channel 2, Detroit. At the moment, the first broadcast of the series that I can find through looking in newspaper databases on the Internet was on Thursday, April 19, 1951, at 11:00 p.m. on WDTV-TV, Channel 3, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That date may not be the first broadcast date, since not all the newspapers in the United States of America may be available through a computer database, and so maybe a newspaper exists (having television broadcasting listings) that would show some other date or station can be listed in the "first" idea. Here is where the problem of the DuMont idea might have come from. WDTV-TV was owned by the DuMont Television Network (or, really, DuMont Laboratories) in 1951, so maybe someone thought DuMont was involved in the making of The Cases of Eddie Drake. There is more to the story about DuMont (the company) in a way. It was on March 6, 1952, at 9:30 p.m., when WABD-TV, Channel 5, of New York City, New York, began to run The Cases of Eddie Drake on a weekly basis. In 1952, WABD-TV was owned by DuMont (the company), so, today, people might say that the DuMont Television Network began to use The Cases of Eddie Drake because of the idea related to WABD-TV and 1952. Proof that The Cases of Eddie Drake was not a DuMont Television Network series is that two different DuMont-owned stations debuted the series at different times--months apart. In 1951, CBS Film Sales was the distributor of the series, and it looks as if, in 1950, CBS (such as CBS Film Sales) had gained complete control of The Cases of Eddie Drake (meaning, for instance, American Tobacco had no stake in the series), but it looks as if, in 1951 and 1952, IMPPRO Inc. was yet an entity that was set up to collect some profits from syndication. Since I am mostly involved in finding information about local television in relation to Detroit, I report that WJBK-TV, Channel 2, in Detroit, began to run the series on Thursday, June 28, 1951, at 9:00 p.m., and it aired another episode on Thursday, July 5, 1951, at 9:00 p.m., and I am not sure if an episode aired on Thursday, July 12, 1951, but from Tuesday, July 17, 1951, through Tuesday, October 16, 1951, the series was regularly shown to viewers on Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.. In 1951, a number of television stations around the country carried or aired the series.
Now, I have another series to talk about--Jackson and Jill. On Thursday, June 23, 1949, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which owned the NBC-TV network, got an episode of the 30-minute filmed entertainment series broadcast on at least WNBT-TV (New York City, New York) at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) and on WNBQ-TV (Chicago, Illinois) at 8:00 p.m. (Central Time), and the episode might have been aired on other stations, but I cannot fine any additional stations by looking in old newspapers of around the country, and, for instance, the program did not air in the Detroit area, such as on WWJ-TV. On Monday, August 8, 1949, an episode was shown on WNBT-TV at 8:30 p.m. (Eastern Time) and on WNBQ-TV at 7:30 p.m. (Central Time). Based on the times that I have given, the first event (June 23, 1949) was probably not an NBC-TV network-feed event and was probably a spot-event (each station received a film of the episode and aired it), and the second event may or may not have been a network-feed event (meaning a feed event in which stations aired the program at the same moment). A book entitled The Early Shows: A Reference Guide to Network and Syndicated Prime-Time Television Series from 1944 to 1949 (which was written by Richard Irvin and published by BearManor Media (Albany, Georgia) in 2018) has no information about the event of August 8, 1949, and the book notes that the NBC-TV network previewed the series to the American public--by broadcasting one episode in the East--on November 24, 1949. I can find no broadcast event by searching through old newspapers for November 24, 1949. There may have been a broadcast of an episode on November 24, 1949, but the broadcast was not listed in television listings in newspapers, so it seems very unlikely there was a broadcast on November 24, 1949. On December 31, 1949, WNBT-TV aired an episode--based on television listings--at 8:00 p.m.. It seems very unlikely that a bunch of other episodes were broadcast anywhere between June 23, 1949, and December 31, 1949, in the country. When did the series really show up in the country? It was not till September 1950 when the series began to be seen through some type of syndication arrangement around the country, and television stations around the country aired the show in the 1950-1951 television season.
