What Vast Wasteland? George Pierrot Made Every Detroiter a World Traveler

The Michigan Historical Review 46:2 (Fall 2020): 71-92©2020 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved What Vast Wasteland? George Pierrot Made Every Detroiter a World Traveler By Tim Kiska A mere decade after commercial television’s birth, some of its most respected leaders had begun to express alarm publicly about the medium’s content. In 1958, Edward R. Murrow, who forged legendary journalism credentials as a World War II radio correspondent for CBS, delivered a scorching speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association. Murrow, broadcast journalism’s greatest figure, told his peers: “If there are historians about 50 or 100 years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks, they will find there recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the world in which we live.”1 Three years later, Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appeared before the National Association of Broadcasters and described television as a “vast wasteland.”2 Minow’s broadside, and the scolding by America’s most famous broadcaster, were ominous warnings about the quality of a medium that already had become a dominant influence on national culture.3 No matter how vast the programming desert, oases could be found on both the national programming grid and—perhaps surprising to today’s generation—in local broadcasting studios. The technology that delivered pictures into America’s living rooms had arrived as a wondrous but empty vessel. When local broadcasters scrambled to find content, it was not all children’s shows and old movies. There was Charm Kitchen on 1 https://12565270.weebly.com/rtnda-speech.html; Dan Shelley, “A ‘Wires and Lights in a Box’ Speech for Today,” Radio Television Digital News Association, October 15, 2018. www.rtdna.org/article/a_wires_and_lights_in_a_box_speech_for_today. 2 www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm. 3 For a different view of the debate, see Laurie Oullette’s Viewers Like You? How Public TV Failed the People (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 25. She deconstructs the arguments, characterizing them as “the denigration of popular genres as trivial and low, the claim that the mass audience is responsible for the wasteland, and the assumption that better television would inevitably be crafted from above.” 72 The Michigan Historical Review WXYZ-TV, hosted by Edythe Fern Melrose, also known as the “Lady of Charm.” She featured cooking tips and household advice; Soupy Sales would take pies in the face as his trademark comic shtick. And Ding Dong School, a show for youngsters hosted by Miss Frances.4 In Detroit, a pioneer city in commercial broadcasting, an unlikely figure emerged to fill an astounding amount of airtime that turned out to be no wasteland and, above all, did not insulate viewers from the world in which they lived. On May 1, 1961, the very day Minow made his “vast wasteland” speech, a portly and avuncular travel host named George Pierrot (pronounced purr-ROW) took Detroit viewers on a holiday in France via his daily show, George Pierrot Presents, on WWJ-TV (Channel 4).5 It would begin with a shot of camels walking in a desert, presumably somewhere in the Mideast. The set was simple: a map of the world in the background and two chairs, one for the host and one for his visitor. Pierrot’s guest that day talked about the Sorbonne, the Lourdes Shrine, and the Pyrenees Mountains. The previous day, a Sunday, Pierrot could be seen on both WWJ-TV (Channel 4) and WXYZ-TV (Channel 7).6 At 1 p.m., on Channel 7, Pierrot’s guest brought film from Vienna.7 At 6 p.m. on Channel 4, Pierrot and that same guest, Neil Douglas, explored “New England Adventures.”8 During that year, Pierrot’s show was seen on WWJ-TV seven days a week, occupying prime TV real estate: 5 p.m. until 6 p.m. on weekdays, and again from 6 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The format could not be simpler. Pierrot sat in a chair next to a guest who came bearing travel films. And yet the show endured...