MAY IN THE GOLDEN AGE
                                Unless otherwise noted all times are Eastern Time Zone
                    For current dollar equivalents consult: www.usinflationcalculator.com
              
MAY 1 1914 Phonograph music is relayed by wireless from the Wannamaker Department Store in New York City to the company's Philadelphia store.  ​
MAY 1 1931  “Goat Gland Doctor” John Brinkley, who lost his license to operate KFKB/ Milford, Kansas, is granted a Mexican license to construct a 50,000 watt station at Villa Acuna, Mexico, near the U.S. border.
MAY 1 1932   NBC/Chicago cuts its pay scale for talent on local broadcasts to $3 for individual acts in each program, $5 for teams of two and $8 for quartets.  
MAY 1 1936   WDGY/Minneapolis-St. Paul rents space overlooking the local ballpark to broadcast the games of the Minneapolis Millers without paying - while General Mills pays $20,000 to broadcast the season on 50,000 watt WCCO. 
MAY 1 1936   Hearst’s WBAL/Baltimore rechristens May Day as Dewey Day - celebrating Admiral Dewey’s steaming into Havana Bay on May 1, 1898.
MAY 1 1937   WJJD/Chicago clears its schedule of all foreign language programs as soon as their current contracts expire.
MAY 1 1938   Claude Hooper leaves Clark-Hooper, Inc., to open radio audience research firm C.E. Hooper , Inc.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen and Hooper Was No Easy Target.)
MAY 1 1938  Broadcasting magazine reports fifteen 50,000 watt stations have applied for 500,000 watts: KDKA/Pittsburgh, KFI and KNX/Los Angeles, KSL/Salt Lake City, WGN/Chicago, WHAS/Louisville, WHO/Des Moines, WJR/Detroit, WJZ/New York City, WOAI/San Antonio, WOR/Newark, WSB/Atlanta and WSM/Nashville. 
MAY 1 1939   Brown & Williamson Tobacco moves its three NBC shows, Avalon Time, (with Red Skelton and Red Foley), Plantation Party, (Whitey Ford), and Uncle Walter’s Dog House, (Tom Wallace), from Cincinnati to Chicago for economic reasons.
MAY 1 1939   Sealtest moves its weekday serial Your Family & Mine from NBC to a CBS network of  35 stations.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 1 1939   NBC’s W2XBS/New York City begins its regular television service of one nighttime hour twice a week. 
MAY 1 1940   NBC reclaims the Monday through Saturday 7:30 to 8:00 p.m. half-hour which gives it control of the four hours nightly from 7:00 to 11:00 and could earn an additional $2.5 Million for the network.  
MAY 1 1941  The Treasury Department appoints radio to spearhead its Defense Savings Bond Drive at the local and network levels with no announced dollar goal.  Broadcasters pledge an estimated 5,000 announcements to begin the campaign.
MAY 1 1941   FCC authorizes New York City stations WMCA and WNEW to increase their 24-hour power to 5,000 watts. 
MAY 1 1941   RCA demonstrates its disc and tube color television system commenting, “Well, here it is, mechanical, revolving disc color television.  We think it’s as good as Columbia’s, but our hearts still belong to Daddy Electronics.” 
MAY 1 1942   NBC distributes 2.0 Million postage paid postcards titled, Census of Wartime Radio Listening, asking recipients to name their favorite radio stations before and after sunset. 
MAY 1 1942   The Blue Network makes Gangbusters available to affiliates for local sale through the summer.  (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 1 1942   Campbell Soup cancels its weeknight Lanny Ross Show on CBS because it can’t obtain the tin necessary to package cans of its Franco American spaghetti. 
MAY 1 1942   Dinah Shore begins her weekly variety show on 107 Blue Network stations for Bristol Myers' Mum Deodorant.  (See Crooners & Chirps.)
MAY 1 1943   Gillette sponsors its fourth consecutive Kentucky Derby broadcast on CBS featuring Ted Husiing and Jimmy Dolan with Clem McCarthy calling the actual race.
MAY 1 1943   NBC celebrates the 500th broadcast of Alka-Seltzer’s National Barn Dance originating from WLS/Chicago.  (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 1 1944   Blue joins NBC in broadcasting variety programming between 11:30 p.m. and midnight on weeknights instead of big band remotes.  
MAY 1 1944   National War Labor Board orders the AFM to halt its strikes against WJJD/Chicago and KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul after the stations refuse to double the number of union musicians on their staffs.
MAY 1 1944   Olive Clapper, widow of the Mutual newsman killed in a February air crash and known to be his informal editor, is appointed to cover the year’s Republican and Democrat national conventions for the network.
MAY 1 1944   St. Louis University establishes Universal Air Audits, employing crippled and shut-in war veterans around the country to monitor local stations and report interrupted, garbled or undelivered commercials to national clients.
MAY 1 1945   Radio flashes the bulletin of Adolf Hitler’s death and the fall of Berlin.
MAY 1 1945   With the rush of wartime news Mutual newscaster Gabriel Heatter registers a personal high 21.7 Hooperating against his season average of 11.4.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 1 1945   CBS prohibits sponsors from plugging their programs broadcast by other networks.
MAY 1 1945  NBC bans the mention of other programs originating on competing networks.
MAY 1 1945   FCC authorizes WOKO/Albany, New York, to continue operating for 30 days while its license suspension is appealed.
MAY 1 1945   NBC commentator H.V. Kaltenborn wins the 1944 Peabody Award along with NBC’s Cavalcade of America and The Telephone Hour.  (See H.V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 1 1945   CBS owned WCBW(TV)/New York, begins a three night a week schedule totaling four hours.
MAY 1 1946   Paul H. White, founder and head of CBS News, leaves the network after 13 years.
MAY 1 1946   NBC owned WNBT(TV)/New York City resumes its daytime programming of three hours per week.
MAY 1 1946   Philco’s WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia begins operations.
MAY 1 1946   DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City presents ten acts from Ringling Brothers Barnum & Baily circus performing in its studios.
MAY 1 1947   FCC ends its three-month freeze and issues 51 new AM station grants in a week.
MAY 1 1947  The AP establishes its own Radio Department to replace the service previously supplied by its subsidiary, Press Association, Inc., for its 700 subscribers.
MAY 1 1948   The American Federation of Musicians signs its first contract with the television networks ending the AFM’s 39 month ban against live music on television.  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 1 1948   FCC grants a four month license to WGAR/Cleveland, withholding a three-year renewal pending results of its investigation into news slanting by the station and co-owned WJR/Detroit and KMPC/Los Angeles.
MAY 1 1948   AT&T ends the networks’ free use of coaxial cable as television networking becomes commercial.
MAY 1 1949   A WJXN/Jackson, Mississippi, disc jockey is fired for warning Sunday evening listeners that, “…the moon is falling into the sun,” and causing a panic in a local church. 
MAY 1 1949   ABC-TV’s Super Circus begins its seven-year Sunday afternoon run.
MAY 1 1949   AT&T adds three coaxial cable circuits to its New York to Chicago television link, creating three westbound circuits and one eastbound.
MAY 1 1950   General Mills launches a four month, $700,000 campaign on NBC’s prime time schedule buying 65 half-hours for Wheaties cereal in established programs during their regular sponsors’ summer hiatuses. 
MAY 1 1950   The 1949 Peabody Awards for radio include CBS newsman Eric Sevareid and Jack Benny for comedy - Ed Wynn and ABC’s Crusade In Europe for television.
MAY 1 1951   NBC loses 28 staff members ordered back to military duty as the Army reactivates its special psychological warfare unit at Fort Riley, Kansas.
MAY 1 1951   Kate Smith is presented with a Red Cross citation signed by President Truman for Distinguished Humanitarian Service on her NBC-TV show celebrating her 20th anniversary in radio and television.  (See Kate’s Great Song and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 1 1951  RCA reports its first quarter net income of over $11.9 Million is the greatest in its history.
MAY 1 1952   NBC's new comedy team, Bob (Elliott) & Ray (Goulding), wins the 1951 Peabody Award for comedy.
MAY 1 1952   The American Research Bureau reports that in April  CBS-TV’s I Love Lucy became the first  television program to reach 10.0 Million homes.
MAY 1 1952   KTLA(TV)/Los Angeles is praised for its pool production of the second televised atomic tests from Yucca Flats, Nevada and transmitted via microwave relays to Los Angeles for network distribution.
MAY 1 1952   Meredith Publishing, owner of WOW AM&TV/Omaha and WHEN-TV/Syracuse, buys WPHO AM&TV/ Phoenix, Arizona’s lone television station, for $1.5 Million.
MAY 1 1953   Transcription based Keystone Broadcasting System boasts 652 affiliates in small radio markets.

MAY 2 1930   Frank Mazette of New York City is fined $50 for allowing his five year old daughter, known to radio audiences as Baby Rose Marie to sing in public places.  But the child is allowed to continue singing on radio. 
MAY 2 1932   Jack Benny, 38, begins his 28 year multi-network run with his first show, The Canada Dry Program on Blue.  (See Benny’s Double Plays.)
MAY 2 1933   The Navy Department lifts its broadcast ban on the Navy and Marine bands over the objections of the AFM.  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 2 1934   WLW/Cincinnati begins its five year experimental increase in power from 50,000 to 500,000 watts with a ceremonial broadcast headed by President Roosevelt. 
MAY 2 1937   Kay Kyser’s Surprise Party opens a 17 week Sunday night run on 57 Mutual stations for Willys automobiles coinciding with a nationwide tour by the Kyser orchestra.  (See Kay Kyser.)
MAY 2 1937  The El Rey Theater in Los Angeles begins to interrupt its movies on Sunday nights to play the Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor radio shows over its loud speaker system.
MAY 2 1937   CBS broadcasts a late night half hour saluting WHAS/Louisville for distinguished service during the Mississippi & Ohio River floods.
MAY 2 1938   NBC buys transcription rights to The Lone Ranger in the West and Southwest.  The program is already heard three times weekly in 42 markets outside of that area on Mutual.  (See The Lone Ranger.and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 2 1941  FCC adopts the NTSC television standards of 525 lines of vertical resolution, 30 frames per second  with interlaced scanning, 60 fields per second and FM sound.
MAY 2 1941  FCC authorizes the full commercial operation of television stations effective July 1st - but subject to revision every six months.  The authorization adds that licensed stations must operate at least 15 hours a week including a minimum of two hours a day between 2:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. six days a week.
MAY 2 1943   FDR’s speech on all four networks concerning the U.S. coal miners’ strike registers a 56.7 Hooperating.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 2 1943   The NAB asks its members to play The Star Spangled Banner every day at noon for the week to note National Music Week.
MAY 2 1943   Arturo Toscanini’s copy of his NBC Symphony arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner is auctioned for $1.0 Million in War Bonds. 
MAY 2 1944  The Federal Trade Commission opens hearings challenging R.J. Reynolds’ use of the expression, “…easy on the throat,” in its Camel Cigarette advertising on five CBS and NBC programs. (See Unfiltered Cigarette Commercials.)
MAY 2 1944   Striking musicians at WJJD/Chicago and KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul fail to comply with War Labor Board orders to return to work while stations’ management nego-tiate with the AFM.  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 2 1945   Blue launches its 13-week series The Road Ahead - broadcast from a different veterans’ hospital and with a new guest star each week.  Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Fred Allen are signed for the first three shows.
MAY 2 1945   CBS sells 50,000 watt WBT/Charlotte to Jefferson-Standard Life Insurance for $1.5 Million, 
MAY 2 1946   ABC buys WXYZ/Detroit, WOOD/Grand Rapids and the Michigan State Network from King-Trendle Broadcasting for $3.65 Million.  The sale doesn‘t include King-Trendle’s Lone Ranger, Green Hornet and Challenge of The Yukon programs.  (See The Lone Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 2 1946   Broadcast reporters cover the two day Alcatraz Island prison riots that kill three inmates and two guards from boats anchored in San Francisco Bay.
MAY 2 1946   FCC reports that 22 applicants for black and white television licenses have withdrawn in favor of color television applications at a later date.
MAY 2 1947   Edgar Bergen signs with Standard Brands for the 1947-48 season to broadcast his Sunday NBC show twice on the West Coast - at 5:00 p.m.and a transcribed repeat at 8:00 p.m.  (See The Late Shift and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 2 1947   C.E. Hooper announces his firm’s first annual Hooperade of Stars saluting the season’s top rated programs in 20 categories, led by Bob Hope, Fibber McGee & Molly and Jack Benny.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 2 1948   Dud Williamson, host of Mutual’s What’s The Name of That Song?, dies of a heart attack at age 45.
MAY 2 1949   CBS financial records filed with the SEC show Arthur Godfrey was the network’s highest paid employee in 1948 at $258,450.  Godfrey received another $58,440 in Columbia Records royalties.  (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAY 2 1949   Frank K. White, President of Columbia Records, becomes President of Mutual succeeding Ed Kobak who had held the post for five years.
MAY 2 1949  Mutual’s Fulton Lewis, Jr., co-op newscast extends to 306 stations underwritten by 750 local sponsors.
MAY 2 1949  American Tobacco announces it will sponsor Jack Benny’s fall television debut on CBS-TV with a monthly half-hour variety show seen live on the West Coast and filmed for distribution elsewhere for a budget of $15,000 per episode.  (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
MAY 2 1950   CBS salutes Bing Crosby on his 46th birthday with a special quarter-hour program featuring Bob Hope carried by 180 affiliates.
MAY 2 1951   Jerry Colonna’s variety show debuts on ABC-TV.  (See “Professor” Jerry Colonna.)
MAY 2 1951  Veteran comedy writer Dick Knight, 40, formerly with Bob Hope and Burns & Allen, dies of a heart attack after a rehearsal of the Ed Wynn television show at CBS in Hollywood. 
MAY 2 1952   Winners of, “…a rustic cabin on a Maine island,” on ABC’s Chance of A Lifetime sue the network for $15,000, claiming that the structure was a shed and unfit for habitation.
MAY 2 1952  President Truman conducts an hour-long tour of the refurbished White House on the ABC, CBS and NBC television networks accompanied by newsmen Walter Cronkite, Bryson Rash and Frank Bourgholzer.

