The Walter Winchell Show (1956)

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By 1956, Walter Winchell had already had an extensive career as a vaudevillian, a syndicated columnist, and, for a while, as a Red-baiter in Senator Joseph McCarthy's crusade against communism as a writer and broadcaster. Winchell had hitched his career to McCarthy's then-rising star in the early 1950s but had managed to maintain sufficient distance that his own career was largely undamaged by McCarthy's spectacular fall in 1954. Winchell had, however, walked out on his broadcasting career at ABC in 1955 in a dispute with network executives; prior to this, his 15-minute daily radio broadcast had been simulcasted over the ABC television network for the previous three years.

It was from this background that The Walter Winchell Show reemerged as an NBC variety program in the fall of 1956. NBC executives hoped that Winchell could develop an audience for such a program in much the same way that his fellow columnist, Ed Sullivan, had been doing for the past eight years on CBS. It was not to be.

Winchell proved to be a disaster in the ratings for NBC. His program, shot live in New York City for its first nine weeks on the air, was then moved to Hollywood. Winchell had a large number of celebrities who were willing to appear on his program, either in anticipation of a favorable mention in his widely-read column or in appreciation for a prior one, but this did not prove adequate to save the program, which was cancelled at the end of 1956.