''Bowling Headliners'' was television's first nationally broadcast bowling show.
It aired on
ABC
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Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
from December 26, 1948, to October 30, 1949, and on
DuMont from November 13, 1949, to April 9, 1950.
The series aired from
Rego Park
Rego Park is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City. Rego Park is bordered to the north by Elmhurst and Corona, to the east and south by Forest Hills, and to the west by Middle Village. Rego Park's boundaries include Queens ...
Lanes in
Queens, New York
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long I ...
. The original commentators were
Jimmy Powers
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and
Al Cirillo. When the show moved to DuMont,
Joe Hasel took over as host.
Cirillo also produced the program.
Other hosts included
Russ Hodges
Russell Pleasant Hodges (June 18, 1910 – April 19, 1971) was an American sportscaster who did play-by-play for several baseball teams, most notably the New York Giants / San Francisco Giants. He is perhaps best remembered for his call of Bobby ...
and
Bill Slater.
Each episode of ''Bowling Headliners'' had two nationally known professional bowlers competing as part of a found-robin elimination tournament. An audience-participation feature invited viewers to send letters about their bowling abilities. Each week two letter-writers were selected to compete against two members of the audience at the bowling alley in three-frame matches with prizes available.\
Edelbrew Brewery Inc. of Brooklyn signed a contract in January 1949 to sponsor a 15-minute segment of ''Bowling Headliners'' on four of ABC's eastern stations. It was the show's first sponsor. In March 1949, the program lost what would have been another beer sponsorship. The New York State Liquor Authority canceled a contract that would have added Ballantine as a sponsor. The authority cited the bowling alley's selling of Ballantine, saying that the proposed advertising would amount to subsidizing the alley's operations. Officials of the alley and Ballantine proposed stopping sales there, but the authority did not change its decision.
The show was featured on the cover of the October 29, 1949, ''
TV Guide
TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...
'' when the magazine was still a local publication from New York City.
OldTVGuides.com
The series is believed to be lost
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History
*Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...
.
See also
*List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
This is a list of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network, which operated in the United States from 1942 to 1956. All regularly scheduled programs which were aired on the DuMont network are listed below, regardless of whether they orig ...
*List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
The DuMont Television Network was launched in 1946 and ceased broadcasting in 1956. Allen DuMont, who created the network, preserved most of what it produced in kinescope format. By 1958, however, much of the library had been destroyed to recover ...
References
Bibliography
*David Weinstein, ''The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television'' (Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Temple University Press is a university press founded in 1969 that is part of Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). It is one of thirteen publishers to participate in the Knowledge Unlatched pilot, a global library consortium approach t ...
, 2004)
*Alex McNeil, ''Total Television'', Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains ...]
, 1964)
External links
''Bowling Headliners'' at IMDB
Bowling television series
ABC Sports
American Broadcasting Company original programming
Black-and-white American television shows
1940s American game shows
1950s American game shows
1948 American television series debuts
1950 American television series endings
Lost television shows
DuMont sports programming
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