Swift Home Service Club is a 1947-1948 American television show, "credited with being the first sponsored daytime network TV show." [1] Hosted by Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, it aired Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. ET. [2]
Swift Home Service Club is a 1947-1948 American television show, "credited with being the first sponsored daytime network TV show." [1] Hosted by Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, it aired Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. ET. [2]
The show launched on NBC Television in May 1947, Mondays through Fridays at 1 p.m. ET. It started shortly after a previous show hosted by McCrary and Falkenburg, Bristol-Myers Tele-Varieties which debuted on the NBC network on January 5, 1947, and aired Sunday evenings from 8:15pm to 8:30 p.m. ET.
Described as "a new daytime TV show that blended the homemaker, fashion, and talk shows", [3] The Swift Home Service Club featured homemaker tips and interviews, with topics such as interior decorating, kitchen ideas, and cooking. Audience participation contests with guest judges were also included. [4]
In addition to Falkenberg and McCrary, regulars on the program included Sandra Gahle, Martha Logan, and Helen Carroll and the Escorts. Dan Seymour was the announcer. [4] Lee Cooley was the producer, [5] and Tom Hutchinson was the director. [6]
A review in the June 1, 1947, issue of Sponsor magazine pointed out several flaws in one episode:
There can't be any question of the fact that Jinx Falkenberg is telegenic, but there also isn't any question but that she hadn't the slightest idea of what to do next on this show. Tex McCrary, the male half of the Jinx and Tex team, would have looked better with a hair cut and an established character ... Sandra Gahle, the interior decorator on the program, should look to her corseting, and the hat designer, Walter Florell, should realize that the television camera is not a mirror in which he's looking at himself and striking poses. [7]
This show has one of the oldest live television episodes preserved, with a kinescope of a 1947 transmission in the collection of the Library of Congress. This program is also credited as one of the first television programs with a sustaining sponsor: Swift and Company, the meat and food products company. The series lasted only one season.
According to Library of Congress and concurrent press sources, the program debuted in May 1947 at 1pm ET. There is a 3-minute segment of a live broadcast captured on early kinescope in the Library of Congress archives as part of the Hubert Chain collection from October 31, 1947, one of the earliest surviving recordings of live television. This program, one of several concurrent programs on NBC telecast from NYC's WNBT-TV, may be the first NBC network daytime show, shown in only two markets originally.
Kinescope, shortened to kine, also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s for the preservation, re-broadcasting and sale of television programmes before the introduction of quadruplex videotape, which from 1956 eventually superseded the use of kinescopes for all of these purposes. Kinescopes were the only practical way to preserve live television broadcasts prior to videotape.
The year 1947 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events during 1947.
Mary Kay and Johnny is an American situation comedy starring real-life married couple Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns. It was the first sitcom broadcast on a network television in the United States. Mary Kay and Johnny initially aired live on the DuMont Television Network before moving to CBS and then NBC.
Kukla, Fran and Ollie is an early American television show using puppets. It was created for children, but soon watched by more adults than children. It did not have a script and was entirely ad-libbed. It was broadcast from Chicago between 1947 to 1957. Comedienne Fran Allison starred, interacting with puppets, Kukla and Ollie whose puppeteer was the show's creator, Burr Tillstrom. After the original run, the team appeared in other productions over several decades.
Eugenia Lincoln "Jinx" Falkenburg was an American actress and model. She married journalist and publicist Tex McCrary in 1945. Known as "Tex and Jinx", the couple pioneered and popularized the talk show format, first on radio and then in the early days of television. They hosted a series of interview shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s that combined celebrity chit-chat with discussions of important topics of the day.
Don McNeill's Breakfast Club is a long-run morning variety show on NBC Blue Network/ABC radio originating in Chicago, Illinois. Hosted by Don McNeill, the radio program ran from June 23, 1933, through December 27, 1968. McNeil's 35½-year run as host remains the longest tenure for an emcee of a network entertainment program, surpassing Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and Bob Barker on The Price Is Right, albeit split between radio and television, whereas the latter two were television only.
John Reagan "Tex" McCrary Jr. was an American journalist and public relations specialist who popularized the talk show genre for television and radio along with his wife, Jinx Falkenburg, with whom he hosted the first radio talk show, Meet Tex and Jinx, as well as the radio show Hi Jinx and the television talk shows At Home and The Swift Home Service Club.
Admiral Broadway Revue is an American live television variety show that ran from January 28 to June 3, 1949. The show was notable for being "television's first full scale Broadway type musical revue."
Author Meets the Critics was an American talk show which was broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company, American Broadcasting Company, and the DuMont Television Network. The series began as a mid-season replacement on NBC on April 4, 1948, but was transferred to ABC during 1949. The show was transferred back to NBC during 1951, and then to DuMont from January 10, 1952, to October 10, 1954.
The 1946–47 United States network television schedule was nominally from September of 1946 to the March of 1947, but scheduling ideas were still being worked out and did not follow modern standards.
The 1947–48 United States network television schedule was nominally from September of 1947 to March of 1948, but scheduling ideas were still being worked out and did not follow modern standards. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series cancelled after the 1946–47 season.
Cash and Carry is an American television game show hosted by Dennis James that ran on the then-both affiliates of the DuMont Television Network from June 20, 1946, to July 1, 1947. This made it not only the sole program aired on Thursday nights by the network, but also the first "network" television game show.
Strike It Rich is a game show that was broadcast on American radio from June 29, 1947 to December 27, 1957, on CBS and NBC. It was broadcast on television as well, starting in 1951. People in need of money appeared and told their tale of woe, then tried to win money by answering four questions. If the contestant did not win any money, the emcee opened the "Heart Line", which was a phone line to viewers who wished to donate to the contestant's family.
The year 2003 in radio involved some significant events.
Television Screen Magazine, also known as TV Screen Magazine, is an NBC Television Network series which debuted 17 November 1946, airing Sundays at 8:30 p.m. ET, and ended on July 23, 1949.
You Are an Artist was a television series, which first aired on NBC flagship station WNBT-TV in New York City and "a small network of stations on the East Coast" on May 13, 1946, and then continued on the NBC Television network until 1950.
I Love to Eat was a live television series on NBC that aired from August 30, 1946 to May 18, 1947, and was a cooking show hosted by chef and cookbook author James Beard. The show is notable for having been the first network television cooking show.
Americana is a weekly game show which ran on NBC from December 8, 1947, to July 4, 1949. The series was originally hosted by literary critic John Mason Brown and produced by Martin Stone Productions with NBC Television. Each week's show was sponsored by Encyclopedia Americana. The 30-minute show aired Mondays at 8:10pm ET in the 1947-48 television season, and Mondays at 8:30pm ET in the 1948–49 season.
Campus Hoopla is an American game show that ran on the NBC Television network from December 27, 1946, until it ended on December 12, 1947.
Bristol-Myers Tele-Varieties was a TV series broadcast on WNBT-TV beginning in December 1946, and then began broadcasting on the NBC Television Network on January 5, 1947, on Sunday evenings from 8:15 to 8:30pm ET. The show, including interviews of celebrities, was hosted by the wife-and-husband team of Jinx Falkenburg and Tex McCrary.