January 17, 1949 the first TV sitcom aired. Anyone know which show it was?

[underpants]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goldbergs_(broadcast_series)

The Goldbergs is a comedy-drama broadcast from 1929 to 1946 on American radio, and from 1949 to 1956 on American television. It was adapted into a 1948 play, Me and Molly; a 1950 film, The Goldbergs; and a 1973 Broadway musical, Molly.

The program was devised by writer-actress Gertrude Berg in 1928 and sold to the NBC radio network the following year. It was a domestic comedy featuring the home life of a Jewish family, supposedly located at 1038 East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. In addition to writing the scripts and directing each episode, Berg starred as bighearted, lovingly meddlesome, and somewhat stereotypical Jewish matriarch Molly Goldberg. The show began as a portrait of Jewish tenement life before later evoking such growing pains as moving into a more suburban setting and struggling with assimilation while sustaining their roots.

The serious side

Berg was not averse to incorporating serious real-world issues that affected Jewish families. One 1939 episode addressed Kristallnacht and Nazi Germany (including a rock through the family window as the Goldbergs made their Passover Seder); other World War II-era episodes alluded to friends or family members trying to escape the Holocaust. But these were sporadic deviations from the show's main theme of family, neighborhood and the balance between old world values and new world assimilation. Molly shows viewers the strong matriarch that she is by constantly helping others with their dilemmas and proving to be the hero time and time again. [4]


In 1948, Berg wrote and staged a theatrical version of the show on Broadway, Me and Molly. A year later, she brought The Goldbergs to television.

Television
The television version ran on CBS Television from 1949 to 1951 and co-starred Philip Loeb as Jake Goldberg. He and Gertrude Berg reprised their roles in a 1950 film of the same name. The show almost didn't get to the small screen at all: CBS executives were uncertain that the show would work on television as well as it did on radio. Berg prevailed, however, and picked up General Foods (Sanka coffee) as its sponsor. Berg, who continued to write every episode, insisted that no studio audience be used and made sure everyday events formed the base for the stories she was once quoted as saying she avoided "anything that will bother people ... unions, fund raising, Zionism, socialism, intergroup relations. ... I keep things average. I don't want to lose friends." Berg's hard work and determination paid off. In 1950, she won the first Best Actress Emmy Award for her role as Molly on The Goldbergs.

The Goldbergs was destined to spend almost a decade on television—but not without disruptions. In 1950, Philip Loeb was blacklisted and pressure was placed on Berg (who owned the television version as she had the radio original) to fire him. When she refused, General Foods cancelled their sponsorship, and CBS dropped it from their schedule by June 1951.



Eight months later, however NBC—the show's original broadcasting home—picked up the series for the 1952–53 season, but informed Gertrude Berg that if she persisted in allowing Philip Loeb to remain with the series, it would never be seen on television again. She finally gave in, and the series reappeared in a twice-weekly, early-evening 15 minute format (with another change in title, to Molly, in due course), with Harold Stone and then Robert H. Harris replacing Loeb as Jake, though Berg quietly continued to pay a salary to Loeb

[doc03]

1. I would have guessed the Honeymooners. n/t

[underpants]

2. I had never heard of this show

in all the TV retrospectives I have seen I never heard this show mentioned.

[Downwinder]

3. Saw her on stage in "The Solid Gold Cadillac."

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. My husband and I recently watched a PBS production called "Jews in America."

I think that was the title. It was at least 2 nights, and about 4 hours long, each episode.

One of the things they talked about was this program. They didn't provide all the details you did, but I recognize it.

I recommend the show we watched. Lots of historical details that I had never known before.

[underpants]

6. As I said above I had never heard of it. I was susprized by this

Jews on TV back then? I guess she had proved that there was an audience and TV is a business. Interesting story.

[Basic LA]

5. Great post & nostalgia.

Have some memories of the TV show. It spoke to many of us living tenement lives in NY/NJ at that time.

