Finding Horror on Early Network Television: Lights Out and the Business of Genre

Abstract

This article examines the forms and formats of early network television horror using a case study of the prime-time NBC series Lights Out (1949–1952). Lights Out, which began on radio, has been variously categorized as noir, suspense, horror, and/or pulp programming. This generic confusion is indicative of the broader troubles attending scholarly analysis of American classic network era television horror, including its elision in broadcast and genre histories. To address these scholarly issues, this article offers three interventions. First, it argues that analysis of commercial practices like programming and advertising is useful for understanding the construction of television horror during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Second, it details how intermediary discussions around Lights Out provide a clear view of broadcasting limits such as sponsor profitability and content regulation that affected television horror during the period. Finally, it articulates the protean shapes of early television horror programming.

Walter Damm was not happy to be writing Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, newly minted vice president of television programming at the National Broadcasting Company, in November 1949. Damm was new to television programming himself, having only worked with the medium at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee since the station’s inaugural broadcast two years earlier. Nevertheless, Damm had admonitory words for Weaver. “We are deeply concerned,” Damm wrote in his November 10, 1949, letter to Weaver, “with NBC’s seemingly loose supervision of television mystery shows” (Weaver n.d., Papers, box 118, folder 14). “‘Fireside Theater’ at 8:00 PMCST, which immediately follows the Milton Berle show on Tuesday nights,” Damm continued, “came in for quite a good deal of criticism on the basis that practically every child watches the Milton Berle show and with a gory mystery immediately following it parents are having trouble.” Children, it seemed, were getting treated to their own television double-features: Milton Berle and pulp fiction.

Damm felt no compunction diagnosing the issue for the NBC television programming executive: “[what] metropolitan New York. . .will accept is not acceptable in such towns as Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, etc.” Damm’s solution was two-pronged: press NBC to make scheduling changes and have the network provide programming descriptions in advance—or threaten withdrawal. Milwaukee was a one-station city, after all, and its viewers did not have the opportunity to switch stations like other television audiences could in larger, multiple-station markets.

Back in New York, Damm’s letter set off a chain reaction within NBC. Weaver, for his part, was in a bind. Responding to Damm’s demands required careful consideration to preserve programming integrity but placate television station owners carrying NBC feeds. A volley of communication among Stockton Helffrich of NBC Continuity Acceptance, the internal-facing regulatory apparatus for programming, Fred Wile, another vice president of NBC television programming, and Weaver resulted in a November 21, 1949 “Recommendations” letter (Weaver n.d., Papers, box 118, folder 14) being issued by Wile. To start, NBC would not provide advance descriptions of upcoming television shows to Damm. “‘Shared control’ of NBC editorial policy,” according to Wile, “is no control.”

NBC, however, would allow Damm to reschedule shows since they existed as kinescopes. For Weaver and Wile, television stations owned their licenses and could reasonably alter scheduling to accommodate their viewers. More importantly, however, Weaver and Wile saw ominous clouds on the programming horizon. “A few more instances like Damm,” they worried in their November 1949 memo, “[would result in] real pressure from [organized] groups” (Weaver n.d., Papers, box 118, folder 14). Prohibitionary recommendations issued by the pair included notifying advertising agencies responsible for sponsor programming of Damm’s concerns, insisting that Continuity Acceptance be present for program rehearsals trending in “horror or otherwise distasteful [directions],” and formulating a regulatory policy for television. In closing the memo, Wile directed NBC Station Relations, a liaison unit between individual stations and the network itself, to persuade Damm that NBC was “tackling the problem.”

This exchange between Damm and programming executives at New York-based NBC illustrates the intricacies and tensions of programming horror-coded episodes and series for US network television in in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This chapter follows the programming discussions and practices involved in placing one of these shows, specifically Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952), on television airwaves in 1949. Programming horror-coded subject matter, which often mixed violence, profanity, and the supernatural, for early network television involved complex practices that triangulated risk management, advertising, and regional broadcast station concerns. These practices involved the sporadic inclusion of explicit—albeit riskier—generic tropes to maintain audiences loyal to extant franchises, navigation of regulatory thickets around broadcast media that traversed temporal and spatial boundaries, and balancing (or battling) of regional differences over acceptable fare using generic affiliation strategies that fulfilled the commercial needs of early broadcast sponsors. Many of these practices were put in place after NBC’s experiences with transitioning Lights Out (NBC 1934–1939) from its local Chicago radio origins to network radio air.