MAY 3 1923   Bulletins broadcast by WGY/Schenectady help locate and recover the kidnapped six year old son of pioneering GE broadcast engineer Ernst Alexanderson.
MAY 3 1930  The New York Daily News, angered by the CBS news scoop of the Ohio prison fire in April, drops all news and commentary about radio.
MAY 3 1932   Careton Coon, 39, co-founder of the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, the first dance band made famous by radio in 1922 with its late night broadcasts on WDAF/Kansas City, dies from blood poisoning.  
MAY 3 1937   Jim & Marian Jordan move their Fibber McGee & Molly from Chicago to Hollywood for six weeks while they film This Way Please.  Their move to Hollywood becomes permanent two years later.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.) 
MAY 3 1938   WXYZ/Detroit hires two script writers to work under Fran Striker in creating half-hour episodes of The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet.  (See The Lone  Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.) 
MAY 3 1940   Paramount releases Buck Benny Rides Again, starring Jack Benny as himself and his radio “gang”: Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Andy Divine, Phil Harris, Dennis Day and Don Wilson.  (See Radio Goes To The Movies and Sunday At Seven.)
MAY 3 1941   FCC suddenly issues its Report On Chain Broadcasting on a Saturday, effectively ordering NBC to sell one of its two networks, forcing NBC and CBS divest from their artist management bureaus and limiting all networks’ option time on affiliated stations.
MAY 3 1942   Jack Benny and his cast begin 30 weeks of non-broadcast repeats of their Sunday programs exclusively for studio audiences of Armed Forces personnel.  (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 3 1943 The Treasury Department begins sponsoring Home At Tommy Dorsey’s on Blue a weekly half-hour remote from the bandleader’s New Jersey estate.
MAY 3 1946   Mutual game show Twenty Questions attracts Ronson Lighters as its first sponsor when it completes its first 13-week cycle and receives a reported 121,000 pieces of fan mail.  (See Twenty Questions.)
MAY 3 1946   The Milwaukee Journal’s WTMJ withdraws its construction permit for a black and white television station to wait for color television.
MAY 3 1947   The Little Show starring Robert Q. Lewis debuts on CBS.  The 15 minute Saturday night comedy written by a dozen newcomers including George Axelrod and brothers Neil & Danny Simon supervised by Goodman Ace is cancelled after four weeks.  (See Easy Aces.)
MAY 3 1948   A woman nicknamed Klondike Kate by her neighbors sues Fibber McGee & Molly, NBC and Johnson Wax for an episode of the sitcom in which a comic character named Klondike Kate, “…held the plaintiff up to ridicule.”
MAY 3 1948   WQQW/Washington, D.C. and WFAX/Falls Church, Virginia apply to be the first AM stations in the country to share a single transmitting tower.
MAY 3 1949   In response to CBS talent raids, NBC’s David Sarnoff tells RCA stock-holders, “Time will tell there is no profit for the network, the sponsor or the artists in the purchase of overpriced talent packages.” 
MAY 3 1949   RCA drops its idea of sponsoring an NBC-TV show opposite Wednesday night’s popular Arthur Godfrey & His Friends on CBS-TV as its response to the CBS talent raids on NBC. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAY 3 1950   Ralph Edwards’ This Is Your Life completes its two year radio run on CBS.
MAY 3 1951   NBC announces a 10% to 15% cut in afternoon and evening rates similar to that effected earlier by CBS.
MAY 3 1951  Procter & Gamble signs seven year radio and television services contract with Red Skelton guaranteeing the comedian a total nearing $10.0 Million.
MAY 3 1952   Gillette pays $200,000 for radio and television rights to the Kentucky Derby broadcast on CBS and  televised for the first time on CBS-TV.. 
MAY 3 1953   NBC follows the CBS lead by announcing a 10-15% cut in Network Radio rates effective July 1st. 

MAY 4 1932   Wealthy organist Irma Glen begins a series of weekly 15 minute recitals on WENR/Chicago, paying the station $275 for its time every Wednesday night. 
MAY 4 1934   Blue begins Taxi, a three times a week, well-received serial starring Heavyweight challenger Max Baer leading up to his June 14th title bout versus Champion Primo Carnera which Baer won.
MAY 4 1935   Brown & Williamson Tobacco of Louisville becomes the first broadcast sponsor of the Kentucky Derby.   
MAY 4 1936   Mutual rejects Warner Brothers’ $2.0 Million dollar proposal to merge the network and film studio. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
MAY 4 1936   Kate Smith is the guest at a Washington, D.C., celebration of her 27th birthday and fifth year as a CBS star attended by 1,500 honoring her efforts for the American Legion, Red Cross and Jewish War Veterans.  (See Kate's Great Song and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 4 1936   The manager of WIBM/Jackson, Michigan, contacts the other 50 U.S. stations that share its 1370 kc frequency to lobby the FCC for an increase in their power from 100 watts to 500 watts days and 250 watts nights.
MAY 4 1941   All networks refuse to carry Adolph Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag denouncing Great Britain. 
MAY 4 1942   Mutual’s first network program, The Lone Ranger, is moved to Blue’s network of over 70 stations by sponsor General Mills.   Mutual counters with its new Western hero, Red Ryder.  (See The Lone Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.) 
MAY 4 1942   Truth Or Consequences becomes the 19th NBC program rebroadcast via shortwave for Armed Forces overseas. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 4 1942  The wartime sugar shortage forces General Foods to cancel its annual nationwide spot radio campaign for Certo Pectin, used in canning jams and jellies. 
MAY 4 1945   CBS correspondent Bill Downs, the first American reporter to broadcast from Hamburg after Allied capture, outlines German surrender negotiations for Holland, Denmark and northwest Germany. 
MAY 4 1949   C.E. Hooper announces its entry into television audience surveys in 31 cities beginning in June.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen and Hooper Was No Easy Target.)
MAY 4 1950   Jack Benny and Ed Wynn receive the annual Peabody Awards for radio and television - and Ford receives a special award for its sponsorship of United Nations sessions on CBS-TV.
MAY 4 1950  A reported 1,000 physicians attending the Texas State Medical convention in Fort Worth’s Texas Hotel observe three surgical procedures in color television transmitted from the nearby Saint Joseph’s Hospital. 
MAY 4 1951   Mutual’s Queen For A Day, on an eleven-city tour of the East Coast, attracts 15,000 for its broadcast from Philadelphia. 
MAY 4 1951   Robert Montgomery signs a two-year, $200,000 contract to be NBC-TV’s Executive Producer, over and above his American Tobacco contract to produce, host and occasionally star in its Lucky Strike Theater on the network. 
MAY 4 1951 Procter & Gamble’s research department issues a report which concludes, “…After television comes into the home people don’t listen to the radio,” and affects millions in broadcast advertising dollars.
MAY 4 1951  Reports continue to surface that CBS is attempting to buy ABC with the main purpose of obtaining ABC’s television stations in Chicago, San Francisco and Detroit.
MAY 4 1953   Arthur Godfrey, 49, leaves his CBS radio and television programs for four months to undergo hip surgery and recover.  (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 4, 1953  Dr. Allen DuMont tells stockholders that his company is developing a 3-D color television system.  (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)

MAY 5 1932 Broadway’s last vaudeville-only theater, The Palace, adds films to its stage presentations.  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
MAY 5 1934   The hard working Wayne King orchestra takes a five week vacation from its four network broadcasts a week for Lady Esther cosmetics.  (See The Waltz King.)
MAY 5 1934   A proposed 5% state tax on radio station income fails to pass the New York State Legislature.
MAY 5 1936   The Edison Foundation reports that 260 stations have agreed to carry its transcribed 15-minute series on the life of Thomas Edison at no charge.
MAY 5 1937   FCC approves the sale of WLWL/New York City by the Paulist Fathers to watch magnate and station owner Arde Bulova for $275,000.
MAY 5 1941   FCC Commissioners T.A.M. Craven and Norman S. Case, dissenting votes in the agency’s Chain Monopoly Report, warn in their Minority Report that the drastic rules voted by their five colleagues will harm broadcasting. 
MAY 5 1941   Arthur Godfrey, 37, popular 6:45 to 9:00 a.m. weekday personality at CBS-owned WJSV/Washington, begins an additional 5:30 to 6:45 a.m. feed of his daily show to CBS flagship WABC/New York City.  (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAY 5 1941  A Buffalo, New York, commercial bakery loses its court battle with Procter & Gamble and agrees to stop calling its products Ma Perkins’ Pies.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 5 1942   Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield cigarettes moves Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade into the 7:15 quarter hour on CBS, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.
(See In The Miller Mood.) 
MAY 5 1943   Through a contract mix-up, Fulton Lewis, Jr.’s nightly commentary on Mutual is broadcast by two New York City stations every weeknight for two months: 7:00 p.m. on WOR and 7:45 p.m. on WHN. 
MAY 5 1943  Transradio Press is awarded $2,298 in its breach of contract suit against WCKY/Cincinnati.
MAY 5 1943   Adam Hats and Butterick Patterns are the first advertisers to experiment with free television time offered on Wednesday nights by DuMont’s W2XWV(TV)/New York.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
MAY 5 1944   Glenn Miller signs a seven year contract with 20th Century Fox, telling reporters that he’ll be discharged from the Army within a month.  Reports surface that Miller’s band would replace Fred Waring’s orchestra on CBS three nights a week.  (See In The Miller Mood.)  
MAY 5 1944   Following a 17 month suspension during World War II, CBS resumes live studio television production from its WCBW(TV)/New York for two hours on Friday nights.
MAY 5 1944   DuMont Television advertises that its W2XWV(TV)/New York City is on the air for two hours every Sunday,Tuesday and Wednesday night and, “Experimental commercials are a feature of every program.”  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
MAY 5 1945   FCC reports that 90% of its 115 television station applications on file are from radio broadcasters and manufacturers, and 30 of them have newspaper interests.
MAY 5 1947   ABC President Mark Woods says his network’s owned AM stations will duplicate programming on their FM stations. 
MAY 5 1947   Cigarettes pursue the daytime radio audience as Chesterfield buys into Arthur Godfrey Time on CBS, Camels buy 15-minutes of Paul Whiteman’s record show on ABC and Philip Morris buys Heart’s Desire on Mutual. 
MAY 5 1947  Described as a soap opera of “significant social significance,” Pursuit of Happiness begins its five week run on ABC to reflect the views of its sponsor, the AFL which budgets $400,000 in a multi-network blitz against The Taft-Hartley labor law.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 5 1949   The television version of ABC Radio’s giveaway show Stop The Music! debuts on ABC-TV with a jackpot valued by the network at $16,500.  (See Stop The Music!)
MAY 5 1949   FCC Chairman Wayne Coy predicts at the Ohio State Institute For Edu-cation By Radio, “…Within five years television will be the dominant medium of broadcasting.”
MAY 5 1949   ABC-TV begins General Dwight Eisenhower’s legendary 26 week documentary Crusade In Europe over a 32 station network.
MAY 5 1949  ABC’s KGO-TV/San Francisco begins operations with Crusade In Europe as its first program.
MAY 5 1952   Clarence Hartzell, (fka Uncle Fletcher on Vic & Sade), joins the cast of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club on ABC.  (See Vic & Sade.)
MAY 5 1952   Mutual boasts 1,879 local sponsors for its Game of The Day co-op broad-casts on 245 stations.
MAY 5 1952   Omaha’s only daytime-only station, KOWH, celebrates its 30th anniversary.
(See Top 40 Radio's Roots.)
MAY 5 1953   Taped audio of NBC-TV’s Coke Time starring singer Eddie Fisher begins its run on the NBC Radio network of 197 stations - with another 375 Mutual stations added the following week in cities without an NBC outlet.

MAY 6 1932   Ben Bernie signs a 52-week contract with Pabst Beer to continue his weekly half hour on CBS for $4,500 per program. 
MAY 6 1934  The five Pittsburgh radio stations enjoy a weekend windfall in advertising income when the three city newspapers are shut down by a two-day labor strike.
MAY 6 1933  Atlas Beer pays WGN/Chicago $1,500 to sponsor its broadcast of the Kentucky Derby.
MAY 6 1935   Mutual establishes its own network sales department independent of its affiliated stations.
MAY 6 1937  Eyewitness report of the 7:23 p.m. Hindenburg airship explosion at Lakehurst, N.J., is recorded by WLS/Chicago newsman Herb Morrison.  NBC breaks its ban on recordings to broadcast the transcription on both of its networks the next day. (Click Hindenburg.)
MAY 6 1937  Engineer Charles Nehlsen is cited as the unsung hero of the Hindenburg disaster transcription when he had the presence of mind to put the recording needle back on the disc after the impact of the explosion dislodged it.   
MAY 6 1937   Rudy Vallee’s Royal Gelatin Hour is shortwaved to NBC from the stage of London’s St, George’s Hall but commercials are read from a separate room unheard by the audience.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 6 1938   After her 1936 debut on Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour and subsequent appearances on CBS and NBC, soprano Lucille Browning, 25, is awarded a contract with the Metropolitan Opera.
MAY 6 1939   NBC televises its interview show Vox Pop from the New York World’s Fair.
MAY 6 1940   NBC’s Continuity Acceptance Department asks writers of comedy shows to avoid the term, “jerk”, whenever possible because it sounds cheap.
MAY 6 1940   FCC orders all 13 U.S. shortwave stations licensed for international opera-tion to transmit at 50,000 watts beginning July 1.  Only General Electric’s WGEO/Schenec-tady and World Wide’s WRUL/Boston operate at that power at the time of the order. 
MAY 6 1941  Bob Hope performs his first broadcast for a military audience at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California.  (See Hope From Home.) 
MAY 6 1942   NBC lifts its ban on espionage and sabotage plots in its crime shows, allowing Mr. District Attorney to pursue enemy agents.  (See Mr. District Attorney and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 6 1944   Co-owned Seattle stations KJR and KOMO exchange call-signs.
MAY 6 1945   DuMont Laboratories begins construction of W3XWT(TV)/Washington D.C., with old parts from its New Jersey factory.  (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions)
MAY 6 1947   NBC censors cut Bob Hope’s show briefly when the comedian refers to CBS by name.
MAY 6 1948   Dick Powell and William Conrad debut as co-stars in the 20 week adaptation and extension of the classic newspaper comedic melodrama The Front Page.  (See Dick Powell.)
MAY 6 1949   Over 30 employees of NBC’s Chicago division are fired as the network directs its radio and television production and sales efforts to its New York and Los Angeles divisions.
MAY 6 1949  FCC authorizes the first UHF, (Ultra High Frequency), television station to test home reception - KC2XAK, a satellite of NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City licensed to Bridgeport, Connecticut on Chanel 24.
MAY 6 1949  KING/Seattle buys the city’s only television station, KRSC(TV), for $375,000.
MAY 6 1950   Kentucky Derby officials refuse to allow live television of the race, forcing Gillette to sponsor a 15 minute film of the race the next night on CBS-TV.
MAY 6 1952   Reports circulate that the Liberty Broadcasting System is reducing its network service from 16 to eight hours a day.
MAY 6 1952   DuMont’s WDTV(TV)/Pittsburgh reports surprisingly good ratings and sold out blocks of time for its overnight Swing Shift Theater of movies from midnight to 7:00 a.m.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)

