Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio beyond the Networks 9780822391128

Citation preview

Points on the Dial

PO I NTS 0N THE D I AL Golden Age Radio beyond the Networks Alexander Russo

DukE uNIvErSITy PrESS Durham & London 2010

© 2010 Duke University Press All Rights Reserved Printed In The United States Of America On Acid-Free Paper ∞ Designed By Jennifer Hill Typeset In Arno Pro By Achorn International Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Permissions: An earlier version of chapter 3 first appeared as “Defensive Transcriptions: Radio Networks, Sound-on-Disc Recording, and the Meaning of Live Broadcasting,” Velvet Light Trap 54 (fall 2004): 4–17.

If radio is an art, as I believe it is, you have to remember, first of all, that an art must give pleasure. There are many books on esthetics. But there are only two problems in esthetics. One is to get the audience to come in. The other is to get it to stay in. Radio is the easiest of all arts to walk out on. What most people overlook, if they have not tried it, is the extreme difficulty of using radio so that it will be interesting to the listener. Every art has its limitations. You cannot practice any art until you recognize its limitations and master its technique. JOHN ERSKINE, quoted in Broadcasting to All Homes

Advertising that doesn’t distract—doesn’t sell. It doesn’t get a chance to sell,

unless and until it distracts. JUSTIN MILLER, writing for the Grey Advertising Agency

Contents

ix

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction  Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 17 Chapter One  The Value of a Name

Defining and Redefining National Network Radio

47 Chapter Two  “The Lord is my Shepard I shall not want”

Regional Networks as Sites of Community and Conflict

77 Chapter Three  Brought to You via Electrical Transcription

Sound-on-Disc Recording and the Perceptual Aesthetics of Radio Distribution Technologies

115 Chapter Four  On the Spot

The Spatial and Temporal Flow of Spot Broadcasting

151 Chapter Five  People with Money and Go

Locating Attention in the Human Geography of Radio Reception

184 Conclusion  Open-End Game

The Legacy of Spots, Representatives, and Transcriptions

191 Notes 241 Bibliography 257 Index

Acknowledgments

In writing about radio I am constantly reminded that it is a medium based on and obsessed with time. In writing about the time I have spent writing about radio I appreciate that print is not similarly obsessed with time. I have accumulated tremendous intellectual, emotional, professional, and personal debts in the process of writing this book. Although there is no way I can properly thank all of those who helped me with this project, with no stopwatches, musical out cues, or giant hooks threatening to drag me offstage I want to acknowledge the many people whose direct and indirect aid made this book possible. Financial support was provided to me during the research and revision process by the Catholic University of America; Brown University; the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; the Sylvia and John Thayer Fellowship for Graduate Student Research at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Newell D. Goff Institute for Ingenuity and Enterprise Studies at the Rhode Island Historical Society; the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation; and the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing His­ tory at Duke University. Thank you also to the University of Texas Press for permission to reproduce sections of chapter 3 that were published in the fall 2004 issue of Velvet Light Trap.

 Acknowledgments

The work of archivists, librarians, and administrative assistants often goes unheralded, but without their dedication and helpfulness this project would have never reached fruition. I wish to extend my deep gratitude to Mike Mashon, Bryan Cornell, and Karen Fishman at the Library of Congress Recorded Sound Division; Chuck Howell and Michael Henry at the Library of American Broadcasting; John Fleckner, Reuben Jackson, Alison Oswald, and Wendy Shay at the Archives Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; Jacqueline Reid at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University; Lauren Buisson and Julie Graham at the Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Los Angeles, Arts Library; and, finally, the staff at the Archives of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. My time at the Smithsonian was greatly aided by Chris Cotrill and Stephanie Thomas of the National Museum of American History library and by fellowship coordinator Suzanne McLaughlin. The staff at McMullen Library at the Catholic University of America received my requests for obscure dissertations and amiably complied with my requests to extend due dates “just a little longer.” Finally, administrative assistants make the world function. At Brown and at Catholic I have been the beneficiary of a series of exceptional assistants, namely Carole Costello, Jill Ramsey, Brianne Palmieri, Steven Scott, and Jean Wood. Studying institutional cultures makes me appreciate all the more the people within them, for it is these individuals who define what the institutions really are. Susan Douglas provided me with my first foray into radio research while I was still an undergraduate. I still thrill to the experience of the archive. My teachers at Wesleyan and Brown provided me with a worldclass education for which I am eternally grateful. At the National Museum of American History Pete Daniel, Steve Lubar, Barney Finn, and Charlie McGovern provided invaluable leads on source materials, critical readings of chapter drafts, and general advice on navigating the large bureaucracy known as the Smithsonian. I have tremendous colleagues at the Catholic University of America and I cannot say enough about how their commitment to research and teaching creates an environment where I am happy to come to work every day. Thank you Amy Holberg, Jenny Horne, Lisa Gitelman, Lisa Lynch, Abby Moser, Rachel Storey, Chuck Tryon, and Steve McKenna.



Acknowledgments xi

I have been fortunate to receive both critical readings and uncritical advice in the process of writing and revising this book. I could not imagine a more helpful and welcoming intellectual community than that of contemporary radio historians. I am grateful for my generous and lively discussions with Susan Douglas, Michele Hilmes, Bill Kirkpatrick, Kathy Newman, Allison McCracken, Elena Razlogova, Jim Schwoch, Mike Socolow, and Derek Vaillant, among others. I also wish to give special thanks to Mari Jo Buhle, Lisa Gitelman, Josh Greenberg, Lynne Joyrich, Sherry Linkon, Elena Razlogova, Susan Smulyan and the anonymous readers for Duke University Press for being such conscientious readers of first my dissertation and, later, my book manuscript. I would like to thank Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press for his enthusiastic support of the project, as well as Mandy Earley and Molly Balikov for their tireless and conscientious efforts preparing and editing the manuscript. In the relatively blinkered worlds of scholarly life, it is sometimes necessary to be reminded that life exists outside the boundaries of the office, archive, and library. Thanks to my colleagues and at-large support group in Providence and in Washington and through “the internets.” Thanks too to Sherry Linkon and Robert Clyde, as well as the other members of the Linkon, Clyde, and Quint clans for their roles in creating our new extended family. In addition to those already mentioned, Kim Bernard, Jenny Bilenker, Themis Chronopoulos, Michael Coventry, Evan Ellicott, Steve Garabedian, Deirdre Murphy, Judith Rosenbaum, Steph Sterling, Michele Urton, Drew Volmert, Judd Walencikowski, and Susanne Wiedemann provided all sorts of support and counsel. I want to express my sincere gratitude to my parents, Susan Russo and John Russo, for their assistance on all levels—emotional, professional, financial, and chromosomal. Thank you for everything. Finally, to Lara, although your introduction to this project may have come at a time when it was already well along, its completion was due in no small part to your insightful readings, fastidious copyediting, and cheerful support in the face of some of my grumpiest days. Its conclusion is all the sweeter for your presence in my life.

Introduction

Narratives of Radio’s Geographies

On October 19, 1937, President Frank Mason of the National Broadcasting Company received an irate memo about station affiliations from his vice president of network sales, Roy Witmer. In the memo Witmer recounted that the prior evening he had been listening to the Bridgeport, Connecticut, station wicc, which he knew was a member of nbc-Blue. However, during the broadcast Witmer had heard a series of announcements that implied that wicc had other network affiliations. The first statement announced that wicc was affiliated with the Colonial Network. A notice of affiliation with the Mutual Network immediately followed. Finally, a third announcement informed the audience that they were now joining the Blue Network of the National Broadcasting Company. This was not the first time that Witmer had noticed that wicc used a variety of program sources. Several months earlier he had written to the station’s owner, John Shepard III, and Shepard’s flagrant violation of nbc policy surely added to Witmer’s ire.1 Perplexed by the knowledge that an nbc station was affiliating with two other networks, and worried that multiple affiliations “confused” listeners, Witmer expressed a “deep suspicion” that “there are a great many other stations doing the same thing.”2 I begin with this example because it encapsulates a range of dynamics that render more complex a monolithic conception of the so-called network era of radio broadcasting. I believe

 Introduction

Witmer’s hunch was correct. During radio’s golden age its stations drew upon a range of program sources and not just national networks. If this sce­ nario was not exceptional, if it represented common broadcasting industry practices and a normal listener experience, then it suggests that radio of this period was more complicated, fragmented, and multivocal than has yet been accounted for. It is my argument in this book that between 1926 and 1951 (the “network era”) radio as a cultural form in the United States was not the homogeneously constructed “imagined community” that is inscribed in popular memory. Radio stations drew upon not only national network feeds but also a wide range of programming sources including regional networks, sound-on-disc transcription recordings, and nationally produced scripts performed locally. Likewise, an equally diverse group of individuals and organizations made possible the production, distribution, and sponsorship of these programs. The programs and their producers created hybrid and varied programming and advertising forms, which were integrated into the daily lives of audiences that listened both attentively and distractedly in locations both inside and outside the home. These were the dynamics in play when a distressed nbc executive expressed concern that one of his network’s stations was receiving programming from multiple sources—a case that violates golden age radio’s mythology of national unity. The cultural memory of golden age broadcasting recalls radio’s ability to unite the country around a shared experience of hugely popular, nationally produced, commercially sponsored programs. This is not a coincidence. Almost from their inception, nbc and cbs sought to represent themselves as national unifiers. Practices of interconnection, network formation, and commercial advertising built upon one another in service of the national ideal during the 1920s and 1930s.3 at&t landlines facilitated the simultaneous connection of affiliated stations by building a network from the metropolitan centers of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Broadcast networks considered commercial advertising necessary not only to pay the connection fees but also to provide a “better class of talent” than local stations could supposedly come by. Only national advertisers could afford the steep admission price for network sponsorship. Finally, according to this narrative, audiences responded because they preferred the higher production values and star personas that only the networks and national sponsors could afford. In this account the near universal popularity of these pro-



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 

grams produced a feeling of commonality as the family unit symbolically participated in national events by gathering around a single radio located in the home. Network radio then reigned supreme as a nationally unifying medium until it was displaced by television’s arrival in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the present work I revise this account by revealing the complexity of the story of radio as a cultural unifier. In addition I challenge the image of radio during the network era as monolithic and static, and I gesture toward how a reconceived history of the network era influences our understanding of postnetwork radio and of phenomenologies of listening. As a cultural form, network programming supposedly offered a vision of unity and cohesion by creating a sense of a simultaneous “imagined community.” This concept, derived from Benedict Anderson’s model of nationalism in the modern age, animates many contemporary studies of radio in the network era.4 Anderson argues that the simultaneous daily activity of reading a newspaper containing information circulated from other co-temporal places created an experience of connection and shared existence vital to national identity. When this notion is applied to network-era radio, the emphasis is placed on the medium’s practice of the centralized distribution of live programs. As cultural gatekeepers, national networks were able to disseminate programming that appealed to a homogeneously defined American identity. This mass mode of address defined radio as a national rather than local entity. Audiences were invited to see themselves as members of a single national community rather than as part of multiple, varied identities. National networks used “sanctioned national culture” to attempt to smooth out and control regional and local cultural expressions. Thus these appeals to a single identity could only be sustained at the expense of those at the margins. At the same time there were limits to these efforts, which in turn created a national radio culture that was both unified and divided, characterized by ongoing structural tension rather than by pure dominance.5 Therefore, while arguments concerning American radio networks’ centralization and standardization describe one aspect of radio’s cultural form, they are incomplete because of the wide variation in radio’s production and dissemination practices and the attendant complications to the cultural dynamics of reception. Despite an overarching impulse toward homogeneity, there were many fissures within network radio’s hegemonic cultural form. Susan Douglas

 Introduction

reminds us that while radio is widely considered to have built national unity in the 1930s, it also allowed “listeners to experience at the same time multiple identities—national, regional, local—some of them completely allied with the country’s prevailing cultural and political ideologies, others of them suspicious of or at odds with official culture.”6 While Douglas is speaking about the polysemy of network programs, her insight about the ways radio appealed to multiple categories and modalities of identity can be extended to address radio outside of the network system and the multiple forms of imagined community that it engendered. If circuits of distribution are incomplete or coexist in conjunction with alternative methods of cultural dissemination, then a more flexible conception of simultaneity is needed to account for the ways that imagined communities of various scales are established and maintained. Radio most certainly fostered a national imagined community, but it also constructed smaller regional and local ones that were linked to the larger community in some ways and independent of it in others. There has recently been a wave of excellent scholarship that has begun to revise the national orientation of much radio history, but there is much more work that needs to be done to explain the complex ways that local broadcasters operate as local entities, how their practices extend into the national and the global, and how they produce experiences that register as meaningful to listeners on multiple levels.7 In addition to complicating the dynamics of radio’s role as cultural unifier, my work in this book revises the assumption that network radio was a monolith unchallenged in its industrial and cultural domination. This narrative holds that the success of commercial broadcasting created a hegemonic system. After a period of intense debate, the medium’s technological, cultural, and economic form was supposedly codified in the 1934 Communication Act, which ratified sets of commercial and technical standards that only commercially sponsored broadcasters could meet. This enshrined national commercial broadcasting’s unchallenged dominance.8 This perspective also assumes that the remarkable continuity of performers during the network era indicated stasis within the entire medium. In many ways this view is summed up by Fred Allen’s rueful eulogy for network radio that described its final years as ones where “the audience and the medium were both getting tired. The same programs, the same comedians, the same commercials—even the sameness was starting to look the same.”9 The assumption of “sameness,” then, encompasses both the commercial orientation of



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 

network radio and the deleterious effects of those commercial pressures on programming aesthetics. However, instead of seeing the networks as monolithic and the era as static, it is imperative to recognize that while the performers may have remained the same, the structure of programming schedules, the organization of individual shows, and the experience of listening changed continuously. By the time a network-dominated commercial system had supposedly consolidated itself in the 1934 Communication Act, parallel institutions had already emerged, constructed audiences, produced programs, sold those audiences and programs to both sponsors and stations, and distributed those programs for broadcast on local stations. The resulting national radio landscape was a multitiered system with intermingling, yet distinct, national, regional, and local programming forms, sponsorship patterns, and methods of program distribution. The changing landscape of revenue and programming sources contributed to a highly segmented, discretely organized listening experience. Rather than a single homogeneous address, the average broadcast day, even for a single station, was full of multiple, contrasting modes of address and program forms. In conjunction, the experience of listening also became more hybrid in nature by encompassing varied degrees of attention and spaces of reception. The histories of these radio models revise and counter the cultural memory of live network broadcasts constructing a national imagined community modeled on the family and constituted by attentive audiences. The traditional focus on American radio’s tendencies toward cultural unity and stasis distorts not just the network era but also the much longer period that came after it. According to the dominant narrative of broadcasting’s development, television first crushed and then replaced network radio’s nationally unified structure and address. Upon television’s birth contemporary commentators pronounced radio dead—the first of many such pronouncements and one unchallenged by subsequent historians. According to this narrative network radio failed to anticipate the demand for television and could not compete with America’s enthusiasm for the new visual medium. Yet not all was lost. Supposed visionary entrepreneurs, operating outside the confines of the networks, discovered in the early and middle 1950s that radio could be profitable if it supplied a relatively small range of music and local news, or what came to be called “formats.” According to this account the idea of the format, pioneered by figures such as Todd

 Introduction

Storz and Gordon McLendon, saved radio from the onrushing onslaught of television. In an oft-repeated tale, Storz claimed to be inspired to limit his playlist by seeing a waitress at a diner repeatedly play the same songs on the jukebox while cleaning up one night, thus giving birth to Top 40.10 This story, like many other origin tales, obscures more than it reveals. As the centerpiece of a narrative of phoenixlike rebirth it assumes a simple relationship of cause and effect between the postwar introduction of television and the demise of radio networks, and it valorizes entrepreneurs like Storz and McLendon for having an innate sense of market demands. Dividing the history of broadcasting into neat categories of national and local, network and independent, dramatic and comedic-musical, home and mobile, family listening and individual listening obscures the ongoing interactions among these elements that preceded the widespread transformations of the 1950s. The transformations in postwar radio were a paradigm shift following the vacuum left by the demise of network radio as a mass medium, but they were as much based upon long-standing tensions and developments in the medium’s technological, industrial, and cultural form as they were purely a response to the threat posed by the emergence of television. This volume charts those tensions and developments. I entertain the contradictions of network radio’s impulse toward mass audiences as well as the experiences of multiplicity, all structured by commercial imperatives. I trace the institutional, technological, and aesthetic precursors to the mythical moments of death and rebirth, and I suggest that music formats (and their attendant modes of listening) emerged from the complex interaction of multiple influences as part of long-standing tensions within the radio industry. These dynamics shaped the way radio would develop and provided models that many broadcasters, including Storz and McLendon, took up in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Because traditional narratives linked national network broadcasting’s demise with the rise of the supposedly local disc jockey era, complicating this story requires attention to the overlapping and preceding dynamics of broadcasting practices and their economies of attention, space, and place. To examine the complexity of interwar and postwar radio my argument takes an interdisciplinary perspective. I draw on the interpretive methodologies of social, cultural, and broadcasting history as well as media theory to account for interactions within the production and reception of technologically based aural representations. I follow a revisionist historical con-



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 

tention that emphasizes how what is often considered a single medium is actually the result of the “dynamic interplay” of a system of technologies, industrial and regulatory dynamics, programming, and practices of reception and use.11 James Lastra’s “four-term dialectic” of “device, discourse, practice, and institution” provides a useful schema for this analysis.12 I consider devices—in this case multiple systems of technologies—that constituted the infrastructure of “radio”; the cultural discourses that described and prescribed how the technologies were to be used; the practices involved in using those devices when producing as well as listening to broadcasting programs in a commercial system; and finally, the institutions, as social and economic structures, that defined the possibilities and activities of radio practice. Radio encompassed a complex system of technologies, each of which has particular ontological properties. More than simply “medium speci­ ficity” there were elements of aural broadcasting that were unlike other media. Yet, at the same time, those supposedly ontological criteria and the aesthetic and habitual definitions of good and proper radio practice were socially constructed; these rules and norms were the product of conflicts among a variety of actors, each of whom defined collections of technologies in ways that served particular interests.13 The technological system commonly referred to as radio was structured by a socially situated idea of spatial communication. The central problem for American commercial radio was (and continues to be) the separation of sender and receiver.14 Neither radio networks nor sponsors could know how listeners would react to programs. In the absence of prescribed cultural protocols for listening, radio networks worried that listeners would simply turn off programs for the slightest reason. Speaking to this issue, John Durham Peters compared theories of mass communication to those of hermeneutics.15 That is, both concern themselves with the sending of a message without the ability to ascertain whether that message has been received and understood. This inability to “know” the audiences has taken on a special consideration as a source of sustained anxiety because of American broadcasting’s commercial context. The radio industry depended on selling audiences to sponsors and, in turn, the sponsors who paid for programming needed to know if audiences were responding to the advertising aimed at them. This anxiety has manifested itself through a concern with audience attention.

 Introduction

Attention, as Jonathan Crary has recently noted, emerged in the midnineteenth century as a new epistemology of consciousness. Attention combined socially articulated psychological functions of perception with institutional imperatives for disciplined subjects. It was part of the disciplinary process in which bodily behaviors became scientific objects and social problems. As Crary notes, “The problem of attention, then, was not a question of a neutral timeless activity like breathing or sleeping, but of the emergence of a specific model of behavior with a historical structure—behavior that was articulated in terms of socially determined norms and was part of the formation of a modern technological milieu.”16 In encompassing an idea of perception that included both absorption and deferral Crary’s focus on subjectivity writ large also applies to the construction of media subjects enacted in the relationship between audiences and the mass media they consume.17 A dynamic of absorption and deferral provides a model for examining ideals of aural reception, the experience of radio listening, and the forms of intersubjective communion that the medium fosters. Today radio is largely considered a secondary medium—that is, consumed while doing something else.18 This secondary status was not always the case. During the network era, radio was often regarded as a primary medium capable of holding sustained audience attention, thereby suggesting that models of radio listening were socially produced. The changing status of listening reminds us that the relationships between what Lastra has termed “technologically mediated sensory experience” and “technologically produced forms of representation” are not ontological ones. Rather, they are “pragmatic, historical, and contingent forms of knowledge produced in response to concrete and objective material possibilities, but also in response to emerging discourses, existing practices, and established institutions.”19 As such one thread in this project is to contextualize the listening experience of this era of radio. Scholarship from the field of sound studies suggests that listening is contingent on an array of socially situated contexts and processes. Parts of this work, such as Susan Douglas’s archaeology of listening modes, Kate Lacey’s call for a “periodization of listening,” and Jonathan Sterne’s emphasis on “audile techniques,” address the cultural specificity of radio listening in context.20 This book thus continues that work by exploring some of the ways in which broadcasters defined, debated, and redefined not just programming forms but also categories and practices that allowed listeners to



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 

experience radio programming as meaningful and the social and cultural importance of those practices and experiences. Placing radio within the larger rubric of consumer culture requires expanding the object of study, from viewing radio in terms of technologies and aesthetic practices to situating the radiophonic, a description that invokes why a medium matters to social relations. In a manner similar to James Hay’s description of the televisual, I constitute the radiophonic as a “socio-spatial problematic.”21 Like the medium it preceded, radio in the 1930s and 1940s was an “assemblage” that was both “site” and “network.” As a site, radio operated in discrete spaces; it also operated relationally through technologies, economic relationships, social arrangements, and links to everyday life that were located elsewhere. Each configuration of ubiquity and connectedness structured the scale of radio’s operations and the ways each contributed to a particular model of social relations.22 Because radio was constituted as both site and network, the social meanings of its institutions, actors, and technologies could shift depending on the scale of their operation. These variable meanings informed the ways that the broadcasting industry attempted to turn audiences, and their attentive capacity, into a commodity organized to facilitate the sale of other commodities.23 In the United States commercial broadcasting developed as a response to the question, “Who will pay for radio?”24 However, a more difficult question almost immediately followed, “What can radio produce that someone will pay for?” To answer this, broadcasters turned to an ever-increasing apparatus of audience construction and measurement. Categories of audience attention were produced by demographers who devised new ways to measure, define, and in effect call into being new market categories. Audience researchers did not operate in a vacuum; they shaped their product (surveys and data) in response to the demands of its buyers (namely, advertising agencies, sponsors, and broadcasters) as well as to larger cultural dynamics.25 Markets, both mass and niche, have been repeatedly “discovered” by culture industries promoting different products through different media throughout the twentieth century. Thus, while this book focuses on radio audience markets, similar processes occurred in music, film, clothing, and other consumer goods. At times these larger dynamics intersected with radio, but at other times they operated more or less independently.26 The development of marketing on the radio was part of a larger relationship between capitalism and social legitimation. Advertisers in the early

10 Introduction

and middle twentieth century feared individuals would become alienated by mass-produced products and the similarly massive corporations that created and distributed them. These companies sought ways to mediate that threat, one of which was by using radio.27 They sought to make radio part of a language of “better living,” where consumer goods became intimately connected to definitions of the good life and taste preferences provided a means of identifying oneself and relating to others. Consumer culture built upon and “destabilized” existing identities based on geography, ethnicity, political preferences, and class position, and radio played a part in that process.28 In this volume I render this story more complex and extend it by examining the process by which these forms of identity not only provided radio advertisers one set of resources to articulate to consumer goods but also fed back into the orientations and operations of those national processes. The properties of the medium of radio lent themselves to several unique challenges to practices of cultural production. Radio has given expression to tensions in American culture because of its embodiment of individuality and collectivity. Its individualized reception, use of oral modes of communication, and invocation of the imagination clash with culture industries’ desire for homogenized, uniform responses to programming.29 Precisely because of this tension, the radio industry used a wide variety of practices and modes of address to articulate commonly held identities and identifications to advertised products via the program mode of address. Through the process of articulation, phenomena that have no necessary relationship are linked to one another within a larger discourse. Stuart Hall stresses the contingency of this process to point toward its usefulness in securing political agency. Yet, this conception also serves as a useful means of mapping the evolution of all kinds of ideologies, including those of consumerism.30 Geographical identities provided a fertile ground for broadcasters and advertisers who sought to develop specialized appeals and generate narrowly conceived responses. These forms of identity provided to radio producers a set of resources that allowed them to garner and retain listener attention. Radio thus was one venue where culture industries developed techniques of constructing and addressing both mass and niche audiences, a crucial step in the larger process of creating the segmented consumer culture that characterized the latter part of the twentieth century and our present moment.



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 11

This book explores how radio and its meanings developed along four overlapping axes: practices of audience construction, technologies of program distribution, the aesthetics of programming form and content, and definitions and practices of audience reception. In order to examine the intersections among these elements, I first discuss the processes whereby radio was discursively constructed as national and how the resulting radio nation was defined as a mass audience. Next I explain the ways in which individuals known as station representatives established alternative market definitions for discrete areas outside of the radio nation. Then I explore the development of two alternative systems of program distribution—regional networks and sound-on-disc transcriptions. These economic, production, and distribution dynamics allowed for the development of “spot broadcasting.” Spot radio influenced the form and content of radio programming and advertising as well as the listener’s experience of the “flow” of individual elements across the broadcast schedule. Finally, I chart how this fragmented mode of address led the broadcast advertising industry to embrace the experience of radio listening as one of “distraction” rather than attention. An examination of the interconnection among these technologies, discourses, and practices produces a more nuanced and more complete understanding of radio’s network era. At the same time, it will give us a fuller picture of the form, content, production, and reception of aural broadcasting that developed after television began. Chapter 1 interrogates the centrality of network interconnection to golden age radio. While the rhetoric of the networks stressed their national character, network practices reflected a far more heterogeneous reality. Net­work structures were often limited in scope and continuously in flux. Their orientation at any given moment depended upon negotiations between broadcasters, at&t, and sponsors. As such there were areas of the radio nation that were neither reached nor covered by the networks. “Split networking”—where sponsors chose to use only part of the possible network—demonstrates one consequence of the gaps in the national broadcasters’ coverage and suggests that network distribution was based upon a contingent flexible configuration of multiple networks. At the same time, station representatives constructed an alternative to the national network market by acting as boundary workers and “audience intellectuals.” These individuals moved between the national and the local scales by promoting stations and informing potential sponsors of schedule openings. In so

12 Introduction

doing they translated the needs of parties that operated in each scale to the other. This allowed them to institutionalize a discursive framework that supported the development of spot broadcasting and rationalized the sale of local station time to national entities. Spot broadcasting represents a broad category. It included full-length programs and brief announcements, but the common element was the discrete selection of market, content, and time of day by sponsors. In chapter 2, I extend the ideas of market definition and networking by examining the use of network interconnection to distribute programs on a regional basis. The gaps in the national network systems charted in chapter 1 and the work of station representatives allowed for an alternative networking model. Existing alongside national chains, regional networks were also prevalent during the network era. By 1942, for example, there were over forty such networks.31 Broadcasters negotiated national, regional, and local identities within their modes of program address and means of program distribution. New England’s Yankee Network and Colonial Network provide a case study that illustrates how regional radio networks created programming that had regional appeal and constructed a regionally based radio market identity to sell to advertisers. In addition, because most regional network affiliates were also national network affiliates, these activities created conflicts that suggest a more complex and fraught relationship between local and national broadcasters than has been thought. Although limited, regional networks serve as one example of spot broadcasting, sound-on-disc transcriptions—recordings produced especially for radio broadcast—represent an even more important alternative distribution me­thod. Chapter 3 examines the technological, discursive, and institutional his­ tories of sound-on-disc transcriptions as a means of program distribution. National networks successfully established live broadcasts, distributed through at&t landlines, as radio’s ideal form in the late 1920s. Constrained by this definition, independent program producers used specific recording technologies and discursive strategies to establish a distinction between phonograph records and “transcription” discs. They redefined electrical mediation and modes of aural representation that equated recorded performances with live ones. Networks viewed recorded programs as a profound threat to their economic livelihood and acted to co-opt and control



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 13

recorded program production by entering it themselves, with limited success. Despite these efforts, sound-on-disc transcriptions changed the conditions of technological possibility for producing and disseminating spot programs and thus provided important models for post-television radio. In chapter 4, I examine how the form and content of spot broadcasting embodied a diverse range of selling styles and differently scaled modes of address. The multivalenced definition of “spots” brings together a number of threads from preceding chapters and considers their impact on radio’s textual flow. Spot broadcasting consisted of both programs and announcements. National advertisers used spot programs in conjunction with network-based radio advertising efforts to extend a mass address, as well as independently to localize their advertising message. They could do so because of the alternative market definitions constructed by station representatives and alternative means of producing and distributing programs via transcription disc. Transcriptions also gave rise to a new program form based upon transcription music libraries. Music libraries allowed stations to create “network quality” programs without a network affiliation and provided a means for regional advertisers to enter radio advertising without the cost associated with national network broadcasting. Stations also embraced spot broadcasting because it provided them with more revenue than did network programs. They regularly rejected unsponsored network shows in order to air spot programs, thus creating fragmented and multiscaled modes of address. Spot broadcasting also included short announcements, the progenitors of the fifteen- and thirty-second commercial. Station break spot announcements inserted themselves into and around network programs. This disrupted the attempts by mass appeal programs to create “goodwill” between the audience and sponsor and fragmented the temporal sequence of the radio schedule, thereby contributing to the crea­ tion of the dynamics of “segmentation and flow” that continue to characterize American commercial broadcasting. Chapter 5 addresses how spot-based segmented radio appeals played a role in the microgeography of radio reception during the network era as spaces and modes of listening underwent revision. The network ideal of national audiences and national markets manifested itself in ideas of “allset, all family” listening. This cultural trope imagined the ideal context of listening as one that took place in the evening with the entire family relaxed

14 Introduction

but attentive, arrayed around an “ethereal hearth” in the living room.32 However, this definition made alternative forms of listening—such as distracted, individualized, and daytime—a problem. As more Americans purchased multiple radios for the car and the home, the broadcasting industry sought to graft onto them its earlier definitions of listening. However, at the same time alternative spot-influenced forms of radio programming, such as morning shows and disc jockey–based “block programs,” embraced modes of distracted and individualized listening. These programs, designed to be heard while the audience was performing other activities, contributed to a process whereby distracted listening ceased being pathologized and instead became the norm. Alternative program production strategies, sources, technologies, and distribution methods revise our understanding of golden age radio as solely live, national, and networked and its cultural form as one of unification and centralization. The proliferation of program formats, sources, distribution methods, and production technologies by the mid-1940s rendered this defi­ nition of radio functional as ideology only. A more complete account of radio’s golden age history thus revises traditional accounts of the decline of network radio and the “rebirth” of local radio. It accounts for the complex story of competing forces within the broadcasting industry that created models of radio that remained dominant until the late 1990s.33 Network radio, like network television after it, initially conceived of its product as a homogeneous mass. Postnetwork radio, and now postnetwork television, divides its audiences into discrete segments. The prehistory of radio’s postnetwork transformation gives us another origins story, one that focuses on the process through which audiences could be conceived in spe­ cific ways and programming could be devised, produced, and distributed in order to address what producers thought those audiences wanted. As such, the story of radio’s specialization and transformation influences not just our understanding of the history of a communications medium but also how we interpret the history of consumer culture, the historically specific ways in which we listen, and the ways we construct identities based on taste cultures. Although peer-to-peer filesharing, commercial download services and devices like the iPod now challenge radio as a means of distributing and listening to music, for much of the last fifty years American audiences learned about new music through radio, and radio in turn created



Narratives of Radio’s Geographies 15

profiles around those tastes. Far in advance of today’s digital data mining technologies and prescriptive algorithms, radio formatters and audience intellectuals sought to generate synergies and affinities between audiences and advertisers. Growing ever more sophisticated, radio represented a field in which these ideas could be tested, and it may well do so again.

ONE

The Value of a Name Defining and Redefining National Network Radio

The image of a nation connected via radio that appeared in the September 1927 issue of Radio News stands in many ways for the iconic understanding of network-era broadcasting.1 Appearing less than a year after the launch of nbc and the same month that cbs took to the air, this image endorsed the possibilities for cultural integration through technology. Entitled “The New Melting Pot,” it depicts radio as a wired network capable of uniting the nation (see figure 1). The picture identifies the dual A and B batteries used by the radio receivers of that era as “The English Language” and “Ame­ icanism and Patriotism,” thereby suggesting that the forms of representa­ tion were as important as the content delivered. Significantly, radio is re­ presented as a collective listening experience on both macro and micro spaces. All of the figures are listening to the same programming and all are listening in groups. Even the one possible exception, the African American servant in the South who is the only figure performing labor while listening, is still exposed to the integrative effect of radio.2 Although neither national radio’s technological capacities nor its meanings were fixed when this image graced the pages of Radio News, its division of the country into regional groups invites questions about the identities represented by those geographical places and their relationship to broadcasting as technology and cultural form.3

18 Chapter One

1

“The New Melting Pot”: the radio nation envisioned by Radio News, September 1927.

As scholars have begun to engage with the long interrelationship between communication technologies and space, the information network has gained importance as an analytical concept for understanding the social, cultural, and economic changes wrought by the technological possibilities of interconnection. Although there are some exceptions, this body of work conceives of “the network” in terms of the integration of people, of culture, of the world. Well before radio networks, discourses of progress, integration, and modernity were linked to telegraph, telephone, railroad, and electricity networks.4 Radio networks extended this logic of interconnection leading to modern progress, and those who were judged to be outside of the radio nation were considered primitive and lacking.5 Equating the network with centralization obscures a more complicated story of radio as a technological system as well as the cultural and economic role of the programming distributed via that system. The hegemony of networked commercial broadcasting at the end of the golden age has produced scholarship that focuses on radio’s early history, especially the relatively tumultuous 1920s and early 1930s. This work establishes the ways in which the structure of the network system was determined by political, economic, and technological considerations. These revisionist narratives end with the codification of the commercial network system in the 1934 Communication Act.6



The Value of a Name 19

In contrast, a different view of the geography of golden age radio is created when the medium is thought of as a system of technological, commercial, and information internetworks that required constant revision and modification. This view of the network refers to a complex intersection of elements directly involved in the production, distribution, and reception of radio programs as well as in the process of creating audience markets to be sold and to sell to. In addition, the network of program distribution depends on the material distribution network of the sponsor’s product. Radio networks thus were not monolithic entities but rather complex technological systems that directly and indirectly integrated a wide range of elements including technology, people, information, and material goods. Although the concept of national radio was constructed to appear to be the natural and transparent outgrowth of wired interconnection, its everyday existence depended on the complex interaction of different forms of labor and knowledge. In their study of the role of classification in the modern world Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star have argued that the analysis of “informational infrastructure” requires an acknowledgment of the interdependence of technical networks and standards and the labor of politics and knowledge production. Classification systems, much like technologies, seek to appear transparent even as they mediate our experiences of reality.7 Their linkage of knowledge production and technology suggests parallels with the development of national broadcasting practices. While national broadcasters like nbc and cbs promoted integration via network interconnection, their rhetoric did not always match the realities of network service. Despite its image as uniform, consistent, and singular, the system was limited, unstable, and hybrid. The fluidity of these networks was produced by the interaction between the technological structure of the system and the economic orientation of the organizations that used the system. This made manifest the significant gaps in these network ideals, which in turn allowed for the construction of alternative markets that ultimately influenced the creation of the imagined communities invoked by network programs. Radio markets did not appear naturally but rather had to be constructed and maintained according to the needs of the institutions that used them. The practices of constructing radio markets were contingent upon both the available social science techniques and the structural needs of

20 Chapter One

advertisers and broadcasters. The product—the “audience commodity,” as Dallas Smythe termed it—was produced by institutions that quantified and evalu­ated individuals and groups according to their consumption capacity. Moreover, the limitations on audience construction techniques required the social contracts between the broadcasting and advertising industries to accept certain types of knowledge as legitimate.8 Before these social science–based approaches were developed in the 1930s, broad­ casters and sponsors combined demographic and spatial categories to construct and evaluate markets.9 This geographical orientation structured the scope and limits of the network system. Although radio networking was discursively conflated with the national, the economic and technological underpinnings of the network system often rendered it anything but uniformly connected and fully integrated. The conflicting definitions of market value affected the operation of the technological system of networked programming distribution. Instead of a static one-way interconnection, radio networks were in constant flux reconfiguring themselves according to the desires of sponsors and networks. A common example of this was the split network, a term that refers to a situation where a sponsor refused to purchase all of a network’s affiliates. These incomplete networks forced nbc and cbs to work around the skipped stations and to produce additional unsponsored “sustaining” programs that were sent to those stations in lieu of sponsored shows. Split networks demonstrate the role of nontechnological factors in creating gaps in the program distribution patterns of broadcasting networks. They were generated by the conflict between the sponsors’ desire to pay for time only for areas that were useful to them and the networks’ need and obligation to provide unsponsored sustaining programs to their affiliates in the absence of commercial ones. Both nbc and cbs fought to eliminate split networks from their schedules because they reflected the limits of the networks’ construction of a mass national radio market. At the same time, other commentators voiced doubts about the national mass. The implications of these network gaps and concerns intersected in the activities of the station representative. Station representatives constructed local markets and convinced advertisers of those markets’ value. In so doing they filled some of the radio nation’s discursive gaps and contributed to the process by which programming was produced, distributed, and aired in those geographical locations. Once these markets were called into being, other entities such as regional



The Value of a Name 21

radio networks and transcription producers (which I address in subsequent chapters) provided programming for discrete geographic and market segments. National Broadcasters Define National Network Service As network broadcasting was inaugurated on a wide scale in the latter half of the 1920s, it was generally described in terms that linked its technological properties with the geographical space of the nation. The medium could bind space and thus allow audiences to experience events occurring around the country from the safety of their own homes. Crossing social and cultural boundaries constituted one of early radio broadcasting’s greatest appeals to early audiences, thereby convincing them to purchase sets. However, over the course of the 1920s a larger, more diverse audience that listened to hear specific programs replaced the relatively small, devoted audience of amateur operators, known as “distance fiends,” who listened to hear faraway events.10 In the chaotic 1920s radio landscape amateur operators, local stations, and national networks all vied to define “radio” in a way that served their interests. As the ether grew more crowded, station signals often interfered with one another. Amateurs wanted “quiet nights” to facilitate listening based on distance rather than content. Small community stations wanted the right to broadcast without interference from larger metropolitan stations. Programming was ad hoc and often amateurish, appealing to audiences partially because of its attention to local performers and communities.11 In this aural environment national broadcasters sought to implement national radio defined by cultural value and national unity. In the second half of the 1920s radio networks worked to establish a connection between technological basis, industrial organization, and cultural function.12 While technology created many possibilities for national broadcasting, networking was judged to be both technologically feasible and culturally desirable. Under the terms of the 1926 Radio Patent agreement between at&t and rca, the telephone company sold weaf and withdrew from direct broadcasting in exchange for a monopoly over the means of distributing programs. This technology, borne of the telephone company’s long investment in wired voice transmission, led to the creation of its long-lines division. After intense political debate, wired networking was determined

22 Chapter One

to be the most viable technology for simultaneously connecting stations. The wired network model was aided by its seeming resemblance to other “chain” organizations like the telephone, a cultural suspicion of monopoly power (such as that suggested by superpower stations), and the appeal of decentralized stations in a large country.13 To convince advertisers that national interconnection was worth the sig­nificant financial investment, nbc, cbs, and their proxies traded on pre­ existing definitions of radio as communicative and connective. Building on radio’s earlier incarnation as a point-to-point medium rather than a broadcast one, these groups described radio in terms of simultaneous transmission and reception of content while also investing that simultaneity with aesthetic, social, and cultural value.14 Networks championed their ability to distribute the “highest quality” and most expensive programs over the widest possible audience and area. They noted that by splitting the costs of programming among many stations, they would have larger budgets and could hire higher-profile talent than any single station. Further, the networks argued, it was because of program “quality” that listeners valued those programs—and their sponsors—more highly than they did local shows. At the same time they suggested that a unified experience could provide a cultural uplift. Thus, the intended national scope of the networks was matched by assertions of their centralizing cultural function. These narratives proved successful as a wide range of commentators saw in radio a means of reestablishing a social and political consensus in a United States divided by class, race, and regional identities.15 Thus, by building on the legal, philosophical, and technological models of earlier communications networks like the telegraph and the telephone, as well as cultural desires for national unity, nbc and cbs were able to discursively and legally establish radio’s ideal form as national, wire distributed, and live. While cultural uplift and unification provided one set of justifications for wired national networks, they contained another implication of national radio—the diminishment and denial of viable local broadcasting practices. National radio networks sought to define local radio as technically inept, ama­teurishly programmed, and excessively commercial. It was, in the net­ work’s formulation, the audience’s dissatisfaction with local radio that attracted them to network programming and justified the networks’ own oligarchic position as program distributors.16 This is somewhat ironic because amid all the fervent discussion of national service and national scope the



The Value of a Name 23

daily reality of network interconnection was decidedly limited well into the 1930s. Two intertwined elements, market size and technical infrastructure, determined whether listeners in a given geographical area would receive primary coverage from a radio station affiliated with one of the national networks. They were intertwined because networks could only expand their access to at&t’s technical infrastructure if advertisers were willing to pay, and sponsors would only pay if they wanted to reach consumers in a given geographical area.17 Thus the construction of markets played an important role in determining the actual extent of radio networks. As broadcasters attempted to convince advertisers that radio was valuable as an advertising medium they drew upon models of market definition pioneered by print advertising media. Newspaper and magazine advertising provided the institutional infrastructure for constructing the radio market. Advertising agencies in the 1910s and 1920s actively discouraged their clients from using specialized publications and seeking specialized markets. They generally resisted acknowledging the heterogeneity of the United States in favor of seeing the nation as a single mass market.18 In this context broadcasters used information created for newspaper features syndicates. One influential early collection of data for radio was the Chicago newspaper publisher Walter A. Strong’s organization called 100,000 Group of American Cities.19 First published in 1926, just as the radio networks were forming, the 100,000 Group’s 81 Principal American Markets was one of the first wide-scale market maps of the United States. It provided population and retail information on every city and town with more than one thousand people, and it charted the social and economic characteristics of the residents who produced “buying power” and it linked that ability with the availability of stores in which products could be sold.20 As radio sponsors, advertising agencies, and broadcasters adapted market knowledge for one medium to another they also linked those markets with technical studies of station power and coverage, or usable range.21 There was a strong correlation between the cities listed in 81 Principal American Markets and the location of the early network affiliates. The National Broadcasting Company’s 1927 “Outline of Development” lists as one of its basic assumptions that “at least two programs shall be available to listeners in all important centers at practically equivalent signal strength” (italics mine).22 Also included were maps of the relative populations of the

24 Chapter One

2

Coverage of the NBC Red Network in 1927.

3

This map overlays the coverage of the NBC-Red station and the major retail markets valued by purchasing power, standard of living, accessibility, and population. The more deeply shaded counties were considered to be of higher value than the lighter colored ones.

United States and, while the total population was relevant, the primary factor in value was market strength as defined by the possibilities for retail sales. Indeed, the report included several maps where the signal strength of nbc’s core stations overlapped with the “county value” expressed in terms of purchasing power, standard of living, accessibility, and population. As the accompanying illustrations suggest, the geographical boundaries of the nation and its market value were not identical. In order to be included in the national mass one had to have a certain level of income.23



The Value of a Name 25

4

A layout of the interconnection routes for the NBC Red Network in 1927. This network focused on the East Coast and the industrial Midwest.

5

Market map of the United States based on population and network radio coverage. The map was produced by the Batton Advertising Agency and used by NBC in its plan for network growth.

Because market category and technological necessity were interdependent, interconnection was not universal. If the major metropolitan markets defined the network radio nation, then “national coverage” necessarily excluded areas that were unprofitable due to line costs or a lack of sponsor demand.24 As the maps in figures 2, 3, and 4 show, NBC’s infrastructure of network interconnection was constructed to serve the most populous and most valuable markets. Because of population density, network connections were most abundant on the East Coast and in the upper industrial

26 Chapter One

Midwest. Large swathes of the country, generally in the South and the West, were not included in the network system and thus could only be connected via class C lines of inferior quality.25 Indeed, as figure 5 demonstrates, the population distribution in the United States heavily distorted the contours of national boundaries. Because the infrastructure of “national” radio interconnection networks was in part determined by the markets that advertisers wanted to reach, the radio nation of the 1920s and early 1930s was confined to the East Coast and the industrial Midwest. As the nbc salesman Donald Shaw described in a memo motivating his employees: “The National Broadcasting Company is basically designed to give the manufacturer mass coverage in the population and trading centers of the country . . . networks are not a hit or miss affair, but form a very definite coverage pattern that will serve and sell major areas.”26 Shaw’s remarks elide the limits of network coverage and conflate the nbc network of “major” population and coverage “centers” with national “mass” coverage. These were the only areas that Shaw believed would be of interest to potential sponsors. In essence, according to the networks’ logic, one was present within the nation only if one lived within one of the “major population and trading centers.” This offhand remark suggests that the procedures that advertisers and broadcasters used to classify radio markets in the 1920s and 1930s were only partly about broadcasting technologies. The “radio nation” was produced by schemes of classification that defined and valued geographical markets and, in so doing, excluded large areas of the country. Not Quite the Nation: Split Networks and Network-Sponsor Conflict One consequence of Nbc’s and cbs’s use of wired interconnection to link stations in markets chosen by sponsors was that the network system did not actually reach the entire nation. Neither advertisers nor networks wanted to pay the costs of connecting markets that did not justify their expense. In the first half of the 1930s, the networks disliked originating programs outside of their studios in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco because at&t charged them significantly higher rates to do so. This reduced the viability of program productions in other areas.27 Likewise, the networks actively resisted affiliating with stations in smaller markets or in locations



The Value of a Name 27

that would not justify their hookup cost until forced to do so by political pressure. For example, in 1931 nbc only added stations in North Dakota when it was pressured by the state’s congressional delegation, all levels of state government, and fifty thousand people who had signed a petition.28 Likewise, in 1935 C.W. Horn advised his colleagues that only one of nbc’s existing circuits should be extended to the West Coast. His only rationale for extending the circuit and affiliating with more stations was the “defensive reason” that cbs was seeking to expand its network.29 The networks’ resistance to expanding their system infrastructure beyond the largest markets during the first half of the 1930s affected the daily operational constitution of the networks. During the late 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, the structure of the na­tional networks more closely resembled regional groupings than the single unified web described in their promotional rhetoric. For example, nbc sold itself as two coast-to-coast networks, the Red Network and the Blue Network. It sought to maintain an independent identity for each, with Red featuring more popular programming and Blue airing highbrow fare. However, these definitions only extended to each network’s “Basic” stations—the ones nbc required a potential sponsor to purchase. These stations were concentrated on the East Coast and in the industrial Midwest and connected core markets but bypassed smaller ones, especially those in the South and the less-industrialized areas of the Midwest. In addition nbc operated an independent Pacific Coast network and several supplementary groups of stations used interchangeably by both Red and Blue, which could be included if the sponsor so desired but were not required.30 Moreover, because the supplementary groups shared Red and Blue affiliations, only one network could operate nationally at a time.31 The incomplete “national” service produced by the basic plus supplemental structure of the networks had important implications when sponsors wanted to reach areas where the network did not go or during times when the network had other obligations. Until the mid-1930s, because the nbc and cbs networks emphasized the major metropolitan areas, many markets received secondary rather than primary coverage. Throughout the decade more than half of the United States did not have primary coverage. In the “white areas,” which at the end of the decade still included approximately 1.7 million square miles and twenty-one million people, radio listeners did not receive direct

28 Chapter One

groundwave signals. Instead, they depended on the less reliable, staticfilled skywave signals, which bounced off the ionosphere. Primary signals sounded far better and were more reliable than secondary signals.32 Indeed, in 1937 the fcc reported that only 43 percent of the country had usable radio coverage at night.33 For comparison, in 1936 an nbc executive spoke disparagingly of the “vast difference between freak night sky waves and dependable signals.” For this salesman, coverage differences meant that he could not reliably promise sponsors that markets in the gray areas would hear the sponsored program.34 Yet it also suggests ways in which there were large areas of the country that were not included in the definitions of the radio network’s national coverage. Sponsor and network definitions of desirable markets did not always match each other. National companies depended on road and rail networks that moved physical products as well as the infrastructures of regional wholesalers or “jobbers” that served as intermediaries between the large companies and local retailers. Even if a certain territory was characterized by attractive demographic criteria, if sponsors did not have product distribution in a certain territory, or did not expect sales from another, they were disinclined to pay for service into those areas.35 These decisions by network advertisers to make full network purchases provide another example of the ways in which radio networks were multimodal. The radio network was not merely constituted by the cost of distributing electrical signals over special telephone lines but also by the infrastructures of material distribution networks. Because it was dependent on these varied factors, sponsor priorities created tensions with the networks. One common example where this occurred was in the practice of split networking. A split network occurred when an advertiser wanted to limit the number of stations it purchased. Often this meant that advertisers purchased certain affiliates within the networks’ supplemental groups and not others. In the first part of the decade, significant numbers of radio sponsors pared their advertising expenditures by substituting split networks for larger network purchases. Hard hit by the economic downturn, nbc and cbs were forced to accept split networks.36 When they did, it meant that listeners in different cities received different network programs; for example, Chicago heard something different than Des Moines, even if both local stations were network affiliates. Split networks, then, suggest that radio’s



The Value of a Name 29

ability to create an experience of national unity was not nearly as common as has been assumed.37 Split networking caused tensions between the network and sponsors, between networks and their affiliates, and between networks and advertising agencies. The primary venue for tension was between stations and networks. If affiliation’s principal value to stations was the reception of highquality revenue-generating programming, a split network contract meant that certain stations would not receive that program, thereby eliminating that value. If the affiliate could not create a show that equaled the appeal of the national show then it would lose part of its audience, which could hurt other shows on both the station and network. For example, in March 1933 the manager of nbc Baltimore affiliate wfbr complained to the chain that several highly rated musical variety shows, the A&P Gypsies, Lady Esther’s Wayne King Orchestra, and the Blackstone Plantation, were not being sent to his station.38 The manager was particularly piqued because nbc was not providing replacement programming, which required the station to “fill-in locally” by creating its own shows during those times.39 The networks recognized the inequality inherent in forcing stations to create their own programs when they affiliated primarily to receive nationally produced programs. In 1934, as part of nbc’s decision to eliminate split networks, the nbc executive D. S. Shaw described the practice as “unfair and even vicious.” Comparing the nbc radio network stations to Christmas tree lights, he argued: “When you eliminate from service a station, that transmitter is like the bulb in the middle that has been severed half-way out of the socket and left dark. It is true that the other programs can be built locally and put on the air by the starved station, but . . . asking them to ‘fill locally’ is much the same as selling them a ticket to a show and then sitting in the seat yourself.”40 To avoid alienating its affiliates, nbc and cbs provided sustaining shows in order to keep the scheduling slots open. Sustaining shows were programs created by the network for potential sale or to serve public interest requirements. Created “on-spec” or as loss-leaders for public relations purposes, they seldom had the budgets or star power of sponsored programs. Sustaining programs were merely a partial solution, however. Even though they cost stations less than creating their own programs, their lack of sponsors meant that they did not add to the stations’ revenues.41 Similarly, split networks created extra costs for the networks: cbs did not

