Starring Alice Burrows Running time 15 minutes First episode date 1948 | Country of origin United States Original release 1948 – 1949 Final episode date 1949 | |
Original network DuMont Television Network | ||
The Needle Shop was an early United States television program which aired on the DuMont Television Network in a 15-minute timeslot at 2:30pm ET weekdays. The program aired on New York City television station WABD from 1948 to 1949.
Contents
Broadcast history
This series is significant as representing part of WABD's daytime experiment. While not the first with daytime programming, the station was the first to introduce a schedule which began in the morning and continued through to the end of prime-time, at a time when daytime and afternoon broadcasting was heavy on test patterns.
The series was about sewing, and was hosted by Alice Burrows, who was age 62 when she started appearing on the series. She was described in a news article as "pretty, silvery-haired and bristling with energy".
According to the book What Women Watched: Daytime Television in the 1950s (University of Texas Press, 2005) by Marsha Cassidy, the DuMont daytime schedule beginning in January 1949 was:
Preservation status
As with most DuMont series, no episodes are known to exist, as live local shows were very rarely kinescoped for many years. Additionally, 1940s daytime television series are poorly preserved as a whole, with only a few scattered kinescopes known to be held by television archives (one of which, an experimental one-off telecast of the Breakfast Club radio show, aired on WABD).
Reception
Billboard magazine felt a younger and more attractive host would have been a better choice, but also stated that Burrows "obviously knows her stuff" and that the series "might prove of value".