American Inventory is a thirty-minute weekly filmed educational series that first aired as a summer replacement Sunday nights during 1951 on NBC.
[2] The series incorporated panel discussions, lectures from experts, film of activities and events taking place out of the studio, and occasional in-studio dramatic scenes.
[3] Described as "adult education",[4] the goal was to provide information to Americans about their own history and resources and issues facing them as a society.
Beginning in the summer of 1952 a new type of episode was featured, in which various professions were examined in a dramatised setting, under the collective title of "American Gallery".
The NBC studio in Spanish Harlem was used,[3] but episodes were also produced in other cities, such as Chicago where a mass Civil Defense exercise was recorded.
[11] The network broadcast took long breaks during the summer of 1952 while producer Bill Hodapp travelled to Europe with three camera crews for research and footage for upcoming shows.
[14] New production of the show ceased in April 1954 for up to five months when Hodapp left as producer, leaving NBC still owing the Sloan Foundation thirty-two episodes for the fourth season.
[15] Ben Gross from the Daily News judged "although this promises to be a most interesting and worthwhile series, the opening episode was in no way superior to the average documentary".
[6] However, the fourth episode, a panel discussion among health and emergency workers, filmed amid a massive Civil Defense exercise simulating a nuclear strike in the Chicago area, provoked a re-evaluation from the Boston Globe: "...the show was an excellent documentary, very well produced and guided by Clifton Utley".
[18] The New York Times said American Inventory should be praised for its courage in devising new formats for presenting educational material almost every week, while acknowledging it sometimes didn't work.
Some stations in Texas had a two week delay in their viewing the premiere while AT&T technicians hooked broadcasting towers up to the private network lines.
[20] Gradually coverage expanded to the rest of the country, with subscribing stations not yet connected to the network receiving film reels.