Thursday, February 26, 2015

WAPI-TV Ads from the 1950's & 1960's

For some time I have been mining the Lantern Media History digital collection for material related to Alabama. The site offers full text of numerous trade and popular magazines related to film, television and radio. The publication dates range from the early twentieth century into the 1960's.

The advertisements below all come from the site; I have linked to the specific Lantern pages for each one so you can look at the full magazine issue. I've posted numerous images from the site on my @AJWright31 Twitter feed and will be using many in future posts on this blog. 

 These five advertisements are taken from various media trade journals between 1955 and 1964. All five feature WAPI-TV, Channel 13, the longtime NBC affiliate in Birmingham. Today the station is known as WVTM or NBC13. Alabama's first television station went on the air in July 1949 with different call letters, WAFM, and network affiliations. New owners changed the call letters to WABT and finally WAPI in 1958. The WAPI in the first ad refers to one of Alabama's oldest radio stations


The second ad lists the fall 1962 network programming on the station. Boy, do I remember many of those shows with fondness. We must have watched a lot of NBC in those days; the only show I don't remember at all is Saints and Sinners. 

The third ad comes from a period when the station carried both NBC and CBS programming. Note the tiny listings for weekly programs featuring "Bear" Bryant and "Shug" Jordan. No doubt a much larger font would have been used if that ad ran today!

The final two ads are simply touting the brand. I wonder who that outstanding young woman with the beehive hairdo was.









































Broadcasting 1956












































Sponsor 1962 Also appeared in Broadcasting



1 comment:

  1. Hm. The one model used rather blatantly...wonder if she was related to the station in some extra-professional way (someone's wife/sister/girlfriend?).

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