MAY 7 1933   President Roosevelt delivers his second Fireside Chat, broadcast by all 150 network stations to an estimated 40 Million listeners.
MAY 7 1934   An audience of 5,000 attends an NBC concert by the Detroit Symphony used to introduce the new models of Packard automobiles.
MAY 7 1934   FCC authorizes WMAQ/Chicago to increase its power to 50,000 watts.
MAY 7 1935   RCA Chairman Sarnoff proclaims, “High definition television field tests will begin in 12 to 18 months,” and predicts a company expense of $1.0 Million for its development.
MAY 7 1936   A U.S. District Court awards actress Tess Gardella $115,000 in her suit against General Foods and NBC for “stealing” her stage name, Aunt Jemima.  
MAY 7 1936   An FCC lawyer rules that singer John Charles Thomas violates the ban against broadcasting point-to-point communications by closing his Blue network program with, “Goodnight, Mother.”
MAY 7 1937   After two months of arguing that its price was too high, the FCC approves the $125,000 sale of KMPC/Los Angeles to G.A. (Dick) Richards, owner of WJR/Detroit and WGAR/Cleveland.
MAY 7 1938  Brown & Williamson Tobacco obtains exclusive rights to the Kentucky Derby for five years and moves to CBS with announcers Ted Husing and Robert Trout.
MAY 7 1939  Controversial Detroit priest Charles Coughin announces that listener demand will keep his Sunday sermons on the air over the summer on his network of 47 stations.  (See Father Coughlin.)
MAY 7 1942  Bob Crosby substitutes for his brother, Bing, as host of NBC’s Kraft Music Hall for two weeks while Bing and Bob Hope tour the country in golf matches for charities. 
(See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 7 1944   Eddie Cantor is saluted for his charitable work at a dinner for 1,500 at New York City's Astor Hotel and broadcast by NBC with proceeds going to Cantor's Boys Camp.
MAY 7 1945   First bulletins of Germany’s World War II surrender is flashed by the Associated Press and broadcast at 9:35 a.m.  The reports trigger daylong network coverage resulting in a Hooper sets-in-use figure of 33.1 and a nighttime average of 38.2 although official White House confirmation doesn’t come until the next day.  (See V-E Day: (Very Early).)
MAY 7 1946   Full power WCAU/Philadelphia is sold by the Levy brothers to The Philadelphia Record for $6.0 Million.
MAY 7 1946   DuMont previews its first postwar home television sets with 18 inch picture tubes plus AM-FM-shortwave radios and record players for $2,400  (See Dr.  DuMont’s Predictions)
MAY 7 1947 The four major networks grant New York based union musicians a 20% raise in a one year contract.  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 7 1947   CBS releases an independent survey estimating 35.9 Million U.S. radio homes, (93%), have radios and 33% of those homes have more than one radio. 
MAY 7 1947  Landmark dramatic series, Kraft Television Theatre, begins its eleven year run on NBC-TV.
MAY 7 1948   AT&T announces completion of its New York to Los Angeles coaxial cable which will be used for television transmission when repeater stations are installed along the route.
MAY 7 1949   A listener wins $29,000 in prizes on CBS’s Sing It Again but a follow-up question worth an additional $25,000 in cash is incorrectly scripted and asked, leading to a flood of calls to the network switchboard.
MAY 7 1949  Mystery series The Affairs of Peter Salem begins its four season run on Mutual.
MAY 7 1949   The 75th running of the Kentucky Derby is the first to be televised with WAVE/Louisville carrying the race sponsored by Gillette.
MAY 7 1949  Standby For Crime starring 30 year old Myron (Mike) Wallace as a homicide detective, is re-started on ABC-TV after a month’s interruption.
MAY 7 1950   The Falcon replaces The Adventures of Christopher London on NBC opposite Jack Benny on CBS.  (See Sunday At Seven.)
MAY 7 1952  Comedian Jerry Lester sues NBC for $112,000, claiming the network refused to honor his $4,000 a week  contract to host Broadway Open House.
MAY 7 1953   FCC discards its requirement that FM stations be on the air a minimum number of hours per day.

MAY 8 1933   U.S. Supreme Court grants the FRC absolute power in assigning radio facilities and "redistributing" them from “Over Quota” states to “Under Quota” states.  
MAY 8 1933   The Supreme Court decision sustains the FRC decision to delete Chicago stations WIBO and WPCC in “over-radioed” Illinois and assign their 560 kc. wavelength to WJKS/Gary in “under-radioed” Indiana.
MAY 8 1933   Comedian Ed Wynn announces an initial six stations linked by Western Union lines for his Amalgamated Broadcasting System due to open, “…within the next month…”, with 16 hours of programs per day.
MAY 8 1937   The networks cover the takeoff of Hearst sponsored Coronation Flight, recognized as the first commercial transatlantic round trip flight, piloted by Dick Merrill & Jack Lambie, to return from London with the first pictures of the coronation King George VI. 
MAY 8 1937  The Kentucky Derby returns to NBC’s Blue Network with Clem McCarthy describing the race for Kentucky-based Brown & Williamson’s Kool cigarettes.
MAY 8 1939   The U.S. Federal Alcohol Administration asks Congress to ban beer advertising from radio.
MAY 8 1939   Major ad agency Blackettt-Sample-Hummert buys weeknight two hour block on WMCA/New York City for transcribed repeats of its daytime serials - The Romance of Helen Trent and Our Gal Sunday from CBS; Stella Dallas, Lorenzo Jones, Backstage Wife, Just Plain Bill and Young Widder Brown from NBC.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 8 1940   Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll break their long-standing rule of not admitting audiences to their broadcasts by performing an episode of Amos & Andy at Camden, New Jersey’s Convention Hall for 8,000 employees of sponsor Campbell Soup and their guests.  (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer.)
MAY 8 1944   BBC grants Mutual exclusive rebroadcast rights to its daily Newsreel program but only until the Allies invade the European continent when the program becomes available to all networks. 
MAY 8 1944   C.E Hooper completes its first 89 city Network Radio survey and reports audience tune-in and program popularity is almost identical to its on-going 32 city survey service.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 8 1945   President Truman’s 9:00 a.m. ET confirmation of V-E Day scores a 64.1 Hooperating, an all-time high daytime rating.  (See V-E Day  (Very Early).)
MAY 8 1945   NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York stays on the air a record 14 continuous hours covering V-E Day celebrations. Programs are relayed to WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia and WRGB(TV)/Schenectady.
MAY 8 1945   CBS celebrates V-E Day with Norman Corwin’s hour-long drama, On A Note of Triumph, narrated by Martin Gabel.
MAY 8 1949   The weeklong CIO strike at Philco’s 22 Philadelphia manufacturing plants is settled and 6,500 workers return to their jobs.
MAY 8 1950   RCA Vice President Conway Coe, former U.S. Commissioner of Patents, testifies to the FCC that nearly 1/6th of the 48,000 patents issued from 1931 to 1945 in the field of electronics went to RCA.  
MAY 8 1951  Free of motion picture contract prohibition to appear on television, comics Bud Abbott & Lou Costello sign with NBC-TV for four live 60 minute programs and 22 filmed half hour shows. 
MAY 8 1952   Lightning strikes the 475 foot transmitter tower of KMOX/St. Louis, and travels another 500 feet to the control room, knocking the station off the air for an hour.
MAY 8 1953   Drew Pearson’s syndicated weekly transcribed commentaries reach 173 stations, the same number that carried his broadcasts on ABC.

MAY 9 1932   WMAQ/Chicago moves operations from The Daily News building to NBC’s headquarters in the Merchandise Mart.
MAY 9 1934   FRC authorizes WLW/Cincinnati to resume broadcasting at 500.000 watts after a supressor antenna was employed to prevent interference with Toronto station CFRB.
MAY 9 1935  Witches Tale script writer and actor Alonzo Deen Cole collapses from an appendix attack during rehearsals at the WOR/Newark studios forcing the station to substitute a studio orchestra for the mystery program.
MAY 9 1936   CBS introduces Craig Earl as Professor Quiz , Network Radio’s first audience participation quiz show, beginning a two network run totaling seven years.
MAY 9 1937   Craig Earl celebrates the first anniversary of Professor Quiz with a personal appearance before 15,000 fans at the American Legion Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
MAY 9 1937  Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with dummy Charlie McCarthy debuts on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour and sets course to become Network Radio’s Number One program over the next two seasons.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and W.C. Fields.)
MAY 9 1937  Bob Hope begins his 13-week run as host of Blue’s Rippling Rhythm Revue featuring tenor Frank Parker and Shep Fields’ Rippling Rhythm orchestra.
MAY 9 1937  Vaudeville acrobat Joseph Spah, (aka Ben Dova), appears on Robert Ripley’s Believe It Or Not on NBC to tell how he survived by jumping from the burning Hindenburg in which 36 passengers and crewmen died.   (See Believe It Or Not.)
MAY 9 1938   Frank Hummert defends his policy of denying his writers any credit or ownership of their scripts produced for the Blackett-Sample-Hummert agency or its Air Features production firm, dismissing their work as nothing more than dialog to follow the detailed plots he and his wife Anne develop for each show.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 9 1938   A newly organized “audience defense group”, The American Radio Audience, demands the FCC, “…adopt a sterner attitude in punishing broadcasters who fail to live up to the law.”
MAY 9 1940  Kay Kyser’s NBC radio troupe breaks all records in its week-long engagement at the Fox Theater in St Louis, with 32 performances attracting 127,177 customers paying over $43,000.  
MAY 9 1940   Germany begins invades France, Belgium and the Netherlands at 11:00 p.m. prompting the networks to keep lines open for the latest news and major affiliates stay on the air overnight.   
MAY 9 1941  NBC celebrates Jack Benny’s 10th anniversary in radio with a testimonial dinner for 1,250 invited guests at the Los Angeles Biltmore Bowl, where the grateful Benny announces, “I hope I’m with NBC for the rest of my radio career.” (See Sunday At Seven  
and Network Jumpers.)
MAY 9 1942   Pioneer network announcer Graham McNamee, 53, dies of a streptococcal infection.
MAY 9 1942   Truth Or Consequences creates a long-distance singing quartet of four U.S. servicemen, located in New York City, Chicago, Hollywood and Great Lakes, Michigan, harmonizing to My Gal Sal.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAY 9 1944  DuMont changes the call sign of experimental W2XWV(TV)/New York City to WABD(TV) as the FCC grants it a commercial television license to operate on Channel 5.  (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.) 
MAY 9 1945   The four networks calculate the revenue lost from commercial programs cancelled in their two day coverage of the Allied victory in Europe is $500,000.  (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
MAY 9 1946  Bing Crosby hosts his final Kraft Music Hall broadcast after ten years in the role.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 9 1946  Standard Brands, a pioneer Network Radio sponsor, buys a Thursday night hour on NBC’s WNBT(TV)/ New York City for a variety show - the first starring comic Joe Besser and hit singer Evelyn Knight. 
MAY 9 1947  Air Force veteran Gordon MacRae, 26, signs to host Gulf Oil’s syndicated quarter-hour, Songs By Gordon MacRae on 280 stations, simultaneous with his summer fill work for Fanny Brice on 149 CBS affiliates and his weekly Teentimers’ Club on 101 NBC stations.   (See The Railroad Hour.)   
MAY 9 1947   The $1.0 Million libel lawsuit of film producer Walter Wanger against ABC Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler is settled out of court  
MAY 9 1947  CBS is sued for $50,000 by writer Roger Kay who claims the network stole his idea for the series Intrigue and for $100,000 by writer William Barr who claims CBS used his Rhymo show under a different title. 
MAY 9 1948   CBS attempts to capitalize on ABC’s hit, Stop The Music! by following its Sunday night 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. time period with its own pair of audience participation prize shows, Try ‘n’ Stop Me and Strike It Rich.  (See Stop The Music!)
MAY 9 1949   Over 400 stations reject Packard’s offer for a “free” quarter hour transcribed program celebrating the car company’s 50th anniversary.
MAY 9 1949   Veteran newsman and honored D-Day correspondent George Hicks, 44, leaves ABC to join NBC.  (See D-Day On Radio.)
MAY 9 1949   Sammy Kaye’s orchestra begins a transcribed three-times-weekly quarter hour on 260 stations for Chrysler dealers.
MAY 9 1949  NBC orders a $1.5 Million budget cut after the loss of its star comedians and increased television costs.
MAY 9 1950   Ralph Edwards moves his This Is Your Life from NBC to CBS.
MAY 9 1951    General Mills buys a half-hour weekday block on 200 Liberty network stations for non-sports programs - its quarter-hour Hymns of All Churches, plus a second 15 minute strip for an unnamed program. 
MAY 9 1952   ABC, CBS and NBC ban the record Junco Partner, citing that the lyrics refer to narcotics. 

MAY 10 1922   The U.S. Commerce Department issues the last three-letter call sign to WHB/Kansas City.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
MAY 10 1923   Variety publishes its first review of radio programs, the entire May 6th evening’s fare on WEAF/New York City.
MAY 10 1930 The Dallas News opens 50,000 watt WFAA/Dallas, billed as The Largest Station in the South, at a cost of $200,000.
MAY 10 1934   Crosley’s WLW/Cincinnati employs security personnel and deputy sheriffs from two counties in response to a bomb threat to its new 500,000 watt transmitter during a labor dispute at the company’s manufacturing division.
MAY 10 1934   NBC’s Thursday night Rudy Vallee Fleishmann Yeast Hour and Maxwell House Showboat switch studios at Vallee’s insistence with Showboat moving to the huge 8-H seating 1,500, and Vallee going to 8-G with a 250 capacity.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 10 1937   The U.S. Court of Appeals reverses a lower court’s award of $115,000 to actress Tess Gardella, (aka Aunt Jemima), who sued General Foods and NBC for using the name and a different actress on broadcasts. The two parties settle out of court six months later.
MAY 10 1939   The NAB assists NBC's appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and obtains a reversal in the $15,000 judgment against the network for an ad-lib swipe made by Al Jolson against a Uniontown hotel. 
MAY 10 1940   Network London correspondents report Winston Churchill will be the new British Prime Minister.
MAY 10 1940   Gillette begins sponsorship of Elmer Davis’ nightly 8:55 p.m. news capsule on CBS.
MAY 10 1940   FCC grants the separation of St. Louis stations KSD and KFUO, establishing KFUO as a daytime operation at 830 k.c. and making the St. Louis Post-Dispatch owned KSD a fulltime station at 550 k.c. 
MAY 10 1941   CBS correspondent Leigh White is reported safe in Egypt after transpor-tation across the Mediterranean from the Balkans where he was wounded by German aircraft machine gun fire.
MAY 10 1942   Blue Network President Mark Woods tells affiliates that the network would most likely not be sold by NBC until after World War II.
MAY 10 1942   Mutual passes the 200th affiliate mark with the addition of North Carolina stations WGTC/Greenville, WGTM/Wilson and WGBR/Goldsboro. 
MAY 10 1942   All four networks carry Winston Churchill’s shortwave broadcast from London warning Hitler against poison gas warfare, resulting in a 27.4 CAB rating.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 10 1943   The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the FCC’s Report On Chain Broad-casting.  NBC responds by putting its Blue network up for sale and CBS offers to sell its artist management bureau. 
MAY 10 1943   Eleanor (Cissy) Patterson, Publisher of The Washington Times-Herald sues Walter Winchell for $200,000 in a libel suit then withdraws the suit when the trial opens.   (See Walter Winchell.) 
MAY 10 1944   NBC announcer Gayne Whitman records “news bulletins” of the Allied D-Day invasion of France for use in the West Coast chain of Fox theaters when the event actually begins.  (See  D-Day On Radio.)
MAY 10 1944   Ralph Edwards and Harry Von Zell cancel the contract that made Von Zell host of Truth Or Consequences when the Army refuses to draft Edwards.  Von Zell is given $14,000 for his audition show work and expenses.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAY 10 1945   The U.S. Director of Wartime Censorship abolishes the World War II bans on informal interviews, record show dedications and news of the President’s travels.
MAY 10 1946   The Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting Board of Directors decides to keep the financially struggling CAB rating service operating “on an interim basis” until November, requiring a subsidy of $60,000.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 10 1946   KABC/San Antonio boosts its daytime power from 250 to 50,000 watts and 10,000 watts at night at 680 kc.
MAY 10 1948   Bulova cancels its estimated $175,000 in radio time signals to put the budget into television time signals. 
MAY 10 1949   Talent agency William Morris sues Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll for breach of contract and $300,000 after the team sells its Amos & Andy name and show to CBS.  (See Network Jumpers.)
MAY 10 1949   Bob Hope’s radio troupe returns to Hollywood after a whirlwind cross-country tour of 55 cities playing to a total paying audience of 450,000 and another 750,000 at benefits, Armed Forces camps and hospitals.  (See Hope From Home.)
MAY 10 1949   WOV/New York City is sold by watch manufacturer Arde Bulova to a financial group for over $200,000, allowing Bulova to comply with the FCC’s 1943 duopoly ban and keep ownership of WNEW/New York City. 
MAY 10 1950  The networks carry reports of and utterances of a doomed worker, Dominick Atteo,  fatally trapped for 26 hours in an abandoned Brooklyn well.  
MAY 10 1950   Producers of ABC’s weekday show Bride & Groom sue the Los Angeles television show Wedding Bells for $250,000, claiming theft of format. 
MAY 10 1950  NBC‘s Kraft Television Theater celebrates its third anniversary with its 157th consecutive performance, Macbeth, starring E.G. Marshall and Uta Hagen.
MAY 10 1950   Bandleader Phil Spitalny sues Warner Brothers for $600,000 over the studio’s use of his Hour of Charm radio show‘s “title, style and format” in the film My Dream Is Yours.  (See The Hour of Charm.)
MAY 10 1951   Chicago husband-and-wife radio team, Myron (Mike) Wallace and Buff Cobb sign a one-year CBS radio and television contract.

