VAN JOHNSON & ESTHER WILLIAMS TAKE THEIR TURN ON LUX RADIO THEATER
Lux Looms Largest...
The 1947-48 Season
16th In A Series
Babies Boom & Ratings Bloom. The 1947-48 season provided Network Radio’s Golden Age with its last hurrah. Revenues broke the $200 million dollar mark and in terms of total audience, 1947-48 can be recognized as the most popular season of the era.
Network Radio’s Top 50 average program rating jumped a whopping 23%, representing well over a million homes. The nightly Top Ten programs’ season ratings grew an even more impressive 25%. The sharp ratings increase came after four seasons of trickling decline - a decline that resumed again the following season.
The one-season spike can be attributed to two factors. First, the industry ratings standard became A.C. Nielsen’s mechanical, Audimeter methodology which proved to be more generous in its count than C.E. Hooper’s telephone coincidental polls. However, Claude Hooper personally issued a notice to his subscribers in January that cited “violent fluctuations” and an abnormally high Sets In Use reported by listeners.
The other cause for the higher ratings began in the bedrooms of America in late 1945 and resulted in a population surge that columnist Sylvia Porter dubbed, The Baby Boom. By January, 1948, nearly eleven million babies had been born in the U.S. since the end of World War II. The young parents of these infants were staying at home in droves to tend to their young.
While radio ratings boomed, movie attendance bombed. Movie ticket sales dropped ten percent in 1947, down nearly half a billion tickets. It’s no coincidence that Network Radio’s greatest ratings gains were scored on Friday and Saturday - the traditional “nights out” for singles and young couples. Most of those stay-at-homes were listening to their radios - and hearing the first commercials about a new phenomenon in home entertainment that was still years away for most of America, television.
Net Growth. The networks’ year-long hunt for new affiliates was led by Mutual, adding 104 stations for a total of 488. ABC signed 27 new affiliates, bringing it up to 222 and NBC added six for a total of 161. CBS continued to trail the group by taking on ten new stations to reach 157. As a result, 97% of the country’s commercial AM stations had affiliated with a network - an all time high.
Outspoken Mutual boss Ed Koback used none of the typical programming platitudes or self-serving promises of public service when discussing his network’s intentions. “We’re not going to fuss around with highbrow programs” he told Time magazine in February, “We’re primed for battle with the other networks for mass audience.” Mutual seldom produced a program that made the season’s Top 50, but it did make money with Koback at the helm. The network’s billings jumped 30% to nearly $26 Million, in his first two years and he was just getting started.
Big Mac’s Whopper of A Network. Gordon McLendon took after his wealthy father who owned a chain of theaters in Texas - he was a showman. Who but a showman would train a parrot to recite his station’s call letters on cue? The 25 year old McLendon did just that at his KLIF/Dallas in 1947.
In March, 1948, McLendon launched The Liberty Broadcasting System from KLIF. It became the most viable new national radio network since Mutual was formed in 1934. Liberty was based in baseball - play by play broadcasts of major league games recreated from Western Union reports and fed to Liberty affiliates in minor league cities throughout America.. In 1948, only the ten cities that were home to the 16 major league teams were out of bounds to McLendon.
The recreation technique had been used in radio since its earliest days - but McLendon’s production touches made it a broadcast art. Mixed with the appropriate sound effects, Liberty’s recreations were difficult to tell from the real thing. The young network executive, who took to the air himself as “The Old Scotchman,” headed a team of sportscasters in their twenties that included future greats Lindsey Nelson, Don Wells, Buddy Blattner and Jerry Doggett - each skilled at the extemporaneous speaking demands necessary to create colorful word pictures from the barest of information.
Liberty operated only in the daytime hours with its baseball broadcasts, but McLendon had his sights set on its becoming a full time, full service network. This was a special concern to Mutual as it pondered what to do about the upstart network that threatened its territory in small and medium sized markets. The situation would come to a head four years later when Liberty programs were heard from nearly 500 stations.
The Beginning of The End. Network Television was officially born on Friday, June 27, 1947, when NBC fed a special three hour block of programs - a speech, a short film, a variety show and a boxing match - to stations in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady. Baltimore and Boston were added to the chain later in the year. The event passed with little notice - but it was the genesis of Network Radio’s decline.
Television was still a novelty and seemed no immediate threat to radio - reaching less than 200,000 homes with patchwork programming several hours a day. But video’s growth trend was inescapable. By March, 1948, 16 stations were on the air across the United States with another 82 under construction. (1)
NBC reported that its 1947 television operations lost $2.7 Million. It was understood that its radio division would cover the loss plus the additional $5.0 Million that the network expected to lose before the new medium turned its first profit. In effect, Network Radio was buying the bullets for its own execution.
NBC Takes It, Baker Leaves It. NBC had a lock on Sunday’s two hour period between 7:00 and 9:00 with all four of its comedy programs headed by Jack Benny, Phil Harris & Alice Faye, Fred Allen and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy scoring ratings in the 20's and finishing in the season’s Top Ten. But CBS was laying plans to upset listening habits the following season.
Meanwhile, Eversharp Pens moved its popular quiz Take It or Leave It from CBS to NBC and fired the show’s host of seven years, Phil Baker. Baker was replaced by 32 year old Garry Moore, fresh from five Top 50 seasons teamed with Jimmy Durante on CBS’s Friday schedule. With Moore’s high energy, fast talking approach, Take It Or Leave It’s rating increased from 14.5 to 16.0. But in a season of widespread rating increases, the show dropped from 18th to 40th in the season’s Top 50.
Spade Digs In. Even in a season of inflated ratings, one of the big surprises was The Adventures of Sam Spade, which nearly doubled its CBS rating to a 17.8 against NBC’s Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy at 8:00. It was the first of three Top 50 seasons for the slick private eye series starring Howard Duff and produced by William Spier. (2) Like The Adventures of The Thin Man, the Spade series was based upon a detective hero created by author Dashiell Hammett. However, Hammett had nothing to do with the program or its success against Bergen. But both Sam Spade and Edgar Bergen were headed for a showdown with a newcomer from ABC, Stop The Music!
Stop Starts. ABC needed a mid-season replacement on Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET for its low rated and costly Detroit Symphony broadcasts when Ford Motors dropped its sponsorship and switched to Fred Allen‘s Top Ten Show on NBC. (3) As a result, ABC was looking for something inexpensive to produce that would appeal more to listeners and advertisers than Ford’s Detroit Symphony broadcasts - which could mean most anything.
Stop The Music! - offering a mountain of merchandise prizes similar to Truth Or Consequences’ secret identity contests, - was the brainchild of bandleader Harry Salter and Quiz Kids producer Louis Cowan. The show’s weekly production budget was low but its Mystery Melody jackpot sometimes bulged with $30,000 in prizes - mostly merchandise obtained in exchange for glowing promotional plugs rattled off by host Bert Parks and announcer Don Hancock. (See Stop The Music!)
The game was simple. Popular and traditional songs were played by Salter’s orchestra or sung without title identification by singers Kay Armen and Dick Brown who would hum over titles in lyrics. Parks would break into songs shouting, “Stop The Music!,” which indicated he had a contestant on the line whose telephone number had been picked at random. If the contestant correctly identified the song, a single prize was awarded - plus the opportunity to identify the jackpot’s Mystery Melody, usually a vaguely familiar folk or classical selection with an obscure title. Every incorrect answer added another prize to the jackpot. The show made headlines in May, 1948, by showering a North Carolina couple with a jackpot touted to be worth $17,000.
Stop The Music! was trend setter. It introduced forced listening contests to Network Radio. Contestants had be listening to the program to win - a device employed by broadcasters ever since. ABC also sold the program in a unique manner, offering 15 minute segments for sponsorship to separate, non-competing advertisers. The sale of participating sponsorships in network programs had long been practiced in daytime programming. Stop The Music! was the first major prime time show to be sold in pieces.
Stop The Music! was first broadcast at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, 1948, but didn’t appear in the Nielsen reports until June when the giveaway show scored an initial 12.6 rating. By June, Edgar Bergen had taken Charlie McCarthy and left on summer vacation from his NBC timeslot at 8:00. Bergen’s departure stranded Fred Allen at 8:30 with the feeble lead-in of Bergen’s summer replacement, the Robert Shaw Chorale’s concerts of traditional music. Without Bergen’s powerful escort, Allen’s season long average rating of 22.7 sank to a 9.4 in June against the second half hour of Stop The Music! It was a sign of things to come.
Youth Must Be Served. Horace Heidt returned to Network Radio after a two year layoff with The Youth Opportunity Program - a talent competition for singers and musicians on NBC that borrowed its format and judging standards from The Original Amateur Hour. Broadcasting from different major cities every week, ala Dr. I.Q., Heidt and his orchestra traveled from city to city where the troupe performed for a week in a downtown theaters and broadcast the program on Sunday nights.
Heidt hit the air running on his first show in December by introducing a handsome, 18 year old accordion virtuoso to the contest, Dick Contino. Contino won the program’s weekly first prize of $250 for 13 consecutive weeks and took home the season’s grand prize of $5,000. As a result of the show, Contino became a teen idol. Sales of accordions and accordion lessons soared and Heidt was off to a five season run for Phillip Morris cigarettes.
For Crying Out Loud… Prime time radio had no tear-jerking reality programming since John J. Anthony took his sobbing guests - (“No tears, please...”) - to Mutual’s daytime schedule in 1945. Break The Bank producer Walt Framer filled that void with Strike It Rich, the quiz show that dwelled on the “true life experiences” of its needy contestants who spilled out their problems to host Todd Russell. (4) The more tragic their stories leading to their seeking help from the program, the better. All candidates were screened and selected by Framer’s staff to meet that criteria.
It was as if Santa Claus had come to Network Radio as pleas to appear on the program flowed in by the thousands. All requested jobs, housing, transportation, medical treatment, artificial limbs, false teeth or whatever else the applicants might need to evade poverty, pain or some other fate worse than death.
The quiz offered a top prize of $800 but it was secondary to the show’s Heartline telephone which rang with offers to help the contestants escape whatever dire straits that had brought them to Strike It Rich. The show was awash in tears of self-pity converted to cries of joy when the Heartline and its pre-arranged benefactors came to the contestants’ rescue - on Framer’s cue.
Strike It Rich was moved to Sunday afternoon the following season with a new host, Warren Hull from Vox Pop. Hull remained with the show through its subsequent seven year weekday run on NBC Radio and CBS Television. As a result, Walt Framer cried all the way to the bank.