Today, The Cases of Eddie Drake is considered one of the first filmed 30-minute entertainment series made for television, but it was not the first to be broadcast. It was also not the first filmed 30-minute series. For example, WABD-TV was one station that aired a documentary-type filmed series of 30 minutes--which was associated with the Encyclopedia Britannica--called Serving through Science of around late 1946 and early 1947 (the history of which I have not fully tracked down for myself). Some people think a series called Public Prosecutor was or is the first filmed entertainment series, and that is sort of true. However, I note a 17-minute pilot for Public Prosecutor was created in 1947, and the series when broadcast--starting in 1951--came in several forms based on an original 17-minute-or-so length for each episode--each episode was chopped down to fit in a 15-minute block with commercials, and episodes (not cut down) were offered to fit in a 20-minute block with commercials, and there was a third case. All the episodes--the total of which came out to be 26--were about 17-minutes long when produced, and in the third case, it seems, two-episodes were cut down so that they would fit in a 30-minute block with commercials. I found some stations aired the program in a 30-minute block in 1951, and it seems very unlikely that a block of time contained one episode and some 13 minutes of filler. I have found no evidence that one episode was made to fit in a 30 minute block, and, even in early 1952, Jerry Fairbanks Inc. (as the distributor) only had 15-minute episodes listed in charts of programs available for purchase by television stations. I say that Public Prosecutor can be called the first 15-minute or 20-minute filmed entertainment series and not the first 30-minute filmed entertainment series, and it was not the first entertainment television series broadcast (no matter what the length). By the way, Public Prosecutor showed up in Detroit as a syndicated series for the first time on April 21, 1951, at 5:30 p.m. on WWJ-TV, Channel 4. Remember--What a series is broadcast as, such as a thirty-minute series, determines how to define it, and when a series is in production, it is not finished, and the nature of it is yet unknown for sure. Oh, I have this to report--It was in 1948 when the makers of Jackson and Jill were working to make Jackson and Jill, and, for one, I found information that notes that, in December 1948, Jerry Fairbanks Productions bought a script for an episode that had been written by Robert Stephen Brode, so, in way, it can be said that the production of Jackson and Jill goes back to at least late 1948. Does that information qualify as denoting that production was underway on Jackson and Jill in 1948 or does the start of production begin with actual filming? I cannot yet say what was or is the first filmed 30-minute entertainment series if the start of filming is the determinant. I know not when filming actually began on Jackson and Jill, Your Show Time, and The Cases of Eddie Drake. So I cannot say what was the first 30-minute filmed entertainment series in the country based on the start of filming. I have shown when Your Show Time and The Cases of Eddie Drake and Jackson Jill first showed up on television, especially in series form.
To make this report, I did use a lot of time to see if another show (series) could have been the first to be broadcast, and I came up with a long list of series or shows, and my list covers from 1941 to 1960 and has a little more than 342 series (in relation to syndicated broadcasting and network broadcasting), and so far, I have found nothing to displace Your Show Time as the first, if first to be broadcast is the determinant.
I now report on some of the first 30-minute filmed entertainment weekly series and when they showed up on television.
Your Show Time (featuring Arthur Shields as "The Bookstore Man") showed up in the East on NBC-TV on January 21, 1949.
Fireside Theatre showed up on NBC-TV on April 5, 1949.
The Lone Ranger showed up in syndication in September 1949.
Life of Riley showed up on NBC-TV October 4, 1949.
The Silver Theater showed up with film shows on April 3, 1950 [Note: The series had started out as a live show in October 1949.].
The Gene Autry Show showed up on CBS-TV on July 23, 1950.
Trouble with Father showed up on ABC-TV on October 2, 1950.
The Cisco Kid showed up in syndication in October 1950 [Note: This series was shot on color film, but, at first, only black-and-white prints were distributed in the country; color prints did not show up till the 1960s.].
King's Crossroads showed up in syndication in December 1950.
"I Love Lucy" showed up on CBS-TV on October 15, 1951.
Incidentally, a weekly show called Hopalong Cassidy showed up on NBC-TV, on June 24, 1949, but that series contained material from theatrical movies of the past, and the material (film) was not specifically made for television, and the series ran for one-hour, and, officially, the series can be called one of the first network television series to offer full movies on a regular basis, though all the movies were tied to Hopalong Cassidy only and not to various characters [Note: For the fall of 1952, the first episodes of Hopalong Cassidy (as a true television series) were put in syndication, and there were 26 episodes, each of which ran 30 minutes, and for the fall of 1953, the package of episodes now contained 56 episodes (given 26 more had been made since the fall of 1952).].
In May 1948 and June 1948, WBKB-TV, Chicago, aired a series called Bob Sterling, American Ranger, and it looks as if what existed of the series in 1949 was offered in kinescope form in syndication 1949.