30 Chapter One

charge its affiliates for sustaining programs, and although nbc did impose a charge the amount did not equal the costs of program production or the line charges to distribute the programs.42 In addition, as I discuss in later chapters, these gaps created the potential for further conflicts if the affiliate had a successful local show or used programs obtained from independent program producers. In these cases the station would be loath to cancel it when nbc was able to provide them with a sponsored show in that slot. Split networks also resulted in tensions between networks and advertisers. For example, when nbc reduced its rates in spring 1933 because of the Depression, it also attempted to eliminate split networks.43 When sponsors protested, the reaction within the company revealed a mixed attitude toward advertisers. The Los Angeles–based nbc executive Don Gilman expressed his displeasure with the decision because it made sponsors feel that networks were “indifferent to their problems, and are concerned only with the selfish promotion of our own business.”44 Others in the nbc sales ranks, like Roy Witmer, disagreed and argued that a sponsor always made “dead sure he gets his last pound of flesh . . . Neither is the advertiser particularly interested right now in gestures of good will in territories from which definite sales returns are doubtful.” In his typically caustic fashion Witmer acknowledged that networks and sponsors did not always have mutual interests. Indeed, he recognized that certain stations were not profitable for sponsors to purchase because of nbc policy: “With respect to actual radio sets in various districts our rate structure is illogical. So many things are rela­ tive, and this is a case where relativity plays an important role.”45 Although Witmer doubted much could be done to control split networks aside from “passing the buck” to local affiliates, the network made it a priority to restrict split network contracts.46 In the mid-1930s, following the reduction of at&t rates and as an attempt to reduce the complications created by split networks, nbc and cbs reorganized their rate structures in order to emphasize coverage through using more stations rather than more powerful ones. This tactic was termed by nbc as the “integral package theory of operation,” which assumed that each network was an independent, self-contained package. The integral package theory aimed to ensure that basic coverage would always be national by refusing to mix Red and Blue affiliates on a single network.47 As part of this reorientation, throughout the 1930s the networks increased the number of stations that constituted a minimum purchase. Larger so-called



The Value of a Name 31

Basic groups ensured coverage of the largest population centers, which was how the networks defined national service. In 1928, there were seventeen nbc-Red affiliates, eleven nbc-Blue affiliates, and seventeen described as supplementary. Ten years later the Basic Red and Blue packages consisted of twenty-three and twenty-four stations respectively, but the network required the evening sponsor of the Red Network to purchase a minimum of fifty stations with the remainder chosen from station groups organized regionally. Despite a desire to phase out split networks, large and powerful sponsors could override those polices. For example, nbc amended its split network prohibition in 1934 when Standard Oil wanted to broadcast daily regional news at 6:00 pm. The networks allowed Standard Oil to disregard network-defined station groups and place its programs on only the stations it wanted.48 Although the split networks were reduced in number, in January 1935 there were still fifty-five a week on nbc. While the network was able to eliminate them on the commercially oriented Red Network, the prevalence of sustaining programming on nbc-Blue meant that split networks were a continued presence well into the late 1930s.49 Whether out of a desire to recruit agitated nbc sponsors or out of fear of losing its own affiliates, Columbia continued to accept split networks in its supplementary groups. The network had problems with what one internal memo termed “stinker” stations that sponsors refused to purchase.50 Still, by 1938 cbs required sponsors to purchase twenty-four of its twenty-six Basic stations.51 These reorganized rate structures catered to the general desire of sponsors to advertise only in the most important areas while simulta­ neously pushing individual sponsors to buy more stations.52 Both networks divided their supplementary stations into regional groups. Sponsors could choose these station groups individually, as a whole, or in part, and they received discounts based upon the number of stations purchased. This was a change from nbc’s earlier models that based discounts on the dollar amount of the purchase. This structure made it financially advantageous to purchase more stations rather than the most powerful ones.53 The networks’ shift from a model that stressed fewer higher-powered stations to one that stressed more lower-powered stations coincided with a shift toward larger sponsors with nationally distributed products. The networks recognized that pursuing larger advertisers increased their dependence on smaller numbers of sponsors.54 However, this fear was trumped

32 Chapter One

by their dissatisfaction with the inconsistency of the smaller advertisers.55 Between 1937 and 1941 network revenue increased 50 percent while the number of advertisers was reduced by 25 percent. By the beginning of the Second World War, over half of network revenue came from just eleven companies.56 In addition, those companies produced five general kinds of products—food, drugs, soap, toiletries, and tobacco products—all of which were inexpensive and could be used by large percentages of the population.57 The reorganization at nbc and cbs reflected not only their desire to maintain their status as the preeminent national advertising distributors but also the external pressure by advertisers and stations on the network system as nbc and cbs had defined it. However, at a moment when massmarket advertising was ascendant, the broadcast advertising industry debated how to address the gaps and omissions resulting from the networks’ mass orientation. Not all commentators and advertisers were convinced of the inherent value of the mass, and they represented a strong counterdiscourse that later would be used by station representatives to formulate alternative definitions of the audience. Missing Parts of the Mass Audience In the early 1930s the huge popularity of evening programs like Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Hour and Amos ’n’ Andy convinced many advertisers of the value of mass radio advertising. These programs were cultural phenomena in which listeners would reorient their daily activities to make sure they did not miss them.58 Broadcast over the national networks, the programs regularly were heard by between one-third and one-half of the country’s population.59 Advertisers believed that radio audiences followed their favorite performers and invested heavily in shows with widely popular appeal.60 However, not everyone in the broadcasting industry was convinced of the value of these types of programs. Despite a general emphasis on mass audiences, in the first half of the 1930s commentators regularly discussed the value of smaller audiences. In part this may have been a holdover from earlier notions of a “class” audience, but it also reflected a sincere concern about the advertising effectiveness of widely popular programs. In one example from 1932 the Radio News editor Alfie Hammond argued against the broadcasting trends toward large, broadly appealing shows. His argument was based on the radio ad-



The Value of a Name 33

vertising studies that showed that program popularity did not necessarily translate into correspondingly high levels of sponsor identification or sales mobilization by the audience.61 That same year and in a similar vein Kenneth Goode’s Manual of Modern Advertising lamented the industry’s focus on the mass. He noted that the broadcasting industry had investigated both the types of programming that had general appeal and how each element of that general program was likely to appeal to each member of the listening family. The industry had not, however, “begun to realize its possibilities of segregating small special audiences for intimate and even technical talks about specialties in which they are interested.”62 The tenor of Goode’s comments suggests that he was not necessarily invested in niche audiences as inherently upper class. Rather, they imply an evolving idea of niche appeals, or what later would be thought of as the relationship between taste culture and audience engagement. Other commentators were also attempting to find a way to discuss specialized audiences other than the “class” audience. Among them was Herman Hettinger, who in a 1934 article in Broadcasting admonished the industry for its hit mentality and mass orientation: “It seems to me that we have reasoned too much on the basis of outstanding hits . . . It must be remembered that different classes and temperaments of listeners desire different types of programs, each type of which should be placed over the station to whose personality and clientele it is best suited.”63 In contrast to the networks, which claimed that class audiences had the same program preferences as the mass audience, Hettinger argued for smaller, discretely targeted programs and advertising messages. Hettinger acknowledged a lack of empirical research to support his observations, indicating that this issue was not necessarily one that was of widespread concern. However, placed in the context of his earlier studies of Philadelphia listeners and his ongoing calls for the industry to develop more sophisticated ways of understanding the relationship between commercial content, program content, and audience interests, Hettinger’s comments suggest that at least one segment of the broadcast advertising industry was interested in niche audiences. Moreover, in the following years advertisers expressed concern about whether large shows were worth the expense. John Dolph of the N. W. Ayer Agency skeptically evaluated the value of sponsor recognition. He was “not convinced that the good will and gratitude supposedly achieved by the advertiser for the mere fact that he presents the program is all that it has been

34 Chapter One

cracked up to be.” Dolph felt that listeners now regarded radio as part of their “natural heritage” granted when they purchased a set, and therefore it was not reasonable for sponsors to expect audiences to connect their name with a program.64 The comments of Goode, Hettinger, and Dolph represent a counter concern with the limits of mass-oriented advertising. In conjunction with the real limits to the networks’ coverage, they are linked to the development of station representation and spot broadcasting as a way to fill in geographic and discursive gaps in the network system. Spotty Definitions: Spot Broadcasting, Station Representation, and Markets Defined One reason for the success of the networks’ advertising system was that it provided sponsors and their agencies a solution to what organizational studies scholars have called the “problem of uncertainty.” This theory holds that organizations respond to their inability to know for certain if their product will be successful by attempting to impose order, increase rates of predictability, and enforce accountability.65 Especially during the 1920s when radio advertising was of unproven worth, radio networks provided a well-ordered system that could reliably ensure that the audience would hear a designated commercial announcement at a certain time. In addition, because networks were linked contractually with their affiliates, accountability was built into that system. The same could not initially be said for the advertiser who wished to sponsor programs on local stations across the country, using what was termed by the industry as “spot broadcasting.” Spot broadcasting is a slippery concept, and it had multiple meanings for the broadcasting industry in the 1930s and 1940s. Pierre Key’s Radio Annual for 1933, one of the first major reviews of the radio industry, provided this definition: “It is interesting to note how spot broadcasting got its name. By using this method of broadcasting the national advertiser can spot the territory in which he wishes to merchandise; spot the radio stations (just as he would choose a local newspaper) which would do the best job for him; spot the day or night of the week when he feels he has the best chance to appeal to his type of purchases, and then spot the actual hour of that day or night, over that station, and in that territory, when he feels his message could reach the greatest number of people.”66 In contrast to the national network model that stressed centralized production and distribution from that point, spot



The Value of a Name 35

broadcasting was rooted in a different articulation of the national and the local. This focus rendered the category of spot broadcasting at once broad and specific, as evident in various descriptions of the concept throughout the network era. It included the location of a program or announcement within the “flow” of the schedule as well as the audience that the advertiser intended to reach. Indeed, Key’s all-encompassing conception of “spot” was not soon clarified. A decade later John Blair, a station representative and one of the foremost proponents of spot broadcasting, provided a more succinct but no less broad definition of spot as “radio advertising of any type (from 25-word announcements to full-hour shows) planned and placed on a flexible market-by-market basis.”67 In 1948, near the end of the “network era,” spot broadcasting was still sufficiently amorphous that Sponsor held a contest to inaugurate a new name for the term.68 The magazine noted that all manner of activities fell under the rubric of “spot,” thus leading to wholesale confusion within the various elements of the broadcasting industry as to what “spot” actually referenced. The common thread in all of the definitions the magazine considered was the placement of programs and announcements on a market-by-market basis. In the end, Sponsor’s committee picked “selective advertising” as the new name—a choice that reflected the newfound importance of segmented markets, segmented programs, and segmented audiences to postwar broadcast advertising.69 This endpoint suggests how spot broadcasting—as a cultural process of market definition, promotion, and rationalization—filled in the gaps in the network system and facilitated nonnetworked practices of radio program production, distribution, and reception. However, to reach that point spot broadcasting needed to address the “problem of uncertainty.” This was done through the work of station representatives. These individuals and organizations performed the intellectual and physical labor of constructing specific geographic locations as audience commodities, and in so doing rationalized the process by which advertisers came to recognize those markets’ value. The histories of station representatives and spot sales demonstrate one way that local and regional identities were articulated to national brands. The primary users of spot advertising were national advertisers seeking to localize their message—for them the flexibility that spot campaigns allowed was valuable. As such spot selling was simultaneously nationally oriented and locally oriented. However, for the local to be articulated into consumer culture it had to be produced in ways that were recognizable to

36 Chapter One

industry personnel within that larger matrix of institutions and material goods. This required a different way of classifying markets than that given in the mass definitions of the national networks. These alternative definitions of specific markets were constructed by station representatives. Only after specific markets were defined could the local, or at least particular aspects of local culture, be linked with advertised consumer goods. However, these processes did not solely involve the integration of the local into the national. The definitions of the local by station representatives also flowed upstream and influenced the perspectives, practices, and operations of national radio advertisers, agencies, and broadcasters. The development of spot sales was therefore intertwined with that of station representation. From an originally marginal place in the broadcasting industry, the station representative became an important force in brokering the relations between local stations and national advertisers. Station representatives functioned as “audience intellectuals” who generated, explained, and translated knowledge about local stations and local markets to national agencies and sponsors. This term, developed by the historian Kathy Newman, describes the professionals hired by the radio industry to “discover, count, and rate the new audience commodities that had yet to be the target of radio marketing, and to tell them how best to ‘sell’ these new audiences with programming, advertising, and new products.” 70 Many of the individuals involved in the intellectual work of constructing audiences moved back and forth between academic and for-profit worlds.71 Neither solely national nor solely local, station representatives moved between the two in their roles as “knowledge brokers” and “boundary workers.” They not only produced forms of knowledge about local markets but also transported and translated that knowledge from the local to nationally operating agencies and sponsors.72 Through these acts of translation they convinced sponsors and agencies of the value of local markets and demonstrated the viability of radio advertising tailored to specific rather than mass audiences. Station Representation and the Rationalization of Local Radio Advertising In the late 1920s radio advertising was a wide-open and relatively undeveloped field. Few stations had large sales staffs and advertising agencies rarely possessed radio departments. As a result, networks represented one of the



The Value of a Name 37

only means of easily securing time on multiple stations. However, despite their rhetoric of national service the networks were concentrated on the East Coast and in the industrial Midwest and they were programmed for what they perceived to be that sensibility: white, urban, and middle-class.73 In this context station representation emerged with two competing models: nonexclusive and exclusive. Nonexclusive representation basically involved time brokering. Early station representatives approached potential advertisers with available time on stations, or they approached the stations with interest from advertisers. In return they received a 15 percent commission from both station and agency, but they had no obligation to the station or to the sponsor until the time contract was signed. In contrast, exclusive representation meant that a given representative only sold time on a single station in a geographic area. Two of the pioneering station representatives, Scott Howe Bowen and Edward Petry, reflect these two positions. According to H. Preston Peters, an early station representative, the duties of a station representative were “to obtain the largest share of any appropriation available to his station in the market plan for broadcast by the agency and the advertisers” and “to bring to the attention of advertiser and agency other additional or comparable markets that might be suited to those campaign plans.”74 From offices in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles station representatives acted as liaisons and human mediators between stations and advertising agencies. In addition to acting on behalf of the stations by providing advertisers with knowledge about local markets, station representatives created descriptions of the stations and the markets that those stations served. Their promotional materials and public statements were filled with descriptions of particular and specific markets that were comparable to descriptions found in radio network materials. Station representatives sold themselves as the translators of the complex, confusing world of individual stations into rational, comprehensible schedules and prices. In so doing they promoted not only the specific stations they represented but also the idea of segmented and localized broadcasting.75 If a company wanted to sponsor a program in an area not served by the networks in the late 1920s it could expect some difficulty. During this period, advertising agencies remained uninterested in spot broadcasting. Their entrance into radio was premised on a fee structure based on producing programs for network distribution, finding stations on which to air those programs, and charging their clients for those services.76 For agencies,

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contacting stations individually required more work than placing a single network order; this work could multiply if the sponsor wanted any regional variation in the copy used in different areas. In addition, however, agencies feared spot broadcasting would result in rate cutting. Because representatives sometimes demanded a commission from both time sellers (stations) and buyers (advertisers), neither side could be sure it was receiving the best deal, thereby creating mistrust around the transaction. One of the first successful representatives to recognize the gap created by the studied disinterest of the agencies was Scott Howe Bowen.77 Beginning in 1927 Bowen’s New York–based organization researched potential markets, found popular local shows that wanted national sponsorship, and even began program production. Bowen focused his efforts on advertisers by promising them more economical coverage than the networks could provide.78 Given the lack of agency interest, the overwhelming majority of Bowen’s business came from approaching potential sponsors with open time slots and programs. As of 1934 only 20 percent of his annual billings came from filling orders originating with the sponsor or agency.79 Bowen was also influential for defining the key service that station representatives could supply to advertisers: the ability to coordinate a focused campaign for a national sponsor. In a 1932 advertisement in Broadcasting, Bowen claimed that “Spot (individual station) Broadcasting is custom-built for you. Flexible as an eel. Adaptable as a politician. Gives people what they want when they want it—where you want it.”80 This ad’s seemingly extraneous definition of spot broadcasting suggests that the term was new enough that Broadcasting’s readers would not recognize it. Yet the language of this ad with its metaphors and descriptions of customization and localization would later become commonplace. Bowen steadfastly advocated a nonexclusive model of representation because such a model allowed him to place shows on any station that would accept them. His position was that nonexclusive representation benefited both advertisers and stations because the representative was not bound to any single station but instead could place a program according to agency and sponsor wishes. However, this understanding of the value of representation was not shared universally. Stations, clients, and agencies feared that nonexclusive representatives like Bowen were not choosing stations based on their clients’ interests but rather according to the firms’ own priorities. This was an issue especially for stations that were owned or



The Value of a Name 39

managed by one of the networks, because the chains preferred to keep schedule slots open for placement of their programs. For example, prior to October 1932 nbc refused to recognize station representatives who placed time on its managed and operated stations.81 It changed its policy for a brief sixteen- month period, but then reverted to its prior position, which refused to recognize “special agencies,” like Bowen’s, that sold time on its managed and operated stations on a nonexclusive basis. In so doing nbc was clearing the field for its own entrance into local spot sales and transcription production and wished to remove programs that could potentially limit the networks’ own program placement options.82 This decision negatively affected Bowen’s practice of approaching sponsors and agencies on behalf of stations or with the idea for a campaign in a given area or for a given show. Another threat to Bowen’s model was the growing prominence of exclusive representation, which was chiefly advocated by Edward Petry. In another example of early radio borrowing from newspapers, exclusive representation was based on newspaper syndication.83 Unlike the case in a time brokerage model, exclusive station representatives did not directly control the time to be sold.84 Rather, the representative agreed to contract with only one station in a given geographical area. In exchange, all national spot advertising for that station would be handled by the representative’s firm, which solicited agencies directly as well as responded to inquiries from agencies looking to sponsor programs in the area by providing information such as available schedule slots, ratings, coverage, and demographic data about the station and its market. In the early 1930s the industry was vigorously debating the merits of each type of representation. Supporters of nonexclusive representation argued that the exclusive model simply did not provide enough revenue to survive. In the middle of the Depression, they claimed, it could take months of work to land an account from a sponsor, and the representatives needed to maintain maximum flexibility in order to ensure that they could place their potential accounts.85 In contrast, supporters of an exclusive model of station representation contended that their model represented a rationalization of the industry that put stations first. Firms like Petry’s argued that nonexclusive representation was confusing and rife with possibilities for abuse. During the early 1930s, when concerns over rate cutting were rampant, agencies could not be sure that they were paying what the stations were actually asking. There was no guarantee that the stations on

40 Chapter One

the brokers’ lists were included because they were the best for the client rather than because they had agreed to cut their rates, with the difference going to the representative.86 Rationalization through exclusive representation appealed to stations, clients, and advertising agencies. Exclusive representatives could guarantee to sponsors that they could provide promised time slots on their represented stations, unlike nonexclusive representatives who could be scooped by their competitors. This endeared exclusive representatives to adver­ tising agencies that desired rationalized systems of program sponsorship. When considering large purchases on multiple stations in varied locations, agencies willingly compromised complete freedom of station choice in favor of a guaranteed result from a set number of stations and the ease of a single conduit for those stations. In addition, exclusive representation assured clients that the rate that they were receiving was the same as that offered to any other advertiser.87 Stations also preferred exclusive representation because they had a guar­ antee that their representative would not demand a rate cut in order to place a spot with them as opposed to a rival across town. Many stations were desperate for income, and some resorted to rate cutting to survive. The recollections of one representative suggest the ways in which representation benefited stations and sponsors; namely, the spot programs that representatives solicited represented “a tremendous sum of money for that day and age and the national advertisers wanted to use radio. The networks weren’t too well established cross country and in order to get one of those shows you had to fight for it. If you were a station, the broker got his 15 percent regardless of which station he placed the business on.”88 Thus exclusive representation protected stations as well as sponsors. Representatives could not threaten to take a contract to a rival station if they were bound to a single station in a given geographical area. As a result, Petry quickly rose to national prominence as stations chose his firm to represent them.89 Even the networks were impressed by Petry. In late 1933 nbc executives internally discussed the possibility of purchasing his firm and putting him to work for them, and these discussions may have fueled trade publication rumors of merge negotiations the following year.90 Station representatives were not simply middlemen. Their activities were crucial to defining local spot markets in ways that made their value clear to national advertisers. A comparison with institutionally oriented audience



The Value of a Name 41

intellectuals illustrates the role of station representatives in constructing local spot markets. In 1934 Herman Hettinger described the central problem facing the broadcasting industry as one of market knowledge. Specifically, spot broadcasting needed to gain information about the relationship between markets for consumer goods, the distribution of those goods, and markets for spot advertising.91 Hettinger was a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business and one of the foremost audience intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s. As a “commercial pragmatist” Hettinger accepted and adopted the commercial framework of the broadcasting industry and sought to aid the industry in solving its problems as it conceived them.92 A year later one of Hettinger’s students, Lloyd H. Rosenblum, echoed his advisor’s analysis: “Probably the greatest difficulty of spot broadcasting is the lack of information on the subject. Sponsors themselves are often vague on the matter and though middlemen, agencies, and stations are spending more time studying spot, it is still a mystery to many.”93 Rosenblum found that fully half of spot users did not check to see if their campaigns had been successful. Agencies found it was simply too time intensive to check up on each time availability, to check again to see if the spot aired, and finally to poll the area to find out if the campaign was successful. Rosenblum believed that spot broadcasting had to match the networks’ ability to guarantee that the advertised product actually reached the air in order for it to succeed. As the broadcast advertising industry debated this issue, station representatives influenced this discussion by constructing rational systems of market knowledge and sales implementation that competed with the networks’ definitions of the nation. Constructing Market Knowledge: Station Representatives as Audience Intellectuals It was the station representatives who filled the perceived knowledge gap about markets and station performance. Less than one year after Rosenblum’s lament over the dearth of information surrounding spot radio, J. Leslie Fox, commercial manager of WCLO, expressed a rather different sentiment on the subject. Fox triumphantly proclaimed, “Spot broadcasting today is on the highest plane in the history of radio advertising. It finally has achieved its rightful position in the advertising picture along with magazines, newspapers, networks, and billboards.”94 The cause of this newfound

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status, Fox declared, was exclusive station representation. In contrast to the dark days of the past, with its environment of rate cutting, little market knowledge, and cutthroat competition, Fox enthused that the situation has changed: “Agencies need only pick up the phone to learn anything about a station and market thousands of miles away. Stations have found out over the past several years that they, too, just like newspapers, can secure more business, a sound and more honest representation of their facilities, and a closer cooperation from agencies and advertisers by having their own representatives. Today, the present and future of spot broadcasting is brighter than ever before.”95 While exultant rhetoric that bore little resemblance to the truth was not uncommon in the pages of Broadcasting, Fox’s boosterism should not be quickly dismissed. In the mid-1930s both spot broadcasting and station representation became forces within the radio industry. In September 1937 J. Walter Thompson’s Chicago office reported a 1,000 percent increase in the placement of spots in the first eight months of 1937 compared with a similar period in 1936.96 Harry Bannister, manager of the Detroit station wwj, recalled that in 1934 and 1935 local business exceeded national spot sales by two or three times, but by 1938 sales were equally divided between network, local, and national spots.97 By the end of the decade spot and local sales eclipsed those of networks.98 Spot broadcasting’s ascendance into a central part of the broadcasting industry reflected not only the rationalization of the relationships between advertisers and stations but also a new way of approaching broadcast advertising that was the genesis of the market segmentation that would follow after the Second World War. Station representatives were influenced by models and metaphors of newspaper syndication and advertising. As the example from Fox above suggests, station representatives embraced the newspaper/magazine metaphor as an explanation of local station operations and their role in them. The idea of a newspaper provided an alternative to the national magazine comparison promoted by the networks. The networks likened themselves to national weeklies like Life that were read by the entire nation.99 In contrast, newspapers were locally owned and operated and contained a mixture of local news as well as nationally syndicated features and wire reports. Likewise, their advertising base included both local and national organizations. Radio News noted in 1930 that there were “two forms of advertising in use today,” national magazines and local newspapers: “We may compare



The Value of a Name 43

chain broadcasting with the magazine and call it national radio advertising, and the recording programs with the newspapers in each city and call it ‘spot’ radio advertising.”100 In conjunction with their use of newspaper metaphors, station repre­ sentatives foregrounded their experience “in the field” as a form of knowledge about markets, stations, and those stations’ local audiences. A 1937 Broadcasting profile of the station representative John Ralph Latham illustrates how representatives claimed local knowledge. The article described a speech to the New York Advertising Club in which Latham argued that spending time in the field and talking with stations, listeners, and local businessmen was essential: “Get out in the field and learn for yourself how the stations handle their present accounts. Learn how they handle their own advertising and promotion, what they really think of their audiences and what their audiences really think of them.”101 He warned the admen to not be “fooled by power and frequency”: the low-powered stations were more aggressively attuned to attracting an audience because they lacked the wattage and dial location of larger stations, thus making them “a better buy for the advertiser.” 102 Advice like this ran contrary to the emphasis by networks on mass audience appeals and industrial practices that relied on national ratings surveys like Hooper and Crossley. Indeed, it was part of a strategy that stressed the emotional bonds of loyalty and specialized knowledge. In a similar fashion another successful station representative, John Blair, touted the value of “station tested” local programs for national advertisers. His firm’s 1936 advertisements argued that a number of advertisers had used local shows successfully and that their success challenged the commonly held notion that audiences preferred national programs: “The desire to eliminate the inherent gamble of a new program, a ‘pig in a poke,’ may have been the motivating factor, but only one factor—greater responsiveness—keeps them there. For years, stations of the John Blair list have been studying the program desires of their own individual audiences. They are acutely conscious from week to week of all reactions. Naturally, they have brought to their stations those features which please their audience most—an audience close to the program—loyal and responsive to its sponsor . . . Every Blair office has a complete statistical record of these shows and is completely equipped to audition them at any time.”103 Stationtested shows, Blair suggested, were closer to their audience than were national shows—a proximity that manifested itself through listener response.

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Instead of being devalued as amateurish, local programs were more valuable because they had a unique ability to connect with the audience. In this advertisement Blair also nimbly combined firsthand subjective knowledge with “rational” statistical data. Like all local stations, Blair’s stations had firsthand knowledge of their markets, but Blair claimed to have harnessed that knowledge into a statistical form useful for agencies to take to their clients. Blair’s promotional efforts were not limited to the trade press. He also directly contacted agency time-buyers with “Radio Hot Sheets” when “unusual” or “bargain” periods became available.104 While such tactics emphasized the up-to-the minute nature of program availabilities, other companies emerged to provide still more systematic knowledge and services. Station representatives did not simply convey information but also used their market knowledge as the basis for offering an increasingly wide range of services for advertisers. In 1935 potential sponsors’ assumptions about the difficulty of placing spot advertising were challenged by Free and Sleininger’s representation film, which claimed, “Believe it or not—it’s often easier (and usually more productive) to place time on a well-selected group of ‘spots’ than on a network. In fact, if you’re feeling worn out, we’ll arrange the whole works for you—select the stations, clear the time, engage the talent, even help produce the programs . . . Then your message will reach only the people you need to reach—no waste, no overlapping, no weak links.”105 This proposition was no mere hyperbolic ballyhoo. The expansion of duties performed by station representatives placed them in competition with the sales staffs of national networks in ways that could put the larger organizations at a disadvantage. As middlemen the representatives were more efficient at relaying information than were the networks. In 1932 nbc formed a “Local Service Bureau” to act as representative for spot sales on its managed and operated stations.106 However, unlike the independent representatives, this division had the additional mandate of being required to protect slots where network programs aired or might be aired in the future. This meant that although the division represented local stations, they represented the network first, and thus in practice inquiries from sponsors had to be vetted by both sta­ tion and network personnel.107 The nbc salesman Donald Shaw complained about the impact of such inefficiency on the network’s bottom line by stating, “I wonder if you realize that today—right now—should you desire an availability report on any or all of nbc’s operated stations, a wire would have



The Value of a Name 45

to be sent out with a sometimes days delay in answers? Why? . . . Petry or Free & Sleininger give prospects the answer in minutes or hours—we take days.”108 Shaw’s frustration suggests one way in which the representatives’ position outside of the largest institutional structures of broadcasting could work to their advantage. While station representatives translated and codified local knowledge for advertising agencies and sponsors, their qualitative information was being interpreted through the growth of techniques of quantitative radio audience analysis by a newly emergent field. As John J. Karol, director of marketing research for cbs, noted in the April 1937 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, “Only a few years ago radio was considered by many to be unmeasureable and was frequently referred to as an ‘intangible medium.’ ” But now, Karol suggested, a variety of survey techniques indicated that radio broadcasting could be quantified along numerous axes.109 The use of geographically constituted audience appeals in radio advertising demonstrates the articulation of niche market categories to preexisting social identities.110 A pamphlet from John Blair and Co. in 1942 described spot broadcasting in ways that stressed autonomy and choice by noting that “the selection of markets is made solely by the advertiser—not by the medium. Instead of a predetermined group, he uses those markets which match his selling operations and his type of customers.” This referred not simply to the location of radio stations but also to the daily activities of various subgroups and taste cultures. “Spot Radio’s flexibility extends also to the time of broadcasts, making it easy to secure attention from particular types of customers . . . farmers at dawn, women ready for shopping, revelers at midnight. Thus it is possible not only to aim advertising accurately but to hit those selected audiences with the effective sales message for each.”111 By linking advertising appeals to market segments and daily activities, station representation and spot broadcasting contributed to the further specialization of the audience as a commodity. In contrast to the networks’ desire for a mass national market, spot broadcasting articulated the social context of listening with program content and targeted advertising. This rhetoric not only acknowledged the advertisers’ freedom of choice by lauding their application of particular “aims and problems” to select markets but also interjected the station representative as the most efficient and reliable means of obtaining the data that justified the selection of specific stations, programs, and times.112

46 Chapter One

Though often overlooked, station representatives established themselves as a central part of the broadcasting industry in the 1930s. By gathering market data and translating that data to advertisers, they played a crucial role in the construction of a segmented audience commodity by simultaneously selling a market as they facilitated selling to that market. Although neither solely local nor national, their historical legacy lies in their function as mediators and boundary workers. The importance of station representatives lay in their ability to transcend one single scale of action and move among several. They facilitated the flow of information necessary for the construction of geographic audience-commodities. Likewise, they translated information for stations, advertising agencies, and sponsors, thereby allowing each group to transcend the scale of its activities. While national broadcasting corporations described wire-based networks as a technology of seamless interconnection, in reality it represented a set of technical possibilities rather than the system’s everyday operation. Nontechnical elements such as the sponsor’s market preferences and product distribution network make clear how discursive and material networks influenced the shape and extent of this information network. This intermedia interaction is reflected in the practice of split networking and the conflicts it generated among sponsors, stations, and national broadcasters. The gaps in and omissions of a network-based construction of the radio nation were filled by station representatives, who played a crucial role in discursively establishing geographically defined markets. This was one element of the process that established a parallel system for the production, distribution, and sponsorship of radio programs. In the next two chapters I offer two case studies of these parallel systems—regional networks and sound-on-disc transcriptions—which provided both programming and the means to distribute those programs to the markets constructed in the gaps of the national networks. Regional networks challenge the assumption that radio network interconnection was necessarily equivalent with national scope, and sound-on-disc transcriptions address the issue of liveness and the presence of recorded materials in golden age radio.

two

“The   Lord is my Shepard I shall not want” Regional Networks as Sites of Community and Conflict

In April 1936 the treasurer of cbs, Paul Runyon, sent a telegram to the Hotel Buckminster in Boston, Massachusetts. It was addressed to John Shepard III, the president of the Bay State Broadcasting Company and the owner of station wnac, Columbia’s Boston affiliate (see figure 6). The telegram said simply, “The Lord is my Shepard I shall not want.” Runyon was not speaking of theology. Instead, he was telling the Boston broadcaster that cbs no longer wished to affiliate with wnac or Shepard in any way. Broadcasting magazine interpreted this exchange as showing Runyon’s desire “to impress upon the Boston operator that cbs had at last wrested itself from his domination in New England.”1 This level of outright hostility between a network official and an affiliate is nearly as curious as Broadcasting’s interpretation, which suggested that it was Shepard who had been dominating Columbia. While cbs had now asserted its ability to control the situation, it could do so only by terminating its relationship with Shepard and by affiliating with another lower-powered Boston station. While the conventional wisdom of broadcasting history is that networks dominated their affiliates, and not vice versa, this brief exchange suggests that this view needs to be revised. No doubt, network affiliation was very often beneficial for stations, but the story of John Shepard and the Yankee and Colonial networks challenges the conventional wisdom that affiliation was necessary and entailed a loss of autonomy.

48 Chapter Two

6

John Shepard III, owner of the Yankee and Colonial networks.

John Shepard may not have been a typical broadcast station owner, but neither was he without parallel. Regional radio networks like his Yankee and Colonial networks filled geographical gaps in the technological infrastructure of the national network systems by developing programs oriented toward regional audiences. In marketing those programs they constructed idealized definitions of regional audiences to sell to national, regional, and local sponsors. Finally, regional networks defended their right to prioritize their own interests against larger national broadcasting entities. Their efforts to maintain their autonomy extended their influence beyond their immediate sphere into national broadcasting, thus further complicating efforts to understand this era’s stations and networks and the relationship between  the two. The activities of regional networks were also structured by articulations of geographic boundaries, market definitions, and audience identities. Like the station representatives discussed in chapter 1, regional networks “jumped scales” and thus complicated a binary conception of broadcasting  as either national or local. Shepard’s organizations simultaneously operated as local, regional, and national entities. They received programs from national networks (sometimes, as suggested by the anecdote I give in the introduction, from multiple networks during the same evening); they en-



“The Lord is my Shepard” 49

tered into a variety of ventures and agreements with station representatives; they produced programming for local and regional consumption; and they regularly sent programming upstream to the Mutual Network for national distribution. These practices not only suggest ways in which network radio was not inherently national but also demonstrate how national, regional, and local radio overlapped. The Yankee Network: Promoting Programs   with Hometown Appeal Although national networks constituted the dominant model of programming distribution via interconnection, during the height of the golden  age regional networks also thrived. The name itself is somewhat of a misnomer, as regional radio networks encompassed a wide variety of programming practices and institutional arrangements. Some regional networks were permanent organizations; others were sporadic station groups created solely for a special event or in the service of a spot campaign; still others were clusters of stations with a common owner. All of these regional networks broadcast to geographical areas of limited and nonnational geographic scope. While they were relatively smaller and less profitable than the national networks, their history highlights the process by which the already existing regional identities of their listeners were articulated to consumer goods through program address. With programming that both drew upon and deviated from the styles of the national networks, regional networks performed three intertwined roles. First, they provided programming to stations that either could not gain a national network affiliation or wanted to fill time periods when the national network otherwise offered sustaining programs that did not bring in revenue. Second, regional networks provided programming with a regional orientation and yet also with higher production values than those of the local shows. Finally, they sold advertisers audiences conceived along local demographic lines. Despite substantial variation in geographic scope, economic activity, and length of existence, regional networks operated throughout the country and grew substantially during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.2 From fewer than ten such networks in 1933, the number of regional networks doubled in five years, and then doubled again by 1942 to reach a total of forty-one regional networks. Despite a postwar decline when the number dropped to thirty-four,

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as late as 1956 there were ninety-three combined regional networks and group station operations.3 The story of the Yankee and Colonial networks demonstrates an alternative model of network-based programming production, distribution, and sponsorship. The owner of these two different networks, John Shepard III, began broadcasting as radio station wnac from his parents’ Boston-based  department store in 1922. The Shepard family also owned a store in Providence, Rhode Island, and soon operated radio station wean there as well. In  1928 Shepard linked the stations and began to sell them as one advertising package. During this time he also experimented with cooperative sponsor­ ship by purchasing blocks of time from stations in other towns, providing music through links with either wnac or wean, and selling commer­ cial spots between songs. This allowed smaller advertisers to sponsor one sec­tion of the larger program.4 Building on this initial success, Shepard approached several smaller New England stations and offered them programming in exchange for time, thereby officially incorporating the Yankee Net­ work in 1930. Its sister chain, the Colonial Network, followed in 1936.5 Shepard possessed some remarkable geographical advantages that contributed to the success of the Yankee Network. New England was one of the nation’s densest regions in population, household income, and number of households with radios. With over three-quarters of a million radio homes, Massachusetts alone contained twice as many radio homes as did Delaware, Vermont, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada combined.6 At the same time, New En­gland listeners had difficulty receiving stations from big cities. Mountains in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, western Massachusetts, and Connecticut prevented clear reception of higher-power stations, and the national networks had little interest in affiliating with smaller, low-powered stations.7 New England’s compact geography also benefited Shepard by reducing the costs of leasing long lines from at&t.8 The Shepard organization had a highly rationalized and vertically integrated structure designed to maximize programming choices and profitmaking options. Shepard mirrored the operations of national networks by using an intertwined structure of program production, sales organization, extensive promotion, and affiliations with independent program producers. In the early 1930s Shepard rebroadcast cbs programs from his affiliated stations wnac and wean to entice smaller stations to affiliate with



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him. Shepard distributed to those stations on his network the larger network’s programs along with Boston-produced, sponsored music programs. Shepard did not charge the cbs advertisers for the additional station, so they did not object. Initially, cbs was also happy to have the increased coverage, but soon the network changed its mind when it realized that Shepard was usurping cbs’s role as program distributor. The Yankee Network thus was forced to find other sources of programming.9 The Yankee Network mixed a variety of programming sources and styles that combined nationally produced, general-appeal recorded shows or spot announcements with locally produced live programming. In the early 1930s wnac, wean, and the Yankee Network contracted with the station representative Scott Howe Bowen to solicit national spot advertisers. Likewise, Yankee was an early user of sound-on-disc transcription recordings, for which it obtained programs from Transco and the World Broadcasting System (wbs).10 In early 1934 Shepard joined Bowen in forming Group Broadcasters Inc. Initially composed of twenty-five stations drawn from Bowen’s representation business, gbi was a cooperative designed to link stations together for national spot advertisers. Bowen, who owned a transcription production company, solicited advertisers and produced programs. He hoped that his programs would function like sustaining shows on the wired networks. Once they were on the air, Bowen hoped that they could be sold to advertisers. In return, affiliated stations paid for the production costs, possible line charges, and a small commission. The affiliated stations were located throughout the Northeast and industrial Midwest, much like the national networks’ affiliate distribution at this time. Indeed, most also carried a national network affiliation but saw gbi as a way to increase their revenue by converting unsponsored time into sponsored time. Indeed, gbi claimed its rates represented a greater value than that of national networks. As one advertisement put it, “Your choice of America’s major markets and no ‘cover charge.’ ”11 Nevertheless, Shepard denied that he wanted to compete with national networks. He described gbi as simply an attempt to foster radio advertising in general, and he argued that “there is no reason why the station itself, which is so vitally interested in the national business it receives, should not extend its own efforts in this field and secure its share of national accounts by means of a carefully coordinated sales plan similar in scope and effectiveness to that of other media, such as the national magazine and Sunday newspaper groups.”12

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The organization lasted only a few months. Following the failure of a projected merger with the World Broadcasting System, a producer of transcription records, and given the probable clashes with Shepard, Bowen pulled out. Within two months Shepard named Edward Petry as the new sales representative for the Yankee Network.13 Also within several months wor, gbi’s key station, joined wgn, wlw, and wxyz to form the Mutual Network. Still gbi represented a significant effort to organize the spot sales field by combining station representation, program production, and program distribution. Despite the organization’s quick demise, its advertising philosophy remained a central goal for future regionally organized spot sales groups. Skewed heavily toward music, news, sports, and home economics, Yankee Network programming appealed to local and regional audiences by offering something competitors did not.14 Yet the network also retained the economic advantages of multistation distribution. Because the costs could be distributed across many stations, Yankee could spend more money on program production. Likewise, regional networks like Yankee produced programs with “metropolitan” talent with a local connection, which the industry perceived as being of higher quality. For example, the chain maintained its own orchestra and regularly featured these musicians along with various local singers and musicians. Shepard also ran a talent agency. This gave him a secure, steady source of performers for studio shows, the ability to book local appearances for network stars, and the possibility of using local appearances as live radio programs.15 Similarly, Shepard contracted with news stringers and local newspapers to create his own news-gathering service. The papers received a credit line for the stories they provided. He then offered a bulletin service to stations unable to afford their own fulltime news staffs, while also selling spot announcements to local, regional, and national sponsors who hoped to reach those markets.16 These news reports, to generalize from a week of copy submitted to the fcc in 1934, equally addressed national and regional events. These stories were short, befitting their status as bulletins that aired between 11:00 pm and 11:15 pm daily. There were national stories about nra regulations, bombs in Havana, and obituaries of Hollywood stars, but most had a regional orientation. Sometimes this meant that national stories were discussed in local terms, as with an ongoing series of stories about the potential effects of a national strike in the textile industry. New England was home to one hun-



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dred thousand textile workers and this national story had regional ramifications. Other stories addressed upcoming state congressional races, the activities of the Massachusetts Public Utilities Commission, and various violent crimes in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. But there were also stories about a runaway horse in Worchester that threatened children at play, teenagers breaking into a warehouse in Boston, and a rabid dog in Quincy.17 Somewhat surprisingly, the copy did not display Shepard’s notoriously conservative political orientation.18 The Yankee Network scheduled its programs during time periods that the national network did not serve. In the early 1930s national networks offered daytime programming, but much of it was sustaining. In 1932 only  30 percent of the morning national network programs were sponsored. This dropped sharply to just less than 12 percent of programs sold in the afternoons.19 Two years later the balance had been roughly evened out so that 20 percent of morning programs and 22 percent of afternoon shows were sponsored. Overall, however, daytime was dominated by sustaining programs.20 Working around this distribution of sponsored programs as well  as the obligations created by wnac’s affiliation with first cbs and later nbc, Yankee focused on a fairly tight range of time slots—generally from 7:00 to 10:00 in the mornings, from 12:00 to 2:00 in the afternoons, and from 6:00 to 7:00 in the evenings with an occasional extension to the 7:30 to 8:00 pm slot. Thus, while only 15 percent of Yankee Network’s nighttime programs were sponsored, 60 to 70 percent of daytime broadcasts were.21 Additionally, a large percentage of the programming was “striped,” that is, airing three or five times a week at the same time, which facilitated repeat listening.22 In a similar fashion the Yankee Network constructed its programs to counter the content of national network shows. If national networks emphasized “quality” “mass appeal” programming that sought to generate goodwill for the network and sponsor, Shepard divorced programming content from advertising content. An article entitled “Radio Audiences Form Class Tastes,” written in 1934 by Roy Harlow, Shepard’s assistant, cited Broadway theater as a model for radio because it varied its audience appeals: “who TODAY would expect to engage a theatre and produce a play through which he hoped to please equally every man, woman, or child regardless of race or creed. That may seem ridiculous but it is exactly what is expected of the producers of a radio program by its sponsor.” He argued that no Broadway

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producer would open a play similar to all the other shows in all the other theaters in town. Theater producers recognized that taste mattered and that audiences apply their own sets of value—ones often based on their class positions. Theater, Harlow suggested, had recognized this for years and had offered highbrow as well as burlesque styles. For Harlow the recognition of class tastes allowed advertisers to move beyond simply generating “goodwill” to engaging actively in selling a product: “Basically, if we are willing to face facts, the playing of the ‘Last Roundup’ or an act from a Wagnerian opera will never sell a can of soup or a tube of toothpaste. It is the copy that sells—nothing else. Granted the ballyhoo of a fine program is a great attention getter, and that a good performance builds good will, in the final analysis it is the copy, its dignity or cleverness of introduction, its delivery and salesmanship that brings the customer into the tent and makes him a purchaser.”23 Divorcing programming appeal from continuity—the term that the industry used to describe advertising copy—foreshadowed what is now considered standard advertising practice: design a program to appeal to specific audiences and sell ads for that show to advertisers who want to target that audience. Programs attracted audiences; advertising copy convinced  them to purchase a product. Following this philosophy the Yankee and Colonial Networks broadcast local sports events on both amateur and professional levels. Sports had a readily available regional audience as well as ample opportunities for selling advertising time. Shepard’s owned and operated stations specialized in catering to local sports teams. For example, wean in Providence carried Brown University football games; waab in Worcester carried Holy Cross games; and wicc in Bridgeport carried Yale games.24 However, these sports paled in comparison to the importance of baseball in the Yankee and Colonial programming lineup. In 1926 wnac began carrying Red Sox and Braves baseball games and distributed them to Yankee Network affiliates when the network began. The network offered live play-by-play Monday through Saturday during the twenty-four-week season. The network also used wire reports of away games to re-create and broadcast them. Finally, the network aired twice-daily sports roundups and made them available to spot advertisers.25 While baseball coverage partly stemmed from Shepard’s love of the game, sports programming offered several advantages for a regional network. In a era before night games, baseball provided relatively inexpensive programming during daytime hours when



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the national networks offered relatively little sponsored programming. The chief production costs were low—consisting of telephone line rental and the salaries of an announcer and an engineering team.26 Baseball and other sports programs were of little interest to the national networks because of their technical challenges and regional appeal. In a system predicated on the clock hour and on live programming, the unpredictable length of sports events could wreak havoc on network schedules (as it sporadically does to this day) and their attendant sponsorship arrangements.27 Unlike today when commercial spots can be moved, the single sponsor model combined with live productions made cancellations and delays incredibly expensive. Shepard dealt with these considerations by rigidly cutting away from baseball at the six o’clock hour even if a game was not completed, which suggests limits to his oft-cited love of baseball when put in conflict with his economic interests.28 These technical issues aside, sports are inherently regional. Outside of the World Series many in professional baseball felt that the average fan followed only his or her own team and was not very interested in distant squads.29 Indeed, in 1934, Boston, Chicago, and Cincinnati were the only cities to regularly broadcast major league games. Not coincidently, Cincinnati was home to wlw, which was operated by independently minded Powell Crosley, another owner who had a tendentious relationship with nbc. Conversely, in Chicago, Cubs games were aired over independent station wgn. Across town, when nbc attempted to reduce the number of baseball broadcasts on wmaq in 1933, Niles Trammell, the nbc vice-president in charge of the network’s Chicago operations, intervened to keep the games on the air citing the $30,000 annual revenue brought in by baseball.30 In addition to different programming forms the Yankee Network also adapted national radio genres by creating regionally oriented versions of national models. Particularly successful were audience participation programs and quiz shows. In her reading of Herta Herzog’s studies of the  audience for Professor Quiz Susan Douglas suggests that these listeners enjoyed radio quizzes because the programs flattered the audience’s knowledge base and allowed them to control their intellectual performance. The shows allowed listeners to feel as if they possessed greater intellectual abilities than they otherwise might have thought they possessed.31 Regional quiz shows evoked similar but still more potent pleasures of self-knowledge and comparison because of the proximity between audience and contestants.

