reasons. Skelton changed sponsors in 1948; Brown & Williamson, owners of Raleigh cigarettes, withdrew due to program production costs. His new sponsor was Procter & Gamble's Tide laundry detergent. The next year, he changed networks, going from NBC to CBS, where his radio show aired until May 1953. After his network radio contract was over, he signed a three-year contract with Ziv Radio for a syndicated radio program in 1954. His syndicated radio program was offered as a daily show; it included segments of his older network radio programs, and new material done for the syndication. He was able to use portions of his older radio shows because he owned the rights for rebroadcasting them. Television (1951–1970) Skelton was unable to work in television until the end of his 1951 MGM movie contract; a renegotiation to extend the pact provided permission after that point. On May 4, 1951, he signed a contract for television with NBC; Procter and Gamble was his sponsor. He said he would be performing the same characters on television that he had been doing on radio. The MGM agreement with Skelton for television performances did not allow him to go on the air before September 30, 1951. His television debut, The Red Skelton Show, premiered on that date: At the end of his opening monologue, two men backstage grabbed his ankles from behind the set curtain, hauling him offstage face down. A 1943 instrumental hit by David Rose, called "Holiday for Strings", became Skelton's TV theme song. The move to television allowed him to create two nonhuman characters, seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliffe, which he performed while the pair were flying by, tucking his thumbs under his arms to represent wings and shaping his hat to look like a bird's bill. He patterned his meek, henpecked television character of George Appleby after his radio character, J. Newton Numbskull, who had similar characteristics. His "Freddie the Freeloader" clown was introduced on the program in 1952, with Skelton copying his father's makeup for the character. (He learned how to duplicate his father's makeup and perform his routines through his mother's recollections.) A ritual was established for the end of every program, with Skelton's shy, boyish wave and words of "Good night and may God bless." During the 1951–1952 season, the program was broadcast from a converted NBC radio studio. The first year of the television show was done live;