Fidler’s Duets. Among his Hollywood reporter competitors, including Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Jimmie Fidler was the most controversial with his often sarcastic and biting commentaries on the work and personal lives of the movie colony’s elite. His rapid-fire 15 minute Network Radio series dating back to 1934 were never ranked in the season’s Top 50, but Fidler became unique in 1947 when his program was broadcast twice on Sunday nights over two different networks - first on Mutual and two hours later on ABC. The unusual double dip, underwritten by drug manufacturer Carter-Wallace for its Carter’s Little Liver Pills laxative and Arrid deodorant, scored a total rating in double digits for two consecutive seasons.
Mutual’s Neat Nick. Nick Carter, Master Detective finished the season with a 13.0 rating - the all time high for any prime time program on Mutual. The detective series was similar in its melodramatic format and heavy organ scoring to Mutual’s Sunday afternoon pulp-fiction block - House of Mystery, True Detective Mysteries and The Shadow. With popular radio actor with Lon Clark in the title role, Nick Carter had a solid five year run at 6:30 for Cudahy Packing’s Old Dutch Cleanser but never cracked a season’s Top 50 or a Sunday Top Ten. (See Nick Carter.)
Lever Leverage. Lever Brothers and CBS co-owned Network Radio’s highest rated two hour block. Lux Radio Theater was the Monday night centerpiece - scoring its all-time highest ratings and the first of five consecutive seasons as Network Radio’s most popular program. Easily the most popular program for ten consecutive months, Lux Radio Theater of the 1947-48 season was the last series of Network Radio’s Golden Age to finish its season with an average rating of 30 or higher. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)
Lever’s Lipton Tea and Pepsodent brands book-ended Lux with two newcomers- Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts at 8:30 p.m. ET and My Friend Irma at 10:00. Both new shows shot into the year’s Top Ten along with Lux, making 1947-48 the first season in a decade that CBS had as many as three programs in the Annual Top Ten.
Godfrey’s Tea Party. After 13 years on the air, Lux Radio Theater became the only dramatic series to ever rank as a season’s Number One program. All it took was a lead-in boost from a 44 year old ukulele playing disc jockey who brought the first talent competition back to Network Radio since Major Bowes’ amateurs left the air in 1945. Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, produced by CBS, had kicked around the network’s schedule without a sponsor for over a year. Lever Brothers picked up the show for its Lipton Tea division in September to replace the disappointing - and highly expensive - Joan Davis sitcom, Joanie’s Tea Room.
Godfrey had been on the CBS payroll since 1934 - as a popular early morning disc jockey on the network’s Washington, D.C., and New York City stations. He was so popular that beginning in 1941, Godfrey was heard in both cities every weekday morning. But he never clicked on the full network until June, 1947, when the informal, mid-morning Arthur Godfrey Time debuted Monday through Friday on CBS. Nevertheless, Godfrey kept his “day job” with the two local stations in New York and Washington until November, 1948. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
Talent Scouts was an immediate hit in the Monday timeslot. Godfrey’s first season resulted in a rating that was over 50% higher than Joanie’s Tea Room could score for Lever. It was the first of five consecutive Top Ten seasons for Talent Scouts.
Irma La Dunce. Marie Wilson was 31 and a beautiful, busty, wide-eyed blonde. She had appeared in 40 films in supporting roles - yet few knew her name outside Hollywood where she had starred in comedian Ken Murray’s long-running stage revue Blackouts since 1941. That all changed when the comedienne became My Friend Irma immediately following Lux Radio Theater on CBS in 1947. Lever Brothers snatched up the prime timeslot when Screen Guild Players was pushed up to 10:30 by its new sponsor, Camel cigarettes.
My Friend Irma was created by writer-producer Cy Howard and starred Wilson as Irma Peterson, the warm hearted, empty headed, dumb blonde extraordinaire - an extension of her stage and movie persona. With support from top radio talents Cathy Lewis, Hans Conreid, John Brown and Alan Reed, My Friend Irma became one of Network Radio’s highest rated sitcoms, scoring four consecutive Top Ten seasons. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
Smart Show, Stupid Move. Doctor I.Q. had enjoyed four seasons as one of Monday’s Top Ten programs. The rapid fire quiz show was NBC’s top rated entertainment program on Monday for all four years, consistently scoring double digit ratings in its 10:30 timeslot. In 1947, after a two year hiatus, Mars Candy resumed sponsorship of the quiz show that traveled from city to city to originate its remote broadcasts from theaters packed with eager potential contestants seeking the silver dollars awarded for correct answers. (See Dr. I.Q.)
Then, in a maneuver nuttier than its Mars Bars, the candy company moved the NBC winner back one hour to 9:30, opposite the second half of Lux Radio Theater, Monday’s perennial leader since the 1935-36 season. Lux had grown even stronger since Dr. I.Q. first faced off against it in 1940 and lost its time period by better than a two-to-one margin. Their rematch was even more one-sided. Dr. I.Q. fell from Monday’s Top Ten and plummeted in the season’s rankings from 49th to 108th place among all prime time programs. The Lew Valentine quiz was battered by Lux for two seasons until Mars and NBC dropped the show in 1949.
Killing Time. NBC’s veteran comedy lineup took Tuesday’s Top Four positions - with Amos & Andy scoring its highest rating since 1934. But CBS continued to counter with the drama that Bill Paley promised it would against the highly rated NBC laugh getters. Scripted crime and detective melodramas of different types were relatively inexpensive for sponsors and generators of solid ratings for the network. It was smart programming for CBS because NBC outlawed any crime or murder mystery dramas to be broadcast before 9:30 p.m.
Big Town beat NBC’s Milton Berle at 8:00. Mr. & Mrs. North was brought to CBS by Colgate and nipped at A Date With Judy at 8:30. The Adventures of Christopher Wells was a one season attempt to siphon listeners from Fibber McGee & Molly. CBS continued its practice into other nights with familiar titles like The Adventures of Sam Spade, Mr. Keen, The FBI In Peace & War and Casey, Crime Photographer - all broadcast before 9:30. As a result, the network placed eight of its low-budget, low-risk dramas in the season’s Top 50.
Right Day, Right Time, Wrong Place. Milton Berle finally scrambled into the season’s Top 50 with a Tuesday night variety show that featured some of radio’s top comedic studio talent - Arnold Stang, Pert Kelton, Arthur Q. Bryan, Jack Albertson, Ed Begley and announcer/foil Frank Gallop. In its second season in NBC’s 8:00 p.m. timeslot the show’s audience jumped 40% and scored double digit ratings against Big Town on CBS. Nevertheless, Berle and sponsor Philip Morris parted company in April and he was gone from NBC Radio.
Ironically, Tuesday at 8:00 brought Berle his greatest triumph - on television. He first appeared as guest host of NBC-TV’s new Texaco Star Theater on June 8, 1948. It was the preview of a program would make entertainment history over the following season.
The Crooner’s Swoon. Bing Crosby made big news earlier in the year by signing Al Jolson to a $50,000 contract for ten Wednesday night Philco Radio Time guest appearances on ABC during the season. The ink was barely dry when Jolson signed another contract - to host Crosby’s former NBC show, Kraft Music Hall. Jolson showed up for just one Philco Radio Time appearance.
Crosby was forced to scramble and rely on a mix of movie star guests - actors Jimmy Stewart, Claudette Colbert and Barry Fitzgerald among them - and “casual drop-in guests” from other ABC shows like Lone Ranger Brace Beemer and Breakfast In Hollywood’s Tom Breneman. In a season of inflated ratings Crosby’s suffered a 20% loss of audience, falling out of the season’s Top 50 for the first and only time in his 21 years on the air.
The Big Story Is Crosby’s Downfall. Buried in the ratings by Crosby during its first season, NBC’s studio drama The Big Story doubled its audience and became the first program to beat Crosby in his time period since 1941 when Major Bowes pulled a one season upset. Inspired by actual newspaper reporters’ investigative tactics and their resulting true stories - while never allowing the facts to get in the way of an even better tale - The Big Story dramatized the stories and awarded the reporters responsible for them with a weekly prize of $500. The series became a Wednesday fixture on the NBC schedule for eight years, all of them under the sponsorship of American Tobacco’s Pall Mall and Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Inka Dinka Did Do! Rating woes were forecast for Jimmy Durante without Garry Moore, his partner for five years who had gone solo to host Take It Or Leave It. But failure was always predicted for the 54 year old Durante since his Jumbo Fire Chief fiasco. (See The 1935-36 Season.) Durante-Moore sponsor Rexall Drugs, moved Durante and his Inka Dinka Doo theme song to NBC’s Wednesday schedule at 10:30. The comedian fooled everyone by posting a solid three point gain over the team’s final season together. With or without Moore, Durante finished in the season’s Top 50 five times and was never out of a nightly Top Ten from 1942 through 1950 when he retired from series radio for even greater success in television. (See Goodnight, Mr. Durante...)
Mayor Barrymore & Mr. Scrooge. Screen legend Lionel Barrymore was 69 and had over 200 films to his credit along with five network seasons as Mayor Of The Town on CBS. Sponsor Noxema Skin Cream moved the heartwarming family series to ABC with better than expected results. Mayor Of The Town became the first program to ever increase its ratings by moving to ABC from NBC or CBS. The series topped its CBS ratings by a stunning 65%.
Barrymore played the widowed mayor of a small town much like his Dr .Leonard Gillespie character in 15 of MGM’s Dr. Kildare movies - a gruff but tender hearted patriarch with a booming laugh Agnes Moorhead headed a strong supporting cast as Hizzoner’s housekeeper, Marilly. Mayor Of The Town was best known for its annual departure from format when Barrymore became Ebenezer Scrooge in his annual holiday presentation of A Christmas Carol. He performed his radio adaptation of the Dickens classic over a dozen times.
Barrymore’s success at 8:00 was followed by Vox Pop which was picked up after eight seasons on CBS and moved to ABC’s Wednesday lineup at 8:30. The Parks Johnson & Warren Hull human interest/interview show recorded a 40% jump in its ratings.