[calimary]

15. Welcome to DU, Basic LA!

Glad you're here! Early TV is really amazing - the stuff they did and the ground they all broke. My early memories were vague - I remember Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, I LOVED the Danny Kaye show because I loved Danny Kaye. And Dinah Shore. And Lucy & Desi. And Perry Como. Seemed like everybody had a musical/variety show. My parents watched Perry Como's show. We'd all watch in their bedroom - they were stretched out and I was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed looking up at the TV from almost directly underneath it. Even back then I had to be close to the TV because I couldn't see! Serious myopia even back then. I remember Perry Como. EVERY time that show was on, my mother would always say the same thing: "you know, he's a VERY GOOD Catholic!" And I can remember thinking how odd that was. My thoughts always went to - "his show was good because he's 'a VERY GOOD Catholic'? What does THAT have to do with it? What does that have to do with ANYTHING?" I think I was maybe six years old at the time. I actually had those thoughts.

I had a LOT of those thoughts through my youth. About stuff that just didn't make sense, and/or didn't fit. In 5th grade, I couldn't figure out why I should be listening to the priest from the neighborhood church about family life and marriage and parents and children - since priests weren't married and never had jobs or wives or families to take care of (so how the hell could he know - or be entitled to make all these dictates and formal pronouncements about such subjects?) And when they'd answer - "well, it's God's will" or that's what God intended" - that was never a satisfying answer for me. Never realized til much later what that suggested about my own views. But there just seemed to be so much of that whole social construct that didn't make any sense to me.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. never heard of it

[olddots]

8. early TV had shows about working people

It wasn't great but it was somewhat realistic .

[monmouth4]

9. I guess I'm one of the few on DU who actually watched this show as a kid. We didn't have a tv

and watched on neighbor's tv because my father thought tv was a passing fad. When my brother and I were never home, he finally bought one. This was a wonderful show and was geared to the average American middle-class family. Our Irish neighborhood loved the show, it dealt with what every family went through and had little to nothing to do with actual religion. Molly was a brilliant woman and I recall my parents laughing about Bishop Fulton Sheen saying one time he was glad he didn't have to go up against Molly but Milton Berle instead. Berle was a good guy and also Jewish and of course made jokes about it. Comedy was so different back then. Groucho, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coco, Jackie Gleason, etc. Great times and I feel fortunate to have been a part of it..

[sakabatou]

10. My grandpa would know it

I don't think my parents know the show.

[RoverSuswade]

11. My first TV comedy was I love Lucy.

My parents bought a "Meck" TV in 1951. Neighbors would come over to watch 'I Love Lucy' on WISH-TV, channel 8 Indianapolis. We lived 75 miles north of Indy so our antenna was 40' in the air.
After about 10 minutes of watching the picture would fade out for about 8 minutes. Ergo: bathroom breaks and frig-raiding took place. Someone would yell "the picture's coming back" and we'd all race for the living room and resume watching the conclusion. It was fun trying to figure out 'what we missed.'

[AwakeAtLast]

12. Did you know?

WISH-TV is no longer CBS. Kind of sad.

[RoverSuswade]

13. Yes, that was a shocker.

However WTTV-4 brought back Debbie Knox as news anchor - great move.
In 1951-54 we had only 4 stations to choose from:
Best reception - channel 6 WFBM-TV Indianapolis (NBC)
Fair reception - channel 8 WISH-Indy (CBS)
Sporadic reception - WTTV channel 4 Bloomington - Dumont network?
Once-in-a while reception - channel 3 Kalamazoo (NBC) - don't remember call letters.
.
Best-thing-that-ever-happened: In 1957 - WLW-I Channel 13 (Noblesville-Indianapolis) came on air. It was ABC and we could watch 'American Bandstand.'

[RoverSuswade]

16. OOPS - i FORGOT

WTTV was first transmitted on channel 10