with a framing sequence on a stage, where the pair would share gags with the audience and occasionally a fellow cast member, and often set up the episode's plot. They would reappear halfway through the episode and discuss what had just occurred or hint at things to come. These stage portions were dropped in the second season, which followed a more traditional sitcom format. A simpler opening title sequence, without film clips or co-star credits, was also introduced. The series did not employ a laugh track in the strictest sense; completed episodes were screened for an audience in a theater and their reactions were recorded and added to the soundtrack. In the 2021 4k restoration release, some episodes have the option to be viewed with and without an audience track. Broadcast history The show was not a network program when first introduced in the fall of 1952, but was sold into syndication by MCA Inc. to about 40 local stations across the country. As a result, it was broadcast on different days, at different hours, and in different episode order in different cities. In New York City, it began airing on December 5, 1952, on WCBS-TV, leading earlier reference works to erroneously presume that the show was carried nationally on the CBS network starting on that date. (WCBS broadcast the show at 10:30 pm, which was after network programming had signed off and local programming resumed.) The series had already debuted in other cities by then, including Los Angeles. Similarly, second-season episodes (1953–54) were telecast in New York on NBC's flagship station, WNBT (later WNBC-TV), but not carried on that network, either. The only time the show was broadcast on a network was when CBS repeated first-season episodes as part of its Saturday morning schedule in the 1954–55 season. The sitcom had a long life in reruns from the late 1950s to the 1990s. In the 2010s and into the 2020s, the series has appeared on classic TV networks such as MeTV and its spinoff/sister network Decades. It has been released on DVD by three different distributors, starting in the 1990s. It was released on Blu-ray for the first time in 2022. Production notes Lou Costello owned the show with Bud Abbott working on salary. The first two establishing episodes were produced by Alex Gottlieb, who had produced the team's first eight films and, more recently, their two independent color