Nothing Funny About It. Abbott & Costello weren’t as lucky in their move to ABC‘s Wednesday lineup. The comics and Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes had parted company in June after five successful seasons as part of NBC’s potent Thursday lineup. ABC scooped them up as a bridge between Vox Pop and the new Groucho Marx comedy quiz, You Bet Your Life. The new Abbott & Costello Show on ABC was offered to affiliates on a co-op basis, with half its commercial minutes sold nationally and the other half made available for local sale. Without the powerful support of NBC’s Sealtest Village Store and Eddie Cantor surrounding them, Abbott & Costello’s ABC show - with its familiar format and top flight supporting cast held over from its NBC run - dropped from 24th to 105th in the season’s rankings.
Jolson Sings Again. Kraft had seen its Music Hall ratings drop to half the levels that Bing Crosby averaged before he jumped to ABC. The low-budgeted replacement pairing of comedians Edward Everett Horton and Eddie Foy with Eddie Duchin’s orchestra struggled to stay in double digits. As a result, the cheese company decided to open its checkbook for a headliner who approached Crosby’s stardom.
Meanwhile, Al Jolson was hot again after the success of his filmed biography, The Jolson Story, a year earlier. The movie earned six Academy Award nominations and won two Oscars. A sequel, Jolson Sings Again, was already in the works at Columbia Pictures and his records were selling again.
Jolson demanded and got $7,500 per week to sign on as the new host of Kraft Music Hall. It proved to be a good investment for Kraft. The 60 year old singer, paired with pianist-comedian Oscar Levant, pumped the show back into first place on Thursday and a return into the season’s Top 20. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
CBS Plays Catch Up. Just two years after placing only one program in Thursday’s Top Ten, CBS pulled even with NBC. The network’s strategy was long term, counter-programming that landed most of its prime time entries into Thursday’s Top Ten.
Against the aging Jolson‘s Kraft Music Hall, CBS and Autolite countered with a variety show hosted by 32 year old movie singing star Dick Haymes. Opposite the frivolous Aldrich Family, CBS presented the well acted Suspense, replaced at mid-season by The FBI In Peace & War. Against the still popular comedy of Burns & Allen, CBS offered the melodrama of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons and Casey, Crime Photographer beat Jack Carson and Eve Arden’s Sealtest Village Store at 9:30.
Although neither CBS anthology series finished in Thursday’s Top Ten, First Nighter helped push Eddie Cantor out of the season’s Top 50 for the first time in his long career and Radio Readers Digest took audience from Bob Hawk who was moved to NBC for the season by Camel cigarettes to replace Abbott & Costello. Momentum was on CBS’s side against the long running shows on NBC.
Suspended Suspense. One glitch in the CBS Thursday schedule was the November cancellation of Suspense by Roma Wines. The network moved the mystery anthology - a Top 50 hit for three seasons - to Saturdays for the remainder of the season as a sustaining, hour-long feature hosted by Hollywood star Robert Montgomery. It remained unsponsored, unrated and apparently unwanted until mid-May when CBS shelved the show and waited for another sponsor to come along. It wasn’t a long wait before Autolite automotive products picked up Suspense for the following season and returned it to the CBS Thursday schedule. (See Sus...pense!)
Jumping Jack. Movie comedian Jack Carson was at the height of his Warner Brothers film career and had logged four years on CBS with his own Wednesday night sitcom dating back to the 1943-44 season.. Despite his growing movie fame and skilled comedic support on his radio show provided by Dave Willock, Arthur Treacher, Mel Blanc and Agnes Moorhead, Carson could never win his time period against NBC’s Mr. & Mrs. North. Carson left CBS to join Eve Arden as co-host of NBC’s Sealtest Village Store when Jack Haley left the show in 1947. The move provided Carson with his only double digit rating although Sealtest lost its time period to the CBS potboiler, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.
Darting In & Out of Prime Time. A dart game on radio made about as much sense as putting a ventriloquist on radio. Except Darts For Dough didn’t get anywhere near Edgar Bergen’s ratings. Soft drink Dr. Pepper promoted its hometown’s local radio favorite, Darts For Dough, from WFAA/Dallas to Blue’s Sunday afternoon schedule in 1944 to replace Al Pearce who had jumped to CBS. Hosted by friendly Orval Anderson, the combination quiz and stunt show’s contestants threw darts for cash prizes including a grand prize of $100 for hitting a bulls eye and setting off a crescendo of bells and whistles. (6)
Darts For Dough enjoyed its three year Sunday run until October, 1947, when it was slotted into ABC’s Thursday schedule at 9:30 p.m. ET. The dart game didn’t have a chance against two of Thursday’s Top Ten programs in the same half hour - Casey, Crime Photographer and the Jack Carson & Eve Arden Sealtest Village Store. It lasted for three months and scored a dismal 3.5 rating.
13th Year’s Good Luck. The average rating for Friday night’s Top Ten soared 43% to the highest level since 1934-1935. Coincidentally, ABC won the night with four programs in the Top Ten - its best showing since Monday of 1934-1935 in its Blue Network days. This Is Your FBI became ABC’s first program to win a night since Walter Winchell took first place on Sunday in 1944-45. With its twin, The FBI In Peace & War on CBS, the two G-Man shows turned in a combined 33.7 rating for the season. (See FBI vs. FBI.)
Make Room For Danny. Danny Thomas was the hottest comedian on the nightclub circuit and General Foods wanted a replacement for The Adventures of The Thin Man at 8:30 on Friday. Thomas was no stranger to radio - he had played ongoing supporting roles for Baby Snooks and The Bickersons since 1944. The new Danny Thomas Show debuted in January against two of Friday’s Top Ten - This Is Your FBI and Can You Top This? The Thomas variety show lost its time period to both with a 13.7 rating and the comedian left series radio in June, never to return. (7)
Ignorance Is Bliss. It was a classic choice for listeners: brains or buffoonery. Mutual picked up Information Please for co-op sponsorship - half network sponsored, half locally sponsored. The highly praised intellectual panel quiz led by Clifton Fadiman had enjoyed five seasons as a Top 50 program in its nine year history on Blue, NBC and CBS. It was slotted Fridays at 9:30p.m. on Mutual. (See Information Please.)
Meanwhile, CBS scheduled It Pays To Be Ignorant at 10:00 p.m.. With veteran vaudeville comic Tom Howard asking truly stupid questions like, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?,” his panel of numbskulls played by vaudeville vets Gene Sheldon, Harry McNaughton and Lulu McConnell - all formally addressed as “Mister” or “Miss” ala Information Please - would go off on rambling, nonsensical tangents but never answer the question. It was a half hour of verbal baggy pants slapstick, full of cheap jokes and insults - the total antithesis of Information Please. The season's final ratings? Information Please, 4.7 - It Pays To Be Ignorant, 14.3. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant.)
Now You See It... Gillette’s Cavalcade of Sports - aka ABC's Friday Night Fights - became the first network radio series to be televised on a regular basis - seen weekly on NBC-TV. Nevertheless, radio still ruled the ratings. Don Dunphy’s audio account the Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Heavyweight Championship fight on June 25, 1948, drew a whopping 59.5 rating. The fight was a rematch of their December, 1947, bout won by Louis in a controversial decision. Louis settled the rematch with an 11th round knockout.
Saturday Up, CBS Out. Saturday’s Top Ten average rating shot up 40% to its highest point ever recorded - even bigger than during the early Crossley years when double digit ratings were common. NBC claimed the seven top shows while ABC took the remaining three spots of the Top Ten with its crime oriented studio dramas. CBS was shut out of a nightly Top Ten for only the second time in its history.
Edwards Walks Into The Top Ten. Among the millions of random phone calls made by his operators over the years, C. E. Hooper himself was called once. It happened on a Saturday night in May, 1948. He reported that he was listening to Truth Or Consequences. He wasn’t alone. Truth Or Consequences was in its peak season - scoring the highest rating and ranking of any audience participation show - ever.
Ralph Edwards spiked his fall ratings with the third of his big jackpot giveaways, Miss Hush, again suggesting that listeners’ entries be accompanied by donations to The March of Dimes. Before dancer Martha Graham was identified six weeks later, the bounty of cash and merchandise prizes had grown to over $20,000, and the charity had collected an astounding $880,000.
Edwards followed that success in late December with The Walking Man - a mystery celebrity whose identity was disclosed in a series of clues - similar to the Hush contests. But only The Walking Man’s recorded footsteps were heard while Edwards read the clues. This time Edwards solicited donations for the fledgling American Heart Association. Contest entries containing contributions - sometimes over 100,000 envelopes per day - poured in for ten weeks while Edwards lured listeners with a jackpot that swelled to $22,500, in cash and merchandise. When Jack Benny was finally identified as The Walking Man in March, the American Heart Association credited over $1,75 Million in donations to the contest. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
NBC’s Record Party. Led by Truth Or Consequences, NBC’s entire Saturday lineup benefited from the listening boom. The Life of Riley, The Judy Canova Show, Your Hit Parade, The Grand Ole Opry and Curtain Time all recorded their highest ever ratings. Colgate rescued Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge from Wednesday’s debacle of the previous season when Kyser’s half hour was paired with the failed Frank Morgan sitcom, The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy. In his new Saturday timeslot Kyser inherited the powerful lead-in provided by Colgate’s Judy Canova. The Ol’ Professor’s ratings leaped 65%, propelling his musical comedy quiz back into the season’s Top 50.
NBC had more reason to celebrate when Frank Sinatra returned to Your Hit Parade after a two year absence and his fans responded in huge numbers. They accounted for a 60% ratings surge and a record high ranking in the Top 15 for Lucky Strike’s weekly countdown of hits.
“I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart…” Joan Davis couldn’t have picked a better theme song. Evicted from Joanie’s Tea Room by Lever Brothers, the comedienne was moved by CBS to Saturday at 9:00 in one of the network’s first experiments in co-op sponsorship - affiliated stations received commercial availabilities within the program instead of cash payment from the network for carrying the show. Joan Davis Time was slotted opposite two of Saturday’s Top Ten programs occupying the same half hour - NBC’s Your Hit Parade, which celebrated Frank Sinatra’s return as its singing host, and the gritty Gangbusters on ABC. The two programs accounted for 31.9 rating points which didn’t leave much audience left for Davis. Her sitcom registered a meager 5.1 - down over 60% from Joanie’s Tea Room. Her sitcom quietly left the air at the end of the season.
