Omnibus (U.S. TV series)

For the 1967 to 2003 BBC series, see Omnibus (UK TV series).

Omnibus
Leonard Bernstein's debut appearance, 1954
Genre	Variety
Developed by	Robert Saudek and the Ford Foundation
Presented by	Alistair Cooke
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	8
No. of episodes	164
Production
Running time	55 min usually, but it varied depending on the program
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS (1952-1956) ABC (1956-1957) NBC (1957-1961)
Picture format	Black-and-white Color
Audio format	Monaural
Original run	November 9, 1952 (1952-11-09) – April 16, 1961 (1961-04-16)

Omnibus is an American, commercially sponsored, educational television series.

History

Broadcast live primarily on Sunday afternoons at 4:00pm Eastern time, from November 9, 1952 until 1961. Omnibus originally aired on CBS, and later on Sunday evenings on ABC. The program finally moved to NBC in 1957, where it was irregularly scheduled until 1961. ABC aired a brief revival of the series in 1981. Omnibus was created by television executive, Robert Saudek, to be both entertaining and uplifting.

With Ford Foundation funding, Omnibus, hosted by Alistair Cooke in his American television debut, featured diverse programming about science, the arts, and the humanities. The program featured original works by playwrights such as William Saroyan, interviews with public figures such as architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and performances by many of the most prominent entertainers of the day such as Jack Benny and Orson Welles. A heavily abridged version of Shakespeare's King Lear starring Orson Welles and directed by Peter Brook, was telecast on 18 October 1953 on CBS. Leonard Bernstein and Jonathan Winters made their first television appearances in the series. Bernstein gave his first televised music lectures on the program, and conducted one of the earliest telecasts of excerpts from Handel's Messiah on it. The best remembered episode featuring Bernstein was his first - an analysis of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in which the conductor demonstrated what the music might have been like if Beethoven had left some of his discarded music sketches in the symphony. It was transmitted on November 14, 1954.

The series won more than 65 awards, including seven Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards. The series is held at The Library of Congress and Global ImageWorks, among other archives. The Bernstein Omnibus programs were released in a 4-DVD set for Region 1 and Region 2 in 2010.

External links

• Omnibus at the Internet Movie Database
• Omnibus at TV.com
• Museum of Broadcast Communications web site
• Global ImageWorks footage library Omnibus Collection