DON DUNPHY - KING OF THE RING ON FRIDAY NIGHT NETWORK RADIO.
TV Cooks With Microwave
THE 1951-52 SEASON
20th In A Series
Going Hollywood. Television continued to grow rapidly in technical development and viewer popularity. AT&T completed the installation of over a hundred microwave towers that traversed 3,000 miles, crossed the Rockies and linked both coasts with live video transmission. The path was cleared for live network production from Hollywood - an advantage previously exclusive to Network Radio.
And, as was the case with early radio, prime time television production would begin to shift from Broadway-oriented New York and low-cost Chicago to the glamour and glitz of the movie capital. Improved programming and production techniques sold television sets at the rate of over 400,000 units per month. A third of America’s homes had become television households.
Radio Chains Linked To Losses. Adding to Network Radio’s woes, increased competition from over a thousand AM stations newly licensed since 1947 - mostly independent outlets - cut further into the audience of established network affiliates. For the first time, the average rating of the season’s Top 50 and nightly Top Ten Network Radio shows fell into single digits, a new low.
People Are Funny, Groucho Marx’ You Bet Your Life, Dragnet, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and Hopalong Cassidy became Network Radio’s first programs to win their respective nights with less than a ten rating - numbers that only two years earlier would have barely scratched the season’s Top 50. As ratings went, so went revenues. To stay competitive, all four radio networks cut their evening rates from 15 to 25%.
The radio chains finished 1951 with their greatest drop in income since 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression. Network Radio took a $16.8 million dollar hit, totaling a 15.5% revenue decrease in three years. For the first time since the networks were established 24 years earlier, their share of total U.S. radio income dropped below 30%. - and there seemed no way to reverse the trend. Meanwhile, the networks’ television billings leaped to $180.8 million in 1951, up an astounding 112% in just one year and passing the radio networks by $1.3 million. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
Dream, Weaver. Like Bill Paley at CBS, NBC’s Pat Weaver was a strong proponent of the networks producing the programs they aired, not just providing their facilities for shows provided by advertisers and their agencies. In doing so, he advanced a new way to sell radio and television network advertising. Citing the high production costs inherent to television, Weaver, (the former Young & Rubicam and American Tobacco advertising executive), argued that underwriting sponsorships of entire programs was fast becoming too expensive. Instead of offering network time to individual advertisers in 30 or 60 minute chunks, Weaver proposed selling commercials within network produced programs to multiple advertisers in 30 and 60 second units Already practiced to a limited degree in Network Radio, Weaver wanted to make it routine. He called the concept Magazine advertising. It was already known and wide spread in local market radio and television as Spot - or more formally - Participating advertising..
NBC introduced spots to network television in January, 1952, with the debut of Weaver’s ground breaking morning program, Today. The network produced program and its new way of selling commercial time both had their critics. Nevertheless, The Today Show is still fixture on NBC-TV and virtually all radio and television advertising is now sold in spots
Weaver also foresaw a new kind of Network Radio program. His autobiography dates the idea back to the spring of 1952 when he first proposed Monitor, a 40 hour weekend marathon mosaic of entertainment, news, sports and feature segments anchored by popular network personalities. It took three years to put all the pieces together. Monitor finally hit the air in June, 1955, and remained an NBC weekend fixture for 20 years. (1)
Give Me Liberty...er...Give Me Debt. Gordon McLendon’s Liberty Broadcasting System, with its daily mix of live and recreated baseball games, had grown to 481 affiliates in the summer of 1951, second only to Mutual in size. Mutual and major league baseball had long-standing association with the network’s exclusive coverage of the annual All-Star game and World Series. They decided that something had to be done about the maverick from Texas who was leeching broadcast rights to big league games for a mere $1,000 a year. Adding insult to injury, The Sporting News named Gordon McLendon as “America’s Outstanding Sports Broadcaster of The Year” in 1951.
Mutual retaliated first in 1950 with its own Game of The Day - play-by-play broadcasts featuring sportscasters Al Helfer, Gene Kirby and Art Gleeson originating their reports directly from the ballparks, not a studio in Dallas. Then Mutual went after McLendon’s primary sponsor, Falstaff Beer. Organized Baseball followed with a demand that McLendon pay an annual $250,000, in rights fees and prohibited Liberty baseball broadcasts in any city that had a major or minor league team, claiming that Liberty’s radio broadcasts of major league games weakened minor league attendance.
Faced with these impossible obstacles plus the loss of its key sponsor, Liberty began to hemorrhage money and shut down operations in May, 1952 McLendon sued baseball for twelve million dollars in damages. “The Old Scotchman” settled out of court for $200,000, three years later. By that time the crafty McLendon had become a successful early proponent of Todd Storz’ Top 40 format at his Dallas, Houston and San Antonio radio stations. He later pioneered the “good music” and all-news radio formats in what became his ten city chain of a dozen AM and FM independent stations. (See Top 40 Radio’s Roots.) (2)
The Eyes Have It. Television continued to offer a familiar and formidable lineup of programs appealing to Network Radio audiences. Radio properties converted to television remained the fastest, most convenient - and sometimes cheapest - means that the tele-vision networks had to lure new viewers, push their ratings and attract bigger advertising dollars.
ABC-TV offered The Amazing Mr. Malone, Beulah, Chance of A Lifetime, Charlie Wild Private Eye, The Clock, The Lone Ranger, Mr. District Attorney and Stop The Music!
CBS-TV countered with Amos & Andy, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Big Town, Blue Ribbon Bouts, Burns & Allen, Casey, Crime Photographer, The Frank Sinatra Show, The Fred Waring Show, The Garry Moore Show, Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, The Jack Benny Program, Lux Video Theater, Perry Como’s Chesterfield Supper Club, The Sammy Kaye Show, Songs For Sale, Strike It Rich and Suspense. CBS also introduced I Love Lucy in 1951, a variation of Lucille Ball’s CBS radio sitcom, My Favorite Husband.
NBC -TV boasted The Aldrich Family, The Big Story, Break The Bank, The Kate Smith Hour, Leave It To The Girls, Lights Out, Martin Kane Private Eye, One Man’s Family, The Original Amateur Hour, The Quiz Kids, The Voice of Firestone, The Wayne King Show, We The People, You Bet Your Life and Your Hit Parade.
Some of the conversions went on to successful television runs - including a few legends. Others were simply filling time until something better came along. All further lessened whatever unique programming that remained on Network Radio. (3)
Infomercial Pleas. Mutual introduced another innovation to Network Radio in 1951 - programs of solid commercials with the sole purpose of moving merchandise - known today as infomercials. Homecraft Industries presented How To Play The Piano, which popped up occasionally in prime time to sell piano lesson books. Meanwhile, Mutual’s 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. timeslot on weekday mornings was briefly given over to pitches for Charles Antell’s Formula Nine hair pomade and National Health Aids vitamins in back-to-
back 15 minute segments.
A&A Plus. Amos & Andy were riding high Sunday nights on CBS. It was Network Radio’s most popular program in March, 1952 - the team's first outright monthly win in their 23 year Network Radio career - and it was the show's first nightly win since Monday of the 1934-35 season when it was the giant among 15 minute Multiple Run programs. Yet, only eight years had passed since Freeman Gosden, 53, and Charles Correll, 62, were considered washed up in radio when the quarter hour Amos & Andy dropped to 70th place in the season’s rankings. Their remarkable comeback in a half-hour sitcom format rewarded Lever Brothers’ Rinso laundry soap with the season’s second highest rated program - just half a rating point behind Lever’s top rated Lux Radio Theater. (4)
Winchell’s Ills. Walter Winchell, citing a “complete rest” ordered by his doctors after a second nervous breakdown within a year, cut his broadcast season short and left the air after his Sunday, March 23rd broadcast on ABC. The columnist was in the midst of his twelfth and last Top Ten season at the time. The bombastic Winchell had proclaimed himself - like Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy - a “Crusading commie fighter,” and flung innuendo-laden accusations with abandon in his newspaper columns and weekly broadcasts. His list of formidable critics and enemies grew to include leaders of both political parties, the NAACP and most every other influential syndicated columnist. Winchell found himself in a constant state of self-created public and private battles - more than enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown. (See Walter Winchell.)
Winchell’s broadcasts were filled following his departure by Erwin Canham and then Taylor Grant before Drew Pearson took over for the rest of the season in April. Despite Pearson’s popularity, Winchell sponsor Richard Hudnut Cosmetics immediately cancelled its $500,000 annual contract. Winchell returned to his Sunday program six months later but never regained his former popularity.
What Were You Smoking? Philip Morris cigarettes had sponsored The Philip Morris Playhouse on CBS for five years - three of them were Top 50 seasons. The program was renamed The Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway in September, 1951, and moved to NBC for four months then moved back to CBS in January. To make room for Playhouse On Broadway on CBS - and make the situation even more unusual - Philip Morris cancelled Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program talent show - a Top 30 program for two consecutive seasons. At season’s end, Heidt’s cancelled series finished in his career high 13th place - Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway’s ratings trailed Heidt by 20% and finished 30th.
GI Jo Was A Real Doll. Former Tommy Dorsey band singer Jo Stafford had carved out a successful solo career for herself in both records and radio since 1944 when she became a favorite entertainer of American servicemen stationed overseas who dubbed her “G.I. Jo.” The beautiful 34 year old Stafford had co-hosted NBC’s Chesterfield Supper Club with Perry Como for five seasons. Leaving the show in 1949, she returned to radio as permanent co-host of Carnation’s Contented Hour on CBS in March, 1950. Stafford and her co-star, veteran film actor/singer Tony Martin, pushed Contented Hour’s ratings back into contention. The long running show placed 40th in the 1951-52 season - its first Top 50 finish in 17 years. Yet, Carnation cancelled it in December. Eight months later, Jo Stafford became an international star with the release of You Belong To Me, the Number One record in both the United States and Great Britain. Stafford’s string of hits made her Columbia Records’ top selling female artist of the early 1950's and Columbia’s first artist to sell over 25 million records.