Silver Bullets Shoot Up The Ratings. All but one of the Multiple Run Top Ten programs was a Monday through Friday strip. That exception was The Lone Ranger, the Number One Multiple Run. After 15 years in the same Monday-Wednesday-Friday timeslot, The Masked Rider of the Plains out-distanced his nearest competition on CBS by a wide margin and finished among the Top Ten of all prime time programs on each of the three nights it was broadcast. The General Mills sponsored series from WXYZ/Detroit almost doubled its previous season’s rating and made its first of two appearances in the annual Top 50. It remained the Number One Multiple Run program for three consecutive seasons. (See The Lone Ranger.)
Thomas Follows The Money. After 13 years with the Blue Network and four with NBC, Lowell Thomas jumped to CBS for a reported $10,000 per week from Procter & Gamble. Keeping him in his 6:45 timeslot of 17 years, P&G owned a 45 minute block of CBS time - following the nightly Thomas newscast with Beulah at 7:00 and the Jack Smith songfest at 7:15. During the season when other programs enjoyed record gains in ratings, Thomas lost 30% of his NBC audience, fell out of the season’s Top 50 for the first time in his long career and never returned. Nevertheless, the veteran newscaster remained with CBS at 6:45 p.m. ET until his retirement in 1976 when he was 84 years old.
Beulah Back Big Time. The big surprise was Procter & Gamble’s revival of a former programming failure with a new format and familiar face. Hattie McDaniel, 54, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1939's Gone With The Wind and had another 18 featured movie roles to her credit - all in the stereotyped role as a fat and jolly family maid. Her radio experience was limited to reoccurring parts in the 1937 revival of Showboat and the cast of the Eddie Cantor Show five years later. In November she won the title role of the newly reformatted sitcom, Beulah, based on the character created two years earlier by the late Marlin Hurt. As a strip show, Beulah became a Multiple Run Top Ten hit for five years and for three seasons was among the annual Top 50 programs. At 7:00 p.m. it provided a solid lead in to Jack Smith's 15 minute music show at 7:15, also sponsored by P&G. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten,)
Soap & Soup Sales. Despite Lowell Thomas’s slip in popularity, CBS achieved a rarity by placing its entire block of five strip programs from 6:45 to 8:00 in the Multiple Run Top Ten. Two advertisers, Procter & Gamble and Campbell Soups, sponsored the entire block. CBS hadn’t programmed Multiple Runs in the 7:30 time period since 1938, opting instead for weekly half hour programs with different degrees of success. The network returned to the Multiple Run race in 1947 with Campbell Soups’ Club 15 starring Bob Crosby and the singing Andrew Sisters at 7:30 followed by a quarter-hour newscast by Edward R. Murrow, also sponsored by Campbell. The Murrow and Thomas newscasts, Crosby and Jack Smith music shows plus Beulah would all repeat as Multiple Run Top Ten programs for five consecutive seasons.
(1) To meet the growing demand for television receivers, 31 different manufacturers reported turning out 33,000 new sets a month in February, 1948. Most popular were the ten-inch screen table models produced by RCA and Philco with an average price tag of $350, ($3,485 in today‘s money).
(2) William Spier was also responsible for the successful Suspense mystery series on CBS. (See Sus...pense!)
(3) Ford had cancelled its hometown symphony orchestra when Henry Ford died and the company became free to appeal to popular taste with its radio advertising instead of bowing to its founder’s dictates which included buying prime time for the Greenfield Chapel Children’s Choir and Early American Dance Music.
(4) Todd Russell, the two year veteran of Mutual’s Double Or Nothing, was host of Strike It Rich during the program’s first and only prime time season on CBS. It scored a respectable 10.9 season rating against Horace Heidt’s new Youth Opportunity talent show on NBC.
(5) It was Lever Brothers’ big year. It owned five of the season’s Top Ten programs under its corporate sponsorship. In addition to Monday’s leaders, the company - known to the rest of the world as Unilever - also sponsored Bob Hope and Amos & Andy on NBC’s Tuesday schedule.
(6) The show’s large on-stage dartboard was highlighted by segments marked 10, 2 and 4 - the times of day when the sponsor recommended a bottle of Dr. Pepper for a workday energy rush of sugar.
(7) Four years later Danny Thomas turned up on television with his legendary sitcom, Make Room For Daddy, and teamed with Sheldon Leonard to produce a string of television’s most popular comedies including The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Top 50 Network Programs - 1947-48
A.C. Nielsen Radio Index Service. Sept 1947 - June 1948.
Total Programs Rated, 6-11 PM: 162. Programs Rated 13 Weeks & Ranked: 156
35,900,000 Radio Homes 93.1% Coverage of US. One Rating Point = 359,000 Homes
1 8 Lux Radio Theater 31.2 Lever Brothers/Lux Soap Mon 9:00 60 CBS
2 2 Fibber McGee & Molly 26.1 Johnson Wax Tue 9:30 30 NBC
3 7 Amos & Andy 24.1 Lever Brothers/Rinso Laundry Soap Tue 9:00 30 NBC
4 5 Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy 22.7 Standard/Chase & Sanborn Sun 8:00 30 NBC
5 1 Bob Hope Show 22.5 Lever Brothers/Pepsodent Tue 10:00 30 NBC
6t 4 Fred Allen Show 22.3 Ford Motors Sun 8:30 30 NBC (1)
6t 17 Truth Or Consequences 22.3 Procter & Gamble/Duz Laundry Soap Sat 8:30 30 NBC
8 N My Friend Irma 22.2 Lever Brothers/Pepsodent Mon 10:00 30 CBS
9 12 Phil Harris & Alice Faye 22.1 FW Fitch/Fitch Shampoo Sun 7:30 30 NBC
10t N Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts 21.9 Lever Brothers/Lipton Tea Mon 8:30 30 CBS
10t 3 Jack Benny Program 21.9 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Sun 7:00 30 NBC
12 11 Mister District Attorney 21.1 Bristol Myers/Vitalis Hair Tonic Wed 9:30 30 NBC
13 6 Red Skelton Show 20.4 Brown & Williamson/Raleigh Cigarettes Tue 10:30 30 NBC
14 26 Life of Riley 20.1 Procter & Gamble/Dreft Laundry Soap Sat 8:00 30 NBC
15t 14 Duffy’s Tavern 20 0 Bristol Myers Ipana & Vitalis Wed 9:00 30 NBC
15t 33 Your Hit Parade 20.0 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Sat 9:00 30 NBC
17 21 Big Town 19.5 Sterling Drug/Ironized Yeast Tue 8:00 30 CBS
18 15 Great Gildersleeve 19.1 Kraft Foods/Parkay Margarine Wed 8:30 30 NBC
19 29 A Date With Judy 19.0 Lewis Howe/ Tums Antacid Tue 8:30 30 NBC
20t N Al Jolson’s Kraft Music Hall 18.9 Kraft Cheese Thu 9:00 30 NBC
20t 10 Screen Guild Players 18.9 Lady Esther Cosmetics Mon 10:30 30 CBS
22 24 Inner Sanctum 18.6 Emerson Drug/Bromo Seltzer Mon 8:00 30 CBS
23 26 Aldrich Family 18.5 General Foods/Grapenuts & Jello Thu 8:00 30 NBC
24 35 Blondie 18.1 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Super Suds Sun 7:30 30 CBS
25t 15 Burns & Allen Show 18.0 General Foods/Maxwell House Thu 8:30 30 NBC
25t 58 This Is Your FBI 18.0 Equitable Life Insurance Fri 8:30 30 ABC
27 62 Adventures of Sam Spade 17.8 Wildroot Cream Oil Sun 8:00 30 CBS
28t 26 Fanny Brice Baby Snooks Show 17.3 General Foods/Jello Fri 8:00 30 CBS
28t 22 Judy Canova Show 17.3 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Halo Shampoo Sat 10:00 30 NBC
30 9 Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal 17.2 Jergens Lotion Sun 9:00 15 ABC
31t 38 Manhattan Merry Go Round 17.1 Sterling Drug/Dr Lyons Tooth Powder Sun 9:00 30 NBC
31t 36 Mr & Mrs North 17.1 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Halo Shampoo Tue 8:30 30 CBS
33t 51 Mr Keen 16.7 American Home Products/Kolynos Toothpaste Thu 7:30 30 CBS
33t 32 People Are Funny 16.7 Brown & Williamson/Raleigh Cigarettes Fri 9:00 30 NBC
35 86 The Lone Ranger 16.4 General Mills/Cheerios MWF 7:30 30 ABC
36t 81 The Big Story 16.1 American Tobacco/Pall Mall Wed 10:00 30 NBC
36t 71 Break The Bank 16.1 Bristol-Myers/Vitalis Hair Oil Fri 9:00 30 ABC
36t 34 A Day In The Life of Dennis Day 16.1 Colgate/Lustre Cream Thu 7:30 30 NBC
36t 71 Waltz Time 16.1 Sterling Drug/Phillips Milk of Magnesia Fri 9:30 30 NBC
40 18 Take It Or Leave It 16.0 Eversharp Pens & Pencils Sun 10:00 30 NBC
41 65 Kay Kyser College Mus Knowledge 15.9 Colgate Dental Cream Sat 10:00 30 NBC
42t 55 The Fat Man 15.7 Pepto Bismol Fri 8:00 30 ABC (2)
42t 31 The FBI In Peace & War 15.7 Procter & Gamble/Lava Hand Soap Thu 8:30 25 CBS
44t 38 Casey Crime Photographer 15.6 Anchor Hocking Glass Thu 9:30 30 CBS
44t122 Meet Corliss Archer 15.6 Campbell Soup Sun 9:00 30 CBS
46 74 Milton Berle Show 15.4 Philip Morris Cigarettes Tue 8:00 30 NBC
47t 40 Dick Haymes Show 15.3 Autolite Spark Plugs Thu 9:00 30 CBS
47t 96 Theater Guild On The Air 15.3 US Steel Sun 10:00 60 ABC (3)
49 N The Man Called X 15.2 General Motors/Frigidaire Refrigerators Sun 8:30 30 CBS (4)
50 22 Suspense 15.0 Roma Wines Thu 8:00 30 CBS (5)
(1) Fred Allen Show Oct - Dec Standard Brands/Tenderleaf Tea Sun 8:30 30 NBC
(2) The Fat Man Sep - Dec Pepto Bismol Mon 8:30 30 ABC
(3) aka: US Steel Hour
(4) The Man Called X Sep - Nov Generao Motors/Frigidaire Thu 10:00 30 CBS
(5) Suspense Jan - Jun Sustaining (Unrated, Unranked) Sat 8:00 60 CBS
This post is in part abridged from Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953. Copyright © 2012 & 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
The 1947-48 Season
16th In A Series
Babies Boom & Ratings Bloom. The 1947-48 season provided Network Radio’s Golden Age with its last hurrah. Revenues broke the $200 million dollar mark and in terms of total audience, 1947-48 can be recognized as the most popular season of the era.
