Fifty years ago, most of Hollywood’s major movie studios refused to have anything to do with the new medium of television. Studio executives considered TV to be the interloper, unwanted competition for their big-budget films and larger-than-life stars. But despite wide screens, three-dimension, various color processes and slogans such as “Movies Are Better Than Ever,” a growing number of Americans bypassed the local theater in favor of watching a wooden box with wires and lights inside.

In the early 1950's, a few of the smaller studios–with little to lose–plunged into television production. Columbia created its own division, Screen Gems, to make television series and found success with programs such as Fireside Theater and Father Knows Best.

Walt Disney struck a deal with the also-ran ABC network in 1954, which benefitted both sides–Disney received the money he needed to complete his Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California; ABC scored a top-ten hit with the Disney-produced anthology Disneyland.

The Disney deal was backed by ABC chairman Leonard Goldenson, who ran the United Paramount Theater chain before his company merged with ABC in 1951. Goldenson’s belief was that viewers didn’t care whether a program was live or on film, as long as it was entertaining. With that thought, Goldenson approached his good friend, Jack Warner of Warner Brothers. Goldenson proposed that Warner’s studio create an hour-long dramatic series. For the third-place ABC, a deal with Warner Brothers would give the network respectability with both advertisers and the broadcast industry. Jack Warner, on the other hand, saw television as the sure way to promote his studio’s pictures to a captive audience. Indeed, Disney proved it could be done by giving viewers well-produced “documentaries” of various Disney studio projects on Disneyland. But Disney made sure viewers were both informed and entertained by what were essentially long commercials for such films as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

Warner Brothers’ studio lot was more suited to dramatic programs with plenty of action and adventure, so Warner reached into his archives and pulled out three of the studio’s classic films to adapt for television. First on the list was King’s Row, the drama about a small-time doctor (the 1941 film featured an actor named Ronald Reagan whose character had his legs amputated, leading him to exclaim the now-famous line “Where’s the rest of me?”).

Second was the classic World War Two drama Casablanca. But instead of Bogart and Bergman fighting the Nazis and falling in love, the modern version featured relative unknown actors, with Rick’s Café as the setting for romance and Soviet-Communist intrigue in the Cold War 1950's..

The third property was a western called Cheyenne, which featured the title character as a law-and-order man who tried to restore peace wherever he traveled in the old West.

ABC agreed to pay $3,000,000 for 39 episodes of the filmed anthology project, which was named Warner Brothers Presents. In those days, three million bucks would pay for one pretty good theatrical film.

Producing 39 episodes of a weekly television series for three million meant cutting costs to the bone by using relatively inexperienced writers, crew members and actors in the back lots of Warner’s studios. The early shows reflected the lack of cash, with predictable plots and relatively low production values.

Still, ABC wagered that viewers would forgive the flaws if the shows were compelling and scheduled correctly. The year before, the network slotted Disneyland at 7:30 pm on Wednesday nights, a half-hour before CBS and NBC’s prime time offerings went on the air. ABC bet–correctly–that kids would control the channel at the start of the evening, and stay with Disneyland for the full hour.

The result was a smash hit for Disney and ABC at the expense of CBS’ variety show Arthur Godfrey Presents and NBC’s situation comedy I Married Joan. With that in mind, ABC scheduled Warner Brothers Presents at 7:30 pm on Tuesday nights. The competition was far more formidable–“Warner” would compete with the first half of NBC’s revolving comedy-variety hour, with The Bob Hope Chevy Show alternating every other week with either comedienne Martha Raye or “Mr. Television” himself, Milton Berle. On CBS, the second half of Warner Brothers Presents would go up against a weak half-hour drama called Navy Log. ABC was able to draw some major advertisers for “Warner Brothers” that had never before run ads on the network, including General Electric and Liggett & Myers Tobacco.

But as part of the deal, Warner was allowed to use 15 minutes of the hour long program to plug its upcoming films and stars. Behind the Cameras at Warner Brothers gave viewers what was essentially a Warner Brothers commercial about its upcoming film releases and interviews with its stars. (One segment featured young actor James Dean, who was then filming Giant; Dean ironically discussed traffic safety just weeks before he himself died in an auto accident.) But the Behind The Cameras segment meant Warner Brothers Presents was close to a 50/50 mix of program content and commercial time. That’s not what viewers wanted.