In this article, I trace the evolution of network-led conversations around early US broadcast horror programming and its effects on the television forms of Lights Out. First, I briefly detail internal network programming discussions about the placement of the local WENR Chicago radio show on national, NBC-sustained radio airwaves. This includes attempted sales to commercial sponsors in the mid-1930s. Next, I turn to internal NBC programming conversations around transitioning the frequently horror-coded anthology series from a network radio show to a commercially sponsored, prime-time weekly television show on NBC air in the late 1940s. I end by defining some of the attributes of the horror genre on early American network television as evidenced by Lights Out and its transition to television.

Following in the methodological footsteps of media industry scholars studying television genres such as Mittell (2004) and Perren (2023), I take a contextual view of genre programming. I accomplish this by mixing archival research that includes internal corporate memoranda and programming policies with scholarship covering media industries and genre. Keeping Hills’s (2005) discussion about generic identifications around horror television in mind (p. 119), moreover, I define Lights Out as early broadcast horror rather than Gothic (or noir) television. I also recognize that details of the television show’s relationships to the horror genre are reliably complex because of commercial practices like generic hybridization that positioned programming according to network and sponsor imperatives. To grapple with this complexity, I examine the industrial and historical contexts of early American network television horror. I build on recent work that highlights the commercial logic shaping horror and affiliated generic products by scholars such as Gaynor (2022) and Telotte (2023) to study the effects of advertising and scheduling concerns on NBC’s positioning of early network-era horror. This allows me to note how the horror genre often revealed the limits, both codified and informal, of late 1940s and early 1950s American network television because it underscored the relationships among advertising practices, scheduling, and controversial subject matter. In doing so, I make the argument that intermedial network television practices are essential for locating and defining network television horror programming. An analysis of early commercial considerations involved in the placement of horror on American television, moreover, prove useful for charting the genre’s subsequent evolutions on a medium constructed as antithetical to horror’s perceived theoretical functions.

Theorizing Lights Out and Early Network Television Horror

Several obstacles have hindered a more robust understanding of Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952) and US network era—specifically early network era—television horror. One problem is that scholarly, critical, and industrial perspectives have occasionally rendered the genre difficult or non-existent on network television. Hills (2005) points out that TV industry creators and workers have cast horror programming as a “dangerous, difficult generic or cultural category for broadcasters” (p. 119). Hutchings (2018, 17) argues that the 1960s anthology Thriller (NBC 1960–1962) “is where horror on American television begins.” In Hutchings perspective, Lights Out and other early network horror programming do not factor into larger histories of the genre.

A related issue stemming from these views is that network-era television horror, despite its on-screen presence, has traditionally received less sustained scholarly and critical attention than filmic horror of this period. Horror scholars have remedied this oversight by re-constructing textual strategies, audiences, and forms of the genre on American commercial television during the late 1940s through the 1970s. Benshoff (2011) and Phillips (2022), for example, have examined specific network television horror programs such as Dark Shadows (ABC 1966–1971) and Kolchak: The Night Stalker (ABC 1974–1975), while Waller (1987) and Heffernan (2004) have foregrounded made-for-television horror movies on network airwaves and the midcentury circulation of horror films on American television, respectively. Wheatley (2006) and Wilson (2020) likewise have established important historical and industrial roots for studying Lights Out and early commercial television trafficking in the macabre and supernatural. Wheatley’s delineation of Gothic American television has proven particularly helpful as a more general approach to this television category under consideration, though I decidedly use the generic label “horror” for Lights Out based on my analysis of its industrial context.

Categorization of generic texts is another problem facing scholarly and critical engagements with early US network-era television horror and Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952). Wheatley (2006) refers to Lights Out as “Gothic-horror” programming (p. 125), and Wilson (2020), who focuses more on the figure of Frank Gallop than the commercial practices comprising horror on television, classifies the show as a “live hosted horror anthology series” (p. 847). These interpretations of the series as horror—or Gothic-horror—do not transfer to scholarly readings of the radio series from which it was adapted. Where Wilson argues that the 1940s television adaptation of Lights Out is distinctly a horror anthology, radio historians such as Krutnik (2025) place an analysis of Lights Out (NBC 1934–1939) within broader lines of pulp, suspense, and noir radio programming. Matthew Killmeier (2013) takes a slightly different conceptual turn from Krutnik and classifies the original radio version of Lights Out, along with other similarly themed radio programs such as The Witch’s Tale (1931–1938), as mystery-thrillers. Examining the mystery-thriller genre, or perhaps even sub-genre, is important to Killmeier because it offers media scholars a “more complete understanding of radio horror and the horror genre” (p. 167). A constraint of Killmeier’s approach (and perhaps Wheatley’s) is it side-steps analysis of the horror genre on early broadcast media by focusing on the mystery-thriller or Gothic categories and their narrative/textual permutations. These complex engagements with Lights Out indicate scholarly struggles around the show’s inconsistencies.

