October 27

On the 27th in1946, the television show Geographically Speaking debuted. Not terribly earthshaking news and I doubt if you will find it running on cable or broadcast television at any time in the near future. Why, then, am I sharing this meaningless bit of trivia? However, I suppose that my use of the adjective meaningless is redundant concerning trivia. What sets Geographically Speaking apart from a zillion other television shows is that it has the distinction of being the first commercially sponsored television program. Its sponsor was Bristol-Meyers. Carveth Wells, intrepid rich guy and explorer traveled the globe extensively with his wife, Zetta. Mrs. Wells was in the habit of lugging a 16mm motion-picture camera on these jaunts across the surface of the planet and used quite often. Actually, she seemed to use it every day. At some point in their travels, Carveth and Zetta become travel weary and their globetrotting jaunts ended. Mrs. Wells put her home movies to good use however and they supplied the material for the show, which had a running time of 15 minutes. When Mrs. Wells ran out of new material for the show, the show was simply cancelled. Re-runs would not be invented for a good ten years.