Even worse, two of the three rotating features suffered low ratings. Neither Casablanca nor King’s Row were ratings successes. Only Cheyenne, with unknown star Clint Walker, caught on with viewers, especially kids. After discussions with network executives and advertisers, Warner made some major changes. The Behind the Cameras segment was dropped at the start of 1956, along with the Kings Row drama. Cheyenne was promoted to an every other week entry, with Casablanca and a filmed anthology called Conflict alternating on weeks when Cheyenne did not air. At the same time, CBS juggled its lineup, moving the weak Navy Log away from Warner Brothers Presents and replacing it with an increasingly popular new situation comedy But in the middle of the season, CBS swapped Navy Log for a promising new comedy called You’ll Never Get Rich, starring Broadway comic Phil Silvers as an con man/Army sergeant named Ernie Bilko.

The results were impressive. When Bob Hope’s show aired on NBC, his was the top-rated program in its timeslot. But on the weeks when Cheyenne aired, ABC had the largest audience. And when neither Hope nor Cheyenne appeared, CBS took top honors with You’ll Never Get Rich, now renamed The Phil Silvers Show. (In fact, if Cheyenne had been counted as a stand-alone series instead of being lumped with the other Warner Brothers Presents segments, the western would have been one of the top 20 series for the 1955-56 season.)

For the 1956-56 season, the Warner Brothers Presents title was dropped, and Cheyenne and Conflict alternated every Tuesday night. Ironically, Cheyenne never emerged as a weekly series; a complicated production schedule coupled with star Clint Walker’s battles with the studio made weekly episodes all but impossible. But the success of Cheyenne and its spin-off series Bronco and Sugarfoot led other studios to accelerate their efforts into made-for-television series. Still, Warner Brothers had a head start. By 1960, Warner was the largest provider of television series, providing ABC with 30 percent of its prime-time schedule for the 1960-61 season.

Warner Brothers moved beyond western dramas to create the action-adventure genre, with handsome male leads, beautiful women, and plenty of action (violence) in every episode. 77 Sunset Strip led the way in 1958; its success led ABC and Warner to roll out similar shows in different locales such as Hawaiian Eye, The Roaring 20's and Surfside Six. Unfortunately, the plots and scripts became repetitive and viewers began going elsewhere. ABC–which briefly beat NBC for second place among the three networks–soon found itself falling back to third. Not until 1976 would ABC finally achieve parity with its older rivals–and then some.

As for Warner Brothers, it was a relatively minor player in TV series production after the collapse of the action-adventure format for ABC. But eventually, it became a major player once again, especially with such hits as The Dukes Of Hazzard; Growing Pains and Family Matters in the 1980's, and The West Wing, Friends and ER in the 1990's. And in 1995, Warner Brothers finally launched its own television network in the United States. The WB, as the “netlet” is known, is responsible for such series as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, Gilmore Girls, Everwood and Smallville. Its most popular series continues to be 7th Heaven, a drama centering on a minister and his family. Going into its tenth season in the fall of 2005, it remains the most popular series on the WB network.

And by 1957, 71 percent of the programs shown on all three major networks were broadcast on film. By the early 1960's, videotape all but killed the live production (except for one-shot special series episodes and major events such as the Oscars, the Grammys and the Emmys. The Hollywood-television marriage remains alive and well.

When the WB network was launched in 1995, Warner went back to its famed cartoon archives for a corporate symbol similar to the Fox spotlights, the NBC peacock, the eye of CBS and the lower case letters of ABC. What WB came up with was Michigan J. Frog, who made his debut in the 1955 theatrical cartoon “One Froggy Evening” as a singing, dancing and talking amphibian who warbled “The Michigan Rag.” MJF appeared in the promos and the commercial bumpers for the early WB network series. But on January 23rd, 2005, WB Chairman Garth Ancier announced that Michigan J. Frog was “dead and buried” as the network’s mascot. Why? Ancier and his underlings said extensive research revealed that the frog reinforced WB’s early image as a network that aimed for a teen audience.

(In a parody, an episode of The Simpsons had Bart “checking out the Warner Brothers network;” on the screen of the Simpsons’ TV was a Michigan J. Frog-like character singing to his audience: “We’re proud to present on The WB/Another bad show that no one will see!”) These days, WB wants to attract some of the older viewers as well (surprise, surprise), so the former “Home Of The Frog” now uses “The WB” over splashes of paint as its logo. Although he is no longer the symbol of the network, a spokesman says Michigan J. Frog “is living in Bolivia under the witness protection program.” This author sends best regards to Mr. Frog and wishes him well in his future entertainment endeavors.