Word: sullivans
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...amazement of NBC and Steve Allen, and the consternation of CBS and Ed Sullivan, the battle of Sunday at 8 (TIME, July 9) took an unexpected turn. In only his second appearance at that critical TV hour, NBC's Steve Allen, aided by his guest star, Elvis ("The Pelvis") Presley, last week badly beat CBS's Ed Sullivan with a Trendex rating of 20.2, and 55.3% of the audience, against Sullivan's 14.8 rating and 39.7% of the audience. Except for a couple of one-shot shows (Martin and Lewis twice) and a Spectacular (Inside Beverly Hills...
...hour dominated the television week. On Sunday night at 8, Comedian Steve (Tonight) Allen opened the latest phase of NBC's attack against CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show (TIME, June 25). NBC's ambitious objective: to grab Sullivan's audience, consistently rated the biggest or second biggest audience of any TV show...
With so much at stake and so redoubtable a personality as Allen's thrown against him, Sullivan reacted with an astute application of high strategy. By announcing that 43 Hollywood stars would appear on his show, he made good use of the well-established principle that the more Hollywood stars promised on a TV show, the more viewers the show will draw. He made even better use of the principle's incontrovertible corollary−viz., the quality of a TV show varies inversely with the number of Hollywood stars on it and the time they stay around. Sullivan...
...Comfortable Lead. It was the usual Sullivan variety show with everything thrown in from bears riding bicycles to Harry Belafonte singing spirituals and with something to appeal to every member of the family. Against this onslaught Steve Allen was forced to do a little of the same kind of thing. Allen offered some big names of his own "to get the customers to walk into the store." Sammy Davis Jr. sang too long and too loud, and Kim Novak fluffed her way through a skit that strained too hard for its laughs. The best part of the Steve Allen show...
Meanwhile, though Sullivan kept a comfortable lead, Allen did rather well in the audience he drew to his opening show. Against Sullivan's score of 24.6 with 59% of the audience in a 15-city Trendex rating, Allen won a rating of 13.3 with 33% of the audience, more than double the usual NBC rating against Sullivan...