MAY 11 1922   KGU/Honolulu becomes Hawaii’s first radio station.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
MAY 11 1926 AT&T incorporates its subsidiary, Broadcasting Corporation of America, to operate its two owned stations, WEAF/New York City and WCAP/Washington, D.C.  It sells the division to RCA two months later.
MAY 11 1931   Crossley, Incorporated, announces 50 advertisers have paid $1,000 each for its 1931 Radio Report gathered from house-to-house interviews in 52 cities and due in December.  (See Radio’s Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 11 1931   KTMR/Los Angeles moves its studios and transmitter to the United Artists motion picture lot and increases its power to 1,000 watts. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.) 
MAY 11 1936   NBC offers advertisers a network of the eight stations it controls in New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Cleveland, Schenectady and Washington, D.C., under specific conditions provided stations are paid their standard rates and line charges between them are covered. 
MAY 11 1937   FCC authorizes Twin City stations KSTP, WCCO and WTCN the dual-identification of, “…Minneapolis and St. Paul,” regardless of their location in either city.
MAY 11 1938   NBC gives 15 minutes following its weekday Farm & Home Hour to Indiana Senator Sherwood Minton to attack publishers who criticize the Roosevelt administration and promote his bill that would imprison reporters who “lie”.
MAY 11 1941   Mutual breaks ranks with the other networks and signs an eight-year contract giving ASCAP 3% of its gross income, (less commissions and other agreed deductions), until 1945, then 3½% until December 31, 1949. 
MAY 11 1941  The five Dionne Quintuplets, age 6, rehearsed to greet Ned Sparks’ CBS audience from Toronto in English, suddenly refuse to speak anything but French.  Sponsor Ontario Tourist Commission blames their parents. 
MAY 11 1942   Pure Oil expands H.V. Kaltenborn’s NBC news commentaries from three to five nights a week.  (See H.V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 11 1942   NBC broadcasts Stephen Vincent Benet’s poetic drama, They Burned The Books, on the ninth anniversary of the infamous Nazi book burning in Munich.
MAY 11 1942   Kay Kyser begins a series of full-scale Monday night “previews” of his Lucky Strike College of Musical Knowledge shows on NBC, complete with a studio audience and prizes in an effort to tighten the program’s format and script.  (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 11 1942   Michigan brewer Stroh signs for its third, 13-week summer series of half hour concerts on WJR/Detroit, featuring conductor Gus Haenchen and soloists from New York City plus a 35 piece string orchestra at a weekly cost of $5,000.  (See Gus Haenchen.)  
MAY 11 1942   News From Home, a half hour program produced six times a week for Armed Forces personnel overseas, begins its run on six powerful U.S. shortwave stations.
MAY 11 1946   Broadcast lines in Asheville, N.C., auditorium are cut by vandals preventing NBC’s broadcast of a speech by AFL President William Green.
MAY 11 1946   Truth Or Consequences arranges a hookup between Hollywood and the edge of the Arctic Circle in Canada to interview a contestant who was sent north to look for gold. (See Trutrh Or Consequences.)
MAY 11 1946   WHN/New York City disc jockey Robert Q. Lewis, begins a Saturday night variety half-hour on Mutual.
MAY 11 1946  The Chicago Tribune claims to be the first newspaper to transmit stories via radio facsimile - sending four pages from its WGNB(FM) 29 miles to the home of Tribune publisher Robert McCormick.
MAY 11 1947   Mutual honors Mothers’ Day with The World’s Greatest Mother, a 30-minute tribute to the Virgin Mary, with Ethel Barrymore, Bing Crosby, Loretta Young, George Murphy, Margaret O’Brien and other stars.
MAY 11 1947   To cut costs CBS-TV lays off 50 television technical and production personnel with ten weeks’ severance pay and cancels all studio originated television programs to focus on sports and special events.  
MAY 11 1949   NBC fights off the CBS attempt to sign singer/comedian Dennis Day by renewing its contract with Colgate-Palmolive, the sponsor of A Day In The Life of Dennis Day.
MAY 11 1950   False rumors spread from Wall Street that 20th Century Fox has bought ABC Radio & Television.  
MAY 11 1951   NBC negotiates the purchase of a 30-acre tract adjacent to Warner Brothers’ studios in Burbank to build its West Coast radio and television headquarters.  Reported cost of the land plus an additional ten acres purchased earlier from the city was $800,000.
MAY 11 1951   International Telephone & Telegraph, United Paramount Theaters and CBS all openly bid against each other to purchase ABC and its owned stations.
MAY 11 1951   Mutual reports the co-op sales of Fulton Lewis Jr.’s nightly commentaries reach 358 stations.

MAY 12 1930   Walter Winchell begins his radio career on CBS owned WABC/New York City.  (See Walter Winchell)
MAY 12 1932   Citing economic conditions, CBS fires 100 employees and orders a 15% pay cut for all remaining workers.  
MAY 12 1933   Major Andrew White, one of the original promoters of the Columbia Broadcasting System, declares bankruptcy.
MAY 12 1933   The FTC orders the Theronoid Co. to cease its radio advertising on 19 stations which claimS that its solenoid belt treats diseases through magnetism.
MAY 12 1937  All networks and most independent stations broadcast all or major parts of the 14 hour coronation ceremonies of King George VI from BBC via shortwave from London beginning at 4:45 a.m.
MAY 12 1937  CBS begins shortwave service to Europe through its new facility, W2XE.
MAY 12 1942   FCC cuts the minimum hours of operation for television stations from 15 to four hours per week.
MAY 12 1942   Chesterfield cigarettes moves its three-times weekly Glenn Miller Moonlight Serenade, (aka Music That Satisfies), on CBS from 10:00 to 7:15 p.m.  (See In The Miller Mood.)
MAY 12 1943   A transmitter fire knocks WABY/Albany, New York, off the air for 24 hours, enough time for the station to locate and install a new transmitter. 
MAY 12 1944   ABC’s Paul Whiteman asks ten noted American composers, including Ferde Grofe, Peter DeRose and Aaron Copeland, to write five minute works for radio. (See The Radio Hall of Fame.)
MAY 12 1945   AFM President James Petrillo demands that Hollywood movie studios prohibit their films employing union musicians from being broadcast on television.  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 12 1947   ABC President Mark Woods tells West Coast radio producers that the network will spend up to $250,000 to improve the equipment and techniques used to record radio programs for broadcast. 
MAY 12 1948  ABC’s Breakfast Club becomes the first daytime radio show to be simulcast on a network - a one time performance from Philadelphia’s Academy of Music televised by WFIL-TV and WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia, WABD(TV)/New York City and WMAL-TV/ Washington.
MAY 12 1948   ABC begins construction of its television tower for WJZ-TV atop the Hotel Pierre in New York City.
MAY 12 1949   Bill Downs of CBS, NBC’s Merrill Mueller, Martin Agronsky from ABC and Mutual’s John Thompson lead the networks’ live overage of the lifting of the Berlin Blockade. 

MAY 13 1931   With his NBC broadcasts, his Connecticut Yankees band’s nightly appearances at the Pennsylvania Hotel and his solo appearances in George White’s Scandals on Broadway, Rudy Vallee’s weekly income is estimated at $12,000.  (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 13 1935  CBS chief Bill Paley is editorially praised when he states that effective June 1st his network will no longer accept new advertising accounts for deodorants or laxatives or other products of “questionable taste”.  (See The 1934-35 Season.)
MAY 13 1935  CBS announces limits to time allotted to commercials effective July 1st - 10% of nighttime programs and 15% of daytime programs with an extra ten seconds allowed to 15 minute programs.
MAY 13 1936   Gillette pays Jack Oakie $3,000 to read a two-minute audition on a direct line from Gallup, New Mexico, for a new variety show the company is considering.
MAY 13 1937   RCA President David Sarnoff intervenes to persuade Johnson Wax to return the Monday night 8:00 to 8:30 NBC time period it claimed for Fibber McGee & Molly when Firestone mistakenly let its option on the half-hour lapse.
MAY 13 1937   Rudy Vallee presents his second week of NBC’s Royal Gelatin Hour from London, but atmospheric conditions create static throughout the broadcast and block the shortwave transmission for minutes at a time.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 13 1939   New York City retailers report selling 230 television sets made by RCA and DuMont in one week - ranging in price from $300 to $600. (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)
MAY 13 1940   The U.S Justice Department clears its docket of the five remaining cases referred to it by the FCC - all similar to the Commission’s Pot O Gold complaint - as possible violations of lottery laws.
MAY 13 1940   General Foods moves The Jack Benny Program from NBC affiliate WWJ/Detroit to competitor WXYZ when WWJ pre-empts the comedian’s show to carry Detroit Tiger baseball games that conflct with it.  (See Sunday At Seven.)
MAY 13 1941   FCC Chairman James Fly addresses the NAB convention to add to the Commission’s Report on Chain Broadcasting issued ten days earlier that,  “…all matters of means, methods and timing in it are flexible.”
MAY 13 1943   Settlement of the ten month musicians’ strike against transcription companies is scuttled when AFM boss James Petrillo demands that the companies refuse service to stations which the union deems “unfair.”  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 13 1944   WNBT(TV)/New York City transmits an unpublicized Saturday afternoon half-hour variety show starring Zero Mostel and Nan Merriman as a demonstration for congressmen visiting its Princeton, New Jersey laboratories.
MAY 13 1945   General Motors underwrites NBC’s hour long Remember This Day written by Arthur Hopkins with  music composed by Dr. Frank Black and performed by New York City’s top radio actors in a thanksgiving for victory in the European war.
MAY 13 1945 NBC airs a special show from Washington, D.C., featuring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on the eve of the Seventh War Loan Drive with a six week goal of $14.0 Billion in War Bond sales
MAY 13 1948  DuMont demonstrates its new Tele-Transcriber process of film recording developed with Eastman Kodak which reconciles motion pictures‘ 30 frames per second with television‘s 24 frames per second.
MAY 13 1950   Early Network Radio star, “Whispering” Jack Smith, 51, dies ten days after his last television appearance.
MAY 13 1950   WFBM(TV)/Indianapolis adds Saturday and Sunday Indianapolis 500 qualification time-trials to its second annual coverage of the May 30th  Memorial Day race.
MAY 13 1951   After ten days of talks, negotiations are called off in which CBS attempted to buy ABC for $26.0 Million.  
MAY 13 1951   Norwegian police find the body of ABC Berlin bureau chief Lyford Moore, 40, in an Oslo fjord ending a five month search.
MAY 13 1951 After three years on Mutual, Quaker Oats replaces its Sunday evening Roy Rogers Show with Challenge of The Yukon from WXYZ/Detroit when the cowboy star insists Quaker also sponsor his television show.

MAY 14 1933   CBS debuts its new Sunday night lineup: The Gauchos, The Chicago Variety Show, The Columbia Dramatic Guild, Andre Kostelanetz Presents, The Columbia Review, Quiet Harmonies and John Henry, The Black River Giant.
MAY 14 1934   KNX leads Los Angeles stations with the news of kidnap victim William Gettle’s release and the arrest of the millionaire’s abductors - followed by the bulletin that Tucson kidnap victim Jane Robles, age 6, was found unharmed after 19 days in the Arizona desert.
MAY 14 1934   A court order prevents WSGN/Birmingham from broadcasting home games of the local Southern Association baseball team from a tree house outside the ballpark’s fence.
MAY 14 1936   CBS announces its intent to lease and operate WEEI/Boston and KSFO/San Francisco.
MAY14 1936   FCC approves KWKC/Kansas City changing its call sign to KCMO.
MAY 14 1937   WOR/Newark reporter Dave Driscoll is attacked by NBC personnel when attempting to interview returning Coronation Flight co-pilot Jack Lambie because NBC has an exclusive agreement with pilot Dick Merrill.
MAY 14 1938  Legendary track announcer Clem McCarthy creates confusion in his call of the muddy Preakness Stakes on NBC by spotting Dauber dead last by half a mile turning into the homestretch then winning it going away moments later.
MAY 14 1939   WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul becomes the only local station to accompany the British Royal Family on their train trip through Canada as newsman Cedric Adams joins the trip in Montreal and makes two reports a day for ten days until the train reaches Winnipeg.
MAY 14 1941   Forty Mutual affiliates opposed to the network’s deal with ASCAP organize as The Mutual Network Affiliates.
MAY 14 1942   The 14th episode of the U.S. Army’s shortwave program Command Performance starring Al Jolson, Marlene Dietrich and Keny Baker is produced and recorded at the NAB convention in Cleveland.  (See Command Performance.) 
MAY 14 1942 The American (FM) Network curtails operations after less than a year. 
MAY 14 1943   The U.S. Supreme Court rules 4-2 that the FCC must reopen the 1941 hearings which resulted in KOA/Denver losing its Class 1-A Clear Channel authorization on 850 kc. permitting WHDH/Boston to operate fulltime. 
MAY 14 1943   CBS begins its late night experiment with Friday’s Broadway Bandbox starring Frank Sinatra with Raymond Scott’s orchestra from 11:15 p.m. to midnight.  Sinatra leaves the show after eight weeks.
MAY 14 1945   Blue’s Breakfast Club begins a two week tour of Eastern cities to benefit the Seventh War Loan Drive.
MAY 14 1945   Danny Kaye and Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians with vocalists Barry Wood and Bea Wain headline the hour-long special show devoted to the Seventh War Loan campaign on Blue.
MAY 14 1947   KFI/Los Angeles broadcasts an apology at the 6:30 p.m. conclusion of NBC’s The Big Story because the program violated the station’s publicized ban on crime stories before 9:00 p.m.
MAY 14 1948   The Don Lee West Coast network refuses to carry the Mutual feed of remarks by President Truman to the Young Democrats Club in Washington, D.C.
MAY 14 1950   Milton Berle completes NBC-TV’s 21-hour telethon that generates $1.3 Million for the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
MAY 14 1951 John W. Vandercook replaces Raymond Gram Swing’s nightly commentary on the Liberty Network when Swing joins the Voice of America. 
MAY 14 1951  The Liberty Network announces four new programs featuring Mickey Rooney, Jim Ameche, Hollywood reporter Carl Shroeder and Russ Morgan’s orchestra in addition to its schedule of sports broadcasts. 
MAY 14 1951   KFSB/Joplin, Missouri sues the local minor league baseball club for $15,000, charging that it prevented the station from broadcasting games of the major league St. Louis Cardinals. 
MAY 14 1951   Veteran radio actor Bill Johnstone, 76, who portrayed The Shadow from 1938 to 1943, is burned to death in a fire at his Connecticut home.  (See The Shadow Nos.)
MAY 14 1951   Speculation of a television network comprised of newspaper-owned stations ends as the Chicago Tribune’s WGN-TV renews its affiliation agreement with the DuMont Network for two more years.  (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)
MAY 14 1952   Fueling reports of the network’s collapse, Liberty Broadcasting System’s senior sportscaster Lindsey Nelson, 33, resigns.
MAY 14 1952   Fort Industry Company, operator of seven radio and four television stations, changes its name to The  Storer Broadcasting Company.
MAY 14 1952   Listeners to ABC’s Break The Bank on WGVA/Geneva, New York are surprised when the station breaks into the quiz with the news bulletin that the bank in nearby Ovid, New York has been robbed. 