Tune In Turnover. Carnation's Contented Hour was just one of Sunday’s seven former Top Ten shows that disappeared from the schedule over the course of the season. Red Skelton moved to CBS on Wednesday, Meet Corliss Archer left for ABC on Friday and Mutual’s Roy Rogers rode off to NBC’s Friday schedule. The American Album of Familiar Music, Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program and Louella Parsons’ Hollywood News joined Contented as December cancellations.
Irma’s Popularity Ennds. Lever Brothers’ Pepsodent Toothpaste surprisingly cancelled My Friend Irma in June. The sitcom had ranked among Monday’s Top Ten and the season’s Top Ten programs for four consecutive years since its debut on CBS in 1947. The show was picked up by a small independent drug firm, Pearson Pharmacal, manufacturers of Ennds Chlorophyll Tablets. (5) Pearson moved My Friend Irma from the heart of Monday prime time to the CBS Sunday schedule at 6:00 p.m. Without the powerful lead-in provided by Monday’s Lux Radio Theater, the one joke sitcom starring Marie Wilson lost over 55% of its audience, failed to reach Sunday’s Top Ten and dropped out of the season’s Top 50.
A Dramatic Climax. Lux Radio Theater on CBS Monday nights was Network Radio’s most popular program for six of the season’s ten months and led a pack of 24 scripted dramas - the highest number of dramatic series that would ever rank among a season’s Top 50 programs. Lux celebrated its fifth and final season as the country’s Number One program. Although its ratings had dropped over 55% since the advent of television in 1948, Lever Brothers’ Monday night movie adaptations would always rank Network Radio’s most popular dramatic series. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
King Arthur’s Camelot. Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts lost nearly 30% of its previous season’s radio audience and dropped into single digit ratings for the first time in its five year run. But nobody at CBS or Lever Brothers’ Lipton Tea division panicked - instead they cheered. Simulcast with CBS-TV, the low cost Talent Scouts became the season’s Number One television program with a weekly audience estimated by Nielsen at over 8.0 Million viewers. Combined with the show’s Nielsen radio audience average of over 4.0 Million homes - and an estimated 8.0 Million listeners in those homes - Talent Scouts became the leading simulcast program of all time.
In addition to Talent Scouts, Godfrey continued to host his popular mid-morning CBS radio show and a Wednesday night variety show on CBS-TV - both highly rated and sold out with advertisers waiting in line. For his weekly marathon of broadcasts Godfrey’s pay was upped to approximately $1.0 Million a year by CBS. The 47 year old redhead was worth every red cent to his network and sponsors. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
What A Difference A Day Makes. Suspense scored the season’s biggest comeback when Autolite moved the nine year old series from Thursday to Monday, replacing the cancelled Hollywood Star Playhouse. Introduced every week by host Harlow Wilcox as, “Radio’s outstanding Theater of Thrills,” Suspense climbed from 38th to twelfth in the annual rankings. Suspense was the year’s top mystery/crime drama in a season when the genre accounted for over 20% of the Top 50 programs. It was a sweet comeback for the program that had been erased from the CBS schedule in 1948 for lack of a sponsor.
Power To The People! Ralph Edwards’ Truth Or Consequences left CBS in May, 1951, after just one season. Its departure left CBS without one of its Top Ten programs on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Mars Candy picked up People Are Funny when Brown & Williamson Tobacco cancelled its sponsorship of Art Linkletter’s stunt show after nine successful seasons on NBC. People had outscored Truth Or Consequences’ ratings for four years, including their coincidental scheduling on Tuesday night the previous season. The candy company kept People Are Funny on Tuesday but moved it from NBC to CBS. Listeners followed. People Are Funny became Tuesday’s most popular program and jumped back into the season’s Top Ten after a two year absence from the list. (See People Are Funny.)
The Real Mystery Is Why? People Are Funny replaced Tuesday’s Number One program of the previous season on CBS when Sterling Drug moved Mystery Theater to ABC’s Wednesday schedule. Beginning in 1943 on NBC as Sterling’s Molle Mystery Theater, the program was often compared to Suspense as a top notch mystery anthology. Molle was dropped from the title in 1948 when Sterling switched sponsorship of the show from its Molle Shave Cream to Bayer Aspirin and Phillips Milk of Magnesia laxative and moved the program to CBS. Of greater consequence, Sterling assigned production of the program to Frank & Anne Hummert and it became another of the couple’s simplistic character-driven series, sometimes known as Hearthstone of The Death Squad. Nevertheless, it was popular. Mystery Theater/Hearthstone registered three consecutive seasons on CBS among the annual Top 20 programs, finishing in eleventh place in 1950-51. (6)
Meanwhile, Sterling Drugs remained on the CBS Tuesday schedule with Pursuit, sponsored by Molle. Pursuit, the adventures of a British detective like Hearthstone, had traveled over five separate CBS timeslots in two years as a sustaining fill-in and summer substitute before Sterling picked it up. Pursuit wasn’t a Hummert production. Instead, it sounded more like Suspense with sharp writing, plus the same meticulous supervision of William Robson and Elliot Lewis delivered by Hollywood’s top radio actors . Nevertheless, Pursuit lost over 40% of Mystery Theater/Hearthstone’s audience. Sterling cancelled it before the end of the season.
Reports of My Death... Eddie Cantor left radio in 1950 to concentrate on his twelve Colgate Comedy Hour television shows per season plus another half dozen TV guest shots. The 59 year old comedian was briefly hospitalized in May, 1951, with a ruptured blood vessel in his vocal chords, prompting false reports that he had died. Proving the reports totally wrong, Cantor bounced back into his television work immediately and signed a new radio contract with Philip Morris Cigarettes for the 1951-52 season. The cigarette maker had jumped on the “mildness” advertising bandwagon and Cantor’s endorsement following throat surgery was considered a coup. (See Unfiltered Cigarette Claims.)
Eddie Cantor’s Show Business - Old & New debuted in October on NBC’s Sunday night schedule, then moved to Tuesdays in January. The recorded program with no studio audience was a total departure for Cantor. It featured phonograph records by Cantor’s show business friends, providing a springboard for his reminiscing about them. Philip Morris dropped the show after one season, but disc jockey/raconteur Cantor enjoyed doing it - even for little money Show Business - Old & New remained on NBC as a sustaining program until June, 1954.
Theater Dead & Barried. Lewis Howe’s Tums antacid tablets replaced the expensive Hollywood Theater, an anthology series featuring film stars, with Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator in mid-March. Craig starred Hollywood tough guy William Gargan who had enjoyed a 20 year career in the movies playing police and detective types. Gargan had left his radio and television role as Martin Kane, Private Eye three months earlier in a dispute over script quality. Barrie Craig began slowly but steadily built a following and remained on the NBC schedule until 1955.
Hopeless Tuesday. Bob Hope, 49, had been a Tuesday night fixture on NBC for 14 years. His half-hour comedy/variety show had been radio’s Number One program for five consecutive seasons from 1942 through 1947. Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield Cigarettes cancelled Hope’s expensive show at the end of the 1951-52 season. His final Tuesday night program was broadcast on June 24, 1952, resulting in a final month’s rating of 5.0. (7) Hope would return the following season on Wednesdays but Tuesday night radio was never the same again.
Red Weds A Disaster. Procter & Gamble cancelled Red Skelton’s Sunday show and CBS moved the suddenly sustaining Skelton into Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. to replace Hal Peary’s poorly received Honest Harold. CBS had carried Peary’s sitcom for a year in search of a sponsor without success. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s). Skelton’s sponsor-less program went unrated until March when Norge Appliances picked it up. It would have been better if Skelton had stayed outside Nielsen’s commercial standards during the show’s final four months of the 1951-52 season. The comedian’s ratings dropped over 65%. He fell from 8th to 86th place in the season’s rankings.
It can only be assumed that the program would have registered a higher rating if its sustaining months during the fall and winter had been rated when listenership was traditionally higher. However, Skelton’s six films in two years and his highly rated NBC-TV variety show every week beginning in the fall of 1951, suggest that the comedian’s decline in radio popularity was the result of overexposure. More evidence of this was found the following season when Skelton jumped back to NBC Radio’s Tuesday schedule with little improvement in his dismal rating.
NBC Runs Out of Town. Lever Brothers struck a double blow to NBC in December when it pulled Big Town from the network’s Tuesday schedule where it had registered three consecutive Top 50 seasons after its jump from CBS in 1948. (See Big Big Town.) Lever returned Big Town to CBS and a new Wednesday timeslot which did more than harm NBC’s ratings. The switch removed all Lever Brothers’ advertising from the NBC prime time radio schedule. (See Sponsor Sweepstakes.)
A Bout Winning. Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer was a longtime Network Radio sponsor dating back to The Ben Bernie Show of 1932-33. The Milwaukee brewer returned to the season’s Top 50 with its sponsorship of Blue Ribbon Bouts on the CBS Wednesday schedule - a weekly series of boxing matches simulcast by Pabst on CBS-TV. What differed the CBS/Pabst boxing shows from Friday’s long running Gillette Cavalcade of Sports on ABC Radio and NBC-TV, was its willingness to follow the boxing headliners of the day - Rocky Marciano, Ezzard Charles, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Jake LaMotta, Kid Gavilan, etc. - to arenas around the country, while the Gillette bouts were generally confined to New York’s Madison Square Garden. As a result, the Pabst matches reported by Russ Hodges scored steady ratings and finished in Wednesday’s Top Ten. Television stole its audience the following season. Blue Ribbon Bouts’ radio ratings collapsed, Pabst cancelled its sponsorship and the program went off the air in December, 1952.
