October 14, 1958 - August 13, 1961
OPEN-END with David Susskind: (WNTA Channel 13 Television)
September 10, 1961-May 5, 1963
OPEN-END with David Susskind (WNEW Channel 5 Television)
June 9, 1963, last show of the season broadcast on WPIX TV.
October 13, 1963-September 18, 1966
OPEN-END with David Susskind (WPIX Channel 11 Television)
October 2, 1966-September 1986
DAVID SUSSKIND SHOW (SYNDICATED, PBS, and COMMERCIAL STATIONS, including WNEW, New York).
Four experts discuss the future political roles of Senators Robert and Edward Kennedy in the Democratic Party and speculate about the 1972 Presidential election. Panelists are author Gore Vidal, syndicated Washington columnist Max Freedman, and reporters Ben Bradlee (Washington Post) and Robert Novak (new York Herald Tribune).
Open End with David Susskind was a breakthrough talk show which literally had no time limit. The show ended when host, moderator David Susskind, felt all conversation points were discussed. Some of these marathon telecasts lasted over four hours! Jean Kennedy was the producer during the 28-year run of the series.
The series premiered and aired on WNTA Channel 13 in New York for three years, an independent broadcast station before it would become a Public Broadcast Station in 1962. A myriad of talk show guests, famous, infamous, and unknown, found a forum on OPEN END. Subjects varied focusing on usually one topic...show business, politics, the economy, sex, education, crime, etc. Typically, many guests would discuss a subject sitting around a large table with David Susskind moderating, leading his guests with baited questions. On occasion, a solo guest would highlight the show.
For the first three years of its 28-year existence as a regular series, WNTA TV was home to OPEN END which originally began its broadcasts on Tuesday nights, switching on January 18, 1959, to Sunday nights...a future Sunday evening time slot of the week where it would remain until 1986, for the rest of its run.
After broadcasting with a two-hour truncated format on WNEW form September 10, 1961, to May 5, 1963, a falling out and rift occurred between Susskind and WNEW management centered on WNEW's reluctance to air discussions regarding race relations in America. WPIX reacted with interest in bringing OPEN END to their flagship New York channel. For the last OPEN END show of the 1962-1963 season, WPIX TOOK LAST MINUTE EMERGENCY MEASURES TO CLEAR TWO HOURS ON SUNDAY NIGHT June 9, 1963, featuring solo guest Dr. Martin Luther King, pre-empting regularly scheduled programming (6:30-8:30 pm).
Open End was later cut by WPIX to a one-hour time slot. David Susskind not satisfied with the shortened format reconnected with WNEW where he returned to a two-hour format with a changed program name.
THE DAVID SUSSKIND SHOW had its return premiere on WNEW TV on October 2, 1966.
The David Susskind Show also found syndication across the country and each market would run the program at different times at their own discretion.
Most all the telecasts were recorded on videotape, 2" quadruplex. Most shows were kept for a year or two like THE MOVIE MAKERS broadcast, which was re-run on August 6, 1961, almost a year after it was the first telecast on October 2, 1960. By this time, the show was no longer without a time limit. It ran for a finite three hours long. Thus, the re-run of the MOVIE MAKERS had some footage deleted from its original run which aired for over three and half hours, including commercials.
The re-run of "THE MOVIE MAKERS" was the next to last broadcast telecast on WNTA channel 13. On September 10, 1961, the show moved to WNEW Channel 5 METROMEDIA in New York.
Sadly, most all of OPEN END broadcasts (1958-1966), later retitled THE DAVID SUSSKIND SHOW (1966-1986), were wiped erased, destroyed, discarded...whereabouts unknown, representing most shows produced and telecast during the late 1950s, 1960's and early 1970s. Only a handful of OPEN END / DAVID SUSSKIND shows are known to survive from 1958 thru 1969. Hundreds of programs survive representing the middle 1970's thru 1986.
Open End with David Susskind was a unique breakthrough talk with no time limit, rare during any time in television broadcast history, and never to be replicated in the future of television broadcasting after 1960.
On occasion, only one guest would be profiled. Most shows were comprised of many individuals discussing one topic which included race relations, the draft, organized crime, the Hollywood scene, the politics of the times, sex-change operations, divorce, clairvoyants, psychoanalysis, and prostitutes.
The oldest surviving archived remnant is a December 23, 1958, kinescope 20-minute segment of a broadcast titled "Method or Madness?" The topic, "method acting" with guests Michael Benthal, Ben Gazzara, Adolph Green, Betty Comden, Lawrence Harvey, Jule Styne, and Patricia Neal.
Host: David Susskind.