MAY 15 1906 General Electric assigns Swedish immigrant Ernst Alexanderson, 28, to build the high speed alternating current generator ordered by pioneering wireless developer, Reginald Fessenden.  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
MAY 15 1923 The Second National Radio Conference establishes the AM Radio Band of 550 to 1350 kilocycles.
MAY 15 1923   Westinghouse Electric sells its share of WJZ/Newark to RCA which moves its license and studios to New York City.  (See Three Letter Calls.) 
MAY 15 1923 RCA reopens WJY/New York City as the sister station to its newly acquired WJZ.
MAY 15 1931  Former showgirl and Miss America contestant, Diane Knapp, is chosen by NBC as its first “face” to appear as a model and actress in experimental television broadcasts.
MAY15 1934   The U.S. Senate defeats the controversial Wagner-Hatfield Amendment to the pending Communications Act which would strip all radio stations of their licenses and reassign 25% of them to religious, educational, labor and other “non-profit” organizations.
MAY 15 1939   The Kansas State Legislature passes a confusing bill that prevents any newly licensed stations from entering into a contract with ASCAP.
MAY 15 1940   FCC Chairman James Fly praises radio for its, “...fair and intelligent reporting,” of Germany's European invasions during the past week.
MAY 15 1940   The Surprise Party’s “convention” nominating Gracie Allen For President opens at Omaha’s Ak-Sar-Ben Auditorium as Burns & Allen perform two broadcasts for a total audience of 15,000 on CBS..
MAY 15 1942   C.E. Hooper expands its monthly audience survey periods from one week to two, adding approximately 100,000 homes to the poll per month.  (See Radio's Rulers:
Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 15 1945  The Federal Trade Commission charges Captain Midnight sponsor Ovaltine with false and misleading advertising in commercial claims that the drink steadies nerves, fights colds and improves eyesight.  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
MAY 15 1946  Eddie Cantor is reported stunned when his joke on NBC that labor leader John L. Lewis, “…gave the atom bomb 24 hours to get out of town,” resulted in a chorus of boos from the studio audience.  (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 15 1946  General Foods refuses to release George Burns & Gracie Allen from their contract and allow them to accept F.W. Fitch’s offer to take over the Fitch Bandwagon timeslot on NBC following Jack Benny.
MAY 15 1947   Crosley introduces a table model television set with a 6½ x 8½ picture tube priced at $375 plus $55 for installation,
MAY 15 1948   Dr. I.Q. Junior becomes a simulcast, but only in Detroit, as the NBC radio show originates from the studios of WWJ-TV for seven weeks.  (See Dr. I.Q.)
MAY 15 1948  WATV(TV)/Newark goes on the air as the temporary New York City television outlet for ABC-TV until the network’s WJZ-TV is  operational.
MAY 15 1948   Admiral Corp. cancels ABC-TV’s first network program, On The Corner, after three shows in a dispute over the handling of its commercials by the program’s star, comedian Henry Morgan. 
MAY 15 1949   Lowell Thomas is reported 1948’s highest CBS wage earner at $420,300.
(See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 15 1950  President Truman, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby headline the Treasury Bond sales campaign opening broadcast carried by all networks.  
MAY 15 1950  Arthur Godfrey hosts a television tribute to the Treasury Bond campaign on NBC-TV with President Truman and TV stars Sid Caesar, Imogene Cocoa, Paul Winchell, Perry Como and Marguerite Piazza.
MAY 15 1951  The NCAA proposes a collegiate football Game of The Week on television to any sponsor willing to buy the 1951 season rights for $1.0 Million then make the games available to any stations that will broadcast them without charge. 
MAY 15 1952   The Liberty Broadcasting System network, with nearly 400 affiliates, suspends operations leaving 75 employees out of work.
MAY 15 1952   Called “legalized larceny” by broadcasters, the FCC issues its controversial Rebroadcast Rule which requires stations to make their programs available to competing stations for re-broadcast.
MAY 15 1953    Chet Lauck and Norris Goff conclude their ABC weekday series as Lum & Abner and leave Network Radio after a 22 year multi-network run. 
MAY 15 1953   The Conelrad, (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation), defense system using radio goes into effect.
MAY 15 1953   A Federal jury orders commentator Drew Pearson to pay $50,000 in libel damages to former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Norman Little. 
MAY 15 1953 Gillette spends $400,000 for radio and television coverage of the Rocky Marciano vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Heavyweight Championship fight which ends at 2:25 of the first round with a knockout by Marciano. 
MAY 15 1953 A bar in blacked-out Chicago floats an elaborate balloon mounted antenna to pick up television coverage of the Marciano vs. Walcott fight from a Kalamazoo, Michigan station which ends in Marciano's irst round victory.

MAY 16 1929 CBS introduces Network Radio’s first crime drama, True Detective Mysteries, which begins its 16 year multi-network run.
MAY 16 1930  Brooklyn Eagle Editor and world traveler H. V. Kaltenborn begins a series Friday night travel talks on CBS sponsored by Cunard Steamship Lines.  (See H.V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 16 1932  NBC announces its intent to cut its staff by 195 employees due to economic conditions.
MAY 16 1932   Anticipating a “summer slump” in advertising, Los Angeles stations KMPC, KRKD and KMTR slash their rates by 50% for three months.
MAY 16 1932   FRC threatens WGAR/Cleveland with loss of license if it finds the station’s interviews with an arrested bootlegger are, “…discreditable or demoralizing.”
MAY 16 1932   RCA demonstrates its television system employing cathode ray tube technology.
MAY 16 1934   The Lone Ranger from WXYZ/Detroit debuts as a Wednesday night feature on WOR/Newark, four and a half months before the Mutual network is formed.  (See The Lone Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 16 1936  NBC breaks policy and mixes stations from its Red and Blue Networks to out-maneuver Mutual for American Oil’s exclusive broadcast of the Preakness from Pimlico Race Track.
MAY 16 1936   Gabriel Heatter and commentator Johnny Johnston leave for London to represent Mutual on the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage to America with nightly broadcasts from the ship.
MAY 16 1938  FCC begins hearing presentations from 15 clear channel stations aspiring to 500,000 watts: KDKA, KFI, KNX, KSL, WBZ, WGN, WGY,WHAS, WHO,WJR, WJZ, WOAI, WOR, WSB and WSM.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
MAY 16 1938  Lord & Thomas Advertising representing Pepsodent Toothpaste signs Bob Hope for a variety show beginning in the fall with the network, day and time to be named later.  (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 16 1940  The four networks carry President Roosevelt’s address to Congress calling for new defense programs.
MAY 16 1941   Gillette and Mutual buy the 1941 World Series broadcast rights for a reported $100,000.
MAY 16 1943   NBC’s Fitch Bandwagon begins incorporating five minute newscasts by Alex Drier into its Sunday night shows.
MAY 16 1944   FCC rules that one company can own up to five television stations, increasing its previous limit from three.
MAY 16 1946  U.S. Census Bureau announces that 90.4% of American homes have radios.
MAY 16 1946   NBC President Niles Trammell tells a luncheon group of advertising executives that, “…some commercials fit into show like a riveting machine fits into a symphony orchestra.”  
MAY 16 1946  A heavy hailstorm hits San Antonio which brings down radio stations’ network and transmitter lines, knocks KTSA off the air for eight hours and forces 50,000 watt WOAI to revert to its 5,000 watt emergency transmitter.
MAY 16 1946  A special nighttime episode of ABC’s weekday audience participation show Ladies Be Seated is televised by DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York.
MAY 16 1947  Radio networks give full coverage to the “surprise air attack” maneuvers of 125 Air Force bombers over New York City.
MAY 16 1947  Jack Benny’s radio troupe closes out a week of 43 performances at the Chicago Theater, breaking the house box office records with $113,400 in ticket sales,  (See Sunday At Seven.)
MAY 16 1948  CBS news correspondent George Polk, 35, is found murdered in Athens, Greece.
MAY 16 1949  The U.S. Supreme Court reverses a lower court decision and upholds the FCC’s denial of license renewal to WORL/Boston for misrepresentation of its financial statements.
MAY 16 1949  The four major networks combine to inaugurate the new Opportunity Bond Drive with an hour-long show headlined by Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Al Jolson and Frank Sinatra.
MAY 16 1949   Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin, co-stars of South Pacific on Broadway, receive $7,000 for singing hits from the show on NBC’s Telephone Hour.

MAY 17 1933   Carlton E. Morse’s serial One Man’s Family originating from KPO/San Francisco becomes the first regularly scheduled West Coast show to be broadcast nationwide and begins its 27 year multi-network run on NBC.
MAY 17 1935   Los Angeles stations ignore the demand of the new American Society of Recording Artists, to pay a fee for every phonograph record they play as its lawyers ask on what law the group’s claims for payment are based. 
MAY 17 1938   Information Please debuts on Blue starting its ten season multi-network run.  (See Information Please.)
MAY 17 1938   Lever Brothers orders a comedy skit involving airlines off its Al Jolson Show at the last minute in respect to a Lockheed airliner missing in the fog shrouded Sierra Madre mountains with nine persons aboard - found the next day with no survivors. 
MAY 17 1938   NBC’s experimental W2XBS(TV)/New York City, presents its first melodrama to an invited audience at its Radio City headquarters, the 30-minute Mysterious Mummy Case with Dorothy McGuire and Ned Weaver heading a cast of nine. 
MAY 17 1939  NBC’s W2XBS(TV)/New York City broadcasts television’s first baseball game - Columbia vs. Princeton.
MAY 17 1939  Ten thousand fans turn out for the NBC broadcast of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge at the  Kansas City Municipal Auditorium that seats only 2,700.  (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 17 1942  The first Government produced program to boost wartime morale, the half-hour Keep ‘Em Rolling, ends its 28 week free run on 130 stations with the donated talent of stage, screen, radio and recording stars.
MAY 17 1945  FCC announces the allocation of 13 channels for television - seven between 174 and 216 megacycles and an additional six, pending tests, between 44 and 108 megacycles. 
MAY 17 1946   ABC, CBS, Mutual and many independent stations carry the prime time address of former President Herbert Hoover on the international hunger crisis and the status of the Emergency Famine Relief Committee.
MAY 17 1948   ABC sells the public offering of 500,000 shares of its stock at nine dollars a share in two hours.
MAY 17 1948   KFI/Los Angeles sues a Superior Court Judge for $150,000 claiming the jurist shut the station out from covering a notorious murder trial while allowing the microphones from two other stations in the courtroom. 
MAY 17 1949   WFDR-FM/New York begins operations on the same day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., is elected to a New York congressional seat.
MAY 17 1950   At the radio industry’s urging, the U.S. Senate defeats President Truman’s controversial plan to reorganize the FCC giving it greater powers.
MAY 17 1950   NBC joins the talent bidding war for Bob Hope by offering to buy a million dollars worth of stock in Hope’s personal corporation plus a salary of $10,000 a week in return for a five year exclusive contract.  (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 17 1950   George Burns, 54, and Gracie Allen, 55, retire from Network Radio after 18 years to focus on their television series.

MAY 18 1931 The first West Coast installation of experimental television equipment is reported at Don Lee’s KHJ/Los Angeles with a second planned for Lee’s KFRC/San Francisco.
MAY 18 1934   Phil Spitalny’s all-girl orchestra begins The Hour of Charm’s 14 season multi-netowork run on CBS.  (See The Hour of Charm.)
MAY 18 1934   Sponsor Pillsbury reports receiving 300,000 responses for a booklet about the stars of NBC’s soap opera Today’s Children in return for a label from the company’s flour.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 18 1939   FCC denounces the practice of long-term leasing of radio stations and refuses to permit the University of Alabama and Alabama Polytechnic Institute to lease WAPI/Birmingham for $1,000 a month to a third party over 15 years. 
MAY 18 1939   NBC celebrates Rudy Vallee’s 500th broadcast for sponsor Standard Brands  - which cancels Vallee four months later.  (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 18 1940   In a rare Saturday announcement, the FCC strips television Channel One, (42,000 kc. to 50,000 kc.), and awards it to Frequency Modulation radio broadcasting.
MAY 18 1942   Don McLaughlin, 35, debuts as (David Harding) Counterspy on Blue and remains in the title role for the program’s entire 14 season multi-network run.  (See FBI vs. FBI.)
MAY 18 1942   Blue Network anchor WJZ/New York City breaks its rule against station break commercials and allows spots of 25 words or less beginning with a campaign for Procter & Gamble’s Duz Detergent. 
MAY 18 1942   NBC and CBS both cut the operating hours of their New York City tele-vision stations for the duration of World War II - WNBT(TV) to six hours a week and WCBW(TV) to four hours a week.
MAY 18 1944  Westinghouse complies with FCC duopoly regulations by selling WGL/Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Farnsworth Radio and Television Co., while keeping WOWO in that city, then buying KEX/Portland, Oregon, from the Portland Oregonian, which also owns KGW in that city.  (See Three Letter Calls.) 
MAY 18 1945  The U.S. Office of Censorship lifts most of its remaining wartime restrictions on broadcasters - again allowing weather forecasts on radio.
MAY 18 1945  Blue agrees to relay the dispatches of BBC South Pacific correspondent Stanley Maxted via shortwave to London.
MAY 18 1949   ABC financial records show Breakfast Club host Don McNeill to be the network’s highest paid talent in 1948 at $180,229. 
MAY 18 1950   FCC outlaws Western Union’s surcharge on baseball wire reports to networks - two dollars for each affiliate receiving play-by-play broadcasts based on the information.  The Liberty network promptly files a claim for its 1949 surcharge payments of $18,000..  
MAY 18 1951  Writer Don Ettlinger is awarded $6,250 of a $250,000 suit against CBS for helping to create the Our Miss Brooks sitcom - after turning down a $60,000 offer from the network to settle out of court.  (See Our Miss Arden.)
MAY 18 1951  KSTP-TV/Minneapolis-St. Paul televises the tonsillectomy operation on the son of a staff announcer at a local hospital.  
MAY 18 1951  The city of Jacksonville, Florida, takes the FCC to the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., after the Commission’s reallocation plan removes the grant for television Channel 2 from city-owned WJAX. 
MAY 18 1952   Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy tells a Gannett News Service interviewer, “We have a vast number of Communists in the press and radio.” 
MAY 18 1953   ABC joins CBS and NBC by announcing a 15% cut in network radio rates between 1:00 and 10:30 p.m.