Degrees of Consistency. Another Milwaukee brewer, Schlitz, took a different approach to its radio advertising. Academy Award winner Ronald Colman and his wife, Benita Hume, had been frequent popular guests on Jack Benny’s Sunday show, portraying the comedian’s polite but embarrassed British neighbors in posh Beverly Hills. (See Your Money Or Your Life.) In 1949, Fibber McGee & Molly creator Don Quinn proposed that they star in his new weekly series, The Halls of Ivy, an urbane sitcom about the president of a small college and his wife. After a slow start in January, 1950, the Schlitz Beer program broke into the season’s Top 50 in 1951-52. The Halls of Ivy earned a steady, consistent following that grew, however slightly, during its three seasons on the air. While most every other programs lost audience, Halls edged up in ratings from 6.5 to 6.6 to 6.7. It left radio in June, 1952, and was converted to television for a 39 week run in 1954-55.
Top To Bottom. The Fat Man was permanently pulled from ABC’s schedule in September, 1951. (See The Curse of Dashielll Hammett.) But The Fat Man’s head writer, Richard Ellington, had another series prepared for its star, J. Scott (Jack) Smart. The Top Guy was the continuing story of a two-fisted police commissioner who spent more time in the trenches fighting criminals than he did behind his desk. The melodrama bore a strong resemblance to Mr. District Attorney, complete to the presence of its star, Jay Jostyn, in a supporting role to The Top Guy. Unfortunately, the the series was slotted against two of Wednesday’s Top Ten programs, NBC’s Great Gildersleeve and Dr. Christian on CBS. The Top Guy couldn’t muster half of The Fat Man’s ratings and limped in at 71st place in the season’s rankings. The series was shuffled around the ABC schedule over the next season as a spot carrier for participating advertisers until it left the air in May, 1953.
Webb Cops A Hit. Dragnet was in its third season and became Thursday’s Number One show by holding the same 8.7 rating it had earned the previous season. Jack Webb’s low keyed police drama jumped from 45th to 14th in the season’s Top 50. It remained a fixture on the NBC radio schedule for the next six seasons. Webb took Dragnet to NBC-TV in January where it enjoyed an eight year run and became the network’s most popular dramatic series in concurrent radio and television runs - all sponsored by Liggett & Myers Tobacco. (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet.)
A Familiar Voice Fades. Barton Yarborough was one of Network Radio’s many studio actors whose voice was familiar but his face wasn’t. The native Texan was 31 when he landed his first major radio role as Cliff in Carleton E. Morse’s original San Francisco cast of One Man’s Family in 1932. He remained with the series for 19 years. Yarborough’s infectious friendly drawl was then featured as Doc Long in Morse’s I Love A Mystery. (8)
Jack Webb, another veteran of San Francisco radio, chose Yarborough for the role of his Los Angeles police detective sidekick, Ben Romero, for Dragnet's debut in 1949. The realistic police drama became a hit and was destined for television. After two and a half seasons of Dragnet’s increasingly popular radio run, Yarborough was eager to share in the success and fame that the program’s television adaptation promised. It was never to be. Five days after filming the second episode of the Dragnet television series Barton Yarborough dropped dead of a heart attack at age 51.
Hummerts’ Misters of Mystery Move. Sterling Drug’s Bayer Aspirin cancelled Wednesday’s Top Ten melodrama, Mr. Chameleon, in December. CBS exiled the Frank & Anne Hummert series to Sunday afternoons for a month until General Foods and Wrigley Gum joined to bring the show back to the network’s prime time schedule on Thursday. Mr. Chameleon lost half its audience in the moves and dropped to 49th for the season. (See Karl Swenson.)
Sterling’s Kolynos Toothpaste cancelled Thursday’s top rated Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons in June, 1951. Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield Cigarettes picked it up and moved it to NBC’s Thursday schedule. Keen fared better than the other Hummert programs, losing only 27% of its previous season’s ratings. Despite their programs’ ratings losses, the Hummerts finished the 1951-52 season in a unique position. They produced two of Thursday’s Top Ten programs on two separate networks.
Parade of Hits Runs & Airs On Thursday. After 17 consecutive seasons as a Saturday night staple, American Tobacco uprooted Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade and moved it to NBC’s Thursday schedule. The weekly countdown of popular hits had hopped between CBS and NBC over the years, but could always be heard on Saturdays. The move to Thursday was considered necessary by the tobacco giant and its agency, BBDO. They had discarded the idea of simulcasting the radio show and its television adaptation which was entering its second season as a Saturday night feature on NBC-TV. A complete divorce between the two versions of the program was ordered. That also meant two completely different casts. Television’s Your Hit Parade took the show’s young lead singers, Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins, which forced the radio version to look for a new and fresh headliner.
But instead of enlisting young star vocalists as it had in the past, the radio show turned to 49 year old Guy Lombardo, his Royal Canadians orchestra and their “Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven,” - a band that had been heard on various network shows since 1928. To the surprise of many, Lombardo’s troupe pushed radio’s Your Hit Parade back into the season’s Top 50 and kept the program alive for its final 18 months in Network Radio. (See Guy Lombardo.)
ABC’s One Night Stand. It had never happened before, not even in its peak Blue Network days of the 1930’s. Led by its mix of scripted shows, ABC won every Friday night prime time period from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m . The lineup included four of the season’s Top 50 shows - Dick Powell’s Richard Diamond, Private Eye, This Is Your FBI, Mr. District Attorney and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. The Lone Ranger provided a substantial lead into the powerful ABC schedule with a ratings tie against NBC’s strip shows, One Man’s Family and News of The World. All three were among Friday’s Top Ten.
ABC’s dominance of Friday lasted for only one season but stands as a tribute to the network that rose from a shell - methodically stripped of its headline attractions and sold by NBC in 1943 - to become a strong competitor in the high stakes arena of Network Radio in just eight years.
Dunphy Puts Up A Fight. Gillette’s Cavalcade of Sports Friday night boxing shows followed the ABC lineup of scripted winners at 10:00. The series didn‘t gain a Top 50 rating, but won its time period from the diminished and sustaining opposition offered by CBS and NBC. Don Dunphy’s exciting blow-by-blow radio accounts of the weekly fights was also opposed by NBC’s telecasts of the same contests, and yet another television attraction that siphoned Network Radio’s audience during the time period - Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont Network, starring comic actor Jackie Gleason, former star of television’s Life of Riley, who was fast becoming one of video’s top headliners.
Nevertheless, the Gillette boxing show posted two of the season’s biggest ratings. Dunphy’s description of the Joe Louis vs. Rocky Marciano bout in October scored a 10.6 and the Joe Walcott vs.Ezzard Charles Heavyweight Championship match in June hit 14.1. Unlike Pabst’s Wednesday night fights that left the air the following season, Gillette’s Friday night Cavalcade of Sports continued on year after year. The program moved from ABC to NBC in September, 1954, and remained a Friday night radio fixture until the summer of 1960. Throughout his 19 years of describing Gillette’s weekly boxing matches - including some 200 championship bouts - Don Dunphy was arguably the most widely heard sportscaster of Network Radio’s Golden Age.
DA Becomes DOA. Bristol-Myers’ Vitalis Hair Tonic evicted Mr. District Attorney from its eleven year home on NBC’s Wednesday schedule - all of them Top 50 seasons - and moved the melodrama to Friday on ABC. The crime fighting DA played by Jay Jostyn had compiled an enviable track record on NBC . It scored three Top Ten seasons and another six among radio’s 15 most popular programs. Mr. District Attorney lost 35% of its audience in the move to ABC, but managed to hold its own with the network’s powerful Friday lineup that took four of the night’s Top Five slots. Despite its decent showing, Bristol-Myers cancelled the program at the end of the season and radio’s most popular crime fighter of the Golden Age was gone. (See Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
Duffy Ain’t Here Anymore. After eleven seasons on three networks, Ed Gardner’s familiar Duffy's Tavern opening line, “Duffy ain’t here…”, had another meaning in late 1951. The sitcom which had scored three consecutive Top 15 seasons just five years earlier had drifted into unrated participating sponsorship on NBC and was cancelled at mid-season. (See Duffy Ain’t Here.)
Also gone from NBC’s Friday schedule were Bill Stern’s Colgate Sports Newsreel after a ten year run and the William Bendix sitcom, The Life of Riley, which had enjoyed six Top 50 seasons. (See Bill Stern.) An even longer running network program ended on ABC when The Sheriff was cancelled. The western series was the successor to Pacific-Borax’s Death Valley Days, a pioneering network drama that began in 1930.
Saturday’s Listless. Only eight prime time Network Radio programs were sponsored and qualified to be rated and ranked on Saturday. Saturday had become a stay at home night for millions of television viewers attracted by NBC-TV’s block of All Star Revue and Your Show of Shows, both developed under Pat Weaver’s leadership of the network. The Revue hour was hosted by rotating comedians Jimmy Durante, Danny Thomas, Ed Wynn, Jack Carson and Martha Raye. Show of Shows was a 90 minute marathon of variety starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. It was tough for radio advertisers to compete as sponsors. So they didn’t. Most of Saturday’s programming was sustaining and available to participating advertisers. Network Radio’s only rated popular music offering of the night was R. J. Reynolds’ Vaughn Monroe Show,(aka The Camel Caravan). Reynolds abruptly pulled the show from CBS in December and moved it to NBC.
Getting The Gate. Colgate Palmolive Peet was spending a large budget in television and cancelled two of Saturday’s top radio shows. The soap company dropped The Judy Canova Show during the summer of 1951 despite her seven consecutive seasons among Saturday’s Top Ten. The hillbilly comedienne/singer was off the air until December when NBC brought her sitcom back on a sustaining basis and retained its strong supporting cast intact, including the voice of Warner Brothers’ cartoons, Mel Blanc. (See Mel Blanc.) Without a fulltime sponsor for the rest of the season, The Judy Canova Show went unrated by Nielsen, breaking its string of eight consecutive Top 50 finishes. But the popular Judy wasn’t to be ignored for long. She returned with participating sponsors in October, 1952, for an encore Top 50 season.