I have to report some good news about The Cases of Eddie Drake. When I had finished searching in newspapers and magazine databases for information that could be used this section, I went looking again to see if some website had, for the most part, the story about The Cases of Eddie Drake at least somewhat close and correct. Well, I found--stumbled on, really--a webpage called "How the Old Song and Dance Iced TV's First Private Eye", which was written by Michael Shonk and called January 24, 2013, and the website to which the page was attached was "criminalelement.com", and it looks as if Michael Shonk was involved in fictional mystery stuff, such as such as television shows. Michael Shonk's story about The Cases of Eddie Drake sort of comes off as if written in pulp-fiction form, but it is pretty good or accurate.
Since I am not sure when the final four episodes of The Cases of Eddie Drake were produced and where Patricia Morison was at the time, I cannot say whether or not Patricia Morison's being busy with other matters was the real reason Patricia Morison did not perform in the final four episodes. Maybe, the producers wanted another gal in the show. Maybe, Patricia Morison was a diva-type. Maybe, American Tobacco dropped out of the picture, and the producers wanted to cut the production budget to make the final episodes, and that meant they hired Lynne Roberts for less money than that which had been set for Patricia Morison. Today, I only know of one episode of The Cases of Eddie Drake that people can find easily, and the episode--"Shoot the Works"--can be found on YouTube. And so I have shot the wad on The Cases of Eddie Drake for now, given what I have been able to find so far.
In January 2022, I sent an email to The Paley Center for Media, noting that the information about The Cases of Eddie Drake that it had was defective, and I received no response from The Paley Center for Media.
[Note: I have more to say about Your Show Time later in this document.]Here is a special note, focusing on Wikipedia and more. Above, you saw material that noted that The Honeymooners was a DuMont-filmed series. That is way wrong. The series called The Honeymooners, which was a filmed series and is yet seen on television today, was used on CBS-TV in the 1955-1956 television season, and then DuMont was, in essence, gone. However, I note that the characters in sketches identified as "The Honeymooners" got started with Jackie Gleason on television shows that he did on DuMont Television Network before the fall of 1955. By the way, many people today report that DuMont ended in 1956. That is wrong! Officially, DuMont was done as television network on September 15, 1955, but, in essence, a DuMont-related company (a new entity really) did run a co-op distribution system as what might be thought of as in-house thing, involving up to two television stations it owned, from late 1955 to November 1957 (or so) at best. The production of The Honeymooners was from Jackie Gleason Enterprises Inc. Productions only (as noted on the credits), but involved in the production process was the DuMont Labratories-created-and-owned "Electronicam" filming process. I report that I stated that network television began in 1946. Actually, on Monday, April 15, 1946, the first permanent television link--linking three cities as a network--was set up, and it involved New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and it was related to the start of the commercial DuMont Television Network, though programming on a regular basis on the linked-up system did not start on that day, and, by the way, Thomas Alva Edison was a guest for ceremonies related to the event. Some people note that DuMont Laboratories did some linking (non-permanently) previous to April 15, 1946, and that is true, but that was not related to a commercial network television really. So I use April 15, 1946, as the start of the connected commercial DuMont Television Network, and I add that WABD-TV, which was involved in the event, was the first television station in New York City to return to the air after switching to what it was supposed to now use as a frequency (related to change in frequency allocation) [Note: WABD-TV had been shut off for the change in December 1945, and WCBW-TV and WNBT-TV had been shut down on March 1, 1946.]. Incidentally, a lot of sources hint that only WABD-TV (in New York City) and W3XWT (of Washington, D.C.) were involved in the event of April 15, 1946, but the event of April 15, 1946, was broadcast on WPTZ-TV in Philadelphia, too. [Note: For more information about DuMont, see Television History and Trivia #201, which can be reached through this T.H.A.T. #201 link.]