It is helpful to look at scholarship about commercially driven generic practices for other horror-identified media of the period to parse the existing disagreements about Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952). The same opacity that attends definitions and categorizations of early network television horror can be found in scholarship about horror radio and films of the period. Useful correctives, however, exist. Film historian Jancovich (2014) notes that scholarly understandings of 1940s horror films have been quite limited because of retroactively applied generic distinctions. While the 1940s were frequently viewed as fallow for the horror genre, the key to unlocking this period, per Jancovich, rests in recognizing that generic terms such as “thriller,” “mystery,” “film noir,” and “Gothic woman’s films” were not distinct categories but “were all identified as horror” by 1940s audiences (Jancovich 2014, 330). Viewed this way, 1940s horror films were distinct enough in orientation to receive discursive labels associated with the horror genre but broad enough to accommodate a variety of different thematic affiliations. More importantly, however, these variations were intentionally produced because they allowed genre films to appeal to wider audiences (Berenstein 1996; Staiger 2012; Telotte 2023). Horror films, in other words, didn’t simply disappear in the late 1930s and 1940s; they experienced changes in generic markers that were often market-driven choices.

Thematic affiliations for horror films also made commercial sense because of industry wariness about local and national regulatory efforts. Scholars looking at horror film censorship during this period (Doherty 1999; Edwards 2012; Petley 2014; Prince 2003) have discussed, to varying degrees, the effects of formalized self-regulation policies, particularly the William Hays-administered Hollywood Production Code initiated in 1930, on distribution-driven generic affiliations associated with pre-1950 horror film cycles. One issue all scholars agree on is local censor boards, rife with “idiosyncratic tastes” (Doherty 1999, 297), were a constant feature of the film distribution landscape both pre-Code and post-Code, and they regularly provided feedback about what subject matter was acceptable or not for local audiences. The Kansas-Frankenstein (1931) case, perhaps the most famous example of local board interference with horror films, illustrates the uneasiness censor boards felt about on-screen violence and religious profanity such as digging up corpses (Prince 2003, 60). Distribution-driven generic hybridity created wider commercial potential for subject matter that might prove taboo for local civic groups by routing more explicit horror fare through more accepted generic material.

Local censor boards and interest groups would continue to exert influence on radio and early network television commercial practices around horror programming. Radio-cum-television networks with regional station affiliations, such as NBC, experienced similar fears about the distribution of content considered violent or profane, especially to local viewers outside urban centers like New York. In addition to the use of less-threatening generic affiliations designed to garner wider audiences, as television industry scholars such as Pondillo (2010) and Jaramillo (2018) have noted, national networks developed or adopted content regulation policies that affected horror-coded programming. Many of these policies were internally decided through departments like NBC’s Continuity Acceptance, which cut its teeth on broadcast radio scripts but monitored later NBC television programming such as Lights Out (1949–1952). As Morreale (2022) shows, efforts to moderate horror content on network-hosted airwaves would remain a fixture with subsequent shows like ABC’s The Outer Limits (1963–1965).

Early network television sponsorship and program scheduling, themselves negotiations of earlier radio practices, are also useful entry points for understanding Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952). As several media historians (Kovacs 2022; Mashon 2007; Meyers 2014; Schatz 1990) have argued, early television sponsors, which included cigarette and appliance manufacturers such as Philip Morris and Admiral, hoped to keep advertising structures in place from the still-dominant network radio broadcasting model. These negotiated—and often contested—arrangements granted sponsors extraordinary control over the creation, packaging, and content of early television programs. One reason for this arrangement, aside from the lucrative stasis of broadcast radio advertising models, was the extremely high programming costs for early television. To maintain efficient television costs, increase viewership, and promote television sales, networks reluctantly ceded influence to sponsors, and sponsors exerted influence over program content and scheduling.

Control of programming by advertisers, as both Meyers (2014) and Mashon (2007) point out, also led to disputes over the location of sponsored programming on the television schedule. This coordination of programming positions, generally referred to in the television business as “adjacencies,” was based on “selling goals rather than on audience interests” (Meyers 2014, 285). As a result, temporal locations on the television schedule (prime time, late night) became flashpoints in programming decisions. These temporal issues were considered alongside spatial ones, which in turn hinged on local-national dynamics driven by regulatory concerns. The two, however, were often mixed: A late prime-time position for live programming on the East coast often meant the program aired at an earlier hour—and a different set of eyes—in other locations such as Los Angeles. Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952), in both its transition to NBC network radio and network television, would get caught in the push and pull between network programmers and sponsors, revealing much about the evolution of horror programming to early network television airwaves.

