It's 1953. What's on TV (or radio) tonight?

A few days ago I posted some pictures and ads from a 1958 issues of Ladies Home Journal.  In that same collection of "old stuff," there was a single 4-page section from the May 8, 1953 St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press.  It was from an inner section so there wasn't any hard news but what caught my eye were the TV and radio (yes, radio) schedules, and what movies were showing in the theaters.

I was about 6 months old in May of 1953, but there were no TVs or radios in our house.  My parents and I lived with my maternal grandmother in a little town in west central Wisconsin.  Evidently there were rules in that household and one rule was that no radios or TVs or anything that makes noise was allowed by my grandmother.  (She must have made an exception for me.)  My cousins who are older than I am don't remember her as a very cuddly grandmother.  I kind of do but she died when I was quite young, so who knows what you remember as a child.  

Anyway, my parents and I moved to our own house across town when I was almost 5, and that's when my memories of radio shows and TV began!

First of all, I noticed that there are more radio schedules than those for the two TV stations.  Here's what was on TV that day:

That Wheel of Fortune you see?  Must have been a different one.  Other fun things I noticed - two soap operas and Guiding Light lasted all the way until 2009, Dave Garroway on what maybe became the Today Show, and Ding Dong School with Miss Francis!  Howdy Doody, John Cameron Swayze, and Ozzie & Harriet.  I see some wrestling (or rasslin') on channel 5.  I think I remember sitting with my dad watching wrestling.  Maybe it was a Friday night thing!

Below are all the lineups for the 6 main radio stations with some others along the side.  

Ozzie and Harriet were also on radio!  And I wonder who was on Barn Dance that night?  WDGY was the rock and roll station I remember but it doesn't look very rock-y back then.  What do you see?

And below are some of the movie listings.  I hope you can zoom in enough to see them if you are interested.  The only one I really recognize is High Noon with Gary Cooper.  I guess old movies isn't my thing so much.

And finally, there was an article about Christine Jorgenson who was back in the United States after having sex reassignment surgery in Copenhagen, Denmark the previous year.  The article was rather exploitative so I'm not going to post it here, but it was interesting to see it in light of what we've learned about gender dysphoria in the almost 60 years since then.