I have spent months researching the first day of commercial television on July 1, 1941, as we near its 70th anniversary this coming Friday. What I discovered was a day as messy and prescient as it could be, not like anything that has been written about in the history books. Can you imagine that when the day ended critics are already complaining about how this new medium is exploiting the American public? The very first day and TV is being called offensive! Snooki of Jersey Shore infamy will not be born for another forty-six years.

July 1, 1941, was planned as the day American television would begin to be competitive with the other established media. After years of research and experimental transmissions, TV would now receive the economic jolt through advertising to develop new programming. David Sarnoff of RCA/NBC and William Paley of CBS also made sure to frame television as an extension of the radio industry. Meet the new medium, same as the old medium, this time with pictures.

Working with the Library of Congress and the NBC News Archive, I was able to acquire the remaining artifacts of that historic day. There was no formal way to capture the television image; the kinescope process was a few years away. But audio transcriptions from part of NBC's inaugural day were made and placed in the radio collection. I have never encountered any recordings from the other networks, audio or video. I have read numerous accounts of July 1st, but hearing those discs totally altered my thinking of what TV was all about at the beginning.

The first program TV preserved on audio is the News with Lowell Thomas, a fifteen minute synopsis of the day's events. Thomas is very sober as he recounts the Nazi march into the Soviet Union. He even references Napoleon's incursion a century before, expecting his audience would get the historical allusion. But, as the broadcast ends, he applauds Joe DiMaggio for tying the hitting streak mark of forty-four games set by Wee Willie Keeler. Any baseball fan knows that Joltin' Joe's streak, which continued to fifty-six games, is one of the most sacred records in the history of all sports. Then Thomas decides to perform ethnic comedy. He jokes that since Italians are so good at baseball maybe Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, should use balls and bats in the European war. The idea of mingling news and comedy was conceived on that very first day. Who knew that Jon Stewart's act was so old?

The first broadcast day ended with the game show Truth or Consequences, a much rowdier version than the show we remember with Bob Barker. This show sounded like a precursor of the “Morning Zoo” with staff cackling and mocking guests throughout. This program seemed childish, even by the standards of our reality TV. In fact, one contestant was forced to sit on a lap of a middle-aged woman, pretending he was a baby crying for a bottle.  A critic from Variety complained “it makes a very unpretty picture—if anyone cares—of American citizenship.”

We are now processing these discs, and I invite you to visit the Paley Center and hear history in the making. Listening to comedy news and reality stunts, you will feel right at home.

Please visit our website this July 1st and learn more about TV's 70th birthday. Special thanks to Karen Fishman and Mike Mashon of the Library of Congress; Clara Fon-Sing and Kevin Bianchi of the NBC News Archive; and historian David Schwartz of the Game Show Network for all their assistance.