Colgate also cancelled The Dennis Day Show in June. The singer had compiled five consecutive Top 50 seasons. The soap company had designs on a television show for the handsome Day, but the project never got beyond the pilot stage.
The Beulah Curse? Marlin Hurt created Beulah and died before the character’s first complete season as a half hour sitcom. In her fifth season in the title role of the weeknight quarter hour version of the sitcom, Hattie McDaniel was forced by illness to leave Beulah on November 14th She died of cancer eleven months later at the age of 59. (9) McDaniel was replaced at mid-season by another veteran black actress, Lillian Randolph - who survived until 1980. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
The Other Ameche. Adventure shows The Silver Eagle and Mr. Mercury had alternated with The Lone Ranger in ABC’s 7:30 timeslot on Tuesday and Thursday after the ill-conceived (Jack) Armstrong of The SBI was cancelled in June, 1951. Mercury starred busy radio, television and stage actor Staats Cotsworth who had held the title role of Casey, Crime Photographer on CBS for seven years. When Mr. Mercury left the air at mid-season, Silver Eagle became a multiple run series on both Tuesday and Thursday. The Silver Eagle, aka Canadian Mountie Jim West, was played by veteran radio actor Jim Ameche - who ironically originated the role of Jack Armstrong in 1933. (10)
(1) David Sarnoff and his son Robert still ran RCA and controlled NBC. Their egos were bruised when Pat Weaver was hailed in the press for his many innovations. The former advertising man who turned NBC’s fortunes around was pushed out of network power by the Sarnoffs in 1956.
(2) Mutual continued its daily baseball broadcasts until 1960. At its peak, Game of The Day, had 458 affiliates, several dozen shy of Liberty’s record when McLendon and his young crew created play-by-play broadcasts with wire reports and colorful imaginations.
(3) Struggling DuMont programmed radio favorites Ellery Queen and Twenty Questions in the 1951-52 season.
(4) Gosden and Correll were also rewarded with the loyalty of CBS which kept them on the radio network long after the sitcom had run its course in 1955. Their Amos & Andy’s Music Hall, a glorified disc jockey show, ran as a nightly strip show of 30 and 45 minutes with participating sponsors until November, 1960.
(5) Pearson Pharmacal was a forerunner in a short lived fad of the early 1950's during which a number of toothpastes, soaps and chewing gums became green in color to promote their “new and improved” formulas containing chlorophyll, billed as “Nature’s Deodorant.” Ennds was touted to rid consumers of bad breath, perspiration odors and smelly feet.
(6) In its subsequent move to ABC in 1951, Mystery Theater/Hearthstone became known as Mark Sabre - yet another of Hummerts’ formulaic productions. The program lost 55% of its CBS ratings and dropped out of the annual Top 50.
(7) Hope’s timeslot was filled over the next 13 weeks by an audience participation quiz, Meet Your Match, starring another fast talking comedian, 36 year old Jan Murray.
(8) Barton Yarbrough recreated the role of Doc Long in three low budget Columbia movie adaptations of the series. The films were far from major attractions and Yarborough remained just another face in the crowd.
(9) Hattie McDaniel was criticized by civil rights groups for her stereotyped role as a housemaid. In response she said, “I’d rather play a maid for seven hundred dollars a week than be a maid for seven dollars a week.” The veteran actress was actually paid a $1,000 a week and considered worth every penny by CBS, sponsor Procter & Gamble and her millions of listeners.
(10) Jim Ameche always lived in the shadow of his older brother Don, The Ameche brothers both looked and sounded alike, but only Don went on to huge Network Radio and movie stardom. Jim remained as The Silver Eagle under General Mills sponsorship for five seasons and later became a morning disc jockey on WHN/New York City.
Top 50 Network Programs - 1951-52
A.C. Nielsen Radio Index Service, Sep 1951-Jun 1952
Total Programs Rated, 6-11 PM: 136. Programs Rated 13 Weeks & Ranked: 105
41,900,000 Radio Homes. 95.5% Coverage of US. One Rating Point = 419,000 Homes
1 1 Lux Radio Theater 13.9 Lever Bros./Lux Soap Mon 9:00 60 CBS
2 4 Amos & Andy 13.4 Rexall Drug Stores Sun 7:30 30 CBS
3 2 Jack Benny Program 12.9 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Sun 7:00 30 CBS
4 3 Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy 11.2 Coca Cola Sun 8:00 30 CBS
5 5 Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts 9.7 Lever Bros./Lipton Tea Mon 8:30 30 CBS
6t 20 People Are Funny 9.6 Mars Candy Tue 8:00 30 CBS
6t 9 You Bet Your Life 9.6 Chrysler Corp./DeSoto & Plymouth Autos Wed 9:00 30 NBC
8 13 Fibber McGee & Molly 9.3 Pet Milk Tue 9:30 30 NBC
9 7 Walter Winchell’s Journal 9.2 Richard Hudnut Cosmetics Sun 9:00 15 ABC
10t 17 Bob Hawk Show 9.1 R.J. Reynolds/Camels Mon 10:30 30 CBS
10t 13 Life With Luigi 9.1 Wrigley Gum Tue 9:00 30 CBS
12 38 Suspense 9.0 Autolite Spark Plugs Mon 8:00 30 CBS
13 29 Horace Heidt Youth Oppty Program 8.8 Philip Morris Cigarettes Sun 9:30 30 CBS
14t 45 Dragnet 8.7 Liggett & Myers/Chesterfield Thu 9:00 30 NBC
14t 26 Hopalong Cassidy 8.7 General Foods/Grape Nuts Cereal Sat 8:30 30 CBS
16t 12 Mr & Mrs North 8.6 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Halo Shampoo Tue 8:30 30 CBS
16t 26 Our Miss Brooks 8.6 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Lustre Creme Shampoo Sun 6:30 30 CBS
18t 22 Dr. Christian 8.4 Vaseline Wed 8:30 30 CBS
18t 34 Father Knows Best 8.4 Crosley Radios/Refrigerators Thu 8:00 30 NBC
20 25 Gangbusters 8.2 General Foods/rape Nuts Cereal Sat 9:00 30 CBS
21 19 The Big Story 8.0 American Tobacco/Pall Mall Cigarettes Wed 9:30 30 NBC
22t 26 Bing Crosby Show 7.9 Liggett & Myers/Chesterfield Wed 9:30 30 CBS
22t 22 FBI In Peace & War 7.9 Wildroot Cream Oil Thu 8:30 30 CBS
22t 22 Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch 7.9 Wrigley Chewing Gum Sat 8:00 30 CBS
25t 33 Bob Hope Show 7.8 Liggett & Myers/Chesterfield Tue 9:00 30 NBC
25t 15 Mr Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons 7.8 Chiclets Chewing Gum Thu 8:00 30 NBC (1)
25t 50 Theater Guild On The Air 7.8 US Steel Sun 8:30 60 NBC
28 29 Great Gildersleeve 7.6 Kraft Foods/Parkay Margarine Wed 8:30 30 NBC
29 35 Big Town 7.4 Lever Bros./Lifeboy Soap Wed 8:00 30 CBS (2)
30 67 Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway 7.3 Philip Morris Cigarettes Sun 8:30 30 CBS (3)
31t 45 Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet 7.2 Heinz Foods Fri 9:00 30 ABC
31t 48 The Railroad Hour 7.2 American Railroad Assn Mon 8:00 30 NBC
31t 42 This Is Your FBI 7.2 Equitable Life Assurance Fri 8:30 30 ABC
34 15 Mr District Attorney 6..8 Bristol Myers/Vitalis Hair Tonic Fri 9:30 30 ABC
35t 29 Hallmark Playhouse 6.7 Hallmark Cards Thu 8:30 30 CBS
35t 67 Halls of Ivy 6.7 Schlitz Beer Wed 8:00 30 NBC
35t N Pursuit 6.7 Sterling Drug/Molle Shaving Cream Tue 9:30 30 CBS
35t N Tums Hollywood Theater 6.7 Lewis Howe/Tums Antacid Tablets Tue 8:30 30 NBC
39 35 Beulah 6.6 Dreft Laundry Soap M-F 7:00 15 CBS
40t 59 Carnation Contented Hour 6.4 Carnation Milk Sun 9:30 30 CBS
40t N Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show 6.4 RCA Victor Radios & TV Sun 8:00 30 NBC
40t 49 Richard Diamond, Private Det. 6.4 Rexall Drug Stores Fri 8:00 30 ABC
40t 60 Voice of Firestone 6.4 Firestone Tire & Rubber Mon 8:30 30 NBC
40t 56 Your Hit Parade 6.4 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Thu 10:00 30 NBC
45 38 Meet Corliss Archer 6.3 Electric Companies Co-op Sun 9:00 30 CBS
46t 62 Cavalcade of America 6.2 DuPont Chemicals Tue 8:00 30 NBC
46t N Eddie Cantor’s Show Biz Old & New 6.2 Philip Morris Cigarettes Tue 10:00 30 NBC (4)
48 80 Blue Ribbon Bouts 6.0 Pabst Beer Wed Var 60 CBS
49t 10 Mr Chameleon 5.9 General Foods/Wrigley Gum Thu 9:00 30 CBS
49t 72 One Man’s Family 5.9 Alka Seltzer M-F 7:45 15 NBC
(1) Mr Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons Sep - Mar Chesterfield Cigarettes Thu 8:30 30 NBC
(2) Big Town Sep - Dec LeverBros/Lifeboy Soap Tue 10:00 30 NBC
(3) Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway Sep - Dec Philip Morris Cigarettes Tue 10:30 30 NBC
(4) Eddie Cantor’s Show Biz Old & New Oct - Jan Philip Morris Cigarettes Sun 9:30 30 NBC
This post is in part abridged from Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.