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In these programs, listeners could directly compare themselves with their neighbors or with expanded members of the radio community throughout the state and region. In The American Woman’s Jury, the Yankee Network tapped into the radio quiz craze by adapting and reusing a programming idea that had proved successful elsewhere. As the title suggests, The American Woman’s Jury asked its listeners to send in their problems to a studio jury of housewives and mothers who would discuss and judge them.32 The success of the show led to a spinoff called Quizzing the Wives. It featured the same women panelists answering trivia and history questions and ran in an adjacent time slot. In 1945, the network offered a male-targeted version, The Answer Man, which was broadcast every weekday at 6:30 pm and featured the “rapid fire answering of questions from New England listeners.”33 While write-in shows offered New England residents a greater chance of having their problem or question recognized on the air, other Yankee audience participation shows extended this logic to on-air appearances. The Quiz of Two Cities began in the Baltimore-Washington area and quickly spread across the country. The Yankee Network version matched up contestants from Boston and Providence and from Bridgeport and Hartford. Shows had themes (beauticians versus electricians, for example) or featured contestants from companies that had offices in both cities. In 1941 the Boston Globe reported that people in Boston fought over tickets to be in the studio audience.34 These programs expanded the possibilities of participation and recognition for participants and listeners alike. The voice of a local participant served as an index to the program’s local origins. Here, Jody Berland’s argument about disc jockeys can be extended to other types of programs.  Berland suggests that the deejay’s voice “provide[s] immediate evidence of the efficacy of its listeners’ desires. It is through that voice that the community hears itself constituted, through that voice that radio assumes authorship of the community, woven into itself through its jokes, its advertisements, its gossip, all represented, recurrently and powerfully, as the map of local life.”35 In contrast to the uniform tones and standard accents of national network announcers, Yankee and Colonial network programs were filled with working-class, regionally specific accents. These accents defined the local orientation of these shows by expressing concerns or engaging in local  rivalries.36 Fred Hoey, the Red Sox and Braves radio announcer between 1927 and 1938, was born and raised in New England and had a dry biting style 



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that the region’s listeners appreciated. Hoey’s popularity was so great that after he was fired in 1937 public pressure forced the notoriously stubborn Shepard to reinstate him.37 The important appeal of these shows was not lost on the broadcasting industry. Even as national sponsors increasingly concentrated their business on the largest independent stations and the national networks, local shows retained pleasures that were out of the national network’s scope. In commenting on the relationship between the local and the national in August 1935, Herman Hettinger predicted that national radio programming would increasingly resemble weekly magazines with general appeal, but that there would be opportunities for other types of programs. As part of this national structure, “the network outlet must therefore always assume some of the lineaments of national appeal,” providing an opportunity for smaller stations. If radio’s “personal element can be capitalized upon by local stations so that its entertainment carries a particular personal appeal, and if its entire program is built about the lives and activities of the community, it should be possible to build up an unassailable position with regard to listening.”38 However, Hettinger addressed only half of the issue. Programs were not made simply for the sake of the audience but rather sought to compel the audience’s attention so that products could be sold to its members. At the same time, however, advertisers needed to feel that a market was important enough to warrant spending money to sell to it. Thus even as they articulated an aural community in which audiences could potentially hear their neighbors or themselves, the Yankee and Colonial networks retained a dual focus on regional and national advertisers. They also constructed a particular  version of a regional community—one not for listeners but for sponsors. Selling New Englandness:   The Appeal of the Yankee Network Hometown Audience Shepard may have been selling to the audience, but he was also constructing audiences to be sold. Spot sales had established the value of targeting certain segments of the radio audience. Embodying that principle, Shepard’s own advertisements constructed the value of his audience. Selling the Yankee Network audience required Shepard to create a mythical New England, one that held value for advertisers and that could only be accessed using Shepard’s facilities. While in the previous section I described the types of

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audience address that local listeners found appealing, it is nearly impossible to know, on the one hand, exactly why certain programs were popular while others failed and, on the other, if those successes and failures were due to Shepard’s ability to gauge his audience’s preferences. However, Shepard convinced advertisers that he knew his audience and that his knowledge had value. Media historian Thomas Streeter has argued that the importance of ratings is not that they accurately measure the audience but that the parties using them—broadcasters, agencies, and sponsors—reach an agreement that they do.39 The Yankee Network’s promotional rhetoric established a consensus within the broadcasting industry that it possessed knowledge of a particular audience. This consensus, in turn, formed the basis for advertisers’ own justifications for using the Yankee Network for their campaigns. In this scenario Yankee’s audience research, promotional success stories, and constructions of New England were more than mere promotional devices; they were rhetorical tools essential to constructing an alternative  conception of broadcast advertising and the audience commodity. Shepard understood the value of marketing and of ratings as part of marketing. In the late 1920s and early 1930s audience ratings were crude. The first studies of Boston radio by the survey firm Crossley and by the Bos­ ton Advertising Club ranked wnac third in the market. Crossley used a telephone recall method that restricted the survey to telephone subscribers and asked respondents to remember what they had listened to the previous day. Shepard claimed that Crossley’s techniques were invalid and he commissioned surveys of his own. Conducted through Price-Waterhouse, the four Shepard surveys conducted between 1930 and 1932 used mail questionnaire or telephone coincidental methods.40 They reached different conclusions than the Crossley surveys and in so doing provided the basis for Shepard’s claims of connection to New England audiences.41 The institutional advertisements of the Yankee and Colonial networks applied the ideals of specialized appeals to geographically focused markets. Shepard’s promotional strategy was the “Hometown Station” reaching “Home-Town Audiences,” which suggested the connection between station  locations and the domestic and community orientation of the audiences. Employing a kind of regional essentialism, the Yankee and Colonial networks linked their programming address to their projection of knowledge about New England tastes. According to Shepard’s marketing, stations were  not simply located in New England states; rather, their location within those



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communities allowed them to create programs that New England audiences enjoyed, and this knowledge allowed those programs to sell to the audience. Regional networks were often called “neighbor networks” by the broadcast advertising industry, a rhetorical comparison often used by the networks themselves.42 An early advertisement for the Yankee Network not only  visually mirrored the format of a local newspaper, but also expressly described itself using the hometown paper as a model: “Watt an idea buying station time on wattage. Yet many buyers of radio time still contract on that basis. No space buyer would expect to cover New England with one Boston newspaper, although Boston papers do circulate extensively throughout New England . . . Coverage is not watts—it’s listeners. Local stations, like local newspapers, are necessary for complete New England coverage, because each station has strong local appeal. The advertiser who buys the Yankee Network obtains eight-station coverage reaching into every major trading area. In addition, he has the advantage of greater flexibility. He can spot his program in the particular trading area where he has the most retail outlets.”43 This advertisement promoted the idea that the Yankee Network offered focused yet flexible coverage and a loyal, regionally defined audience, a combination that would become the network’s hallmark. Additionally, Shepard’s emphasis on smaller stations led him to challenge the industrial practice of using station wattage to determine card rates.44 The advertisement questions coverage based on station power, then one of the standard methods of measuring audiences. While this benefited larger, more powerful stations, it placed smaller stations at a clear disadvantage.45 The promotional materials of the Yankee and Colonial networks regularly invoked cultural tropes of “Colonial New England” in the service of advancing their case for local radio specialization. One full-page advertisement in Radio Annual 1946 invoked the figure of the lamplighter, the power of tradition in New England, and the importance of local institutions such as the bank, church, town hall, and radio station in the formation of community. The ad ended with a pitch for the Yankee Network’s unique ability to reach this community: “The Yankee Network, in turn, with its 23 local hometown stations, serves these key communities as only local stations can serve them—linking them together to form New England’s greatest radio market. For all over coverage, with direct impact in each trading area, Yankee Network is your only buy.”46 Another advertisement from the same year touted the network’s presence “not here and there . . . but in twenty-four 

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key markets throughout New England,” thus directly challenging the national networks’ inconsistent New England coverage. This presence, the ad claimed, helped “every local station make a production focal point for point-of-sale promotion, insuring acceptance by listeners . . . and cooperation by merchants.”47 The friendly relationship between Yankee and Colonial and their audiences was the message of these institutional ads, the positive counterpoint to the subtle suggestion that New Englanders did not particularly take to strangers and thus turned away from national network programs. One such ad from January 1941 read, “Like Good Friends Who Are Always Welcome—are the home-town radio stations and those who call, via the loudspeaker—because they’re known and liked for their personal qualities. Many are part of the immediate community—and ALL enjoy acceptance in the home resulting from long association and genuine friendship.” “Isn’t it logical,” the copy asked, “that you’re bound to be more successful in these communities if you appoint a local organization that is known—has standing and acceptance­—in preference to a stranger from afar?”48 Goodwill and trust were transferable, the ad proclaimed; one need only sign with the Colonial Network. The contrast between Shepard’s construction of small-town New En­ gland and the national network model is clear in the counteradvertising used by nbc. If Shepard touted hometown appeal and chided the spotty network coverage, the network advertisements used quality appeals. One example of this comparison was a 1935 advertisement for wbz, the Springfield, Massachusetts, Red affiliate managed by nbc. Printed on the front page of Broadcasting was a picture of two boys playing marbles. The caption on the left read, “I’ll swap yuh ‘leven miggies for this glassie?” The copy that followed read, “Remember? That glassie was sure plenty more fun to own than those eleven miggies. It was a beauty! It was bigger. It had ‘Class.’ And you wanted it.” The ad goes on to suggest that wbz and wbza not only had the most power in New England but also employed the highest standard of advertising and ethical conduct. It concluded by stating, “That’s what gives a station ‘Class.’ And ‘Class’ is what makes a glassie worth even more than a good handful of miggies.”49 The swipe at Shepard would have been clear to regular readers of Broadcasting. Shepard was in the midst of an institutional campaign, “It takes a network to sell New England,” and the Yankee Network had eleven stations. Moreover, the advertisement played with the meaning of “class,” which referred not only to the behavior but also to



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power and type of station.50 Despite such swipes, Shepard persisted in his emphasis on regional broadcasting. As part of its “hometown” strategies the Shepard organization took over many of the promotional tasks performed by advertising agencies. Cutting out advertising agencies potentially saved advertisers money while simultaneously increasing Yankee’s revenue. Program cross-promotion, the network argued, extended advertising campaigns both to consumers and to retailers and distributors: “Go Where They Live . . . To Sell Where They Buy” read one advertisement from June 1941 (see figure 7).51 Local stations like Shepard’s supplied the “where to get it”—the missing link in the average national ad campaign, according to one small station owner.52 The Gretchen McMullen Household Hour provided one such example of the kind of cross-promotion and service that Yankee promised its advertisers. The show aired twice a week, once on wnac and wean and again over the twelve Yankee Network stations. Each episode promoted eight different products, none of which were allowed to directly compete with one another. Products were used on the show by integrating brand names into recipes. Listeners could then write in for copies of the recipes, which also included sponsor promotional materials. The network would then provide the sponsor with the names and addresses of letter writers for use in future direct mail advertising campaigns. Additionally, network representatives would contact retailers and distributors to inform them of the products that were being promoted and to provide an advertisement for the product in an independent trade publication, New England Grocer and Tradesman.53 This kind of cross-promotion suggests that Yankee’s claims about facilitating close relationships between stations and retailers existed beyond rhetoric. Indeed, members of the Shepard organization used their personal contacts in the region to facilitate a good relationship between a manufacturer and local and regional retailers and distributors who wanted the manufacturer’s support in moving the product. For example, representatives of the Yankee Network would go to regional trade conventions to promote its ability to support the interests of retailers and manufacturers. To note one case, in 1934 the Yankee Network shared a booth at the New England Drug Show with Apothecary Magazine, the official publication of the New England State Pharmaceutical Association. In addition, the network broadcast from the trade show with programs sponsored by exhibitors.54 These strategies were important because for manufacturers of branded products convincing 

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7

An ad for the Colonial Network, 1941.

distributors and retailers to carry their products was as important as convincing consumers to buy them.55 However, even as Shepard extolled the virtues of a mythical small town where everyone knew everyone else, he also stressed the economic strength of the region. While advertisers certainly appreciated good relationships between retailers and consumers, they also knew those relationships mattered only to the extent that consumers had enough disposable income to purchase their products. Shepard’s advertisements sought to convince the advertisers that the New England market was worthy of sponsor investment. In one clear example from 1937, an advertisement for the Colonial Network was titled simply “$319.60 Retail Sales for every man, woman and child! That’s a Market!”56 Other advertisements were more subtle. A twopage spread on the interior back cover of Radio Annual 1940 emphasized the high percentage of single-family home ownership while noting that



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homeowners constituted a “responsive market for hundreds of commodities.”57 Additionally, the ad implied that homeownership reflected a baseline income and purchasing level. Throughout the 1930s local sales, regional network sales, and national spot sales continued to climb, outpacing national network sales and providing an ever-greater percentage of station revenue. In 1935, 50 percent of the average New England station’s revenue was from local advertising; almost 15 percent came from direct purchases by national and regional advertisers in the form of spot sales; and nearly 30 percent was revenue from national and regional networks.58 The broadcasting industry noted the shift. In early 1937 Herman Hettinger commented: “Advertisers are beginning to become aware of the value of regional networks as a means of reaching particular market areas with programs of special appeal. . . . The most interesting angle of this situation seems to be the increasing tendency to view regional networks not as a testing ground or supplement to other effort, but as a medium in their own right. This tendency to view radio, not as a single medium, but as a number of specialized media dealing in sound—national networks, regional networks, various classes of stations—is one of the healthiest and most important trends taking place among advertisers today.”59 However, if regional networks had become recognized as an independent advertising medium, this increased status was accompanied by increased attention from national networks who, as the decade wore on, took a variety of steps to inhibit the growth of regional networks into full-scale competitors. Yankee and the National Networks During the 1930s the proliferating number of programming options filled station schedules. The increased offerings from the national networks, transcription programs, regional networks, and local stations resulted in competition for valuable time slots. As schedules tightened many stations realized that their interests did not necessarily coincide with those of the national networks with whom they were affiliated. Network-affiliate relations are nei­ ther a form of one-sided dependence nor one of mutually beneficial cooperation, and as such are better characterized as a series of struggles. Networks strived to maintain hegemonic control over station schedules, while stations sought maximum freedom while retaining network affiliation. For example, although mutually dependent, the relationship between Shepard 

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and the networks featured repeated conflicts. The history of the relationship between Shepard and the national networks demonstrates that cbs and nbc constantly renegotiated the terms of their hegemony. During the 1930s network affiliation became a Faustian bargain for many  stations. The benefits of affiliation were obvious: high-quality shows and guaranteed revenue. Likewise, stations relied on network programs to attract large audiences. This not only provided direct revenue but also boosted the rates for other time slots. Network affiliation could not guarantee profits, and some unaffiliated stations made money. However, because of the disparities between affiliated and unaffiliated stations, owners perceived affiliation as a prerequisite for making large profits. In 1938, for example, only 27 percent of the affiliated stations lost money, while almost 48 percent of the unaffiliated stations were in the red. That same year the average profitable affiliated station made nearly nine times the amount of the average profitable unaffiliated station ($45,183 compared to $5,485). Among unprofitable stations, network affiliates lost twice as much money as the independents ($11,882 compared to $5,485). This suggests that network affiliation may have actually harmed unprofitable stations by restricting their sources of programming.60 In addition to distributing commercially sponsored programs, networks also provided their affiliates with unsponsored sustaining programs, which performed a number of important functions for the networks and stations. Sustaining programs were public affairs or cultural programs designed to support network arguments that they operated in the “public interest.” Examples include The University of Chicago Round Table and broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Whenever critics would charge that radio was overly commercialized, the networks would cite their sustaining programming as examples of public service.61 This argument was slightly disingenuous, however, as sustaining programming performed other important roles for the networks, including building a “balanced” schedule and acting as a tryout for sponsored programming. These sustaining programs were created “on spec” to build an audience before being sold to a sponsor. For example, in 1935 nbc aired the Bob Crosby Orchestra program on Friday nights at 8:15 without a sponsor. It failed to obtain sponsorship that season but several years later was picked up by Camel Cigarettes.62 Especially in the early 1930s nbc and cbs worried that affiliates would fill gaps in the program schedule with local programming that they considered to be in-



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ferior and that they feared would drive away listeners. Networks offered sustaining programming to fill in those gaps and hoped that such programs would aid in audience retention.63 For stations, sustaining programs were a free or at least relatively inexpensive source of relatively high-quality programming.64 Moreover, if a sustaining program proved popular, the network could obtain a sponsor for it. Over the course of the 1930s, however, affiliates increasingly viewed sustaining programs as a liability. For all the rhetoric of unified schedules, sustaining programs did not bring in any direct revenue. As spot sales rose in popularity they provided an increasing proportion of local station income. In 1936 C. E. Midgely of the radio department at the advertising firm Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne drew the following analogy between radio networks and railroads: “The average person hears more about the ‘Twentieth Century,’ the ‘Chief,’ and the ‘Broadway Limited,’ than he does about No. 18 or No. 97, fast freights which really produce the revenue for the line. Coast-to-Coast network broadcasts make excellent ‘lead’ programs for any radio station but it is the national spot and local programs which pay the freight.”65 As Midgely suggests, relying on spot revenue created a paradox for local stations. Popular, well-known network programming established station ratings that were higher than those of most independent stations. This in turn was one factor that determined how much it cost to purchase a block of time on that station. This cost was the “card rate” and was given to network and spot advertisers alike. However, network programs only provided to stations a percentage of their published “card rate.” In contrast, the spot programs returned a higher percentage of the card rate—often twice as much.66 To complicate matters, the most desirable schedule slots were constantly in danger of being appropriated by network programming as part of “option time” clauses. Thus the stations were not always able to capitalize on established levels for local or spot programs that returned a greater share of their published rate. If the networks did not have a full commercial schedule in network option time then the local station could substitute programs of their choice. If a program was not sponsored then the local station could, and often did, refuse it. However, once the network obtained a sponsor for the show, the affiliate had to give up that time slot. Thus if an affiliate had a long-running locally sponsored show it could be forced to cancel it or move it, with only four weeks notice, to give priority to the network show. As the proportion

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of sustaining to sponsored programming steadily decreased throughout the  1930s and 1940s, local stations increasingly argued to the fcc that the impending threat of cancellation at short notice prevented them from developing local programming with local sponsors and, in effect, made them even more dependent on the networks for programming.67 These structural tensions within the broadcasting industry were especially acute between the Shepard organization and the national networks. At various points in the 1930s and 1940s, Shepard-owned stations affiliated with each of the four major national networks, nbc-Red, nbc-Blue, cbs, and Mutual. While Shepard was affiliated with each, he negotiated extensively over program scheduling, levels of payment, and sponsor relations. Throughout, Shepard retained a remarkable amount of autonomy and control over both his networks and his owned and operated stations. Shepard started with cbs, which maintained a contractual right to place sponsored programs anywhere in its affiliates’ schedules. Shepard interpreted this loosely, thereby creating tensions between himself and the network. Shepard considered rejecting network programming outright to be “extremely stupid,”68 so if he wanted to air a local or regional program on wnac at a time when cbs offered its own program, he simply shunted the cbs show to his other Boston station, waab. Both stations operated from the same studios, thus allowing Shepard to claim that Columbia was still broadcasting in Boston.69 This arrangement was not viewed favorably by cbs because it prevented the network from guaranteeing sponsors a certain time and a certain station for their programs. Moreover, Shepard reportedly flouted cbs rules by carrying Mutual Network programs on wnac during periods that cbs did not offer programs, which violated the exclusivity clauses in the cbs contract.70 These incidents were generally rare in the 1920s and early 1930s because most of the Yankee and Colonial programs aired during daytime when there was relatively little sponsored programming. But by the mid-1930s the daytime schedules were filling up with sponsored serial programs, thereby increasing the pressure on Shepard to replace his lucrative baseball games with network soap operas. This pressure, and Shepard’s resistance to it, created a situation that neither the broadcaster nor the network could abide.71 By the middle of the decade cbs was actively searching for a way out of its affiliation with Shepard. Indeed, Columbia pursued several different paths in order to ensure that it could sever its relationship with Shepard.



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First, cbs signed an affiliation option agreement with the independent Boston station whdh. This agreement gave cbs the right to affiliate with WHDH upon the expiration of the network’s contract with Shepard. Second, cbs negotiated an agreement that would have provided for affiliation with the Hartford station wtic if the fcc would allow the station to move to Boston. The agency would not approve the relocation, but the network’s efforts suggest how deeply Columbia wanted to be rid of Shepard.72 Finally, Columbia engaged in a bidding war with nbc, Hearst Radio, and the Boston Herald-Traveler newspaper for the lease on the Boston station weei. The network’s determination to end its relationship with Shepard and gain unencumbered access to the Boston market is evident in its willingness to outbid its rivals. All this activity did not go unnoticed. Indeed, in reporting on the affiliation swaps Broadcasting noted that “it was well known in radio circles that cbs has not been satisfied with its Shepard contract.”73 Not to be outdone, Shepard had started to negotiate with nbc well before the weei deal was consummated. Seeing cbs’s aggressive pursuit of a new Boston affiliate, nbc investigated contingency plans. Like its rival, nbc had also considered and rejected the possibility of attempting to move the Hartford station wtic to Boston because it believed that the fcc would oppose placing a new station into an already crowded urban market. Mindful of cbs’s experience, nbc was wary of Shepard. Yet, in the end the business interests overrode any worries about personality quirks. In a June 1935 memo from Frank Russell to Richard Patterson, nbc’s executive vice president, Russell rejected the wtic proposal by stating, “It has always struck me that our need in Boston is for good local coverage and this probably could be secured by an existing Boston station even if weei signed with Columbia. I have the impression that John Shepard would accept our station contract, and although he may not be a satisfactory individual, I see no reason why we could not do business with him.”74 The complicated negotiations resulted in a complete swap of New England station affiliations. In addition to wnac affiliating with nbc-Red, Shepard moved wnac and wicc from cbs to nbc-Blue and waab from cbs to Mutual. Apparently, cbs had no problem releasing him from those contracts. In turn cbs replaced these stations with wpro and wtic. Shepard also organized the Colonial  Network to carry baseball games and Mutual Network programming. The move from cbs to nbc was an important one for Shepard because it enabled him to continue to distribute programs to Yankee and Colonial

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network affiliates while simultaneously maintaining a national network affiliation for his owned and operated stations.75 An important distinction between the two national networks lay with their option time policies. Although cbs retained an option on all of its affiliates’ time, nbc divided the day between station option time and network option time. When Shepard was with cbs the network could potentially force him to cancel any of his programs if the network started a sponsored program. With nbc there were specific periods when Shepard maintained an absolute contractual right to program anything he wanted.76 Moreover, the amount of time options  that each network actually exercised varied considerably between nbc-Red and nbc-Blue. With more popular, more commercial programs, Red used nearly 60 percent of network option time in 1938. During the same year the Blue Network, which was more highbrow, used slightly less than 20 percent of option time because it broadcast more sustaining programs.77 Thus, even though Broadcasting prophesized that the affiliation swap would “doom regional chains,” Shepard’s new affiliation actually facilitated his ability to reorganize his networks and continue operations because he had more time available on his owned and operated stations to broadcast Yankee and Colonial programs.78 Wary of Shepard’s ties to the Mutual Network, nbc attempted to limit his ability to act as a conduit for competing programming. Shepard interpreted nbc’s option time and sustaining programming policies in ways that gave him scheduling flexibility, but these interpretations also caused clashes over who had the right to which time periods. Shepard’s contract with nbc prohibited him from taking or providing any programs for networks outside of New England. However, he negotiated several exemptions, including one for Father Coughlin’s program Shrine of the Little Flower, which was distributed via an ad hoc national network.79 Shepard had carried the Sunday afternoon show since its inception as part of what he termed a “special national network,” and he wanted to continue to air it. As he noted in a letter to nbc President David Rosenblum, “As this is station option time, and in view of the particular circumstances, I feel sure that you will not wish to hold us in this case to the letter of our agreement and we have accepted a reservation of time on this program.”80 Although nbc agreed, it added a caveat that the contractual agreement “shall continue in full force” and that “our action in this case does not constitute a precedent for future cases.”81



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This exchange suggests that relations between networks and affiliates were not one-sided. In other negotiations Shepard was not so straightforward, and accommodations were not as easily reached. For example, nbc did not want any of its affiliates to take any Mutual Network programming. For Shepard this affected wnac, wean, and wicc, which were affiliated with Mutual. In the end nbc and Shepard came to a “gentleman’s agreement,” to use the term applied by Broadcasting magazine, that Shepard would not air Mutual programs on wnac. However, this agreement did not apply to waab. Shepard made waab his key station for the Colonial Network and then funneled Mutual programs through it to Colonial Network affiliates, including at various times wicc and wean. As Mutual did not require that its affiliates provide it with option time, each station could independently negotiate for those programs it wanted. Both wean and wicc appear on Mutual’s 1941 rate card, although these stations took programs from four networks—nbc, Mutual, Yankee, and Colonial.82 Because of these complicated arrangements, nbc’s relationship with Shepard was as stormy as cbs’s had been. Throughout his relationship with nbc Shepard constantly split hairs to gain every possible financial advantage. In some cases Shepard’s arguments with the network turned upside down nbc’s efforts to protect its own oligarchic position. One example was split-network contracts. As discussed in chapter 1, a split network is one for which a sponsor decided to take only a portion of the basic stations because it did not want to pay for coverage over the entire network. Throughout the 1930s nbc sought to eliminate this type of network arrangement as part of its campaign to establish network radio as a single national advertising medium. Early in Shepard’s negotiations with nbc he claimed that the network’s policy of not accepting split network contracts from advertisers was a de facto guarantee from the network that his stations would be purchased by sponsors.83 Another example came from Shepard’s obstinately literal interpretation of nbc’s station and option time policies. When nbc scheduled a commercial program that overlapped into station time, Shepard insisted that nbc pay him the local station rate for that section. Essentially, Shepard argued that nbc should be treated like any other entity that wanted to purchase time on the station. Because nbc affiliates received an average of 20 percent of their quoted national

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card rates for network shows, charging nbc as he would a local sponsor  would have given Shepard substantially more money.84 Likewise, Shepard regularly challenged the national network’s right to determine what programs his stations would carry. In one case he refused to carry a fifteen-second “cowcatcher” spot that a sponsor added to their network program. A cowcatcher spot was an extra commercial for a different product produced by the program’s main sponsor. As I will address in chapter 4, these spots were a source of continued conflict within the broadcasting industry. In response to an nbc telex that announced the spot for Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia preceding the Manhattan Merry Go Round, which primarily advertised Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder, Shepard stated his case to nbc: “Of and by itself this message clearly shows that the Milk of Magnesia announcement is not a part of the program, but is a commercial announcement purely and simply. If you want to start the program and announce both as sponsors, we have no objection, provided that the amount of copy does not exceed what we consider to be in the public interest.”85 Shepard  insisted that although his network contract stipulated that he had to accept commercial programs, he did not have to accept independent commercial announcements. He knew he could sell that time to another spot as a station break announcement. Shepard went on to argue that existing practices limited nbc’s right to insert commercial spots into network programming. He noted that because nbc was not in the practice of inserting spot ads when he signed the affiliation contract, and because the contract made no mention of the practice, then “past custom would control the construction of the contract before any court.” That the same company produced both products advertised made no difference to Shepard. In an unlikely turn nbc’s vice president of station relations, William Hedges, privately agreed with Shepard’s logic. Hedges was unwilling, however, to concede to Shepard publicly, and instead he suggested that the Milk of Magnesia spot be more closely incorporated into the program. This, he felt, would eliminate any possible objection to the spot by affiliates. Eventually Shepard conceded and allowed nbc commercial spots because his continued clashes with nbc management endangered his affiliation. Following an extensive conversation with nbc President Lenox Lohr about network affiliate cooperation and his practice of cutting commercials, Shepard wrote Lohr a lengthy letter outlining his position. He began, “I feel that sometimes we have not taken the time to explain why certain requests,



“The Lord is my Shepard” 71

which by themselves may seem unimportant, were not granted. Then again, we may have built up a little feeling in the fact that when we did not think something that came up was handled fairly by nbc, that we said so in no uncertain terms.” Granting this, Shepard immediately reversed himself. “I might add that on certain of these occasions, nbc ultimately agreed that we were right, but it is only human that whoever made the ruling in the first place should at least to some extent, resent criticism, even although well founded.” After simultaneously admonishing and forgiving nbc for disagreeing with him, Shepard explained that he would stop cutting commercials even if he considered their inclusion “not right.” As further evidence of his loyalty, he then listed a number of programs that his stations accepted in station time “where we feel we can do so without too great a financial loss.” Shepard finished the letter by invoking his special position as an operator of regional networks as well as an nbc affiliate: “You, of course, realize that we have a great many problems which are different from the majority of the other stations in that we are, I think, the only station in as big a market as Boston in the East, with the exception of your M.&O. Stations. Therefore, there is more demand on our time. Also, as you know, we run a regional network, which makes for further complications. There are certain times which we have on option with these stations in our Yankee Network contracts, and we just cannot afford to give up these times to nbc for a network revenue on one station only. In the meantime, I will try to elaborate a little more on any refusals of any requests in the hopes that your organization will be able to see our viewpoint.”86 Despite his detailed explanations and conciliatory tone, Shepard remained determined to place his own interests, whether concerning individual stations or networks, before those of nbc. Lohr’s response ostensibly concurred with Shepard’s sentiments. It was, however, only three sentences long.87 Lohr’s curt response was indicative of the continued disintegration of the relationship between Shepard and nbc. The personal feelings of the nbc executives toward Shepard were summed up in a comment by John Royal in late 1939 when the broadcaster refused to air a speech by the Republican politician and then New York City district attorney Thomas E. Dewey: “For a long time I have figured that John Shepard has been taking some strange and unwarranted attitudes on radio broadcasting company problems. In my opinion, his objection to giving time to Thomas E. Dewey is difficult to understand and rather stupid.”88 As cbs had done previously,

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nbc began to look for alternatives to Shepard in the Boston area. By May 1940 the network had decided to switch wbz from the Blue Network to the Red. Shepard was not offered the option to renew as a Red affiliate. He was incensed, but nbc knew Shepard had no other option besides affiliating with its network. After a fiery encounter with Shepard over the future of Red Network affiliation in Boston, William Hedges remarked to the station manager of wtic that Shepard returning to cbs was “somewhat of a remote possibility because John has his Yankee Network and his philosophy of operation of that network does not fit in very well with Columbia’s requirements.” Hedges felt that Shepard would do better as a Blue affiliate than as a Red because the larger number of sustaining programs would allow him to continue to operate the Yankee Network. He did not, however, “expect John to come and ask us to speed up the switch from Red to Blue.”89 While Hedges may have been correct in his assessment that the Blue Network would be a better fit for Shepard, being forcibly evicted from the Red Network represented a significant financial decline as well as a loss  of face. Shepard’s response was electric, and he began to pursue several strategies that directly attacked nbc. Using the forced switch as his example, in 1941 Shepard testified before the fcc chain broadcasting hearings against nbc’s contention that stations were satisfied with the terms of their network affiliations.90 Moreover, when the radio industry geared up to fight the “Report on Chain Broadcasting” that came out of those hearings, Shepard sided with Mutual and other independent operators against nbc, cbs, and the nab. In opposition to the industry party line, he concurred with fcc Chairman James Fly’s findings on network restraint of trade. Moreover, he publicly denounced the nab’s attacks on Fly by arguing that the organization was not representative of the larger station community but was under the sway of the national networks.91 Shepard also increased his ties with the Mutual Network by becoming a stockholder. Shepard had been involved with Mutual since its inception, but now, faced with the loss of nbc programming, he decided to take an ownership interest. Shepard began openly to defy nbc in other ways. In a particularly memo­ rable exchange from September 1941, Shepard informed nbc that because it had not used the 10:00 pm to 10:30 pm time period on wean and wicc for the previous year he had taken it upon himself to schedule his own programming. As such, the network should no longer consider those time



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periods available. In the event that nbc managed to secure a sponsored show, Shepard volunteered that he would find another slot for the show to be aired on transcription.92 Shepard’s dry tone in this memo announced to nbc’s sales department that he had succeeded where they had failed. While Shepard’s crowing may not have been a factor, the time period had a network sponsor within a month. True to his word, Shepard told nbc that he could only air the show for two weeks. After that time his other programming had priority. In reply nbc stated only that they would hold him to his contract.93 Unlike the earlier heated exchanges, this response suggested that the network was no longer disposed to engage with Shepard. Having found alternative arrangements for a Boston affiliate, nbc saw no value in going through the motions of debating the issue. Shepard also intensified his efforts to establish alternative distribution systems via fm. In some sense an extension of his earlier efforts such as the Group Broadcasters Incorporated transcription network or cooperative program production and distribution through the Mutual Network, Shepard made long-lasting and significant investments in developing fm relays that would provide an alternative to at&t landlines. Shepard’s organization partnered with Edwin Armstrong and began experimenting with fm broadcasting. In 1937 Shepard had received permission from the fcc to build an experimental station in Paxton, Massachusetts. Built at a cost of $35,000 (nearly $500,000 in 2005 dollars), by 1939 w1xoj was broadcasting sixteen hours a day as part of a plan of extensively promoting fm.94 The fm technology was promoted for its superior sound quality, but it attracted Shepard because it permitted the distribution of programs without using telephone lines. The networks watched with concern as w1xoj received programs from the Yankee Network’s Boston studios, located forty-three miles away from the transmitter, as well as through links with other fm stations in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.95 It then rebroadcast the programs without losing any signal quality.96 In 1940 after the fcc allowed for commercial operation of fm stations, Shepard formed the American Network (not to be confused with the American Broadcasting Company, which was created after the fcc mandated divestment of nbc-Red and nbc-Blue).97 The network had some success with commercial broadcasts, and it planned to link fm stations throughout the country. However, wartime material shortages delayed the expansion of fm. Likewise, many station owners were reluctant to invest in fm technology

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because it meant giving up their ownership of am stations. By 1944 the network had gone bankrupt and ceased operations.98 With Shepard managing to alienate nbc at nearly every front, the network completely severed its ties with him. While earlier negotiations ostensibly held open the possibility of wnac remaining an nbc-Blue affiliate, this possibility was concretely ruled out by early 1941 when nbc signed contracts to make whdh its Boston Blue Network affiliate.99 Indeed, nbc had been strategizing about what to do about Shepard for some time. The network believed that the fcc would not impede its efforts to establish an alternative to Shepard in Boston. In 1940 Frank Russell, the network’s executive based in Washington, D.C., informed Niles Trammel that “for some time I have noted considerable opposition to John Shepard at the Commission . . . when I hinted in Commission circles recently that Shepard might start suit against us they expressed no concern.” 100 The opposition Russell referred to stemmed from Shepard’s refusal to allow Communist Party– USA head Earl Browder to speak over waab and even to allow Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats without payment. As Russell noted wryly, “As you know, Chairman Fly took a very indifferent attitude toward the Communists until the Yankee network refused to take a scheduled Browder broadcast.” Fly’s interest would manifest itself in the Mayflower decision, which renewed waab’s license but admonished the station for failing to live up to its public service obligations.101 With this decision pending, Russell felt reasonably sure that whdh’s power increase request would be approved, thus making it a viable affiliate. The restructuring efforts by nbc extended to multiple Shepard holdings. At the same time that it dropped wnac, nbc also replaced the Shepardowned nbc-Blue affiliates wean and wicc with other stations in Providence and Bridgeport.102 As if to add insult to injury, nbc promoted these new Blue stations as an alternative to Shepard’s regional chains. Under the title “The Blue’s Making News in New England,” a two-page Broadcasting advertisement began with the statement, “Here’s our Revised Eight-Station New England Line-Up to Cover ‘Yankee Land’ with Yankee Thriftiness.”103 In addition nbc used its powerful Red affiliates wtic and wbz to organize the seven-station New England Regional Network (nern). Four of the five remaining affiliates were formerly affiliated with the Yankee network. Further, nbc used the New England stations it controlled to steal several Yankee affiliates and form a competing regional chain. A quick acquisition



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by nern was The Marjorie Mills Hour, a popular Yankee homemaker program. The half-hour show had been running on Yankee five times a week for over ten years, and it represented a loss for Shepard of $100,000 in gross advertising revenue.104 In December 1942 Shepard announced that he was selling his radio holdings. He claimed he sold because of a desire to be liquid in case of  future inheritance tax problems (his father John Shepard Jr. was eighty-six at the time). However, the reduced revenue from losing the nbc affiliation, the increased competition for Yankee and Colonial from nern and the Atlantic Coast Network, another new regional chain, as well as the financial drain caused by failure of his fm chain, the American Network, surely factored into his decision. The General Tire and Rubber Company purchased Shepard’s four am, two fm, and two experimental stations, as well as the assets of the Yankee and Colonial networks, for a total of $1,240,000. Shepard remained general manager, and the stations retained their Mutual contracts.105 While the Yankee Network continued for another twenty-five years, General Tire’s ownership and the declining health of both of the Shepards caused Yankee and Colonial to operate more conservatively than they had in the past. Yet the decline of the Yankee Network as a specific entity is less important than the larger trends it embodied. The divisions between national network and other forms of radio advertising continued during the Second World War. The networks used their rate structure to ensure full national service from large advertisers.106 At the same time as this consolidation, the dizzying array of options within spot sales (whether regional network, local, or national) brought more specialized advertising campaigns and programming styles. Regional networks provide one case study of the complex multitiered broadcasting landscape of the network and postnetwork eras. As I discussed in chapter 1, the national networks worked hard to tie the idea of interconnection to the national. However, regional networks complicated the relationship between interconnection, network formation, and commercial advertising by providing alternative models of program production and networked distribution.107 Regional networks like Yankee and Colonial suggest that there was at least limited space for regionally oriented counterprogramming—in terms both of schedule location and of a geographically delineated audience address.

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Conflicts between smaller broadcasters such as Shepard and the national networks demonstrate that American radio was not a monolithic entity, but neither did regional networks ever pose a serious challenge to overthrowing the national networks’ oligopoly. Shepard was financially successful; during the first half of 1937, for example, wnac showed a profit of over $60,000.108 Yet regional networks as a whole accounted for a very small part of overall radio network advertising expenditures. For example, in 1931 the Yankee Network’s gross receipts were a mere $779,000 compared to $25,900,000 for nbc and $11,600,000 for cbs.109 In 1938 the profit for Yankee and Colonial was $543,000 on net sales of $754,000 while that same year nbc and cbs combined for net sales of $100,892,000.110 While the scale of the regional networks may have paled in comparison to the national networks, their profitability demonstrates two important points: first, that national networks were not the sole source of live programming, and second, that the regional broadcasters’ desire to control their own schedules could interfere with the national networks’ business operations. Although Shepard achieved varied levels of success in these endeavors, other individuals and organizations were able to do more. The gaps in the national network system also opened up other opportunities for programming and distribution that did not require network interconnection. While regional networks represented a model of broadcasting that was neither national nor solely local, sound-on-disc transcription technology provided an alternative method of producing and distributing radio programming outside of the network system and for locally defined markets.

three

Brought to You via Electrical Transcription Sound-on-Disc Recording and the Perceptual Aesthetics of Radio Distribution Technologies

During fall 1946 the radio industry anxiously anticipated the debut of Bing Crosby’s new radio program on the ABC radio network. Backed by Philco, the crooning radio personality returned from semiretirement to host what would be the first regularly scheduled recorded network show. Described by Variety as “Here’s wax-in-your-ears,” the phrase invoked the taunt “Here’s mud-in-your-eye,” and aptly conveyed the animosity between Bing Crosby and cbs and nbc after the performer decided to make his presence on network radio dependent on his right to record his program. In its typical hyperbolic prose the trade magazine noted that the show’s debut was “fraught with significant undertones and overtones; the implications from a standpoint of radio entertainment are perhaps as far-reaching as anything to hit show business since the advent of talking pictures.”1 Up until this point the networks had insisted that audiences would not accept recorded programming. Indeed, Philco inserted a clause in Crosby’s contract that required him to return to live production should his ratings fall below a certain point.2 Yet this did not happen. Crosby’s ratings were consistent (although there was concern about one particularly poor week, the low rating was ascribed to Crosby’s musical guest—a particularly unpopular violinist). Despite this coverage in the popular and trade press, Crosby is more often remembered by radio historians for his role as an early backer

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of ampex, the first American producer of magnetic tape recording devices, a technology that was not used until the 1948 season. Both historical and contemporary discourses often conflate the inauguration of recorded network programming and the introduction of magnetic tape. In this chapter I seek to revise part of that conflation by examining the long and important history of sound-on-disc transcriptions, the innovation that Variety found so significant. Variety’s comparison of live and recorded radio to silent and sound film may seem a bit odd, but was a significant choice for many reasons. While there had always been sound in silent film, talkies added sound linked to the film’s narrative. While the same cannot be said of the choice to record ­ radio programming rather than broadcast it live, a number of striking similarities remain. Sound-on-disc recording technologies, which were developed to bring sound to film, formed the bases for the radio recording processes used by Crosby for his new show. Sound film forced the movie industry to reconceptualize its codes of representation as well as its economic structure. Twenty years after sound film’s first major success with Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, another musical performer could potentially upend radio networks’ aesthetic models. However, in some ways Crosby’s threat to the networks was already irrelevant. At the onset of the Second World War, five years prior to Crosby’s show, nearly one-third of radio station programming was broadcast from records, the vast majority of which (one-quarter of total station programs) originated from transcriptions.3 By the time Crosby’s transcription show debuted, transcriptions accounted for 43 percent of station programming, a percentage all the more remarkable because of wartime restrictions on the use of shellac.4 Indeed, in the years prior to his recorded network debut, Crosby had already transcribed numerous programs for the Armed Forces Radio Service and for independent distribution in England with Bing Time.5 Recorded programming in general, and transcriptions in particular, not only represented a significant percentage of network-era programming but also played a crucial role in broadcasting’s history. Transcriptions were not an anomaly but rather were central to broadcasting in the network era. Their long history revises our understanding of the economic structures, aesthetic form and content, and cultural impact of radio during the medium’s “golden age.” Transcriptions represent another challenge to the dominant norms of live network broadcasting and demonstrate that wired interconnection was not the only



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means of distributing programming. Freed from the dictates of network policy and infrastructure, transcriptions made possible a more complicated and fragmented set of radio programs and advertisements. Between the middle 1920s and the late 1940s sound-on-disc transcriptions represented one of the most advanced methods of recorded sound technology. The term transcription encompassed a number of distinct but related technologies, practices, and aesthetic principles. Its primary use was to differentiate programs that had been specially produced for radio broadcasts from commercially available phonograph records. The history of why and how that distinction became important encompasses issues of technological development, industrial practice, institutional needs, and aesthetic form.6 While transcriptions were related to popular phonograph technology, they were more complicated, more expensive, and higher in sound quality. The actual records were larger and rotated more slowly, with sixteen inches spinning at 33 1/3 rpm compared with the ten-inch diameter and 78 rpm speed of phonographs. The wider diameter allowed transcription discs to hold up to fifteen minutes of programming, whereas a 78 rpm phonograph held only four minutes’ worth. Transcriptions used electrical recording and playback techniques whereas many commercial phonographs (especially in the late 1920s) relied on acoustic playback. Transcriptions were produced solely to be aired on radio and thus were not available for retail sale. Beyond these material and technological differences, the distinctions between phonographs and transcriptions and the place of each on broadcast radio represented an important series of conflicts within industrial practice. Raymond Williams and Warren Susman, among many others, have argued that communications technologies are the product of the social con­ ditions and social tensions in which they developed.7 Within the institutions of radio production and dissemination, conflicts over the definition of “radio” determined the historical significance of the medium and our understanding of that medium’s form and content. Supporters of the Ameri­can system of broadcasting worked hard to define radio as commercial, national, live, and networked on economic, technological, aesthetic, and legislative levels. The “American System,” a term created by the broadcasting industry, defined radio’s most natural form as one that featured nationally distributed, commercially sponsored programs. These networks, the supporters of the American system claimed, ought to be privately owned and operated

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and entrusted to broadcast “in the public interest” with minimal government regulation. The market would ensure that audiences received the programs they wanted and minimize those that they did not, with the possible exception of certain public service programs to be consumed like medicine for cultural uplift. The chief goal of this definition was to exclude any institution or program form that threatened the status quo of American broadcasting hegemony in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet, at various points, the major institutions of that system—at&t, the networks, affiliates, advertising agencies and sponsors—all supported the development of transcriptions.8 As a technology of recorded sound distribution, transcriptions embody some of the central contradictions within an unstable consensus over radio’s economic and aesthetic form. Economically, transcriptions arose as a result of capitalism’s relentless drive for profit. They encroached on the national networks’ desire to protect their oligarchic position as distributors of national programming. Yet they also presented opportunities for profitable nonnetwork program distribution. As a cultural form, the hybrid local, regional, and national orientation of transcriptions undercut the sense of national unity supposedly fostered by the simultaneous reception of live programs. Indeed, transcriptions complicated the relationship between an emergent national identity and residual local and regional identifications.9 The national network programs associated with the golden age of radio may have been live and national, composed of comedy, drama, and variety, but local stations also relied heavily on recorded programs. A combination of local, regional, and national sponsors supported these programs, thereby creating a listening experience mediated by geography, time, and social identity. The history of transcription recording, like that of regional net­works and spot sales, demonstrates that the economic and institutional struc­tures that made formatted radio feasible were not born fully formed, but were preceded by earlier models of program production and distribution. Liveness, Electrical Recording, and the Cinematic Origins of Transcription Technology One of the most important transcription companies of the 1930s was the World Broadcasting System (wbs). It was at the forefront of the development of transcription recording technology, the programming and sales



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strategies for those discs, and the discursive campaigns to establish the place of transcription records within the broadcasting industry. Through a series of institutional practices, wbs alternatively utilized and challenged the dominant notions of quality radio broadcasting as national, live, and net­ worked. Networked commercial broadcasting began in 1927 but required nearly a decade to secure a hegemonic status. Robert McChesney has suggested that the so-called American system of broadcasting was con­solidated economically by 1932, legislatively by 1934, and ideologically by the end of the decade.10 Unlike the anticommercial radio reformers or radio educators of the same period, wbs neither challenged the idea that radio should be funded by commercial sponsors nor questioned whether radio content production should be based in major metropolitan centers. Like station representatives and regional network operators, it articulated a position that challenged the economic bases and aesthetic values of live, national network broadcasting. In the process wbs embodied certain contradictions within the commercially driven American system of broadcasting. As a collection of technologies, an institutional product, and the embodiment of aesthetic principles, radio transcriptions developed out of the interaction of several different, and at times contradictory, media forms. Jonathan Sterne has argued (via Stuart Hall) that different though related sound reproduction technologies like telephony, phonography, and radio were “plastic” and “malleable” in their early incarnations. These inventions were technologies that could be used in any number of ways. In order to become “media” they had to be defined through a cultural process whereby uses, practices, effects, and identities were attached to each technology by way of a secondary linkage to economic, technical, and social contexts.11 With roots in phonography, cinema, telephony, sound amplification, and radio, transcriptions were the product of an articulation of different communications media technologies and different discourses about those technologies. As transcription producers established a place for sound-on­­­disc transcriptions within radio broadcasting in the first half of the 1930s, they simultaneously drew from and fought against the institutional and aesthetic structures of the older media.12 In this way the largely forgotten position of sound-on-disc transcriptions within radio broadcasting was the result of both material technologies of sound recording and competing cultural definitions of the supposedly ontological properties of those media technologies.

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The sound-on-disc technology used by wbs originally developed by Western Electric, the research arm of at&t during the 1920s. Western Elec­ tric conducted research on sound transmission to improve telephone service, and this research led the company’s engineers into related areas of sound amplification and reproduction. In 1925 Joseph Maxfield and H. Harrison, two Western Electric audio engineers, developed a system of electromagnetic recording and playback. Indebted to telephone tech­nology, which converted sound into an electrical signal and then back to sound again, Maxfield’s and Harrison’s system represented a leap forward in recording technology. They used a condenser microphone to pick up and convert sound waves into electrical impulses. The electrical signal was sent through an amplifier to increase its strength, and then it was sent on to an electromechanical disc cutter. The cutting head was balanced within a magnetic field, which made it very sensitive to the electrical signal. The variations of this signal transcribed the electrical waves onto the disc. Likewise, the playback needle was positioned within the magnetic field of the electrical pickup to reproduce the currents that carried the sound signal. This signal was amplified again before being sent to a loudspeaker.13 Electrical reproduction vastly improved sound recording and playback. Earlier methods of sound recording relied on acoustic energy to convert sound waves into physical impressions on a disc or cylinder. Acoustic recording used a large horn to channel the sound into smaller spaces, the tone arm and the soundbox . The soundbox contained a diaphragm that vibrated a stylus that in turn etched the sound signal onto the surface. The process reversed itself during reproduction. Heavier soundboxes, which placed more pressure on the styli, along with harder styli, which cut more precisely, improved the system.14 In contrast, electrical reproduction captured a much wider sonic range and was quickly adapted by the phonograph industry for recording purposes. However, playback apparatus remained largely acoustically driven. There were some electrical players, but well until the 1930s most home phonographs were like Victor’s Orthophonic system designed for electrically recorded discs but with acoustic playback technology. These players featured a redesigned horn that allowed the reproduction of a greater range of frequencies captured by the new recording techniques.15 Electrical recording and playback influenced the development of another line of Western Electric sound research—namely, sound motion



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pictures. During the early to mid-1920s, several parties competed to find a way to make sound films, among them Fox’s Movietone, Lee DeForest’s Phonofilm, and General Electric’s Pallo-Phonophone. Faced with competition from several sound-on-film systems, Western Electric concentrated on utilizing existing disc technologies in the race for “talkie” pictures. Western Electric engineers developed a means of synchronizing motion picture films with a disc-based soundtrack. This research developed 16-inch discs that revolved at 33 1/3 rpm. After the major motion picture companies rejected the sound-on-disc system as too cumbersome, Western Electric joined with one of the smaller studios, Warner Brothers, to form Vitaphone. Don Juan, the first Vitaphone production, did not fare well, but the partnership struck gold in October 1927 with The Jazz Singer.16 Although only part of The Jazz Singer featured synchronized sound, the film proved that sound pictures could be popular. As film studios and theaters rushed to install sound equipment, Western Electric formed Electrical Research Products Inc. (erpi) to market, install, and service sound film tech­nology. In 1928 and 1929 Western Electric could not produce Vitaphone systems fast enough, but it was soon clear that sound-on-film systems were superior. Sound-on-film systems were less cumbersome and easier to edit, thereby meshing more easily with the demands of Hollywood’s classical representational style.17 Western Electric quickly conceded by licensing the Movietone optical sound system and marketing it as the Western Electric Sound Projector System.18 By 1930 the silent-to-sound theater conversion process was largely complete.19 Although Vitaphone sound-on-disc recording technology was not successful in film, it gained a second life in radio. In 1929 erpi exclusively licensed the Vitaphone disc recording tech­ nology under the name the Western Electric Recording System to the New York–based recording company Sound Studios. Sound Studios was the production arm of the World Broadcasting System. The close relationship of wbs with Western Electric and erpi gave it a leading role in the transcription field—a linkage formed as part of at&t’s strategy to protect its long-line monopoly. According to the terms of the 1926 revision of the 1920 Patents Pool agreement, at&t received a monopoly on wired interconnection between stations in exchange for not reentering broadcasting as a station owner until 1934.20 For its part at&t wanted to ensure it had an interest in any potential competitors to its networks. The development

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of long-playing recording and playback technology provided opportunities for the production and distribution of programs outside of a wired network. By exclusively licensing its transcription technology to wbs, at&t maintained its position as one of the central players in both live and recorded methods of program distribution. The secondary status of the Western Electric Recording System in relation to its more successful motion picture system delayed its use in radio and ensured it would face stiff economic, ideological, and legislative com­petition. By 1929 network radio had firmly delineated the boundaries of radio broadcasting. Drawing from earlier discourses about electrical communications technology, the radio networks defined radio in terms of its technological capacity for “liveness” and “presence.” The roots of the assumption that live radio broadcasts represented the best and most natural form of the medium stemmed from radio’s position as a technology of electrical communication. Technologically and discursively, radio was linked with earlier inventions that also permitted instantaneous connection across time and space. The connections between electric communications technology and notions of presence dated back to the telegraph in the midnineteenth century. Like the telegraph and the telephone, the experience of early radio listening was heavily determined by cultural discourses that foregrounded the medium’s ability to move the participants through time and space to “witness” events occurring far away.21 Yet these discourses did not wholly determine actual broadcasting practices. The use of recorded programming also had a long tradition in broadcasting. In 1906 Reginald Fessenden supplemented his own violin playing with phonograph records during his Christmas Eve broadcasts from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.22 In 1920 Frank Conrad used records during the Saturday evening concerts he broadcast from his station 8xk. The popularity of these concerts convinced Westinghouse engineers to invest in the first commercial radio station, KDKA.23 Before there were national networks, broadcasters accepted recorded broadcasts as standard practice. During the radio craze of the early 1920s, radio stations often used phonograph records to fill their schedules, although prior to 1927 the larger class B stations were prohibited from doing so.24 The popularity of radio music damaged record sales, thereby leading ascap to demand that radio stations pay royalties for the records they broadcast. Some smaller stations that could not afford the fees played records anyway, claiming they were only providing publicity.25



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Similarly, early experiments with dramatic shows proved that recorded programming could be economically viable. In 1926 and 1927 a Chicago ad executive named Raymond Soat successfully produced and distributed 78 rpm recorded announcements that he then sold to individual stations.26 In April 1929 the front cover of the inaugural issue of Broadcast Advertising advertised the services of Paul Rayner, a station representative who offered clients the use of the Auditone Broadcasting System, an electrical transcription device that promised “The Perfect Program [with] All Broadway Talent.”27 These examples demonstrate the presence of recorded material on radio, a presence that would be attacked by the promulgation of aesthetic values of liveness. Just as with the economic organization of the medium, during the mid1920s the aesthetics of sound still permitted a variety of possibilities. Not only was it acceptable to broadcast phonograph records but it was also permissible to record live shows for retail sale. An article in Radio Broadcast in December 1927 favorably discussed a trend toward producing records of radio performers for home consumption. The accompanying list of recordings released in the last third of 1927 included speeches by Calvin Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh upon the latter’s return from his transatlantic flight, as well as the shows Sam ’n’ Henry, The Happiness Boys, and The Ipana Troubadours. In describing the value of these programs the article opined, “If it is not possible to reproduce a complete program in one’s own home, one can at least recreate the equivalent . . . Here are fine recordings made by the favorites of the Atwater Kent hour, and the famous artists of the Victor, Brunswick and Columbia hours. As for the jazz bands, the comedy duos, and other entertainers with a more local fame, they, too, are forever, at your beck and call on the black discs.”28 In this article the appeal of the phonograph lay in the ability of the listener to experience the performances repeatedly. In this way they were like regular musical phonograph records.29 Yet these performances had initially gained their popularity as live radio broadcasts. The “equivalency” of phonograph recordings of radio programs to live performances suggests that rigid distinctions between phonograph listening and radio listening were not yet in effect. Being “forever, at your beck and call” represented an aesthetic stance that was retained by the music recording industry but soon abandoned by both broadcasters and transcription producers. Indeed, broadcasters soon aggressively argued that it was an idea that was antithetical to the radio medium.30

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Radio networks had a significant and continued interest in defining radio in general, and quality radio specifically, as live, networked, and national. While a number of technological alternatives to wire networks existed, nbc and cbs realized that priority access to at&t landlines maintained high barriers to entry against potential competitors. Because they maintained privileged access to wire lines, the networks promoted live programming by claiming it possessed superior aesthetic value.31 By invoking liveness as an ontological property of the radio medium, networks used aesthetic criteria to justify their own economic interests. One example of this argument appeared in 1930 in This Thing Called Broadcasting, a book coauthored by Alfred Goldsmith, vice president of rca, and the radio consultant Austin Lescarboura. The ownership by rca of both nbc and Victor Records created a paradox in their discussion of radio recordings. They used the idea of liveness to define radio in opposition to the phonograph: “Yet it is universally conceded that radio . . . should particularly and preferably do that which cannot be done, or as well done by any other existing agency. And certainly the major function of radio is to provide instantaneous mass communication . . . It can place millions of people in direct touch with the living, vibrant personality of a speaker; it can bring the most interesting event instantaneously into the home; it can translate the very individuality of a great artist or the inspired performance of an orchestra into instant contact with the people of a nation.”32 For Goldsmith and Lescarboura the phonograph functioned as a straw man. Its advantage lay in the high degree of “individual selectivity” it supposedly conferred on its users. The distinction between “selectivity” and “nonselectivity” neatly placed the debate in terms of individual choice while sidestepping any potential objection to the network’s position as controller of broadcast content. Listeners sacrificed “selectivity” for the superior aesthetic experience of “liveness.” Liveness defined the qualitatively superior listening experience offered by network programming. Goldsmith and Lescarboura insisted that radio’s status as “a thrilling personality-contacting, nation-binding agency” required commercially sponsored networks connected via at&t landlines. They conceded that stations could earn more money by substituting a recorded program for a network-distributed show, but they placed the local economic interest of the station against the larger interests of the medium as a whole. Live radio programs, Goldsmith and Lescarboura argued, produced a more pleasurable listening experience than did recorded ones.



