McCall Homemaking Cover, Jinx Falkenberg in Calif

''Swift Home Service Club'' is a 1947-1948 American television show, "credited with being the first sponsored daytime network TV show." Hosted by

Tex McCrary John Reagan "Tex" McCrary Jr. (October 13, 1910 – July 29, 2003) 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 ...

and

Jinx Falkenburg Eugenia Lincoln "Jinx" Falkenburg (January 21, 1919 – August 27, 2003) was an American actress and model. She married journalist and publicist Tex McCrary in 1945.Autobiography: Jinx, Jinx Falkenburg, Duell, Sloan and Pearce (1951) Known as ...

, it aired Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. ET.

Broadcast history

The show launched on

NBC Television The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

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.

Format

Described as "a new daytime TV show that blended the homemaker, fashion, and talk shows", ''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.

Personnel

In addition to Falkenberg and McCrary, regulars on the program included Sandra Gahle, Martha Logan, and Helen Carroll and the Escorts.

Dan Seymour Dan Seymour (February 22, 1915 – May 25, 1993) was an American character actor who frequently played villains in Warner Bros. films. He appeared in several Humphrey Bogart films, including ''Casablanca'' (1942), ''To Have and Have Not'' ...

was the announcer. Lee Cooley was the producer, and Tom Hutchinson was the director.

Review

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.

Preservation status

This show has one of the oldest

live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the Internet when content or programming is played continuously (not on deman ...

episodes preserved, with a kinescope of a 1947 transmission in the collection of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

. This program is also credited as one of the first television programs with a sustaining sponsor:

Swift and Company JBS USA Holdings, Inc. is an American food processing company and a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinational company JBS S.A. The subsidiary was created when JBS entered the U.S. market in 2007 with its purchase of Swift & Company. JBS speci ...

, 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.

References