Lights Out Moves From Radio to Television

Scholars studying early network television horror, particularly Wilson (2020), have noted the prime-time position of Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952), but have had less to say about the complex spatial (local-national) and temporal (prime time, late night) undercurrents informing scheduling practices for radio and, eventually, early television horror. The following case study thinks about the transition of Lights Out from local radio to network radio, and from network radio to network television. Each of these moments underscores the importance of network practices, including distribution-driven generic hybridization, advertising, and scheduling, and accumulated experience dealing with horror content that informed the positioning of early network horror television. They also create a steadier base from which to categorize and define early horror programming on television.

Placing Horror on NBC Network Radio

During March of 1935, the NBC Sales department requested that Lights Out (WENR 1934–1935), a Wyllis Cooper-written show airing at 1 a.m. EST on Chicago’s NBC affiliate radio station WENR, be auditioned for commercial sponsorship and network broadcast (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). The request by the network Sales department immediately met with resistance from programming executives, such as Bertha Brainard, within the same NBC network offices in New York. Brainard wrote to fellow programmer John Royal on April 1, 1935 and lamented the show as “terrible” because it was riddled with “damns, hells, lousy and nuts, and feminine shrieks,” but added that “because of all the above, it may be just the thing a [sponsor] would go for” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). Brainard, on the same day, sent another letter about Lights Out—this one far more pointed. “The Program Department in New York would not find a script of that kind acceptable with all its profanity,” argued Brainard; beyond having to “be cleaned up to be acceptable in this neighborhood,” it absolutely could not but scheduled for “when children are listening” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51 1 April 1935).

Brainard and Royal’s admonitions about the morbid quality of Lights Out (WENR 1934–1935) would be countered by other executives at NBC. Niles Trammell of NBC’s Central Division admitted in an April 1935 memo that the show “is unquestionably a. . .hair-raising thriller, in which the ghosts parade or the murderers cavort,” but he gestured to the viability of other “detective and ghost stories popular during the last few years” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). Radio horror programming, according to Trammell’s memo, had the capacity to “build a tremendous audience.” Five days later, a release would circulate that announced the arrival of Lights Out on NBC network radio airwaves. Mentioning there was overwhelming demand for the WENR show from “society folk to taxi drivers,” the April 10 release echoes Trammell’s communiqué by stating that “Lights Out is distinctly not a program for children” and will be broadcast at “a late hour” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d, box 38, folder 51).

On April 11, 1935, Brainard sent a letter to multiple executives that the half-hour show would be broadcast on NBC network air at 12:30 a.m. on a sustaining basis, as well as offered for commercial sale, pending “a revised script and cleaned up copy” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). The Chicago-born Lights Out (WENR 1934–1935), a late-night, local radio favorite for multiple audiences, was thus being readied for its debut on network airwaves with much wider reach than local air. While NBC would bear the brunt of costs by holding it as a sustaining program, the goal of placement onto network air was finding a commercial sponsor for the program.

The network encountered two major issues with finding a sponsor immediately after placement of the show on national air: scheduling and softening the roughness of its local flavor for mass appeal. Executives were split on the scheduling issue, despite the network decision to offer it at 12:30 a.m. In a memo to Royal on April 15, 1935, NBC executive Roy Witmer expressed concern with the (very) late broadcast slot for Lights Out (NBC 1935–1939) by commenting he “cannot imagine anyone buying it for broadcasting 12:30 to 1 a.m.” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). In a nod to the complexities of programming for a national radio network with reach across multiple U.S. time zones, Witmer wrote, they “might buy it as late as 11 p.m., which during Daylight Saving Time. . .would land them on the Coast at 7 p.m.” The issue there, as Witmer noted, was that a 7 p.m. West coast broadcast would encounter eager children. Witmer, like Brainard, couldn’t help himself when it came to giving a closing admonition about commercially sponsored radio horror: “I think we are tearing down rather than building up when we are willing to accept that kind [sic] of revenue” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51).