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According to their logic, the thrill of listening to radio encompassed more than simply program content; that is, radio also offered the possibility of experiencing an event occurring somewhere else from one’s own home. The microphone, and later the television camera, acted as witnesses by standing in for the spectator and transmitting those events to the spectator to experience, and as such they represented one of the largest appeals to early radio audiences.33 Thus, according to Goldsmith and Lescarboura, radio audience members preferred to listen to network stations because they appreciated the aesthetic experience of listening to live programs rather than recorded ones.34 Goldsmith and Lescarboura were not alone in invoking an aesthetic of liveness to claim a more enjoyable listening experience. In the late 1920s both nbc and cbs actively promoted the aesthetic value of live radio programming while simultaneously denigrating recorded materials. In 1929 nbc made a similar claim in a promotional book that emphasized the network’s capacity for live national broadcasting to support its claims of aesthetic superiority. The company noted that some advertisers had found the use of phonographs to secure coverage outside of network areas “quite satisfactory.” Yet, it suggested, something was missing from those broadcasts—namely, an element of simultaneity that could come only from live broadcasts: “But one of the most appealing things about the radio program is its spontaneity, the feeling that one is listening to living voices; top music just as it is being played by the artist himself. There is nothing of the set precision of a phonograph record in the radio program picked up at a studio microphone and broadcast directly. The little hesitancies of a speaker, the very realities of human imperfection, even among the finest instrumentalists, all tend to make the program, instantaneously broadcast, fascinating and intriguing. These are advantages hardly possessed by phonograph records.”35 The imperfections of live broadcasting, nbc asserted, added to the pleasure of radio listening. This aesthetic superiority translated into a greater audience appreciation of the program sponsor, thereby creating goodwill and consumer acceptance, promoting dealer cooperation, increasing the value of other types of advertising, and improving the morale of the manufacturer’s employees.36 In contrast, the network warned, recorded programming would rob radio of this power and listeners of their enjoyment. In 1930 nbc President Merlin Aylesworth spoke contemptuously of transcriptions: “If radio is to become a self-winding phonograph, it would be better to disregard radio entirely and go back to

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phonographs and records, than to waste the all too few wave lengths available for living speakers.”37 Aylesworth’s condemnation of recorded musical programming was not unique, for the networks were not the only parties that had an investment in live entertainment. Studio musicians, for example, also realized that phonograph records threatened their livelihoods. Perhaps mindful of how recorded movie sound put house orchestras out of work, James Petrillo, the head of the Chicago Federation of Musicians (CFM), began a fight over recorded radio music that would last for decades. In 1927, the same year that nbc banned transcription recordings, Petrillo engaged in a self-defined “crusade” against station wcrw, which he accused of using phonograph records instead of live musicians.38 Early pressure by nbc and the CFM on the Federal Radio Commission (frc) allowed them to establish the terms of debate over recorded sound with little resistance. In August 1927 the frc issued General Order No. 16, which required stations to announce transcription recordings before and after playing them.39 More than simply a regulatory directive, the ruling established the pri­ ority of live presentations over recorded ones. The frc regulations for transcription announcements were couched in terms of fraud and deception. Oriented toward musical broadcasts, General Order no. 16 concluded, “The failure to clearly announce the nature of such broadcasting is in some instances working what is in effect a fraud upon the listening public.” One year later the frc strengthened the law by taking a more aggressive tone: “The Commission has realized that there is no field in which deception can more readily take place than in the nature of announcements preceding the rendition of selections from a recorded medium. . . . The essence of . . . General Rule no. 52 is the prevention of deception.”40 If unannounced recordings were deceptive, this logic presupposed, then live broadcasts, which did not have to be announced, occupied the default position of genuine. Moreover, these rulings established public service criteria that privileged the idea of bringing audiences something that they could not receive in other forms. While ostensibly this referred to a distinction between commercially available phonograph records and live broadcasts, the regulations established criteria that privileged live broadcasts over recorded ones. The frc requirements demonstrate the extent to which wired networks became the normative model of program distribution, a model predicated on a definition of radio as “live.”41



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Thus, in the late 1920s, both the film and radio industries formulated aesthetic standards that represented rapidly changing economic bases and program forms. There is a curious analogy between the ways that Hollywood’s major film studios used sound film and the ways that broadcasters used wired networks to raise the barriers to entry into their respective industries. Sound films required more capital than silent films to produce, aiding the consolidation of the motion picture production industry. In addition, because they required sound reproduction equipment in exhibition spaces, they privileged the most successful theater owners. Similarly, broadcasters used aesthetic principles of liveness, which could only be achieved through wired network distribution, to consolidate and protect their own oligarchic position. While Hollywood established clear representational standards that privileged visual representation while using sound-on-disc technology, in the end radio was not as successful in maintaining a single overarching paradigm of representation.42 Unlike the so-called “classical” model of Hollywood representation, liveness was repeatedly compromised within industrial practice. Nevertheless, the terms of these early debates, especially what the industry and audiences understood to be live and what was considered “truthful” versus “false,” suggest the battle lines that would continue in a variety of forms for the next twenty years. Making Records into Transcriptions With the network models of aesthetics already in place when the longplaying disc transcription companies formed in the late 1920s, companies like wbs spent the next fifteen years carving out a place for recorded programming in radio. Radio networks and the frc defined quality radio and the public interest as inherently live. In contrast, the wbs developed economic and aesthetic models for transcription broadcasting that reflected the company’s hybrid roots in motion picture, telephone, recorded sound, and radio institutions. The company borrowed from a variety of sources as it campaigned for a place within radio broadcasting. These sources addressed every aspect of network radio’s supposed superiority: economic value, highest fidelity broadcasts, intimacy of live broadcasting, and the best stars with the largest budgets. Ultimately, companies like wbs not only de­veloped a market for transcriptions but also substantially revised the definitions of quality radio programming. In so doing they became

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an essential part of the structure of radio programming production and distribution. While transcription technology may have had the potential to challenge wired networks as a means of distributing programs, wbs did not initially seek to use it in this manner. Instead, wbs positioned transcriptions as a supplement to network radio.43 President A. J. Kendrick of Sound Studios made this argument in a Radio News article from 1930: “It might be thought that the recorded program would compete with the networks. This is not the case. Recorded broadcasts are not a substitute for the networks.” Indeed, he added, transcriptions give networks and agencies an additional sales argument. Instead of “wasting” a program by using it only once, “the prospective sponsor will be able to make full use of his network program by having it recorded and used for spot broadcasting from independent stations.”44 Kendrick subtly positioned transcriptions as an ally to the networks while simultaneously pointing out the gaps in their rhetoric of national service. For sponsors, live network radio offered simultaneous coverage of the largest markets as well as a significant amount of prestige.45 However, as I argued in chapter 1, at this time “national coverage” as defined by the networks was highly circumscribed. If an advertiser wanted to reach an area outside of the largest markets or wanted a time that conflicted with the existing network schedule, transcriptions offered an alternative.46 Kendrick’s choice of a model of supplementarity was indicative of the weak position of transcriptions in relation to nbc and cbs. By disavowing any intention of challenging the networks, Kendrick likely hoped to prevent the networks from moving against transcriptions before they gained a foothold. Even though transcriptions did not yet represent a threat, nbc’s forceful response to phonograph records in the mid-1920s demonstrated the networks’ determination to guard their positions zealously. Now, several years later, the networks did not immediately assault the potential new rival.47 The willingness of some in the broadcasting industry to suspend judgment can be seen in Goldsmith’s and Lescarboura’s descriptions of transcriptions in This Thing Called Broadcasting. In a statement perhaps indicative of rca’s ownership of nbc and Victor Records, they called Kendrick’s position “interesting” but refused to condemn it. Unlike their position toward stations that chose recorded programs over network program ones, supplementarity remained an open question: “In its proper sphere, it [the recorded program] might substantially assist certain phases of broadcast-



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ing, particularly the economic problem of certain of the outlying stations. Incorrectly utilized, it might provide an unfortunate and deadening element in radio, depriving the listeners of some of the capabilities of radio broadcasting.”48 For Goldsmith and Lescarboura, transcriptions were acceptable if they remained geographically and economically separate from live, network broadcasting. As networks steadily expanded, however, this division could not hold. The supplementary service model served its purpose: it attracted advertisers who wished to expand their existing network campaigns and stations that wanted another programming source. Within several months of its public debut, forty stations had purchased wbs playback machines, and by 1931 a total of 150 stations owned one. While many of these stations were small and located in areas not served by network connections, a significant number were network affiliates. The immediate popularity of transcription campaigns with sponsors and stations demonstrated the flexibility of the supplemental model. One often-cited example was Chevrolet’s use in 1930 of wbs to record and distribute to 170 stations around the country the Chevrolet Chronicles, a program where well-known veterans of the First World War narrated their experiences. Although the connection between war heroes and automobiles is not readily apparent, transcriptions appealed to Chevrolet because many of its dealers were located in areas not directly served by the networks.49 While the company also used the nbc network for live broadcasts, transcriptions allowed local dealers to insert brief announcements at the end of the broadcasts. wbs boasted that its 130 stations represented more affiliates than all the networks’ stations combined.50 Although transcribers like wbs had achieved significant success, they felt that an interlocking series of misperceptions about the quality and aesthetic value of transcriptions hindered their continued growth. The first misunderstanding equated phonograph records with transcription records. The result of this mistaken identity, the transcribers felt, was a perception that the tonal quality of transcriptions was inferior to that of live performances. Indeed, during the late 1920s the public displayed a remarkable enthusiasm for “radio sound” over that of phonograph records.51 Transcribers worried that audiences dissatisfied with the sound quality of phonograph records would perceive their product negatively because the frc-mandated announcements applied to both phonograph records and transcriptions. The “stigma” that remained attached to recorded programs, transcribers felt, was enough

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to scare away a significant number of advertisers. Even if it did not exist in fact, many sponsors and broadcasters believed that audiences preferred live programs to recorded ones.52 With the generation of “goodwill” still a dominant justification for radio advertising, sponsors wanted to ensure maximum cultural value for their investment. In response, the transcription companies’ promotional campaigns sought to establish the aesthetic value of transcription records. To accomplish this they used the rhetoric of perceptual fidelity. Perceptual fidelity was based on the idea that radio listeners could no longer distinguish live broadcasts and transcription recordings because of technical advances in recording processes. Once established, transcribers hoped to equate perceptual fidelity with quality. The radio industry agreed that 78 rpm phonograph records broadcast on the radio did not equal the sound quality of live broadcasts. In the 1920s many radio stations that played records had simply put the radio microphone next to the phonograph horn, thereby yielding poor sound quality. In addition to the noise that came from the record surface and the needle, and the poor tonal quality of acoustic recording and playback methods, the microphone also picked up background noise from the studio environment. Not surprisingly, many listeners of that era preferred live talent.53 Even though virtually all phonograph records were recorded electrically by 1930, transcription supporters referred to the acoustic methods in order to further the contrast between this “previous, primitive” method and their own advanced techniques. These arguments referenced “bootleg” transcription companies that had purchased disc recorders originally used by film production companies and then copied 78 rpm phonograph records or live radio programs onto transcription discs.54 Distinguished by inferior technological apparatuses and similarly unprofessional staff, these two methods of recording established negative models used by larger transcription companies for comparison to their own products. Through articles in the trade and popular journals, transcription companies explained in detail their technologies, their processes of recording, and the professional standards built into these techniques. Descriptions of different types of technical apparatuses established the superiority of transcription technology to phonograph technology. All phonograph records stored sound by inscribing mechanical energy produced by sound waves onto the disc material. These sound impressions created cuts into the walls and floor of the larger record grooves that guide the stylus. However, there



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was considerable variation in the methods of etching those signals. In a lateral cut method, the sound cuts in the record groove were a consistent depth. The electrical signal caused the stylus to cut into the walls of the larger groove. In contrast, in “hill-and-dale” methods vertical sound grooves followed the trough of the record with the amplitude of the inscriptions reflecting differences of volume and tone.55 Lateral cut techniques reduced the surface noise that had accompanied earlier versions of vertical recording. However, lateral cut methods could not capture the same volume and tonal range as vertical cuts. Bass tones transfigured their greater energy into a deeper cut, thus creating the possibility of cutting too far into the walls of the phonograph groove. Recording engineers had to reduce the input levels of these lower tones. Most phonograph records used lateral cuts. When Bell Labs developed improved vertical cutting techniques from the earlier Edison-based versions, the transcription companies touted the improved frequency range that these new methods provided.56 The promotional articles frequently stressed the care taken in the production of transcription discs. Once the cutting styli inscribed the wax discs, the discs were washed in a galvano bath. This process coated the wax disc with copper plating, to create a negative image. The wax was carefully peeled away, leaving a “master” disc. This master was then used to make shellac test pressings. The engineer, the director, and the sponsor reviewed these test discs. Once approved, engineers copper plated the test disc, now called the “mother.” The mother formed a mold to create another negative called the “stamper,” which provided the image for the production discs.57 This process was virtually identical to that of 78 rpm phonograph recording, but by reiterating it in detail transcription companies stressed the ideas of time, effort, precision, and care. In short, these were alternative criteria of quality that did not include liveness. The transcription companies’ technological argument depended on integrating discourses of quality with those of fidelity. By emphasizing the time, care, and expense that went into recording a transcribed disc, the authors sought to equate their product with the reigning standard of quality, the network broadcast. In these articles quality was defined in terms of tonal range and listener experience.58 Though related, this conception of transcription disc–making was different from attributes applied to other sound reproduction technologies such as at&t’s standards of functionality or nbc’s addition of spatial movement via liveness because it was

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based upon a perceptual equivalence by the listener.59 However, intermixed with these technical discussions were categories of aesthetic value. Transcription sound engineers were not necessarily wrong when they insisted that their discs sounded clearer, were freer of distortion, and possessed a wider sound range than 78 rpm phonograph records. Transcription sound engineers used technical standards to try to equate perceptual fidelity with the aesthetic superiority networks claimed for live radio broadcasts. Their constructions of fidelity combined with their institutional needs to claim equality with the quality of live broadcasts. They used scientific language and ideas of technical standards to create an idea of fidelity in order to challenge decidedly unscientific aesthetic standards while simultaneously constructing a different kind of aesthetics.60 Sound engineers who worked at transcription companies embraced electrical recording techniques as their solution to the dilemma where liveness occupied the default position as radio. They interpreted the tech­ nology of electrical sound reproduction to claim an aesthetic and technical equivalence to live broadcasts. A direct electrical connection between the event and the wax recording and the broadcast reduced the number of conversions from sound to electrical signal in transcription recording and playback. This electrical connection laid the groundwork for transcriptions’ aesthetic challenges to network definitions of quality programming.61 The illusion of “liveness” was based on using the technical capacities of electrical recording to erase the listener’s perceptual recognition that he or she was hearing recorded material. One articulation of recorded equivalence came from an article by J. R. Poppele, the chief engineer for wor—an independent New York City station that used transcriptions extensively.62 Professing to offer “some practical facts about transcriptions,” Poppele ended his article by arguing against the announcements of recorded programs: “Some advocates of the direct broadcast speak of the transcriptions as canned music as contrasted to flesh and blood performances. The direct broadcast is not flesh and blood any more than the recorded. In each case, the sound is transformed at the microphone into electrical energy and does not reappear again as sound until it reaches the loud speaker in your home. And, since the same microphones and amplifiers are used in each case, the electrical counterparts of the sound are identical . . . Let’s listen to electrical transcriptions with our ears, and not become prejudiced by wild imaginings, past mediocrity or unfounded theories. Let us judge electrical tran-



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scriptions by the finest examples, which fortunately, may be heard from the country’s foremost stations.”63 While Poppele admonished his readers not to be swayed by “wild imaginings” or “unfounded theories,” he himself attached a near-mystical significance to electrical current. For him, transcriptions merely become a medium for storing the presence of an artistic event as it was inscribed into wax. The disc record became a medium of distribution that functioned the same way as long-line cables. Tonal fidelity was equated with perceptual fidelity. Poppele’s conception of sound recording drew upon the concept of inscription, which the film sound historian James Lastra has argued was one of the chief metaphors guiding instrument design and representational practice of sound devices. According to the ideals of inscription, phonograph records provide “proof ” of their indexical relationship to the sound event they represent through the material traces left on their physical form. Inscription foregrounds the mimetic qualities of reproduction. These physical marks allegedly demonstrate that phonograph records store and retransmit the original event in an unmediated form.64 The conception of an invisible auditor allowed transcription producers to combine the benefits of economy of scale production with the aesthetic value derived from an event’s singularity.65 Transcribers could thus tout the financial advantages of recorded programming while invoking the power of liveness that associated radio with the ability to move the auditor through space. For example, in the August 1930 issue of Radio News Kendrick described the recording process through an analogy to film production: “For the sake of economy of time, and that more work may be done in each session, the program is not usually recorded in the order in which it is to be released, any more than are the scenes of a motion picture filmed in their proper sequence.” In film production, he noted, all the shots in each scene are filmed together, then edited together to make a whole: “The same takes place in recording. The soprano does some of her numbers. Then the orchestra plays many of its selections. The quartet sings its pieces in one session.”66 In making this argument Kendrick simultaneously valued the possibility of editing while retaining a notion of the event as singular and autonomous. For Kendrick, each piece was a discrete unit; a scene compared to a musical selection. Unlike a film, where multiple edits moved the spectator within a scene, the musical selections were indivisible. Their internal hierarchy rendered each element inseparable.67 The sound engineers’

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techniques impressed upon readers an even greater difference than pure fidelity between recordings and transcriptions. If acoustic fidelity was no longer a function of the unique conditions of production but instead could be replicated, then the representational model shifted from valuing the live, unrepeatable performance to emphasizing the realistic simulation of an event that captured it effectively for the listener.68 The conflation of technical fidelity via inscription and perceptual fidelity via simulation can be seen in descriptions of the transcription producer’s up-to-date studios, which were equipped using the latest in sound acoustics. One Radio News article from 1932 reported in florid prose the performance spaces for Sound Studios (wbs’s production arm). Noting that the studios were the product of twenty-six weeks of labor by acoustical engineers, the author stated that it only took a “glance into one of the Sound Sudios” to see the product of the “unlimited research necessary for perfection and progress in the field of electrical transcription.” This author stressed the importance of “strategic” insulation in creating a state-of-the-art “dead room” where, “standing in one corner of the room, a person’s voice may be heard as a mere whisper, but by moving only a few feet it is heard loudly and distinctly.”69 The author also noted that this variation in sound was complemented by the use of several microphones in the studio. Multiple inputs allowed sound engineers to modify the sound levels of different instruments as they “mixed” the recording. Mixing was a new enough concept that the author felt the need to explain the term and how it influenced both how musicians played and the final product.70 But more importantly, mixing reflected an understanding of sound reproduction as representation. Sound was not universally deadened with a microphone record recording the performance. Rather, the careful selection of sound-absorbing materials created a malleable space where sounds could be controlled, divided, combined, and recombined.71 The resulting recording was both inscriptive (in terms of each mimetically reproduced performance element) and simulated (in terms of the representational practice of mixing). Moreover, because transcribers intended these records to be broadcast and not sold to the general public, they argued that the process created a distinct medium. Transcriptions were not adapted from a phonograph recording, these authors noted, but were produced solely for broadcast. Like the live program and unlike a phonograph record, the only means of experiencing this show was by listening to the radio. One could not walk into the



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local record store and purchase it for consumption at one’s leisure. Thus, transcriptions were, as Goldsmith had asserted regarding live radio, “doing what no other medium can do.” Promoters of transcriptions staked their case before the frc on the basis of that definition. The successful lobbying efforts by wbs before the frc demonstrated its ability to redefine radio and recording aesthetics. During the 1931 (and subsequent) nab conventions, the transcription companies lobbied to have the organization support their campaign to revise the transcription announcement regulations.72 Later that year the frc revised the notification it required to allow any form of announcement, provided it was “clear and in terms commonly used and understood.”73 For Harold LaFount, the frc chairman who authored the revised rules, the distinction between phonograph records and transcriptions was based on availability; that is, whether or not the listening public could purchase the performances on phonograph or if they could only hear them via radio. This opinion resolved a technical question in terms of the market.74 Moreover, the frc also agreed that transcriptions were different from “mere recordings” because transcriptions entailed the same production processes as did network or “live” presentations. This language viewed transcriptions as a connection technology rather than a recording technology. The national radio networks’ definition of live broadcasts as public service conflated broadcast wave propagation with wire-line station connections. This ruling separated them. For the frc, the quality of liveness, linked to the ability to bring the public events unavailable by other means, could be approximated with certain recording techniques. This subtle distinction represented a significant victory for transcription proponents because their product ceased to be defined a priori as an inferior level of public service. Models of representation based on inscription were useful to transcribers because they redefined liveness in a way that broke the network stranglehold on public service broadcasting. However, as transcription companies attempted to capitalize on their initial success, they quickly faced new problems. Quality, Realism, and Made-to-Order Networks After securing a victory before the frc, the transcription companies increased their efforts to legitimate recorded broadcasts. Having gained a discursive toehold using models of inscriptive representation, they expanded

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their claims of quality and aesthetic equivalence to live programming. In one flamboyant promotional stunt before the New York Advertising Club, personnel from Sound Studios, including A. J. Kendrick, did not read the talks they were scheduled to give but rather sat at the dais while a recorded presentation piped from wbs studios was delivered via speakers placed at the table. Broadcasting covered the event in glowing terms, describing the speeches as “natural as life” where “not a scratch or loss of frequency range was discernible in the entire demonstration.” Moreover, the magazine claimed, the “excited” crowd “besieged Kendrick following the presentation.”75 Reminiscent of Edison’s “tone test” promotional tours for the phonograph, the stunt established certain discourses of quality, realism, and equivalency that wbs applied to its shows.76 In a similar fashion wbs claimed that its product was of higher quality than even live theatrical performances, and it enlisted the actor Pedro de Cordoba to testify to the superiority of recorded transcriptions over live, miked performances. Writing in Broadcasting de Cordoba noted that “because of painstaking direction and exclusive mechanical perfection of electrical recording, each World Electrically Transcribed Program is the radio equivalent of an outstanding Broadway stage success in its living realism and artistic impressiveness.”77 Similar “quality” discourses were evident in another wbs production, Tarzan of the Apes. A Broadcasting article chronicled the techniques employed by the director to immerse the actors in their roles so that they could “visualize the atmosphere desired so that they in turn may transmit it to their unseen audiences.” These efforts included screening films about the South Seas for the cast, creating full stage sets, working out blocking and stage directions, and having the cast perform in costume, all so that “the full effect of a theater performance could be obtained.”78 The show required over a year of preproduction, during which wbs sent recording crews to zoos around the country to obtain lifelike sound effects. As one promotional review wrote, “ ‘Tarzan’ on the air is the jungle made audible.”79 In recordings of the series, the sound effects repeatedly overshadow the narrative and character elements.80 The obsessive attempts to project authenticity and realism were supposedly replicated and extended in the production of another wbs series, Unseen Hands. As one writer noted: “In one of the programs, cannibals were stealing a man’s soul, according to a primitive Swahili ritual. Whole libraries of ethnology and exploration were searched until the actual ritual was found recorded in the Swahili language.



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Drums were made according to the specifications of explorers. Twenty colored people, some of them perhaps actually descended from Swahili ancestors, were taught the ritual and the rhythm of the drums. They were rehearsed for days to make a four-minute program, which could be fitted into its proper place in the transcriptions.”81 It is far too easy to write off these descriptions as mere propaganda or to imagine with amusement the studio’s attempts to teach “authentic” Africans an “authentic” Swahili ritual. However, this passage demonstrates how the conflation of inscription and simulation in discourses of “quality” led promoters to claim that a program offered a realistic and accurate representation. It does not seem to have occurred to the producers that the Swahili may not have been cannibalistic. Their definitions of reality stopped at perceptual reproduction of a sound; they did not even question the idea that such a program could be authentic in the first place. Tarzan exemplified the transcription companies’ desperate need to match the level of “quality” that network shows supposedly obtained. Their outlandish efforts demonstrate the limits of inscriptive models of representation to establish equivalence to live broadcasts, even though radio drama regularly used aesthetics of simulation in the service of the narrative. While the network entertainment programming never claimed to reproduce the event exactly as it occurred, the transcription producers did. Equating fidelity with quality and then extending fidelity to include narrative and dramatic elements had served transcription producers well in the past but had definite limits. The transcription companies continuously relied on perception as a solution to the dilemma posed by competing values of quality. However, unlike the earlier efforts that retained an investment in liveness, the revised arguments about the quality of transcription stated it was irrelevant. Building on perceptual fidelity, transcription supporters claimed that listeners could not tell the difference between live and recorded broadcasts. They challenged the networks’ assumption that the nature of the radio medium was inherently live and that live broadcasts were necessary to foster a sense of intimacy between performer and audience. One example of this kind came from Scott Howe Bowen, a station representative and an early advocate of spot and transcription sales. His argument integrated discourses of quality into a critique of liveness. Broadcasting quoted him as stating: “The discriminating radio audience . . . will not today accept such radio fare as child pianists, local comics, strained sopranos and other amateur talent as

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must necessarily be presented by stations operating in smaller communities . . . To most rural listeners, and, for that matter, to most city dwellers a radio program takes on no flesh and blood aspects. . . . To them a broadcast performance can never be other than a remote quantity. So your listener is but little interested in whether live, breathing persons pour it into a mike, for instant use, or whether they engrave it in wax for future reference.”82 Here Bowen revalued the geographical separation between program production and reception that undergirded the idea of liveness. Instead of valorizing the ability of live radio to move the audience across space and time, he suggested that it did just the opposite. In contradicting the basic canon of radio advertising theory that stressed the value of “intimacy” and “presence” as prerequisites for successful radio communication, Bowen separated the affect of radio as a communications medium from its content. For him program quality was solely determined by the production budget, and transcriptions made network-caliber programming available to small stations. Bowen’s argument was bolstered by a study of the benefits and disadvantages of transcriptions produced by the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. One of its authors, Barry Golden, strongly attacked the assumption that audiences disapproved of transcription broadcasts: “A supposed disadvantage which we don’t consider valid is the claim that much of the advertising power of radio is dependent on the intimacy between artists, announcer, and sponsor on one side and listeners on the other.” Golden was not opposed to intimacy as a general advertising principle but rather only to the claim that it was the sole province of live broadcasts. As he stated: “There are those who claim that only live talent are capable of creating this friendly, close relation between sponsor and listener. The untruth of this argument has been demonstrated by our figures, which indicate the predominantly favorable attitude towards electrics upon the part of the listeners. Further, it is possible to interpolate live announcements into a recorded broadcast, thus getting a result identical with that of a live program.”83 Arguments like those of Bowen and Golden reconfigured the value of liveness. They recognized that liveness was not an ontological quality of the radio medium but rather an ideological one. The aesthetic value of liveness could be constructed and replicated at will by networks and transcribers alike, with little noticeable loss of affect. If it were possible to duplicate the perceptual experience of liveness then networks could no longer claim



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to be the sole providers of this “essential” experience. Likewise, program quality no longer depended on distribution via wired networks but instead was solely a function of the talent and production level. With quality and network no longer exclusively linked, transcription companies could argue that they were able to provide a simultaneous, widely distributed, highquality networklike experience of their own. Transcription companies not only equated their programs to live network fare but also redefined the idea of the network. Once the affective power of liveness was replicated, the definition of connectivity implied by the term “network” could be reinterpreted. Here transcription companies like wbs used a rhetorical strategy that dovetailed with that of station representatives, staking out their right to reach specific geographic areas. The network was defined by nbc and cbs as a national coordination of disparate stations and although wbs retained the idea of coordination, it added two qualities that transcription could provide that networks could not: focus and specialization. A wbs advertisement from 1932 pictured a carrier pigeon flying above a map of the United States (see figure 8). Pins representing wbs-affiliated stations dotted the map, under which the headline read, “With the precision of a homing pigeon your message will go home.”84 The national map dotted with affiliate stations was a common image in wired network advertisements. This conception of national scope was visually referenced by wbs while its written copy promised coverage that was both less expensive and less wasteful. If networks relied upon metaphors of wide-scale “blanket” coverage then the homing pigeon invoked associations of directness. Here the message would “come home to roost” without distraction. Through its advertisements and promotional appeals, wbs implied that transcription provided advertisers a thrifty alternative to the indiscriminant coverage provided by cbs and nbc—something of special value in the midst of the Great Depression. If national networks were grandiose in scale and price, the ads seemed to suggest, then wbs gave almost as much but with much less waste. In an advertisement from March 1932 the headline “you can build your own broadcasting chain . . . ” ran underneath two hands pushing together the links of a metal chain. Beneath the image and title were two columns of text. The column on the left contained advertising copy that read, in part, “the new day requires that your advertising dollar be spent where it counts the most. We urge our clients to be guided

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8

This 1932 World Broadcasting System advertisement equated geographic specialization with national scope.

by their own distribution figures when broadcasting . . . Note the scope of the World Broadcasting System. Realize that you can select exactly those stations you want—either complete territories, or one station from each territory, or any combination.”85 In the right column was a listing, by region, of 125 stations that had affiliated with wbs. In ads like this, the company replaced its earlier marketing strategy of promoting its programs as a supplement to network programs and network-defined markets with a strategy that emphasized its ability to cater to advertiser needs. As such wbs attempted to exploit the tension in the relationship between networks and sponsors. Networks wanted sponsors to purchase the largest number of stations, whereas sponsors wanted to purchase coverage only in regions where their products were distributed.86 Describing its service as the “most flexible advertising medium in the world,” wbs touted its ability to cater the commercial message to each and every market, bridging the local and the national: “Many advertisers want local color in their commercial message. Here is the opportunity to vary the commercial tie-up in each market if that is desirable. The names of local dealers, special announcements, little adaptations to accord with local tastes and conditions lend a varied and forceful appeal to your advertising.”87 Likewise, a draft of another wbs



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promotional pamphlet, “Direct-by-Air: The wbs Straight Line Method to Radio Results,” bears a handwritten edit with the subtitle “A Declaration of Independence.” This pamphlet noted that “the ABC of buying and selling, in fact of all successful endeavor, is the ‘power to pick and choose,’ to do as we please, to respond to the dictates of our seasoned judgment. . . . To have the right to make our own choice and to use that right is the natural thing to do.”88 This pamphlet emphasized “Localized Radio for National Advertisers,” and its critique of the national networks’ demands for minimum purchases would have been readily apparent to industry readers. Likewise, the phrase ABC referenced the letters used by radio researchers to define listeners by income level. The ability of transcriptions to tailor an advertising message to a specific market did not go unnoticed, and transcription companies soon gained valuable allies—namely, advertising agencies. For advertising agencies, flexible recorded networks represented a client service that was not available through live networks. Agencies brokered between client desires and the organizations that provided the services that fulfilled those desires. By embracing transcriptions, agencies saw an opportunity to make themselves more valuable to their clients. In early 1932 a major endorsement of transcriptions came from Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne (bbdo). In citing the threefold increase in transcription use during 1930 the agency concluded that transcriptions fulfilled a “real need.” The agency listed four major advantages of transcriptions, including the ability to gather a cast that could not be assembled otherwise; a time frame that allowed the performers to practice, thereby ensuring higher-quality performances; the opportunity to review the program before airing it; and greater geographical flexibility in reaching a desired audience, especially if that audience was not reached by network coverage. In addition, the agency noted, transcriptions permitted recording of live events in areas not reached by networks. Finally, after citing reviews of fan mail bbdo concluded that “the prejudice to transcriptions programs as ‘canned music’ has been largely overcome by the superior quality and careful recording of the regular sponsored programs.”89 The agency’s report on transcriptions contained the same points made by the transcription companies themselves. The wholesale acceptance of the transcription company agenda by a major advertising agency such as bbdo demonstrates that sponsors and national broadcasters did not always share interests.90

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Agencies felt that transcription provided them with several valuable services. First, quality program production by transcribers potentially reduced the amount of work performed by the agency. Instead of creating a program from scratch, an advertising account executive could draw on an existing body of work, and thus the advertising agency would only need to write the commercial copy. Second, with extensive affiliate agreements, transcribers like wbs served as gatekeepers. Instead of contacting each individual station, the agency could place a spot program on a number of stations through the transcription company. A single gatekeeper also prevented stations from quoting different rates to different clients. In this way wbs acted in a capacity similar to that of a station representative, and agencies wanted to keep the existing commission system intact. 91 Third, transcriptions allowed sponsors to design the scope of their coverage and vary the advertising message within that campaign while maintaining control of the advertising message. Agencies appreciated that they could affirmatively respond to sponsor requests, which helped ensure the client would remain with their agency.92 The impetus for bbdo’s report may have come from the success of Chandu the Magician, a popular Los Angeles show first broadcast in August 1931. Chandu not only demonstrated the potential of transcription programming to the broadcasting industry but also it was a product of McCann-Erikson and Earnshaw-Young, two rival advertising agencies. Transcription broadcasts for Chando, initially a live broadcast program, were added in spring 1932 along with sponsorship by the Beech-Nut Corporation. Distributed over six stations, the show was an immediate hit, bringing in as many as one hundred thousand responses to promotional tie-ins in a single week. By summer Beech-Nut had expanded its distribution of the show to a regional level. 93 Unlike the earlier conception of transcriptions as supplementary, Beech-Nut decided to use Chandu precisely because it was not a national network program. In an article on the Beech-Nut campaign, the McCannErickson executive F. Arthur Elsey described the process through which the agency and client decided to use a transcription program: “When radio advertising was first considered, Beech-Nut seemed to be a national hook-up. Hardly a city, town or village in the United States but knows the famous Beech-Nut Trade mark. Why then should not the company foster this goodwill with a network program of broadcasting—uniform, centrally-



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controlled, blanketing the country?”94 By posing the problem in this way, Elsey’s rhetorical question directly confronted how network radio supposedly operated as homogeneous, nationally oriented programming created in one of a few cosmopolitan production centers. Elsey described BeechNut’s decision not to use a traditional network hookup: “The important factor in this plan is not the serial nature of the entertainment, of the fact that the story, ‘Chandu—the Magician,’ was selected, valuable as this excellent mystery drama has proved. Rather it is the opportunity for Beech-Nut to vary its selling continuity to suit the needs of individual trading centers and areas.” 95 Significantly, in this passage Elsey attributed the most value to Chandu’s distribution method rather than the program’s serial form or its content. For him, the central element in the success of the Beech-Nut campaign was the flexibility in advertising content afforded by the non–wired network methods of program distribution. Chandu used different sponsors in different areas because it divided advertising content from program content. This represented a significant departure from the form and content of wired network programs. Networkera advertising often integrated the commercial message into the content of the show, but Chandu separated the program content from the advertising content. No single sponsor received “goodwill” because there were multiple sponsors in different regions. While Beech-Nut remained the sponsor on the East Coast and in the Midwest, beginning in December 1932 Rio Grande Oil assumed those duties on the West Coast. With this unlikely combination of sponsors, a year and a half after its debut the show played over seventy-seven stations both as a live broadcast and by transcription. This included daily broadcasts on forty-six stations in seventeen states. Moreover, because the show was transcribed several stations broadcast it twice daily.96 Beech-Nut varied its advertising copy by region to accommodate specialized appeals. The company wanted the copy to reflect its sales goals, distribution chains, and perception of geographical interests. The company promoted particular products if it felt sales were lagging, helped areas where the local distributor was willing to “get behind” a product, or simply varied appeals based on the company’s perception of different regionally based taste cultures. For example, Beech-Nut Tomato Juice Cocktail (presumably as a mixer for bloody marys) was advertised on the show’s New York City broadcasts. In the possibly dry or at the very least more

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socially conservative state of Indiana, the company marketed its unspiced Pure Tomato Juice. Likewise, Beech-Nut included cultural references tailored to different geographical regions. The ads for coffee on the East Coast referenced coffee drinking on famous steamships, while commercials for bacon in the Midwest invoked a famous hotel in Chicago.97 Associating the product with glamour and opulence represented an identical type of advertising strategy. Yet by using regionally specific signifiers the company simultaneously attempted to forge positive associations while preventing the potential alienation that could come if the reference was not understood. Moreover, this kind of example suggests that nationally sponsored advertisements did not necessarily resonate as uniform. Rather, instead of a faceless national corporation the company could be made to appear locally or at least regionally based and “in tune” with the sensibility of each area.98 As transcription companies lobbied advertising agencies, the national networks watched with concern. Although they regarded transcriptions as their most significant rival, their response to them was inconsistent and structured by institutional politics and the very same ontological claims of liveness that allowed them to maintain their oligarchic position. Defensive Transcribing: Network Recording Services The front-cover advertisement by nbc in the March 15, 1934, issue of Broadcasting represented a significant departure for the network. Framed by two phrases, “Rounding out its service to advertisers” and “nbc is broadcasting headquarters,” were headlines announcing the start of the nbc electrical transcription service (see figure 9). In place of the archetypical nationwide map with connected dots visualizing the networks’ distribution web, this ad used the image of the nation as a base for two transcription turntables. The advertisement promised changes at the network, and it pledged that from that day forth “the entire resources of the nbc organization will be placed at the disposal of the spot and sectional advertiser.” Any potential sponsor who inquired found that resources previously limited to national advertisers, such as program staff, radio artists, and salesmen, were now available for creating and placing recorded programs.99 Coming from the company that prided itself on offering live national service, nbc’s newfound affection for local and regional transcription users seems shocking. Indeed, the public relations efforts surrounding the new



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Unlike those of the independent transcription producers, the promotional materials for NBC’s transcription service emphasized its national orientation.

service walked a careful line by simultaneously promoting the new service while not disparaging the network’s existing orientation. Vice president E. P. H. James of nbc addressed this issue before the New York Advertising Club shortly after the network announced its new service. Even while insisting that live networks were the “backbone of broadcasting,” James conceded the network’s change of heart. He championed the new position, stating somewhat disingenuously that “it is not our policy to decry any one form of broadcast advertising as compared with another. We recognize the very definite place in the field which is held by the various forms, local, spot, and national—each serving its particular group of advertisers.”100 While nbc attempted to spin its new enterprise as an enlightened effort to ensure closer relations between network and affiliates, in fact it demonstrated the company’s fear of losing control of its affiliates. Designed to protect the company’s monopoly, transcriptions placed nbc in an awkward public position and generated a great deal of internal conflict.101 The history of nbc’s Recorded Service Division represents the extent to which nbc employees had internalized the definitions of radio as live and national. Their reluctance to challenge their primary mandate clashed with the needs

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of other parts of rca and limited their ability to respond to changes within the broadcasting industry as a whole.102 The public acceptance of transcriptions and live broadcasts as presented by nbc representatives such as James was not matched within the company’s offices. The decision to produce transcriptions in 1934 was both preceded and followed by repeated conflicts within nbc and rca over whether, or to what extent, either company should be in the transcription business. The first area of conflict centered on the relationship between rca and nbc. Unlike at&t, which was able easily to apply its research for sound-on-disc film to the radio business, when Victor Records was purchased by rca in 1929 (forming rca-Victor) the parent company barred its subsidiary from soliciting transcription business because it feared that competition from transcriptions would harm another one of its divisions, nbc. Not only did rca not want direct competition between its subsidiaries, it was suspicious of the entire notion of transcription recording. Indeed, rca knew that the expense of wired networks would ensure that nbc would maintain its oligarchic status. Transcriptions, on the other hand, were relatively inexpensive and thus had lower barrier to entry costs. rca feared that aiding the development of the transcription business would jeopardize one stable enterprise, the nbc wired networks, only to replace it with one that was subject to fierce competition.103 Plunging record sales in 1930 caused by the onset of the Great Depression led rca to reverse its policy on transcription sales, and as a result it divided the transcription business between Victor and nbc. Victor was responsible for manufacturing, stamping, and shipping the discs, and nbc was placed in charge of selling, programming, and recording. The nbc executives were incensed by the decision, and they felt that rca’s attempt to buoy Victor would threaten their own business. In response, the network sales staff stalled and delayed. The failure to sell transcriptions led nbc to pay Victor $125,000—an amount equal to the sales it was supposed to generate. In effect, the payment was compensation for staying out of the business.104 Faced with the obstinate nbc sales staff, in 1932 Victor persuaded rca to allow them to enter the field independently. Only a separate operation, they argued, could prove the financial viability of transcription service.105 To prove their case rca-Victor offered for commercial sale 33 1/3 rpm “transcriptions” on ten-inch and twelve-inch records. However, these records, as well as the players designed to accommodate them, failed badly.106



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While nbc executives were concerned that a transcription business would compete with their wired operations, they soon realized that their failure to offer transcription programs was itself creating competition. The network found itself in conflict with stations, reformers, and sponsors. Affiliates of nbc frequently complained that the network’s programming policies impoverished them. While nbc had a right to certain option-time hours, it offered sustaining programs during other periods. Sustaining programs provided stations prestige but no direct revenue; transcriptions, on the other hand, may not have been prestigious but they provided income. Whenever possible, stations refused sustainers and aired transcriptions. Faced with this situation, nbc found it hard to claim that it offered highquality sustaining programming if few of the programs actually aired. In addition, sustaining programming kept slots in affiliate schedules open for new, commercial shows. Affiliates were much more willing to replace a nonrevenue-generating sustainer with a network show than to break a contract with a transcription show in order to take a lower-paying network program. Transcription programs threatened to increase tensions between affiliates and the network.107 Gradually some at nbc realized that entering the transcription business itself provided a solution to transcription competition. In 1933 nbc convened another committee composed of the high-ranking executives from the networks’ programming, engineering, station relations, and sales divisions. Its members, Bertha Brainard, C. W. Horn, Lloyd Thomas, Donald Withycomb, and Roy Witmer, solicited opinions from across the organization.108 The chief objections at this stage came from members of the legal department, who argued the transcription business involved too many risks and unforeseen circumstances. Moreover, they felt, transcriptions represented a distraction from the network’s principal business of wired program distribution.109 Those who supported the idea of nbc beginning transcription production argued that only by seeking a closer relationship to stations could the network control them. As nbc’s chief engineer, C. W. Horn, wrote to Executive Vice President Richard Patterson Jr. in a 1933 memo, “My position heretofore has been that the nbc should engage in transcription work, even though it is in competition with our primary service of wire distribution, as a measure of self-protection.” If nbc’s transcription business failed, he felt, then the company could rely on its wired networks. But if it succeeded then nbc stood to improve relations with its

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affiliate stations, thereby ensuring their cooperation in clearing programs and lessening the chance that stations might switch networks. Horn continued by stating: “Furthermore, if we are able to supply both wire programs as well as transcription programs, we are able to give full service to our associated stations with whom we desire to make contracts. It should therefore, be less difficult for us to schedule our programs over our associated stations if we can give them a complete service and are competitive with ourselves rather than if outside transcriptions companies compete with us.”110 President Merlin Aylesworth of nbc expressed similar sentiments. Even though he had made public statements opposing recorded radio, he claimed to have supported an nbc transcription service since 1930, and he urged Patterson to act before nbc lost its competitive advantage: “This is all in the psychology of selling; the outside agency will always sell against the network while we will sell with it and for its accommodation.”111 By December 1933 the committee agreed to move nbc into the transcription business.112 In the end nbc became resigned to the idea that transcriptions would not go away. As of October 1933 there were thirty-three competing transcription producers.113 Thus nbc, as Patterson put it, “must choose between expediency and refusing to see the light of competition.”114 With this mandate, Horn hired Frank Black as the network’s music director. Black had previously headed Sound Studios, wbs’s production arm, and nbc felt his extensive experience with wbs would help them overcome the disadvantage of their late entrance into the field.115 A promotional campaign announcing the new service began in spring 1934. The task of promoting transcriptions was chosen by nbc as a way of maintaining closer relations between the network and its affiliates, just as in its internal arguments.116 However, while nbc had agreed “in principle” to enter the transcription business, implementation proved more difficult. In a “somewhat modest” way nbc began to offer transcription services to advertisers and stations, and despite the public relations ballyhoo that spring the results were, in the words of one nbc report, “small and unimportant.”117 There were a number of reasons for this. First was the slow start of nbc’s local sales division. The sales department was not willing to do much to sell local stations without being the exclusive representative for those stations. Independent representatives already had existing contracts with those stations. Petry’s firm, for example, represented twenty nbc affili-



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ates and the transcription division saw this group of stations as a significant obstacle.118 Second, tensions also soon developed between the network and rca-Victor. The plan by nbc was to use rca facilities for the actual recording with the network handling talent and sales. Victor would then drop its own transcription business. However, rca-Victor objected to giving up its radio transcription business because it provided the financial support for other aspects of its recording business. Almost immediately, nbc’s sales department chief, Roy Witmer, reversed himself and removed his support for nbc’s entrance into the transcription business. He argued that sales would be hurt if rca continued to solicit custom transcription business.119 Further, rca executives also objected to nbc’s request that it transfer its personnel to the radio network.120 The same was not necessarily true for the rca sound engineers. For them, moving to nbc meant adopting a new set of professional standards. As C. Lloyd Enger, the head of rca-Victor transcription recording operations, noted in a memo to the nbc eastern division manager Edgar Kobak: “nbc’s Engineering Department is blazing the trail of technical development and these developments in live broadcasting are of extreme value in recording electrical transcriptions. Our experience at Victor taught us that we must forget our phonograph experience and think in terms of the broadcasting art. The standards of phonograph records and electrical transcriptions are less similar than are the standards of electrical transcriptions and live broadcasting.”121 Enger’s tone suggests that he relished the new opportunity with nbc. Indeed, he expressed surprise that rca-Victor did not want to transfer his team to nbc. Based in large part on Enger’s recommendations, the record company and nbc negotiated an agreement that allowed Victor to continue to solicit custom recording business until nbc firmly established its own transcription business.122 The resulting intracorporation competition, combined with the success of wbs and the growth of exclusive station representation organizations like Edward Petry’s firm, required the company to revisit the issue several more times over the next five years.123 Despite the internal squabbles, nbc Electrical Transcription Service began offering the company’s owned and operated stations thirteen-minute programs in 1935. Described as “tailor made,” the programs were designed for local sponsorship and timed so that the station could insert two oneminute commercial announcements at the beginning and end of each

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program.124 The new library service, called Thesaurus, copied the formula that wbs had pioneered so successfully. Not merely a library of recordings, Thesaurus prepackaged many of the tasks that local stations had previously performed. They provided playlists and continuity scripts. The former included selection references along with time cues to ensure that the station would be able to insert commercial announcements or station announcements. In addition, the network provided a sales promotion service to aid the station in soliciting local sponsors. Finally, nbc went so far as to include a catalog system and the filing system to organize and store both recordings and catalog cards.125 Although the Thesaurus service provided stations with commercial copy and playlists, many stations chose to write their own copy and choose their own playlists, using the service solely as a source of musical selections.126 While Thesaurus was financially successful, it was treated consistently as a poor sibling within the nbc organization.127 In late 1935 Vice President Niles Trammell complained that Thesaurus programs should not be broadcast in the evening over nbc owned and operated stations because they lowered the stations’ prestige.128 Soon thereafter the company was ac­ tively debating the status of the relationship between transcription and live programming.129 In 1936 nbc voted over the objections of the Sales De­ partment to liberalize nbc’s policies and accept all kinds of transcription business, to consolidate rca-Victor’s transcription division with nbc’s transcription division, and to solicit spot sales business.130 Up until that point Roy Witmer, the head of the Sales Department, had refused to allow his salesmen to sell spot time except for owned and operated stations and he actively discouraged them from selling transcriptions for any stations.131 Responding to one of these sales representatives he noted, “It is hard for me to even say ‘work on transcriptions when you have nothing else to do,’ because there really shouldn’t be any time for you to work on anything except Network facilities and spot business.” For Witmer, transcription sales could not equal the financial and cultural capital generated by selling a live program. He continued by stating, “I know there are two or three people who get very excited over a ten to fifteen thousand dollar transcription order. I am not one of them. What can get me excited is a $250,000 Network order, out of which comes good profit, an excellent live program for all of our stations, prestige and publicity, and a general impetus for the build up of the National Broadcasting Company.”132



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In part because of Witmer’s strident objections, as well as continual stalling by rca-Victor (now called rca Manufacturing), the consolidation did not occur until 1939, after the new nbc president, Lenox Lohr, asked David Sarnoff, president of rca, to intervene.133 Lohr did not come from nbc’s ranks: in addition to his military background, prior to becoming president of nbc he managed the preparations for the Chicago Century of Progress Trade Fair. As such, he did not have the same investment in the wire distribution of live programs as did other network employees. In the conclusion of his letter to Sarnoff, Lohr noted: “nbc is a program-building, talent-selling and radio facilities-selling organization devoted entirely to the radio business. Electrical transcriptions are essentially a part of that business. The talent and program techniques are identical, the customers and the sales approach are identical, and the ultimate result of the broadcasting is identical with live programs. The only difference is that in one instance, a wire is used and in the other a record.”134 Lohr noted that Mutual had already entered the transcription business and cbs was rumored to be trying to purchase wbs.135 For him, these rivals represented a growing threat, and he felt that nbc could not afford to ignore transcriptions as a field for internetwork rivalry: “The real competitors of nbc are Columbia, Mutual and World Broadcasting System, and our joint interest will be best served if we combine the strengths we have in the transcription field with those we have in the broadcasting field and seek to take the largest volume of business away from our real competitors.”136 The involvement with transcriptions by nbc represented a defensive strategy that was conceived and maintained as a way to prevent competition from independent companies. In some ways, nbc succeeded. Most historians still remember wire networks as the only method of network program distribution during the golden era. Even transcribed shows like The Shadow and The Lone Ranger are considered emblematic of network radio and not seen as recorded programs. Yet examples like these suggest that the actual impact of transcriptions should not be judged solely by whether they usurped wired networks (although by the 1950s they largely had done that). Like station representation, regional networks, and spot sales—phenomena with which they were deeply intertwined—transcriptions were perceived by the networks as a threat worthy of a response. The networks’ efforts at co-optation, with varying degrees of success, demonstrated that the American system of broadcasting did not proceed naturally from radio

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technology but instead was a product of social choices. The history of transcriptions also demonstrates that well before television was widely introduced radio was already deviating from a wired network model. Radio networks may have been able to define live broadcasts as radio’s best and most natural form in the late 1920s, but adhering to that definition limited their ability to respond to new practices of program production and distribution represented by transcriptions. This is not to say that these definitions slowed the acceptance of recorded programming. In a similar fashion to the efforts of station representatives, the sound-on-disc transcription companies had to redefine aspects of normal radio in order to create a space to operate. Each had to negotiate practices that assumed those normative definitions of radio. In this way these discursive constructions of different technologies contributed to the scale of the actions of these individuals and institutions. These program producers initially used the gaps in network interconnection to position their products as mere supplements to the networks. They then built on their initial success and used technical characteristics of transcription production to equate perceptual fidelity with quality and thus gain status as equivalents to network broadcasts. They gained allies in advertising agencies who saw in transcriptions a way to respond to client demands for specialized coverage. The growing acceptance of transcriptions by stations, sponsors, and agencies prompted nbc to attempt to co-opt recorded materials in order to minimize their impact on network operations. In the next chapter I address the networks’ further efforts to manage the use of transcriptions on their stations—to greater or lesser success. These efforts were necessary because once transcriptions were accepted by stations, agencies, and sponsors, they took a central role in the development of spot broadcasting. In so doing, they provided a method of producing and distributing programs without using at&t lines, and thus ultimately contributed to a fragmented listening experience.

four

On the Spot The Spatial and Temporal Flow of Spot Broadcasting

The Bulova time signal was ubiquitous in 1930s and 1940s radio. Comprising chiefly of the six letters that spelled out the name of the sponsor, followed by an announcement of the current time, these commercials aired several times a day on hundreds of stations. The time signal was conceived as a kind of service advertising by Bulova, a watch manufacturer. In the late 1920s most radio sponsors believed in “goodwill” advertising that sought to associate the name of the product with the audience’s enjoyment of a particular show.1 Service advertising attempted to tie the form and content of the radio advertisement to the product being sold, and it was popular during the late 1920s as a “soft sell.” Bulova’s comparison of its practices to that of the food companies that provided recipes suggests that it had somewhat loftier goals; indeed, it wanted its name to become associated with time itself.2 Beginning in 1927 the Bulova Company approached numerous stations about buying advertising time during their station breaks, the twenty-five-second periods at the top and bottom of the hour that were required by the fcc for station identification. The company then adapted its commercial continuity to fit those breaks between programs. In contrast to the typical radio commercials that ran a minute or longer, Bulova’s announcements were very simple and short. Spoken live by the local station announcer, they always included a spelling of the product name. The company also gave

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each product a distinctive name that fit easily into the ad copy. While Bulova used a broad approach and did not try to customize its copy or campaigns to particular regions, the advertising industry often cited the company’s success as a template for other successful short-announcement campaigns.3 Despite (and perhaps because of) both its brevity and ubiquity, the time signal announcement has been a footnote in broadcasting history. However, by bringing the Bulova time signal to the foreground I both highlight the connections between station representatives and spot radio advertising and recast accounts of the spatial and temporal experience of radio in the 1930s and 1940s. The story of Bulova’s time signals is central to the story of spot broadcasting and station representation. As I chronicled in chapter 1, station representatives rationalized data collection about local stations that facilitated the process that allowed national sponsors to purchase time on those stations. One reason for the success of Edward Petry, a well-known advocate of exclusive representation, was directly linked to Bulova’s time signals. Having initially developed a relationship with stations while selling Bulova spots, Petry was able to convince stations to allow him to represent them. Indeed, according to industry lore Petry “traveled around the country with Bulova contracts in one pocket and station rep contracts . . . in the other.”4 The Bulova story further suggests that our knowledge of the form and content of network-era radio must account for all elements of the broadcast schedule. An analysis of spot broadcasting historicizes the development of radio’s textual form and shows that commercials were part of an ongoing dialectic between attention and distraction that characterizes commercial media specifically and aesthetic production in general.5 Although golden age radio is recalled as an era of single-network sponsorship, many types of commercial announcements interrupted the broadcast hour in multiple ways. Spot programs and spot announcements contributed to the creation of a spatially and temporally fragmented mode of radio address. Their history suggests another way in which radio’s mode of address was not univocal but was rather the product of organizations that acted in a variety of contexts and spatial scales. Combined with the histories of regional networks and transcription producers who provided alternative methods of program production and distribution, spot broadcasting moved from filling in gaps created by network practices to staking out a position as an alternative to the national networks.