MAY 19 1934  WGN/Chicago is first on the scene of a Saturday afternoon accidental blaze that destroys 90% of the Chicago Stockyards and blocks of adjacent residences, killing one person, injuring 54 and rendering 1,200 homeless.
MAY 19 1935   Washington, D. C., radio personality Arthur Godfrey, 31, is hospitalized briefly with cracked ribs and a broken clavicle after falling from a horse.   (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAY 19 1935   WHIO/Dayton, Ohio, broadcasts the baptism of a station personality’s baby boy whose name was chosen from a station contest: William Howard Ivan O’Conner - coinciding with the station’s call sign.
MAY 19 1938   Crosley’s stations WLW and WSAI dedicate a 75-foot shortwave tower atop the 48 story Carew Tower in downtown Cincinnati for the reception of mobile unit communications.   
MAY 19 1941   WLW/Cincinnati begins temporarily operating past midnight with an experimental 750,000 watts.
MAY 19 1942   CBS opens its Latin America network of 76 stations with programming relayed by its U.S. based shortwave stations WCBX, WCRC and WCDA.
MAY 19 1942   New York City radio stations go silent for 20 minutes at 11:06 a.m. in a test of the municipal air raid alert system.
MAY 19 1943   Winston Churchill’s speech to the U.S. Congress on all four networks registers a 27.1 Hooperating.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 19 1944  Independent station WCFL/Chicago agrees to carry 20 programs a week from Blue when the network’s WENR is off the air and its share-time partner, WLS, is unable to clear time.
MAY 19 1944   Newspaper-radio station transactions continue with WPEN/Philadelphia purchased by The Philadelphia Bulletin from watchmaker Arde Bulova for $620,000.
MAY 19 1944   Mutual newscaster Gabriel Heatter signs a contract with his three sponsors that will pay him a three year total of $1.0 Million.
MAY 19 1946   The Press Wireless news service begins a ten day test of transmitting its dispatches to local stations by point-to-point shortwave  instead of costly telephone lines. 
MAY 19 1946   The successful stage play Mr. & Mrs. North, source of the hit radio series, is adapted for television by NBC.  (See Married Sleuths.)
MAY 19 1947  The ad agency vs. network fight for control over programs spreads from radio to television as viewers complain about the poor quality of J. Walter Thompson’s productions of The Kraft Television Theater as opposed to NBC’s in-house programs. 
MAY 19 1948   CBS sells 55% of its WTOP/Washington to The Washington Post and acquires the remaining 55% of KQW/San Jose-San Francisco for $425,000.
MAY 19 1948  The National Association of Broadcasters adopts a new and stiffer Code of Conduct for its members. 
MAY 19 1948  Interview show Vox Pop leaves the air after a 16 season multi-network run. 
MAY 19 1950   Washington, D.C., lawyer Kenneth Davis files a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission charging BMI with, “...brazenly and openly operating a monopoly.”
MAY 19 1950   New York City stations WNEW and WOR are first to cover the massive series of explosions of 420 tons of munitions in the port of South Amboy, New Jersey, that kill 27 and injure an estimated 350.  WPIX(TV) shoots film of the disaster which is broadcast the following afternoon. 
MAY 19 1950  NBC-TV signs a five year contract with Ziv Productions for weekly showings of The Cisco Kid on its television stations in New York City, Cleveland and Washington, D.C.  (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.) 
MAY 19 1952   Gordon McLendon announces the formation of a new, down-sized Liberty Broadcasting System consisting of his family’s KLIF/Dallas, KLBS/Houston and KELP/El Paso, plus those owned by his father-in-law, (former Louisiana Governor Jimmy Noe), WNOE/New Orleans and KNOE/Monroe, Louisiana. 
MAY 19 1953  RCA Chairman David Sarnoff holds an “informal” demonstration of an improved compatible color television system for FCC commissioners.

MAY 20 1931  Robert L. Ripley debuts his Believe It Or Not series on NBC for Standard Oil from the deck of the S.S. Leviathan returning to New York City from Europe.  (See Believe It Or Not.)
MAY 20 1932  Stanford football coach Glenn (Pop) Warner refuses to appear on a CBS program promoting Olympics and hosted by Will Rogers, explaining, “…amateur athletics should not be exploited on commercial radio programs.”
MAY 20 1935   After seven years on the air, Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll add a third member to their Amos & Andy cast, actress Julia Portefield.  (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 20 1938  Southern Bell Telephone Company asks WWL/New Orleans to discontinue its Riddle Man quiz which jammed city telephone circuits with 8,000 calls, blowing fuses and interrupting its service.
MAY 20 1938   NBC President Lenox Lohr tells the St. Louis Ad Club, “Television, when perfected commercially, will prove one of the greatest social forces known.” 
MAY 20 1940   NBC tells sponsor Lewis-Howe that it wants Pot O Gold off its Red network schedule in the fall despite the government ruling that the program isn’t a lottery.
MAY 20 1940   FCC authorizes full commercial operation of FM stations effective January 1, 1941.
MAY 20 1943   A one-time broadcast of Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour on CBS from Washington, D.C., limits contestants to War Department employees who are each paid $50 for their performance.  (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine.) 
MAY 20 1945   WXLH on Okinawa becomes the 180th Armed Forces Radio station.
MAY 20 1947   NBC broadcasts Ben Grauer’s half hour description of the sun’s total eclipse from Bocayuva, Brazil. 
MAY 20 1947   CBS continues to lose its top attractions when sponsors move Jimmy Durante and comedy quiz Take It Or Leave It to NBC for the 1947-48 season.  
MAY 20 1949   RCA completes a $60.0 Million loan through Lehman Brothers for television projects payable at 3% annual interest on May 1, 1974. 
MAY 20 1949   Zenith introduces its table model FM-only radio - The Major, named for FM inventor Major Edwin Armstrong - for $27.
MAY 20 1949  RCA introduces its new table model TV with a ten-inch picture tube for $269.50.
MAY 20 1950   Meat packer Hormel adds a Saturday afternoon half-hour on CBS to its all-girl band schedule of broadcasts on ABC Sunday evenings.
MAY 20 1950   CBS pays $2.5 Million for the 15 acre Gilmore Stadium site at Beverly and Wilshire in Los Angeles to be the location of its West Coast headquarters named Television City.
MAY 20 1951   Salt Lake City stations KALL and KDYL are at Utah’s Point of The Mountain Prison in an hour and reporting from the scene after the outbreak of a brief Sunday afternoon.   
MAY 20 1951  Hollywood reporter Hedda Hopper leaves the air after a sporadic nine season multi-network run spanning twelve years.  
MAY 20 1952   Herbert Marshall’s espionage series The Man Called X is cancelled after a four season multi-network run over eight years.


MAY 21 1923   Future announcing legend Graham McNamee, 34, is hired by WEAF/New York City.
MAY 21 1934   WAAF/Chicago, destroyed in the Stockyards inferno, receives FCC permission to remain silent until rebuilt.
MAY 21 1934   Broadcasters protest an FTC ruling that beginning on July 1st all commercial scripts must be filed with the agency.
MAY 21 1937  Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler adds a Friday night quarter hour to his Tuesday night schedule for Procter & Gamble’s Drene Shampoo on NBC.
MAY 21 1937  Radio pioneer Lee deForest tells a University of Southern California audience that television development is headed in the wrong direction and that the cathode ray tube is impractical, but he offers no alternative.
MAY 21 1940   The first 441-line television image is transmitted on the New York City -Philadelphia coaxial cable.
MAY 21 1941   Mark Ethridge of WHAS/Louisville receives a lengthy standing ovation of cheers after addressing the NAB convention, scathingly attacking the FCC anti-monopoly report and denouncing the commissioners who voted for it.   
MAY 21 1942   U.S. Defense Communications Board proposes a plan for stations to pool spare parts vital to technical operations during the World War II scarcity.
MAY 21 1944  After 17 separate operations and her leg still in a cast resulting from plane crash injuries suffered over a year earlier, Jane Froman makes her radio comeback on Blue’s Radio Hall of Fame.  (See Radio Hall of Fame.)
MAY 21 1945   President Truman’s speech before Congress honoring the U.S. Infantry scores a 20.6 Hooperating.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 21 1945   New York Post publishers Ted & Dorothy Thackrey buy KYA/San Francisco and KTMR/Los Angeles for a reported $1.0 Million. 
MAY 21 1945   Bob Hope’s radio troupe performs to an audience of 12,000 in Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium to benefit the Smokes Fund - providing cigarettes for hospitalized war veterans. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears )
MAY 21 1947   Edgar Bergen receives a new contract from sponsor Standard Brands giving him $25,000 per week plus the ability to transcribe his Sunday night program for its West Coast repeat broadcasts.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 21 1947   Weekday simulcasts of Mutual’s Queen For A Day begin on Don Lee’s W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles.
MAY 21 1949   NBC-TV Executive Producer Owen Davis, Jr., 42, drowns when he falls from a boat in Long Island Sound.
MAY 21 1952  Gordon McLendon, President of the defunct Liberty Broadcasting System, announces plans to form the Liberty Radio Network with 26 former LBS affiliates on the West Coast.

MAY 22 1933   Chet Lauck and Norris Goff bring Lum & Abner to NBC prime time, beginning a 14 year multi-network run.
MAY 22 1933   Harry Horlick’s A&P Gypsies celebrates its 10th consecutive year on NBC for the Atlantic & Pacific Stores.
MAY 22 1935   Agent MCA buys a full page ad in the trade press crediting Kay Kyser as the originator of “singing song titles” sung by the band’s vocalists at the beginning of each song.  (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 22 1936   FCC grants a power increase to Don Lee’s KFRC/San Francisco to 5,000 watts days and 1,000 watts nights.
MAY 22 1936   After three other Cleveland stations refused to deal with the national Communist Party, WGAR sells 30 minutes to its Secretary, Earl Browder, for a speech.
MAY 22 1942   Hubbell Robinson, 36, refuses Bill Paley’s offer of $20,000 annual salary to become “Executive Producer” of CBS and remains at Young & Rubicam Advertising.
MAY 22 1944   Blue’s Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands begins to insert interviews with “everyday” service personnel stationed around the world recorded at “Coca Cola Stands” on bases and transmitted to the show by shortwave.   (See Spotlight Bands.)
MAY 22 1946  ABC asks the FCC to approve the sale of a million shares of its stock to the public in an effort to raise an estimated $15.0 Million.
MAY 22 1947  FCC authorizes WGAR/Cleveland to increase its transmitting power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts.
MAY 22 1947  Jack Benny opens a two week engagement at New York’s Roxy Theater for a guaranteed $40,000 a week.  (See Sunday At Seven and Your Money Or Your Life.)
MAY 22 1948   United Press ends its play-by-play baseball wire service after one month when Western Union complains of infringement of its long term service to radio stations.
MAY 22 1945   Lt. Col. A.A. (Abe) Schechter, former NBC News Director, is awarded the Legion of Merit for establishing communications and broadcasting systems in the Pacific war zone.
MAY 22 1947  Mutual signs disc jockey Martin Block for a one hour, Monday through Friday afternoon record show.
MAY 22 1949   Earl (Mad Man) Muntz begins the advertising blitz for his low-cost, “three knob” television sets in Chicago with 75 skywriting messages a day until further notice.  (See The 1949-50 Season.)
MAY 22 1950  Laredo, Texas, loses its only radio station when KPAB leaves the air for lack of operating revenue.
MAY 22 1950  Pianist/comedian Don (Creesh) Hornsby, 26, scheduled to host NBC-TV’s new 11:00 o’clock weeknight variety show, Broadway Open House, dies in White Plains, New York, of a polio attack.
MAY 22 1951  FCC Chairman Wayne Coy, in his position since the resignation of Charles Denny in 1947, is nominated for a full seven year term by President Truman.
MAY 22 1952   Chicago’s WGN-AM and co-owned WGNB-FM broadcast a 55 minute binaural concert with each station carrying one channel of the “two eared” program.
MAY 22 1953   A strike by 26 AFTRA members forces The Kansas City Star’s WDAF AM&TV off the air.​

MAY 23 1929  The first patent application is filed for the Espenschied-Affel Coaxial Cable System.
MAY 23 1932   NBC lays off another 95 employees bringing its total nationwide firings to nearly 12% of its 1,700 workforce.
MAY 23 1938   NBC equips all of its network and owned stations with identical sets of chimes to be used on its chain breaks.
MAY 23 1939   All networks devote 24-hour coverage to the sinking of Navy submarine Squalus off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, drowning 26 of its 59 crewmen. 
MAY 23 1939   Variety predicts General Electric will introduce large-screen television in theaters, “…within six months.” 
MAY 23 1940   Bob Hope’s radio popularity leads to a week of 43 performances at the Chicago Theater and a payday for his troupe of over $20,000.  (See "Professor" Jerry Colonna and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 23 1941  NBC blasts the FCC's 3-2 decision, (2 abstentions), to remove 850 kc. from 1-A Clear Channel classification which allows fulltime operation to WHDH/Boston, pre-viously exclusive at night to the network’s KOA/Denver.
MAY 23 1941   Knox Gelatin wires every station in America slated to carry President Roosevelt’s May 27th Fireside Chat an offer to buy a 30-second patriotic message both before and after the speech.
MAY 23 1942   FCC approves the transfer of licenses of WJZ/New York, WENR/Chicago and KGO/San Francisco from RCA to the Blue Network, Inc. 
MAY 23 1943   The New York Philharmonic begins a 52 week series of Sunday afternoon broadcasts on the full CBS network sponsored by U.S. Rubber at a cost of $1.5 Million.
MAY 23 1944   U.S. Senators Burton Wheeler and Wallace White introduce The Commun-ications Act Amendments of 1944 which rewrites most of the 1934 Communications Act and bans sponsorship of all news and commentaries.  Their bill fails to get support.
MAY 23 1945   WOV/New York City broadcasts its controversial Memorandum To America documentary charging the International YMCA with “coddling” German prisoners of war.
MAY 23 1947  ABC majority stockholder Edward Noble turns down a $25.0 Million offer from Marshall Field for the network he purchased four years earlier for $8.0 Million.
MAY 23 1947   The Philadelphia Bulletin, new owner of WCAU/Philadelphia, sells its WPEN/Philadelphia to local interests for $750,000 - over $100,00 more than it paid for the station three years earlier.
MAY 23 1947   Maine Senator Wallace White, co-author of the defeated Wheeler-White Bill three years earlier, again proposes tighter government controls over broadcasting. 
MAY 23 1948   ABC’s Stop The Music! debuts with a 10.1 Hooperating opposite Fred Allen’s 8.7 on NBC - compared to the 16.3 Allen scored the week before the giveaway show became his competition. (See Stop The Music!)
MAY 23 1949  Lever Brothers renews Lux Radio Theater on CBS for its 15th consecutive season after an unsuccessful bid by NBC to steal the program.  (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
MAY 23 1949   ABC renews its case with the FCC to move KOB/Albuquerque off the 770 kc. frequency of its WJZ/New York City and back to its original 1030 kc. 
MAY 23 1949   Transit Radio boasts the addition its sponsored music to the public transit systems of five more cities: Baltimore, Kansas City, Mo., Worcester, Mass.,  Evansville, Ind. and Allentown-Bethleham, Pa.
MAY 23 1950   KSTP-TV/Minneapolis-St. Paul becomes the first television station to film a defendant testifying during a murder trial inside a courtroom. 
MAY 23 1951   ABC and United Paramount Theaters announce plans for a $25 Million merger - beginning 22 months of procedures before the deal is approved by the FCC.
MAY 23 1951  The National Football League awards a five year contract to DuMont, giving the network exclusive television rights to NFL championship games for $95,000 per year.
(See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)
MAY 23 1952   FCC Commissioner Robert Jones tells a Pittsburgh audience that the city only has one VHF television station because of the Commission’s 250 mile separation rule between stations and as a result, Pittsburgh was, “…sold down the river.” 

