High culture dominated commercial network television programming in the 1950s with the first television appearances of Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini, the first telecasts from Carnegie Hall, the first live American telecasts of plays by Shakespeare, the first telecasts of Tchaikovsky's ballets "The Sleeping Beauty" and "The Nutcracker" and the first opera specially composed for television, "Amahl and the Night Visitors". "The Bell Telephone Hour", an NBC radio program, began its TV run featuring both classical and Broadway performers. The networks employed art critics, notably Aline Saarinen and Brian O'Doherty, something that was mostly discontinued by the start of the digital television era.