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The robust system of spot broadcasting created by station representatives, regional networks, transcription producers, and advertising agencies suggests that local stations possessed significant autonomy in programming scheduling practices. Certainly they faced constraints, especially if they were network affiliates, but in themselves these battles serve as evidence that the radio schedule was not as homogeneous as some have assumed. Although the ability to air more commercials would seem to be a strange sort of victory, the implication that follows is that spot broadcasting, in the form of programs and announcements, spatially fragmented the experience of listening. Spot announcements were neither purely national nor purely local. In the above example of the Bulova time signal, the Biow advertising agency in New York wrote the time signal advertising copy and a local announcer read it, but the sheer diversity of spot broadcasting created multiple forms and modes of address. These forms and modes of address were influenced by industry-wide discussions of broadcast advertising that simultaneously lauded and reviled them. When spot broadcasting emerged in the early 1930s it complicated the existing debates in the industry over appropriate techniques for delivering radio advertising. Encompassing a highly varied set of practices, spot broadcasting included full-length programs (many of which resembled network shows) as well as brief thirty-second or one-minute announcements. Programs and announcements were produced in metropolitan centers, local stations, or, as in the case of programs generated via a music library, a combination of the two. These programs and announcements represent several distinct modes of broadcast advertising. On one hand, for national advertisers spot broadcasting was a supplemental form that increased the overall size of the audience or localized their product by making it appear connected to the community. On the other hand, for smaller sponsors spot broadcasting acted as their primary advertising method within limited geographic regions. In contrast to the discourses of cultural uplift, universal appeal, or audience manipulation that networks applied to their programs, descriptions of these programs stressed accommodation to listener preferences and taste preferences. With spot announcements the story was quite different. Some advertisers viewed them as flexible and practical but others saw them as parasites on the “goodwill” generated by their sponsorship of network programs. Thus depending on their place on the station schedule, spot programs and announcements operated to extend or disrupt the

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conventional logic of broadcast advertising as part of a highly variable and fragmented listening experience. Spot broadcasting played a central role in developing a listening experience that was distinct from that typically envisioned under a single-sponsor model of broadcasting and that prefigured the contemporary experience of broadcasting “flow.” The term flow as coined by Raymond Williams describes the experience created by the temporal unfolding of broadcast content including programming, commercials, and promotions. The broadcast schedule’s segmentation of time creates a sense of movement and interruption where new information and experiences constantly arrive. In this formulation, the unfolding cornucopia of program, promotion, and advertising texts is designed to engulf viewers, thereby ensuring that their attention is directed across and between the variety of texts.6 As Williams and a number of the scholars who have engaged with the concept of flow suggest, flow is intimately connected to the stimulation of consumption in a Fordist mass-production and mass-consumption economy.7 As a form of advertising, spot broadcasting undoubtedly played a role in stimulating mass consumption, but it was also a harbinger of the techniques of market segmentation that would come to characterize the post-Fordist era of flexible accumulation. In addition radio’s engagements with flow created models that would only later be adopted by American commercial television.8 Indeed, in many ways spot announcements prefigured the “magazine” style programming commonly attributed to President Sylvester “Pat” Weaver of nbc, and as such it was a style of advertising that reflected the influence of debates over the ideal ways of advertising on radio that had unfolded for over two decades.9 Radio Advertising’s Form and Address Practices of radio advertising rested upon powerful assumptions about radio’s form, the relationship of the medium to the audience, and the constitution and behavior of that idealized audience. As a form of commercial communication, radio advertising had (and continues to have) a problem of limited knowledge. Akin to the concept of hermeneutics, to use the comparison put forth by John Durham Peters, broadcast advertisers could not truly know how everyone in their audience would respond to a commercial, so they needed techniques for framing and interpreting the limited



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evidence available.10 Consequently, the industry’s fear that the audience would ignore or resist its commercial messages structured the form and content of radio programs and advertising.11 Though radio lacked images, broadcasters and advertisers invested sound with the ability to create an intimate connection with the audience that would aid in promoting products.12 However, they were not sure of how to guarantee that connection. As a result, during the 1920s and 1930s there were several competing strategies. Initially the radio industry used formal address and indirect associations between program and advertising content. However, during the Great Depression agencies and broadcasters faced increased pressure from sponsors skeptical of these oblique approaches. In response, the advertising industry took two distinct approaches: one was to use commercials “integrated” into program content to trick the listener into consuming the advertising content. The second approach was to use direct hard-sell techniques. In both cases, advertising and program content were separated, with the latter used as a lure to secure audience attention. Integrated commercials assumed an attentive audience while direct commercials assumed a distracted one. These two approaches and their attendant conceptions of the audience provide the context for understanding the different types of spot broadcasting and the ways in which each operated. During the 1920s the industry sought out a “class” audience as defined by income and cultural sophistication.13 When radios were expensive and owned largely by amateurs and members of the middle and upper classes, the broadcast advertising industry believed that this latter audience would be offended by overt selling. 14 To compensate, networks and advertising agencies practiced what was called “goodwill” sponsorship, which sought to deliver an “indirect” advertising message chiefly by associating the sponsor’s name with a program that audiences enjoyed. Techniques included inserting a brief, formal announcement thanking the sponsor for underwriting the cost of the program and naming the program or its performers after the sponsor’s product. For example, the early radio stars Billy Jones and Ernest Hare were first called the Happiness Boys when their program was sponsored by Happiness Candy Stores; later, they were renamed the Interwoven Pair when the Interwoven Sock Company became their sponsor.15 During the “goodwill” period, commercial strategies focused on integrating the entertainment and advertising parts of a radio show. Advertising agencies constructed programs to appeal to what they perceived as the

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taste preferences of the advertised product’s users and to match the usage context or other associations of the advertised product.16 For example, a program sponsored by a cough drops manufacturer would be set in a town in winter. This made parts of the program content subservient to the sponsoring product.17 In the late 1920s and early 1930s several factors influenced the movement away from goodwill advertising. Because it limited the style and amount of commercial messages, goodwill advertising also limited the opportunities for the advertising agencies that were quickly embracing the medium.18 The industry began to recognize that audiences listened inconsistently, thereby “missing” the advertising message and consequently failing to feel the required goodwill.19 Finally, the advertising industry was hard hit by the economic impact of the Great Depression.20 As a result, it shifted its focus from the entertainment portions of a show to the selling portions. In the late 1920s the radio advertising industry shifted to approaches that considered the form and content of the advertising message as an independent entity within the programs. This orientation was characterized by descriptive and dramatized announcements. There were several styles of descriptive commercial announcements. Initially characterized by a formal tone and resembling a stock sales speech, announcements began to use more informal, direct address in an attempt to convey intimacy between the speaker and an individual audience member.21 Another common approach was the dramatization of the commercial announcements.22 Both of these techniques were more directed than the goodwill styles. The assumptions made by advertisers regarding the audiences’ attitudes toward commercials as well as their general levels of attention were mapped onto the techniques used during daytime and evening programming. The firms Young and Rubicam, and J. Walter Thompson stressed the value of soft selling and therefore integrated commercials into the evening programs they produced. These agencies transposed to radio techniques they had successfully used in print campaigns. These were comic strip ads which used multiple panels to narrate the virtues of products, visually combining entertainment and promotional content.23 In a similar fashion integrated commercials sought to seamlessly link the advertising message with the program’s narrative structure or, alternatively, use humorous or ironic banter between the announcer and stars to ease audience accep­ tance of the ad.24



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In contrast to the interwoven styles used in evening programs, agencies that produced daytime soap operas emphasized a hard-sell didactic advertising style. For example, Blackett-Sample-Hummert’s serials for Proctor and Gamble and other sponsors used the announcer to comment directly on the story, to smooth the transition from dramatic to commercial content, and to deliver a stand-alone direct advertising pitch.25 Direct-appeal advertising shifted the focus from building up a brand name to exhorting the audience to action. Although advertisers recognized that this approach was more likely to alienate the audience, they also assumed that the daytime routines of the housewives that they addressed in their programs would cause them to miss the more subtle advertising messages.26 These two approaches to radio advertising, soft and hard, reflected the preference of many advertisers to construct a mass audience in broad strokes through generic, stereotyped appeals. Ironically, the assumption by broadcasters and advertisers that listeners would dislike direct selling reflected their own class assumptions but not necessarily the opinions of the radio audience. Some audiences embraced advertising, notably if it was connected to a program that they felt reflected their taste preferences as well as presented in a style that reflected their values. For example, rural midwestern audiences perceived the softsell goodwill approach of metropolitan broadcasters as less honest than advertisements that simply described the product and its cost. In preferring a straightforward, no-nonsense approach, rural listeners felt they were able to evaluate the merits of the product on their own and thus resented being cajoled with euphemisms.27 For the networks and for some advertisers, this dynamic of resistance and accommodation led them to construct local nonmetropolitan rural audiences as simple, practical, plainspoken, neighborly, and interested in folksy, lowbrow programs set in small-town locales.28 However, in their uniformity they represented another type of mass appeal. Other advertisers, both large and small, recognized the complexity of audience responses and engaged with local taste preferences in more specialized ways. These advertisers flirted with the possibilities for capitalizing on organic local preferences even while they worried that this approach would reduce their control over their advertising message. Their uncertainty led them to pursue a range of programming and advertising options, including nationally produced spot programs, locally produced spot programs

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with spot announcements, and station break spot announcements. Still, the rhetorical appeals and delivery styles of spot advertising displayed the influence of industrial norms of radio advertising and the type of spot broadcast. Short spot announcements, broadcast during daytime hours or on independent stations that were not bound to ideals of cultural value, were predominantly straightforward and hard-sell.29 In taking a page from advertising theories that valued a positive emotive connection between broadcaster and audience, spot programs aimed to localize national brands. Operating in a variety of circumstances, at times these radio program/ advertising forms acted to extend the national into the local and, at other time, reversed the flow by sublimating the national to the local. Localization, Supplementary Radio Advertising, and the Multistation Trend For much of the 1930s advertisers were frustrated by the significant gaps in the reach of the network system. The national broadcasters’ structure of basic and supplementary networks did not always mesh cleanly with advertisers’ distribution or dealer networks. For these advertisers, spot broadcasting supplemented existing national campaigns, much like transcription productions. Promoters of spot advertising encouraged large national advertisers to use spot announcements and spot programs to localize their brand identity. This would allow them to combine mass appeals and niche appeals in the same campaign or even the same program. The deployment of spot programs and announcements often depended on the size of the advertisers. In general, the larger the advertiser the more likely it was to use spot broadcasting to supplement other radio advertising efforts. In 1935, for example, the largest spot advertisers were equally as likely to use spot broadcasts to supplement their network-based campaigns as they were to use spot broadcasting exclusively. In contrast, smaller advertisers generally used spot as their only means of radio advertising. Broadcasting found that nearly 90 percent of the smallest third of the top three hundred spot advertisers of 1935 used spot exclusively, a 40 percent increase over the top-third tier.30 For the large advertisers that used spot broadcasting, supplementation could mean different things. Advertisers sometimes created independent



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spot announcements or programs for the campaign, and at other times they contracted with transcription companies to record their network shows to be used in supplementary campaigns. Although nbc did not permit its own recording division to record nbc network programs if they were to be used on Columbia shows, the company paradoxically did allow outside transcription companies to do so.31 This means that even “live” network programs were not necessarily heard live when they were broadcast on certain stations. When confronted with a gap in the network, sponsors paid little heed to the networks’ rhetorical emphasis on the emotional value of hearing live performances. Even in 1934 liveness was, as Jane Feuer has argued regarding television, more ideological than ontological.32 Independent spot campaigns provide another example of supplementation in the sense that especially large advertisers used multiple stations. Although not necessarily a pioneering technique for the advertising industry, these campaigns do belie the idea that radio advertising was only oriented toward a national mass. Automobile manufacturers, for example, commonly used these supplementing and localizing techniques to link their national brand with local dealers in radio and print campaigns. Chevrolet regularly sponsored national network programs, but the company was also a pioneer of transcription use with its Chevrolet Chronicles in 1930. It expanded its use of spot campaigns in conjunction with its network purchases throughout the 1930s. The extent of these campaigns is illustrated through Chevrolet’s 1935 show Musical Moments. Produced by the World Broadcasting System, Musical Moments consisted of musical selections and two one-minute commercials for Chevrolet. This left time for an additional local commercial for local Chevrolet dealers. Musical Moments sometimes ran on more than one station in a city, and in some cases it used all the stations in a given area. By the end of the year it ran three times a week on 289 stations and five times a week on an additional 96 stations. With 385 total stations airing the show, that meant 1,347 broadcasts a week. Broadcasting magazine noted that this kind of campaign gave Chevrolet 211,000 radio advertisements a year.33 Moreover, these were advertisements for both the national company and its local dealers. As the advertising executive Bruce Robertson noted in an analysis of the program’s success, “[In this] series the dealer is the star; the listeners’ attention is focused on him at every turn. Each number is introduced with the phrase ‘your local Chevrolet dealer presents the music of . . . ’,

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‘your local Chevrolet dealer now brings you . . . ’, ‘your local Chevrolet dealer . . . ’ ”34 This kind of strategy became commonplace as transcriptions became more widely used in the mid-1930s and the broadcasting industry noted the successful use of transcription campaigns.35 Ford followed Chevrolet’s lead after “persistent demand” from its dealers for supplementary radio advertising on local stations.36 This suggests that spot advertising, even as supplement, reflected the demands from the local traveling to the national, and was not simply about national advertisers dictating terms to their local retailers. Localized transcription programs were able to mediate the alternatively complementary and conflicting interests of manufacturers, distributors, and different types of retailers, and this made them a valuable model for users and producers of transcriptions. Advertisers needed to negotiate the complicated relationships between the jobbers and merchants who sold their products. It was far more difficult to focus a campaign geographically if there were multiple dealer outlets for the product. While clearly national companies had an interest in linking their product with its local supplier, the local retailers’ receptiveness to this link was not a foregone conclusion. Advertisers knew that consumers could resent “indignities of scale” where mass-produced goods could appear uniform and alienating. They sought to introduce products in ways that made them appear to have a personal scale, one means of which was to connect their national brand to local entities.37 However, for local retailers and wholesalers the advantages were not always so clear. During the early part of the century, as manufacturing companies and their advertisers sought to establish brand-name goods, they worried that local retailers would undercut their product by claiming that the house brand was “just as good.” These large manufacturers expended tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money attempting to cultivate relationships with the local merchants. Likewise, during this period there were sporadic outbursts of resistance to nationally advertised goods by local retailers.38 Nationally branded products offered smaller profit margins for the retailers than did their unadvertised counterparts. Chain stores demanded volume discounts from suppliers and undercut the prices of locally owned stores.39 Thus, while some local merchants appreciated the promotional materials that the national manufacturers offered, others remained resistant to the idea. One solution could be found in making it possible for local and regional sponsors to have their own programs.



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Advertisers less well known than Chevrolet also used supplementary transcription campaigns for the cost savings or to help local dealers control program content and the majority of the commercial spots on a program. In one example, General Household Utilities made a transcription homemaking program it produced available to local dealers that wanted to advertise on the radio. The company placed the program on stations in areas where its dealers agreed to reimburse it for local time charges. In total, the campaign consisted of 1,400 quarter-hour programs on 105 stations, for which the company estimated it paid $1,600 less than it would have if it had a half-hour network program on 50 stations.40 Transcription distribution did not simply reduce overall advertising costs. The ability to select certain markets and not others meant that the company could respond to the desires of those dealers who wanted to advertise on radio while not having to enlist reluctant dealers to support a campaign that they did not want. This aided in maintaining close relationships between national companies and their local representatives. The Chevrolet campaign and others like it also suggest that the broadcasting industry developed a more complex understanding of the relationship between stations and audiences in the mid-1930s. Audience research in the 1920s and early 1930s consisted largely of station power and coverage. The industry assumed that there was a single best station in a given geographical area and that the region was “covered” if an advertiser purchased time on that station.41 However, the success of Chevrolet and several high-profile campaigns as well as the relatively small cost of purchasing transcriptionbased programs led other advertisers to try using more than one station in a given region. For example, in 1935 Los Angeles was the fourth largest market in the country with over 500,000 radio sets. However, an advertiser could purchase a fifteen-minute daytime slot on the area’s second highest rated station for only thirty-six dollars.42 Although at present this seems like common sense, at the time it was considered to be a radical break with the existing advertising models. In describing the practice in Broadcasting Blayne Butcher, radio director for the advertising agency Lennen and Mitchell, noted that multiple location placement was far easier than trying to figure out the single best station in a given area. He linked the trend to the new recognition that “listening habits are a much more important factor today than ever before” and that multiple spots allowed a sponsor to “take advantage of the policies of

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stations in shaping the type of programs that would best carry his message to the station’s type of audience.”43 In essence Butcher embraced the articulation of preexisting station and audience identity with advertised products. Another commentator echoed Butcher’s advice a few months later, wondering in faux amazement that “now, in a few months’ time, they [national advertisers] all seem to have discovered that it is no more unreasonable to buy time on more than one station in a city than it is to buy space in more than one newspaper . . . that, in a word, the same reasoning they have been applying for years to other media works just as well when they apply it to radio.”44 Significantly, both authors compared the practice of multiple station purchases with that of newspaper syndication by referencing the comparison that was so often used by station representatives selling the idea of spot broadcasting. This suggests certain parallels in how station representatives and advertising agencies conceived of radio as an advertising medium; the shared conception was the favored local adaptation of a variety of content to specific markets rather than the uniform address to a single mass market. Other national advertisers also recognized the value of spot broadcasting as a way of ensuring continuous delivery of the advertising message, even if it conflicted with the network policies of program balance. One of these advertising agencies was Blackett-Sample-Hummert (BSH), a firm that often purchased extended blocks of time for its clients.45 This could create conflict with the networks. During the 1930s, even though they provided discounts when sponsors purchased adjoining time slots, the national networks did not like daytime serials to run consecutively. They felt this violated their standards of program balance. BSH was a large producer of daytime serials, and in the mid-1930s it clashed with nbc over discount rates and contiguous slots. Because the network did not allow the agency to place consecutive serials, the sponsor, Proctor and Gamble, wanted a discount based upon its purchase of multiple daytime noncontiguous slots.46 At the same time as this fight, BSH was also a major purchaser of spot advertising, which did not have the same restrictions. In 1934, for example, its $2,000,000 worth of spot purchases made it the largest single spot buyer for that year.47 BSH’s use of spot expanded when the company began producing and syndicating spot programs in 1936.48 In certain circumstances, then, spot programs were used by agencies like BSH as an alternative to network



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broadcasts. But national agencies and sponsors represent only one segment of spot broadcasting users.

Smaller Advertisers and the Appeal of Smaller Programs While large advertisers like Chevrolet regularly used spot broadcasting to supplement their network-based campaigns, it was even more popular among smaller advertisers. These advertisers had long had contentious relationships with the national networks. Priced out of national shows, in the early 1930s they had turned to daytime programming, which cost less than evening sponsorship. However, smaller advertisers were disproportionately affected by the Great Depression and thus were more likely to advertise only intermittently—a pattern that quickly earned the ire of national networks.49 As the economy improved in the middle of the decade, the national networks sought to shift their emphasis toward larger advertisers who made larger purchases. Each network’s 1935 rate revisions increased the size of the minimum “basic” purchase. In conjunction with this increase, the networks restructured their discount schemes to favor advertisers who made larger purchases.50 This penalized smaller advertisers, who would have to pay as much as 50 percent more for a fifteen-minute segment than would the large advertiser who bought a full hour and quartered it. As a result smaller advertisers were driven away from the networks, and an ever-smaller percentage of big advertisers accounted for larger percentages of network revenue.51 These smaller advertisers did not forgo radio advertising. Rather, they shifted their broadcasting venue and embraced the ideas of localization. Using smaller stations, they constructed ads to appeal to specific markets in specific ways. The radio advertising industry began to recognize that the small programs that had survived the influx of network radio did so because they struck some chord with their audience. Descriptions of local programs and local stations emphasized audience loyalty. Within the broadcasting and advertising industries there was a steady stream of commentary that argued that loyal local audiences would be more likely to respond to a sponsor of their beloved program than they would to mass-oriented network programs.52 The niche appeal of spot programming is apparent in the practices

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of its use and the constitution and orientation of its users. In contrast to both the class-based idea of specialty audiences of the late 1920s and subsequent mass-audience appeals, these niche appeals supposedly had a unique basis for attracting and retaining audiences. In contrast to the language of gendered domination in the descriptions of serial audiences, accounts of small programs and practices of spot broadcasting acknowledged the limits of audience knowledge, stressed accommodation to specialized taste preferences, and embraced a discourse of influence versus attention. Because smaller sponsors could not afford the high costs associated with mass-appeal network programs, they used shows with a focused audience appeal. In 1936 John Dolph, a former executive of N. W. Ayer who became the Pacific Coast sales manager of cbs, published an article titled “Building a Successful Small Program.” In this article he stated: “Ratings cost money. The program [question] is one of mass attention versus listener influence. The mass attention show is the big sell. It scatters its entertainment with a lavish hand, then strives for enough listener influence to cash in on the tremendous audience it has built. The successful small show is built primarily for listener influence, then strives to broaden its audience enough to make it profitable. The small show must select somewhat carefully and rather narrowly, the audience it wants . . . The more specialized the interest, the more narrowed the audience and the more positive the listener-influence.”53 A year earlier, Dolph had evinced skepticism toward the value of “goodwill” advertising generated by network programs, and his new geographical location suggests a connection to his views. As I discussed in chapter 1, many national sponsors found it prohibitively expensive to purchase time on West Coast stations, and so those stations produced significant amounts of programming for regional sponsors.54 Moreover, while many network shows rebroadcast their show live a second time later at night for the West Coast audience, many others did not. This meant that prime-time East Coast programs aired in the late afternoon when much of the audience was still at work or eating dinner, and as such their influence on listeners was reduced.55 Therefore, unlike earlier calls for specialized programs for a “class” audience, Dolph’s argument, reflecting his West Coast perspective, suggests an alternative regional conception of specialized audience tastes and listener influence. Moreover, Dolph was not alone in recognizing the value of listener influence through appeals to specialized audiences.



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Though the audience intellectual Herman Hettinger was located in the heart of East Coast broadcasting rather than at its farthest point west, in his 1936 review of broadcasting advertising he lauded specialty appeal programs. Spot broadcasting, he suggested, was already widely acknowledged for its importance in supplementing network shows and providing intensive coverage, such as Chevrolet’s Musical Moments. Yet, he added, there was also an emerging “consensus that non-network advertising is being employed to an increasing degree as a means of reaching particular markets with special appeal, rather than merely supplementing other radio efforts.”56 In light of Hettinger’s earlier concerns about radio’s failure to appeal to niche audiences and his long-standing emphasis on placing radio advertising within programming that would appeal to the intended market, his coronation of spot as a means to cultivate “special appeal” audiences reflects an alternative to the then dominant model of mass audiences. For many spot advertisers the issue of small programs was linked to the medium of distribution—either live or transcription. While this was ostensibly a technical issue, the aesthetic issues of distanced control versus localized intimacy were mapped onto the choice. In 1938 Hettinger addressed these issues in a radio advertising guidebook in which he advised potential sponsors to consider their goals when choosing the method of delivering commercial announcements. Transcribed announcements “assured standardized delivery” and uniformity of characteristics like voice quality, speed of delivery, and emphasis. However, using live announcements made by the station staff allowed “greater personal appeal, and sometimes enables the advertiser to adapt his message more completely to local psychology and speech.”57 In describing the choice in terms of uniformity and centralized control or idiosyncrasy and connection, Hettinger captured the ways that spot broadcasting equaled the networks’ abilities to rationalize message delivery or adapt to local customs and taste preferences. Unlike the descriptions of network programs that emphasized the advertising agencies’ and broadcasters’ ability to manipulate audience response, Hettinger’s choice reflected a view that the particularities of a given location had to be accounted for in the advertising strategies and messages. While Hettinger stressed the ways in which these local particularities could be harnessed by the advertiser, the inverse is true as well. If advertisers sought to retail control, they could face resistance from those local cultures.58 This dynamic

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of hierarchical control versus local autonomy was further complicated by the transcription library as both programming source and model of spot broadcasting. Transcription Libraries as Program Kits Transcription libraries added another set of geographical scales to spot broadcasting by allowing local programs to have production values equal to those of nationally produced shows. As with other elements of the spot system, these radio syndication services were modeled on newspaper feature syndicates that sold columns, comic strips, and other content to local papers.59 Like newspaper syndicates, library services offered local stations a range of programs to fill their schedules, although the selections were weighed heavily toward musical programming. These services were aimed at smaller stations that could use them to create programs and then sell advertising time to local or national sponsors. Alternatively, because they cost significantly less than the wire charges that stations paid to receive “free” network sustaining programs, stations could air library-based programs without sponsors to build an audience. In representing a substantial source of local station programming these shows were also embraced by regional and local, as well as some national, advertisers as an inexpensive alternative to live network shows or other types of complete transcription programs like Chandu the Magician. Befitting their links to newspaper features syndication, transcription li­ brary services were organized around a logic of elemental combination. This organizing logic is readily apparent in the products of the World Broadcasting System, which assembled and distributed its library service starting in fall 1933. In so doing it was a leader in the production of transcription libraries. When stations subscribed to World’s Program Service they received a library of transcription discs that contained individual musical selections as well as written continuity to bridge the musical selections. In addition wbs rented playback machines and could act as a station representative to secure sponsorship of the shows it provided. Equipment rental benefited both stations and transcription producers. As playback technology advanced during the 1930s and 1940s, both parties had an interest in maintaining the highest-quality performance. In light of this, wbs offered to buy the radio stations’ older playback machines and lease them new, updated



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Western Electric models that used vertical rather than laterally grooved records. The new players featured a hybrid pickup that meant they were backward compatible with older transcription discs while at the same time offering increased sound quality when used with vertically grooved records. The company even provided and maintained the storage bins to store the transcription discs.60 In short, library services supplied all the elements necessary for a station to air network-quality programming. Every month, transcription services sent their affiliates a new series of releases. World’s Service, for example, was broken up into 214 fifteenminute chunks according to a staggered pricing system. Stations paid between $65 and $150 a week for fourteen to forty-two hours of programming, a cost that was significantly lower than what the networks charged them for sustaining programs.61 The musical selections varied. Some were standard arrangements performed by studio musicians under the name World Transcription Orchestra or World Transcription Vocalists, but others were original compositions recorded just for the service.62 Although the transcription libraries were weighted toward operetta and popular standards, they featured a wide variety of musical genres so that stations could create a diverse range of programs. The offerings by wbs had titles like Magic Harmony, Melody Palette, Musical Jigsaw, Tonic Tunes, Carefree Capers, and Metropolitan Moods.63 While wbs referred to these as “programs,” they might be better thought of as set lists. The continuity was designed to seamlessly integrate with the musical selections to create programs designed to fill specific day parts, appeal to specific types of audiences, and create specific moods in those audiences. Some scripts described the ideal type of announcer for a given show. For example, the announcer for the fifteen-minute-long, twice weekly show Swing Your Partner would, “of course, have a young peppy voice and be a ‘swing addict.’ ”64 Program services also advised stations on how to link sponsors with programs to their desired audience. For example, the sales materials for World’s Pop Concerts, a thirty-minute weekly symphonic program, instructed stations to use the program if they wanted to appeal to the “older and more stable, if not more enlightened, element of the radio audience.”65 For this kind of audience, stations were told to seek out sponsors among the community’s department stores, financial institutions, insurance companies, and jewelers. Strangely, the materials viewed “drug and toilet goods companies” and “paint and varnish dealers” as equally viable prospects.

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Finally, wbs also advised the station airing the program to use the local newspaper’s music critic as the announcer for the show, thereby extending the appearance of local origination. Although these guidelines seem intuitive, they provide evidence that locally based and oriented radio advertising sales personnel actively sought local sponsors throughout the network era. Although these individuals may not have been as important for network affiliates as for independent stations, their presence counters the claims that stations had to develop suddenly local sales forces and sales prospects after the networks’ collapse in the 1950s. By mid-1935 wbs produced seventeen and a half hours of programming each week using twenty-three shows. Importantly, it was not alone in this effort. The possibility of selling programming to small stations combined with the technological means of doing so inspired a number of entrepreneurs to produce network-quality dramatic and comedic programs that could be sold to individual stations. That year Broadcasting Yearbook listed forty different transcription producers.66 These shows were often derived from popular genres or were knockoffs of popular programs. For example, in the early 1930s during a moment when children’s adventure and science fiction serials were popular, transcription companies like the California-based Transco produced a show called the World Adventurer’s Club. It was also at this time that wbs produced Tarzan. Shows like Charles McGregor’s Ed and Zeb duplicated the rural appeal of Lum and Abner. In addition to NBC Recording, competing transcription companies like Standard Radio Inc., Associated Music Publishers, and Charles Michelson also produced music library and program library services.67 Many of these companies were based in major metropolitan areas, but others were based in mid-size cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, and Nashville, thereby suggesting that transcription production was also regionalized.68 Transcription libraries allowed small stations to produce high-quality programs. This countered the networks’ claims that nonmetropolitan stations needed network programs because those affiliates lacked the ability to produce good programming. Locally produced shows could avail themselves of national talent through transcription libraries, which reduced their costs and significantly raised the “quality” of their shows, which in turn allowed them to appeal to an increased range of sponsors. A January 1939 review of wbs’s client base not only finds a heterogeneous mixture of advertisers, stations, and programming types (both traditional shows and



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the library service) but also distinctively conceived sales strategies for each. One example was Down the Midway, which used the sound effects and musical selections in the library to evoke a carnival atmosphere. The show was cooperatively sponsored by local merchants whose commercials were delivered by local announcers in the style of sideshow barkers. Another example was The Guignard Review of Modern Composers, which was sponsored by the Guignard Brick Works of Columbia, South Carolina. Each week this show featured a different composer selected from the World Library. The station airing the program, WIS, added discussions of each composer’s significance based upon supplementary materials in the library along with seemingly unrelated contests that were oriented toward the show’s audience (one was on Civil War history). Although the programs based on the transcription library were especially popular with local advertisers, the regional and national companies’ programs were also represented in the list of the library-based programs by wbs.69 For example, the Southern New England Telephone company used the World Library to promote the idea of long distance telephony, and Proctor and Gamble’s American Family Soap was promoted through a wgn-produced homemaker show called The Friendly Neighbor, which used World music library selections. Still, the majority of sponsors were local advertisers.70 These examples not only suggest the range of programs offered by local stations using transcription libraries but also highlight the ways in which these programs mixed local, regional, and national elements. Although some advertisers preferred that their advertisements be localized, others preferred to retain control of the advertising message, thus spurring the development of minute-length transcribed spot announcements. Regional and national advertisers found that they could retain the ability to control the delivery of the commercial continuity in locally produced programs. Transcription companies recorded discs that only contained spot announcements, and they distributed those discs to stations. In one example, the recording logs for the Los Angeles–based C.P. McGregor Company show that the Golden State Company received sixty spots in January 1935. Six months later, the sponsor placed an additional order for forty-eight spots for distribution in June and July.71 Spot advertising was influenced by the general conceptions of advertising and the different styles of continuity delivery depending on whether the spot broadcast was a program, one-minute announcement, or station

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break announcement. Broadcast during daytime hours or on independent stations that were not bound to ideals of cultural uplift, spot announcements were predominantly straightforward and hard-sell. Taking a page from advertising theories that valued a positive emotive connection between broadcaster and audience, spot programs aimed to localize national brands. Transcribed spot announcements often incorporated narrative and instructional elements much like network commercials. While there were some “service announcements” that gave brief mentions of the sponsor name, most spot announcements were hard-sell, making the sales pitch directly. Repetition was a central element that was sometimes used to reinforce brand recognition. At the start of the decade, station break spots were the most popular because of their cost, ability to localize, and ability to capitalize on their proximity to popular network programs. The demand for station break spots quickly outstripped the available time slots. In response, advertisers turned to minute-long spot advertisements with dramatized copy and jingles, so that by the end of the decade the industry favored announcements over spot programs.72 These freestanding commercials in turn spurred an ongoing battle over the place of spot advertising in radio broadcasting. Spot Broadcasting and Network Affiliates In the mid-1930s transcription programs, announcements, and live programs maintained relatively consistent proportions of spot broadcasting. Transcription programs represented between 35 and 38 percent of total national spot sales, announcements represented 18 percent, and live talent between 43 and 47 percent.73 However, this ratio could vary widely depending on the station. In 1935 nbc compared its managed and operated stations and found that spot announcements accounted for an average of 57 percent of station sales revenue, but this average masks significant differences among stations. For some affiliates spot announcements accounted for up to 83 percent of station revenue, but for no station did they represent less than 40 percent. Likewise, transcription programs accounted for 22 percent of sales for all stations, but they represented half of all sales for some stations while others barred them completely. Finally, sales to local sponsors represented a total of 23 percent for all station revenue, but this



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too is deceiving. Percentages ranged from a meager 8 percent to an overwhelming 96 percent.74 These figures are striking for several reasons. The fcc’s “Report on Chain Broadcasting” severely criticized the networks for forcing their managed and operated stations to accept large amounts of network programming, which limited the time available for nonnetwork shows that appealed to local “public interest.” In fact, local programs accounted for between 18 and 71 percent of those aired by the stations. So while some stations were simple conduits for network programs, others had limited network offerings. Moreover, given that the network affiliation contracts provided financial incentives to stations that “cleared” large amounts of network programs, one would not expect that the average managed and operated station would receive over half of its revenue from spot announcements. This suggests that whether out of choice or circumstance, several of these network stations were nearly completely local in their orientation and completely dependent on spot broadcasting for their survival. Spot broadcasting thus was not something simply used by independent stations—it was also crucial to those stations most closely tied to the national networks. As advertisers and stations realized that transcription programs could equal the popularity of live network fare, spot programs filled local schedules and, in turn, influenced network operations.75 The cbs network had always maintained the right to all of its affiliates’ time, and nbc had a “gentleman’s agreement” but no written contracts that governed when stations could reject network programs. In 1935 the affiliate rejection of nbc programs in favor of transcribed spot programs was a central reason for the network’s implementation of exclusive time options in its affiliation agreements.76 However, this effort was only a partial solution. The networks’ affiliation contracts for 1935 gave them absolute control over the prime-time hours, but they also gave stations the unfettered right to reject commercial or sustaining programming in “station time.” Although this time was in less desirable hours, stations began rejecting not only sustaining programs but sometimes even commercial ones in favor of transcription programs.77 This striking shift took the networks by surprise and strained their relationships with their local affiliates. They had expected that affiliates would gradually cancel network programs located in station time but were unprepared for the speed with which it occurred.78 In February 1936 nbc’s vice president of sales, Roy Witmer, wrote to complain

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about “operating under conditions . . . so completely unwholesome as to be unthinkable.” The situation that incensed Witmer was that nbc had swapped one station-time program for another but then had the new program rejected by two nbc managed and operated stations on the grounds that the slot was not available. Because the network sent out messages to simultaneously cancel one program and replace it with another, Witmer concluded that the stations were refusing station-time programs as a standard policy in order to air independently solicited commercial spot programs. In complaining to Frank Mason, nbc’s vice president of station relations, Witmer fumed that “it is the fundamental thinking on the part of our M and O Station Managers that their local business is of sufficient importance to completely upset the total overall nbc revenue situation.” Witmer then continued by stating, “I think it would be a sad commentary on nbc executive wisdom, if we are to find ourselves in a position whereby the very stations for which we paid vast sums of money for the one and only purpose of clearing for Network service, can, in the final analysis, function exactly reversely.”79 Witmer’s anger reflects the network’s desire to subordinate local programming for the interest of network clearance. Similar dynamics governed the use by the network affiliates of the shorter spot announcements. As more and more broadcasters and sponsors used spot announcements, they too became a source of friction between networks and their affiliates. In late 1935 nbc’s Chicago manager, Niles Trammel, wrote to his counterpart in the Eastern Division, Edgar Kobak, to express his concern that spot announcements were “running rampant.” Describing them as “more or less parasites on the industry,” he told Kobak that he almost “threw in the sponge” after hearing an nbc Thesaurus program with six announcements during the fifteen-minute period following Amos ’n’ Andy. Still, Trammel was resigned to their presence because they represented “a large percentage of our revenue” and hence no “drastic” action should be undertaken.80 Others in the network were equally concerned. Witmer worried about how spot announcements affected the audience’s perception of the network’s quality. He reported that he was hearing “more and more complaints from both listeners and advertisers concerning the terrific amount of spot announcements so rapidly creeping in radio everywhere.” Witmer steadfastly adhered to a sales and program philosophy that emphasized a mass audience, and so he had little love for spot broadcasting in any form: “I still hold to the theory that the fewer spot announcements



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we have on our stations, the better the general program structure of those stations will be, and that the better the programs are, the greater the audience will be, and that finally, the greater the audience the more valuable the stations become to the advertisers.”81 Witmer’s opinion, which nearly always placed network sales before all others, was in the minority but gained more adherents as the influence of station break spots on programming increased in the second half of the decade. In response to the threat posed by spot programs and spot announcements, the networks structured their affiliate contracts so that local stations were required to charge local and spot advertisers the same amount as the network did. If the station used its option time to reject a sponsored network program and run a spot program, the network was legally entitled to “liquidated damages.” This policy aimed at preventing affiliates from undercharging and competing with the network by reducing the financial bene­ fits both to potential spot advertisers and to the station. The fcc criticized the networks for this policy and charged that it was anticompetitive, and the stations resented limitations placed upon them by the networks.82 This resentment can be seen in their use of station break announcements, a form of spot broadcasting that the networks had more difficulty controlling. Breaking the Connection: Station Break Announcements as a Negative Form of Spot Broadcasting In the early 1930s audience familiarity with and discernment of radio conventions caused advertising agencies and program producers to develop a new strategy for commercial announcement within programs. Goodwill announcements had established a paradigm whereby announcements were inserted at the beginning, the midpoint, and the end of the program. However, advertisers feared that listeners recognizing that fact would change the station before hearing the final commercial.83 Given that many programs lasted only fifteen or thirty minutes, advertisers were also concerned that the audience would mistakenly connect the sales message of one program with one that either preceded or followed it.84 Finally, advertisers and agencies worried that the intimate connection they sought to establish could be disturbed by the abrupt shifts in mood and tone possible in a broadcast schedule predicated on variety and constructed of independently conceived shows. In response to these concerns, program producers began to

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insert brief opening credits and postludes in order to create a division between the programs.85 With this move the product did not have to be connected to the show itself and the show did not have to do anything more than attract and secure the audience’s attention. Station break spots were brief commercials, sometimes as short as fifteen or twenty words but sometimes as long as twenty-five seconds. Broadcast locally, they ran between network programs. Station break spots illuminate several contentious aspects within the broadcasting industry’s organizational structure and the relationship of different elements to the medium’s form and content. If the broadcasting industry viewed radio’s appeal as based upon a happy marriage between entertainment and commercial value, then station break announcements were an unwelcome suitor that threatened to break up the relationship. The spot advertising discussed earlier in this chapter consisted of discrete programs and announcements that were broadcast in geographical areas that the networks did not reach (in the case of supplemental campaigns) or during time slots without sponsored ­network programming. They sought to increase the size of the mass audience or appeal to smaller audiences. Station break spots, in contrast, sought to capitalize on and appropriate network pro­ gram­ming for their own purposes. In so doing, they exposed the conflicting and coercive elements of network-sponsor, network-station, and audienceprogramming relationships. Station break announcements began because of a twin technical and legislative requirement. The frc required that stations announce their call letters and locations at the top and bottom of the hour. This meant that even during network feeds, where the program and commercial content were controlled from a central location, it was necessary to cut away and relinquish control to local stations. Likewise, programs commonly aired on a specific combination of network stations, not every affiliate. This meant that between programs the network and at&t engineers had to reconfigure the network to connect the correct originating studio with the correct stations. In the 1930s this was performed manually and required at least twenty seconds to switch network configurations. This produced an additional temporal gap between network content. These gaps became ideal venues for locally broadcast commercial announcements. Stations liked station break announcements because this form of spot advertising often delivered a higher amount of revenue to the station than



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did the network programs they appeared between. This set of affairs was the result of the complicated relationship between a station’s rate card and its affiliation contract with a network. A rate card listed the cost of purchasing time on a station in various increments. Determining the “card rate” was fairly straightforward—the result of coverage data, audience, and network affiliation. If a local advertiser wanted to sponsor a fifteen-minute program then it needed only to consult the rate card and contract with the station to air the show. However, network advertisers purchased stations through the network. While the station received the full value of its rate card for locally originated programs, for network programs the actual amount returned was determined by highly complex network accounting practices. Generally, stations only received between 20 and 40 percent of their published rate from network programs.86 For example, if the station rate was $200 an hour and the show returned 20 percent of that rate then the station could receive as little as $40 for giving that time over to the network. Stations tolerated this state of affairs because their card rates were higher for network affiliates than for independents, but it meant that they were largely dependent on nonnetwork programs for their survival. Although networks laid claim to their affiliates’ time to air programs, the station break presented a loophole. Local stations controlled the time in which station break spots aired, even if this time was located between two shows in network option time. Like programs sponsored by local advertisers, the stations received the full amount of their published card rate, not the percentage mandated by affiliation contracts. True, station break announcements cost only 10 or 15 percent of the hour rate, but for some stations this nearly equaled the revenue they received for airing an entire hour of a network program. For example, the 1926 card rates for evening time slots on the Cleveland station wtam were $180 for an hour, $112.50 for a half-hour, and $70.31 for a quarter-hour.87 In contrast, the station contracted with Bulova to air two signals a night for a week for $250, or about $18 per announcement.88 Assuming the station received 30 percent of its card rate from nbc, the return on an hour program was only $54. The station may have received more money for the network program but it was a much lower proportion of time to income.89 Moreover, it was common for stations to squeeze an additional thirty-second spot announcement into the station break, thereby adding to their revenue and, sometimes, cutting off the preceding or upcoming program.

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Although many stations eagerly adopted station breaks, their enthusiasm was not universally shared in the broadcasting industry. In 1933 NBC’s Officers and Department Heads committee was unable to reach a “hard and fast rule” on station break announcements on affiliate stations, even though these interruptions were “becoming more serious all the time.”90 Indeed, although the company had asked its Station Relations Department to “dissuade” local stations from airing spot announcements that interfered with the network’s own, two months later the network reversed course and began to help its associated stations garner spot announcements by acting as their representative.91 Even as the network profited from and even promoted the local sale of spot announcements, it also faced continual problems with stations interfering with its programs.92 The company reversed itself again in early 1934 by severely restricting spot announcements on its owned and managed stations and pressuring its engineers to reduce the amount of time needed to reconfigure the network between programs.93 Certain individual stations duplicated nbc’s policy and received national attention in the trade papers when they limited the time periods in which they accepted spot announcements between programs. In one example from 1934 Earl Gammons, the manager of the Minneapolis nbc affiliate WCCO, refused to accept station break spots during the evening and called “extremely unfair” the practice of selling announcements between programs for which another advertiser had paid and built up an audience. 94 Despite such pronouncements WCCO, like many other stations, could not afford to ban station break announcements completely and continued to sell them during less valuable time periods such as early in the morning or late at night.95 The ambivalence of the national broadcasters toward station break spots was matched by the ambivalence of the radio advertising industry. Agencies recognized that the relatively low cost of station break spots allowed smaller clients to enter radio advertising and larger clients to localize their sales campaigns, all of which increased their billings. Yet station break spots could also alienate larger advertisers who paid to produce the programs that aired alongside the spot announcements. This ambivalence is reflected in the 1934 comments of H. H. Kynett, head of the Philadelphia advertising agency Aitkin-Kynett, Co. Writing in the trade journal Broadcasting, Kynett expressed general support for the emerging range of nonnetwork advertising options based upon transcription or local programs produced



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to fit minute-long spot announcements that were “carefully planned and executed, [and] that rob no one of time or effect.”96 In contrast Kynett did not approve of the shorter station break announcements. Though just twenty-five or fifty words long, “all too often” they simply added “time, boredom and confusion to closing and opening announcements—sometimes giving credit for the broadcast (in the listener’s mind) to the spot announcement.” The strategy “may be profitable to the local station,” he acknowledged, “but is it fair to the network program?”97 For Kynett, spot announcements were a boon to the industry because they could be a valuable selling tool on their own terms. Conversely, station break announcements represented several threats to radio advertising’s ability to use the direct, intimate connection with the audience created by the program to deliver an advertising message. For adherents of soft-sell advertising, the danger of station break announcements was their obviousness. By potentially annoying their audience with a hard-sell pitch, they broke the web of mutual reciprocity between sponsor and audience. Likewise, sponsors feared that the audience would confuse the station break sponsor, who bore none of the program’s production costs, with the program’s sponsor, thereby negating the “goodwill” generated by sponsorship. Conversely, for hard-sell adherents station break announcements impinged on the opportunity to deliver the sales message. For them the presence of multiple advertising messages forced them to share the stage, so to speak, diluting the power of each. Here again the cost disparity meant that station break advertisers received a disproportionate share of the benefit. The advertising industry’s simultaneous skepticism toward and use of station break spots created tensions that repeatedly erupted into open conflict. Although the American Association of Advertising Agencies was publicly against station break spots, it did not forbid its members from purchasing them on behalf of clients, and so many did.98 In 1937 the simmering tensions boiled over when the N. W. Ayer advertising agency lodged public complaints about station break spot commercials with nbc and cbs on behalf of two of its clients, Campbell Soup and the Ford Motor Co.99 Ayer was responding to the concerns of its large institutional clients that competing advertisers were appropriating the prestige of high-cost network programs. In part the agency’s concerns may also have stemmed from an increase in the use of transcribed announcements by spot ad­ver­ tisers. With more sponsors offering stations these types of commercials,

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the earlier short station break was increasingly crowded with multiple announcements.­100 Ayer released a statement that described the “practice of slipping in extraneous commercial spots” as “unfair to the sponsor and the public.” The statement claimed that the agency had received “numerous complaints” and that broadcasting companies needed to put a stop to the practice.101 Ironically, Ford had used an intensive spot campaign with several thou­ sand announcements the previous fall.102 The agency received the full support of the normally broadcaster- (rather than advertiser-) oriented trade magazine Broadcasting, which noted that the sale of “100% advertising” by stations was “not affording their listeners anything of entertainment value.”103 The advertising agency Young and Rubicam joined N. W. Ayer’s anti­ station break campaign a few months later. Young and Rubicam was widely known for its preference for soft selling and use of integrated commercials that eased the listener into accepting the advertising message, so it is not surprising that they would respond so stridently to an advertising form that acted antithetically to those principles.104 Young and Rubicam’s campaign used survey data obtained from over one hundred stations that handled its programs and attached station break announcements. The agency launched its attack through a letter sent to those stations, the trade press, and the National Association of Broadcasting. The letter admonished the offending stations for placing station break announcements before and after network programs: “The advertiser who is buying the chain-break announcement is capitalizing upon the circulation which our clients’ programs have created . . . The chain-break advertising has contributed nothing towards building up this audience and contributes nothing towards maintaining it. In view of that we do not believe it is equitable for him to use our circulation for his advertising.”105 Given that the most difficult task of a program was achieving listener-sponsor identification, the letter continued, station break announcements created “a very real possibility of confusion as to who the sponsor of the network show is.” Moreover, Young and Rubicam argued, spot broadcasting actually harmed itself in addition to the network show because, they believed, it was “almost impossible” for audiences to absorb two advertisers’ messages on two different products within a span of three or four minutes. The letter concluded by demanding that each station discontinue inserting chain-break announcements before or after any Young



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and Rubicam programs, ominously intimating that sponsors were no longer willing to give up the “precious seconds” that were rightfully theirs. The agency’s rhetoric may seem overblown, but it followed closely the emerging discourses in the field that stressed the ability of radio advertising to create a “selling mood” and to “stimulate” the buying desire of listeners.106 If the agency’s goal was to provide an emotional context to deliver an advertising message, then station break sponsors threatened to disrupt that mood. The controversy over station break announcements continued at that year’s nab convention. There, Arthur Pryor, vice president of Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne, “spanked” the radio industry (to use Broadcasting’s description) through his admonitions regarding the elimination of the between-program spot announcements. Yet Pryor had to acknowledge that his own agency could not lead that fight because it was obliged to place station break spots if its clients wanted them for fear of losing those clients. However, he used that fact to place the blame squarely on the broadcasters for accepting what he sold them.107 In replying to Pryor Broadcasting acknowledged that the “growing evil” of station break announcements was making the audience “all too weary as their numbers increase.” However, the trade journal rejected Pryor’s charge that stations were to blame. Stations, they countered, were only responding to the demands of advertisers and agencies. If agencies steered sponsors toward spot programs then stations could increase their revenue through them and not have to accept station break announcements.108 With advertising agencies willing to transfer blame for station break spots to broadcasters, sponsor anger caused problems for the networks. They, too, publicly flogged themselves for their inability to control the actions of their affiliates, but they were not willing or able to take any substantial action to curb the stations. The networks pressured their affiliates to stop placing station break announcements, but they knew they could push only so hard. If the network banned station break announcements outright then the stations would demand that the networks make up for their lost revenue. The networks would then have to either reduce their profits or raise network rates and risk alienating the very sponsors they were attempting to placate. The networks made one weak proposal to institute a dual rate structure by charging clients more if they wanted the network to ensure that chain break announcements were not attached to their programs. However, this idea received little support from either ad agencies or sponsors.109