Announcement for the novice again (reworked in March 2019): To get useful television-delivered news or Internet-delivered news, try Breitbart News Network (the history of which goes back to 2007), WorldNetDaily.com, Newsmax TV (which was started up in 2014), CNS News (which is on the Internet and which was launched on June 16, 1998), and One America News Network (a.k.a. OAN), since the entities do not blindly support Barack Obama-type people (communists, socialists, progressives, liberals, and Shariaists), as do CNN, MSNBC, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, and ABC-TV (Note: To learn about bad journalism, you might tune in to CNN, MSNBC, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, and ABC-TV from time to time to see how they differ from the better places mentioned). I note that the Fox News Channel is evolving into a rotten channel, becoming like those that I have put down in this paragraph. If you are unclear of my intentions, I say in different words that you should boycott CNN, MSNBC, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, and ABC-TV and even now much of what is on the Fox News Channel and hope they lose more ratings and advertising revenues, since they are expendable, and it is time for you to find the guts to be mean and heartless and cancel them--since they are hurting you. In 2019, "The Drudge Report" was sold, and it should be treated as suspect for now. [Note: Everyone in the Democratic Party in the country is rotten, and the Republican Party establishment has shown itself to be socialistic and communistic within the last few years, and only a few of the rotten people tied to the Republican Party are U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie.]
[Note: Here is an example of Chris Christie's rottenness. On Sunday, February 6, 2022, Chris Christie was a guest on This Week with George Stephanopoulos (of ABC-TV), which had Martha Raddatz as the host, and Chris Christie pushed out crap. For example, Chris Christie said--"...And let's face it. Let's call it what it is. January 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump...an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week--overturn the election. And he's trying to do a cleanup on asile one here...." and "...He actually told the truth by accident. He wanted the election to be overturned....". That is bullshit!]Hey, let me stick in the Looking at the Movies section now and here. This section expands a bit on the main part of this edition of Television History and Trivia, which is about Eddie Drake. The Cases of Eddie Drake was sort of based on a national network radio show called The Cases of Mr. Ace, which had the famous actor named George Raft playing Eddie Ace, and that radio series was from 1947. The Cases of Mr. Ace was sort of based on a movie of 1946 called Mr. Ace. In Mr. Ace, George Raft played Eddie Drake, and Eddie Drake was a gangster instead of a private detective (or private investigator). In the movie, Sid Silvers played Pencil, who was the right-hand man of Eddie Drake's. Generally speaking, the movie was about a woman (played by Sylvia Sidney) who was a U.S. Representative and who was running to be the governor in her state. When I saw the movie recently, the movie came off as sort of a feminist piece, and I have to admit that I stand for the idea that very, very, very few women should get involved in being in political office, since women have a different thinking skill than men do, and women are more likely to adopt the ways of socialism, wishing to be nice and caring and such, and so women in politics mostly create crap. Given that, I report that Mr. Ace is the movie featured in this edition of Television History and Trivia. When you see the movie, such as on YouTube, you can pretend the date is Tuesday, September 6, 1955, and the time is 11:00 p.m.. On that date, CKLW-TV, Channel 9, aired Mr. Ace. The movie clearly fits in the category of films that I offer through Looking at the Movies, because it was broadcast in the first-three-year period or so of the existence of Channel 9. By the way, the assistant director for the movie was a man named Joseph Depew, and he went on to be a director for network television film shows, and, for example, he directed 144 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies. And yet others whom you will see in the movie if you watch it are Stanley Ridges, Jerome Cowan, and Sara Haden. The movie was written by Fred Finklehoffe, and the radio series and the television series were written by Jason James.
I can say that, years ago, such as in the 1940s and 1950s, there were "bad" shows on broadcast network television at times, such as shows with bad acting or bad directing, but there were no "ugly" shows, and I can say that, today, I have no problem finding "ugly" shows on broadcast network television, and "ugly" shows contain ugly people, such as with ugly morals, or contain political crap, and I now talk about two new "ugly" series on broadcast network television. On Tuesday, March 8, 2022, NBC-TV put on the first episode of The Thing about Pam, which features Renee Zellweger as the main performer, and the series is based on a podcast and a Dateline episode (of NBC-TV) focusing Pam Huff. Right from the opening scene, the ugliness began. Not a single character was someone that I would like to see again--it was a collection of mentally and physically ugly people. Nothing about The Thing about Pam was nice or pleasant or fun. Then, on Thursday, March 17, 2022, Fox TV pushed out the first episode of Welcome to Flatch, and all the characters were freaky or stupid or creepy and the like, and they did dumb stuff, and the episode came off as a collection of just bits of useless stuff done by ugly characters. Only rotten people would watch The Thing about Pam and Welcome to Flatch, which are not "bad" series, since the word "bad" does not suit the seriesm, given the series are worse than bad.