MAY 24 1844 Samuel Morse opens the first permanent telegraph line - a government financed wire between Washington, D. C. and Baltimore, Maryland, with the four word transmission, “What hath God wroght?” (See Alchemists of The Air.)
MAY 24 1932   FRC approves WMCA/New York City to absorb WPCH and swap its 810 kc. for municipally-owned WNYC’s 570 kc. 
MAY 24 1939   RCA Chairman David Sarnoff concludes a weeklong FCC hearing into network chain-monopoly practices with an impassioned defense of NBC operations and an attack against any form of censorship.
MAY 24 1939   Despite protests from Wichita, Kansas stations KFH and KANS, the FCC approves the move of 500 watt KFBI from Abilene to Wichita at 1050 kc.  
MAY 24 1940 Adam Hats agrees to sponsor a series of Friday night prize fights from Madison Square Garden to be broadcast in Spanish and transmitted to South America via NBC shortwave facilities.
MAY 24 1940   Bulova Watch Company reports a record 162 stations in America have been bought for station break time signals tagged with the the familiar, “B-u-l-o-v-a…Bulova Watch Time.”
MAY 24 1943   CBS, NBC and Blue networks confirm that they are drawing up revised affiliate contracts to conform with the FCC’s new chain broadcasting regulations.
MAY 24 1946   President Truman speaks to the nation on all networks in response to the emergencies created by the day-old national strike of railroad workers which ends the following day.
MAY 24 1946   ABC launches its network television operations with nightly programs originating on an alternating basis from DuMont’s WABD/New York, Philco’s WPTZ/ Philadelphia and General Electric’s WRGB/Schenectady.  (See Was American Idle?)
MAY 24 1949  Members of Congress express outrage at ABC commentators Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson for their attacks against former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal who committed suicide two days earlier. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 24 1949   Gene Autry withdraws his plans to buy KTSA/San Antonio.
MAY 24 1949   ABC-owned WJZ-TV/New York City installs television receivers in 25 area supermarkets as it begins daytime programming five days a week
MAY 24 1950   Mutual loses its fourth largest client when Ralston Purina cancels the Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters and Eddy Arnold’s Checkerboard Jamboree to put its $1.1 Million budget into television advertising.  
MAY 24 1950   Jean Hersholt celebrates the 600th broadcast of his Dr. Christian on CBS.  (See Dr. Christian and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 24 1952   Red Foley and Minnie Pearl headline a scaled down version of NBC’s Grand Ole Opry booked for the summer at the Astor Roof nightclub of New York’s Hotel Astor.
MAY 24 1952   Author Fulton Oursler, creator of the award winning ABC Biblical series, The Greatest Story Ever Told, dies of a heart attack in New York City at age 59.
MAY 24 1953   Bob Hope, Martin & Lewis and Rudy Vallee headline a Cerebral Palsy telethon on WBKB(TV)/Chicago that generates $407,500 in contributions.

MAY 25 1927  Fox Studios introduces Movietone newsreels with sound narration in New York City theaters.
MAY 25 1931  The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Langmuir Vacuum Tube, most extensively used for radio transmission and reception, is a device, not an invention.  As such, RCA‘s patent on the tube is void.  
MAY 25 1931  The dubious practice of fortune telling via radio receives a blow when a Cincinnati Police Court fines Doctor Alta Rageh $100 for practicing astrology without a license on WKRC.  ​
MAY 25 1936   CBS agrees to take over KSFO/San Francisco in a five-year lease and affiliation agreement effective January 1,1937.  (See The 1936-37 Season.)
MAY 25 1936   CBS-owned WBBM/Chicago begins a $160,000 renovation project to its studios and offices in the Wrigley Building, including air conditioning a new 500 seat auditorium.
MAY 25 1939   Blue carries the BBC broadcast of American Henry Armstrong’s defense of his Welterweight Boxing Championship from London against Brit Ernie Roderick won by Armstrong in 15 rounds.
MAY 25 1941 Major Bowes’ Capitol Family leaves the air after nearly 1,000 Sunday morning broadcasts going back to November 19,1922, when S.A. Rothafel introduced the Sunday morning show on WEAF/New York City as Roxy & His Gang.  Bowes took over the NBC show in 1925 and moved it to CBS in 1936.  (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine.)
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MAY 25 1942   The Hollywood Victory Committee reports that Red Skelton has performed 166 one-man performances to date at small out-of-the-way West Coast military posts.  (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.) 
MAY 25 1942  Eddie Cantor arranges with sponsor Bristol-Myers to originate his weekly shows from U.S. military bases for the rest of the duration. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 25 1943   ABC President Mark Woods estimates the radio industry has given over $100,000,000 in time and talent to the war effort to date.
MAY 25 1943  Agnes Moorhead originates her Suspense classic, Sorry, Wrong Number, on CBS.  Moorhead repeated her role seven times over the program’s eleven remaining seasons. (See Sus…pense!)
MAY 25 1944  FCC duopoly rulings force KFI/Los Angeles owner Earle C. Anthony to sell his KECA/Los Angeles to the Blue Network for $800,000 cash.
MAY 25 1944  Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gates delivers a speech from Washington into a dead microphone on NBC’s March of Time, later blamed by the network on inexper-ienced engineers hired during wartime.  
MAY 25 1944   Red Skelton is inducted into the Army.  (See Tuesday's All Time TopTen.)
MAY 25 1944   NBC Vice President Clarence Menser cuts the audio of Eddie Cantor and Nora Martin’s duet, We’re Havin’ A Baby during the dedication telecast of the network link between WNBT(TV)/New York Cityand WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia.  
MAY 25 1945   FCC issues new frequency allocation tables which expands the AM dial to 540 kilocycles, estimating that half of existing radios would be able to receive the new frequency which currently ends at 550 kc.
MAY 25 1945   FM developer Dr. Edwin Armstrong is among 14 experts appointed by the FCC to determine over the summer where FM should finally be placed between 44 and 108 megacycles.
MAY 25 1945   An evening performance of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club is televised by Dumont’s WABD(TV)/New York to promote the Seventh War Loan bond campaign. 
MAY 25 1950   Sitcom A Date With Judy finishes its six year run on NBC and ABC.
MAY 25 1951   FM stations involved in storecasting and Transit Radio petition the FCC to rule on these specialized uses, claiming that abolishing them would be, “…a death blow to FM broadcasting.”
MAY 25 1951   Comedian Jerry Lester is dropped as host of NBC-TV’s late-night Broadway Open House, replaced the following week by comic Jack E. Leonard. 
 
MAY 26 1932   Japanese censors prevent newsman Frazer Hunt from originating a commentary from JOAK/Tokyo to be picked up by KGO/San Francisco for the Blue Network.
MAY 26 1933   Amelia Earhart flies over New York City with Ted Husing for an hour and converses with eight different Manhattan locales on the CBS novelty show Around The Town.
MAY 26 1934   Fireworks celebrating the opening of the Chicago World’s Fair are ignited by a signal relayed from Admiral Richard Byrd’s Antarctic expedition on CBS. (See The 1933-34 Season.)
MAY 26 1936   FCC clears WOV/New York City of charges that it broadcasts records in Italian with offensive and anti-Catholic lyrics.
MAY 26 1939   The Associated Press lifts its ban against AP news copy being used in commercial broadcasts.
MAY 26 1940   CBS introduces its much honored Invitation To Learning, beginning the program’s 24 year run. 
MAY 26 1940   Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne debut on radio in the multi-network Red Cross appeal with an excerpt from Robert Sherwood’s drama, There Shall Be No Night.
MAY 26 1941   BMI reports its membership growth at 190 publishers and 690 licensed stations and networks.
MAY 26 1941   The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Florida and Nebraska anti-monopoly rulings against ASCAP. 
MAY 26 1942   The U.S. War Department establishes The Armed Forces Radio Service, (AFRS).
MAY 26 1942   Radio’s notorious “Goat Gland Doctor,” John R. Brinkley, 56, dies in his sleep at home in Del Rio, Texas, bankrupt and owing $155,000 in back taxes.
MAY 26 1943   CBS European News Director Edward R. Murrow returns to New York from London for a month’s rest and physical checkup.
MAY 26 1948   Westinghouse owned WBZ-TV, an NBC affiliate, becomes Boston’s first television station.
MAY 26 1948   Mutual’s Board of Directors scraps plans for a Mutual television network.
MAY 26 1949   The Aldrich Family celebrates it’s 500th broadcast. (See The Aldrich Family and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 26 1949   FCC refuses to allow the Yankee Network to lease its WAAB/Worcester, Massachusetts and WMTW/ Portland, Maine, on a five year, revenue sharing plan. 
MAY 26 1949   ABC boasts receiving 300,000 postcards from viewers to qualify for a call from its month old television version of Stop The Music!  (See Stop The Music!)
MAY 26 1950   FCC concludes its nine months of hearings to determine color television standards.
MAY 26 1952   Pet Milk informs NBC that it is cancelling Fibber McGee & Molly, the first time in 15 years that Jim & Marian Jordan’s popular sitcom has been without a sponsor.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 26 1952   Phiip Morris cancels its three ABC Radio weekday shows -  Against The Storm, The Romance of Evelyn Winters and Break The Bank - to recapture $1.0 Million to cover increased costs of its television hits, I Love Lucy and Racket Squad.
MAY 26 1952  The U.S. Supreme Court overturns a lower court decision, and rules 7-1 that Transit Radio’s FM broadcasts of music and commercials into public  buses and streetcars do not violate the Constitution. 
MAY 26 1953   NBC Vice Chairman Sylvester (Pat) Weaver tells convened affiliates that the network will begin color television programming as soon as the FCC approves the RCA system and it will cost each station $15,000 for equipment to broadcast the color  programs.  Fourteen affiliates immediately agree to the system and charges. 

​MAY 27 1931   NBC’s WENR/Chicago bans recorded music and goes to an all-live talent policy.
MAY 27 1932  The Union Life Insurance Co. reports 170 stations carry its five minute sales talks at no charge in return for one-third of the income they generate.
MAY 27 1932   After a six year delay, the FRC approves the application of WCFL/Chicago to boost power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts and become a fulltime station.
MAY 27 1933   CBS, Blue, NBC and local stations begin heavy coverage of Chicago’s Century of Progress World’s Fair. 
MAY 27 1935   The U.S. Supreme Court rules key provisions of The National Recovery Administration, (NRA), to be unconstitutional. 
MAY 27 1935   The FTC and FCC order the Detroit makers of Marmola, a thyroid tablet advertised as a diet pill, to stop its misleading print and radio advertising. 
MAY 27 1936   CBS, NBC and Mutual dispatch crews to cover the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage, from its Southampton launch and three day Transatlantic cruise to its June 1st arrival in New York.  
MAY 27 1936   American Tobacco Co. introduces its elaborate Lucky Strike Sweepstakes over three networks on Your Hit Parade. (See The Lucky Strike Sweepstakes.)  
MAY 27 1937   Over 8,500 workers at Philco’s huge Philadelphia factory end their four week strike, winning a 36 hour work week and a five cent hourly raise.
MAY 27 1940   Frank & Anne Hummert’s serial Lone Journey begins its five season sporadic multi-network run across twelve years.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 27 1940   The networks are accused of over-reaction when they demand a lyric revision in the popular British song, I’ll Pray For You, because it hints of war: “And we’ll live in peace.”  
MAY 27 1940   FCC issues a decree relegating television to experimental status until its transmission standards can be determined.
MAY 27 1941   C.E. Hooper estimates that 65.6 Million Americans hear FDR's Fireside Chat in which the President declares “…an unlimited national emergency” exists in the United States which, if deemed necessary, would give the military total control over all broadcasting facilities.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 27 1943   Chrysler increases its coverage of Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour from 64 CBS stations to the full network of 119 affiliates to earn a 15% discount in rates.  (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine and CBS Rates - Go Figure!)
MAY 27 1945   Blue network correspondent Clete Roberts makes the first news reports from liberated Crete.
MAY 27 1946   The FTC files a complaint against F.W Fitch's radio jingle - “Don’t despair, use your head, save your hair, use Fitch Shampoo” - contending that the product does not save hair. 
MAY 27 1946   Lew Valentine rejoins Dr. I.Q. in the title role replacing Jimmy McClain who enrolls in an Episcopalian seminary.  (See Dr. I.Q.)
MAY 27 1948   The Adventures of Ellery Queen is cancelled after a seven year multi-network run.
MAY 27 1948   MGM opens KMGM-FM/Los Angeles with a five and a half hour gala broadcast hosted by Red Skelton and Jimmy Durante and featuring the studio’s film stars.
MAY 27 1949   Believe It Or Not creator Robert L Ripley, a star of Network Radio since 1930 and host of a weekly show NBC-TV, dies at 55 of a heart attack.  Ironically, his last program told the story behind the military bugle call, Taps.  (See Believe It Or Not.)
MAY 27 1949   Arthur Godfrey broadcasts his CBS morning show from a U.S. Navy plane flying over New York City. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAY 27 1949   Red Skelton leaves NBC after seven seasons for CBS.  (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 27 1949   Producers of the touring Stop The Music! stage shows cancel over 40 bookings when the U.S. Post Office deems its presentations to be lotteries and threatens to halt the mailings of all newspapers advertising it. (See Stop The Music!)
MAY 27 1947   KFMB-TV/San Diego aqrees to rebroadcast six hours of programs per week from KTLA(TV)/Los Angeles.
MAY 27 1949   Arthur Godfrey blasts the Daughters of The American Revolution on his CBS show when the DAR prevents his Mariners quartet, which is half Negro, from appearing with him in a benefit performance at Washington’s Constitution Hall so he moves the show to the National Guard Armory.  (See Arthur Godfrey.) 
MAY 27 1950   NBC wins the sealed bidding for radio and television rights to the Groucho Marx comedy quiz You Bet Your Life at $3.0 Million for eight years.  (See The One, The Only…Groucho! and A John Guedel Production.)
MAY 27 1950   Frank Sinatra makes his television debut on NBC-TV’s Star Spangled Revue hosted by Bob Hope.
MAY 27 1951   Western adventure Wild Bill Hickok starring Guy Madison and Andy Devine begins its five year run on Mutual.
MAY 27 1952   The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin opens the new 100,000 sq. ft. quarters for its WCAU AM&TV in the city’s suburban area.  
MAY 27 1953   NBC-TV reports its 17-month old morning show, Today, is grossing $350,000 in advertising revenue per month. 

