I love early '50s TV more than anything, BUT, there is one thing I love even more: 1940s TV! These excerpts were taken from the post-war period (1947), when everyone was so incredibly awkward that they even faced the wrong way when the cameras were on them. People had that distracted, "what do I do now" look as they waited for some kind of signal from somebody. Many of the announcers and hosts were dredged from radio, and it shows, as their body language is terrified - the two hosts here clutch their own hands and nervously entwine and fiddle with their fingers, almost white-knuckled, while providing the most stilted narration ever. The Borden's ad is a new high or low in technical accomplishment - the puppet and ad presenter have their BACKS to the camera! They're facing the wrong way! TV was called "radio with pictures" then, and viewers weren't called viewers, nor the audience, nor even "all you folks out there in TV land" - they were TELEVISITORS, a name which, thank God, never caught on.
