Kraft Television Theatre is an American anthology drama television series running from 1947 to 1958. It began May 7, 1947, on NBC, airing at 7:30 pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. It first promoted MacLaren's Imperial Cheese, which was advertised nowhere else. In January 1948, it moved to 9:00 pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that time slot until 1958. Initially produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the live, hour-long series offered television plays with new stories and new characters each week, in addition to adaptations of such classics as A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland.
The program was broadcast live from Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, currently the home of Saturday Night Live. For the entirety of its 111⁄2-year run, Kraft Television Theatre presented a newly produced episode every Wednesday evening for 52 weeks a year (including on Wednesdays that happened to fall on Christmas or other holidays), with no repeat broadcasts. The episode "Patterns" was presented twice, but each broadcast was a separate live production.
Beginning October 1953, ABC added a separate series (also titled Kraft Television Theatre), created to promote Kraft's new Cheez Whiz product. This series ran for 15 months, telecast on Thursday evenings at 9:30 pm, until January 1955. After Kraft cancelled the second show, it changed its sponsor to become Pond's Theatre on ABC-TV from March 1955, while the original Kraft Theatre continued on NBC-TV.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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