Network Radio’s Top 50 average program rating jumped a whopping 23%, representing well over a million homes. The nightly Top Ten programs’ season ratings grew an even more impressive 25%. The sharp ratings increase came after four seasons of trickling decline - a decline that resumed again the following season.
The one-season spike can be attributed to two factors. First, the industry ratings standard became A.C. Nielsen’s mechanical, Audimeter methodology which proved to be more generous in its count than C.E. Hooper’s telephone coincidental polls. However, Claude Hooper personally issued a notice to his subscribers in January that cited “violent fluctuations” and an abnormally high Sets In Use reported by listeners.
The other cause for the higher ratings began in the bedrooms of America in late 1945 and resulted in a population surge that columnist Sylvia Porter dubbed, The Baby Boom. By January, 1948, nearly eleven million babies had been born in the U.S. since the end of World War II. The young parents of these infants were staying at home in droves to tend to their young.
While radio ratings boomed, movie attendance bombed. Movie ticket sales dropped ten percent in 1947, down nearly half a billion tickets. It’s no coincidence that Network Radio’s greatest ratings gains were scored on Friday and Saturday - the traditional “nights out” for singles and young couples. Most of those stay-at-homes were listening to their radios - and hearing the first commercials about a new phenomenon in home entertainment that was still years away for most of America, television.
Net Growth. The networks’ year-long hunt for new affiliates was led by Mutual, adding 104 stations for a total of 488. ABC signed 27 new affiliates, bringing it up to 222 and NBC added six for a total of 161. CBS continued to trail the group by taking on ten new stations to reach 157. As a result, 97% of the country’s commercial AM stations had affiliated with a network - an all time high.
Outspoken Mutual boss Ed Koback used none of the typical programming platitudes or self-serving promises of public service when discussing his network’s intentions. “We’re not going to fuss around with highbrow programs” he told Time magazine in February, “We’re primed for battle with the other networks for mass audience.” Mutual seldom produced a program that made the season’s Top 50, but it did make money with Koback at the helm. The network’s billings jumped 30% to nearly $26 Million, in his first two years and he was just getting started.
Big Mac’s Whopper of A Network. Gordon McLendon took after his wealthy father who owned a chain of theaters in Texas - he was a showman. Who but a showman would train a parrot to recite his station’s call letters on cue? The 25 year old McLendon did just that at his KLIF/Dallas in 1947.
In March, 1948, McLendon launched The Liberty Broadcasting System from KLIF. It became the most viable new national radio network since Mutual was formed in 1934. Liberty was based in baseball - play by play broadcasts of major league games recreated from Western Union reports and fed to Liberty affiliates in minor league cities throughout America.. In 1948, only the ten cities that were home to the 16 major league teams were out of bounds to McLendon.
The recreation technique had been used in radio since its earliest days - but McLendon’s production touches made it a broadcast art. Mixed with the appropriate sound effects, Liberty’s recreations were difficult to tell from the real thing. The young network executive, who took to the air himself as “The Old Scotchman,” headed a team of sportscasters in their twenties that included future greats Lindsey Nelson, Don Wells, Buddy Blattner and Jerry Doggett - each skilled at the extemporaneous speaking demands necessary to create colorful word pictures from the barest of information.
Liberty operated only in the daytime hours with its baseball broadcasts, but McLendon had his sights set on its becoming a full time, full service network. This was a special concern to Mutual as it pondered what to do about the upstart network that threatened its territory in small and medium sized markets. The situation would come to a head four years later when Liberty programs were heard from nearly 500 stations.
The Beginning of The End. Network Television was officially born on Friday, June 27, 1947, when NBC fed a special three hour block of programs - a speech, a short film, a variety show and a boxing match - to stations in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady. Baltimore and Boston were added to the chain later in the year. The event passed with little notice - but it was the genesis of Network Radio’s decline.
Television was still a novelty and seemed no immediate threat to radio - reaching less than 200,000 homes with patchwork programming several hours a day. But video’s growth trend was inescapable. By March, 1948, 16 stations were on the air across the United States with another 82 under construction. (1)
NBC reported that its 1947 television operations lost $2.7 Million. It was understood that its radio division would cover the loss plus the additional $5.0 Million that the network expected to lose before the new medium turned its first profit. In effect, Network Radio was buying the bullets for its own execution.
NBC Takes It, Baker Leaves It. NBC had a lock on Sunday’s two hour period between 7:00 and 9:00 with all four of its comedy programs headed by Jack Benny, Phil Harris & Alice Faye, Fred Allen and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy scoring ratings in the 20's and finishing in the season’s Top Ten. But CBS was laying plans to upset listening habits the following season.
Meanwhile, Eversharp Pens moved its popular quiz Take It or Leave It from CBS to NBC and fired the show’s host of seven years, Phil Baker. Baker was replaced by 32 year old Garry Moore, fresh from five Top 50 seasons teamed with Jimmy Durante on CBS’s Friday schedule. With Moore’s high energy, fast talking approach, Take It Or Leave It’s rating increased from 14.5 to 16.0. But in a season of widespread rating increases, the show dropped from 18th to 40th in the season’s Top 50.
Spade Digs In. Even in a season of inflated ratings, one of the big surprises was The Adventures of Sam Spade, which nearly doubled its CBS rating to a 17.8 against NBC’s Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy at 8:00. It was the first of three Top 50 seasons for the slick private eye series starring Howard Duff and produced by William Spier. (2) Like The Adventures of The Thin Man, the Spade series was based upon a detective hero created by author Dashiell Hammett. However, Hammett had nothing to do with the program or its success against Bergen. But both Sam Spade and Edgar Bergen were headed for a showdown with a newcomer from ABC, Stop The Music!
Stop Starts. ABC needed a mid-season replacement on Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET for its low rated and costly Detroit Symphony broadcasts when Ford Motors dropped its sponsorship and switched to Fred Allen‘s Top Ten Show on NBC. (3) As a result, ABC was looking for something inexpensive to produce that would appeal more to listeners and advertisers than Ford’s Detroit Symphony broadcasts - which could mean most anything.
Stop The Music! - offering a mountain of merchandise prizes similar to Truth Or Consequences’ secret identity contests, - was the brainchild of bandleader Harry Salter and Quiz Kids producer Louis Cowan. The show’s weekly production budget was low but its Mystery Melody jackpot sometimes bulged with $30,000 in prizes - mostly merchandise obtained in exchange for glowing promotional plugs rattled off by host Bert Parks and announcer Don Hancock. (See Stop The Music!)
The game was simple. Popular and traditional songs were played by Salter’s orchestra or sung without title identification by singers Kay Armen and Dick Brown who would hum over titles in lyrics. Parks would break into songs shouting, “Stop The Music!,” which indicated he had a contestant on the line whose telephone number had been picked at random. If the contestant correctly identified the song, a single prize was awarded - plus the opportunity to identify the jackpot’s Mystery Melody, usually a vaguely familiar folk or classical selection with an obscure title. Every incorrect answer added another prize to the jackpot. The show made headlines in May, 1948, by showering a North Carolina couple with a jackpot touted to be worth $17,000.
Stop The Music! was trend setter. It introduced forced listening contests to Network Radio. Contestants had be listening to the program to win - a device employed by broadcasters ever since. ABC also sold the program in a unique manner, offering 15 minute segments for sponsorship to separate, non-competing advertisers. The sale of participating sponsorships in network programs had long been practiced in daytime programming. Stop The Music! was the first major prime time show to be sold in pieces.
Stop The Music! was first broadcast at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, 1948, but didn’t appear in the Nielsen reports until June when the giveaway show scored an initial 12.6 rating. By June, Edgar Bergen had taken Charlie McCarthy and left on summer vacation from his NBC timeslot at 8:00. Bergen’s departure stranded Fred Allen at 8:30 with the feeble lead-in of Bergen’s summer replacement, the Robert Shaw Chorale’s concerts of traditional music. Without Bergen’s powerful escort, Allen’s season long average rating of 22.7 sank to a 9.4 in June against the second half hour of Stop The Music! It was a sign of things to come.
Youth Must Be Served. Horace Heidt returned to Network Radio after a two year layoff with The Youth Opportunity Program - a talent competition for singers and musicians on NBC that borrowed its format and judging standards from The Original Amateur Hour. Broadcasting from different major cities every week, ala Dr. I.Q., Heidt and his orchestra traveled from city to city where the troupe performed for a week in a downtown theaters and broadcast the program on Sunday nights.
Heidt hit the air running on his first show in December by introducing a handsome, 18 year old accordion virtuoso to the contest, Dick Contino. Contino won the program’s weekly first prize of $250 for 13 consecutive weeks and took home the season’s grand prize of $5,000. As a result of the show, Contino became a teen idol. Sales of accordions and accordion lessons soared and Heidt was off to a five season run for Phillip Morris cigarettes.
For Crying Out Loud… Prime time radio had no tear-jerking reality programming since John J. Anthony took his sobbing guests - (“No tears, please...”) - to Mutual’s daytime schedule in 1945. Break The Bank producer Walt Framer filled that void with Strike It Rich, the quiz show that dwelled on the “true life experiences” of its needy contestants who spilled out their problems to host Todd Russell. (4) The more tragic their stories leading to their seeking help from the program, the better. All candidates were screened and selected by Framer’s staff to meet that criteria.
It was as if Santa Claus had come to Network Radio as pleas to appear on the program flowed in by the thousands. All requested jobs, housing, transportation, medical treatment, artificial limbs, false teeth or whatever else the applicants might need to evade poverty, pain or some other fate worse than death.
The quiz offered a top prize of $800 but it was secondary to the show’s Heartline telephone which rang with offers to help the contestants escape whatever dire straits that had brought them to Strike It Rich. The show was awash in tears of self-pity converted to cries of joy when the Heartline and its pre-arranged benefactors came to the contestants’ rescue - on Framer’s cue.
Strike It Rich was moved to Sunday afternoon the following season with a new host, Warren Hull from Vox Pop. Hull remained with the show through its subsequent seven year weekday run on NBC Radio and CBS Television. As a result, Walt Framer cried all the way to the bank.
