The New Shows

Mary Margaret McBride (weekdays, 2 p.m., ABC), after nearly ten years of local broadcasts, again extends her chirrupy gossip and able interviewing (of authors, politicians and entertainers) to housewives from coast to coast. The new program keeps the same old marshmallow and caramel formula: Mary Margaret getting the celebrities to talk, Mary Margaret talking about herself, Mary Margaret cooing ecstatically over such phenomena as Mother Love, Babies, Paths to Success. But, because the show is sponsored cooperatively, listeners will be deprived of her personal plugging of her homemade commercials. Instead, while Mary Margaret remains strangely silent, local announcers take over the selling job.

Dreamboat (Mon. 9:30 p.m., ABC) is an unsponsored newcomer with songs by Doris Drew, music by Rex Maupin's orchestra, and some insult dialogue imitating the exchanges between Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, all pasted together on a storyline about a river showboat.

Royal Playhouse (Thurs. 9:30 p.m., Du Mont) opened with a filmed TV drama admittedly "contrived" from Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost. Not admitted on the show was another interesting contrivance: all the filmed dramas scheduled for Royal Playhouse have already been telecast during the past two years on NBC's successful Fireside Theater. Commercials: filmed blurbs for Du Mont TV sets.

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