In our present-tense culture, diamond anniversaries tend to get swept away by the whirlwind of current events. Here's an example: Network television as we know it came into being on Sept. 4, 1951, when AT&T threw the switch on the first transcontinental coaxial cable. Up to that time, TV had been an essentially regional phenomenon. (click below to read more)
The most important network shows were all performed live in New York, and the only way for West Coast viewers to see them was for fuzzy-looking film copies called "kinescopes" to be shipped to Los Angeles and broadcast a week later. The coaxial cable changed that by making it possible to transmit live video signals from coast to coast—in both directions. Within a matter of months, Hollywood had become a major center of TV production.
Don't be embarrassed if you didn't know any of this. So far as I know, no one has taken note of the diamond anniversary of the coaxial cable, or celebrated the 60th birthdays of three influential series that the cable made possible. But if you owned a TV set in 1951, you might well remember these Truman-era debuts:
Oct. 15, 1951: "I Love Lucy," the first Hollywood-based sitcom to be shot on film with three cameras in front of a live studio audience. Lucille Ball's zany antics soon made it the most popular show on the air. At a time when there were only 15 million TV sets in America, 11 million families watched "I Love Lucy" every Monday night.
Nov. 18, 1951: "See It Now," the first TV newsmagazine, whose first episode opened with a shot of two control-room monitors. One showed a live picture of the Statue of Liberty, the other a live picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. Edward R. Murrow, the host, was visibly impressed: "For the first time, man has been able to sit at home and look at two oceans at the same time." It may sound quaint now, but 60 years ago that image took people's breaths away.
Dec. 16, 1951: "Dragnet," the first filmed crime drama to make extensive use of location shooting. When Jack Webb opened each episode by saying "This is the city," he meant Los Angeles, not a cramped TV studio somewhere in midtown Manhattan—and that's what you saw on the small screen.
Sound familiar? It should—just as it did in 1951. Not only did "See It Now," "I Love Lucy" and "Dragnet" originate on radio, but they're still being imitated. Mr. Murrow's show was the grandfather of "60 Minutes," whose creator, Don Hewitt, can actually be seen on camera calling the shots in the first episode of "See It Now," which he directed. The three-camera system used to film "I Love Lucy" became and remained ubiquitous. And every police procedural TV series on the air today owes an incalculable debt to the no-nonsense just-the-facts-ma'am storytelling of "Dragnet," which inspired Dick Wolf to create the "Law & Order" franchise.
This isn't to say that network TV hasn't undergone drastic changes in the course of the past 60 years. Take a look at the TV listings for a typical week in 1951 and you'll be surprised by much of what you see there. Sixty years ago, most TV programs were still broadcast live from New York, and prime time was dominated by variety shows, game shows and hour-long "anthology drama" series. While many were banal, some were impressively sophisticated. NBC's "Your Show of Shows," which starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, was written by Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Carl Reiner and featured sharply observed comic skits that remain fresh to this day. Up-and-coming young writers like Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote and Rod Serling regularly sold scripts to "Kraft Television Theater," "Philco Television Playhouse" and "Studio One." Those were the days of "The Frank Sinatra Show," Groucho Marx's witty "You Bet Your Life" and TV's classiest guessing game, "What's My Line?" (The panelists included Bennett Cerf, the president of Random House, and everyone on the show wore evening dress.)
On the other hand, network TV was as much a mass medium in 1951 as it is now, and for every "Studio One" and "Your Show of Shows," there were a half-dozen programs like "Beat the Clock," "Captain Video," "The Lone Ranger," "The Original Amateur Hour" and "Frosty Frolics," an hour-long Wednesday-night ice show telecast live from Los Angeles via—you guessed it—the all-new coaxial cable.
Critics are forever spouting off about TV's "golden age." Not a few of them think we're in the middle of it right now. But the fact is that virtually all of TV's formulaic programming genres were in existence 60 years ago, and that some had already been perfected. Has there ever been a funnier screwball sitcom than "I Love Lucy"? Or a grittier cop show than "Dragnet"? While I yield to no one in my admiration for the best of modern-day series TV, anyone who looks closely at the way things were in 1951 is likely to conclude that network TV is pretty much the same now as it was then, a cultural weathervane that swings wildly and randomly from brainlessness to excellence and back again.
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