...and the 11-year-old(!) Billy Preston dueting on "Blueberry Hill."
Wow. Just wow.
I should add a little historical note at this point, to wit -- the reason the show was short-lived is because the NBC affiliate stations in the former Confederate states had, er, problems with the show's star, for obvious reasons. Remind me again why Lincoln didn't just let those cracker assholes secede?
9 comments:
NBC couldn't get a "national" sponsor. The network footed the bill for the show through it's entire run. It was Cole himself who pulled the plug on the series after a couple of seasons.
What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?
VR - what can I say? young Billy has kind of a Gary Coleman vibe. Pat Boone's version is better:-)
The sponsorship issue was the official explanation. However, that was a sideshow.
The NBC affiliates down South were getting threats for daring to air Nat's show.
This is the historical context -- the KKK disrupting one of Nat's concerts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Ku_Klux_Klan_of_the_Confederacy
What, you're contradicting the know-it-all? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. But you're right.
http://www.classictvinfo.com/TheNatKingColeShow/
Oh Steve...
Those "cracker assholes" would have included Sam Phillips, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Alex Chilton, REM, Tom Petty, etc etc. Let's not throw out the baby with the historical bathwater.
Alzo -- I take your point.
There's also the tiny little point that secession would have left about 4 million human beings as slaves to those cracker assholes.
Cracker assholes notwithstanding, there are three reasons why Nat King Cole's NBC show was never commercially successful. One was he was a black-singer-coming-into-Southern (and Northern) homes at a time when many people thought that the intimacy of TV in homes was socially and culturally threatening. Yes, that's flat-out racism.
Another was the nature of advertising on TV at the time, and yes, major national sponsors were reluctant to back the show for the first half of its life. Racism, yes, but only in retrospect, because had The NKC Show been wildly successful, youbetcha advertisers would've flocked to NKC and NBC. Advertisers care ONLY about money and reach and impact, and no more so than in the mid-1950s when networks were struggling with agencies to get back control of programming.
But the key reason for the failure of the show was scheduling, and whether the NKC Show was up against more popular programming (for the first half of its broadcast life it was up against the much more popular Robin Hood on CBS), or later moved to a 10:00pm slot against the very popular $64,000 Question, The NKC Show only did well when it had BIG name stars on it. There's a 1957 Ebony interview that I can't find on the Internet (but did get my hands on at the UMass-Amherst library when I was working at the University in 1980) which is referred to in "The Perimeters of Black Expression: The Cases of Paul Robeson and Nat King Cole" (see http://jfredmacdonald.com/bawtv/bawtv5.htm) where Cole is equivocal about the success of the show. The Perimeters article also has rating numbers for NKC.
The best way to look at the impact of the show was the way that Cole looked at his role on TV, as "the Jackie Robinson of TV."
While NBC was willing to keep the show going, Cole decided to call it quits after fourteen months on the air. Two factors influenced his decision. First, the network wanted to move the show from Tuesdays at 7:30 to Saturdays at 7:00. Nat felt the move wouldn't help his ratings, since in some areas, the program would air at 6:00 or even 5:00. The other reason was that he didn't feel comfortable asking his guest stars to work for practically nothing. "You can wear out your welcome," he commented. "People get tired if you never stop begging."
The Jackie Robinson comparison is valid to a degree. But King never had the TV success that Robinson had with baseball. Therefore, he had much less impact. The fact that he walked away from his television series for higher paying gigs is understandable. Few watched or remembered the series. Truth be told, Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen did more for blacks on TV than Nat King Cole did. They had the eyeballs and were unafraid.
VR
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