NBC’s solution to the problem of acquiring sponsorship for the nationally scheduled, but Chicago-produced, series in 1935 was taming the subject matter that made it to network air. This would ideally solve the problem of concerned educators, clergy, and parents by placing less offensive content onto airwaves. As it turned out, this solution had its own problems. On May 7, 1935, Royal urged Sidney Strotz of the NBC Chicago office to “[give] your “Lights Out” a little more refinement” to prepare it for sales (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). A week later, Strotz, responding to this request, told Royal that tamer scripts for the then-airing network version had alienated existing listeners of the earlier WENR broadcasts. In a suggestion that would foretell a prominent practice of network-era television horror programming, Strotz suggested that “we. . .give them an occasional show intended to give them the chill and scare that they are looking for” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51).

Strotz was shrewd in his recognition that appealing to existing Lights Out (WENR 1934–1935) audiences, who were built through its original Chicago-only airings and familiar with its horror-coded subject matter, might be helpful for programmers. The problem with the decision to alter the content of locally produced horror radio for national air, however, was two-fold: horror programming was selected by NBC specifically because of its popularity and ability to build loyal, diverse audiences. The genre’s popularity, moreover, had much to do with its expected content, including the use of supernatural mysteries and violence. “Softening” the subject matter of horror to appeal to sponsors, who were both eager to get their products in front of growing audiences yet wary of identification with controversial radio programming, came with the twinned dangers of alienating existing audiences with less explicit content yet still provoking the ire of network executives concerned with building commercial radio in the image of “the public interest,” external regulators, and concerned civic groups. An undesirable late time slot, along with changing generic content that provoked offense and alienated Chicago listeners, proved difficult for NBC programming executives trying to find sponsorship for the show.

NBC came to a standstill around the series because of these issues in the later summer months of 1935. New York-based NBC radio programming executives like Brainard and Royal still considered Lights Out (NBC 1935–1939) unacceptable for network air despite attempts to schedule it for a midnight hour with less explicit violence and profanity. When national broadcasts of Lights Out were cancelled on August 2 of that same year because of New York’s decisions about its salability, regional stations were quick to oppose the decision. San Antonio’s WOAI radio station sent NBC New York a telegram asking whether the cancelation was permanent or temporary because the station was “swamped with [listener] inquiries” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 38, folder 51). This regional/national back-and-forth characterizing Lights Out’s transition from local Chicago radio show to national, a dynamic that triangulated programming concerns, faithful audience segments, and commercial potential, would become a fixture for the series—as would cancellations.

A June 10, 1936 episode about a girl being buried alive, penned by new series writer Arch Oboler, certainly didn’t allay programming executives’ fears about their popular but controversial show. The episode garnered thousands of listener complaints, as well as station programming-side missives, about its morbid and profane content. West coast complaints about the usual Wednesday evening episode rang the loudest, particularly because the ghoulish episode, fed from the East coast, aired at 8:30 p.m. Pacific Coast time. Strotz, responding to the volume of complaints for the episode in a June 23 memo, wrote that “Lights Out [should never] be on earlier than 11 o’clock at night” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 47, folder 53). Still, Strotz wrote the following day, “under no circumstances [should we] take Lights Out off” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 47, folder 53). Never airing the radio show before 11 p.m. would become a strict NBC programming policy for the series during its original run.

By 1938, with nearly three years on, and occasionally off, national network radio air, the program had “excited much interest commercially, but because [of the] hard and fast policy which [prohibited] it being heard in any time zone prior to 11:00 P.M., it [had] been difficult to sell commercially” (NBC Correspondence Papers n.d., box 70, folder 12). With (even) cigarette sponsors taking a pass for the frequently horror-coded radio series, the show in its NBC-sustained iteration would only last a year longer.

Placing Horror on Prime-Time Network Television

By 1947, Lights Out had experienced a popular, but fraught, run on multiple radio networks. A revival of archived radio episodes aired during the summer of 1947 for the ABC network indicates the show had indeed found sponsorship by the likes of Eversharp-Shick razors (The Billboard Staff 1947) over the course of its run. It also illustrates the horror-coded show’s continued popularity, as another network was willing to program the show—warts and all—for its own radio airwaves. These warts hadn’t faded in ten years, either. A Variety review, which claimed “[mystery], detective and crime shows seem like good clean fun alongside this horror of horrors,” wondered “[why] anyone. . .would care to inflict these ghoulish going-ons on themselves on a hot summer night” (Variety Staff 1947). The series had also experienced its first televised airings earlier in the form of four “pilot” specials broadcast on NBC-TV in 1946, although not much is known about these one-time airings (Wilson 2020, 867).

