For television viewers in the '50s and '60s, there was one TV silhouette that proved instantly recognizable. Alfred Hitchcock, a master of both marketing and the macabre, was able to brand not just his name, or his face, but his actual shape. As viewers tuned into Alfred Hitchcock Presents, an outline of the filmmaker's head and chest, paired with composer Charles Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," marked the beginning of a terribly suspenseful story.

But that show only allowed the creators 30 minutes to build and pay off all that tension. It wasn't until 1962, when the show was extended and rebranded The Alfred Hitchcock Hour that the team was allowed a longer format better suited for long-form storytelling. 

The Master of Suspense himself took to the press to share his delight. Hitchcock was thrilled to have more time to torture and entertain his audience. In an August 1962 article clipped from the Tucson Daily Citizen, Hitch, in typical droll fashion, expounds on the new format.

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"It is decidedly true that The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, as the title rather plainly implies, will endure for 60 minutes each week, instead of 30," said Hitchcock.

He then went on to lambast the show's corporate sponsors for hogging up valuable minutes with their dastardly commercials. "Despite the sponsors' infringement upon our time, the one-hour period will allow us to tell full dramatic stories in natural narrative style, whereas the half-hour show permitted us only short tales that led to a 'twist' ending."

Now, untethered by the restraints of such a short block, Hitchcock was able to gather stories from all manner of sources. 

"In doing an anthology of one-hour dramas, we are in fact able to derive stories from all literary sources, not only originals but novels and all manner and length of published works. The half-hour form had limited us to short stories." 

It wasn't just where the stories were pulled from, but the ways in which the stories were told that changed as well. Prior to this 60-minute show, characters were merely the vessels for a story, oftentimes relegated to two-dimensional caricatures of people, rather than fleshed-out, believable beings. 

"One hour also gives more time for character development and for humor, an indispensable item in any successful suspense story," said Hitchcock. "I am privileged to divulge that suspense will remain an active ingredient of all our presentations."

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour allowed Hitchcock and his team of craftspeople to deliver new, exciting stories to willing viewers through 1965.