Americana (game show)

Americana is a weekly game show which ran on NBC from December 8, 1947, to July 4, 1949. The series was originally hosted by literary critic John Mason Brown and produced by Martin Stone Productions with NBC Television. Each week's show was sponsored by Encyclopedia Americana. The 30-minute show aired Mondays at 8:10pm ET in the 1947-48 television season, and Mondays at 8:30pm ET in the 1948–49 season.

For the 1992 documentary series presented by Jonathan Ross, see Americana (1992 TV series).

Americana
GenreGame show
Created byMartin Stone/NBC Television
Written byJerome Coopersmith
Presented byJohn Mason Brown (1947–1948)
Deems Taylor (1948)
Ben Grauer (1948–1949)
with Vivian Ferrer (1949)
Narrated byDick Dudley
Hugh James
Country of originUnited States
Original language(s)English
No. of seasons2
Production
Running time24 minutes
Production company(s)Martin Stone Productions
NBC Productions
Release
Original networkNBC
Picture formatBlack-and-white
Audio formatMonaural
Original releaseDecember 8, 1947 (1947-12-08) –
July 4, 1949 (1949-07-04)

Format

The quiz, whose slogan was "Your program about your country", involved five contestants (originally adults, changed to high school students by March 1949) answering viewer-submitted questions about American history. A panel of three actors would perform short skits (with either one actor or more in each), after which the contestants would try to answer the questions.

Hosts

On January 21, 1948, Brown was replaced by composer and musical critic Deems Taylor, who only hosted that show and the January 28 episode. On February 4 he was replaced by Ben Grauer, who was at the time recognized for hosting Information Please on NBC Radio since 1938.

In 1949, Vivian Ferrer joined Grauer as co-host, likely remaining with the series through its end.

Episode status

Americana was one of the first victims of wiping, a process that was continued by three of the four networks on the air at the time (DuMont rarely disposed of any material) through the late 1970s.

The March 14, 1949, episode is held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.[1] Michael Keane, Dan Roberts, and Oscar Brand were the actors; Elliott Mendelson, Vivian Frost, Elizabeth Mulligan, Joan Moran, and Michael Drake were the contestants. Vivian Ferrer is not mentioned as co-host, implying that she had not been hired at this point.

The surviving episode has been confirmed to be the second-oldest television game show episode known to exist, the oldest being from the mid-1947 game Party Line hosted by Bert Parks (which is held on kinescope at the Library of Congress).

gollark: I think most of it does, really, but often in different ways.
gollark: The grammar appears to be missing things like flat earth, COVID-19 secretly not actually being contagious because something or other, Bill Gates, birds as government spy drones, government-generated cognitohazards in Facebook, periodic table "skepticism", and all that.
gollark: Artificial intelligence is hard and annoying to do, but artificial stupidity is really easy. Although it is harder to match the full range of stupidity of humans.
gollark: It has too many spaces in it, but I guess bad grammar is a conspiracy thing too.
gollark: ... I mean, "stimulant" doesn't mean "magically makes everything function better".

See also

References
  1. "UCLA Archive: Americana". cinema.library.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on June 30, 2012.


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