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Controversies over station break advertising illustrate the tensions created by an advertising form that violated industry assumptions that held up a single sponsor system. The presence of spot ads demonstrates how even national network programs were experienced as fragmented and hybrid by radio audiences. The Young and Rubicam report listed the agency’s programs, such as The Jell-O Hour, The Ipana Troubadours, and Gulf, along with the spot announcements that came before and after. Young and Rubicam was known for its use of integrated commercials to smoothly create an unobtrusive selling environment, but this report demonstrates how, despite the agency’s intentions, the experience of listening to the program was altered on the local level. For example, thirty-three stations carried station break announcements for forty-seven separate sponsors before or after the January 17, 1937, episode of the Jell-O Hour. These sponsors included national brands like Bulova and Rinso Soap that placed spot ads on multiple stations. Other advertisers promoted seasonal products like Rem Cough Syrup, Smith Brothers Cough Drops, or the Master Furriers of Duluth, Iowa. Still other spots were clearly for local companies, like the one for Jean’s of Raleigh, which aired on wptf, Raleigh, North Carolina, or the Dakota Electric Company, which advertised on wday, Fargo, North Dakota. Some stations packed in multiple spots before and after each show while others just had a few.110 Regardless, while the Jell-O Hour had won awards for its innovative and seamless promotion of its national sponsor’s product, the version local audiences heard was filled with both local and national advertisements. How the audience understood the relationship of these local commercials to the show or its sponsor surely varied among audience members, but the response of these programs’ sponsors was far clearer. Hitchhiker and Cowcatcher With broadcasters seemingly unable or unwilling to stop station break announcements, and the advertising industry divided against itself on the issue, many sponsors chose to follow a strategy of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” And, in response, they created what came to be called “hitchhiker” and “cowcatcher” announcements. If some program sponsors had worried about multiple commercial messages diluting their program and brand identity, others soon overcame these trepidations by placing commercial messages for related but separate products before and after the beginning



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and final network commercial break. The hitchhiker announcement was a brief commercial that was inserted after the final commercial by the program sponsor. The cowcatcher announcement was located during the first minute of a program. In both cases these ads promoted a product that was not the official sponsor but was made by the same company. For example, the main sponsor of the Manhattan Merry Go Round was Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder. However, the sponsor of the show, Bayer, placed ads for its throat lozenges at the start of the program.111 In essence, these commercials were simulated spot announcements. However, station representatives did not place these ads—instead, the network program’s sponsor attached them. Unable to prevent local stations from inserting these commercials, the sponsors inserted their own as part of the network program. If hearing announcements of several products left listeners confused about who had sponsored the program, the sponsors reasoned, at least the audience would associate one of the company’s products with the show. The networks’ unwillingness and inability to restrain affiliate use of station break spots and the subsequent loss of face with national sponsors came back to haunt them when they faced charges of overcommercializing the nation’s airwaves. In early 1941, concerned that the increased numbers of commercials would provide fodder for fcc Chairman James Fly’s investigation of network broadcasting practices, cbs and nbc announced action against hitchhiker announcements. They pledged to approach clients and ask them to bridge their hitchhiker announcements with music in order to make it clear that they were part of the preceding program.112 However, little came of these efforts. Having reconciled themselves to multiple advertisements, as well as resentful of earlier network inaction, sponsors were not willing to help the networks. The industry consensus was that little could be done to eliminate hitchhiker and cowcatcher ads.113 During the Second World War, controversy over hitchhiker and cowcatcher announcements continued as the amount of broadcast advertising in general increased. However, in 1943 cbs’s affiliates forced the network to launch a high-profile attack on hitchhiker and cowcatcher commercials. The affiliates viewed every simulated spot as a loss of potential revenue from an independently placed spot announcement.114 In its campaign cbs labeled hitchhiker, cowcatcher, and station break spots the “triple-hammer-trio,” and declared them public enemy number one for commercial broadcasting. In expanding the earlier language of audience confusion cbs argued

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that extended commercial announcements broke the “charmed circle of give-and-take” that network advertisers hoped their program sponsorship would create, and it cautioned that to “break that equation often enough . . . broadcasting would lose much of its magic, [and it] could become merely another mass medium on a cost-per-thousand basis.”115 Further, cbs argued that program sponsorship and spot commercials were antithetical kinds of advertising. The former performed a service to the listener and increased goodwill; the latter sought to piggyback on those “charmed” feelings of sponsor-listener reciprocity. Most curious here is the combination of discourses of science and magic. For the network, radio advertising was described both as a technology (with its carrier wave into the home) and as magical in its transference of social obligation to spur action. This juxtaposition exemplified the paradox of broadcasting. The network could only guarantee reception of the message to the technological limits of the receiver. There was no assurance that the listener would want to listen or accept the advertising message. This last part of the communication circuit was beyond rational analysis (the fact that networks considered “irrational” women their primary audience surely factored in as well). Following the now well-worn mea culpa, cbs took responsibility for these “triple hammer” advertisements, claiming to be acting to save commercial radio as a whole. Indeed, spot advertising’s presence throughout network programming magnified its threat to the entire enterprise of  broadcasting advertising. The argument by cbs was that the public did not object to advertisements integrated into programs, which it considered the cost of “free” broadcasting, but was annoyed by “free-floating” commercials. The network pledged that its affiliates would reform their practices: they would limit their station break announcements to service announcements, place ads only for products that did not compete with the products advertised on adjacent shows, and allow a certain amount of dead air between network programs and spot announcements to cushion the commercial messages. In return, cbs promised to eliminate the “simulated” spot announcements that came before or after the network program sign-on or sign-off. These reforms represented a return to the network’s policies of the 1930s, but they had little effect because the affiliates rarely followed the guidelines.116 Despite repeated promises to the contrary from the networks and a number of individual stations and sponsors eliminating them, hitchhiker



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and cowcatcher advertisements remained central parts of network and station program structure. Periodic bans merely drove spot commercials further into programs. In just one example of many, in the late 1940s the scripts for the nbc radio program Father Knows Best included provisions for the insertion of hitchhiker announcements for a variety of General Mills products. Therefore, while the show’s primary sponsor was Maxwell House, a brief spot for Post Toasties would come between the final commercial and the final credits.117 But in other ways the retention of hitchhiker and cowcatcher ads was a direct response to the industry’s shift toward short spot announcements. Spot programs may have predominated in the middle of the 1930s, but by 1942, spot announcements had overtaken them in popularity and ability to generate controversy. Short station breaks were seldom available. Increasing numbers of sponsored daytime programs reduced the time slots that spot announcements could occupy, and so more sponsors used longer independent announcements.118 As broadcast advertising benefited from wartime tax exemptions that allowed companies to buy advertising for ten cents on the dollar, as well as from the restrictions on newsprint that reduced print advertising, spot broadcasting shared in this process as network schedules filled and more advertisers turned to spot announcements.119 The increased presence of independent commercials also contributed to new ways that the industry understood audience behavior. In the second half of the 1940s the industry shifted its concern from the attention paid by audiences to specific programs toward listener flow within and across programs. The development of “people meters” by the A. C. Nielsen Company provided a new set of data for the radio industry that charted the “holding power” of radio programs. This power represented the ability of a show to prevent listeners from changing the channel within an individual program and between programs. As figure 10, an image from a 1946 Nielsen publication, shows, the company developed matrixes that charted audience flow over time across the program schedule. Nielsen provided context for the audience already listening: how many people turned to or away from the channel at the start of and during a given program. These figures, the company claimed, provided evidence of “complete” i.e. attentive listening because it charted conscious choices to tune into programs and reflected a shift from discrete programs

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10 Charting “audience

flow” over time within a single program and across the schedule.

toward program schedules and commercial spot placement. Moreover, Nielsen found that the majority of the audience changed the channel at least once every fifteen minutes and advised radio program creators to alter the position of their advertisements to reach a higher percentage of the audience.120 Increased numbers of announcements, however, caused each advertising form to be more overt in gaining the listener’s attention and delivering the sales message. Agencies used whistles, bells, shouts, and jingles to cut through the aural clutter between programs, even though those techniques contributed to the same phenomenon they were supposed to combat.121 Although a few stations condemned these announcements, these objections were often to specific types rather than to the form outright. In 1944 the



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New York Times–owned station wqxr rejected Pepsi-Cola’s singing jingle because it annoyed listeners so much.122 Station wwj in Detroit went further: in 1944 it declared that singing commercials were an “epidemic” and banned transcribed announcements completely. The wwj general manager, Harry Bannister, claimed the change would make wwj “an oasis of calm in a pandemonium of clatter,” but the ban did not last long.123 Many in the industry warned that spot announcements contributed to a sentiment that radio was suffering from “overcommercialization”—a fear that was borne out by the significant role that spot announcements played in debates surrounding the fcc’s 1946 publication, “Report on the Public Service Responsibilities of Broadcasters” (known as the “Blue Book”).124 Indeed, that year the average station aired seventy-seven spot announcements a day in addition to sponsored programs. With the exception of large, powerful stations, local retail announcements far outnumbered regional and national spots, thereby suggesting that stations were both actively soliciting local advertisers in the network era and, consequently, also culpable in radio’s increased commercialization in the postwar period.125 Still, the industry was successfully able to evade having any significant limitations placed on spot advertising and the postwar trade journals repeatedly extolled the virtues of spot broadcasting in all of its forms.126 Spot broadcasting in the network era encompassed an incredibly diverse range of programs and announcements, market orientations, and sites of activity. This variety of configurations supports claims for its historical importance and provides a lens through which to view the development of a wide range of now commonplace radio practices. These include the relationship of program to advertising content, techniques of program syndication, efforts at brand localization, the development of niche-radio markets and taste cultures, the proliferation of independent commercial breaks, and the breakdown of the single-sponsor programming model. Spot broadcasting programs and announcements were located within schedule gaps—between programs or in station time—in the early morning and late evening hours. But they were also oriented toward gaps in the mass audience—that is, those parts of the audience whose interests were specialized or not deemed “average” by advertisers or program producers. As the industry developed further theories about specialized modes of address, they linked those appeals to the daily activities of the audiences.

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In the next chapter I address the articulation of patterns of everyday life, taste cultures, and spaces of reception. By embracing distracted listeners and listening practices, spot broadcasting played a crucial role in the redefinition of distracted listening and in facilitating radio’s status as a secondary medium.

five

People with Money and Go Locating Attention in the Human Geography of Radio Reception

In the cultural memory of radio three sets of images dominate the experience of listening: the family gathered in the living room around the set; the car radio; and the child or teenager under the covers listening to some forbidden program. All of these images invoke listening as a spatial proposition, a relationship to a domestic space and family relationships to the world outside of that cocoon. Further, all are part of a human geography of reception and represent other configurations of space, place, and identity in golden age broadcasting. In the previous chapters I have explored nonnational network broadcasting as part of the process whereby existing geographic identities were articulated to radio programs and the consumer goods advertised on them. They traced how space, place, and identity connected to practices of radio production and the form and content of its sound texts. In this chapter I extend those questions to address the behavior of physical bodies in domestic spaces. Since the early 1990s scholarship on media and space has examined how media contribute to the production of space and spatial relationships.1 The cultural critic Jody Berland argues that considerations of textual and spatial production are deeply intertwined: “We are not simply listeners to sound, or watchers of images, but occupants of spaces for listening or watching who, by being there, help to produce definite meanings and effects.”2 Berland

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is suggesting that the cultural form of radio is linked to its spatial context of reception. These spaces serve not only as sites for investigating radio in its specificity but also as sites that are made meaningful through their relationship to other sites (such as those where programming is produced) and other social practices. The expansion of locations where radio receivers operated served to influence the development of discourses about the experience of listening. As the material form of receivers changed and they entered different spaces, the broadcasting industry adapted and reconfigured its normative models of reception. These emerging ideas about where and how people listened presaged the development of “programmed music” in which, as Jonathan Sterne has argued in a more contemporary context, “a relation of listening (itself highly structured by commodity circulation) is reified into a thing that can be bought and sold.”3 Sterne’s “relation of listening” describes the ways that certain types of media-audience interactions can themselves be bought and sold; it examines one way in which the commoditization of distracted modes of listening is spatialized. An earlier incarnation of this type of dynamic occurred in the 1930s and 1940s when distracted listening shifted from being viewed as a threat to being seen as a complementary practice, and then finally to being understood as a normative model in its own right.4 During the network era the broadcasting industry defined the ideal model of listening as family-centered, attentive, and located in the living room of the home. Especially at its outset this made daytime listening—individualized, distracted, and located throughout the home—a problem. The networks’ responses to this issue first emphasized a class market for homemaker programs, but these failed to attract audiences or sponsors and thus led the networks to shift to a mass-market, serial drama format. At the same time, by using techniques and materials derived from spot broadcasting, the local stations developed a variety of programs that reflected alternative conceptions of attentive and distracted listening. The system of spot broadcasting created by station representatives, transcription producers, and regional networks provided the institutional and technological structure that made morning disc jockey programs financially feasible. In turn, their success “proved” to the industry the viability of programming models that foreswore intensive and attentive listening in favor of extensive and distracted listening. Finally, as increasing numbers of radios in the home al-



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tered the contexts of listening, the industry attempted to map existing models of evening and daytime reception onto new listening spaces. With more families purchasing secondary sets and car radios, two long-held network ideals—all-family listening and the centrality of women’s consumption— were revised. Over time, modes of programming originally developed for these mobile listeners became dominant models of secondary listening. This interaction among industrial discourses, production procedures, and spatialized reception practices in everyday life suggests some ways that radio produced coexisting, overlapping, and at times contradictory modes of listening that were linked to the equally fragmented subjectivities of this era.5 Listening in the “Family Circle” Radio’s position as the premier domestic mass entertainment medium of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s occupies a central place in the historical understanding of its position as a cultural form and the role of listening in that process. Although amateur operators often listened individually with headphones, the introduction of the radio speaker in the 1920s made radio listening a potentially communal activity.6 Within both contemporary and scholarly discussions, radio listening was considered a familial activity with each member sitting around a centrally located set—a model that Daniel Czitrom and others have described through the metaphor of the “ethereal hearth.”7 Likewise, these accounts of old-time radio listening stressed the experience’s communal aspects. This image of “family circle” listening constructs the idea that television was the natural replacement for domestically consumed mass entertainment. As Roland Marchand has argued, the family circle was one of the most common tropes in interwar advertising. Family circle ads typically arranged the family in an admiring semicircle around the advertised product. As a visual cliché that emphasized the home as a safe haven, this visual trope suggested a “protective clustering in defense of qualities distinct from those that prevailed outside.”8 Advertisers used the family circle often in 1920s advertisements for radio receivers to domesticate and feminize what might otherwise appear as an alien presence in the home.9 Although for much of the network era most American homes owned just one radio, as receiver prices declined throughout the 1930s and 1940s

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multiradio homes and car radios became commonplace. The diffusion of radios provoked a contradictory response by the radio industry. Radio manufacturers wanted to make radio receivers a mass-market consumer good, with models available for all income levels. Radio networks recognized that the dispersion of radio sets might increase listening, but they were unsure how to accommodate the variety of listening styles that accompanied the diffusion of radio receivers. Networks initially cast the increase in radios only as a way to promote a class market or as a way to establish an independent identity for television. These limited revisions were accompanied by attempts to reinforce the primacy of all-family domestic listening. In the 1920s and into the 1930s radios represented a significant financial investment for most Americans. During the early 1920s many radios were homemade. In fact, the majority of sets were hand-built as late as 1925, and by the end of the decade a third of the total receivers in operation were hand-built.10 In 1925 the average manufactured receiver cost $83. At the onset of the Depression only one-third of American households had a radio. Though some radios cost up to $150, the average set price was $78—a hefty percentage of the income of the two-thirds of American families who earned less than $2,000 a year.11 Even though three million sets were sold annually, the high cost led radio retailers to consider receivers an item for an elite market rather than for a mass market. Starting as early as 1926 manufacturers worried that their production would outpace the percentage of the population that could afford radios.12 To combat saturation, radio dealers began offering incentives that made radios more affordable to a wider range of the population. Through financing, price reductions, and the availability of used sets, the opportunity to purchase radios expanded, even as the Depression took hold. In the late 1920s radio dealers followed the lead of the automotive industry by offering financing, which made radios more affordable. As radio came to be considered a necessity and its technology improved, dealers took trade-ins and resold used sets at a significant discount. In 1929, for example, 60 percent of the new radio market in major cities was for the replacement of a current set. This figure climbed to 80 percent for sales within department stores.13 In part because it feared saturation, the radio industry began to promote for “midget” or “table” sets in the early 1930s.14 S. I. Cole, secretary-treasurer of the Aerovox Wireless Corporation, confidently predicted that during 1932 “radio listeners, in addition to replacing their older and obsolete receivers,



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will purchase second, third, and even fourth sets of the midget variety, to be placed in various other parts of their homes.”15 Cole may have been overstating his case, given the condition of the American economy in 1931, yet his enthusiasm demonstrated radio manufacturers’ goal of placing radio sets throughout the home. Cole’s comments also point to the role of midget sets in increasing radio ownership. While console set sales languished in the early 1930s, the low price of midget sets caused table set sales to soar. Smaller sets required fewer components than larger mantel or stand-alone sets and could be massproduced by manufacturers such as Crosley and Emerson that focused on the low end of the market. Beginning in 1933 they sold receivers for as little as $15.16 Due in large part to midget sets, the average price of a radio receiver fell by nearly one-third, to $55, between 1930 and 1935. In part because the midget made radio available to a much larger percentage of the population, by 1933 two-thirds of American households owned radios.17 As the economy rebounded in the mid-1930s the percentage of families with secondary sets increased. By 1935 there were 21,456,000 households with radios, representing two-thirds of all homes. During 1935 one out of every seven homes purchased a new radio and nearly 3,300,000 sets went into homes that already had a radio.18 Although many of these replaced existing sets, the radio industry estimated that between 2,300,000 and 3,000,000 homes with radios had two or more sets by that year.19 This percentage increased over time, and nearly half of the 8,000,000 sets sold in 1936 went to homes that already had radios. Although three-quarters of these were replacement sets, nearly 1,000,000 were second or third sets.20 At the start of the year 73 percent of American homes (approximately 22,500,000) possessed radios, and between 7.5 percent and 10 percent had more than one.21 The bedroom was the overwhelming choice for the second radio at 57 percent. Curiously, nearly 20 percent of the radio families that owned both a car and a radio had the radio located in the car and not the home.22 Still, the growth of homes with multiple radios was not universal. While rural audiences made up just under 6 percent of all listeners, nearly 76 percent of radios in rural homes were located in the living room, presumably for family listening. Despite the strong sales of table sets, the largest growth in secondary sets came from car radios, which exploded in popularity in the mid-1930s.23 Starting in the late 1920s car radios followed a path similar to home radios.

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During that decade amateurs built most car radios. The first commercially available car radios went on sale in 1929 and initially were not very popular.24 In 1931 only 34,000 car receivers were sold, but sales rose rapidly, reaching 724,000 in 1934 and putting a radio in 16 percent of American autos.25 Two years later, in 1936, over 1,700,000 auto sets were produced—one auto radio for every two regular household radios.26 By 1937, as many as 5,000,000 car radios were in operation, a figure that climbed between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 sets a year until the beginning of the Second World War.27 As a percentage of the total broadcasting audience, those listening in homes with multiple radios and car radios steadily increased during the 1930s. Yet they still represented a minority of the total radio audience. Nevertheless, secondary sets became more common and the radio industry began to revise its ideals of domestic and nondomestic reception. The Family Purchasing Agent and Spaces of Home Listening The assumption of domestic, familial reception as radio’s ideal form was a crucial component of the network-era model of radio as a primary medium—a medium in which it possessed the ability to hold the listener’s attention continuously. In contrast, a model of radio as a secondary medium understood reception as distracted and as occurring while the listener performed other tasks. It was in the evening that broadcasters’ idealized family audience gathered and the leisure-based listening context occurred.28 Radio networks viewed housewives as the principal “purchasing agents” for the family and recognized that women often represented a majority of the audience.29 Yet at the same time networks and agencies thought homemaker labor within the house created problems for a definition of reception that considered “all-family, all set” its ideal.30 They assumed that the audience consisted of housewives performing daily chores and listening alone, and as such would not be able to give radio the same degree of undivided attention as the evening male-centered family audiences. They feared that the lack of sustained attention would impede advertising aimed at housewives. As a response to the problem of audience attention the broadcasting in­ dustry divided the day into segments. In the late 1920s and early 1930s home­



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making shows were the broadcasting industry’s solution to the problem of female domestic labor. As Michele Hilmes and Jennifer Wang have argued, in the late 1920s and early 1930s the broadcasting industry favored homemaker programs that offered advice and discussed a variety of topics. These programs were aimed at a “class” audience defined by income and cultural sophistication. These programs provided advice on cooking, decorating, beauty, and home domestic management and addressed the audience as efficient and scientific managers of a modern home. The extensive range of subject coincided with the then dominant ideas of programming balance whereby every listener would find at least one compelling segment over the course of the program.31 Appearing near the end of the industry’s preference for homemaking shows, a cbs print advertisement from 1933 demonstrates the industry’s use of homemaking programs as a solution to inattentive audiences. This advertisement features a woman performing typical household tasks while listening to the radio. The woman is standing at the counter, mixing something in a bowl. She looks up and over her shoulder. The radio sounds coming in from the doorway have musical notes and the caption “ . . . ‘Today at your local dealer.’ ”32 This phrase’s direct address evoked radio’s movement from the formal announcing style used in the 1920s to the more casual and intimate announcing style of the 1930s that invited the listener to feel as if the voice were “speaking to him or her alone.”33 In addition, the advertisement visually depicts daytime reception outside of the family circle as not only compatible with but also complementary to her household labor. This image was accompanied by advertising copy that stressed radio’s ability to increase the proximity between ad impression and product purchase: “She listens in a buying mood because she is planning the day’s needs, planning to stock-up, reminded by your radio message that her supply is low. She is going to market. Will your product appear on her list? She hears your message when she can compare the product in her hand with every competitive point you have to make about yours. Or she hears with renewed conviction the facts about the very product she is using.”34 Ads like this demonstrate how the networks tried to capitalize on women’s roles as shoppers for their families. This housewife is organized and rational. She hears commercials and then compares the advertised product with the one in her kitchen. Although this would seem to be an ideal model for

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commercial radio listening, network homemaking shows were not particularly popular with audiences. This made the broadcast advertising industry doubt whether homemaker programs reached female listeners effectively. Advertising agencies worried that homemaking shows were too fragmented and varied to permit the sustained attention necessary for successful advertising. A study from 1932 conducted by Halsey Kellogg and Abner Walters of the Wharton School of Finance asked “whether the housewife can be receptive to advertising while she is working about the house.”35 The answer reached in the study was only “probably”—hardly a ringing endorsement. Kellogg and Walters argued that patterns of female domestic listening created a confounding dilemma for radio advertisers because women often did not listen and work at the same time: “In the afternoon sewing and reading seem to compete with the radio programs, while in the evening complete attention to programs is in order.” Yet evening listening was no panacea. Although Kellogg and Walters found that nearly 80 percent of housewives gave evening programs complete attention, they worried that because women did not control evening program selection, directed appeals to housewives would not effectively reach their target audiences. The answer, the authors concluded, was to create daytime programs that either appealed strongly enough to “housewife interests” to outrank housework or offered musical programs that did not require sustained attention. After determining when they should air the program, they advised sponsors to “ascertain the conditions which govern the housewives’ attention during the time of his broadcast. Those conditions of listening which allow the housewives to give the most attention to programs will permit a more lasting and favorable impression to be made upon her memory.”36 They found that housewives wanted less talk and more music. Some were interested in dramatic programming, but only in the afternoon after the bulk of household activities had been completed and more attention could be given. In essence, Kellogg’s and Walter’s advice was for programming that would come to follow the daily “rhythms of reception” based on domestic labor that Tania Modleski has described as characterizing television serials.37 Kellogg’s and Walter’s advice, however, was not immediately embraced. Advertising agencies rejected homemaker shows and musical programming in favor of serial dramas aimed at a mass audience.38 Musical programs did not fit with the desires of advertisers for sustained audience attention.



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They believed it was far too easy to allow music to “merely serve as background.”39 Agencies believed that women were interested in the inter­ personal relationships of others, so that topic became the focus of daytime serial plots. Serials were designed to compel attention for brief fifteenminute time periods. The broadcasting industry believed that their brevity allowed intermittent sustained attention that would not interfere with the pace of housework throughout the day. Their slow pace of narrative development allowed listeners who missed complete or part episodes still to be able to follow the plot.40 The continued presence of daytime serials on television demonstrates their success. However, serials were not the only radio programming format that successfully managed distracted reception. While the networks and agencies focused on serial programming, local stations created programs with multiple segments that linked daily activities to local institutions as a way of making distracted radio commercially viable. Although many national advertisers rejected network homemaker shows because they believed listeners were confused by the variety of segments, the genre thrived on local stations and regional networks.41 The multiple segments provided opportunities for cooperative sponsorships by smaller advertisers. On local homemaker shows direct tie-ins to area merchants had more rhetorical force and appeal than national versions.42 Their success demonstrates their ability to integrate radio listening with the movement of the homemaker not just around the house but also outside of it into the arena of consumption. Local stations around the country used morning programs to provide companionate listening in the 1920s and 1930s. The phrase “musical clock” was coined as the title for one such program in 1929 on Chicago station kyw. The program’s format was fairly simple. The announcer, Halloween Martin, mixed music, time, and weather announcements, as well as commercial messages that announced the current specials at the show’s sponsor, the Marshall Field’s department store. There was little discussion with the audience.43 The show was incredibly popular both in Chicago and elsewhere as local stations replicated it.44 Its appeal was so great that it caused nbc to break with its phonograph record policy when presented with the opportunity to move the program to one of its own stations and, soon thereafter, to go into production making transcription discs for affiliated stations to put on their own versions.45 There is something striking about the phrase “musical clock” that links the show’s purpose to the smooth operation of

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the day. The musical selections varied, but the constant element was the regular announcement of the time with the implicit (and sometimes explicit) admonishing that deadlines are approaching. The general radio orientation toward using intimate, emotional, and direct appeals carried over into “musical clock” programs whose announcers became more conversational. One exemplar of this casual, relaxed approach was Arthur Godfrey’s The Sundial, which aired from 6:30 to 8:00 AM on nbc’s Washington, DC, affiliate wmal starting in 1933.46 In an example from 1939, after Godfrey had moved to WJSV and expanded the show to 8:30, the first half hour consisted solely of popular recorded music (mostly big band or show tunes) and time announcements every several minutes. These announcements included promotions for community events (in this case the promotion of a regatta on the Potomac River and an interview with its organizer). Godfrey addressed the audience in a personal and intimate manner. He listed a lost and found watch, for example, and he announced that a former wsjv employee was selling his sailboat. He even sent messages and instructions to specific individuals—at one point even giving instructions to a young boy on where to go look for his birthday present. There were several transcribed spot advertisements, but Godfrey delivered most of the advertising copy himself in his trademark folksy fashion. He sang along to some of the jingles, hummed a few bars of a song that had just played, and made fun of sponsors.47 In one pitch for a local radio store, Godfrey instructed his listeners to “Tell Sammy I said hello. Kick him in the shins for me if you haven’t for some time. He loves it.” Indeed, Godfrey was so relaxed the show seemed to get away from him. As the show reached its end, he delivered several commercials back to back, then announced, “Here we are again with two minutes to go and nineteen sponsors. Life is so sad.” Despite the warning, only one more commercial was delivered before the end of the show. Although Godfrey was one of the most famous morning show personalities of this era, the format was not dependent on star power; it could be adapted, transported, and repeated. One example was the Fort Worth station KFJZ’s morning show Quality Time.48 Programs like Quality Time were organized around the integration of daily activities and the listening experience. The show’s format consisted of musical selections drawn from the nbc Thesaurus library, shortwave-delivered news bulletins, a “Thought for the Day,” and “Interesting Facts about Text.” It was created



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around an assumption that the audience listened as part of their morning routine of “reading the paper, eating breakfast, or preparing for work.” The show avoided comedy because “humor of a too subtle nature is not the best breakfast food in the world.” A “brief buzzer attention signal” preceded each news period to grab the attention of distracted listeners. The show’s four sponsors were linked to morning activities and included a refrigerator dealer, a coffee company, a drug store, and a supermarket. Quality Time also used principles of segmentation and repetition rather than the prevailing standard for homemaking shows of variety and balance. Both involve the combination of elements, but with the latter programs segments were not repeated and thus required the attention of the listener. Because morning shows repeated segments, listeners did not have to feel as though they must stop their activities to pay attention. There is little suggestion of a high degree of variety in the program itself. The newsbreaks were not significantly different from one another and the aural news flash reminders could perform two roles. They linked activities in the domestic space to wider world events, explicitly prioritizing the news events as important and therefore asking the listener to set aside activities important on a domestic scale for knowledge about events on a national or global scale. At the same time the news buzzers could also inform the listener that if they had already heard the break then they had a certain amount of time during which listening was not required. Although Quality Time replicated network programs in its division of sponsorship into quarter hours, sponsors were directly linked to daily activities performed while listening—eating, drinking coffee, and getting ready for work. This suggests that the advertising continuity was tightly integrated into not only the program content but also daily activities and purchasing decisions. Here local stations possessed an advantage over networks. Because the latter extended across several time zones, they were forced to be more general in linking programming to daily activities. Although this was less of a problem in terms of general daytime household activities, the tighter deadlines of the routine before work and school could not be addressed with the same specificity. Other musical clock shows extended this dynamic of segmentation and flow over longer periods of time, thereby prefiguring what came to be called “block programming.” Block programming meant that the station sought to narrow the variety of programming content to address one kind

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of listener through a mode of address that assumed distracted reception. The acknowledged pioneer of this method was the independent station wnew. Starting in the mid-1930s the station built a model of programming and advertising form and content that would have widespread influence on the radio industry. Although the story of wnew is often told in relationship to the origins of the disc jockey, it can also be understood as part of a wide range of changes in the broadcasting industry as a whole that encompassed sources of programming, sponsorship, and the relationship between advertising and program content. The oft-told tale of wnew’s origins begins in 1934 as a joint venture between Arde Bulova (of the Bulova station break fame) and Milton Biow (Bulova’s longtime advertising agent). In its first year of existence, the station’s programming resembled that of many other independent stations—music, sports, and news. However, the mythical tale of the station takes a sharp turn with the broadcast of news updates on the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. The station already offered local news broadcasts, but during the lengthy periods between trial updates the wnew announcer Martin Block adapted the Los Angeles announcer Al Jarvis’s concept of a “Make Believe Ballroom” to fill airtime. Jarvis had a three-hour show on kfwb where he played phonograph records as if the performers were present, and Block used the same technique. After the Hauptmann trial ended Block’s show continued, and soon after the station expanded its fifteen-minute time slot to ninety minutes a day and reached an audience across metropolitan New York City.49 Capitalizing on Block’s success, the wnew station manager Bernice Judis extended block programming throughout the station schedule, and in 1935 he made wnew one of the first stations to stay on the air twenty-four hours a day by inaugurating a 2:00 am to 7:00 am program called Milkman’s Matinee.50 These kinds of disc jockey shows built upon the economic models of spot and local advertising, but they shifted the form of their programs to accommodate the activities that their audiences performed while listening. It was a common belief among 1930s broadcasters that airing programs from several genres was the best technique for attracting the largest total audience. Indeed, in some instances network affiliates complained that scheduling several daytime serials in a row would alienate their audiences.51 In contrast, for proto-block disc jockeys the tightened focus of the audience address was linked not simply to its orientation toward women in the home



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but also to the activities performed by that audience in a particular listening space. This required longer blocks of programming and continuity within those extended time periods. They could do this because of the economic models of independent stations. Independent stations could use proto-block models more easily than could network affiliates because their relationships with sponsors were different. Independent stations had fewer sponsor franchises that gave sponsors direct control over time. Sponsor control over programming blocks meant that networks had limited means of governing the content on individual shows without alienating the sponsors.52 In contrast, in many early local disc jockey programs it was the announcer, not the sponsor, who controlled both program and advertising content. Deejays often acted as brokers for commercial time on their programs, actively soliciting sponsors who paid on a per-commercial basis.53 For some broadcasters, an ethnic orientation was the organizing principle, even as programs offered in these chunks of time a wide variety of orientations toward genres and tastes. Examples like Yiddish radio in New York and African American–oriented radio in Chicago shared an economic orientation with the proto-block disc jockeys but still attempted to maximize their audience across a given community through program variety. They expected that aficionados of Ukrainian folk music or fans of hot jazz would listen attentively at a given time slot in the same way a network programmer expected fans of Jack Benny to listen attentively at one time and fans of the Chicago Roundtable of the Air to listen attentively at a different time.54 In contrast, proto-block disc jockeys sought continuity across time periods because they recognized that their audiences were not necessarily paying full attention. Proto-block disc jockeys employed a variety of techniques for maintaining continuity across time periods. One technique built on their position as both time brokers and on-air personalities. Disc jockeys often negotiated which sponsors would appear on their programs. Many placed no limitations but others only partnered with advertisers that fit with their conception of their show’s mood.55 Second, because disc jockeys delivered the commercials themselves, they could alter the delivery of the copy prepared by the advertising agency. This allowed the deejay to subsume the commercial message to that of the show’s mood or mode of address.56 The techniques used to accommodate distracted listening by protoblock disc jockeys on morning and overnight programs were not limited to

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those hours. Melding the disparate elements of a morning show into a unified whole foreshadowed the “station sound” philosophy that soon characterized all of wnew’s programming and commercial content. The exact parameters of this aesthetic are vague. Some accounts stress the role of Judis’s personal taste, although the station officially possessed a programming committee.57 Regardless of its origins, its practical operation meant that wnew’s musical programs sought out similarities of genre, tempo, and rhythm to ensure a coherent sound in any given schedule slot. This contrasted with the prevalent ideals of programming balance in which stations avoided series of selections with the same rhythm or tempo or that were performed in the same key in order to achieve a wide appeal.58 Just as important, wnew’s announcers modified the advertisers’ commercial copy so that it might fit with the “wnew sound.” The station rarely aired the transcription jingles that comprised so many spot announcements in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Instead, sponsors and agencies supplied talking points, but the announcers provided the particular wording and style. The result of these policies was a certain uniformity of musical styles and announcement tone across the entire station schedule.59 Block programming, or mood programming as it was also called, became more prevalent as radio broadcasters learned more about listening practices. By 1940, the radio industry had found that one of the main reasons people liked radio is that they could listen while they performed other activities, and networks and advertisers began to revise their opinion that radio needed to be consistently compelling to be successful.60 In 1943 in response to audience research that found that a “continuous music-and-newsto-work formula” would have strong appeal, wnac in Boston successfully competed with network serials to create its own show, The Yankee Tune Factory. Based on a music and news format program called Morning Watch that had been airing on wtic in Hartford, The Yankee Tune Factory aired from 9:00 am to 11:15 am on the Yankee Network.61 The wnac manager Linus Travers explained that this time slot was by design later than the traditional morning programs: “When it becomes too expensive to compete for all of an audience, it is wise to select that part that you want to sell for sponsors and program your operations to read and hold that audience. We’re doing just that.”62 Travers’s description demonstrates the combination of market segmentation and counterprogramming approaches that linked “salesmanship” and “showmanship.”



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Likewise, in 1944 nbc commissioned Paul Lazarsfeld and Helen Schneider to study domestic female “nonlisteners.” Lazarsfeld and Schneider found that over one-third of the accessible morning radio audience (defined as people at home with a working receiver) did not listen to the radio. Of these nearly a quarter disliked radio completely. Another 20 percent were physically unable to listen, thereby suggesting the limits of multi­ radio households. The majority, however, did not listen because they felt that radio distracted them from their primary tasks. Lazarsfeld’ and Schneider’s solution lay in programming that allowed for “oscillating listening.” This program form, which already existed in morning shows, consisted of two- or three-minute subunits in which the listener might seek relaxation from work.63 While serials had come under repeated criticism for creating excessive emotional involvement among their listeners, another third of the audience disliked serials and did not listen to them. This group, which was disproportionately located in metropolitan areas, was one source of listeners for the music and personality shows featured on stations like wnew and wor.64 Several years later, this study was cited by Sponsor to support the increase in block programming.65 The vague descriptions of showmanship used by the radio advertising in­ dustry contributed to the success of disc jockey programs. There were many structural similarities among the ways that dramatic serials and music discjockey programs conceived the relationship between the program and the audience. Both were based upon dynamics of segmentation and flow and intermittent attention linked to daily activities. Yet disc jockeys were criticized far less than serial dramas, which were vilified for their allegedly corrupting influence. Women produced many of the radio soap operas, and the men in the radio networks and advertising agencies were uncomfortable with both women’s power as producers and the deep emotional connections their programs had with their audiences.66 The male disc jockeys (and with rare exceptions disc jockeys were almost exclusively male) reaffirmed values of showmanship. This concept, though its use varied widely, held that the performer was able to anticipate and meet what listeners wanted. Often, this doctrine held, the listener did not recognize that their desires had been anticipated and thought them their own. In contrast to the condemnation of female-produced serials, the press’s laudatory coverage of Martin Block, Arthur Godfrey, and other disc jockeys of this era reflected the belief that these men possessed the ability to connect directly and emotionally

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with audiences and thereby provide a powerful avenue for the delivery of a sales message. It was only in the late 1940s and 1950s, after the number of disc jockeys proliferated and many played rhythm and blues and rock and roll, that their ability to captivate the audience was condemned.67 Although Martin Block’s primary time slot was in the late morning he also had a show in the late afternoon—a period typically reserved for children’s programs. However, with increasing numbers of radios inside and outside the home, the afternoon became a site for counterprogramming for workers returning home and homemakers making dinner. This iteration of the “make believe ballroom” suggests the growing importance of car radios and multiradio homes in the late 1930s and 1940s, thereby anticipating the growth of “drive­ time” radio in future decades. Gilding the Lily: The Benefits and Risks of Multiple-Radio Households As radio receivers became more common in the home and entered new spaces, broadcasters attempted to graft onto them existing models of reception. Affluent multi-radio homes provided the networks with an attractive reason to redefine family listening. After the failure of earlier class programming strategies, in the mid-to late 1930s the broadcasting industry reconfigured class appeals in ways that strived to fit the listening behaviors of existing mass audiences. This strategy embraced multi-radio homes and car radios, but in so doing the industry could not maintain the existing bifurcations between evening family listening and individualized daytime listening. The networks felt that the presence of more radios in the home increased the likelihood that one of the family members would tune to their programs. That this was more likely to occur in high-income homes only added to the networks’ view of a mass-class market in which the most popular programs could appeal to all income groups, including those in the higher strata. In the 1930s homes within the highest income brackets contained the heaviest concentration of radios—a fact not lost on the networks. In 1937, for example, 16 percent of all homes with radios had more than one set, but 44 percent of homes with incomes over $5,000 held multiple receivers.68 A survey of wealthy Boston families conducted for cbs found that the average family in the highest income bracket had three radios; that nearly 20 per-



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cent had five or more radios; and that two families topped the survey with fourteen sets each.69 Armed with such information, it is not surprising that a cbs sales pamphlet from 1937 would state: “Where there are homes with money, there are radios” and “If one is looking for disposable income, one should look to families that have more than one radio.”70 For broadcasters, multi-radio houses offered a tantalizing vision of radio throughout the home as a constant companion for every activity. Another cbs study, cheekily entitled The Very Rich: An Unsentimental Journey into Homes We Often Read about but So Seldom See (Their Gates Are Too High), noted: “Here is a group of people (the Very Rich) sometimes suspected of an indifference to radio. They seem, nevertheless, to insist on having a set in almost every room of their many-roomed houses.”71 Significantly, this study reiterated the value of mass appeal programming by concluding that the best way to reach wealthy audiences was to do nothing at all (the very rich listened to the same shows as everyone else). A similar defensive strategy is evident in the networks’ attempts to de­ fine out-of-home listening as attentive. In the mid-1930s the broadcast advertising industry recognized that teen girls and female “coeds” represented the next generation of “family purchasing agents.” College students and teenagers were the most readily identifiable fans of emerging big band swing. Your Hit Parade had gone on the air in 1935 and remote broadcasts of big band performances were a common feature on the networks, especially in the late evening hours.72 Although the broadcast advertising industry knew that young people were heavy users of radio, it was not sure about the character of that listening. In 1937 a study of high school students conducted by researchers at Ohio State University found that radio listening, both alone and in groups, was often a distracted activity. One student asked how the surveyors wanted listening defined: “What do you mean by ‘listening’? You can, of course, just listen to the radio. Or you can read the newspaper with the radio going some place in the house. . . . and barely listen to what’s on the radio.”73 A year later in 1938 a cbs advertisement titled “Radio Goes to College” seemed to respond to the anxieties held by sponsors about the listening patterns of past and future domestic radio listeners. In the ad the network promoted reception outside of the family circle but carefully stressed its attentive qualities: “Everyone knows a few people who habitually do more than one thing at a time. Such people read while they eat, write while they telephone and—if they’re at college—they study

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while radio-listening. But not all people double-up their activities. If we take the undergraduate as a guide, we find that most people prefer doing one thing at a time.”74 This copy took pains to stress that college listening was as attentive as that in the idealized family circle of evening listening. Yet the ad also indicated that a sizable minority of college students, nearly 39 percent, used radio as a background for their studies. The ad may have stressed the majority of listeners who listened attentively, but the sizable presence of a significant minority did not represent the type of reception that cbs meant when it promoted “how intently the average listener listens.” There is also some irony that cbs was promoting radio use by college students. Nielsen, after all, did not start including college students in its rating service until 2007.75 As with multi-radio homes and college students, the income demo­gra­ph­­ ics of car radio ownership also attracted the networks, even as it forced another revision of the ideal of family-centered reception. Car radio extended the reach of radio advertising outside the home. In 1936 cbs estimated that car radios added 8,100,000 listeners every day (based on three million car radios heard by 2.7 listeners each). A significant number of car radio owners were heavy users, with 8 percent listening to six or more hours a day.76 At the start of the Second World War there were 8,750,000 car radio sets and 29,700,000 homes with sets. This meant that one-third of the potential radio audience was not in the home.77 Even better, this mobile audience was wealthier than the average listener. In its promotional booklet Radio in 1937, cbs described car radio listeners in enthusiastic terms: “Any comment on this radio market would, we suppose, be gilding the lily. Here are 4,500,000 choice families-with-money who are most reachable by radio. For many major advertisers here are people reached by radio at the point of use of their product. For all advertisers, here are people—with money and ‘go.’ ”78 This passage demonstrates also the network’s recognition of specialized audiences and advertisers. Automobile, gasoline, and affiliated industries were some of the heaviest radio advertisers, and cbs felt that car radio reception offered an ideal space in which to advertise these products. Thus, the car radio extended the philosophy of radio as a point-of-use advertising medium while also contributing to the development of demographically segmented markets.79 As with multi-radio homes, networks attempted to map models of domestic listening onto automotive listening. These considered family listen-



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ing as leisure and women’s listening as linked to their role as the principal agent of household consumption. In a report from 1936, An Analysis of Radio Listening in Autos, cbs compared day and evening car radio listening patterns and found that 90 percent of car radio owners listened to the radio when driving in the evening, compared to only 60 percent who listened during the day. Although they represented a smaller percentage of listeners, cbs concluded that daytime listeners were more valuable than nighttime ones because they were closer to acts of consumption. As noted in the report: “The above figures point to one definite conclusion: the automobile radio audience is an even more valuable supplement to the evening broadcaster than it is to the daytime. But in the daytime the advertiser now has a way of reaching women while on their most serious mission in life—shopping trips!”80 Here the network mapped its domestic models of listening onto car radio: in the evening car radio supplemented home audiences for relaxing family listening, and in the daytime it provided individualized reception that could be linked to consumption habits. While car radio opened up new markets for broadcasters, networks considered automotive reception secondary to home use. Another 1936 study of car radio listening, this one by nbc, noted approvingly that “in addition to being a notable radio circulation ‘plus,’ automobile sets have established new listening habits and practices. No longer is listening confined to the fireside. It has taken to the road, and is working for you two ways—indoors and outdoors.”81 Like the cbs research, even as this study observed that car radio expanded the range of listening possibilities, the network sought to contain the impact of these changing listening patterns by stressing automobile reception as supplementary to primary, domestic reception. Even as the network promoted the additional 195,000,000 minutes of listening created by three million car radios, it emphasized that “all of this listening is supplementary to that for which you, as an advertiser, are paying; supplementary to the 22,869,000 homes having radio sets.”82 Even as the network ostensibly promoted its vast out-of-home audience, it also immediately reestablished the primary status of the home audience.83 Although it considered out-of-home audiences merely a “bonus,” nbc experimented with programs designed to appeal to these listeners. The network’s research found that Sunday was the heaviest day of car radio listening. Therefore, in 1936 it began its broadcast of Sunday Drivers—a show for car radio listeners that aired from 5:00 to 5:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.84

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Consisting primarily of “mountain music,” the songs and patter were interspersed with safety advice for Sunday drivers. This program represented an experiment in programming for car radio listeners by suggesting that the networks were beginning to understand that car radios would eventually change the status of the current primary domestic reception space. Indeed, nbc noted that when radio became standard equipment on all cars it would drastically affect radio reception: “Eventually it means a potential circulation almost as big as the present home radio set’s potential circulation! Consider how that will increase opportunities to make sales impressions; how it will focus more and more of the average family’s attention—and time—on radio entertainment; how it will make much more meaningful the fact that ‘radios go where people go.’ ”85 While car radio listening could potentially double radio circulation, its position as a companion to another attentive activity, driving, meant that this technology presented a problematic fit with domestically based models of reception. As with multi-radio homes, networks used the now extremely flexible definition of family to achieve this integration. While the networks attempted to graft existing models of listening onto car radios and multi-radio homes, they found that these additional radios created new conceptions of listening—some attentive and others distracted. Domesticity, Distraction, and Automotive Radio Networks made appeals to the car radio market in terms that were linked to already existing family-centered models of reception. The technologies and cultural form of auto radio developed after norms of domestic listening had been established. Because of this, descriptions of mobile radio stressed the familiar aspects of radio listening and suggested that car radio could create spaces that possessed quasi-domestic properties. However, another central theme of these discourses was the phenomenological similarity between radio listening and driving. Thus, descriptions of car radio used metaphors that integrated attentive and inattentive radio reception with movement through public space protected by a quasi-private bubble of domesticity. Car radio enacted a double movement: the car through the landscape and the radio to other locations. The pleasures of driving and listening complemented one another to produce an experience that was superior to either alone. In an April 1930 article in Radio News Samuel Egert commented,



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“There is nothing as pleasant as hearing your favorite artist broadcasting over your favorite station, while you are covering many miles an hour. We still remember that first thrill of freshness that we got when we heard our radio set talking away in the car. It made the car seem alive.”86 Yet while on the road the car radio developed an oddly close relationship to domesticity. In 1930 Graydon Smith and Philip Eyrich noted: “Certain of us have long felt the need for a radio in the car. On those long jaunts when the houses are few and far between, and the only sound is the purring of the motor as it covers fifty silent miles every hour, the solitary motorist feels alone as a stranger in a big city. It is then that he wishes for a favorite tune or a familiar voice from his destination, growing louder and louder as he races toward it and promising rest and hospitality when he arrives.”87 Here, the auto radio allowed for an increased movement through time and space, but one that was couched in a return to the domestic. In much the same way that radio allowed domestically isolated listeners to experience the public entertainments of the metropolitan city from the safety of their own homes, here the car radio dispelled the isolation and distanciation that came from viewing the world through a windshield by connecting the driver to his or her destination.88 Perhaps because of this linkage, in 1930 A. A. Leonard of the Automobile Radio Corporation described the combination of radio and the automobile as “the greatest contribution to domestic life since the advent of broadcasting.”89 These initial discourses of the pleasures of what Raymond Williams has termed “mobile privatization” remained central to the definition of car radio listening.90 Car radio manufacturers promoted their products through imagery that compared and contrasted radio and automotive performance. For example, a Majestic ad from 1931 featured images of blackface performers (resembling Amos ’n’ Andy), a symphonic concert, a tap duo, a public speaker, and a baseball game flowing into a car stuck in traffic. This image implied that the radio would allow individuals to move through space even if they were denied that ability in their vehicle.91 Moreover, car radio advertisements posited an equivalency of experience between auto travel and radio travel. Another advertisement, this one for the Macy’s department store in 1937, featured three generations of a family in an open touring car with copy that read, “Make every moment in your car a double pleasure. Install a radio— motor to music—and get a new thrill in driving.”92 Comparisons between the types of mobility increased as push-button technologies became more

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common, so listeners could instantly move among stations, moods, and locations, thereby extending the feeling of self-determination and mastery associated with the automobile.93 In conjunction with this movement, car radio also offered a method of buffering contact with public space. Car radio manufacturers reinforced the ideal of the “family circle” by suggesting that their products extended domestic protection through sound. The family circle’s frequent appearance in car radio advertisements yoked the domestic familial unit to automotive movement in public space. An Arvin Radio Corporation ad from 1933 entitled “You’ll smile away the miles when you drive with an Arvin Car Radio” shows two parents in the front seat of a car and a child in the middle rear (see figure 11). Arrayed around the dash, the family duplicates the family circle model of radio listening so common in earlier radio advertisements.94 Another Arvin ad from the same campaign promised that “a world of pleasure follows you with an Arvin Car Radio.”95 These advertisements suggested that the car radio allowed domestic harmony within the self-contained doubled bubble of the vehicle and sound.96 Depictions of family listening were more than simply advertising rhetoric. During the 1930s people did not listen to the car radio alone. In 1936 a cbs-sponsored poll found that only 7 percent of the survey respondents listened individually to car radio. Indeed, the average car radio had 2.7 listeners when in operation.97 Likewise, nbc found that the heaviest use of car radio came on Sundays during family outings. During the winter months the Sunday car radio audience was twice as large its weekday size and four times what it was on Saturday, suggesting the car radio often accompanied family-based pleasure driving.98 This association of car radio listening with the domestic sphere allowed the radio industry to blunt the earlier criticism of the technology—that the car radio demanded too much attention. Throughout the first decade of its development, some feared that car radios would increase accident rates because radio programs would distract drivers.99 In 1928 the battery manufacturer Paul Galvin did not want to invest in William Lear’s car radio project because he worried that radio-equipped cars would distract vehicle drivers and cause accidents. Because of this, he predicted that a legislative backlash would ban car radios and cause him to lose his investment.100 Lear overcame Galvin’s trepidations, after which the two formed Motorola and became leaders in the development and manufacture of auto radios. Yet

11

An ad for the Arvin Car Radio: The family circle in motion.