I do have an example of a "bad" show in a way. On Satuday, March 26, 2022, at 10:00 p.m. (Detroit time), MeTV put on the first episode of a weekly series (designed for a limited run) called Sventoonie, which features a puppet fish and the puppet's fish pal called Blob E. Blob. The first show was "dull," lacking fun and humor, and it had a "padded" feel. Sventoonie (a.k.a. Toony the Tuna) made a poor stand-alone host for such a half-hour series because of the personality, but it can get by with Bill on Toon in with Me on weekday mornings since Bill counters the fish's personality. The biggest part of the failure for the first episode was the writing, which can be corrected if the production team has the skill to fix the problem.
On Thursday, March 31, 2022, CBS-TV pushed out the first episode of a bad series, and that happened at 9:30 p.m., and the series was called How We Roll. It was a sitcom. The laugh track was weak, and jokes were lame, and the lead actor was stiff, and the whole thing was amateurish. And then there is the crap of having the kid want to be a dancer on Broadway, and there is the crap of putting down factory workers, and there is the crap of having the main character's mother look "butch," and there is the.... How We Roll is nine pins short of a strike.
And I have this about a crappy show. On March 28, 2022, I opened up The Guide (for WCMU Public Television), and on the top of page ten, I saw this information about a show called The Trick (which was set to be shown on Friday, April 22, 2022)--"Professor Phil Jones and his team at the University of East Anglia find themselves in the middle of a major investigation with their 30 years of research work being questioned in the first 'fake news' attack.". That sounded like bullshit to me! Phil Jones and people at the University of East Anglia were heavily involved in "Climategate," the scandal pushing fake information about manmade climate change on the world--they were not the victims of "fake news", they were the pushers of fake information [Note: See my document informally called "Cap and Trade", which can be reached through this Carbon link.]. Without seeing The Trick, I report that The Trick is rotten television.
Announcement: Recently, I have added some new documents to the collection of my documents at the website for The Hologlobe Press. One of the documents is entitled A Document that Dispels Myths and Nonsense of Science-Fiction Books, Movies, and Television Shows (A Logic Puzzle), which can be reached through this Myths link. Another document is And So You Think You're Going to the Moon, Mars, or the Stars..., which can be reached by using this Moon link. And yet another of the documents is entitled And the Stupid Women Shall Lead--and Lead Every Good Individual into Shit, Driven on by Communism, Feminism, and Defective Female Beliefs and Little-Girl Thinking, which can be reached through this Stupid Women link. And here are other documents--A Review of What Television Controlled by Socialists and Communists Worked to Sell as Truth in Relation to the U.S. President Donald J. Trump Impeachment (at Impeachment) and T.H.A.T. Special Edition--The First Helicopter-based Traffic Reporters on Radio for the Detroit area of Michigan (at Helicopter Traffic).
Local television in Detroit is loaded with crappy people, and I have some examples here. Recently, I happened to be in the Detroit area and had a television set tune to The Nine (of WJBK-TV, Channel 2.1), and the gang on duty for the morning got talking about gas prices, and one of the idiots was Ryan Ermanni. At one point, Ryan Ermanni noted that he thinks gas gouging (price gouging) is going on in the Detroit area, and he noted that lawmakers should do something about it. I care not about gas gouging since customers in the Detroit area can always avoid the potentially rotten gas stations (if there is any price gouging going on). So Ryan Ermanni wanted or wants government to take care of the problem, though it has been the federal government, especially Joe Biden as the U.S. president, that has caused the rise in prices. Do you see what a jackass Ryan Ermanni is? Elsewhere, WDIV-TV, Channel 4.1, has promos out with the theme "Expect More." I expect more from the television station, but I know it will continue to do fluff and screwed-up stuff. That is what I expect, knowing the place and having analyzed people! On March 13, 2022, at about 11:20 p.m., I happened to catch a report on WDIV-TV from Paula Tutman, and Paula Tutman was doing a report on a person "born in the wrong body." It was more transgender crap! And Paula Tutman was working to help change "the dialogue on gender." The report showed that Paula Tutman--a black woman--pushes the shit that is transgenderism. I report that "transgender" stuff is only imagination stuff tied to people involved directly, since a person's believing the self is living in the wrong body is not related to DNA or caused by DNA--it is a mind thing and thinking thing and fantasy thing. For instance, no person can determine that the self is living in the wrong body based on feelings or no person can determine through thinking that the self is in the wrong body, since the person has to actually live in a real opposite-sex body and the current-sex body to make a determine that is useful, and that is impossible [Note: A person who says that the self is in the wrong body is mentally ill.]. Paula Tutman pushed and pushes shit, and that makes her a screwed-up black woman, like Ketanji Brown Jackson (who showed off her rottenness on March 22, 2022, in a U.S. Senate hearing about her possibly being put on the U.S. Supreme Court).
