Early TV Shows

Have you ever heard of the TV show The Queen's Messenger? Probably not, since it aired in 1928. But wait! We didn't have TV until after the second World War! Well, we did, but no one had a TV set to watch it on. The Queen's Messenger was an experimental production, a radio play transferred to a visual format for broadcast on station W2XAD (also known as WGY) in Schenectady, New York. It is considered the first TV drama. Too bad no one saw it. Oh, the broadcast station set up television receivers around the city, with three-inch screens, so maybe a few lucky people saw it, mostly WGY employees.

Television was still in its infancy when World War II put aside its development, but afterward, programming became more plentiful and people started buying TV sets, which made all the difference. In this video, The Historian introduces us to five groundbreaking series that made television something everyone wanted to see. I would put one thing differently, though. I Love Lucy was certainly groundbreaking in its humor and quality, but its real impact was that it was the first TV show that was recorded so it could be replayed, and therefore introduced the rerun. That's why we can still watch I Love Lucy, but not the earlier shows.