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Galvin and his employees were not alone in fearing car radio’s effects on attention. When car radio was first introduced, several local and state governments considered banning it. In 1930 the New Hampshire state motor vehicle commissioner publicly condemned car radios by stating, “This department is satisfied that the greater percentage of accidents is due to inattention of drivers, and where a radio is being operated while the car is in motion it certainly would tend to divert the attention of the operator.”101 Similar actions were considered in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Washington, DC.102 Citing poor fidelity, excessive noise, and the dubious safety involved in the installation of radio sets in cars, even some members of the radio industry opposed auto radio. As Radio Broadcast editorialized in its February 1930 issue: “The automobilist has about all he can do now to stay on the straight and narrow. Are we to have one-ear drivers to add potential sources of accident? And we cannot see how anyone could enjoy much radio music while journeying about in an auto.”103 In response to possible bans, the Radio Manufacturers Association or­ ganized a successful lobbying campaign to combat any perception that auto radio was dangerous. They made sure that representatives attended public meetings about legislation against car radio and they actively promoted car radio as an aid to driving.104 Radio manufacturers maintained that car radios prevented accidents. Rather than distracting the driver from the road, a car radio kept him or her alert. In one example Ralph Langley, the director of engineering for the Crosley Radio Corporation, wrote in Radio News, “We drive almost entirely ‘by eye,’ whether it be in the city or on the country highway. Our ears are free for other uses, but all they can do is keep us constantly aware of the monotonous noise.” Langley continued by noting that “fatigue from driving is due not so much to the physical effort expended, but to the unbroken roar of the motor and the rumble of the tires on the road. Radio provides a diversion which fills the miles with variety and interest.”105 As with the conceptions of a female auditor called back to the radio by the morning clock news alerts, these comments separated levels of perception and posited radio as a device that ensured driver attention. If the car radio made auto travel safer and more enjoyable because of its ability to keep drivers awake, consumers soon recognized that it also pre-



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vented other distractions, such as those coming from the other occupants of the vehicle. A cbs report from 1936 on car radio use included comments that stressed the ability of the car radio to create domestic harmony on trips. The report quoted one individual’s explanation as follows: “It’s really a God-send on long trips because we seem to run out of conversation and the radio fills in very nicely. Keeps us from getting too irritable on trips.” As facilitators of domestic tranquility, car radios could also be used to individualize listening practices. Another respondent to the cbs survey noted, “When the family in the house wants one program on and I don’t want to listen to it, I turn on the car in the garage and listen to my favorite programs out there.” Likewise another asserted, “This car is mine, and the auto radio is mine. My children dictate what programs should be tuned in on the set at home, but when I’m out in the car, I get the programs I like to hear.”106 Accounts like these suggest that the family-circle imagery that accompanied car radio advertisements did not always reflect the owners’ real experiences with their receivers. Program preferences could also be a point of division and conflict, as well as unity, and as multi-radio homes, as well as car radios, became more common, then second and third receivers were increasingly promoted as a solution to the problem of different taste preferences. “A Radio in Every Room,” or Outside of Them All From the mid-1930s onward radio manufacturers increasingly moved away from promoting familial models of listening to individualized ones. Individualized reception was not new, of course, but increasingly radio listening was depicted in many different locations, not just in the living room. Moreover, these references to radio listening outside of the family circle increasingly divided the domestic space into individualized zones of reception. Multiple radios in the home were promoted as a solution to the domestic discord created by conflicting program preferences. Individualized listening practices and separated listening spaces paralleled the development of specialized markets and programming appeals.107 With more families purchasing more than one set, radio’s location in the home was no longer limited to just the living room. As Radio News gushed in 1934, “It was not so many years ago when every set was designed to be placed in one corner of the living room—and to take up a good deal of

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space in that corner, too. Today, quite a different type of set occupies the place of honor in the living room—and its modern brother and sister sets are ‘stepping out’ in a manner undreamed of before.”108 The article went on to describe the wide variety of radio listening locations for vacationing families: automobiles, hotels, roadside eateries, auto-camps, and water­ craft. The 1933 Western Electric promotional film Network Broadcasting opened with a montage of listening locations and set types shown in a triangular window located above and created by a radio receiver. Within this window were football games and a political rally intercut with a shot of a network announcer. The window closed then reopened on a hospital room equipped with a radio. This was followed by a series of shots, each depicting a different location and listening style: farm kitchen, elementary school classroom, camping trip, automobile, and, only at the end, living room. The message is clear: radio allows participation in all manner of public events from a variety of “safe” and secure locations. Wherever you are, radio can take you somewhere else.109 Still, the sounds that emanated from the radio could irritate other members of the household, and multiple radios provided a solution. In 1932 rca Victor introduced a “radio pillow” that placed a speaker in pillows. The promotional materials for this product emphasized its ability to separate the listener from other individuals. The materials included a picture of a middle-aged man sitting in a living room with his head resting on the “radio pillow,” and he is smiling at the camera. In the background next to the fireplace four other people play cards. Inverting the logic typical of familycircle radio advertisements, the group is not drawn together through the radio. Instead, these materials imply that technology permits individualized radio experiences and family togetherness. In this way sharing physical space retained its status as a desired condition rather than posing a problem.110 Moreover, these experiences are the solution to the domestic conflicts created by “the father who wants to listen to the football game . . . without disturbing the ladies, or anyone else in the house.” Likewise, “Little Willie” who is “anxious to hear the continuation of his bedtime serial” will go to bed without protesting and not disturb his sister.111 In this way these articles offered a technological solution to the problem of differing tastes in programs and the difficulty of meshing radio use into the daily schedules of multiple family members.



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Other evidence of the increasing commonality of multiple radios in the home and its impact on listening habits was the subject’s use as a source of humor. In one example from 1938 a cartoon in Radio News featured an irritated woman dressed in an apron talking to her friend. She gestured with her thumb over her shoulder at three male figures, each of whom was listening to a different radio model—floor, coffee table, and midget. The caption read, “Yeah, I know it’s silly, but each likes his own program, and all are on the air at the same time!”112 Likewise, a cartoon in the January 20, 1941, issue of Broadcasting featured an image of two farmers watching a woman take her radio into an outhouse—the caption for which read: “Grandma wouldn’t miss one of those serials for anything.”113 As examples of individualized listening preferences played for humorous effect, these cartoons suggest the recognition that listening was shifting toward individualized and segmented patterns. Despite references like this, before the Second World War individualized listening in multi-radio homes was not the norm, even though more and more families owned more than one radio. By 1941 the U.S. census reported that over one in three homes with radios had more than one set—namely, eleven million out of the twenty-nine million homes.114 Commenting on these figures, Broadcasting opined that the “tremendous build up in the last few years for portable sets and radio-phonograph combinations, along with the steadily growing popularity of table model radios. . . . and a steady demand for automobile radios, indicate that the radio has branched out from the parlor to the bedroom, kitchen and bath as well as outdoors.”115 Yet one year later a Crossley survey for the New York independent station wor found relatively little concurrent radio listening in multi-radio homes. Although nearly 40 percent of the families surveyed owned two or more radios, only 8 percent of those operated two sets simultaneously. Extra­p­ olated to the population at large, only 2.2 percent of the homes listened to two radios at the same time.116 This situation would, however, change dramatically during and after the war. Wartime work patterns performed an important role in expanding the definitions, and locations, of listening. As the country mobilized into a twenty-four-hour production schedule, radio was promoted as a companion for shift workers. Many late-night disc jockeys had “Battle of the Songbird” contests where listeners would call in to vote for their favorite tune.

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Although there were domestic listeners, the largest responses came from workers on the night shift. While the networks tended to disregard individualized listener reactions in favor of polling, these responses served as powerful evidence to local stations that listening regularly occurred outside of the home.117 The Muzak Corporation supplied music to banks and restaurants as an alternative to radio throughout the 1930s, but it achieved little success in doing so. Following its purchase by William Benton in 1939 the company accelerated its emphasis on “functional music” and reorganized it as a way to improve the psychological moods of its listeners, often in industrial settings.118 During the war the company experimented with musical types that lifted moods and encouraged productivity.119 Wartime restrictions on consumer radio production halted the expansion of radio ownership, but following the cessation of hostilities and the end of rationing it resumed its upward trajectory. During the postwar period, heavy promotion and price reductions drastically accelerated trends toward both multiple-set ownership and the fragmentation of viable listening modes. The end of the war also drastically increased the manufacturing capacity for consumer electronics as wartime industries converted to civilian production.120 During the war, set manufacturers worried that the American public would prefer to purchase other consumer goods, but both during the conflict and immediately afterward they actively promoted radio ownership.121 Depictions of individualized listening assumed a central place within postwar advertising messages. The Radio Manufacturers Association’s 1947 model year theme was “A Radio in Every Room—for Every Purpose” and many of its members’ advertisements promoted the idea of the home in terms of separate, individualized listening locations.122 One 1946 ad for Arvin Radio in the Saturday Evening Post featured three tabletop models with the offer of “Arvins for upstairs . . . downstairs . . . all through the house.”123 Likewise, a November 1946 Westinghouse ad, also in the Post, offered “4 Ways To Delight Your Family This Christmas.” Illustrated with pictures of the four receivers from the Westinghouse product line, the advertisement made clear that each one was aimed at a different member of the family. The smallest boy got the “Little Jewel” portable; his “Big Sis” was very excited by the prospect of a combination record player with a lift-out radio; the grandmother relaxed by a traditional cabinet set; and the companionate parents expressed delight at their purchase of a deluxe record player and radio cabinet set.124



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In a similar fashion, and at the same time, individualized listening in sep­ arate spaces was promoted as a way to ease conflicts over programming decisions. For example, a 1948 advertisement for Trav-ler in Collier’s contained the tagline “All through the house.” The copy read, “There’s harmony in the household when everyone has a radio of his own. For with a personal Trav-ler, each member of the family enjoys the program of his choice. A Luxury? Not at All! In most homes, it’s a necessity. In this way, tempers are smoothed . . . impatience is averted . . . everybody’s happy!” An illustration to the right of the text featured an “average” nuclear family. The ad described their activities and preferred programming genres in rhyming prose, “Dad’s in his study hearing history in the making . . . Mom’s in the kitchen enjoying drama with her baking . . . Sis dances in the ‘rumpus’ room to a band that is a ‘diller.’ . . . Junior’s in his room—ears ‘glued’ to a ‘thriller.’ ”125 In a manner very different from “all-set, all family” reception, advertisers linked specialized listening interests and patterns to separate products. Individualized listening to dispersed radios was more than poorly rhymed promotional rhetoric; increasingly it reflected actual listening practices. After the war multi-radio homes and out-of-home listening became more common. The prewar dynamics accelerated as radio was used as a means for individual family members to separate themselves physically according to their listening preferences. Increased incomes allowed more families to purchase secondary receivers, and even before television was widely available these sets were dispersed in locations outside of the living room. In 1947, for example, the average home had multiple radios. Unsurprisingly, 90 percent of Americans had sets in their living rooms, but 43 percent had them in bedrooms, 23 percent in kitchens, and 17 percent in other rooms.126 A similar trajectory occurred in the development of car radio. At the same time as multiple-radio homes became commonplace, the proliferation of independent radio stations gave audiences more programming options and the ability to listen as individuals or taste groups, all of which decreased family-centered listening. The results of a 1949 University of Pennsylvania study of the listening habits of high school students found a direct relationship between the segmentation of the listening audience, taste preferences, and multiple household radios. Students in families with only a single radio reported that they usually listened to what other members of the family chose. Representing one-third of the respondents, these students generally listened to adult-oriented programs.127 In contrast, an

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equal number of students possessed their own radios that they listened to in their bedrooms with little or no parental oversight. This did not mean that they listened alone. Indeed, most listened with siblings or friends and chose programs primarily based on the recommendation of these peers. Also because of this communal listening, over 50 percent reported that they talked to others while the radio was on. This was clearly not the model of attentive listening valued by the networks. Oriented toward English teachers to help them relate to their students and integrate listening into the curriculum, the author of the article concluded: “The most forceful impression I get from this study is the great amount of undirected children’s listening. Radio is a tremendous force in their lives, but when it comes to choosing programs students are pretty much on their own.”128 Yet they were not on their own. Teenage listeners relied on their peers and on the increasingly sophisticated culture industries oriented toward them. As specialized and segmented taste markets were developed by culture industries, radio became a valuable space for developing specialized content. In the 1940s teenagers became an even more important market segment as diverse cultural industries built on the efforts of the fashion industry and specialized magazines like Mademoiselle and Seventeen to create products oriented toward teens. 129 Combining this emerging niche market with the rising popularity of swing dance music, independent radio stations contributed to this process by creating disc jockey–based programs designed to appeal to the teen market.130 One such program was wnew’s Teentimer’s Canteen. It debuted in 1943 and was hosted by Art Ford, a twenty-two-year-old deejay who at the time was occupying the 2:00 am to 7:00 am slot on The Milkman’s Matinee.131 Teentimer’s Canteen was “presented as a day in the life of a bobby-soxer” and used the popularity of swing music to sell the Teentimers’ OHriginals brand clothing. It was an incredible success, increasing the sales of the Teentimers brand from $20,000 in 1943 to $350,000,000 in 1946.132 The show was adopted for nbc in 1946 under the title Teentimers’ Club. Although the show was on a network, it featured cooperative sponsorship with local cut-in announcements for stores that carried the brand. The switch to the network also meant a switch from recorded to live music. The show coordinated with traveling bands to originate programs in local communities six months of the year, bringing the national to the local.133 This kind of nonfamily listening was important because it did not occur in the neatly delineated daytime, female, individual pattern or the evening,



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male, family pattern that had governed programming assumptions in the network era. In the postwar period segmented audience appeals became common, thereby reflecting new broadcasting and listening models. In 1948 Sponsor called for a revision of ratings methodologies to reflect these changes. The article, entitled “Listeners Are People . . . (Not Homes),” argued that “radio homes were no longer an acceptable basis on which to report broadcast advertising coverage.” 134 It then suggested that although “the family” may have been “an accepted unit” for evaluating the effectiveness of broadcast advertising, recent surveys found significant under- and overreporting in coincidental surveys because they did not account for outof-home, individualized listening. New spaces of listening forced advertisers and broadcasters to develop new conceptions of audience evaluation. A 1949 survey of out-of-home radio listening by the Pulse reporting company found that nearly one-quarter of the radio audience listened away from home and, of that audience, 40 percent listened in cars.135 In foreshadowing radio’s turn toward drivetime programming, the morning car radio audience represented a segment larger than the audience of any single station in the area surveyed.136 In an article from 1950 entitled “Radio’s Uncounted Millions,” Sponsor provided a litany of out-of-home listening locations and noted that these listeners comprised between 14 and 25 percent of the total radio audience.137 That same year a poll by Northwestern University revealed that more than 40 percent of car radios were in use at any given time.138 Some audiences had a higher rate of listening time. In 1948 the Des Moines, Iowa, station who noted that in long trips 60 percent of the state’s car radios (which were in 41 percent of the state’s vehicles) were in use during the journey.139 It is significant that these surveys were sponsored by local stations or academic researchers and not by networks. Out-of-home listening reflects Eileen Meehan’s insight that ratings are themselves a commodity. The ratings companies had little incentive to provide survey data that would challenge the assumptions of their larger clients, the networks.140 However, with television rapidly threatening network radio, network-based assumptions about bifurcated listening patterns mattered less than the increased number of listeners these surveys revealed. The revised consensus about how audiences listened formed the basis for further movements into block program and station formatting.141 Still, these discussions demonstrate that

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the radio industry understood, well before television was widely available, the tremendous changes that had occurred in listening habits and patterns. Postwar television’s frenetic growth led to frequent predictions in the late 1940s of the death of radio. Among the most famous appeared in the April 1949 issue of Look magazine when former nbc president Merlin Aylesworth predicted that “within three years the broadcast of sound, or ear radio, over giant networks will be wiped out. Powerful network television will take its place, completely overshadowing the few weather reports and recorded programs left to the remaining single, independent ear radio stations.”142 Viewed by some commentators in conjunction with television’s rapid rise in popularity, radio’s movement outside of the living room was seen simply as a step toward oblivion. Bernard Smith wrote in the September 1948 issue of Harper’s that “even now the radio set, pushed out of many a living room by the television receiver, is taking refuge in the bedroom, where, with late music and news, it may for a brief period maintain a marginal existence soothing sleep-resisting urban dwellers, before being finally relegated to the storeroom.”143 Descriptions and practices of multi-radio homes and car radio listening were structured by changing evaluations of listening as attentive or distracted and individualized versus communal. Though common in the late 1940s it was still not clear whether models of secondary, inattentive radio listening were beneficial or detrimental to broadcasting. As predictions of radio’s demise multiplied, the broadcasting industry sought solutions to the wholesale changes to its economic structures by embracing distracted, individualized listening. References to individualized listening based on specialized taste began to appear in the middle 1920s but the experience did not become common­ place for most Americans until the 1940s. The radio industry displayed an ambivalent relationship toward individualized listening. In structuring attentive family evening listening as the norm, female daytime listeners became a “problem category” because they listened distractedly while performing other tasks. While the networks, advertising agencies, and sponsors used this fact to construct a gendered mass audience, alternative approaches, largely in marginal time periods and on independent stations, created programming forms that worked in conjunction with a norm of distracted listening. These programming forms, particularly “musical clock” programs, increased in popularity in the second half of the 1930s and 1940s in conjunction with the parallel expansion of contexts of radio reception.



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While networks sought to graft existing models of listening onto car radio and multi-radio homes, each provided a distinctive model, whether distracted or attentive, but now consistently segmented. Radio did not “discover” multiple-receiver homes or out-of-home listening in the 1950s. In the 1930s and 1940s the combination of an increased number of stations, newly emergent markets, inexpensive receivers, and the threat of television allowed for the full-fledged emergence of the possibilities for the models of secondary listening that today describe radio reception.

Conclusion

Open-End Game: The Legacy of Spots, Representatives, and Transcriptions

In 1947 Time magazine used the phrase “open-end game” in the title of an article that described the popularity of My Favorite Story, a transcription program produced by Frederic Ziv that featured the Hollywood star Ronald Colman.1 Although Bing Crosby had broken the network ban on airing recorded programs the prior year, his show was still distributed via wire. Stations received My Favorite Story on transcription disc, and the industry viewed the defection of a well-known personality to an organization that exclusively produced recorded shows as an important paradigm shift in program production.2 Despite their long history in the industry, transcriptiondisc spot programs had only then achieved respectability. The phrase “openend” referred to the practice I discussed in chapter 4 where transcription programs were produced with gaps where spot announcements (whether national or local) could be inserted. But the phrase “open-end” can be understood to refer to more than Ziv’s success at the transcription “game.” With live network broadcasting’s monopoly on quality broken and with television looming, “open-end game” also implied that the acceptance of recorded programming among popular stars challenged the continued viability of this broadcast model—that is, it suggested that the “end game” for networks was “open.” Another implication of the article in Time is that while the trade and popular press hailed Ronald Colman’s transcription



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debut as newsworthy enough to merit coverage, transcription-based programs had a long history. The existence of this article highlights the vagaries behind discourses of the new in postwar broadcasting. It reconfirms the necessity of examining those changes that had occurred by the eve of television’s widespread introduction to American culture, and in so doing the need to recognize that those changes had histories that occurred before the mainstream press noticed them and declared them “new.” Questions about the long-term historical developments of radio as a technology and cultural form that preceded the widespread introduction of television drive this volume, which ends at the moment of transition before television’s widespread introduction. Ironically, that was my initial aim in developing this project. When I first started researching radio my intention was to look at the moment of transition between radio and television. It had its germ in my work as a research assistant collecting materials on the history of the transistor. The cultural memory of the transistor links it with radio’s portability and unsupervised listening to rock and roll by teenagers in the 1950s. However, if portable radios were widely available before the transistor, then why wasn’t the technology examined as part of an existing cultural dynamic rather than the cause of car and mobile radio? As examples like this suggest, my efforts at focusing on postwar radio were thwarted by inconvenient and intriguing stories. For any historian who begins his or her story in 1953, 1946, 1938, or 1929, there is ample evidence of the claims of revolutionary changes sweeping the industry. The relentless presentism found in the trade press coverage is undercut by discussions within broadcasting organizations with somewhat longer historical memories. Even given the focus by the networks on national operations, their strategic decisions can be read “against the grain” as evidence of their concern with and about station representation, transcriptions, spot broadcasting, and disc jockeys. With every attempt to look at the various revolutionary changes that were occurring allegedly as the result of television, the traces of a longer history are revealed. These histories had the effect of challenging some of the most cherished shibboleths of golden age broadcasting. One truism was that network radio displaced local radio in the late 1920s and dominated it until it faced its own decimation by television, thereby allowing local radio to return. But what about regional radio networks? If their histories extended back

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until the 1920s and through the golden age, was network hegemony so absolute? Other truths held that radio was solely broadcast live during the network era. In contrast, my research found that transcription discs existed and were a prominent force from the 1930s on. This evidence also spoke to a paradox of radio history: if network radio was always live, then how did any programs survive for us to listen to today? Likewise, if the experiments for Top 40 started in the late 1940s and early 1950s, could they really be linked to rock and roll? If local stations had to learn how to create their own programs and find local sponsors in the 1950s, then what were those categories of “nonnetwork” and local sales that I saw in 1930s and 1940s trade journals? While Pat Weaver is remembered for embracing “magazinestyle” broadcast advertising instead of the single-sponsor model in 1954, then what about the spot advertisements that resembled his ads? If the Negro” market was “discovered” by ratio in the late 1940s, then what about these other, geographically segmented markets? Although the disc jockey supposedly emerged along with rock and roll, how can one account for the hundreds of disc jockeys playing a wide variety of musical genres in the 1940s? The central task of this volume has been to engage with these questions and examine the structure and extent of changes within broadcasting technologies, discourses, practices, and institutions. As metaphors, gaps and scales are central to this book in multiple ways. Gaps refer to the geographical limits of networks and the institutions that arose to fill them. Gaps also describe the various temporal gaps in the schedule, whether program or announcements that spot programs filled, and the imbrications of temporal and spatial considerations in spot broadcasting as a whole. In addition to this description of the patterns and rhythms of our everyday lives and the ways in which radio filled them, gaps describe the spaces in which radio was heard. Scales are spheres of activity. These are constituted by the specificity of their action in a single location as well as by their interactions with activities conducted in related scales. Certain actions and activities jump the gaps of a single scale and operate in multiple spheres. These concepts intersect with those of James Hay’s “spatial materialism.” Hay has argued that television ought to be understood as a site and a network to emphasize the specific, contextually dependent aspects of television sites that are themselves constructed, in part, through their linkages with other sites. His “socio-spatial problematic” supposes that “sites, networks, and the social arrangements that they suppose are pro-



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duced and governed through multiple (though interdependent) flows that converge differently in different places.”3 Following Hay (who is himself following Raymond Williams), my work in this book considers radio as an assemblage of practices. It is a socially constructed technology actualized through the decision of institutions (themselves determined by the activities and beliefs of those operating in those institutions) which are, in turn, structured by cultural, economic, and aesthetic considerations and, finally, filtered by the infinite array of structuring conditions governing reception by members of the audience. What those audience members “do” with the radio programs depends upon how they come to them and how they leave them, having integrated them into their daily lives.4 So part of the process whereby audience members come to radio depends not only on what types of resources they are offered but also on the contexts in which they make decisions about how to use those resources. This socio-spatial conception of network radio began by revisiting the assumption that network broadcasting was national from its inauguration. I noted that market definition by networks and advertisers excluded certain places (and not always the same ones) from the radio nation. Their exclusion structured which “imagined communities” radio listeners in those areas could experience membership in. At the same time a different form of mediation, represented by the labor of station representatives, constructed alternative radio markets based upon the depth rather than width of appeal and response. As part of the radio nation, these places needed content. Regional radio networks were one set of institutions that responded to that need. They capitalized on limitations in national network infrastructure and embraced certain program genres and established parallel systems of show production and distribution. Likewise, program producers and distributors refined electrical recording technology and defined the resultant sound-on-disc transcriptions. Transcriptions avoided the taint associated with phonograph records and became an alternative method for distributing programs. Moreover, this distribution network operated in a more specialized fashion than did wire networks, thereby allowing content to be tailored to specific locations and identities. The industry referred to both of these dynamics as spot broadcasting, which suggests that the term incorporated multiple aspects. Two forms of spot broadcasting developed: full-length spot programs and brief spot announcements. Both simultaneously were integrated into and disrupted the

188 Conclusion

dynamics of segmentation and flow within national network radio’s broadcast schedule. In so doing they configured broadcasting’s real and imagined social space differently than did national networks. Spot programs could be used to fill in the gaps of network infrastructure by national advertisers seeking the widest possible mass appeal. Similarly, spot programs and announcements were used to “localize” national brands as local presences. These dynamics were altered somewhat by shows constructed by transcription libraries. With varying degrees of local input, these programs allowed individual stations to produce inexpensive but high-quality shows. And one final type of spot announcement, the station break, interfered with and disrupted the broadly constructed goodwill appeals of network programs. Combined, these examples demonstrate how the meaning of each element of the broadcast flow was determined both by its own form and content and by its relationship to segments adjacent to it. Significantly, broadcasters used nonnetwork programming sources to create shows that appealed to different audiences and different modalities of reception. Finally, the “human geography of broadcasting” in and out of the home via disc jockey–based block programming demonstrates how the socialspatial dynamics of reception were part of a redefinition of the experience of listening that embraced distracted reception.5 Operating concurrently with network practices, local radio stations developed programming forms based around music and talk that recognized the value of distracted and mobile reception. The expanded duration of show times permitted audiences to experience a different type of spatial and temporal relationship to their radios. Disc jockey programming encouraged its audience to modulate between attention and distraction. It permitted and even encouraged the audience to regard radio as mere accompaniment, confident in its ability to regain attention with little loss of meaning or potential for confusion. Consensus broadcasting histories view the development of the medium as a natural function of consumer choice and democratic action. National network radio was successful because it responded to consumer desires, this argument suggests. Following in its wake television was an instant success because audiences had come to crave something new, and radio was subsequently reborn because it abandoned its national network model, which was no longer appealing, in order to cater to local interests. So powerful is this idea that it remains the dominant explanation not only of popular and scholarly histories of radio and television but also of contemporary



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accounts of “new media” and “digital media.” Only recently have revisionist accounts of broadcasting’s development challenged this narrative. While much of radio’s historical record, programming, personal papers, oral histories, and journalistic accounts favor the networks, we must remember that radio was a hybrid system with local, regional, and national interests, tastes, and concerns intermingling throughout institutions, programming, and audience responses. Station representatives, regional networks, sound-on-disc transcription producers, spot broadcasting, and disc jockey–based block programming may never have threatened to overturn the national network system, but their success does suggest ways in which different actors carved out varying degrees of autonomy that would bear fruit as all elements of radio (production, text, and audience) fragmented in the early 1950s. Indeed, at network radio’s apex the technological and institutional structures that would make possible the next generation of radio, Top 40, were in place. These include localized spot sales via station representatives, ad hoc arrangements of regional networks for live programs, distribution of record libraries that allowed for locally assembled music and news programs, the development of disc jockey programs and magazine-style spot advertisements, and diffused, individualized out-of-home listening. Not all of these formal elements survived the transition intact. Tape replaced transcription discs, but disc recordings remained a mainstay of radio broadcasting until the compact disc era. Local disc jockeys repeatedly vied with the management of regional groups of stations with single owners. These formal elements would later anchor a different kind of content, rock and roll, but their continued presence complicates our understanding of the rebirth of radio in the 1950s and its existence during the second half of the twentieth century.

Notes

Introduction 1

2

3 4 5

6 7

Roy Witmer, “Letter to John Shepard III,” June 9, 1937, Box 58, Folder 16, Records­ ­of the National Broadcasting Company, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (hereafter referred to as Records of nbc, Madison). Roy Witmer, “Memo to Frank Mason,” October 18, 1937, Box 100, Folder wxyz, Records of nbc, Madison. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 6. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Michele Hilmes not only offers compelling accounts of American network hegemony but more recently has argued for understanding American radio as a system where a “productive tension” between networks and their affiliates saw itself in contrast to highly centralized national radio that characterized European “public service” models of the era. See Hilmes, Radio Voices, 16, and “nbc and the Network Idea,” 12. Douglas, Listening In, 24. See, for example, Doerksen, American Babel; Kelman, “Station Identification”; Vaillant, “Sounds of Whiteness”; and Williams, “From ‘Remote’ Possibilities to Entertaining ‘Difference.’ ” I also found particularly useful Bill Kirkpatrick’s argument that the “ism” applied to the local speaks to the ways that the local has been defined, deployed, and redefined to serve social, economic, or political ends. See Kirkpatrick, “Localism in American Media, 1920–1934.” For a focus on questions of national identity and cultural flows as part of globalization, see, for example, Morley, Home Territories; and Morley and Robins, Spaces of Identity. Likewise, Michael Curtin focuses on the microstudies of the geography

192 Notes to Introduction

8 9 10

11 12 13

14

15

16 17

18

19 20

21 22

of media production as a function of the particular dynamics of place as well as global flows of individuals and capital. See, for example, Curtin, “Mapping the Ethereal City” and “Media Capitals.” McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy. Allen, Treadmill to Oblivion, 238. For some renditions of this common myth, see Fortnale and Mills, Radio in the Television Age, 27; and Barnes, “Top 40 Radio,” 9. For recent work that is beginning to revise this myth, see McCourt and Rothenbuhler, “Burnishing the Brand.” This list was taken from Anderson and Curtin, “Writing Cultural History,” 22. Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema, 13. See Hilmes, “Is There a Field Called Sound Culture Studies? And Does It Matter?”; Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity; Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs; Sterne, The Audible Past; and Wurtzler, Electric Sounds. In this sense, the data-gathering capabilities of the Internet and cable as distribution technologies represent profoundly different dynamics that will have significant ramifications for the future of sound and video. Peters, “The Gaps of Which Communication Is Made” and Speaking into the Air. Crary, Suspensions of Perception, 29. Susan Douglas’s recent cultural history of radio listening also posits a distinction between hearing and listening that exists on the level of meaning— namely, the difference between sound waves entering the ear and vibrating the bones of the inner ear (the ossicals of the tympanic cavity) and the context in which those sound waves are encountered and the significance accorded to the experience. Thus in the most basic sense all listeners are active in that they are engaging with programs and not merely letting them become ambient noise. I leave it as an open question whether the appeals that listeners respond to are produced psychically, cognitively, or ideologically. But as Douglas readily admits, this distinction is not an either/or proposition. People move in and out of attention and distraction continuously. At the same time, certain modes and types of listening dominated certain eras. See Douglas, Listening In, 22–35. An exception that proves the rule has been National Public Radio’s ongoing campaign touting “driveway moments” as signifiers of the high quality of noncommercial adult-oriented radio programming. Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema, 221–22. Douglas, Listening In; Lacey, “Towards a Periodization of Listening”; Sterne, The Audible Past. Hay, “Locating the Televisual,” 212. I take the idea of scale from Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy, “Orientations,” 5–8. They use it to capture dynamics of how media operate and are understood in different spaces, including where and how media representations are produced, how they travel across social space, and how these movements reconfigure social space at the points of production and reception. Couldry and



23

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26

27 28

29 30

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Notes to Introduction 193

McCarthy borrow the concept of “scale effects” from Neil Smith,“Contours of a Spatialized Politics,” 66. For Smith, scale is “language of spatial difference” that is “an active progenitor of specific social processes.” Scale “demarcates the sites of social contest, the object as well as the resolution of contest.” To take one example of such “scale jumping,” regional networks operated as independent entities on a regional level, in many ways replicating the economic structures and practices of national networks. Yet, the meanings of these activities are not exactly the same because they take on a different inflection through the difference in scale—regional networks’ news broadcasts may invoke a shared community, but that community is of a profoundly different scope than that imagined by national network newscasts. Smulyan, Selling Radio, 1. Here, too, Hilmes’s account in “nbc and the Network Idea” of the ways in which European broadcasters perceived their own public service orientations in opposition to unruly American commercial radio provides a valuable socio-spatial comparison. See Smythe, “Communications” and Dependency Road, for his development of the concept of the audience commodity (which I will address in more detail in chapter 1). Several examples of scholars who have used and extended Smythe’s work or address the construction of broadcast audiences are Butsch, The Making of American Audiences; Meehan, “Why We Don’t Count”; Newman, Radio Active; Razlogova, “The Voice of the Listener”; Socolow, “Psyche and Society”; and Streeter, Selling the Air. For the phrase “calling markets into being,” see Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed. In addition to Strasser, a partial listing of the voluminous literature on mass marketing and consumer culture includes Butsch, For Fun and Profit; Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic; Cross, An All-Consuming Century; Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; McGovern, Sold American; Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising; Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Sox; Strasser et al., eds., Getting and Spending; and Tedlow, New and Improved. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream and Creating the Corporate Soul. Bird, Better Living; Douglas, Listening In, 11. See also Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed. Douglas, Listening In, 17. Hall and Grossberg, “On Postmodernism and Articulation,” 141. For a further elaboration of the idea of articulation to the methodology of cultural studies, see Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place; and Stack, “The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies.” Radio Annual 1942, 289–91. Czitrom, Media and the American Mind. The 1996 Telecommunications Act, which relaxed ownership limits, ushered in a new era of national radio. However, contemporary examples of national corporate radio, like Clear Channel, illustrate a significant cultural change since the mid-twentieth century—namely, the rise of niche markets.

194 Notes to Chapter One

Chapter One  The Value of a Name 1

2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

10

Charles Adams, “Radio and Our Spoken Language,” Radio News, September 1927, 238. My discussion of this image takes up ideas discussed by Michele Hilmes in Radio Voices, 1–34. In some ways this echoes Michele Hilmes’s argument in Radio Voices, 75–96, that African Americans represented an unassimilable “othered” presence on American radio. For a history of the decisions to use wired interconnection rather than multiplexing, synchronization, or superpower, see Smulyan, Selling Radio. This image follows the systems rationale that combined technology and ideas of the public within corporate liberal thinking as outlined in Streeter, Selling the Air. Conversely, see Sconce, Haunted Media, for some of the negative connotations of radio networks in the 1930s. This literature is voluminous; a few examples include Beniger, The Control Revolution; Carey, “Technology and Ideology”; Castells, The Rise of the Network Society; Czitrom, Media and the American Mind; and Hughes, Networks of Power. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; Murray, “Broadcast Content Regu­ lation and Cultural Limits, 1920–1962”; Patnode, “ ‘What These People Need Is Radio’ ”; Taylor, “Music and the Rise of Radio in Twenties America.” Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting; McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy; Smulyan, Selling Radio. Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out. Streeter, Selling the Air, 285–86. For debates over the audience commodity, see Jhally, “Probing the Blindspot”; Livant, “The Audience Commodity” and “Working at Watching”; Murdock, “Blindspots about Western Marxism”; and Smythe, “Communications,” Dependency Road, and “Rejoinder to Graham Murdock.” On the history of ratings techniques, see Beville, Audience Ratings. For literature that examines the intellectual construction of ideas of the audience in the 1930s, see Czitrom, Media and the American Mind, 122–46; Douglas, Listening In; Jenemann, Adorno in America; Lenthall, “Radio’s Waves”; Meehan, “Why We Don’t Count”; Newman, Radio Active; Ohmer, “The Laws That Determine Interest”; Pandora, “Mapping the New Mental World Created by Radio”; Razlogova, “The Voice of the Listener”; Socolow, “Psyche and Society”; and Streeter, Selling the Air, 275–308. Douglas, Listening In; Napoli, “Empire of the Middle”; Razlogova, “The Voice of the Listener”; Smulyan, Selling Radio. Douglas and Napoli are influenced by the famous concept of mobile privatization as developed by Williams in Television, 20. For a critique of this argument, see Gripsrud, “Television, Broadcasting, Flow,” 18–21.



Notes to Chapter One 195

11

It should be noted that some audiences preferred this kind of programming to the mass appeals of network fare; see, for example, Doerksen, American Babel; Razlogova, “The Voice of the Listener”; and Vaillant, “Sounds of Whiteness.” Hilmes, “nbc and the Network Idea.” Smulyan, Selling Radio, 58–63; Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 20–84. Hilmes, Broadcasting and Hollywood, 141. Czitrom, Media and the American Mind; Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 314; Hilmes, Radio Voices, 10, 20–22; Smulyan, Selling Radio, 31–36. For a discussion of the ethos of cultural uplift in 1920s radio, see Marchand, Advertising the American Dream. Lizabeth Cohen in Making a New Deal discusses some of the progressive political possibilities engendered by a shared national culture as well as its impact on ethnic identity. For a discussion of the ways this narrative of a national network system appealed to powerful ideals in corporate liberalism that saw in it a technological system in the service of “the public,” see Streeter, Selling the Air, 55. Doerksen, American Babel; Hilmes, Radio Voices, 22; Bill Kirkpatrick, “Localism in American Media”; Smulyan, Selling Radio; Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 105. Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 92. Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising; Turow, Breaking Up America, 25–29. Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Broadcasting, 167. Hettinger adds that the organization was cooperatively supported by newspaper groups. It sold space in those newspapers, promoted the idea of syndicated newspaper advertising, and maintained sources of writing talent that could be made available to group members. Barton, A Study of 81 Principal American Markets. This study was expanded the following year. Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 72. National Broadcasting Company, “Outline of Development for the National Broadcasting Company Networks,” March 14, 1927, Folder 293, Records of the National Broadcasting Company, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter referred to as Records of nbc, Library of Congress). Lower incomes also explain why residents in areas of the South and, to a lesser extent, the West were less likely to purchase radio sets. See, for example, Craig, “How America Adopted Radio” and “ ‘The Farmer’s Friend.’ ” Some accounts argue that radio networks had achieved national coverage by the late 1920s; for example, see Spaulding, “1928.” More recent work has begun to question this assumption; for example, see Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 90–100; and Foust, Big Voices of the Air. Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 92–95. On the regional discrepancies in at&t infrastructure, see Lipartito, The Bell System and Regional Business; and MacDougall, “The People’s Telephone.”

12 13 14 15

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27 28 29

30

31 32

33

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35

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Donald Shaw, “Memo to ALL MEN, “ June 13, 1934, Folder 293, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Hilmes, Broadcasting and Hollywood, 62–63. Kirkpatrick, “Localism in American Media,” 266–69. C. W. Horn, “Memo to R. C. Patterson Re: Seven Point Plan for Improv­ ing nbc Networks,” June 20, 1935, Folder 293, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Of course, these minimum purchases were also negotiable depending on how much difficulty the network was having in selling the slot. See Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 92–94. Midgley, The Advertising and Business Side of Radio, 69. “fcc Hears Industry’s Allocation Views,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1938, 53–59; Foust, Big Voices of the Air, 41; Podber, “Early Radio in Rural Appalachia,” 397– 98; “Rural Listeners Depend on Clears fcc Study Shows,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1938, 28. For other discussions of rural radio listening, see Kline, Consumers in the Country; Vaillant, “ ‘Your Voice Came in Last Night . . . But I Thought . . . It Sounded a Little Scared.’ ” Daytime listening was somewhat better, with 62 percent of the country possessing adequate radio coverage (Craig, “How America Adopted Radio,” 189). Over a decade later, in 1946, one-third of rural audiences still reported reception difficulties (Craig, “ ‘The More They Listen, The More They Buy,’ ” 5). Roy Witmer, “Memo to Lenox Lohr Re: Network Changes,” October 1936, Folder 293, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Midgley, The Advertising and Business Side of Radio, 346, 50; Robinson, Radio Networks and the Federal Government, 110; Roy Witmer, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson,” March 16, 1933, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. R. H. Holmes, “Memo to Donald Withycomb Re: Stations or Groups out of Service,” March 1, 1933, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; John F. Royal, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson, Jr.,” January 23, 1935, Folder 292, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress; Roy Witmer, “Memo to G. F. McClelland,” June 19, 1933, Box 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Socolow in “To Network a Nation,” 92–93, makes this point explicitly and my discussion of split networks is indebted to his work. During the 1932–1933 season Lady Esther’s Wayne King Orchestra had a CAB (Crossley Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting) rating of 10.7, the A&P Gypsies’ rating was 12.6, and The Blackstone Plantation had a rating of 19.6 (Summers, A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 32). Jack Stewart, “Letter to Donald Withycomb,” March 13, 1933, Folder 292, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress. The option to purchase a “split network” was retained during daytime hours (Donald Shaw, “Memo to ALL MEN”).



Notes to Chapter One 197

41

In the first half of the 1930s nbc charged stations twenty-five dollars per hour for evening sustaining programs and fifteen dollars per hour for daytime sus­ taining programs, but in the mid-1930s they sought to change this fee to a flat monthly rate of fifteen hundred dollars. Although cbs did not charge explicitly, the stations paid portions of the line charges (Federal Radio Commission, Commercial Radio Advertising, 30–31; Donald Withycomb, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson, Jr.,” May 4, 1933, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress). Mark Woods, “Minutes of the November 21 Meeting of the Officers and Department Heads,” November 21, 1932, Folder 790, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Split networks could potentially be approved but only with the permission of McClelland. George McClelland, “Memo to R. C. Witmer, Jr.,” May 25, 1933, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; G. W. Wayne, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson, Jr.,” March 16, 1933, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Withycomb, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson, Jr.” Don Gilman, “Memo to G. F. McClelland Re: Round Robin on Split Network Contracts,” June 26, 1933, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Witmer, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson.” Witmer, “Memo to G. F. McClelland.” Frank Mason, “Memo to Lenox Lohr,” April 1, 1936, Box 99, Folder 89, Records of the National Broadcasting Company, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. See also Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 96. Donald Shaw, “Memo to ALL MEN.” Alfred Morton, “Memo to Edgar Kobak,” February 25, 1935, Folder 292, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress; Sidney Strotz, “Memo to John Royal,” January 16, 1935, Folder 292, Records of nbc, Library of Congress, 93. V. Van Der Linde, “Memo to Roy Witmer,” June 9, 1937, Folder 294, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 45; Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 514. Often, nbc had difficulty selling nbcBlue and did not require additional station purchases. Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 95. Sol Taishoff, “Time Charges Revised on Service Basis,” Broadcasting, February 1, 1935, 7–8, 42. Note also that at the same time nbc revised its rates it ceased charging affiliates $1,500 per month for sustaining programs. Significantly, when facing the possibility of increased regulation the networks stressed their basic and supplementary structure to provide the appearance of a less dominating structure (Sarnoff, Principles and Practices of Network Broadcasting, 22). Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 100. Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 251. “What’s Wrong with Radio,” Broadcasting, June 8, 1942, 30. “Media Trends,” Broadcasting, January 27, 1941, 30.

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48 49

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54 55 56 57

198 Notes to Chapter One 58 59

60 61

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68 69

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Ely, The Adventures of Amos ’n’ Andy, 115. Summers, A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 19, 21, 25, 27, 31, 33. Dixon, Radio Writing, ix, 62; Smulyan, Selling Radio, 118. Affie Hammond, “Listeners’ Survey of Radio,” Radio News, December 1932, 331–33. Goode, Modern Advertising, 311–12. Herman Hettinger, “Potential Market for More Radio Accounts,” Broadcasting, September 15, 1934, 80. John M. Dolph, “An Analysis of ‘Sponsor’ Recognition,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1935, 11. Negus, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures, 31. Key, Pierre Key’s Radio Annual, 428. “When Some Like It Hot . . . Some Like It Cold,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1943, 5. “$100 for a New Name for Spot,” Sponsor, August 1948, 83. Selective was not a new term. Paul Raymer, a nationally known station representative, had originally advocated it. This was chosen over H. Preston Peters’s phrase “bull’s-eye broadcasting” (ibid., 86). Newman, Radio Active, 18. See, for example, Douglas, Listening In, 124–60, for a discussion of Paul Lazarsfeld. For the role of knowledge brokers in defining a newly emerging technology, see Greenberg, “From Betamax to Blockbuster.” Smulyan, Selling Radio, 31. “Recollections of H. Preston Peters,” January 23, 1967, Broadcast Pioneers Collection, AT 179, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md., 9–10. Some representatives went so far as to propose commonly funding trade campaigns to promote the idea of spot broadcasting. See, for example, “Free Urges Reps to Combine in Spot Promotion Campaign,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1936, 22. Smulyan, Selling Radio, 81–85. Bowen was not the only individual to enter into representation. In one case the Advertisers Radio Service (ars) was a consortium of stations who actively sought national spot advertising. William Hedges at the Chicago station wmaq organized ars in 1929. Hedges would later move on to become nbc’s vicepresident of station relations. Cooperatively owned, ars had offices in New York and Chicago and solicited spot business for its member stations, which included wnac and the Yankee Network; wmaq in New York; Walter Damm’s wtmj in Milwaukee; wmt in Waterloo, Iowa; whk in Cleveland; wcae in Pittsburgh; wmal in Washington, D.C.; wptf in Raleigh, N.C.; wqam in Miami; and woc and who in Iowa. Headed by Bill Rambeau, who would later found his own independent representation company, ars was disbanded in 1931



78

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Notes to Chapter One 199

after nbc purchased wmaq. William S. Hedges recalled that ars was one of the first representative organizations to operate on an exclusive basis (William S. Hedges, “A Study of Station Break and One Minute Announcement Advertising on nbc Owned Stations,” January 9, 1945, Folder 805, Records of nbc, Library of Congress, 72–73; “Recollections of H. Preston Peters,” 12). Norman Craig, “Pros and Cons of Station Representation,” Broadcasting, July 15, 1933, 5, 29; Scott Howe Bowen Inc., “ ‘On the Spot’ with Local Talent,” Broadcasting, October 1, 1932, 3; “We Pay Our Respects To—Scott Howe Bowen,” Broadcasting, December 1, 1932, 19. In 1934, Bowen claimed $1,300,000 in average annual sales (Scott Howe Bowen, “Letter to Treasurer, National Broadcasting Company,” June 28, 1934, Box 23, Folder 12, Records of nbc, Madison). Scott Howe Bowen Inc., “On the Spot . . . Where the Goods Are Sold,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1932. J. V. McConnell, “Memo to Winslow Leighton—Station wgy Schenectady,” June 23, 1932, Box 6, Folder 59, Records of nbc, Madison. nbc had not yet begun to produce transcriptions but still wanted to clear away any potential competition (Lloyd C. Thomas, “Memo to Roy C. Witmer,” February 9, 1934, Box 23, Folder 12, Records of nbc, Madison). Edward Petry, “The Origin of Bulova Radio Time Signals and Station Representatives,” 1964, Folder 20B, Broadcast Pioneers Collection, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md. An additional print syndication connection comes from Edward Voynow. Voynow was Petry’s partner and a pioneer transcription producer, who worked as a salesman for the Chicago HeraldExaminer and for King Features as promotion manager before joining National Radio Advertisers, a pioneer time brokerage company (Edward Voynow, “Letter to Milton Blink,” October 12, 1964, Broadcast Pioneers Collection, Folder 7B, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md.). Edward Petry and John Blair were based in New York but had national organizations and offices in Chicago and on the West Coast. Other smaller organizations were more regionally based; for example, Free and Sleininger was based in Chicago with stations in Iowa, North Dakota, and Texas, and Paul Raymer was based in New York and handled mostly East Coast stations. In some ways station representation was defined by the physical limits of how far representatives could travel to meet with their stations. See Frank Headley, “Letter to William S. Hedges Re: The Role of the Independent National Station Representative,” May 15, 1964, Broadcast Pioneers Collection, AT 20A, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md., 2; “Recollections of H. Preston Peters,” 7; “Recollections of Humboldt J. Greig,” April 7, 1964, Broadcast Pioneers Collection, AT 14, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md., 2–3. Craig, “Pros and Cons,” 29. Agencies were concerned about rate cutting because they feared it would

200 Notes to Chapter One

87

88 89

90

91 92

93

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95 96 97

98

threaten their own rate-making credibility. See J. Leslie Fox, “Pros and Cons of Station Representation,” Broadcasting, July 15, 1933, 5; see also “New High in Time-Chiseling Stirs Station Head to Sarcasm,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1933, 8; H. H. Kynett, “Spot Broadcasting as Viewed by the Advertising Agency,” Broadcast Advertising, December 1930, 14–16; Russell Byron, “Those Damned Special Representatives,” Broadcast Advertising, October 1931, 19, 52; “Broadcasters Talk About Rates and Representatives at San Francisco Meeting,” Broadcast Advertising, October 1931, 20–21, 54. H. H. Kynett, “The Agency’s Needs in Broadcasting,” Broadcast Advertising, July 1930, 9; “Edward Petry Handling Accounts of 18 Stations,” Broadcasting, February 1, 1933, 16; Edward Petry and Associates, “And So with Spot,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1934, 5; Edward Petry and Associates, “Our Time Is Not on the Block,” Broadcasting, October 1, 1933, 4–5; “Edward Petry Expands with Larger N.Y. Office,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1933, 8. “Recollections of Humboldt J. Greig,” 2. “We Pay Our Respects To—John Portwood Blair,” Broadcasting, February 3, 1941, 31. Merlin Aylesworth, “Memo to Richard Patterson,” December 11, 1933, Folder 528, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Six months later Broadcasting published denials by nbc and Petry that the two were in merger talks. Supposedly Petry asked for $500,000 in cash and $50,000 a year with an nbc counter of $100,000 in cash and a $25,000 salary (“nbc, Petry Deny Report of Merger,” Broadcasting, July 15, 1934, 6). Hettinger, “Potential Market for More Radio Accounts,” 13, 80–81. The term “commercial pragmatist” comes from Bruce Lenthall, “Radio’s Waves,” 269–77. In this fascinating intellectual history of the ideas of radio in the Depression era Lenthall compares the “commercial pragmatists” to other intellectuals of the period and argues that they eschewed more critical stands and identified with the goals of the radio industry. Lloyd Rosenblum, “Spot Looms Larger on Radio Horizon,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1935, 22. J. Leslie Fox, “A Bright Spot on the Radio Horizon,” Broadcasting, February 1, 1935, 11. Ibid., 36. “1,000% Increase,” Broadcasting, September 1, 1937, 32. Harry Bannister, “Oral History of Harry Bannister,” May 1951, Radio Pioneers Oral History Collection, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., 12–14. Bannister also noted that network affiliation required a larger percentage of the weekly schedule to achieve its third of the total income, but the mass audience drawn by network program was necessary to sell local or spot sales. Herman Hettinger, “Broadcast Advertising in 1941,” Broadcasting Yearbook, 1942, 11.



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National Broadcasting Company, Broadcast Advertising, 51. Ted Nelson, “Canned Programs: Smaller Stations May Now Present Excellent Entertainment through the Use of Advertising Recordings on Wax Discs,” Radio News, March 1930, 815, 53. This metaphoric comparison persisted. For example, a 1942 sales pamphlet produced by John Blair compared local radio advertising to retail newspaper advertising and network broadcasts to large national magazines or nationally published and locally distributed papers like American Weekly ( John Blair and Company, “Spot Broadcasting for Sales,” August 17, 1942, Pamphlet 3740, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md.). “We Pay Our Respects To—John Ralph Latham,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1937, 33. Ibid. See also “Latham Urges Use of Station Talent Transcriptions in National Spot Field,” Broadcasting, May 1, 1937, 16. John Blair and Company, “Local Shows Make Good,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1936, 6. John Blair and Company, “A Leader Takes—Another Forward Step,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1936, 25. Free and Sleininger Inc., “ ‘Spots Are Effective, Mr. F & S!’ ” Broadcasting, July 1, 1935, 8. “nbc Branches Taking Spot and Disc Accounts for Network’s Stations,” Broadcasting, October 1, 1932, 9. cbs also started a local sales bureau in the last quarter of 1932. See Rufus Crater, “Spot Probe: Network Representation Rights Argued,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, December 6, 1948, 21–22. Mark Woods, “Minutes of the October 4 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” October 4, 1933, Folder 788, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Donald Shaw, “Memo to Roy Witmer,” April 18, 1935, Folder 567, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. John J. Karol, “Measuring Radio Audiences,” 92–96. It is worth noting that a lack of data was a perennial “problem” for the broadcast advertising industry—one whose “solution” was found innumerable times. “The Local Program Brings Results for National Sponsors,” Broadcasting, August 1, 1935, 20. John Blair and Company, “Spot Broadcasting for Sales,” August 17, 1942, Pamphlet 3740, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md., 4–5. Ibid., 5.

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Chapter Two  “The Lord is my Shepard” 1 2

“Networks Shift Their New England Lineups,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1936, 7. One of the earliest references to regional networks (and one that dates their entrance into the national broadcast advertising arena to 1930) is in “Regional Chains Offer a Distinctive Service to Broadcast Advertisers,” Broadcast Advertising, November 1930, 12.