Copyright © 2012 & 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
THE 1951-52 SEASON
20th In A Series
Going Hollywood. Television continued to grow rapidly in technical development and viewer popularity. AT&T completed the installation of over a hundred microwave towers that traversed 3,000 miles, crossed the Rockies and linked both coasts with live video transmission. The path was cleared for live network production from Hollywood - an advantage previously exclusive to Network Radio.
And, as was the case with early radio, prime time television production would begin to shift from Broadway-oriented New York and low-cost Chicago to the glamour and glitz of the movie capital. Improved programming and production techniques sold television sets at the rate of over 400,000 units per month. A third of America’s homes had become television households.
Radio Chains Linked To Losses. Adding to Network Radio’s woes, increased competition from over a thousand AM stations newly licensed since 1947 - mostly independent outlets - cut further into the audience of established network affiliates. For the first time, the average rating of the season’s Top 50 and nightly Top Ten Network Radio shows fell into single digits, a new low.
People Are Funny, Groucho Marx’ You Bet Your Life, Dragnet, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and Hopalong Cassidy became Network Radio’s first programs to win their respective nights with less than a ten rating - numbers that only two years earlier would have barely scratched the season’s Top 50. As ratings went, so went revenues. To stay competitive, all four radio networks cut their evening rates from 15 to 25%.
The radio chains finished 1951 with their greatest drop in income since 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression. Network Radio took a $16.8 million dollar hit, totaling a 15.5% revenue decrease in three years. For the first time since the networks were established 24 years earlier, their share of total U.S. radio income dropped below 30%. - and there seemed no way to reverse the trend. Meanwhile, the networks’ television billings leaped to $180.8 million in 1951, up an astounding 112% in just one year and passing the radio networks by $1.3 million. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
Dream, Weaver. Like Bill Paley at CBS, NBC’s Pat Weaver was a strong proponent of the networks producing the programs they aired, not just providing their facilities for shows provided by advertisers and their agencies. In doing so, he advanced a new way to sell radio and television network advertising. Citing the high production costs inherent to television, Weaver, (the former Young & Rubicam and American Tobacco advertising executive), argued that underwriting sponsorships of entire programs was fast becoming too expensive. Instead of offering network time to individual advertisers in 30 or 60 minute chunks, Weaver proposed selling commercials within network produced programs to multiple advertisers in 30 and 60 second units Already practiced to a limited degree in Network Radio, Weaver wanted to make it routine. He called the concept Magazine advertising. It was already known and wide spread in local market radio and television as Spot - or more formally - Participating advertising..
NBC introduced spots to network television in January, 1952, with the debut of Weaver’s ground breaking morning program, Today. The network produced program and its new way of selling commercial time both had their critics. Nevertheless, The Today Show is still fixture on NBC-TV and virtually all radio and television advertising is now sold in spots
Weaver also foresaw a new kind of Network Radio program. His autobiography dates the idea back to the spring of 1952 when he first proposed Monitor, a 40 hour weekend marathon mosaic of entertainment, news, sports and feature segments anchored by popular network personalities. It took three years to put all the pieces together. Monitor finally hit the air in June, 1955, and remained an NBC weekend fixture for 20 years. (1)
Give Me Liberty...er...Give Me Debt. Gordon McLendon’s Liberty Broadcasting System, with its daily mix of live and recreated baseball games, had grown to 481 affiliates in the summer of 1951, second only to Mutual in size. Mutual and major league baseball had long-standing association with the network’s exclusive coverage of the annual All-Star game and World Series. They decided that something had to be done about the maverick from Texas who was leeching broadcast rights to big league games for a mere $1,000 a year. Adding insult to injury, The Sporting News named Gordon McLendon as “America’s Outstanding Sports Broadcaster of The Year” in 1951.
Mutual retaliated first in 1950 with its own Game of The Day - play-by-play broadcasts featuring sportscasters Al Helfer, Gene Kirby and Art Gleeson originating their reports directly from the ballparks, not a studio in Dallas. Then Mutual went after McLendon’s primary sponsor, Falstaff Beer. Organized Baseball followed with a demand that McLendon pay an annual $250,000, in rights fees and prohibited Liberty baseball broadcasts in any city that had a major or minor league team, claiming that Liberty’s radio broadcasts of major league games weakened minor league attendance.
Faced with these impossible obstacles plus the loss of its key sponsor, Liberty began to hemorrhage money and shut down operations in May, 1952 McLendon sued baseball for twelve million dollars in damages. “The Old Scotchman” settled out of court for $200,000, three years later. By that time the crafty McLendon had become a successful early proponent of Todd Storz’ Top 40 format at his Dallas, Houston and San Antonio radio stations. He later pioneered the “good music” and all-news radio formats in what became his ten city chain of a dozen AM and FM independent stations. (See Top 40 Radio’s Roots.) (2)
The Eyes Have It. Television continued to offer a familiar and formidable lineup of programs appealing to Network Radio audiences. Radio properties converted to television remained the fastest, most convenient - and sometimes cheapest - means that the tele-vision networks had to lure new viewers, push their ratings and attract bigger advertising dollars.
ABC-TV offered The Amazing Mr. Malone, Beulah, Chance of A Lifetime, Charlie Wild Private Eye, The Clock, The Lone Ranger, Mr. District Attorney and Stop The Music!
CBS-TV countered with Amos & Andy, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Big Town, Blue Ribbon Bouts, Burns & Allen, Casey, Crime Photographer, The Frank Sinatra Show, The Fred Waring Show, The Garry Moore Show, Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, The Jack Benny Program, Lux Video Theater, Perry Como’s Chesterfield Supper Club, The Sammy Kaye Show, Songs For Sale, Strike It Rich and Suspense. CBS also introduced I Love Lucy in 1951, a variation of Lucille Ball’s CBS radio sitcom, My Favorite Husband.
NBC -TV boasted The Aldrich Family, The Big Story, Break The Bank, The Kate Smith Hour, Leave It To The Girls, Lights Out, Martin Kane Private Eye, One Man’s Family, The Original Amateur Hour, The Quiz Kids, The Voice of Firestone, The Wayne King Show, We The People, You Bet Your Life and Your Hit Parade.
Some of the conversions went on to successful television runs - including a few legends. Others were simply filling time until something better came along. All further lessened whatever unique programming that remained on Network Radio. (3)
Infomercial Pleas. Mutual introduced another innovation to Network Radio in 1951 - programs of solid commercials with the sole purpose of moving merchandise - known today as infomercials. Homecraft Industries presented How To Play The Piano, which popped up occasionally in prime time to sell piano lesson books. Meanwhile, Mutual’s 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. timeslot on weekday mornings was briefly given over to pitches for Charles Antell’s Formula Nine hair pomade and National Health Aids vitamins in back-to-
back 15 minute segments.
A&A Plus. Amos & Andy were riding high Sunday nights on CBS. It was Network Radio’s most popular program in March, 1952 - the team's first outright monthly win in their 23 year Network Radio career - and it was the show's first nightly win since Monday of the 1934-35 season when it was the giant among 15 minute Multiple Run programs. Yet, only eight years had passed since Freeman Gosden, 53, and Charles Correll, 62, were considered washed up in radio when the quarter hour Amos & Andy dropped to 70th place in the season’s rankings. Their remarkable comeback in a half-hour sitcom format rewarded Lever Brothers’ Rinso laundry soap with the season’s second highest rated program - just half a rating point behind Lever’s top rated Lux Radio Theater. (4)
Winchell’s Ills. Walter Winchell, citing a “complete rest” ordered by his doctors after a second nervous breakdown within a year, cut his broadcast season short and left the air after his Sunday, March 23rd broadcast on ABC. The columnist was in the midst of his twelfth and last Top Ten season at the time. The bombastic Winchell had proclaimed himself - like Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy - a “Crusading commie fighter,” and flung innuendo-laden accusations with abandon in his newspaper columns and weekly broadcasts. His list of formidable critics and enemies grew to include leaders of both political parties, the NAACP and most every other influential syndicated columnist. Winchell found himself in a constant state of self-created public and private battles - more than enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown. (See Walter Winchell.)
Winchell’s broadcasts were filled following his departure by Erwin Canham and then Taylor Grant before Drew Pearson took over for the rest of the season in April. Despite Pearson’s popularity, Winchell sponsor Richard Hudnut Cosmetics immediately cancelled its $500,000 annual contract. Winchell returned to his Sunday program six months later but never regained his former popularity.
What Were You Smoking? Philip Morris cigarettes had sponsored The Philip Morris Playhouse on CBS for five years - three of them were Top 50 seasons. The program was renamed The Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway in September, 1951, and moved to NBC for four months then moved back to CBS in January. To make room for Playhouse On Broadway on CBS - and make the situation even more unusual - Philip Morris cancelled Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program talent show - a Top 30 program for two consecutive seasons. At season’s end, Heidt’s cancelled series finished in his career high 13th place - Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway’s ratings trailed Heidt by 20% and finished 30th.
GI Jo Was A Real Doll. Former Tommy Dorsey band singer Jo Stafford had carved out a successful solo career for herself in both records and radio since 1944 when she became a favorite entertainer of American servicemen stationed overseas who dubbed her “G.I. Jo.” The beautiful 34 year old Stafford had co-hosted NBC’s Chesterfield Supper Club with Perry Como for five seasons. Leaving the show in 1949, she returned to radio as permanent co-host of Carnation’s Contented Hour on CBS in March, 1950. Stafford and her co-star, veteran film actor/singer Tony Martin, pushed Contented Hour’s ratings back into contention. The long running show placed 40th in the 1951-52 season - its first Top 50 finish in 17 years. Yet, Carnation cancelled it in December. Eight months later, Jo Stafford became an international star with the release of You Belong To Me, the Number One record in both the United States and Great Britain. Stafford’s string of hits made her Columbia Records’ top selling female artist of the early 1950's and Columbia’s first artist to sell over 25 million records.