Fidler’s Duets. Among his Hollywood reporter competitors, including Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Jimmie Fidler was the most controversial with his often sarcastic and biting commentaries on the work and personal lives of the movie colony’s elite. His rapid-fire 15 minute Network Radio series dating back to 1934 were never ranked in the season’s Top 50, but Fidler became unique in 1947 when his program was broadcast twice on Sunday nights over two different networks - first on Mutual and two hours later on ABC. The unusual double dip, underwritten by drug manufacturer Carter-Wallace for its Carter’s Little Liver Pills laxative and Arrid deodorant, scored a total rating in double digits for two consecutive seasons.
Mutual’s Neat Nick. Nick Carter, Master Detective finished the season with a 13.0 rating - the all time high for any prime time program on Mutual. The detective series was similar in its melodramatic format and heavy organ scoring to Mutual’s Sunday afternoon pulp-fiction block - House of Mystery, True Detective Mysteries and The Shadow. With popular radio actor with Lon Clark in the title role, Nick Carter had a solid five year run at 6:30 for Cudahy Packing’s Old Dutch Cleanser but never cracked a season’s Top 50 or a Sunday Top Ten. (See Nick Carter.)
Lever Leverage. Lever Brothers and CBS co-owned Network Radio’s highest rated two hour block. Lux Radio Theater was the Monday night centerpiece - scoring its all-time highest ratings and the first of five consecutive seasons as Network Radio’s most popular program. Easily the most popular program for ten consecutive months, Lux Radio Theater of the 1947-48 season was the last series of Network Radio’s Golden Age to finish its season with an average rating of 30 or higher. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)
Lever’s Lipton Tea and Pepsodent brands book-ended Lux with two newcomers- Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts at 8:30 p.m. ET and My Friend Irma at 10:00. Both new shows shot into the year’s Top Ten along with Lux, making 1947-48 the first season in a decade that CBS had as many as three programs in the Annual Top Ten.
Godfrey’s Tea Party. After 13 years on the air, Lux Radio Theater became the only dramatic series to ever rank as a season’s Number One program. All it took was a lead-in boost from a 44 year old ukulele playing disc jockey who brought the first talent competition back to Network Radio since Major Bowes’ amateurs left the air in 1945. Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, produced by CBS, had kicked around the network’s schedule without a sponsor for over a year. Lever Brothers picked up the show for its Lipton Tea division in September to replace the disappointing - and highly expensive - Joan Davis sitcom, Joanie’s Tea Room.
Godfrey had been on the CBS payroll since 1934 - as a popular early morning disc jockey on the network’s Washington, D.C., and New York City stations. He was so popular that beginning in 1941, Godfrey was heard in both cities every weekday morning. But he never clicked on the full network until June, 1947, when the informal, mid-morning Arthur Godfrey Time debuted Monday through Friday on CBS. Nevertheless, Godfrey kept his “day job” with the two local stations in New York and Washington until November, 1948. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
Talent Scouts was an immediate hit in the Monday timeslot. Godfrey’s first season resulted in a rating that was over 50% higher than Joanie’s Tea Room could score for Lever. It was the first of five consecutive Top Ten seasons for Talent Scouts.
Irma La Dunce. Marie Wilson was 31 and a beautiful, busty, wide-eyed blonde. She had appeared in 40 films in supporting roles - yet few knew her name outside Hollywood where she had starred in comedian Ken Murray’s long-running stage revue Blackouts since 1941. That all changed when the comedienne became My Friend Irma immediately following Lux Radio Theater on CBS in 1947. Lever Brothers snatched up the prime timeslot when Screen Guild Players was pushed up to 10:30 by its new sponsor, Camel cigarettes.
My Friend Irma was created by writer-producer Cy Howard and starred Wilson as Irma Peterson, the warm hearted, empty headed, dumb blonde extraordinaire - an extension of her stage and movie persona. With support from top radio talents Cathy Lewis, Hans Conreid, John Brown and Alan Reed, My Friend Irma became one of Network Radio’s highest rated sitcoms, scoring four consecutive Top Ten seasons. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
Smart Show, Stupid Move. Doctor I.Q. had enjoyed four seasons as one of Monday’s Top Ten programs. The rapid fire quiz show was NBC’s top rated entertainment program on Monday for all four years, consistently scoring double digit ratings in its 10:30 timeslot. In 1947, after a two year hiatus, Mars Candy resumed sponsorship of the quiz show that traveled from city to city to originate its remote broadcasts from theaters packed with eager potential contestants seeking the silver dollars awarded for correct answers. (See Dr. I.Q.)
Then, in a maneuver nuttier than its Mars Bars, the candy company moved the NBC winner back one hour to 9:30, opposite the second half of Lux Radio Theater, Monday’s perennial leader since the 1935-36 season. Lux had grown even stronger since Dr. I.Q. first faced off against it in 1940 and lost its time period by better than a two-to-one margin. Their rematch was even more one-sided. Dr. I.Q. fell from Monday’s Top Ten and plummeted in the season’s rankings from 49th to 108th place among all prime time programs. The Lew Valentine quiz was battered by Lux for two seasons until Mars and NBC dropped the show in 1949.
Killing Time. NBC’s veteran comedy lineup took Tuesday’s Top Four positions - with Amos & Andy scoring its highest rating since 1934. But CBS continued to counter with the drama that Bill Paley promised it would against the highly rated NBC laugh getters. Scripted crime and detective melodramas of different types were relatively inexpensive for sponsors and generators of solid ratings for the network. It was smart programming for CBS because NBC outlawed any crime or murder mystery dramas to be broadcast before 9:30 p.m.
Big Town beat NBC’s Milton Berle at 8:00. Mr. & Mrs. North was brought to CBS by Colgate and nipped at A Date With Judy at 8:30. The Adventures of Christopher Wells was a one season attempt to siphon listeners from Fibber McGee & Molly. CBS continued its practice into other nights with familiar titles like The Adventures of Sam Spade, Mr. Keen, The FBI In Peace & War and Casey, Crime Photographer - all broadcast before 9:30. As a result, the network placed eight of its low-budget, low-risk dramas in the season’s Top 50.
Right Day, Right Time, Wrong Place. Milton Berle finally scrambled into the season’s Top 50 with a Tuesday night variety show that featured some of radio’s top comedic studio talent - Arnold Stang, Pert Kelton, Arthur Q. Bryan, Jack Albertson, Ed Begley and announcer/foil Frank Gallop. In its second season in NBC’s 8:00 p.m. timeslot the show’s audience jumped 40% and scored double digit ratings against Big Town on CBS. Nevertheless, Berle and sponsor Philip Morris parted company in April and he was gone from NBC Radio.
Ironically, Tuesday at 8:00 brought Berle his greatest triumph - on television. He first appeared as guest host of NBC-TV’s new Texaco Star Theater on June 8, 1948. It was the preview of a program would make entertainment history over the following season.
The Crooner’s Swoon. Bing Crosby made big news earlier in the year by signing Al Jolson to a $50,000 contract for ten Wednesday night Philco Radio Time guest appearances on ABC during the season. The ink was barely dry when Jolson signed another contract - to host Crosby’s former NBC show, Kraft Music Hall. Jolson showed up for just one Philco Radio Time appearance.
Crosby was forced to scramble and rely on a mix of movie star guests - actors Jimmy Stewart, Claudette Colbert and Barry Fitzgerald among them - and “casual drop-in guests” from other ABC shows like Lone Ranger Brace Beemer and Breakfast In Hollywood’s Tom Breneman. In a season of inflated ratings Crosby’s suffered a 20% loss of audience, falling out of the season’s Top 50 for the first and only time in his 21 years on the air.
The Big Story Is Crosby’s Downfall. Buried in the ratings by Crosby during its first season, NBC’s studio drama The Big Story doubled its audience and became the first program to beat Crosby in his time period since 1941 when Major Bowes pulled a one season upset. Inspired by actual newspaper reporters’ investigative tactics and their resulting true stories - while never allowing the facts to get in the way of an even better tale - The Big Story dramatized the stories and awarded the reporters responsible for them with a weekly prize of $500. The series became a Wednesday fixture on the NBC schedule for eight years, all of them under the sponsorship of American Tobacco’s Pall Mall and Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Inka Dinka Did Do! Rating woes were forecast for Jimmy Durante without Garry Moore, his partner for five years who had gone solo to host Take It Or Leave It. But failure was always predicted for the 54 year old Durante since his Jumbo Fire Chief fiasco. (See The 1935-36 Season.) Durante-Moore sponsor Rexall Drugs, moved Durante and his Inka Dinka Doo theme song to NBC’s Wednesday schedule at 10:30. The comedian fooled everyone by posting a solid three point gain over the team’s final season together. With or without Moore, Durante finished in the season’s Top 50 five times and was never out of a nightly Top Ten from 1942 through 1950 when he retired from series radio for even greater success in television. (See Goodnight, Mr. Durante...)
Mayor Barrymore & Mr. Scrooge. Screen legend Lionel Barrymore was 69 and had over 200 films to his credit along with five network seasons as Mayor Of The Town on CBS. Sponsor Noxema Skin Cream moved the heartwarming family series to ABC with better than expected results. Mayor Of The Town became the first program to ever increase its ratings by moving to ABC from NBC or CBS. The series topped its CBS ratings by a stunning 65%.
Barrymore played the widowed mayor of a small town much like his Dr .Leonard Gillespie character in 15 of MGM’s Dr. Kildare movies - a gruff but tender hearted patriarch with a booming laugh Agnes Moorhead headed a strong supporting cast as Hizzoner’s housekeeper, Marilly. Mayor Of The Town was best known for its annual departure from format when Barrymore became Ebenezer Scrooge in his annual holiday presentation of A Christmas Carol. He performed his radio adaptation of the Dickens classic over a dozen times.
Barrymore’s success at 8:00 was followed by Vox Pop which was picked up after eight seasons on CBS and moved to ABC’s Wednesday lineup at 8:30. The Parks Johnson & Warren Hull human interest/interview show recorded a 40% jump in its ratings.
