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Behind The Scenes Of ‘Wonderama’…WNEW

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Eyes Of A Generation.com


Behind The Scenes Of ‘Wonderama’…WNEW

This 6 minute clip takes us into the control room with Sonny Fox as our host some time in the early 60s. From 1944 till 1958 this was WABD, Dumont’s flagship station in New York, but in ’58 it became WNEW. There is classic Dumont TV equipment everywhere.

‘Wonderama’ was a popular children’s program that ran for three hours on Sunday mornings on the Metromedia-owned stations from 1955 to 1986, Besides NYC, it ran in five other markets…WTTG in Washington D.C., KMBC-TV in Kansas City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WXIX-TV in Cincinnati, and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis – Saint Paul.

In February of ’55, the Dumont network shut down, but their TV stations continued as independents. In May 1958, DuMont Broadcasting changed its name to the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation in an effort to distinguish itself from its former corporate parent and the corporate name change to Metromedia came in 1961. Enjoy and share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfo5wCwai2Q

Sonny takes his young viewers into the control room of his Sunday morning WNEW-TV program to see how a television show is made. Check out the 1950s DuMont br…

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10 responses to “Behind The Scenes Of ‘Wonderama’…WNEW”

  1. Ward Bennett

    The cameras in this video did not use the original DUMONT Ice Cream Dollies!!!!

  2. Ward Bennett

    Arthur Forrest is still in the Business in LA, he directs The Rose Bowl Parade every year.

  3. Robert Eastman

    Like Ivan, the ashtrays caught my eye. That and the A.D.’s lit cigarette. When I started at CBS, I remember all of the control rooms had ashtrays on the consoles. Seems so strange now.

  4. Ward Bennett

    Palmer, The DUMONT gear at that time was state of the art, the camera head had electronics and the camera dolly referred to by the camera men as the “Ice Cream Dolly”. The ICD had 2 stationary wheels and two rotatable wheels, so when you had to truck, you had to “Break The Dolly”, which was to position the 2 front wheels in the direction you wanted to go. I do not know what the manufacturer of the audio console in Studio 3 was at that time. Studio 2 and Studio 3 were back to back studios on the third floor at the Telecenter.

  5. Art Hackett

    That looks like videotape…and amazingly good. I’m guessing those cameras are all at least ten years old. What’s interesting is all the CCU’s look like the portable ones used in the remote trucks in Houston that used DuMont gear. GE and RCA studio gear of that vintage was generally console mounted. Did DuMont build console mount gear.

  6. Ward Bennett

    Alan, if you were there after 1967, I was there too!!! I was the audio engineer on that show.

  7. Alan Rosenfeld

    A friend of my parents was the film director there for a few years, he got my brother and his daughter on the show. He took me in for the day once and let me hang out in the control room and playback area, what got me interested in a career in TV. I was 11 or 12.

  8. Ward Bennett

    Wonderama was shot at WABD-TV, at the DUMONT Telecenter, 205E 67th Street NYC facility. At that time there were 5 studios in the building this looks like Studio 3. I worked at WNEW-TV between 1967 and 2000, working on many Wonderama shows hosted by Bob McCalister, I know all of the Engineers in this video.

  9. Ivan Baker

    Thanks for posting. Love the ashtrays in the control room. Watched this show every week. Really wanted to win the Ross Apollo bike. BTW went to college with Sonny’s son.

  10. Palmer Johnson

    It appears that the DuMont gear produced very high quality pictures and audio!

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