deep belief in its characters from regular viewers. Fans became so attached to the show that, when it was cut back to 15 minutes in November 1951, letters of outrage poured into NBC and The New York Times. The Bob & Ray Show was the replacement 15-minute program and received considerable vitriol by angry KFO viewers. From August 1952 to June 1954, KFO ran as a weekly program on Sundays (3:00–3:30 p.m. CT). They also began a weekday radio show in October 1952. It was then picked up by the ABC network and returned to the 15-minute daily format (7:00–7:15 p.m. ET) until the last regular program aired on August 30, 1957, a continuous run of nearly ten years. During that time, KFO was a hugely successful show that counted Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Tallulah Bankhead, Ben Grauer, Milton Caniff and Adlai Stevenson among its many adult fans. The show had sponsors like Life magazine, RCA, Nabisco and Ford Motor Co., who surely weren't trying to reach children. James Thurber once wrote that Tillstrom was "helping to save the sanity of the nation and to improve, if not even to invent, the quality of television." Awards Kukla, Fran, and Ollie won a Peabody Award in 1949 for its "whimsy and gentle satire of the James Barrie–Lewis Carroll sort," and two Emmy Awards: in 1954 for Best Children's Program, and in 1971 for Outstanding Children's Programming. The Ford 50th Anniversary Show In 1953, Kukla and Ollie co-hosted The Ford 50th Anniversary Show, a program that was broadcast live on both NBC and CBS. The puppets introduced various sketches and artists, were featured in a sketch about the history of the Ford Model T, and presented a multi-part "Oliver J. Dragon" compilation of newsreel scenes. Following a song medley by Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, Kukla and Ollie complain about having to follow the two singers performing "There's No Business Like Show Business". Ollie says, "There's no business like television, either." Kukla replies, "Well, it's so young." Ollies says, "Yes. Whenever will it grow up? Maybe tonight. Maybe tonight." The program attracted an audience of 60 million viewers. Forty years after the broadcast, television critic Tom Shales recalled the broadcast as both "a landmark in television" and "a milestone in the cultural life of the '50s". Later series After the original series ended in 1957, Tillstrom continued to search for a place