Nothing Funny About It. Abbott & Costello weren’t as lucky in their move to ABC‘s Wednesday lineup. The comics and Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes had parted company in June after five successful seasons as part of NBC’s potent Thursday lineup. ABC scooped them up as a bridge between Vox Pop and the new Groucho Marx comedy quiz, You Bet Your Life. The new Abbott & Costello Show on ABC was offered to affiliates on a co-op basis, with half its commercial minutes sold nationally and the other half made available for local sale. Without the powerful support of NBC’s Sealtest Village Store and Eddie Cantor surrounding them, Abbott & Costello’s ABC show - with its familiar format and top flight supporting cast held over from its NBC run - dropped from 24th to 105th in the season’s rankings.
Jolson Sings Again. Kraft had seen its Music Hall ratings drop to half the levels that Bing Crosby averaged before he jumped to ABC. The low-budgeted replacement pairing of comedians Edward Everett Horton and Eddie Foy with Eddie Duchin’s orchestra struggled to stay in double digits. As a result, the cheese company decided to open its checkbook for a headliner who approached Crosby’s stardom.
Meanwhile, Al Jolson was hot again after the success of his filmed biography, The Jolson Story, a year earlier. The movie earned six Academy Award nominations and won two Oscars. A sequel, Jolson Sings Again, was already in the works at Columbia Pictures and his records were selling again.
Jolson demanded and got $7,500 per week to sign on as the new host of Kraft Music Hall. It proved to be a good investment for Kraft. The 60 year old singer, paired with pianist-comedian Oscar Levant, pumped the show back into first place on Thursday and a return into the season’s Top 20. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
CBS Plays Catch Up. Just two years after placing only one program in Thursday’s Top Ten, CBS pulled even with NBC. The network’s strategy was long term, counter-programming that landed most of its prime time entries into Thursday’s Top Ten.
Against the aging Jolson‘s Kraft Music Hall, CBS and Autolite countered with a variety show hosted by 32 year old movie singing star Dick Haymes. Opposite the frivolous Aldrich Family, CBS presented the well acted Suspense, replaced at mid-season by The FBI In Peace & War. Against the still popular comedy of Burns & Allen, CBS offered the melodrama of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons and Casey, Crime Photographer beat Jack Carson and Eve Arden’s Sealtest Village Store at 9:30.
Although neither CBS anthology series finished in Thursday’s Top Ten, First Nighter helped push Eddie Cantor out of the season’s Top 50 for the first time in his long career and Radio Readers Digest took audience from Bob Hawk who was moved to NBC for the season by Camel cigarettes to replace Abbott & Costello. Momentum was on CBS’s side against the long running shows on NBC.
Suspended Suspense. One glitch in the CBS Thursday schedule was the November cancellation of Suspense by Roma Wines. The network moved the mystery anthology - a Top 50 hit for three seasons - to Saturdays for the remainder of the season as a sustaining, hour-long feature hosted by Hollywood star Robert Montgomery. It remained unsponsored, unrated and apparently unwanted until mid-May when CBS shelved the show and waited for another sponsor to come along. It wasn’t a long wait before Autolite automotive products picked up Suspense for the following season and returned it to the CBS Thursday schedule. (See Sus...pense!)
Jumping Jack. Movie comedian Jack Carson was at the height of his Warner Brothers film career and had logged four years on CBS with his own Wednesday night sitcom dating back to the 1943-44 season.. Despite his growing movie fame and skilled comedic support on his radio show provided by Dave Willock, Arthur Treacher, Mel Blanc and Agnes Moorhead, Carson could never win his time period against NBC’s Mr. & Mrs. North. Carson left CBS to join Eve Arden as co-host of NBC’s Sealtest Village Store when Jack Haley left the show in 1947. The move provided Carson with his only double digit rating although Sealtest lost its time period to the CBS potboiler, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.
Darting In & Out of Prime Time. A dart game on radio made about as much sense as putting a ventriloquist on radio. Except Darts For Dough didn’t get anywhere near Edgar Bergen’s ratings. Soft drink Dr. Pepper promoted its hometown’s local radio favorite, Darts For Dough, from WFAA/Dallas to Blue’s Sunday afternoon schedule in 1944 to replace Al Pearce who had jumped to CBS. Hosted by friendly Orval Anderson, the combination quiz and stunt show’s contestants threw darts for cash prizes including a grand prize of $100 for hitting a bulls eye and setting off a crescendo of bells and whistles. (6)
Darts For Dough enjoyed its three year Sunday run until October, 1947, when it was slotted into ABC’s Thursday schedule at 9:30 p.m. ET. The dart game didn’t have a chance against two of Thursday’s Top Ten programs in the same half hour - Casey, Crime Photographer and the Jack Carson & Eve Arden Sealtest Village Store. It lasted for three months and scored a dismal 3.5 rating.
13th Year’s Good Luck. The average rating for Friday night’s Top Ten soared 43% to the highest level since 1934-1935. Coincidentally, ABC won the night with four programs in the Top Ten - its best showing since Monday of 1934-1935 in its Blue Network days. This Is Your FBI became ABC’s first program to win a night since Walter Winchell took first place on Sunday in 1944-45. With its twin, The FBI In Peace & War on CBS, the two G-Man shows turned in a combined 33.7 rating for the season. (See FBI vs. FBI.)
Make Room For Danny. Danny Thomas was the hottest comedian on the nightclub circuit and General Foods wanted a replacement for The Adventures of The Thin Man at 8:30 on Friday. Thomas was no stranger to radio - he had played ongoing supporting roles for Baby Snooks and The Bickersons since 1944. The new Danny Thomas Show debuted in January against two of Friday’s Top Ten - This Is Your FBI and Can You Top This? The Thomas variety show lost its time period to both with a 13.7 rating and the comedian left series radio in June, never to return. (7)
Ignorance Is Bliss. It was a classic choice for listeners: brains or buffoonery. Mutual picked up Information Please for co-op sponsorship - half network sponsored, half locally sponsored. The highly praised intellectual panel quiz led by Clifton Fadiman had enjoyed five seasons as a Top 50 program in its nine year history on Blue, NBC and CBS. It was slotted Fridays at 9:30p.m. on Mutual. (See Information Please.)
Meanwhile, CBS scheduled It Pays To Be Ignorant at 10:00 p.m.. With veteran vaudeville comic Tom Howard asking truly stupid questions like, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?,” his panel of numbskulls played by vaudeville vets Gene Sheldon, Harry McNaughton and Lulu McConnell - all formally addressed as “Mister” or “Miss” ala Information Please - would go off on rambling, nonsensical tangents but never answer the question. It was a half hour of verbal baggy pants slapstick, full of cheap jokes and insults - the total antithesis of Information Please. The season's final ratings? Information Please, 4.7 - It Pays To Be Ignorant, 14.3. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant.)
Now You See It... Gillette’s Cavalcade of Sports - aka ABC's Friday Night Fights - became the first network radio series to be televised on a regular basis - seen weekly on NBC-TV. Nevertheless, radio still ruled the ratings. Don Dunphy’s audio account the Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Heavyweight Championship fight on June 25, 1948, drew a whopping 59.5 rating. The fight was a rematch of their December, 1947, bout won by Louis in a controversial decision. Louis settled the rematch with an 11th round knockout.
Saturday Up, CBS Out. Saturday’s Top Ten average rating shot up 40% to its highest point ever recorded - even bigger than during the early Crossley years when double digit ratings were common. NBC claimed the seven top shows while ABC took the remaining three spots of the Top Ten with its crime oriented studio dramas. CBS was shut out of a nightly Top Ten for only the second time in its history.
Edwards Walks Into The Top Ten. Among the millions of random phone calls made by his operators over the years, C. E. Hooper himself was called once. It happened on a Saturday night in May, 1948. He reported that he was listening to Truth Or Consequences. He wasn’t alone. Truth Or Consequences was in its peak season - scoring the highest rating and ranking of any audience participation show - ever.
Ralph Edwards spiked his fall ratings with the third of his big jackpot giveaways, Miss Hush, again suggesting that listeners’ entries be accompanied by donations to The March of Dimes. Before dancer Martha Graham was identified six weeks later, the bounty of cash and merchandise prizes had grown to over $20,000, and the charity had collected an astounding $880,000.
Edwards followed that success in late December with The Walking Man - a mystery celebrity whose identity was disclosed in a series of clues - similar to the Hush contests. But only The Walking Man’s recorded footsteps were heard while Edwards read the clues. This time Edwards solicited donations for the fledgling American Heart Association. Contest entries containing contributions - sometimes over 100,000 envelopes per day - poured in for ten weeks while Edwards lured listeners with a jackpot that swelled to $22,500, in cash and merchandise. When Jack Benny was finally identified as The Walking Man in March, the American Heart Association credited over $1,75 Million in donations to the contest. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
NBC’s Record Party. Led by Truth Or Consequences, NBC’s entire Saturday lineup benefited from the listening boom. The Life of Riley, The Judy Canova Show, Your Hit Parade, The Grand Ole Opry and Curtain Time all recorded their highest ever ratings. Colgate rescued Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge from Wednesday’s debacle of the previous season when Kyser’s half hour was paired with the failed Frank Morgan sitcom, The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy. In his new Saturday timeslot Kyser inherited the powerful lead-in provided by Colgate’s Judy Canova. The Ol’ Professor’s ratings leaped 65%, propelling his musical comedy quiz back into the season’s Top 50.
NBC had more reason to celebrate when Frank Sinatra returned to Your Hit Parade after a two year absence and his fans responded in huge numbers. They accounted for a 60% ratings surge and a record high ranking in the Top 15 for Lucky Strike’s weekly countdown of hits.
“I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart…” Joan Davis couldn’t have picked a better theme song. Evicted from Joanie’s Tea Room by Lever Brothers, the comedienne was moved by CBS to Saturday at 9:00 in one of the network’s first experiments in co-op sponsorship - affiliated stations received commercial availabilities within the program instead of cash payment from the network for carrying the show. Joan Davis Time was slotted opposite two of Saturday’s Top Ten programs occupying the same half hour - NBC’s Your Hit Parade, which celebrated Frank Sinatra’s return as its singing host, and the gritty Gangbusters on ABC. The two programs accounted for 31.9 rating points which didn’t leave much audience left for Davis. Her sitcom registered a meager 5.1 - down over 60% from Joanie’s Tea Room. Her sitcom quietly left the air at the end of the season.
