Kraft Television Theatre (1947)

Directed by

Fielder Cook

Genre

anthology series, drama television series

Country

United States

Length

11 seasons, 261 episodes

Rating

7.8 of 10 from 5 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Each week this live drama series presented a different story with new characters. It ran for over a decade on Wednesday nights and included both original plays and adaptations of classic stories.

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What happens

Kraft Television Theatre is an American anthology drama television series running from 1947 to 1958. It began May 7, 1947, on NBC, airing at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. It first promoted MacLaren's Imperial Cheese, which was advertised nowhere else. In January 1948, it moved to 9 p.m. on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the live hour-long series offered television plays with new stories and new characters each week, in addition to adaptations of such classics as A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland. The program was broadcast live from Studio 8-H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, currently the home of Saturday Night Live. For the entirety of its eleven-and-a-half-year run, Kraft Television Theatre presented a newly-produced episode every single Wednesday evening for 52 weeks a year (including on Wednesdays that happened to fall on Christmas or other holidays), with no repeat broadcasts. The episode "Patterns" was presented twice, but each broadcast was a separate live production. Beginning October 1953, ABC added a separate series (also titled Kraft Television Theatre), created to promote Kraft's new Cheez Whiz product. This series ran for sixteen months, telecast on Thursday evenings at 9:30 p.m., until January 1955. After Kraft cancelled the second show, the second show changed its sponsor to become Pond's Theatre on ABC-TV from March 1955, while the original Kraft Theatre continued on NBC-TV. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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