Tune In Turnover. Carnation's Contented Hour was just one of Sunday’s seven former Top Ten shows that disappeared from the schedule over the course of the season. Red Skelton moved to CBS on Wednesday, Meet Corliss Archer left for ABC on Friday and Mutual’s Roy Rogers rode off to NBC’s Friday schedule. The American Album of Familiar Music, Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program and Louella Parsons’ Hollywood News joined Contented as December cancellations.
Irma’s Popularity Ennds. Lever Brothers’ Pepsodent Toothpaste surprisingly cancelled My Friend Irma in June. The sitcom had ranked among Monday’s Top Ten and the season’s Top Ten programs for four consecutive years since its debut on CBS in 1947. The show was picked up by a small independent drug firm, Pearson Pharmacal, manufacturers of Ennds Chlorophyll Tablets. (5) Pearson moved My Friend Irma from the heart of Monday prime time to the CBS Sunday schedule at 6:00 p.m. Without the powerful lead-in provided by Monday’s Lux Radio Theater, the one joke sitcom starring Marie Wilson lost over 55% of its audience, failed to reach Sunday’s Top Ten and dropped out of the season’s Top 50.
A Dramatic Climax. Lux Radio Theater on CBS Monday nights was Network Radio’s most popular program for six of the season’s ten months and led a pack of 24 scripted dramas - the highest number of dramatic series that would ever rank among a season’s Top 50 programs. Lux celebrated its fifth and final season as the country’s Number One program. Although its ratings had dropped over 55% since the advent of television in 1948, Lever Brothers’ Monday night movie adaptations would always rank Network Radio’s most popular dramatic series. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
King Arthur’s Camelot. Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts lost nearly 30% of its previous season’s radio audience and dropped into single digit ratings for the first time in its five year run. But nobody at CBS or Lever Brothers’ Lipton Tea division panicked - instead they cheered. Simulcast with CBS-TV, the low cost Talent Scouts became the season’s Number One television program with a weekly audience estimated by Nielsen at over 8.0 Million viewers. Combined with the show’s Nielsen radio audience average of over 4.0 Million homes - and an estimated 8.0 Million listeners in those homes - Talent Scouts became the leading simulcast program of all time.
In addition to Talent Scouts, Godfrey continued to host his popular mid-morning CBS radio show and a Wednesday night variety show on CBS-TV - both highly rated and sold out with advertisers waiting in line. For his weekly marathon of broadcasts Godfrey’s pay was upped to approximately $1.0 Million a year by CBS. The 47 year old redhead was worth every red cent to his network and sponsors. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
What A Difference A Day Makes. Suspense scored the season’s biggest comeback when Autolite moved the nine year old series from Thursday to Monday, replacing the cancelled Hollywood Star Playhouse. Introduced every week by host Harlow Wilcox as, “Radio’s outstanding Theater of Thrills,” Suspense climbed from 38th to twelfth in the annual rankings. Suspense was the year’s top mystery/crime drama in a season when the genre accounted for over 20% of the Top 50 programs. It was a sweet comeback for the program that had been erased from the CBS schedule in 1948 for lack of a sponsor.
Power To The People! Ralph Edwards’ Truth Or Consequences left CBS in May, 1951, after just one season. Its departure left CBS without one of its Top Ten programs on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Mars Candy picked up People Are Funny when Brown & Williamson Tobacco cancelled its sponsorship of Art Linkletter’s stunt show after nine successful seasons on NBC. People had outscored Truth Or Consequences’ ratings for four years, including their coincidental scheduling on Tuesday night the previous season. The candy company kept People Are Funny on Tuesday but moved it from NBC to CBS. Listeners followed. People Are Funny became Tuesday’s most popular program and jumped back into the season’s Top Ten after a two year absence from the list. (See People Are Funny.)
The Real Mystery Is Why? People Are Funny replaced Tuesday’s Number One program of the previous season on CBS when Sterling Drug moved Mystery Theater to ABC’s Wednesday schedule. Beginning in 1943 on NBC as Sterling’s Molle Mystery Theater, the program was often compared to Suspense as a top notch mystery anthology. Molle was dropped from the title in 1948 when Sterling switched sponsorship of the show from its Molle Shave Cream to Bayer Aspirin and Phillips Milk of Magnesia laxative and moved the program to CBS. Of greater consequence, Sterling assigned production of the program to Frank & Anne Hummert and it became another of the couple’s simplistic character-driven series, sometimes known as Hearthstone of The Death Squad. Nevertheless, it was popular. Mystery Theater/Hearthstone registered three consecutive seasons on CBS among the annual Top 20 programs, finishing in eleventh place in 1950-51. (6)
Meanwhile, Sterling Drugs remained on the CBS Tuesday schedule with Pursuit, sponsored by Molle. Pursuit, the adventures of a British detective like Hearthstone, had traveled over five separate CBS timeslots in two years as a sustaining fill-in and summer substitute before Sterling picked it up. Pursuit wasn’t a Hummert production. Instead, it sounded more like Suspense with sharp writing, plus the same meticulous supervision of William Robson and Elliot Lewis delivered by Hollywood’s top radio actors . Nevertheless, Pursuit lost over 40% of Mystery Theater/Hearthstone’s audience. Sterling cancelled it before the end of the season.
Reports of My Death... Eddie Cantor left radio in 1950 to concentrate on his twelve Colgate Comedy Hour television shows per season plus another half dozen TV guest shots. The 59 year old comedian was briefly hospitalized in May, 1951, with a ruptured blood vessel in his vocal chords, prompting false reports that he had died. Proving the reports totally wrong, Cantor bounced back into his television work immediately and signed a new radio contract with Philip Morris Cigarettes for the 1951-52 season. The cigarette maker had jumped on the “mildness” advertising bandwagon and Cantor’s endorsement following throat surgery was considered a coup. (See Unfiltered Cigarette Claims.)
Eddie Cantor’s Show Business - Old & New debuted in October on NBC’s Sunday night schedule, then moved to Tuesdays in January. The recorded program with no studio audience was a total departure for Cantor. It featured phonograph records by Cantor’s show business friends, providing a springboard for his reminiscing about them. Philip Morris dropped the show after one season, but disc jockey/raconteur Cantor enjoyed doing it - even for little money Show Business - Old & New remained on NBC as a sustaining program until June, 1954.
Theater Dead & Barried. Lewis Howe’s Tums antacid tablets replaced the expensive Hollywood Theater, an anthology series featuring film stars, with Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator in mid-March. Craig starred Hollywood tough guy William Gargan who had enjoyed a 20 year career in the movies playing police and detective types. Gargan had left his radio and television role as Martin Kane, Private Eye three months earlier in a dispute over script quality. Barrie Craig began slowly but steadily built a following and remained on the NBC schedule until 1955.
Hopeless Tuesday. Bob Hope, 49, had been a Tuesday night fixture on NBC for 14 years. His half-hour comedy/variety show had been radio’s Number One program for five consecutive seasons from 1942 through 1947. Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield Cigarettes cancelled Hope’s expensive show at the end of the 1951-52 season. His final Tuesday night program was broadcast on June 24, 1952, resulting in a final month’s rating of 5.0. (7) Hope would return the following season on Wednesdays but Tuesday night radio was never the same again.
Red Weds A Disaster. Procter & Gamble cancelled Red Skelton’s Sunday show and CBS moved the suddenly sustaining Skelton into Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. to replace Hal Peary’s poorly received Honest Harold. CBS had carried Peary’s sitcom for a year in search of a sponsor without success. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s). Skelton’s sponsor-less program went unrated until March when Norge Appliances picked it up. It would have been better if Skelton had stayed outside Nielsen’s commercial standards during the show’s final four months of the 1951-52 season. The comedian’s ratings dropped over 65%. He fell from 8th to 86th place in the season’s rankings.
It can only be assumed that the program would have registered a higher rating if its sustaining months during the fall and winter had been rated when listenership was traditionally higher. However, Skelton’s six films in two years and his highly rated NBC-TV variety show every week beginning in the fall of 1951, suggest that the comedian’s decline in radio popularity was the result of overexposure. More evidence of this was found the following season when Skelton jumped back to NBC Radio’s Tuesday schedule with little improvement in his dismal rating.
NBC Runs Out of Town. Lever Brothers struck a double blow to NBC in December when it pulled Big Town from the network’s Tuesday schedule where it had registered three consecutive Top 50 seasons after its jump from CBS in 1948. (See Big Big Town.) Lever returned Big Town to CBS and a new Wednesday timeslot which did more than harm NBC’s ratings. The switch removed all Lever Brothers’ advertising from the NBC prime time radio schedule. (See Sponsor Sweepstakes.)
A Bout Winning. Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer was a longtime Network Radio sponsor dating back to The Ben Bernie Show of 1932-33. The Milwaukee brewer returned to the season’s Top 50 with its sponsorship of Blue Ribbon Bouts on the CBS Wednesday schedule - a weekly series of boxing matches simulcast by Pabst on CBS-TV. What differed the CBS/Pabst boxing shows from Friday’s long running Gillette Cavalcade of Sports on ABC Radio and NBC-TV, was its willingness to follow the boxing headliners of the day - Rocky Marciano, Ezzard Charles, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Jake LaMotta, Kid Gavilan, etc. - to arenas around the country, while the Gillette bouts were generally confined to New York’s Madison Square Garden. As a result, the Pabst matches reported by Russ Hodges scored steady ratings and finished in Wednesday’s Top Ten. Television stole its audience the following season. Blue Ribbon Bouts’ radio ratings collapsed, Pabst cancelled its sponsorship and the program went off the air in December, 1952.