NBC decided that Lights Out, despite programming concerns around its struggles to find commercial sponsors, the vehement objections to morbid episodes, and its multi-state scheduling issues, had commercial potential for television. After its experiences with the show’s radio forms, NBC recognized that its horror content would need to be adjusted to suit sponsor preferences, particularly a desire for favorable scheduling during prime-time viewing hours. The danger of alienating loyal radio audiences from television shows adapted from radio, moreover, would still prove problematic for NBC-TV programmers, but the needs for sponsorship would outweigh these concerns. Internal self-regulation in the late 1940s would be NBC’s reigning ethos for placing its long-running horror series on television, as well.

NBC’s informal self-regulation around television programming explicitly positioned as horror was learned from previous outings with their radio shows such as Lights Out (1935–1939). An interdepartmental memo issued during the summer of 1948 extended an NBC network policy about mystery shows, formulated for its radio offerings a year earlier, to television. Paramount among its numerous guidelines for content and scheduling was the prohibition of broadcasting “crime or mystery type programs before 9:30 pm EST” (Wooley n.d., Papers, box 573, folder 7). This policy that allowed for an earlier time slot was a marked change from a radio show like Lights Out’s late-night scheduling, where a post-11 p.m. EST time slot meant difficulties with finding commercial sponsorship. Even with a minimum broadcasting time of 9:30 p.m. EST, it was clear NBC was encouraging an adaptation of this material to fit earlier timeslots so that it would prove more palatable for sponsors. Beyond the scheduling policy, the adapted policy included a provision that called for spacing out single episodes of crime or mystery content in a weekly series. Single scripts featuring crime and mystery content, explained the policy, must be “separated from the last such offering by approximately twelve intervening broadcasts featuring other types of program material.” This network exhortation finds parallels in Strotz’s May 1935 suggestion about including the “occasional” generic show audiences have come to expect from a series like Lights Out (NBC Correspondence Papers, 14 May 1935).

NBC’s television adaptation of Lights Out (1949–1952), along with other network shows such as ABC’s Starring Boris Karloff (1949) and the CBS-hosted television adaptation of its radio series Suspense (1949–1954), premiered during Summer and Fall of 1949. Trade press coverage of Lights Out during the period suggests there were initial issues in finding a time slot for the show’s July premiere. A July 9 article first positions the “psychological shows” for a 9:30 p.m. EST slot on Fridays (The Billboard Staff 1949a, 12). Shortly thereafter, an article appearing in Variety announced a Thursday 9 p.m. EST slot for the weekly “mellers,” or melodramas (Variety Staff 1949a, 29). In a Billboard review later that month, the NBC-TV “drama” and “psychological air [show]” had debuted in a Tuesday 9 p.m. EST slot as sustaining network series (The Billboard Staff 1949b, 12). The generic markers used by the trades for Lights Out already indicated a subtle shift in external-facing positioning—one that distinctly moved away from horror while the show looked for sponsorship.

About two months after the series’ summer premiere on television, The Billboard Staff (1949c, 11) reported that “Admiral Radio & Television Corporation. . .sent in a firm order for National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) Lights Out TV program.” Having found sponsorship for the television show in Admiral, a television set manufacturer that chose Lights Out over NBC-hosted variety musical show Garroway At Large (NBC 1949–1954), NBC removed the show from air for two months to allow for sponsor-requested changes. It finally premiered as a commercial weekly series in November 1949. The Monday 9 pm EST time slot would become its permanent home. Trade reviews of the now-commercial property exhibited marked changes from earlier reviews of the sustaining television production. Lights Out episodes were now “drenched in a mood of horror which the bankroller is helping” to finance (Variety Staff 1949b, 27), according to one review of an episode featuring a man’s obsessions with spectral beings. Another review of a different episode, although exceedingly critical of the supernatural murder plot, specifically pointed out the intentions for a “moody and atmospheric” experience (The Billboard Staff 1949d, 12).

If Admiral leaned into the weekly series’ unique selling points, namely its affiliation with horror offerings like moody atmospherics and supernatural occurrences, NBC was again encountering a series of challenges in mediating between sponsors and stations. A Variety headline (Variety Staff 1949c, 31) noted that NBC was reacting to “criticism of unwanted horror on tele whodunits” with a “six-point plan.” NBC programmers like Pat Weaver and Fred Wile were also dealing with communiques from station owners like Walter Damm of WTMJ-TV and George Burbach of St. Louis’s NBC affiliate KSD-TV. Neither owner was particularly happy about the presence of horror-related television programming, no matter how softened it was for prime-time television. In a letter from Stockton Helffrich of NBC’s Continuity Acceptance to Wile in November 1949, nearly the same week Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952) premiered on national television, Helffrich spent considerable time addressing NBC programming’s position between sponsors and station owners like Damm. On one hand, per Helffrich, advertising agencies like Admiral found television mysteries and horror “highly [profitable] and cheap to produce” (Weaver n.d, Papers, box 118, folder 14). With the economics being highly favorable to both sponsors and NBC programmers, according to Helffrich, NBC “Management. . .never wanted to disturb [the arrangement]” (3). On the other hand, it was clear a “measuring authority” might be necessary to make sure programming didn’t get too explicit because of overzealous sponsors (3).

Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952) was thus caught in push-pull dynamics that worked to soften the show for prime time, yet appeal to sponsors (and extant radio fans) with lucrative horror content. The only solution, at least to NBC, was careful self-monitoring of their programming to placate station owners without restricting the efforts of sponsors—and thus networks—to make money. In that same November 1949 memo, Helffrich pointed out that other networks were dealing with similar pressures to practice self-regulation. CBS, with its newly televised radio franchise Suspense (CBS 1949–1954), was “supplying the stuff and the average result [was] identical” (Weaver n.d., Papers, box 118, folder 14). The distinction between network-packaged programming and advertiser-packaged programming also didn’t seem to matter when triaging sponsor and station needs. The pressure was the “same” (3).

Helffrich, when writing Wile, was also trying to contend with NBC’s confusing quagmire of approaches to horror on television, which vacillated from explicit to softened and generically hybridized. The Continuity Acceptance executive applauded NBC’s good intentions for extending its policy around crime and mystery shows to television in 1948, but he lamented the blunt, hammer-like approach that lumped all crime, mystery, and horror episodes together. When “classical and modern dramas” were being equated with pulpy television shows in the same admonishing breath, NBC should be concerned with its ability to make necessary distinctions among its programming (Weaver n.d., Papers, box 118, folder 14). The key to making such distinctions, per Helffrich’s November 1949 memo, rested in the difference between “permissible realism. . .in productions like ‘Dangerous Corner’ and ‘Street Scene’ as contrasted with purely sensational realism in whodunits like ‘Mr District Attorney’ and ‘Lights Out’” (1).

An adapted television show like Lights Out, which came loaded with pre-existing recognition for associating violence with religious profanity and the supernatural, would easily have made programmers and Continuity Acceptance executives like Helffrich nervous. It is not coincidental, then, that Helffrich viewed the television version of Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952), despite efforts to curtail its radio proclivities to position it as a prime-time melodrama with commercial sponsorship, as “purely sensational” rather than “permissible” (Weaver n.d., Papers, box 118, folder 14). This hints at a justified/excessive distinction by Helffrich, which becomes a useful analytic for thinking through how NBC network television programmers may have made quiet distinctions among their generic offerings that disturb our understandings of television horror’s market-driven generic hybridization into suspense-coded fare in the late 1940s. Television horror, in other words, was not simply transmogrified into “suspense” by the end of the decade; rather, its elements had to be broken apart and spaced out from a programming perspective because they were considered excessive for television audiences. This fragmented, ambiguous approach to early network television horror by NBC was driven by complex tensions between various stakeholders.

A particularly apt illustration of the confusing lines between violence, “horror,” and supernatural content on one hand, and generic programming concerns among NBC, station owners, and sponsors, on the other hand, is the July 1951 “Zero Hour” episode of Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952). The Martian invasion-centered episode caused enough written backlash to NBC and station owners that Herbert Swope, an NBC producer, circulated an internal memo to the likes of Weaver, Wile and Helffrich about the usual event. “LIGHTS OUT,” offered Swope in his July 24th letter, “has had perhaps less trouble with this sort of reaction than any show on the air of like category” (Madden n.d., Papers, box 567b, folder 13). Swope was particularly “bitter” because Lights Out had “devoted itself to removing from its scripts any and all inciting and provoking devices” such as violent situations, “weapons and other gory artifices” (2). “Zero Hour” had none such fare; in fact, it simply featured an organ to create an “extremely effective mood piece” (2), which was in line with the weekly series’ emphasis on occultic practices like haunted objects, humans with three eyes, and the ability to speak with the Devil.

Swope wasn’t just writing letters to NBC programming executives. He also had to spend time allaying fears from stations owners about the televised alien invasion. Writing to the program manager of Atlanta-based station WSB-TV in August 1951, Swope pointed out that “horror stories” like “Zero Hour” were a rarity for the series; they were occasionally mingled in with “supernatural farce, comedy, love stories, and even a supernatural musical play at Christmas time” (Madden n.d., Papers, box 567b, folder 13). Marcus Barlett, the same program manager for WSB-TV, took Swope’s words to heart but offered some programming advice that seemed more appropriate for 1930s radio than 1940s prime-time network television: the weekly show “seems to fit better near the midnight hour” (1). Barlett would continue to program the show for Atlanta audiences with the hope that “horror stories” would continue to be rare at the 9 p.m. Monday night slot where “the entire family is in the available audience” (2).

Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952) programmers were given notice that Admiral would be dropping its sponsorship effective March 24, 1952. In addition to the perceived excesses of the show’s content denting its favorability, a new domestic situation comedy, I Love Lucy (CBS 1951–1957), had also been programmed in the Monday night 9 p.m. EST slot starting October 1951. While Lights Out maintained ratings success in its time slot, which it had achieved since its first year of broadcasts, it was losing viewers to the incipient Lucille Ball-driven comedy. Variety Staff (1952) initially reported that NBC had hoped plans to show Lights Out at 9:30 p.m. EST, via kinescopes distributed to stations for programming at a time “late enough to miss [young viewing audiences],” would pull the show from its temporary cancellation (6). The plans never materialized, and Lights Out left network broadcast airwaves.

Conclusion

These programming conversations around Lights Out illustrate the pressures national networks such as NBC faced when placing and positioning horror-coded programming on late 1940s national television. Because of its experiences with radio horror programming, NBC had come to expect that this generic subject matter, which routinely featured violent, profane, and supernatural content, would be popular with multiple audiences in different regions. NBC expected that this content, moreover, would certainly attract the attention of regulators, civic groups, educators, and clergy. The increased scrutiny caused by popular, but often taboo, content relegated horror programming to late-night scheduling slots. By the time NBC was programming Lights Out (1949–1952) for national television, the network had learned from the difficulties it had with selling Lights Out in radio form due to its unattractiveness for commercial sponsors in its near-midnight time slot. To maintain control over its programming costs, NBC programmers knew they needed to change the generic offerings of Lights Out for television to secure commercial sponsorship for the expensive prime-time weekly series.

Unlike the national radio version, the television adaptation of Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952) could not be programmed as a sustaining series because of the expenses of television. Programming strategies to create commercial viability included interspersing traditionally recognized “horror” stories, which would be appreciated by loyal viewers of the series, in with other weekly generic fare such as supernatural comedies and moral dramas. These NBC programming strategies resulted from several currents: the need for weekly episodes that would appeal to a wide variety of audiences; negotiations among NBC, advertisers, and station owners; lessons learned from its troubles selling the radio version to sponsors; and NBC-promulgated programming policies designed to protect the network from increased external scrutiny. Together, these tactics created a temporary but successful environment for early network television horror-related fare.

The economic, regulatory, and geographic pressures of placing horror programming on national television during the late 1940s also created issues with identifying a cohesive “horror genre” during this period. The pressures NBC faced in co-mingling elements like violence, profanity, and the supernatural, which were recognizable in the local and national radio versions of Lights Out, led to intentional generic programming fissures that played to audience expectations around horror-affiliated genres like pulp, science fiction, and suspense stories. This market-driven generic hybridization, driven by commercial and regulatory concerns, had been a feature of the horror genre’s commercial existence for nearly two decades by 1949. The splicing of different genres into one weekly anthology series, however, intensified on early broadcast television as networks like NBC adapted radio series that had been previously positioned as “horror.”

Here we are in a much better place to locate Lights Out (NBC 1949–1952) and early network television horror forms. At a broad level, Lights Out was intentionally constructed as a protean (if sometimes confusing) generic form to meet the needs of multiple spaces, stakeholders, and audiences. As this case study of Lights Out demonstrates, the commercial goal of programming different types of generic fare under a well-known franchise, as well as the need to proactively counter regulatory pressures, led networks to construct the horror category for television using market-driven generic elements. This programming practice would be used in subsequent television anthologies. These practices resulted in generic elasticity that has troubled scholars and submerged the horror genre in broadcast histories, despite clear references to horror by network intermediaries. Second, the show’s “traditional” horror offerings, especially as understood by viewers familiar with its radio kin, could be seen in standalone television episodes that featured explicit content associated with its earlier horror radio offerings. Finally, because of the need to balance potentially offensive elements within a commercial product, Lights Out was programmed for later prime-time slots. This issue of timing, itself a byproduct of live programming designed to enhance network television control over programming in the late 1940s, would become important to the development of the horror genre in the 1950s as recorded programming such as syndicated horror films like Dracula (1931) flooded television airwaves.