Why Disney changed his mind about TV - TV Guide October 1954

"Why Disney changed his mind about TV". Here's a super TV guide from the week of October 23rd thru the 29th, 1954. October 27th would see the debut of the new TV show "Disneyland". I like how Goofy is combing Walt's hair!






The Article is but three pages long, which seems average for TV Guides of this vintage. Lots of interesting things, the "Lands" are two separate words "Fantasy Land", "Frontier Land" and "Adventure Land" and the forth land is "The World of Tomorrow". Repeatedly referred to as an "Amusement Park" this article correctly predicts a July 1955 opening date.






The 9 million dollar prediction was way off! I have read Walt thru in his own money at the end (and money from ???) to make the final total over 17 Million!






Here's the full page ad Disney placed for the debut of the Disneyland TV show at 7:30pm. Conveniently on the page next to the actual listing. Hmmm, Perry Como is on at 7:45, I'll give this "Disneyland" thing 15 minutes to impress me, otherwise it's Perry all the way!





A great two page article on the up coming Sunday two hour special David O. Selznick's "Lights Diamonds Jubilee" Carried on all four networks (who is the forth one?) and in COLOR! Wow, Jennifer Jones looks oh so stylish and pretty, then for my buddy Richard over at the Viewliner LTD, here's Kim Novak, Zowie, "Lovey" indeed. Grrrrrrr...





Color TV was in its infancy in late 1954. As this historic article states, there were 31 million TV sets the US in 1954, and 7,000 to 10,000 of them were color! And a good number of those were in stores unsold. "Eventually it is predicted, most TV programs will be produced in Color". This issue of TV Guide has 5 programs in color, 5 for the whole week!





The "new" RCA 21 inch Color set is expect to be around $800 to $900. Can you imagine that? The average annual household income in 1954 was around $4500, lets spend 20% of our annual income on a TV???? It's no surprise it took about a decade to get the prices down were people could rationalize getting a color set. We got our first color set in 1970 and none of my friends had one yet, we would all huddle around it on Friday nights to watch the "Brady Bunch - In Color"...






By far my favorite part of the old TV Guides is the TV Teletype sections. I love how the New York section gets first billing, "Hollywood" is continued a few pages later. Liberace is talking of getting married, PR spin at its finest...





I hope you enjoyed this little time travel journey to one of TV's Golden Years.