Is this how talk shows used to work?

Cafe Society
1

I was reading a wikipedia article about Betty White and they were talking about her first television show, a talk show called Hollywood on Television which ran from 1949 to 1953.

The show apparently ran for five and a half hours a day, six days a week. The original hosts were White and a guy named Al Jarvis. Jarvis left after a couple of years and was replaced by Eddie Albert, but he also left after six month. From that point on White was the sole host.

Here’s what got my attention. The article says that after White had been hosting by herself for some time, the show changed its format - by bringing on guests for White to talk to and introducing sketches to the show.

So what had the show been before that point? White just sitting in a chair and talking to the camera? For almost six hours at a stretch? Six days a week? That’s mind-boggling but it does seem to be what the show was. And it says the show was all ad-libbed. And broadcast live.

2

It sounds like the earlier radio talk show format. Running 5 1/2 hours by herself is remarkable. With that kind of stamina it’s not surprising she’s still active in show business over 60 years later.

3

Here’s an explanation of what they did:

> The name of the show was Hollywood on Television. "We played records and in
> between the records we’d talk a little … But while the record was on, the audience
> would see us moving around and talking to each other. After the first week they
> called in and they said, ‘It’s driving us crazy, we need to know what you’re saying.’
> So they scrubbed the records and threw out the turntables and we would ad-lib for
> five hours.

There’s a lot more at the link.

4

From your wiki link: After a period of White talking directly into the camera lens for hours at a stretch, the show began accepting guests.

So, yes, that’s exactly what she did.

5

It sounds like they were essentially doing a radio show on TV, which makes sense since I assume most people working in early television came there from radio and had learned certain ways of doing things.

You have a radio announcer with a mike, and point a camera at her or him.

6

It’s like a video podcast…we’re going backwards.

7

The closest to that in “modern” times that I can think of is Night After Night with Allan Havey. On The Comedy Channel before it merged with Comedy Central.

I think the show was originally 2 hours of filler before being cut down as the channel got more programming.

Almost all of it was Havey and Bakay just riffing with each other. The celebrity guest interview was a smallish part of it.

It was really great. Havey has recently appeared in the last season of Mad Men while Bakay went on to co-write the Paul Blart movies and other travesties.

8

It takes all I have to “real life” 6 hours of “real life” on any given day.

6 hours of “ad libbing” is superhuman.

9

I wonder if there’s any kine film of this show. I’m fascinated to know what the hell she talked about all day every day!

10

There’s a couple of stills in the clip (which you can click on in the following URL) which show Hollywood on Television. Sam Peckinpah got his start as a stagehand working for this TV show. His job was, among other things, to reach out and change the poster boards on the set. So his hands occasionally appeared on the show:

11

I can’t even imagine a radio show or podcast that is just one person talking–unless they are being a bunch of other characters.

At least, not any that are adlibbed. There’s nothing to adlib if there’s no one to bounce off of.

12

We really are, but in a good way. Dusting off old ideas and giving them a polish is a great way to sustain entertainment while it goes through a technological transitionary period.

13

I look at modern equivalents like Jenna Marbles or Taryn Southern on YouTube. But their podcasts run for about five minutes and they do them once or twice a week. How can anyone sit there and talk for six straight hours day after day?

14

Except did radio shows have one person–the same person–talking–just ad libbing–for five hours? If they had music, they probably didn’t do that much talking.

15

Was she doing her “Life With Elizabeth” sitcom at the same time?

16

Rush Limbaugh does a three hour radio show every weekday. I imagine he could do six if they’d let him, or at least could have when he was younger.

17

Read the links I gave. There were sketches on Hollywood on Television that were about the character of Elizabeth. Then they decided to make an entire show about Elizabeth. This became Life with Elizabeth. So it was like The Simpsons originating as sketches on The Tracey Ullman Show.

18

I’m guessing that the model for Hollywood on Television was probably Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club from radio.

19

If you go into the show properly prepared, it’s not all that difficult to fill air time. Read magazines, follow current events, and have your staff watch for items on the newswire, and you can keep going for hours.

I used to work on the radio, four hours at a time five nights a week, and we never had dead air time. Sure, we played music, had special features, and sometimes even interviewed special guests, but we were never short of things to talk about. Some of our best lines ever were ad libs.

20

There were lots of radio shows and some early TV shows that were mostly adlibbed. You can find some of them on Youtube. Here are a few random links to Don McNeill’s shows, which I’ve only listened to and/or watched bits of, so I don’t know how good they are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7asUxPlWX6g&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4bET-9EJ7j2k08Ao50pMOy4
They were much better than us at improvising. They were also much better than us at enduring boring bits.