Degrees of Consistency. Another Milwaukee brewer, Schlitz, took a different approach to its radio advertising. Academy Award winner Ronald Colman and his wife, Benita Hume, had been frequent popular guests on Jack Benny’s Sunday show, portraying the comedian’s polite but embarrassed British neighbors in posh Beverly Hills. (See Your Money Or Your Life.) In 1949, Fibber McGee & Molly creator Don Quinn proposed that they star in his new weekly series, The Halls of Ivy, an urbane sitcom about the president of a small college and his wife. After a slow start in January, 1950, the Schlitz Beer program broke into the season’s Top 50 in 1951-52. The Halls of Ivy earned a steady, consistent following that grew, however slightly, during its three seasons on the air. While most every other programs lost audience, Halls edged up in ratings from 6.5 to 6.6 to 6.7. It left radio in June, 1952, and was converted to television for a 39 week run in 1954-55.
Top To Bottom. The Fat Man was permanently pulled from ABC’s schedule in September, 1951. (See The Curse of Dashielll Hammett.) But The Fat Man’s head writer, Richard Ellington, had another series prepared for its star, J. Scott (Jack) Smart. The Top Guy was the continuing story of a two-fisted police commissioner who spent more time in the trenches fighting criminals than he did behind his desk. The melodrama bore a strong resemblance to Mr. District Attorney, complete to the presence of its star, Jay Jostyn, in a supporting role to The Top Guy. Unfortunately, the the series was slotted against two of Wednesday’s Top Ten programs, NBC’s Great Gildersleeve and Dr. Christian on CBS. The Top Guy couldn’t muster half of The Fat Man’s ratings and limped in at 71st place in the season’s rankings. The series was shuffled around the ABC schedule over the next season as a spot carrier for participating advertisers until it left the air in May, 1953.
Webb Cops A Hit. Dragnet was in its third season and became Thursday’s Number One show by holding the same 8.7 rating it had earned the previous season. Jack Webb’s low keyed police drama jumped from 45th to 14th in the season’s Top 50. It remained a fixture on the NBC radio schedule for the next six seasons. Webb took Dragnet to NBC-TV in January where it enjoyed an eight year run and became the network’s most popular dramatic series in concurrent radio and television runs - all sponsored by Liggett & Myers Tobacco. (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet.)
A Familiar Voice Fades. Barton Yarborough was one of Network Radio’s many studio actors whose voice was familiar but his face wasn’t. The native Texan was 31 when he landed his first major radio role as Cliff in Carleton E. Morse’s original San Francisco cast of One Man’s Family in 1932. He remained with the series for 19 years. Yarborough’s infectious friendly drawl was then featured as Doc Long in Morse’s I Love A Mystery. (8)
Jack Webb, another veteran of San Francisco radio, chose Yarborough for the role of his Los Angeles police detective sidekick, Ben Romero, for Dragnet's debut in 1949. The realistic police drama became a hit and was destined for television. After two and a half seasons of Dragnet’s increasingly popular radio run, Yarborough was eager to share in the success and fame that the program’s television adaptation promised. It was never to be. Five days after filming the second episode of the Dragnet television series Barton Yarborough dropped dead of a heart attack at age 51.
Hummerts’ Misters of Mystery Move. Sterling Drug’s Bayer Aspirin cancelled Wednesday’s Top Ten melodrama, Mr. Chameleon, in December. CBS exiled the Frank & Anne Hummert series to Sunday afternoons for a month until General Foods and Wrigley Gum joined to bring the show back to the network’s prime time schedule on Thursday. Mr. Chameleon lost half its audience in the moves and dropped to 49th for the season. (See Karl Swenson.)
Sterling’s Kolynos Toothpaste cancelled Thursday’s top rated Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons in June, 1951. Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield Cigarettes picked it up and moved it to NBC’s Thursday schedule. Keen fared better than the other Hummert programs, losing only 27% of its previous season’s ratings. Despite their programs’ ratings losses, the Hummerts finished the 1951-52 season in a unique position. They produced two of Thursday’s Top Ten programs on two separate networks.
Parade of Hits Runs & Airs On Thursday. After 17 consecutive seasons as a Saturday night staple, American Tobacco uprooted Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade and moved it to NBC’s Thursday schedule. The weekly countdown of popular hits had hopped between CBS and NBC over the years, but could always be heard on Saturdays. The move to Thursday was considered necessary by the tobacco giant and its agency, BBDO. They had discarded the idea of simulcasting the radio show and its television adaptation which was entering its second season as a Saturday night feature on NBC-TV. A complete divorce between the two versions of the program was ordered. That also meant two completely different casts. Television’s Your Hit Parade took the show’s young lead singers, Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins, which forced the radio version to look for a new and fresh headliner.
But instead of enlisting young star vocalists as it had in the past, the radio show turned to 49 year old Guy Lombardo, his Royal Canadians orchestra and their “Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven,” - a band that had been heard on various network shows since 1928. To the surprise of many, Lombardo’s troupe pushed radio’s Your Hit Parade back into the season’s Top 50 and kept the program alive for its final 18 months in Network Radio. (See Guy Lombardo.)
ABC’s One Night Stand. It had never happened before, not even in its peak Blue Network days of the 1930’s. Led by its mix of scripted shows, ABC won every Friday night prime time period from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m . The lineup included four of the season’s Top 50 shows - Dick Powell’s Richard Diamond, Private Eye, This Is Your FBI, Mr. District Attorney and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. The Lone Ranger provided a substantial lead into the powerful ABC schedule with a ratings tie against NBC’s strip shows, One Man’s Family and News of The World. All three were among Friday’s Top Ten.
ABC’s dominance of Friday lasted for only one season but stands as a tribute to the network that rose from a shell - methodically stripped of its headline attractions and sold by NBC in 1943 - to become a strong competitor in the high stakes arena of Network Radio in just eight years.
Dunphy Puts Up A Fight. Gillette’s Cavalcade of Sports Friday night boxing shows followed the ABC lineup of scripted winners at 10:00. The series didn‘t gain a Top 50 rating, but won its time period from the diminished and sustaining opposition offered by CBS and NBC. Don Dunphy’s exciting blow-by-blow radio accounts of the weekly fights was also opposed by NBC’s telecasts of the same contests, and yet another television attraction that siphoned Network Radio’s audience during the time period - Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont Network, starring comic actor Jackie Gleason, former star of television’s Life of Riley, who was fast becoming one of video’s top headliners.
Nevertheless, the Gillette boxing show posted two of the season’s biggest ratings. Dunphy’s description of the Joe Louis vs. Rocky Marciano bout in October scored a 10.6 and the Joe Walcott vs.Ezzard Charles Heavyweight Championship match in June hit 14.1. Unlike Pabst’s Wednesday night fights that left the air the following season, Gillette’s Friday night Cavalcade of Sports continued on year after year. The program moved from ABC to NBC in September, 1954, and remained a Friday night radio fixture until the summer of 1960. Throughout his 19 years of describing Gillette’s weekly boxing matches - including some 200 championship bouts - Don Dunphy was arguably the most widely heard sportscaster of Network Radio’s Golden Age.
DA Becomes DOA. Bristol-Myers’ Vitalis Hair Tonic evicted Mr. District Attorney from its eleven year home on NBC’s Wednesday schedule - all of them Top 50 seasons - and moved the melodrama to Friday on ABC. The crime fighting DA played by Jay Jostyn had compiled an enviable track record on NBC . It scored three Top Ten seasons and another six among radio’s 15 most popular programs. Mr. District Attorney lost 35% of its audience in the move to ABC, but managed to hold its own with the network’s powerful Friday lineup that took four of the night’s Top Five slots. Despite its decent showing, Bristol-Myers cancelled the program at the end of the season and radio’s most popular crime fighter of the Golden Age was gone. (See Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
Duffy Ain’t Here Anymore. After eleven seasons on three networks, Ed Gardner’s familiar Duffy's Tavern opening line, “Duffy ain’t here…”, had another meaning in late 1951. The sitcom which had scored three consecutive Top 15 seasons just five years earlier had drifted into unrated participating sponsorship on NBC and was cancelled at mid-season. (See Duffy Ain’t Here.)
Also gone from NBC’s Friday schedule were Bill Stern’s Colgate Sports Newsreel after a ten year run and the William Bendix sitcom, The Life of Riley, which had enjoyed six Top 50 seasons. (See Bill Stern.) An even longer running network program ended on ABC when The Sheriff was cancelled. The western series was the successor to Pacific-Borax’s Death Valley Days, a pioneering network drama that began in 1930.
Saturday’s Listless. Only eight prime time Network Radio programs were sponsored and qualified to be rated and ranked on Saturday. Saturday had become a stay at home night for millions of television viewers attracted by NBC-TV’s block of All Star Revue and Your Show of Shows, both developed under Pat Weaver’s leadership of the network. The Revue hour was hosted by rotating comedians Jimmy Durante, Danny Thomas, Ed Wynn, Jack Carson and Martha Raye. Show of Shows was a 90 minute marathon of variety starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. It was tough for radio advertisers to compete as sponsors. So they didn’t. Most of Saturday’s programming was sustaining and available to participating advertisers. Network Radio’s only rated popular music offering of the night was R. J. Reynolds’ Vaughn Monroe Show,(aka The Camel Caravan). Reynolds abruptly pulled the show from CBS in December and moved it to NBC.
Getting The Gate. Colgate Palmolive Peet was spending a large budget in television and cancelled two of Saturday’s top radio shows. The soap company dropped The Judy Canova Show during the summer of 1951 despite her seven consecutive seasons among Saturday’s Top Ten. The hillbilly comedienne/singer was off the air until December when NBC brought her sitcom back on a sustaining basis and retained its strong supporting cast intact, including the voice of Warner Brothers’ cartoons, Mel Blanc. (See Mel Blanc.) Without a fulltime sponsor for the rest of the season, The Judy Canova Show went unrated by Nielsen, breaking its string of eight consecutive Top 50 finishes. But the popular Judy wasn’t to be ignored for long. She returned with participating sponsors in October, 1952, for an encore Top 50 season.
