percent. Its consequent amenability to non-live content made Disney’s filmed programming a good fit. This material would also be a boon for UPT, since it would advertise a studio whose productions were routinely exhibited in the company’s theaters.
Disneyland debuted October 27, 1954. The weekly program showcased classic Disney cartoons and original pieces organized around the theme park’s fanciful worlds (Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland). The agreement between ABC and Disney initially called for twenty programs, for which ABC paid $ 50,000 each. The contract also had ABC invest $500,000 in Disney’s amusement park, which gave it 35 percent ownership and all profits from Disneyland’s concession sales for ten years while helping its partner guarantee the additional loans it needed to complete the project.23 The deal—which was the biggest programming package in network TV up to that point—gave ABC Disneyland’s first refusal rights for seven years.
Fortune celebrated Disneyland as “an immediate and smashing success.” The show was the network’s first top ten hit, which Goldenson called “a turning point in our progress.” Disneyland attracted nearly half of ABC’s advertising sales in 1954 and lured additional sponsors to the programs surrounding it. Just as important, ABC’s seven-year contract with Disney ensured that its partner could not simply leave for another network once the show became a sensation.24
Goldenson viewed ABC’s Disney alliance as a potential source of prestige that would enable the network to benefit from its partner’s favorable brand and association with the film industry. Moreover, ABC took advantage of the non-live program’s potential to be rerun, scheduled flexibly, and infused with commercial breaks. Disneyland’s first year on the air included twenty-five weeks of reruns, twelve weeks of second repeats, and an unprecedented number of commercials. Each of Disneyland’s episodes also devoted ten to twenty minutes to promoting Disney’s theme park and related products. The following year, ABC and Disney expanded on Disneyland with The Mickey Mouse Club, a similarly successful afternoon program that the trade magazine Television dubbed “TV’s most important show” shortly after its debut because it so effectively attracted young viewers.25
Allured by ABC and Disney’s prosperous deal, MGM and Warner Brothers partnered with the network to create MGM Parade and Warner Brothers Presents, both of which premiered in 1955 and sold out their advertising spots before even hitting the airwaves. While MGM Parade composed a series of short subjects and trailers for MGM’s upcoming releases, Warner Brothers Presents provided rotating series that adapted the Warner Brothers films Casablanca (1942), Cheyenne (1947), and King’s Row (1942). Cheyenne, the most popular of the bunch, featured the adventures of gallant frontiersman Cheyenne Bodie and sparked a glut of television westerns like Maverick (ABC, 1957–62), Bonanza (NBC, 1959–73), and Rawhide (CBS, 1959–65). Reflecting Disneyland, each Warner Brothers Presents episode initially included a six-minute segment called “Behind the Camera” that introduced viewers to the studio’s stars and teased the company’s upcoming films.
With Disneyland airing on Tuesday evenings and Warner Brothers Presents on Wednesdays, ABC began to achieve the programming regularity and youthful identity that Goldenson and Treyz sought to cultivate after the merger. The collaborations with high-profile Hollywood studios also set the network apart from CBS and NBC. In 1955, ABC produced only 14 percent of its material, while CBS and NBC manufactured roughly 50 percent of their programs. Despite creating such a small proportion of its programming, ABC’s clearance rate increased 24 percent between 1954 and 1955.26 Taking notice of this success, CBS and NBC began establishing similar Hollywood partnerships. The programming model soon became standard practice across network TV.
Critics, however, expressed befuddlement at ABC’s willingness to let content providers so brazenly shop their wares. Goldenson responded to these grievances by appealing to the commercial network’s business imperatives. “We’re in the Woolworth business,” he said, “not in Tiffany’s. Last year Tiffany made only $30,000.” With a thinly veiled jab at CBS—the so-called Tiffany Network—Goldenson admitted that ABC put profits over prestige. The network’s focus on mainstream, promotion-laden entertainments like children’s programming and westerns fashioned a brand that—like Woolworth—served the populace rather than lofty cultural goals. “We study public taste hard and carefully,” Treyz asserted. “We gear ourselves entirely to what the public wants. And the public wants cowboys. The proof: we’re getting the audiences, and we’re getting the sponsors. The big two is now the big three.”27
“A NEW ERA”
ABC built on its Hollywood collaborations by reinvesting in sports. At the time, network sports programming operated out of news departments—a connection that 1950s sports television’s stark aesthetics reflected. Tom Moore, ABC’s vice president for programming, who worked as public relations director for Hollywood’s Forest Lawn Cemetery before joining the network, argued that sports would bolster ABC’s counterprogramming. “I made a pitch to them,” Moore said. “Let’s go all out for sports. Let’s make this the sports network. The other two guys are underrating it.”28 He argued that sports had the unique potential to enhance the network’s Woolworth-inspired efforts. “Advertisers find sports moves merchandise out of proportion to their ratings,” he said. “They will pay more for a sports viewer than for any other.”29 He also reasoned that live sports’ immediacy would prompt stations to clear space for ABC’s broadcasts whether or not they were ABC affiliates. Though he found Moore’s pitch persuasive, ABC News president John Daly had no interest in overseeing this additional content. Goldenson consequently put Moore in charge of the task. The already overextended Moore contracted Scherick’s fledgling company Sports Programs Incorporated (SPI) to produce and package ABC’s sports offerings.
The savvy and opportunistic Scherick had continued to build expertise in sports programming since handling ABC’s professional football and baseball broadcasts earlier in the decade. After taking these packages from ABC and delivering them to CBS at a considerable rate increase, the Tiffany Network hired him in May 1956 as its “sports specialist in charge of all sports program sales.” Just four months into his CBS tenure, Scherick noticed that his new employer was not planning to renew Big Ten college basketball. Scherick thought he could sell the basketball broadcasts on a regional basis like his Falstaff-sponsored midwestern baseball telecasts.30 The salesman phoned Big Ten commissioner Tug Wilson and made his pitch: “You’re getting cancelled by CBS,” he said. “You’ll never make it as a national vehicle but you can make it as a regional one and I can clear the regional network and sell it so that Big Ten basketball can have a very fruitful and long life.”31 Once the Big Ten agreed, Scherick left CBS to form SPI. He took with him CBS producer Jack Lubell and hired Chet Simmons as an assistant. Scherick rented a grimy two-room office on Manhattan’s West Forty-Second Street where he and the hard-drinking Lubell, according to Simmons, “would fight like cats and dogs.”32 Simmons once walked into the office to find Lubell choking Scherick in a fit of blind rage. “Lubell literally lifted Scherick off the floor with his hands around Ed’s neck,” Simmons said. “I thought Jack was going to kill him, because all the while Scherick was making these gurgling noises with his tongue hanging out. Finally, Jack let him go…. I don’t even recall what they were battling about because they were always scrapping, but it wouldn’t have shocked me if a murder had been committed.”33
Shortly after forming, SPI teamed with Dick Bailey’s Sports Network Inc. (SNI), which also launched in 1956 and specialized in providing telephone lines for sports TV productions. SNI handled technical operations while SPI took care of sales. With SNI’s assistance, SPI became ABC’s de facto sports department. But even after Moore recruited Scherick and company, ABC’s slate of sports content was lean. It programmed only seventy-six hours of sports in 1958, which placed it last among the networks.34 ABC also reneged on the contracts to broadcast big-ticket events like the 1960
