It also allowed ABC, then a junior player in American television, to secure its first advertising contracts with commercial giants General Electric and tobacco company Liggett & Myers.

Jack L. Warner, stung by the failure of Milton Berle's expensive film Always Leave Them Laughing,[5] tried to dismiss it as a mere passing fad, but by 1955, this apparently was hardly the case.

The initial goal was to provide new short fiction which they could wrap around segments hosted by actor Gig Young, giving information about upcoming Warner's film projects.

During this portion of the program, viewers saw James Dean doing rope tricks on the set of Giant, Billy Wilder and James Stewart explaining the special effects of The Spirit of St. Louis, and other notable Warner Bros. productions, including a four-part feature on the new John Ford Western The Searchers, one of the first attempts to document the making of a major Hollywood film and a similar three-part feature on the making of Helen of Troy.

[4] Despite the relative success of Cheyenne, ABC and Warner Bros. continued to have problems injecting Kings Row and Casablanca with sufficient drama.

Around this time, the films which inspired the Kings Row and Casablanca segments were sold, along with the rest of WB's pre-1950 theatrical library, to Associated Artists Productions.

The relationship pulled ABC from the bottom of the ratings and helped it avoid the fate of the other struggling 1950s broadcaster, the DuMont Network.