MAY 28 1935    Bing Crosby walks off his Woodbury Soap show on CBS in a script dispute over guest Andy Devine’s introduction - then returns when the sponsor yields to his demands.
MAY 28 1940   FCC asks the remaining stations with two call signs caused by consoli-dations - WABC-WBOQ/New York City, WIOD-WMBF/Miami and WSYR-WSYU/Syracuse - to drop one set of their call letters for simplification.
MAY 28 1941  Lowell Thomas travels to Canada to interview the five Dionne Quintuplets on their seventh birthday for broadcast on Blue.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 28 1941  WNEW/New York City broadcasts the first of eleven Brooklyn Dodger night baseball games with Red Barber and Al Helfer sponsored by Lever Brothers and General Mills.  All day games are broadcast by WOR.
MAY 28 1941   CBS sells its Columbia Artists Bureau talent agency to Music Corporation of America for $250,000.
MAY 28 1943   Vaughn DeLeath, 42, dies after a long illness.  Billed as “The First Lady of Radio,” the singer made her first broadcast in January, 1920.
MAY 28 1944   Al Jolson appears in the season finale of Philco’s Radio Hall of Fame broadcast on Blue from Philadelphia’s Convention Hall for an audience of 13,000 Philco employees and their families.  (See The Radio Hall of Fame.)
MAY 28 1945   Former Hour of Charm singer Marie Magee is awarded $67,500 from NBC by a New York court for injuries suffered two years earlier when a studio flag fell on her head.  (See The Hour of Charm.)
MAY 28 1945   Child actress Margaret O’Brien, 8, is signed for four appearances on Lux Radio Theater in the 1945-46 season at $3,500 per show.  (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 28 1945   In an effort to prepare listeners for duty in the Armed Forces, WIBG/ Philadelphia begins a series of swimming lessons by radio.
MAY 28 1946   In defiance of The Lea Act against featherbedding, AFM boss James Petrillo calls a strike against WAAF/Chicago for not hiring three unneeded musicians.  (See Petrillo!)
MAY 28 1947  CBS President Frank Stanton vows new action to bolster his network after the losses of Dinah Shore, Take It Or Leave It, Ellery Queen, Information Please, Jimmy Durante and Kate Smith.
MAY 28 1947   Philco introduces its first home television set featuring “automatic” tuning and a ten-inch picture tube for $395, plus a $45 installation charge.
MAY 28 1948   General Mills cancels two of its NBC weekday serials, Holly Sloan and Woman In White to obtain funds for  television advertising. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 28 1948   Announcer/actor Kenny Delmar is granted sole ownership of his Senator Claghorn character by an American Arbitration Association panel.
MAY 28 1949   WJLB/Detroit announces that foreign language programming will return to the station after an absence of 13 months.
MAY 28 1950   Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler leaves Network Radio after a spotty 16 year multi-network run.
MAY 28 1951   ABC’s Board of Directors approves the network’s merger with United Paramount Theaters
MAY 28 1951   Mutual joins the other radio networks and cuts its rates but for less than 10%.
MAY 28 1951   U.S. Supreme court upholds the FCC’s choice of the CBS color television system - but the Commission leaves the door open for RCA and other developers who can advance the technology.
MAY 28 1951   G.A. (Dick) Richards, 62, owner of embattled WJR/Detroit, WGAR/Cleve-land and KMPC/Los Angeles, dies of a heart attack in Detroit.
MAY 28 1951   C.E. Hooper reports that television viewing is more popular at night than radio listening in 22 of the 33 major cities it surveys.  Radio is more popular in nine markets and the two media are tied in two.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAY 28 1951   Bob Hope drops his two million dollar libel suit against Life magazine for its story claiming that he stole jokes from Fred Allen.
MAY 28 1952   The ACLU asks the FCC to hold hearings to determine if the new NARTB Code of Conduct contravenes The Communications Act, and, “…provides for an extreme form of censorship.”
MAY 28 1952   FCC approves the sale of KOB AM&TV/Albuquerque to equal partners Time, Incorporated and former FCC Chairman Wayne Coy for $900,000.  Coy’s investment was $75,000.
MAY 28 1952   Walter Evans, President of Westinghouse Radio Stations, Inc., who first joined the company as an engineer at KYW/Chicago in 1921, dies of cancer at age 53 in Baltimore.
MAY 28 1953   Rural comedienne/singer Judy Canova’s sitcom is canceled after its ten year, two network run.  (See Judy Canova.)
MAY 28 1953   FCC approves Philco’s sale of its pioneering television station WPTZ(TV)/ Philadelphia to Westinghouse for a record breaking $8.5 Million.
MAY 28 1953   World famous violinist and early Network Radio star Albert Spalding, dies in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage at 64.
MAY 28 1953   NBC-TV’s weekday 5:30 p.m. kids’ show, Howdy Doody, is reported sold out and accounts for  $5.0 Million in annual network billings.

MAY 29 1935  CBS and NBC begin daily shortwave reports from French liner Normandie on its maiden voyage from Le Havre to New York City.
MAY 29 1939   Elaine Carrington’s highly rated serial, When A Girl Marries, begins its 18 year multi-network run on CBS.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 29 1939   The Yankee Network’s W1OXJ/Paxton, (Worcester), Massachusetts, becomes the first FM station to regularly broadcast 16 hours per day. 
MAY 29 1941   WSM-FM/Nashville becomes the first commercial FM station licensed by the FCC - it leaves the air ten years later.
MAY 29 1942   Legendary actor and frequent radio performer John Barrymore dies at 60.
MAY 29 1944   Peg Lynch’s comedy serial Ethel & Albert (aka The Private Lives of Ethel & Albert), moves from KATE/Albert Lea, Minnesota, to Blue-ABC for a four year run. 
MAY 29 1946  The four radio networks celebrate Detroit’s twelve-day Auto Golden Jubilee with over 20 of their popular programs originating from venues in the city.
MAY 29 1946   With exclusive television rights, ABC-TV films each day’s activity from Detroit’s Auto Golden Jubilee and flies the film to New York City for broadcast and transmission to Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady.
MAY 29 1947   Despite Abbott & Costello’s Top 25 season, R.J. Reynolds’ Camel cigar-ettes cancels the comedy team’s Thursday night show on NBC.
MAY 29 1948   CBS begins the three year run of its 60-minute Saturday night musical giveaway, Sing It Again, an obvious response to ABC’s Stop The Music!  (See Stop The Music!) 
MAY 29 1949   Alan Funt’s Candid Camera begins its long multi-network television run on NBC-TV.
MAY 29 1949   Basil Loughrane, a Network Radio producer/director since 1929 associated with 31 different program series, dies of a heart attack in New York City at age 48.
MAY 29 1950   Red Skelton seeks a new contract from MGM that allows him to appear on television, similar to the agreements that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby have at Paramount.
MAY 29 1950   Frederick Chase Taylor, known to Network Radio listeners as Colonel Lemuel Stoopnagle, dies at 52.
MAY 29 1951   Fanny Brice, 59, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage one week after her final Baby Snooks broadcast.  (See Baby Snooks and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 29 1951  Brown & Williamson Tobacco cancels  People Are Funny after nine years to divert funds into television advertising.  (See People Are Funny and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 29 1951  Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Perry Como, Kate Smith and Victor Borge headline an all-star revue in a New York theater beginning at midnight for  3,000 show business employees who donated a pint of blood to the Red Cross. 
MAY 29 1952   Lee Tracy takes over the role of Martin Kane, Private Eye from Lloyd Nolan on NBC Radio and Television.
MAY 29 1952   RCA Chairman David Sarnoff predicts 1,500 television stations within five years broadcasting to 50 Million sets and 150 Million viewers.
MAY 29 1953   Mutual joins the other radio networks and cuts afternoon, nighttime and Sunday rates, but only by 10%.
MAY 29 1953  ABC announces signing long term radio and television contracts with Joel Gray, Sammy Davis, Jr., George Jessel, Danny Thomas and disc jockey Martin Block.

MAY 30 1935   America’s Town Meeting of The Air begins its 21 year run on Blue-ABC.
MAY 30 1935  Kate Smith begins her nine year run on CBS.  (See Kate's Great Song and Friday's All Time Top Ten.) 
MAY 30 1935  Broadcasters protest the FCC’s field staff secretly monitoring stations for violations of its "Ten Commandments":  Criticism of government departments or officials, Objectionable religious or medical programs, Too many or lengthy commercials, False advertising or encouraging boycotts, Doctors, dentists or lawyers advertising, News or promotion of lotteries, fortune telling or anything not in the public’s interest.
MAY 30 1937  An audience of 35,000 brave rain and snow to attend the 400 voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Memoria Day concert broadcast from Zion National Park by KSL/Salt Lake City and fed to CBS.  
MAY 30 1937  Los Angeles musicians union local places limits on hours that members can perform on network broadcasts in an effort to “spread the work” among its membership.
MAY 30 1938   Himan Brown’s daytime serial, Joyce Jordan, M.D., (fka Joyce Jordan, Girl Intern), begins its sporadic twelve year multi-network run spanning 17 years.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 30 1938   General Mills shakes up its weekday lineup by moving five afternoon programs from CBS to NBC.
MAY 30 1945   The two week tour of Eastern cities by Don McNeil's Breakfast Club on Blue sells $4.5 Million in War Bonds.  
MAY 30 1948   Ham radio operators are hailed for their emergency communications work when massive flooding of the Columbia River knocks Portland, Oregon, area stations KGW, KWJJ and KVAN off the air for extended periods.
MAY 30 1948   WHB/Kansas City, on the air as a daytime only operation at 880 kc. since 1929, moves to 710 kc. with 10,000 watts days and 5,000 watts nights.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
MAY 30 1949   WFBM(TV)/Indianapolis televises the Indianapolis 500 Memorial Day Race in its entirety.
MAY 30 1950   Following the success of its pioneering television coverage in 1949, WFBM(TV)/Indianapolis broadcasts its second Indianapolis 500 Race for four hours on Memorial Day afternoon. 
MAY 30 1951   Pabst Beer pays $100,000 for radio and television rights to the Ezzard Charles vs. Joey Maxim Heavyweight Championship on CBS.
MAY 30 1952   Albert Lasker, founder of  the pioneering ad agency Lord & Thomas, dies of cancer at 72. 
MAY 30 1953  ABC Radio begins block-format programming each night, most with titles - Sunday: American Music Hall, Monday: American Concert Studios, Tuesday: America’s Town Meeting, Wednesday: One Night of Love, Thursday: Dramatic programs, Friday: Comedy shows, Saturday: America’s Dancing Party.
MAY 30 1953   ABC-TV and Falstaff Beer begin baseball’s Game of The Week over 17 Saturday afternoons, but coverage excludes all major league cities and any minor league cities where games are being played at broadcast time.. 

MAY 31 1932   The manager of KPO/San Francisco testifies to the FRC in support of its sale to NBC that Hale Brothers Stores and The San Francisco Chronicle have lost $577,000 on the station since 1922, the same amount that NBC is willing to pay for it.
MAY 31 1933   General Cigar Corporation extends its Wednesday night CBS variety show starring Burns & Allen and Guy Lombardo’s orchestra to Don Lee’s West Coast network for Robert Burns cigars.  (See Guy Lombardo.)
MAY 31 1937  WQAM/Miami loses its broadcast line while covering Amelia Earhart’s early morning takeoff on her ill-fated around the world flight.  The station made a record of its report at the scene for play later in the day.   
MAY 31 1937  WLW/Cincinnati covers the Indianapolis 500 Memorial Day race and feeds it to Mutual as a sustaining broadcast.
MAY 31 1937   For the first time in its eight years on NBC, The Voice of Firestone leaves the air for the summer months.  
MAY 31 1941   Top rated Saturday midday anthology series Stars Over Hollywood begins its 13 year run on CBS.
MAY 31 1943   Comic strip based Archie Andrews begins its two year run as a weekday strip on Mutual then eight years on NBC as a weekly half-hour sitcom.
MAY 31 1943   Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial Lora Lawton begins its seven year run on NBC for Bab-O cleanser.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAY 31 1943   U.S. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau estimates 118,000 spot announce-ments and 8,000 programs of 15 minute or longer were donated by the radio industry to April’s Second War Loan Campaign.
MAY 31 1943   May becomes the first month in Mutual’s history when the network’s billings exceeded $1.0 Million.  (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
MAY 31 1944   The National War Labor Board prevents the AFM from installing its union members in radio stations as “platter turners” to handle musical transcriptions and records. (See Petrillo!)
MAY 31 1944   NBC’s Mary Margaret McBride celebrates her tenth anniversary in radio with a broadcast from Madison Square Garden attended by 18,500 listeners.
MAY 31 1946   FCC denies the CBS application to buy pioneer station KQW/San Jose-San Francisco for $950,000.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
MAY 31 1948   Walter Winchell stays with ABC when the network matches the CBS offer of a one year contract at $520,000.  (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 31 1949   ABC closes its Detroit office and orders a 10% cut in departmental budgets due to growing expenses, mostly involved with television. 
MAY 31 1949   WORL/Boston is ordered off the air by the FCC for hidden ownership issues after a four year fight through the courts. The station began operating in 1926. 
MAY 31 1949   Big Network Radio names with expensive shows cancelled by sponsors include Al Jolson, Burns & Allen, Ed Gardner, Eddie Cantor, Frank Sinatra, Fred Allen and Joan Davis. 
MAY 31 1949   A crowd estimated at 42,000 attends NBC’s afternoon broadcast of Mary Margaret McBride’s 15th anniversary in radio featuring Fred Waring’s orchestra and chorus from Yankee Stadium. 
MAY 31 1949   RCA introduces its new table model television set with a ten-inch screen for $269.50 and sales jump.
MAY 31 1951   Don Quinn, Jim & Marian Jordan’s writer and partner in Fibber McGee & Molly for 15 years, leaves the sitcom to focus on his Halls of Ivy.  Quinn is replaced on FM&M by his assistant for eight years, Phil Lewis.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAY 31 1951  NBC-TV begins to feature star vocalists on Thursday episodes of its late night Broadway Open House with Vaughn Monroe followed for the next three weeks by Mel Torme.
MAY 31 1951   Detroit television viewers are surprised when freakish atmospheric conditions cause a Spanish speaking station from Mexico or Cuba to appear on WWJ-TV’s Channel 4.
                                        GLOSSARY

AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union - AFL = American Federation of Labor - AFM = American Federation of Musicians  - AFRA = American Federation of Radio Artists - AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Service - AFTRA = American Federation of Radio & Television Artists - AGVA = American Guild of Variety Artists - ANA = Association of National Advertisers - ANPA = American Newspaper Publishers Association - AP = Associated Press  - ARB = American Research Bureau - ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers - BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - BMB = Broadcast Measurement Bureau - BMI = Broadcast Music, Inc. - CAB = Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting - CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System - CIO = Congress of Industrial Organizations - CST = Central Standard Time - CWA = Communications Workers of America - EST = Eastern Standard Time - FCC = Federal Communications Commission  - FRC = Federal Radio Commission - FTC = Federal Trade Commission -  IAPTA = International Allied Printing Trades Association - IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News Service - IRS = Internal Revenue Service - LBS = Liberty Broadcasting System - MBS = Mutual Broadcasting System -  MCA = Music Corporation of America - MST = Mountain Standard Time - NAB = National Association of Broadcasters - NABET = National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians - NARBA = North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement - NARTB = National Association of Radio & Television Broadcasters, (fka NAB) - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - PTA = Parent Teachers Association - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - RMA = Radio Manufacturers Association - SAG = Screen Actors Guild - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - SPCA = Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press