Now I get back to Your Show Time for some final thoughts. Variety is a weekly entertainment trade publication that has been around for decades and decades, and I have done research in the publication over the last fifty years or so, and I was a subscriber to the magazine for many years till I was seeing that it was becoming useless for me, as Broadcasting and Cable was. I easily found the review for the first episode of Your Show Time in Variety. The review put down the episode, saying, for example, the first commercial in the show was too long and the narration part was too much, and the last sentence of the article was--"...It's a dull half hour.". When I saw the review, I did not recognize many of the performers' names. Some names that did not call up faces for me were Maria Palmer, Fay Baker, and Stanley Andrews. John Beal was listed, and I seemed to know the name. For now I will say, if Your Show Time was the first 30-minute-long entertainment filmed series, Maria Palmer, Fay Baker, Stanley Andrews, and John Beal were the first actors to take part in the first 30-minute-long entertainment filmed series in the country. I did a tracking job, and I found the names of all the episodes of the series, and I found these actors were some of the people who performed in the series--Dan O'Herlihy, Allene Roberts, Morris Carnovsky, Reginald Denny, Sterling Holloway, Jeanne Cagney, Marjorie Lord, John Archer, Selena Royle, Alan Reed, Evelyn Akers, Hugo Haas, Betty Adams, Peggy Knudsen, Edward Barrier, Jan Clayton, Richard Travis, Melville Cooper, Hank Mann, Mark Daniels, Tom Stevenson, and Leif Erickson. I know many of them (and I have more names that I could have put in this document). How many do you know? For the names of those whom I do not know, I might look up the names to see what the faces are like on some day, and then maybe I would discover I do know some others by face. One episode of the series--the 10th as originally aired--was called "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (which was based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story about Sherlock Holmes), and the episode featured Alan Napier (as Sherlock Holmes), Melville Cooper (as Dr. Watson), Evelyn Ankers (as Helen), and others. Hey, this is great! The episode can be found on YouTube. You might know Evelyn Ankers, since she appeared in two "Sherlock Holmes" movies of the 1940s featuring Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes) and Nigel Bruce (as Dr. Watson). Go take a look at the movies and the episode! My review of the episode is that the episode is not bad, given it was made for television over 70 years ago and ran only about 27 minutes (which is not much time to tell a story). Also, I found one more episode of Your Show Time on YouTube recently, and that episode is called "The Mummy's Foot", which features Herbert Anderson as a writer named Peter, and that film on YouTube is not specifically identified as having come from Your Show Time, but it did.
P.S.: On Friday, April 1, 2022, I happened to tune into The Real, and the gals were talking about the war, food shortages, gas prices, and such, and I noted to myself--These are such stupid women. [Note: They are so much into racial talk and racial crap!] Going into a break and working to get people to come back after the break, the Asian gal said--"...We have more smart things to say....". And that is why the country has the evil Joseph Biden as the U.S. president--the gals continually teach stupidity really, especially to young women.
Remember: The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan was a television show that was produced across the pond and shown on CBS-TV in the late 1960s, and I urge you to find The Prisoner on DVD, maybe from a library, and watch it, and you should show it--all the episodes--to teenagers, or buy it as a present for teenagers.
Stay well!Vic
P.S.: You are urged to see my document entitled One of "The Rules of Man"--A Rule About Health Care that No Politician May Supersede with Law, which can be reached through this Rule1 link. I have deduced that all the Democrats and most Republicans support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and have no intention of killing it, though it should be killed for violating, for one, "The Rules of Man." For example, Republicans Jeb Bush and Chris Christie support the rotten law, and that is one reason that I define them as stupid men and not men who are good enough--in this day and age--to be the U.S. President. I note that the "mandate"--which forces everyone to buy government-approved health-care insurance--violates one of "The Rules of Man," and it is a rule that is attacked in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Anyone who supports the "mandate" is not a good enough person or a smart enough person to be the U.S. president--the mandate is "enslavism," and the "mandate" allows government people--who are often usually bad people, as history shows--decide what health care a person can get, and that is bad.
copyright c. 2022
Date published: April 10, 2022
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