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18. The 1950s Bring Changes and New Competition
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18 The1950sBringChanges andNewCompetition [18.206.13.112] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:47 GMT) Television came to town during the final months of the 1940s. WFBM-TV, Channel 6 (later WRTV) signed on with live coverage of the 500-Mile Race. Five months later, the area’s second TV station arrived. WTTV, based in Bloomington, was seen in Indianapolis thanks to various-sized home antennae. Sixteen months after signon , Channel 6 was providing live network programming, and a year later, WTTV Channel 10 (which later became Channel 4) was granted a power increase and network service. Viewers now were able to see movies in their homes. Granted, most of them at first were not Academy Award winners, but they were a novelty, as were news, sports, music, soap operas, and locally produced entertainment. Local TV personalities hosted movie presentations, and more and more films became available as more and more people purchased TV sets. By 1954 the city had a third station, WISH-TV, Channel 8, and in 1957 it acquired a fourth, WLW-I, which later became WTHR, Channel 13. A remarkable moment occurred in January 1959 when Channel 13 equipment and personnel moved into the Indiana Theater for an evening to introduce and dedicate new studios. Video was shown on Indiana’s screen and live entertainment was provided by cowboy star Gene Autry and local broadcast personalities headed by veteran talk show hostess Ruth Lyons. Her daily show was fed to 13 by WLW-TV in Cincinnati. Both stations were owned by Crosley, Inc. Facing. In the summer of 1953, the Indiana installed equipment that provided directional sound and tripled the size of the video on an enlarged screen. Bass Photo Company Collection, Indiana Historical Society. The Indiana’s owners decided early not to oppose this new form of entertainment . In February 1952, they ran a newspaper advertisement: “See history in the making . . . theater television in addition to a regular screen show.” The TV attraction was a basketball game between Indiana University and the University of Illinois. It came direct from the IU Fieldhouse through the cooperation of IU and WTTV. It was noted that nearly 3,000 packed the theater. No one paid more than a dollar. A review in the Indianapolis Star was not all favorable, however. It stated that “faces and numerals of players were not distinct,” and commercials had a similar problem. Possibly because of the questionable visibility, college basketball on the theater ’s screen was attempted just one more time. It then turned to college football (three Notre Dame games). That eventually was abandoned, too. But video kept improving, and home screens kept getting larger. The theater then turned to boxing . Eight fights were scheduled. These involved such pugilists as Rocky Marciano and Ezzard Charles (matched up three times), Archie Moore, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Jersey Joe Walcott. In a sudden turnaround, the theater decided to [18.206.13.112] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:47 GMT) 192 offer a live TV report of an opening night performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Top price for this was $5. Audience response was modest , and theater television at the Indiana was terminated temporarily. The new process was called CinemaScope. Its first feature was Shane, a western drama with Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Jean Arthur. It occupied the Indiana for two weeks. Six months later, The Robe, a big-screen interpretation of a novel centered on the aftermath of the Crucifixion, stayed an unprecedented seven weeks. By 1954 the Circle, Keith’s, and Loew’s all had big-screen capability. The Lyric did not alter its facilities until the summer of 1956, when it added Todd-AO, another enhanced screen system. This enabled it to present the film version of Oklahoma , which stayed ten weeks. After that, advertisements claimed the theater was one of “ten in the world” to show The Ten Commandments, which stayed six months. That engagement was matched by Around the World in Eighty Days, which ran from early August to early February 1958. All this success continued because the lucky Lyric’s next super film was South Pacific. It set another record, staying for more than eleven months. This was surprising because the Lyric previously had been showing features that moved for additional weeks from the Indiana and Circle. Its films had rarely been first-run. Sometimes the theater had opened up its stage again for primarily country-western presentations. On came the Grand...