Colgate also cancelled The Dennis Day Show in June. The singer had compiled five consecutive Top 50 seasons. The soap company had designs on a television show for the handsome Day, but the project never got beyond the pilot stage.
The Beulah Curse? Marlin Hurt created Beulah and died before the character’s first complete season as a half hour sitcom. In her fifth season in the title role of the weeknight quarter hour version of the sitcom, Hattie McDaniel was forced by illness to leave Beulah on November 14th She died of cancer eleven months later at the age of 59. (9) McDaniel was replaced at mid-season by another veteran black actress, Lillian Randolph - who survived until 1980. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
The Other Ameche. Adventure shows The Silver Eagle and Mr. Mercury had alternated with The Lone Ranger in ABC’s 7:30 timeslot on Tuesday and Thursday after the ill-conceived (Jack) Armstrong of The SBI was cancelled in June, 1951. Mercury starred busy radio, television and stage actor Staats Cotsworth who had held the title role of Casey, Crime Photographer on CBS for seven years. When Mr. Mercury left the air at mid-season, Silver Eagle became a multiple run series on both Tuesday and Thursday. The Silver Eagle, aka Canadian Mountie Jim West, was played by veteran radio actor Jim Ameche - who ironically originated the role of Jack Armstrong in 1933. (10)
(1) David Sarnoff and his son Robert still ran RCA and controlled NBC. Their egos were bruised when Pat Weaver was hailed in the press for his many innovations. The former advertising man who turned NBC’s fortunes around was pushed out of network power by the Sarnoffs in 1956.
(2) Mutual continued its daily baseball broadcasts until 1960. At its peak, Game of The Day, had 458 affiliates, several dozen shy of Liberty’s record when McLendon and his young crew created play-by-play broadcasts with wire reports and colorful imaginations.
(3) Struggling DuMont programmed radio favorites Ellery Queen and Twenty Questions in the 1951-52 season.
(4) Gosden and Correll were also rewarded with the loyalty of CBS which kept them on the radio network long after the sitcom had run its course in 1955. Their Amos & Andy’s Music Hall, a glorified disc jockey show, ran as a nightly strip show of 30 and 45 minutes with participating sponsors until November, 1960.
(5) Pearson Pharmacal was a forerunner in a short lived fad of the early 1950's during which a number of toothpastes, soaps and chewing gums became green in color to promote their “new and improved” formulas containing chlorophyll, billed as “Nature’s Deodorant.” Ennds was touted to rid consumers of bad breath, perspiration odors and smelly feet.
(6) In its subsequent move to ABC in 1951, Mystery Theater/Hearthstone became known as Mark Sabre - yet another of Hummerts’ formulaic productions. The program lost 55% of its CBS ratings and dropped out of the annual Top 50.
(7) Hope’s timeslot was filled over the next 13 weeks by an audience participation quiz, Meet Your Match, starring another fast talking comedian, 36 year old Jan Murray.
(8) Barton Yarbrough recreated the role of Doc Long in three low budget Columbia movie adaptations of the series. The films were far from major attractions and Yarborough remained just another face in the crowd.
(9) Hattie McDaniel was criticized by civil rights groups for her stereotyped role as a housemaid. In response she said, “I’d rather play a maid for seven hundred dollars a week than be a maid for seven dollars a week.” The veteran actress was actually paid a $1,000 a week and considered worth every penny by CBS, sponsor Procter & Gamble and her millions of listeners.
(10) Jim Ameche always lived in the shadow of his older brother Don, The Ameche brothers both looked and sounded alike, but only Don went on to huge Network Radio and movie stardom. Jim remained as The Silver Eagle under General Mills sponsorship for five seasons and later became a morning disc jockey on WHN/New York City.
Top 50 Network Programs - 1951-52
A.C. Nielsen Radio Index Service, Sep 1951-Jun 1952
Total Programs Rated, 6-11 PM: 136. Programs Rated 13 Weeks & Ranked: 105
41,900,000 Radio Homes. 95.5% Coverage of US. One Rating Point = 419,000 Homes
1 1 Lux Radio Theater 13.9 Lever Bros./Lux Soap Mon 9:00 60 CBS
2 4 Amos & Andy 13.4 Rexall Drug Stores Sun 7:30 30 CBS
3 2 Jack Benny Program 12.9 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Sun 7:00 30 CBS
4 3 Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy 11.2 Coca Cola Sun 8:00 30 CBS
5 5 Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts 9.7 Lever Bros./Lipton Tea Mon 8:30 30 CBS
6t 20 People Are Funny 9.6 Mars Candy Tue 8:00 30 CBS
6t 9 You Bet Your Life 9.6 Chrysler Corp./DeSoto & Plymouth Autos Wed 9:00 30 NBC
8 13 Fibber McGee & Molly 9.3 Pet Milk Tue 9:30 30 NBC
9 7 Walter Winchell’s Journal 9.2 Richard Hudnut Cosmetics Sun 9:00 15 ABC
10t 17 Bob Hawk Show 9.1 R.J. Reynolds/Camels Mon 10:30 30 CBS
10t 13 Life With Luigi 9.1 Wrigley Gum Tue 9:00 30 CBS
12 38 Suspense 9.0 Autolite Spark Plugs Mon 8:00 30 CBS
13 29 Horace Heidt Youth Oppty Program 8.8 Philip Morris Cigarettes Sun 9:30 30 CBS
14t 45 Dragnet 8.7 Liggett & Myers/Chesterfield Thu 9:00 30 NBC
14t 26 Hopalong Cassidy 8.7 General Foods/Grape Nuts Cereal Sat 8:30 30 CBS
16t 12 Mr & Mrs North 8.6 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Halo Shampoo Tue 8:30 30 CBS
16t 26 Our Miss Brooks 8.6 Colgate Palmolive Peet/Lustre Creme Shampoo Sun 6:30 30 CBS
18t 22 Dr. Christian 8.4 Vaseline Wed 8:30 30 CBS
18t 34 Father Knows Best 8.4 Crosley Radios/Refrigerators Thu 8:00 30 NBC
20 25 Gangbusters 8.2 General Foods/rape Nuts Cereal Sat 9:00 30 CBS
21 19 The Big Story 8.0 American Tobacco/Pall Mall Cigarettes Wed 9:30 30 NBC
22t 26 Bing Crosby Show 7.9 Liggett & Myers/Chesterfield Wed 9:30 30 CBS
22t 22 FBI In Peace & War 7.9 Wildroot Cream Oil Thu 8:30 30 CBS
22t 22 Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch 7.9 Wrigley Chewing Gum Sat 8:00 30 CBS
25t 33 Bob Hope Show 7.8 Liggett & Myers/Chesterfield Tue 9:00 30 NBC
25t 15 Mr Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons 7.8 Chiclets Chewing Gum Thu 8:00 30 NBC (1)
25t 50 Theater Guild On The Air 7.8 US Steel Sun 8:30 60 NBC
28 29 Great Gildersleeve 7.6 Kraft Foods/Parkay Margarine Wed 8:30 30 NBC
29 35 Big Town 7.4 Lever Bros./Lifeboy Soap Wed 8:00 30 CBS (2)
30 67 Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway 7.3 Philip Morris Cigarettes Sun 8:30 30 CBS (3)
31t 45 Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet 7.2 Heinz Foods Fri 9:00 30 ABC
31t 48 The Railroad Hour 7.2 American Railroad Assn Mon 8:00 30 NBC
31t 42 This Is Your FBI 7.2 Equitable Life Assurance Fri 8:30 30 ABC
34 15 Mr District Attorney 6..8 Bristol Myers/Vitalis Hair Tonic Fri 9:30 30 ABC
35t 29 Hallmark Playhouse 6.7 Hallmark Cards Thu 8:30 30 CBS
35t 67 Halls of Ivy 6.7 Schlitz Beer Wed 8:00 30 NBC
35t N Pursuit 6.7 Sterling Drug/Molle Shaving Cream Tue 9:30 30 CBS
35t N Tums Hollywood Theater 6.7 Lewis Howe/Tums Antacid Tablets Tue 8:30 30 NBC
39 35 Beulah 6.6 Dreft Laundry Soap M-F 7:00 15 CBS
40t 59 Carnation Contented Hour 6.4 Carnation Milk Sun 9:30 30 CBS
40t N Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show 6.4 RCA Victor Radios & TV Sun 8:00 30 NBC
40t 49 Richard Diamond, Private Det. 6.4 Rexall Drug Stores Fri 8:00 30 ABC
40t 60 Voice of Firestone 6.4 Firestone Tire & Rubber Mon 8:30 30 NBC
40t 56 Your Hit Parade 6.4 American Tobacco/Lucky Strike Thu 10:00 30 NBC
45 38 Meet Corliss Archer 6.3 Electric Companies Co-op Sun 9:00 30 CBS
46t 62 Cavalcade of America 6.2 DuPont Chemicals Tue 8:00 30 NBC
46t N Eddie Cantor’s Show Biz Old & New 6.2 Philip Morris Cigarettes Tue 10:00 30 NBC (4)
48 80 Blue Ribbon Bouts 6.0 Pabst Beer Wed Var 60 CBS
49t 10 Mr Chameleon 5.9 General Foods/Wrigley Gum Thu 9:00 30 CBS
49t 72 One Man’s Family 5.9 Alka Seltzer M-F 7:45 15 NBC
(1) Mr Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons Sep - Mar Chesterfield Cigarettes Thu 8:30 30 NBC
(2) Big Town Sep - Dec LeverBros/Lifeboy Soap Tue 10:00 30 NBC
(3) Philip Morris Playhouse On Broadway Sep - Dec Philip Morris Cigarettes Tue 10:30 30 NBC
(4) Eddie Cantor’s Show Biz Old & New Oct - Jan Philip Morris Cigarettes Sun 9:30 30 NBC
This post is in part abridged from Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.
Copyright © 2012 & 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com