Mike and Buff – Nostalgia Central

1 9 5 1 – 1 9 5 3 (USA)
30 minute episodes

Debuting in August 1951, this live New York-based talk show was hosted five times a week by the husband-and-wife team of Mike Wallace and Buff Cobb, who had hosted a similar program on radio from the Chez Paree Cafe in Chicago for 51 weeks.

Each broadcast was structured around a central theme – such as economics, art or religion – with some of the foremost authorities in the US participating in informal discussions on the topics they knew best.

New York Times critic Jack Gould wrote that “the presentation of Mike and Buff constituted an object lesson in how television can be eminently educational without being self-conscious about it.”

The final broadcast of the CBS show aired on 27 February 1953. Wallace and Cobb were divorced in 1954.

The couple also co-hosted a second show, All Around the Town, in which they conducted live interviews from locales including Coney Island, Broadway and numerous restaurants.

Buff Cobb died in New Hampshire in 2010, aged 82, and Mike Wallace died in Connecticut on 7 April 2012, aged 93.

Hosts
Mike Wallace
Buff Cobb