The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 128

Randall Jessee one of the early WDAF television personalities Television And Toothpaste Have Traversed Good and Bad Times By Joyce Wagner Television Editor Considering the number of odiferous TV programs telecast during the last 25 years it is not at all surprising that the history of the medium can be chronicled by advances in dental hygiene For instance 1949 is best remembered as the year commercial television first swept the country and Uncle Miltie first reigned supreme as chief tickler of the national funny bone It was the year that Ed Sullivan launched his long-running variety show then called Toast of The Town and that Ted Mack and Arthur Godfrey along with the Voice of Firestone made the transition from radio to video It also was the year that viewers were electrified by televised black and white illustrations of precisely where the yellow went when bicuspids were attacked by Amm-i-dent In Kansas City 1949 marked the advent of television when at 5:30 pm Oct 16 WDAF-TV channel 4 went on the air with a half-hour test pattern followed by the National Anthem a brief appearance by the late Dean Fitzer general manager of the station and a speech by Roy A Roberts president of The Star According to news accounts of the unveiling the telecast then shifted from the studio to the American Royal where Randall Jessee soon to be known as Mr in Kansas City was seen interviewing a variety of Royal personages NBC Salute This was followed by a newsreel and a brief salute to the station from the NBC network headquarters in New York after which Bill Bates WDAF program director read numerous congratulatory telegrams and McBride The sports editor delivered a 15-minute sportscast Somewhere in between the telegrams and fhe here but by the time the station went on the air the figure had reached 7000 and by the end of the year 25000 Television had hit Kansas City and the nation with an impact unequaled since the birth of radio three decades before When 1949 bowed there had been a million TV sets in use A year later that number had quadrupled In 1950 Groucho Marx puffed his way into national prominence with You Bet Your Life Faye Emerson was chastised for her low-cut gowns Jerry Lester and Dagmar invited viewers to attend their Broadway Open House Superman and Tom Corbett Space Cadet flew on to the small screen with and without the aid of spaceships Jimmy Durante Eddie Cantor Bob Hope Garry Moore Ken Murray Burns and Allen Jack Benny and Ed Wynn began their TV careers And the Andrew Jergens company introduced Dentocillin the first tooth powder containing penicillin to mesmerized viewers Schedule Doubled In Kansas City WDAF-TV offered its first live network telecast (of a college football game between Notre Dame and North Carolina) after achieving a direct link with NBC by coaxial cable through Omaha The date was Sept 30 1950 and the cable connection virtually doubled the program schedule In 1951 Estes Kefauver the lanky senator from Tennessee took his case against organized crime to the people by way of television and a spellbound America watched as alleged underworld figures were unmercifully grilled by the Senate investigating committee Florian ZaBach fiddled his way through a half-hour of music and Stuart Erwin bumbled his way through the Trouble With Father Warren Hull brought many a tear to the cheeks of daytime viewers with his Strike It Rich Amos Andy sportscast a 10-minute newscast was presented by manually moving a telegraph tape across the screen a stroke of haphazard genius which nevertheless fascinated the novice viewers That first evening of Kansas City television concluded with a network telecast of the NBC Television Playhouse and an hour-long look at the Arthur Godfrey show By the time that first evening of televised entertainment ended local residents had caught the small screen fever and were racing to the nearest appliance store to purchase television sets Two months before the first WDAF telecast there had been fewer than 1000 sets in operation fh.