Silver Bullets Shoot Up The Ratings. All but one of the Multiple Run Top Ten programs was a Monday through Friday strip. That exception was The Lone Ranger, the Number One Multiple Run. After 15 years in the same Monday-Wednesday-Friday timeslot, The Masked Rider of the Plains out-distanced his nearest competition on CBS by a wide margin and finished among the Top Ten of all prime time programs on each of the three nights it was broadcast. The General Mills sponsored series from WXYZ/Detroit almost doubled its previous season’s rating and made its first of two appearances in the annual Top 50. It remained the Number One Multiple Run program for three consecutive seasons. (See The Lone Ranger.)
Thomas Follows The Money. After 13 years with the Blue Network and four with NBC, Lowell Thomas jumped to CBS for a reported $10,000 per week from Procter & Gamble. Keeping him in his 6:45 timeslot of 17 years, P&G owned a 45 minute block of CBS time - following the nightly Thomas newscast with Beulah at 7:00 and the Jack Smith songfest at 7:15. During the season when other programs enjoyed record gains in ratings, Thomas lost 30% of his NBC audience, fell out of the season’s Top 50 for the first time in his long career and never returned. Nevertheless, the veteran newscaster remained with CBS at 6:45 p.m. ET until his retirement in 1976 when he was 84 years old.
Beulah Back Big Time. The big surprise was Procter & Gamble’s revival of a former programming failure with a new format and familiar face. Hattie McDaniel, 54, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1939's Gone With The Wind and had another 18 featured movie roles to her credit - all in the stereotyped role as a fat and jolly family maid. Her radio experience was limited to reoccurring parts in the 1937 revival of Showboat and the cast of the Eddie Cantor Show five years later. In November she won the title role of the newly reformatted sitcom, Beulah, based on the character created two years earlier by the late Marlin Hurt. As a strip show, Beulah became a Multiple Run Top Ten hit for five years and for three seasons was among the annual Top 50 programs. At 7:00 p.m. it provided a solid lead in to Jack Smith's 15 minute music show at 7:15, also sponsored by P&G. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten,)
Soap & Soup Sales. Despite Lowell Thomas’s slip in popularity, CBS achieved a rarity by placing its entire block of five strip programs from 6:45 to 8:00 in the Multiple Run Top Ten. Two advertisers, Procter & Gamble and Campbell Soups, sponsored the entire block. CBS hadn’t programmed Multiple Runs in the 7:30 time period since 1938, opting instead for weekly half hour programs with different degrees of success. The network returned to the Multiple Run race in 1947 with Campbell Soups’ Club 15 starring Bob Crosby and the singing Andrew Sisters at 7:30 followed by a quarter-hour newscast by Edward R. Murrow, also sponsored by Campbell. The Murrow and Thomas newscasts, Crosby and Jack Smith music shows plus Beulah would all repeat as Multiple Run Top Ten programs for five consecutive seasons.
(1) To meet the growing demand for television receivers, 31 different manufacturers reported turning out 33,000 new sets a month in February, 1948. Most popular were the ten-inch screen table models produced by RCA and Philco with an average price tag of $350, ($3,485 in today‘s money).
(2) William Spier was also responsible for the successful Suspense mystery series on CBS. (See Sus...pense!)
(3) Ford had cancelled its hometown symphony orchestra when Henry Ford died and the company became free to appeal to popular taste with its radio advertising instead of bowing to its founder’s dictates which included buying prime time for the Greenfield Chapel Children’s Choir and Early American Dance Music.
(4) Todd Russell, the two year veteran of Mutual’s Double Or Nothing, was host of Strike It Rich during the program’s first and only prime time season on CBS. It scored a respectable 10.9 season rating against Horace Heidt’s new Youth Opportunity talent show on NBC.
(5) It was Lever Brothers’ big year. It owned five of the season’s Top Ten programs under its corporate sponsorship. In addition to Monday’s leaders, the company - known to the rest of the world as Unilever - also sponsored Bob Hope and Amos & Andy on NBC’s Tuesday schedule.
(6) The show’s large on-stage dartboard was highlighted by segments marked 10, 2 and 4 - the times of day when the sponsor recommended a bottle of Dr. Pepper for a workday energy rush of sugar.
(7) Four years later Danny Thomas turned up on television with his legendary sitcom, Make Room For Daddy, and teamed with Sheldon Leonard to produce a string of television’s most popular comedies including The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Top 50 Network Programs - 1947-48
A.C. Nielsen Radio Index Service. Sept 1947 - June 1948.
Total Programs Rated, 6-11 PM: 162. Programs Rated 13 Weeks & Ranked: 156
35,900,000 Radio Homes 93.1% Coverage of US. One Rating Point = 359,000 Homes
1 8 Lux Radio Theater 31.2 Lever Brothers/Lux Soap Mon 9:00 60 CBS
2 2 Fibber McGee & Molly 26.1 Johnson Wax Tue 9:30 30 NBC
3 7 Amos & Andy 24.1 Lever Brothers/Rinso Laundry Soap Tue 9:00 30 NBC
4 5 Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy 22.7 Standard/Chase & Sanborn Sun 8:00 30 NBC
5 1 Bob Hope Show 22.5 Lever Brothers/Pepsodent Tue 10:00 30 NBC
6t 4 Fred Allen Show 22.3 Ford Motors Sun 8:30 30 NBC (1)
6t 17 Truth Or Consequences 22.3 Procter & Gamble/Duz Laundry Soap Sat 8:30 30 NBC
8 N My Friend Irma 22.2 Lever Brothers/Pepsodent Mon 10:00 30 CBS
9 12 Phil Harris & Alice Faye 22.1 FW Fitch/Fitch Shampoo Sun 7:30 30 NBC
10t N Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts 21.9 Lever Brothers/Lipton Tea Mon 8:30 30 CBS
10t 3 Jack Benny Program 21.9 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Sun 7:00 30 NBC
12 11 Mister District Attorney 21.1 Bristol Myers/Vitalis Hair Tonic Wed 9:30 30 NBC
13 6 Red Skelton Show 20.4 Brown & Williamson/Raleigh Cigarettes Tue 10:30 30 NBC
14 26 Life of Riley 20.1 Procter & Gamble/Dreft Laundry Soap Sat 8:00 30 NBC
15t 14 Duffy’s Tavern 20 0 Bristol Myers Ipana & Vitalis Wed 9:00 30 NBC
15t 33 Your Hit Parade 20.0 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Sat 9:00 30 NBC
17 21 Big Town 19.5 Sterling Drug/Ironized Yeast Tue 8:00 30 CBS
18 15 Great Gildersleeve 19.1 Kraft Foods/Parkay Margarine Wed 8:30 30 NBC
19 29 A Date With Judy 19.0 Lewis Howe/ Tums Antacid Tue 8:30 30 NBC
20t N Al Jolson’s Kraft Music Hall 18.9 Kraft Cheese Thu 9:00 30 NBC
20t 10 Screen Guild Players 18.9 Lady Esther Cosmetics Mon 10:30 30 CBS
22 24 Inner Sanctum 18.6 Emerson Drug/Bromo Seltzer Mon 8:00 30 CBS
23 26 Aldrich Family 18.5 General Foods/Grapenuts & Jello Thu 8:00 30 NBC
24 35 Blondie 18.1 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Super Suds Sun 7:30 30 CBS
25t 15 Burns & Allen Show 18.0 General Foods/Maxwell House Thu 8:30 30 NBC
25t 58 This Is Your FBI 18.0 Equitable Life Insurance Fri 8:30 30 ABC
27 62 Adventures of Sam Spade 17.8 Wildroot Cream Oil Sun 8:00 30 CBS
28t 26 Fanny Brice Baby Snooks Show 17.3 General Foods/Jello Fri 8:00 30 CBS
28t 22 Judy Canova Show 17.3 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Halo Shampoo Sat 10:00 30 NBC
30 9 Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal 17.2 Jergens Lotion Sun 9:00 15 ABC
31t 38 Manhattan Merry Go Round 17.1 Sterling Drug/Dr Lyons Tooth Powder Sun 9:00 30 NBC
31t 36 Mr & Mrs North 17.1 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Halo Shampoo Tue 8:30 30 CBS
33t 51 Mr Keen 16.7 American Home Products/Kolynos Toothpaste Thu 7:30 30 CBS
33t 32 People Are Funny 16.7 Brown & Williamson/Raleigh Cigarettes Fri 9:00 30 NBC
35 86 The Lone Ranger 16.4 General Mills/Cheerios MWF 7:30 30 ABC
36t 81 The Big Story 16.1 American Tobacco/Pall Mall Wed 10:00 30 NBC
36t 71 Break The Bank 16.1 Bristol-Myers/Vitalis Hair Oil Fri 9:00 30 ABC
36t 34 A Day In The Life of Dennis Day 16.1 Colgate/Lustre Cream Thu 7:30 30 NBC
36t 71 Waltz Time 16.1 Sterling Drug/Phillips Milk of Magnesia Fri 9:30 30 NBC
40 18 Take It Or Leave It 16.0 Eversharp Pens & Pencils Sun 10:00 30 NBC
41 65 Kay Kyser College Mus Knowledge 15.9 Colgate Dental Cream Sat 10:00 30 NBC
42t 55 The Fat Man 15.7 Pepto Bismol Fri 8:00 30 ABC (2)
42t 31 The FBI In Peace & War 15.7 Procter & Gamble/Lava Hand Soap Thu 8:30 25 CBS
44t 38 Casey Crime Photographer 15.6 Anchor Hocking Glass Thu 9:30 30 CBS
44t122 Meet Corliss Archer 15.6 Campbell Soup Sun 9:00 30 CBS
46 74 Milton Berle Show 15.4 Philip Morris Cigarettes Tue 8:00 30 NBC
47t 40 Dick Haymes Show 15.3 Autolite Spark Plugs Thu 9:00 30 CBS
47t 96 Theater Guild On The Air 15.3 US Steel Sun 10:00 60 ABC (3)
49 N The Man Called X 15.2 General Motors/Frigidaire Refrigerators Sun 8:30 30 CBS (4)
50 22 Suspense 15.0 Roma Wines Thu 8:00 30 CBS (5)
(1) Fred Allen Show Oct - Dec Standard Brands/Tenderleaf Tea Sun 8:30 30 NBC
(2) The Fat Man Sep - Dec Pepto Bismol Mon 8:30 30 ABC
(3) aka: US Steel Hour
(4) The Man Called X Sep - Nov Generao Motors/Frigidaire Thu 10:00 30 CBS
(5) Suspense Jan - Jun Sustaining (Unrated, Unranked) Sat 8:00 60 CBS
This post is in part abridged from Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953. Copyright © 2012 & 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com