“Kukla, Fran and Ollie” is an early American television show that used puppets. It was originally created for children, but ended up having an audience of more adults than children. It had no script and therefore, it was entirely ad-libbed.
On this day, October 13th, in 1947, “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” premiered on TV. The show started as a local broadcast in Chicago, Illinois, but it later broadcasted on the NBC network on January 12, 1948. It would air for ten years until 1957. The show earned several honors and two Emmy awards, including Best Children’s Program in 1954 and Outstanding Children’s Programming in 1971.
“Kukla, Fran and Ollie” took several television firsts. It was the first ship-to-shore telecast, the first publicly announced network broadcast of a program using the NTSC “compatible color” system, and an influence to puppeteers later on.