Radio: Network Debut

Gordon Campbell Kerr, 5 Ibs. 7 oz., made his debut into the world last week at Denver’s Colorado General Hospital, and instantly became a TV performer on a 49-station NBC network, courtesy of Smith, Kline and French, manufacturers of pharmaceuticals. Though physicians gathered at A.M.A. meetings had previously watched childbirth over closed-circuit hookups (TIME, June 25, 1951), this was the first time that a delivery had been telecast for the general public.

Because normal childbirth cannot be scheduled for any given hour, the A.M.A. and the commercial sponsors chose a Caesarean delivery for last week’s program. Mrs. John Kerr, 38, wife of a sergeant stationed at Fitzsimons General Hospital, had had two babies already, both by Caesarean section. It was easy for her doctors to set the day and hour when they would perform the third for TV.

While Sergeant Kerr chain-smoked and watched nervously on a TV set in the hospital basement, the cameras showed his wife Lillian on the operating table, virtually obscured by doctors and nurses in close-order formation. There was a short explanation of what was going to happen and the fetal heartbeat pounded over the air. Then the cameras switched to the hospital’s up-to-the-minute facilities for care of premature babies. Only the TV crew and newsmen saw the actual incision in Mrs. Kerr’s abdomen and the quick, dramatic extraction of the full-term baby. The TV audience was cut in again just in time to see Gordon, already swabbed down, get his umbilical cord tied, his mouth drained of mucus and drops put in his eyes. Gordon’s response: a lusty wail. For her pains, Mrs. Kerr got a $100 defense bond.