202 Notes to Chapter Two 3

For comparison, in 1933 the regional networks included Dixie Network, Iowa Broadcasting Company, League of Wisconsin Radio Stations Inc., Don Lee Broadcasting Mason-Dixon Radio Group, Michigan Radio Network, New England Network, Southwest Broadcasting Company, and Yankee Network (For a complete listing of regional networks in 1933 see Pierre Key’s Radio Annual). In 1938 the regional networks included Arizona Network, Buckeye Network, California Radio System, Carolina Combination, Colonial Network, Inter-City Broadcasting System, Iowa Network, Don Lee Broadcasting System, Maryland Network, Mason-Dixon Radio Group, Michigan Network, Northern California Broadcasting System, Texas Quality Network, Virginia Broadcasting System, West Texas Broadcasting System, West Virginia Radio Network, Wisconsin Radio Network, Yankee Network, and Z Net (Radio Annual 1938, vol. 1, 153–57). In 1942 the regional networks included Alabama Network, Arizona Broadcasting Co., Arizona Network, Arrowhead Broadcasting System, California Radio System, Central States Broadcasting System, Colonial Network, Colorado Radio Network, Connecticut System, Cornbelt Wireless Rebroadcast Service, Cowles Stations, Georgia Broadcasting System, Inter-City Broadcasting System, Don Lee Broadcasting System, Lone Star Chain, Mason-Dixon Radio Group, Michigan Radio Network, Minnesota Radio Network, Missouri-Illinois Broadcasting System, New York Broadcasting System, North Central Broadcasting System, Northwest Triangle Chain, Oklahoma Metropolitan Line, Oklahoma Network, Pacific Broadcasting Co., Pennsylvania Network, Quaker Network, Southern Network, Texas Quality Network, Texas State Network, West Virginia Network, Yankee Network, and Z Net. By 1956, Radio Annual grouped regional networks with group station ownership, reflecting the practice of selling a commonly owned group like a small network. These combined categories were Air Trails Network Stations, Alaska Broadcasting System, Arizona Broadcasting System, Gene Autry Stations, Bartell Stations, Big Five, H. M. Bitner, Bonnyville Radio Network, Broadcast Advertising Inc. Broadcasting Corp. of America Network, Kenyon Brown Stations, California Farm Network, California Radio Network, California Valley Group, Columbia Pacific Radio Network, Columbine Network Inc. Connecticut State Network Inc., Pat M. Courington Stations, James M. Cox Stations, Crosley Broadcasting Corp., Dairyland Network, Vic Diehm Associated Stations, Dixie Broadcasting System, Dixie Network, East Texas Network, Florida Select List, Foreign Language Quality Network, Friendly Group, Theodore R. Gamble Stations, Gannett Newspapers, Granite State Network, Great Northern Broadcasting System, Great Western Network, John T. Griffin Stations, Heart Stations, Intermountain Network, Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. Stations, Key Line Radio Group, Edward Lamb Enterprises Inc., Don Lee Broadcasting, Harry Willard Linder Stations, Lobster Network, M&N Broadcasting Co. Stations, Magic Circle Network, Maine Broadcasting System, J. Elroay McCaw Stations,



4 5

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7

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Notes to Chapter Two 203

McClatchy Broadcasting Co. Stations, McLendon Stations, Meredith Publishing Co. Stations, Michigan Radio Network, Mid-American Broadcasting Stations, Mid-Continent Broadcasting Co. Stations, Mid-South Network, Negro Radio South, Newhouse Newspaper Stations, OK Group, Oklahoma Network, Oregon Trail Network, Paul Bunyan Network, People’s Broadcasting Stations, John E. Petzer Stations, John Poole Stations, Quality Radio Group, Rebel Network, RKO Teleradio Pictures Inc., Cecil W. Roberts Stations, R.W. Rounsaville Stations, Rural Radio Network, Scripps Howard Group, William B. Smullin Stations, Sombrero Network, Steinman Stations, Storer Broadcasting Co., Sunflower Network, Taft Stations, Tele-Trip Policy Co. Stations, Texas Broadcasting System, Texas Quality Group, Texas State Network Inc., Time Inc. Stations, Tobacco Network Inc., Union Broadcasting System, Upper Midwest Broadcasting System, West Texas Packaged Stations, Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. Stations, Wisconsin Radio Network Inc., Withers Cavins Stations, J. W. Woodruff Stations, Wrather-Alvarez, Wyoming Cowboy Network, and Yankee Network (Radio Annual 1956, 306–14). Barnouw, The Sponsor, 10. Kroeger, “The History of Boston Radio to 1941,” 102; “We Pay Our Respects To—John Shepard III,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1932, 17; “Yankee Network Is Being Formed,” New York Times, February 9, 1930, 20. For an introduction to early Boston radio and John Shepard’s role in it, see Halper, “Early Boston Radio”; and McLeod, “Local Voices.” These ten states were the lowest in number of total radio homes. Similarly, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined for nearly 1,200,000 radio homes, more than was contained in either the deep South or the western states (“15,801,620,” Broadcasting, December 15, 1931). For a longer discussion of geographic and socioeconomic differences in radio ownership, see Craig, “How America Adopted Radio.” “Regional Chains Offer Distinctive Service to Broadcast Advertisers,” Broadcast Advertising, November 1930, 26; Shepard Broadcasting Service, “In New England Yankee Network for Complete Coverage, Broadcast Advertising, November 1931, 73. C. W. Horn, “Memo to M. J. Woods,” August 29, 1935, Folder 294, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. at&t calculated line charges on a station-mile basis. For a comparison, in 1939 Shepard paid $33,000,000 in line charges while the Don Lee Network, a West Coast regional chain, paid $75,000,000. Federal Communications Commission, “fcc Annual Financial Reports of Broadcast Stations 1937–1947 Colonial Network,” 1939, Box 243, Records of the Federal Communications Commission, Record Group 173, National Archives, College Park, Md.; Federal Communications Commission, “fcc Annual Financial Reports of Broadcast Stations 1937–1947 Don Lee Network,” 1939, Box 246, Records of the Federal Communications Commission, Record Group 173, National Archives, College Park, Md.

204 Notes to Chapter Two 9

10

11

12

13

14

15 16

17

18

When station waab went on the air in 1931 it too affiliated with cbs. Letter from John Shepard to employees of wnac and the Yankee Network, 1930, cited in Kroeger, “The History of Boston Radio,” 104–05; “Yankee Network Is Being Formed,” 20. Interestingly, one New York Times article from 1931 incorrectly identified the announcer Ralph Gilroy as representing the “Yankee network of cbs” (“Program of Radio Broadcasts for Football Games Tomorrow,” New York Times, December 4, 1931, 31). An advertisement for the Transco Company in 1933 thanks the Yankee Network for three years of uninterrupted service, dating the inauguration of service to 1930 (“Transco Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1933, 21). “Your Choice of America’s Major Markets and No ‘Cover Charge,’ ” Broadcasting, June 1, 1934, 17. “Scott Howe Bowen Is Nucleus of Spot-Selling Station Group,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1934, 12. “gbi to Reorganize as shb Withdraws to Work Separately,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1934, 16; “Petry Signs Yankee,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1934, 8. The network did have its own dramatic company, the Yankee Network Play­ ers, but very little information exists in the records concerning their performances. “Yankee Net Forms an Artists Bureau,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1932, 12. While Yankee had agreements with local papers in the early 1930s, the Yankee News Service originated in response to the Biltmore Agreement ending the so-called radio press war. Shepard found unacceptable the terms of the agreement, which required stations to hold stories for up to eight hours to prevent competition with newspapers. See Bickford, News While It Is News; Bickford, “Yankee Scoops,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1935, 24; Gilbert Cant, “U.P. And I.N.S. Offer News to Radio,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1935, 11; Robert Donahue, “ ‘News While It Is News,’ ” Broadcasting, March 15, 1934, 8, 34; “Gillette Renews Yankee,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1936, 51; “Radio Supplies Fast Service in Covering Election Results,” Broadcasting, November 15, 1934; Mark Staples, “Yankee Network Has Cooperative News Arrangements with New England Press,” Broadcasting, December 1, 1931, 10; “Yankee Gets News at $1500 Weekly,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1934; “Yankee Net Gains Gallery Privileges,” Broadcasting, June 1, 1934, 22; “Yankee Net’s Trouble,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1934, 10; “Yankee Signs Five on News Programs,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1935. Yankee Network News Service, “Transcripts of News Bulletins,” August 29, 1934, Box 453, Folder 59–60, Records of the Federal Communications Commission, Record Group 173, National Archives, College Park, Md. On wire services and the standardization of the language of news, see, for example, Carey, “Technology and Ideology.” Shepard was the defendant in the case that set the “Mayflower Doctrine” that led to equal time provisions. In this case, the Mayflower Broadcasting Company petitioned the fcc to reject the Shepard-owned station waab’s renewal request because the station fre-



19 20

21 22

23

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27

28 29 30

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Notes to Chapter Two 205

quently editorialized against FDR, the New Deal, and other local politicians. See Federal Communications Commission, “Mayflower Broadcasting Co.”; P.H.R., “Recent Commission Decisions: Docket 5618 and Docket 5640,” 137; and White, The American Radio, 176–77. Smulyan, “Radio Advertising in Twenties America,” 309–10. To compare, only 35 percent of total network time sold. Of that total, sponsored percentages were still only 63 percent of evening programming and 44 percent of late evening programming (“35% of Network Times Sold as 1934 Begins; 104 3/4 Sponsored Hours,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1934, 12). Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Broadcasting, 102. See also Key, Pierre Key’s Radio Annual; “Listener Loyalty to a Single Station Noted in Rural Areas by Prof. Summers,” Broadcasting, July 7, 1941, 20; Broadcasting Yearbook 1942, 252–55; and “Tide Water to Sponsor Summer Sports Series,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1937, 72. R. L. Harlow, “Radio Audiences Form Class Tastes,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1934, 13. See “Play-by-Play National and American League Baseball,” Variety, May 23, 1945, 40; “Atlantic Bankrolls Yankee Net Football,” Variety, October 2, 1946, 41; “We Pay Our Respects To—John Shepard III,” 17; “Yale Game Sponsorship Again Secured by Yankee,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1937, 22. For Shepard’s license renewal forms, see Federal Communications Commission, “wean License Renewal Application,” Box 53, Folder wean, fcc Record Group 173, 54A0390, National Archives, College Park, Md.; and Federal Communications Commission, “wnac License Renewal Application,” Box 45, Folder wnac, fcc Record Group 173, 54A145, National Archives, College Park, Md. The time shift allowed Shepard to get around Major League Baseball’s restrictions on live re-creations (“Yankee Network Baseball Features,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1935, 4). Federal Communications Commission, “fcc Annual Financial Reports of Broadcast Stations 1937–1947 Colonial Network,” 1939, Box 243, Records of the Federal Communications Commission, Record Group 173, National Archives, College Park, Md. Battema, “In the Beginning,” 17–18; “We Pay Our Respects To—John Shepard III,” 17. Smith, Voices of the Game, 24. Battema, “In the Beginning,” 10. Crepeau, Baseball, 185–86. Chicago was home to William Wrigley, who broadcast Cubs games free to all radio stations starting in the early 1920s. There are other questions that arise here as nbc was dead set against broadcasting baseball on its Chicago stations and Cincinnati was home to independent wlw. Battema, “In the Beginning,” 15. Douglas, Listening In, 147. “The American Woman’s Jury,” Variety, November 29, 1944.

206 Notes to Chapter Two 33 34

35 36

37 38

39

40

41

42

43 44

“The Answer Man,” Variety, May 9, 1945, 24. Thanks to Donna Halper for pointing out the existence of this show. Other cities matched up by the show include Buffalo and Rochester; Cleveland and Detroit; Minneapolis and St. Paul; Dallas and Fort Worth; Kansas City and St. Louis; San Francisco and Los Angeles. Additional variations included the north side of Chicago versus the south side and a New York City version entitled Battle of the Boros (“Noxzema Quiz Program Covers Dallas–Ft. Worth,” Broadcasting, January 13, 1941, 17). For an example of the program’s use of local geographical references, see Kensinger Jones, “Quiz of Two Cities Radio Script,” September 14, 1947, Papers of Kensinger Jones: Writing and Speeches, Radio Scripts, 1947–1949, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University. Berland, “Radio Space and Industrial Time,” 116. For a similar argument about ethnic identity and accents in linguistic slapstick, see Douglas, Listening In, 103. Likewise, Jason Loviglio in Radio’s Intimate Public, 38–69, and “Vox Pop,” 89–112, traces the changing renditions of the American public’s “national voice.” Smith, Voices of the Game, 21–24. Herman S. Hettinger, “What Lies Ahead in Broadcast Advertising,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1935, 7–8. Streeter suggests that the audience commodity may have emerged not out of market pressures, but because of political pressures to create a market. Alternative methods of “paying for radio, whether licensing fees, radio receiver taxes or taxpayer funded broadcasting all required the involvement of the government to regulate and administrate” (Selling the Air, 285–86). Streeter further notes that radio executives were particularly wary of government intervention because of the industry’s origins in the “radio trust,” and may have preferred the appearance of a traditional market, even if it wasn’t clear what they would be buying and selling. Lumley, Measurement in Radio, 238–39. Significantly, this was two years before Hooper entered the field and perhaps foreshadowed industry dissatisfaction with the recall methods of CAB (the Crossley Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting). See Chappell and Hooper, Radio Audience Measurement, 4. For more on the problematic history of broadcast ratings, see Meehan, “Why We Don’t Count,” 117–37. “Regional Chains Offer Distinctive Service for Broadcast Advertisers,” Broadcast Advertising, November 1930, 26. “The Yankee Network News,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1933, 15. In the early 1930s the standard ratings service was the Crossley Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting. However, this service was paid for by the networks and focused on network program audiences. Smaller stations lacking resources used frc engineering surveys of coverage area to claim the entire population within that area as their audience (Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 126).



Notes to Chapter Two 207

45

Also on the page is an “article” claiming that over 17,000 letters were sent in response to the fifth anniversary show of the Robert Burns program, thereby addressing the other generally recognized means of evaluating show popu­ larity (“The Yankee Network News,” 15). Radio Annual 1946, 178. Yankee Network Inc., “The Yankee Network Mutual’s Giant in New England,” Variety, October 23, 1946, 43. Yankee Network Inc., “Like Good Friends Who Are Always Welcome,” Broadcasting, January 13, 1941, 3. “Educating Public to Note Earmarks of the Racketeer,” Broadcasting, March 15, 1936, 41. Yankee Network Inc., “It Takes a Network to Sell New England,” Broadcasting, March 1934, 6. “Go Where They Live . . . To Sell Where They Buy,” Broadcasting, June 2, 1941, 3. S. H. Bliss, “The Local Station and National Advertising,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1932, 11. “Home and Merchandising,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1936, 9. The show Quizzing the Wives, mentioned earlier, provides an example of this kind of focused regional and local cross-media promotion. Its sponsor, the Boston Consolidated Gas Company, provided supplemental print promotional materials such as car cards for busses, posters, a place in mailings to gas customers, and letters to women’s clubs (to generate questions). These things worked to promote what the Yankee Network press releases termed “sponsorship-audience-station partnership” (“Quizzing the Wives,” Variety, February 22, 1945, 28). “Yankee Network Booth Feature of Drug Show,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1934, 45. Yankee’s cross-promotion and cultivation of retail trade demonstrates the importance of retail advertising for local stations. This was widely discussed in radio advertising trade journals. See, for example, Stanley Reed, “Linking Up Radio with Chain Stores, Broadcast Advertising, September 1929, 9; “Radio Displays Make Sales for Retail Dealers,” Broadcast Advertising, April 1930, 10–11; “A Store Wanted to Grow Up—And Did,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1936, 30; and Sandage, Radio Advertising for Retailers. Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising , 77–110; Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 82–86, 187–89. In an ad from 1933 Yankee described a successful campaign by Lin-X Acme Quality Floor Treatment. Lin-X sought to supplement its national Columbia shows. The company sponsored a biweekly program using Yankee Network talent and sales subsequently increased. Moreover, Yankee claimed, the campaign spread to other cities and in each case Yankee brokered distribution agreements for Lin-X products, something it claimed was “a typical example of dealer confidence in the Yankee Network and of merchandising co-operation. The Yankee Network can give the manufacturers [help] in obtaining immediate distribution in New England through local station sales

46 47

48

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50

51

52

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208 Notes to Chapter Two

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57 58

59

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pulling power” (“The Yankee Network Opens the Door to New England Markets for Lin-X,” Broadcasting, July 15, 1933, 25). “$319.60 Retail Sales for Every Man, Woman and Child! That’s a Market!,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1937, 3. Radio Annual 1940, inside back cover. Data from a census conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1935 as reported in “First Census Data Cover New England,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1936, 20. Herman S. Hettinger, “Broadcast Advertising in 1936 and 1937,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1937, 10. In 1938, the 327 stations affiliated with but not owned by the networks received payments from the networks totaling $9,696,156. Of these stations 238 showed net profits that totaled $10,753,650 (an average of $45,183) while 89 stations lost a total of $1,057,494 (an average of −$11,882). That same year the 310 unaffiliated stations lost an aggregate of $149,107. Of the unaffiliated stations, 162 showed profits that totaled $888,493 (an average of $5,485) and 148 showed net losses that totaled $1,037,600 (an average of −$7,011) (Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 33). In 1934, 70 percent of the networks’ annual programming was noncommercial. Of this, 80 percent was music, and nearly 25 percent of that was classical. Only four and three-quarters hours of network offerings were sponsored. See, for example, Gilbert Cant, “No Letup Seen in Summer Broadcasting,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1934, 5–6. For a study of the failure of network radio to offer public service programming, see Siepmann, Radio’s Second Chance, 60–62, 70–79. Summers, A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 52, 84. “Programs Are Fit to Net’s Schedule by Agent Design,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1934, 35; Benjamin Soby, “Audience Limitations and Advertising,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1934, 13. Initially nbc and cbs charged their affiliates for these programs, but cbs eliminated the practice in 1928 while nbc continued to charge affiliates until 1935 (Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 40–42). C. E. Midgley, “What Happens to Spots—A Mortality Study,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1936, 57. While the exact percentage of the return was calculated on a sliding scale, station compensation averaged between 25 percent and 27 percent of the net agency share (Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 32; H. M. Beville, “Memo to Mark Woods,” September 26, 1935, Folder 684, Records of nbc, Library of Congress). According to William Hedges, prior to 1935 nbc conducted operations under a gentleman’s agreement. The network had first option in a specific time period. Programs were provided without cost. Station gave networks sixteen free hours for each



67

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73 74

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Notes to Chapter Two 209

twenty-eight-day period to get basic revenue. The network paid wire line costs, provided sustaining programs, and acted as sales agent and promoter for the station. The next twenty-five hours were paid at the rate of 20 percent of the gross time card rate that the network charged for the station, and the network absorbed discounts and agency commission. For the next twenty-five hours stations received 30 percent of the gross card rate and an overall rate of 37.5 percent. In contrast, many cbs contracts retained the option for all station time. Following the recommendations contained in the fcc’s 1941 “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” the Commission permitted stations to take programs from more than one network and limited the amount of time the networks could place under option in a given segment of time. Options were nonexclusive. They were not options against other networks but only against national sport or local business. There was some fear that in the nonexclusive options the most powerful stations in each community would pick and choose programs but this did not happen. Shepard testimony in front of the fcc Chain Broadcasting Commission, fcc Communications Docket 5060, 5658–5676, quoted in Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 110–11. Additionally, in 1936 Shepard contended to nbc that cbs paid him the Yankee Network rate to feed cbs programming to Yankee affiliates in Lowell, Fall River, New Bedford, and Waterbury in order to provide “extra service to clients.” Shepard hoped to make the same deal with nbc but they wanted none of it ( John Shepard, “Letter to Frank Mason,” November 27, 1936, Box 51, Folder 31, Central Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison). David Rosenblum, “Memo to R. C. Witmer and Frank Mason,” June 25, 1936, Box 51, Folder 31, Records of nbc, Madison; Kroeger, “The History of Boston Radio to 1941,” 112. Socolow in “To Network a Nation,” 110–11, mentions this in the context of cbs’s 1935 contracts and their extension of option time. Kroeger, “The History of Boston Radio to 1941,” 111; “wtic Is Purchased by Cherry & Webb,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1936, 8. “Networks Shift Their New England Lineups,” 7–8. “F. M. Russell to R. C. Patterson, Jr.,” June 18, 1935, Station Relations, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Shepard reportedly accepted the regular nbc compensation formula for wnac to become an affiliate of nbc-Red while wean and wicc affiliated with nbc-Blue. The affiliation of weei and wpro with cbs meant that they could no longer affiliate with the Intercity-Group, an East Coast regional chain. Although nbc did not prohibit its stations from affiliating with other networks, Broadcasting reported that there was a “gentlemen’s agreement” that wnac would not remain affiliated with Mutual. Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 62, 64.

210 Notes to Chapter Two 77

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90 91

The exceptions to this were the so-called immovables, which seemed to be the most highly regarded public interest programs (ibid., 52, 63). “Networks Shift Their New England Lineups,” 7–8. The complete clause in the contract reads: “You agree not to permit the use of station wnac facilities by any radio network other than that of the National Broadcasting Company, except that wnac facilities may be used as part of the Yankee Network of New England but only (1) for programs broadcast only by New England Stations in said Yankee Network; (2) for programs broadcast by the Yankee Network of New England together with one New York City station, provided that such programs are not broadcast simultaneously by stations in cities other than New York City and those New England cities served by stations of the Yankee Network; and (3) for those network programs . . . which you have advised us you already committed to broadcast over Station wnac in station time” (David Rosenblum, “Memo to Lenox Lohr,” July 31, 1936, Box 99, Folder 91, Station Relations: weei, Records of nbc, Madison). John Shepard, “Letter to David Rosenblum,” September 2, 1936, Box 51, Folder 31, Central Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison. David Rosenblum, “Letter to John Shepard,” September 5, 1936, Box 51, Folder 31, Central Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison. Frank Mason, “Memo to A. L. Ashby,” September 19, 1936, Box 51, Folder 31, General Correspondence, Records of nbc, Madison; “New Lineup of Yankee Network Is Announced by Mr. Shepard,” Broadcasting, August 1, 1936, 14; “New Shepard Net Linked to Mutual, New York Groups,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1936, 26; Radio Annual 1942, 302. Rosenblum, “Memo to Lenox Lohr.” Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 41; Rosenblum, “Memo to Lenox Lohr.” William Hedges, “Memo to Roy C. Witmer,” October 11, 1938, Box 100, Folder 50, Records of nbc, Madison. John Shepard, “Letter to Lenox Lohr,” June 11, 1939, Box 73, Folder 73, Central Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison. Lenox Lohr, “Letter to John Shepard,” June 27, 1939, Box 73, Folder 73, Central Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison. John F. Royal, “Memo to William Hedges,” December 15, 1939, Box 73, Folder 73, Central Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison. William Hedges, “Letter to P. W. Morency,” May 10, 1940, Box 100, Folder N.A., wtic: 1932–1940, Records of nbc, Madison. “Early Decision in Monopoly Report,” Broadcasting, January 20, 1941, 26. Although Shepard was frequently at odds with the nab he had maintained an active presence in the organization. See “1,100 at Cleveland for War Convention,” Broadcasting, May 11, 1942, 15–16; “Five Stations Quit nab Membership,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1936, 18; “New Industry Association Started by nib,” Broadcasting, September 29, 1941, 7–8; “Shepard Named Radio Capital



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Notes to Chapter Two 211

Liason,” Broadcasting, February 2, 1942, 7, 40; “Shepard Removes His Stations from Membership in the nab,” Broadcasting, May 25, 1942, 24; “Shepard: No. 1 Man,” Broadcasting, February 2, 1942, 32. John Shepard, “Letter to John Norton,” September 23, 1941, Box 87, Folder 1, Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison. [N.A.], “Draft Letter to John Shepard,” October 22, 1941, Box 87, Folder 2, Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison; William Hedges, “Letter to John Shepard,” Sept. 25, 1941, Box 87, Folder 1, Correspondence Files, Records of nbc, Madison; Shepard, “Letter to John Norton.” “fm Amazes Advertising Men,” fm Magazine, December 1940, 5–6; Benjamin Gross, “How to Demonstrate f-m,” fm Magazine, November 1940, 16–19; John Shepard, “What the f-m Broadcasters Have to Say,” fm Magazine, November 1940, 3; A. F. Sise, “More fm Service in New England,” fm Magazine, April 1941, 9–14. O. B. Hanson, “Memo to Niles Trammell,” October 20, 1939, Box 73, Folder 73, Records of nbc, Madison. Paul DeMars, “Gateway to Finer Entertainment,” fm Magazine, November 1940, 39–43; Paul DeMars, “w1xoj Exceeds Expectations,” fm Magazine, March 1941, 30–35. “First Staticless Network,” Newsweek, June 30, 1941, 54–55; “Nation-Wide Hook-up of fm Stations Would Be Linked by Radio Relays,” New York Times, August 4, 1943, 112. “American Network Activities,” fm Magazine, November 1941, 29; William Lewis, “The Possibility of a Fifth Network,” fm and Television, November 1944, 18–20. “whdh Joins Blue; cbs Gets wtag,” Broadcasting, March 30, 1942, 12; “Yankee Sale Presages Blue Alignment,” Broadcasting, December 21, 1942, 11. Frank Russell, “Memo to Niles Trammell,” October 11, 1940, Box 81, Folder 43, Records of nbc, Madison. The Commission declared that “freedom of speech on the radio must be broad enough to provide full and equal opportunity for the presentation to the public of all sides of public issues . . . The public interest—not the private—is paramount” (Federal Communications Commission, “Mayflower Broadcasting Co.”). wean and wicc had maintained dual affiliation with Blue and Mutual (“7 More Affiliates Acquired by Blue,” Broadcasting, April 6, 1942, 10). “The Blue’s Making News in New England,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1942, 6–7. “ ‘Marjorie Mills Hour’ First Contract Signed by New England Regional Chain,” Broadcasting, August 31, 1942, 12. “John Shepard 3d Continues as Yankee General Manager,” Broadcasting, January 11, 1943, 16, 41–42; “Rubber Yankee,” Time, January 18, 1943, 88; “Shepard Denies Yankee-Blue Overtures toward Affiliation,” Broadcasting, December 28, 1942, 9, 53; “Yankee Sale Presages Blue Alignment,” 11; “Yankee Sale to General Tire Expected to Get fcc Sanction,” Broadcasting, January 4, 1943, 11.

212 Notes to Chapter Three 106

107

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109 110

Roy Witmer, “Memo to Frank Mullen,” May 29, 1945, Box 114, Folder 71, Rec­ ords of nbc, Madison, 2. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 11–23. Hilmes argues that the national network form was determined by the interactions among interconnection, network formation, and commercial advertising. Also worth noting is that waab showed a loss of $15,000 for this period as a result of its new position as a “key station” for the Colonial Network, which increased its costs (Journal of the Federal Communications Bar, “Recent Commission Decisions: In the Matter of Yankee Network Inc. (waab), Docket No. 4723,” 16. Federal Radio Commission, Commercial Radio Advertising, 44. A total of $141,336 of Colonial’s net sales of $190,758 were derived from Mutual programs. This means that regional programs accounted for $613,000 in net time sales for the two networks (Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 32, 105).

Chapter Three  Brought to You via Electrical Transcription 1

2

3 4

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7 8

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“Crosby’s Clicko ‘Wax Radio Network’ Debut for Philco History Making,” Variety, October 23, 1946, 1. “Crosby Distress Signals Up,” Variety, November 13, 1946, 23; “On Wax,” New Yorker, June 14, 1947, 20–21. “Shellac Order Strikes Disc Production,” Broadcasting, April 20, 1942, 10. “Perfectionist,” Time, December 30, 1946, 80. Moreover, these percentages don’t account for the use of test recordings in rehearsals, a common industrial practice. Brylawski, “Armed Forces Radio Service,” 333–46; Martin Codel, “British Can Show Us How to Use Discs,” Broadcasting, October 19, 1942, 10, 50. These categories are indebted to James Lastra’s “four-term dialectic” of device, discourse, practice, and institution. See Lastra, Sound Technology and the Ameri­ can Cinema, 13. Williams, Television, 128; Susman, “Culture and Communication.” For an encyclopedic institutional and economic history of transcriptions, see Biel, “The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting before 1935.” For social and cultural histories of the interplay between local communities and national culture (including consumer culture), see Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920; and Barron, Mixed Harvest. For an insightful reading of how these American cultural traditions of local control and national power informed the use and place of radio in individual communities, see Kirkpatrick, “Localism in American Media, 1920–1934.” McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 252. For a history of groups that opposed a commercial network system, see McChesney, Telecommunications, 38–108.



Notes to Chapter Three 213

11

Sterne, The Audible Past, 182–83. For a more in-depth discussion of the institutional and social linkages in this process, see Wurtzler, Electric Sounds. Although I wrote this chapter before reading Wurtzler, there are a number of parallels in our readings of the language of “transcription” and “signification” that understood sound reproduction as a mimetic or representative process. See Wurtzler, Electric Sounds, 229–78. Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, 212; Millard, America on Record, 140–42; Morton, Off the Record, 25–28. Millard, America on Record, 126–29. Ibid., 143–45. Morton in Off the Record, 27–28, notes that aftermarket producers soon offered pickups that adapted the Orthophonic system to an electrical amplifier such as those found in radio speakers. Millard, America on Record, 150–55. Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema, 180–215. Franklin, Sound Motion Pictures, 38–47. Other film companies objected to licensing the Western Electric Vitaphone system through Warner Brothers— erpi could then recover patent rights to both Vitaphone and Moviephone from Warner and Fox Film. See Read and Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo, 287. Gomery, Shared Pleasures, 215–29. See also Lafferty, “The Early Development of Magnetic Sound Recording in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures, 1928– 1950”; and Crafton, The Talkies. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 67–68. On the telegraph and telephone, see Carey, “Technology and Ideology”; Czitrom, Media and the American Mind; Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880– 1918; Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New; and Sconce, Haunted Media, 21–58. On early radio and “seeing” faraway events, see Covert, “We May Hear Too Much,” 119–219; Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899–1922; and Sconce, Haunted Media, 59–92. For an intellectual and cultural history of the idea of communication, see Carey and Quirk, “The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution”; and Peters, Speaking into the Air. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 156. Ibid., 299. Caldwell, “Legal Restrictions on the Contents of Broadcast Programs,” 244. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 88–89. While Soat grossed over $1,000,000 in 1927 and contracted with national sponsors such as General Baking and Chrysler Motors to produce programs, the combination of limited sound quality, short record lengths, and objections from the networks prevented him from expanding. See Biel, “The Making and Use of Re­cordings in Broadcasting before 1935,” 404–18; and Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 71. Bureau of Broadcasting Radio Digest, “When You Use Spot Radio Advertising—Write, Wire, or Phone,” Broadcast Advertising, April 29, 1929, 1.

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22 23 24 25 26

27

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“The Phonograph Joins the Radio Set,” Radio Broadcast, December 1927, 112–13. There is also a parallel to the Edison Tone Tests, which were designed to establish live and recorded performances as comparable. See Thompson, “Music Machines and the Quest for Fidelity.” Read and Welch in From Tin Foil to Stereo, 290, note that Victor offered some radio-phonograph machines with an optional attachment that permitted home recording. However, they note, the players used a blunt stylus that proved “quite ineffective.” Hilmes, Broadcasting and Hollywood, 141. Goldsmith and Lescarboura, This Thing Called Broadcasting, 284. Douglas, Listening In; Napoli, “Empire of the Middle,” 83–99. Douglas and Napoli are influenced by Raymond Williams’s famous concept of mobile pri­ vatization; see Williams, Television, 20. For a critique of this argument, see Gripsrud, “Television, Broadcasting, Flow,” 18–21. Goldsmith and Lescarboura, This Thing Called Broadcasting, 285. For a similar position expressed by another nbc spokesman that was published at the same time, see Frank Arnold, “High Spots in Broadcast Technique,” Broadcast Advertising, May 1929, 8–9. National Broadcasting Company, Broadcast Advertising, 27. Ibid., 28–35. “Aylesworth Assails Recorded Programming in Chicago Speech,” Broadcast Advertising, December 1930, 7. Gomery, Shared Pleasures, 225. For an account of the impact of film sound on movie theater orchestras, see “ ‘Canned’ Programs Good and Bad,” Radio Broadcast, August 1927, 206; Kraft, Stage to Studio, 33–58; and Passman, The Deejays, 36. See also Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 71. Biel, “The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting before 1935,” 593– 667; “For the Record,” 119. “For the Record,” 120. Hilmes, Broadcasting and Hollywood, 143–44. Bordwell, Thompson, and Staiger, The Classical Hollywood Cinema. wbs was not alone in using this strategy; see Ted Nelson, “Canned Programs: Smaller Stations May Now Present Excellent Entertainment through the Use of Advertising Recordings on Wax Discs,” Radio News, March 1930, 815, 851; J. R. Spadea, “A Defense of Transcriptions: A Reply to Mr. Aylesworth’s Attack,” Broadcast Advertising, January 1931, 9. A. J. Kendrick, “Recorded Programs—What They Are and How They Are Prepared,” Radio News, August 1930, 108–10. Kendrick had a long history in the recording industry. Before coming to Sound Studios he was the general sales manager for Brunswick Recordings. Raymond Soat’s National Radio Advertising Company used the Brunswick studios in Chicago during the mid1920s. Sound Studios prepared several shows for nbc such as the Palmolive,



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Edison, Chase, and Sanborn Choral Orchestra and the Johnson and Johnson features. Kendrick was not alone; see, for example, the response of erpi’s William Harkness to Howard Cowan’s address to the 1929 nab conference, “The Pros and Cons of Recorded Programs,” Broadcast Advertising, November 1929, 8. A. J. Kendrick, “Progress in Recorded Programs,” Radio News, July 1931, 14. For an example of industrial views of transcriptions as a threat, see “Are the Chains Losing Their Grip?” Broadcast Advertising, October 1930, 8; and “Aylesworth Assails,” Broadcast Advertising, December 1930, 7. Goldsmith and Lescarboura, This Thing Called Broadcasting, 286–87. “Chevrolet Uses 170 Stations,” Broadcast Advertising, October 1930, 14. An earlier example of a more limited and selective transcription campaign that was also cited in the trade journals was Maytag’s campaign in 1928. See “So-A-Tone Broadcasts by Electrical Transcription,” Broadcast Advertising, April 1929, 33; R.A. Bradt, “Maytag’s Experience with Recorded Programs,” Broadcast Advertising, November 1929, 36; and “1929 Sees Rapid Growth in Recorded Programs,” Broadcast Advertising, January 1930, 10. Kendrick, “Progress in Recorded Programs,” 14; World Broadcasting System, “By This New Method You Can Have a Nation-Wide Radio Broadcast with Local Dealers Tying In,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1932, 4. Millard, America on Record, 142–47. R. K. White, “Spot Broadcasting by Electrical Transcription,” Broadcast Advertising, August 1931, 7. Douglas, Listening In, 86. For a description of the problems of reverberation in makeshift radio studios of the 1920s, see Millard, America on Record, 267. Biel, “The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting before 1935”; Kendrick, “Recorded Programs,” 110; Millard, America on Record, 173. Morton, Off the Record, 18–19. World Broadcasting System, “Making Radio a First Class Advertising Medium,” Broadcast Advertising, November 1930, 3; Kendrick, “Recorded Programs,” 108–10; A. J. Kendrick, “There’s Music in the Air,” Broadcast Advertising, February 1930, 12. Another example of this type of technical distinction involved the stylus as the point of connection between the record and the tone arm. It was responsible for “reading” the mechanical sound imprint on the disc and converting it into an electrical signal. Phonograph systems used steel styli that were larger and duller than the diamond-tipped styli on transcription cutters and playback machines. Diamond tips permitted more precise etching onto the original record and more defined pickup of those impressions in playback. J. Dale Healy, “Processing Radio Transcriptions,” Radio and Television News, February 1950, 31–34, 108; Kendrick, “Recorded Programs,” 108; Thomas Calvert McClary, “Electrical Transcription for Broadcast Purposes,” Radio News, January 1932, 564–65; Edward Reynolds, “How Electrical Transcriptions Are Made,” Radio News, September 1938, 18–19, 58.

216 Notes to Chapter Three 58

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M. A. Hollinshead, “Recordings: Their Place in Broadcasting,” Broadcast Advertising, July 1931, 5. Sterne, The Audible Past, 246–56, 274–82. Lastra in Sound Technology and the American Cinema, 168, makes a similar point regarding sound engineers in Hollywood during the transition between the silent and sound eras. Yet while he argues that the status accorded to sound engineers’ judgments through their positions in radio stations, telephone companies, and engineering schools followed them when they moved into a new area of sound representation, I contend that the standards were themselves constantly contested as they intersected with different technological systems. R. K. White, “Spot Broadcasting by Electrical Transcription,” Broadcast Advertising, August 1931, 7; “Opposition to Disk Broadcasts Fading,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1932, 10. For another example of the equation of technical and perceptual fidelity in electrical sound reproduction, see Hollinshead, “Recordings,” 5–6. J. R. Poppele, “Some Practical Facts about Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, October 15, 1932, 27. Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema, 7–8. Production economy had been an issue earlier. Spiraling program budgets caused some in the industry to worry about what they perceived as the waste associated with airing a show only once. The advertising consultant and Radio Broadcast magazine editor Edgar Felix predicted in 1927 that transcriptions would be the future of radio as rising production costs required programs to have a permanent value and to not contain mistakes. Transcription recording would allow the construction of radio programs along the lines of film editing, with scenes recorded at different times and then tested and rerecorded if judged inferior. See Felix, Using Radio in Sales Promotion, 200. Kendrick, “Recorded Programs,” 170. Compare this to the kind of multitracked recording of later tape-based recording or to filmic notions of the position of the take within a homogeneous series. See Taylor, Strange Sounds; and Théberge, Any Sound You Can Imagine. Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema. McClary, “Electrical Transcription for Broadcast Purposes,” 564–65. Ibid., 565. Indeed, Lastra in Sound Technology and the American Cinema, 207, notes that the mixing device, called an “up and downer” within the film industry, was first used by Warner Brothers in 1932. He sees it as materially and functionally embodying the new sound norms that emerged during the transitional period. For a history of architectural acoustics, see Thompson, “Dead Rooms and Live Wires” and The Soundscape of Modernity. The group did not hope to repeal the law but rather only to loosen its implementation. Instead of the existing regulation, which provided a ten-word script



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and required announcements prior to and after a recording, they hoped to allow more flexibility in phraseology and only require a single announcement per feature. See “1931 nab Convention,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1931, 7; see also “Asks Change in Disc Broadcast Order,” Broadcasting, June 1, 1933, 6. “Lafount Explains Order Affecting Transcriptions and Phonograph Disks,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1932, 14; Sol Taishoff, “Commission Orders Drastic Rule Revisions,” Broadcasting, December 15, 1931, 5. Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation. Slotten chronicles the continued tension between technocratic and nontechnocratic philosophies within policymaking procedures in both the frc and the fcc. Likewise, see Streeter, Selling the Air, in which he argues that frc and fcc policies were symptomatic of larger trends in technocratic thinking that were (and continue to be) central to both American capitalism and twentieth-century liberalism. Martin Codel, “New Tool in Advertising,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1932, 6. Thompson, “Music Machines and the Quest for Fidelity,” 131–71. “Pedro De Cordova . . . ” Broadcasting, December 15, 1932, 1. “Radio Drama Realism in Beech-Nut’s Serial Made by World System,” Broadcasting, December 1, 1932, 25. Barton Stebbings, “ ‘Tarzan’: A Modern Radio Success Story,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1933, 7. Old Time Radio: Tarzan [sound file], Creative Commons License, April 29, 2007, 2006; http://www.archive.org. Stebbings, “ ‘Tarzan,’ ” 7. “Opposition to Disk Broadcasts Fading,” 10. Barry Golden, “Some Views on Electrical Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, September 1, 1932, 7. World Broadcasting System, “With the Precision of a Homing Pigeon Your Message Will Go Home,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1932, 3. World Broadcasting System, “You Can Build Your Own Broadcasting Chain,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1932, 25. See also World Broadcasting System, “By This New Method,” 4. Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 95. “The Most Flexible Advertising Medium in the World,” Broadcasting, July 15, 1934, 39. World Broadcasting System, “Direct by Air: The wbs Straight Line Method to Radio Results,” n.d., Pamphlet 5353, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md. “Disk Program Nearly Trebled in 1930: Five Distinct Advantages of Use Cited,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1932, 8. A March 1, 1932, letter to Broadcasting from the Brown and Hart Advertising agency listed additional benefits to using transcriptions, including time shifting, the ability to pick and choose only the strongest stations (instead of

218 Notes to Chapter Three

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95 96

97 98

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a group of strong and weak offered by wired networks), and the possibility of repeat broadcasts. See Percy B. Brown, “The Other Fellow’s Viewpoint . . . Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1932, 17. “Radio Markets Inc. Is Formed by Deutsch for Local Stations,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1936, 36. Agencies were particularly worried because the Depression caused print advertising rates and volume to fall sharply. Raymond Morgan, “ ‘Chandu’—Sales Building Magician,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1933, 13. F. Arthur Elsey, “Why Beech-Nut Uses Disks,” Broadcasting, November 15, 1932, 32–33. Ibid., 32. Morgan, “ ‘Chandu’—Sales Building Magician,” 13; Jackson Taylor, “ ‘Chandu’ Programs Cover Population Area of 70,000,000,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1933, 12. Elsey, “Why Beech-Nut Uses Disks,” 33. It is interesting to note that Beech-Nut did not confine its use of radio to Chandu, even as it retained a flexible strategy of network, spot, and transcription. The company also sponsored a show called Unknown Hands that was produced by the World Broadcasting Company as well as the rca-Victor Recordings produced by Red Davis. The program ran on ten stations on the nbc-wjz network three times a week from 8:45 to 9:00 in the evening but also as a transcription on nineteen other stations. Ironically, for all its specialized continuity the show was described as “the story of an average boy” (“Beech-Nut Plans Drive with Net, Disks, Spot,” Broadcasting, September 1, 1933, 38). “nbc Enters Disk Field as Recorder of Spot Programs,” Broadcasting, March 15, 1934, 6. “E. P. H. James Speaks to New York Advertising Club,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1934, 13. Biel in “The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting before 1935,” 717– 842, also follows these internal debates in great detail, and he notes how nbc’s desire to protect its network operations generated conflict within the network as well as with rca. Michael Chanan in Repeated Takes, 60–62, 65–66, sees rca’s interest in nbc and Victor in terms of its attempts to vertically integrate its operations. See also, for example, Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production,” for a study of the struggles and forces within the field of cultural production. The employees of nbc, by virtue of their position within the dominant power structure, struggled to conserve the norms embodied in the network “field of forces.” National Broadcasting Company, “nbc Electrical Transcription Service: Its Growth and Volume,” May 11, 1937, Folder 526, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; David Rosenblum, Richard Cunningham, and Edgar Kobak, “Re-



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port of the Committee on Transcriptions to David Sarnoff,” October 24, 1934, Folder 529, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to Edgar Kobak,” September 24, 1934, Folder 527, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Lenox Lohr, David Rosenblum, Mark Woods, Lloyd Enger, “Memo of Discussion Regarding Electrical Transcriptions,” April 7, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. They were helped by a new recording and playback apparatus and sought to sell the machines to stations, which they did with some success beginning in January 1933. See Radio Corporation of America, “Transcription Turntables by rca Victor,” Broadcasting, May 1, 1933, 6. Chanan, Repeated Takes, 66; Read and Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo, 291–93. C. W. Horn, “Memo to Richard Patterson,” November 11, 1933, Folder 530, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress. The network established a Local Service Bureau two years prior to sell spot advertisements on both its owned and operated and managed and operated stations, but now it was receiving pressure from regular affiliates to act as station representative for them. Brainard was nbc’s director of commercial programming, Horn was nbc’s chief engineer, Withycomb was vice president of station relations, and Witmer was the head of nbc’s Sales Division. Thomas’s position is not clear—he had formerly been in charge of Westinghouse’s radio station operations and may have joined nbc after the network began operating Westinghouse’s stations in 1932. See “nbc to Add 4 Stations,” New York Times, March 8, 1932, 26. A. L. Ashby, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson,” December 12, 1933, Folder 528, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; “Floating Schedule Placement of Spots in Time Brackets Urged by Grabhorn,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1937. C. W. Horn, “Memo to Richard Patterson” (November 11, 1933). Interestingly, Horn viewed transcriptions as a method of forestalling competition from Armstrong’s “high fidelity” service, which was in a very early stage of development. Transcriptions offered a higher sound quality than could be obtained with wire distribution. Merlin Aylesworth, “Memo to Richard Patterson,” December 11, 1933, Folder 528, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Bertha Brainerd et al., “Committee Report to Richard Patterson,” December 22, 1933, Folder 530, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. These companies served 173 national and regional advertisers (“Listing of Transcription Producers,” Broadcasting, October 1, 1933, 23). A report commissioned by nbc outlined the revenues of its potential competitors, including wbs, Scott Howe Bowen, and Edward Petry. See C. W. Horn, “Memo to Richard Patterson,” February 28, 1934, Folder 528, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Richard Patterson, “Memo to Merlin H. Aylesworth,” December 20, 1933, Folder 530, Records of nbc, Library of Congress.

220 Notes to Chapter Three 115

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Not incidentally, Black was immediately called upon to aid the cause of the transcription supporters. In December 1933 he issued a twelve-point report on why nbc should enter the transcription field. See John F. Royal, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson, Jr.,” December 23, 1933, Folder 530, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. “Stations Discuss New nbc Service,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1934, 13. National Broadcasting Company, “nbc Electrical Transcription Service: Its Growth and Volume.” David Rosenblum, “Report on Transcriptions to R. C. Patterson,” November 10, 1934, Folder 527, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. According to handwritten annotations from President Richard Patterson of nbc to Horn on a memo, Witmer had sent his memo to Patterson while Horn was out of town, perhaps on vacation. It took nearly two weeks for Horn to respond, at which point the issue had already been turned over to his executive vice president, Mark Woods. See Horn, “Memo to Richard Patterson” (November 11, 1933); and Enger, “Memo to Edgar Kobak,” 6. Enger, “Memo to Edgar Kobak,” 7. Ibid., 9. Enger felt that the rca-Victor transcriptions were not yet on par with Western Electric’s recordings. Rosenblum, Cunningham, and Kobak, “Report of the Committee on Transcriptions to David Sarnoff,” 4. Lohr et al., “Memo of Discussion Regarding Electrical Transcriptions”; “Like the Discs,” Broadcasting, August 31, 1942, 36. National Broadcasting Company, “nbc Electrical Transcription Service: Its Growth and Volume,” 1. Ibid., 3–5. “nbc Offers Discs to Local Sponsors,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1934, 20; “nbc Syndicated Programs Service Transcription Activities Increasing,” Broadcast News, February 1935, 34–35; National Broadcasting Company, “Why Not Do It the Easy Way?” Broadcasting Yearbook 1942, 203. In 1938 nbc commanded approximately 25 percent of the total transcription field business: namely, $1,300,00 out of $5,000,000 (Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” 18). Niles Trammell, “Memo to Edgar Kobak,” November 27, 1935, Folder 684, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress. See, for example, C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to Lenox Lohr,” May 25, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Lenox Lohr, “Memo to Niles Trammell,” November 27, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Alfred Morton, “Memo to Lenox Lohr,” July 1, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; David Rosenblum, “Memo to Lenox Lohr,” May 14, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; R. H. White, “Memo to R. C. Witmer,” May 13, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress.



Notes to Chapter Four 221

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National Broadcasting Company, “Recommendations for Procedure in Transcription and Spot Broadcasting Field,” 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Lohr et al., “Memo of Discussion Regarding Electrical Transcriptions,” 2. Roy Witmer, “Letter to Mr. White,” May 15, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to L. R. Lohr,” January 17, 1939, Folder 526, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Lenox Lohr, “Draft Memo to David Sarnoff,” December 1, 1938, Folder 526, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Lenox Lohr, “Memo to David Sarnoff,” February 13, 1939, Folder 526, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; National Broadcasting Company, “Detailed Plan for Unification of Rcam and nbc Transcription Activities in Accordance with Mr. Sarnoff ’s Proposals,” February 8, 1939, Folder 526, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; National Broadcasting Company, “nbc Electrical Transcription Service: Its Growth and Volume”; David Sarnoff, “Letter to Lenox Lohr and G. K. Throckmorton,” December 6, 1938, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Lohr, “Memo to David Sarnoff,” 4. The cbs purchase of wbs ultimately occurred through the network’s purchase of Decca (“Decca Buys Broadcasting System,” New York Times, July 8, 1943, 27). Lohr, “Memo to David Sarnoff,” 5–6.

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Chapter Four  On the Spot 1

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4 5 6 7

As Michael Schudson argues, the role of most advertising in marketing and sales is highly “circumscribed.” While one cannot deny advertising’s great power, it generally seeks people who already use a product or are predisposed to one and then reminds them of a particular brand. See Michael Schudson, Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion, 9. “Audible Ad Teaches Public How to Say ‘Bulova,’ ” Broadcast Advertising, January 1930, 19; “What Makes Bulova Tick?” Sponsor, March 28, 1949, 24. Edward Petry and Associates, “Petry’s Folly,” Printer’s Inc., July 28, 1938, 328– 29; Edward Petry, “The Origin of Bulova Radio Time Signals and Station Representatives,” 1964, Folder 20B, Broadcast Pioneers Collection, Library of Ameri­can Broadcasting, College Park, Md.; “What Makes Bulova Tick?” 67–68. “What Makes Bulova Tick?” 23. Spigel, “Introduction,” xxiv. Williams, Television, 80–90. Corner, Critical Ideas in Television Studies; Ellis, Visible Fictions; Gripsrud, “Television, Broadcasting, Flow”; Mellencamp, High Anxiety, 77; White, “Flows and Other Close Encounters with Television.”

222 Notes to Chapter Four 8

9

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11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23

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26 27 28

For a schematic of the economic and cultural distinctions of modernity/postmodernity and Fordism/flexible accumulation, see Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. Baughman, “ ‘Show Business in the Living Room’ ”; Boddy, Fifties Television; Dell, “Wrestling with Corporate Identity”; Kepley, “The Weaver Years at nbc”; and Schwoch, “Selling the Sight/Site of Sound,” address the influence of radio advertising models on television, but they focus on national network operations rather than on spot broadcasting. For a critique of Weaver as the originator of magazine style announcements and women’s variety programs, see Hilmes, Radio Voices, 274–81. Peters, “The Gaps of Which Communication Is Made” and Speaking into the Air. For application of this idea to radio audience evaluation, see Newman, Radio Active, 29. Douglas, Listening In. See Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 89–94; and Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 46. Smulyan, Selling Radio, 128–29. Ibid., 76. Bertha Brainard, “No Formula Is Found for Radio’s Theatre,” New York Times, October 19, 1930, 144. Dixon, Radio Writing, 86. Hilmes, Broadcasting and Hollywood, 83. F. H. Lumley, “Habits of Radio Audience Analyzed,” Broadcasting, February 1, 1933, 11. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 108. Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Broadcasting, 263–65. Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising, 637–38. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 110–16; Ohmer, George Gallup in Hollywood, 28–30. Hilmes, Broadcasting and Hollywood, 86–87; Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 105–8. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 155. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 152; Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 62; Meyers, “Admen and the Shaping of American Commercial Broadcasting, 1926–1950,” 190, 230–31; Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 292. Doerksen, American Babel, 82. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 102–8. For a discussion of these programs, see Craig, “ ‘The More They Listen, The More They Buy.’ ” For a discussion of the network’s expansion of their national mass to include rural farmers, see Kirkpatrick, “Localism in American Media, 1920–1934,” 290–300. For an excellent discussion of the dynamics of translocal localism, see Grundy, “ ‘We Always Tried to Be Good People’ ”; Lange, Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly; Malone, Don’t Get above Your Raisin’; and Wolfe,



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“Triumph of the Hills.” In a similar vein, “hillbilly” programs complicate this story because of the contradictory relationship that country music has with the concept of authenticity. Although the location of rural audiences in the white zones meant that clear channel stations like wls, which aired the National Barn Dance, and wsm, which broadcast the National Barn Dance and, later, the Grand Ole Opry, were located in large metropolitan areas. For an argument about the ability of country music on the radio to foster community identities, see La Chapelle, “ ‘That Mean Ol’ Oakie Boogie.’ ” They included expert monologues, testimonials or dialogue, dramatic skits, and musical jingles—the four major styles of mid-1930s radio commercials (Newman, Radio Active, 29). Significantly, among the middle third, three-quarters used spot exclusively (Lloyd Rosenblum, “Spot Looms Larger on Radio Horizon,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1935, 22). C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to M. J. Woods,” November 30, 1934, Folder 527, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress; Robinson, Radio Networks and the Federal Government, 131. Feuer, “The Concept of Live Television,” 12–21. “Chevrolet’s 211,000 Radioads,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1936, 18; “Chevrolet’s Discs Enter Second Year,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1936, 16. Points of comparison offered by Broadcasting to emphasize the amount of air time this represented included a pile of 26,453 records weighing 6.5 tons and measuring 122 feet in height. Bruce Robertson, “Spot Series Turn to Multi-Station Method,” Broadcasting, March 15, 1937, 11. “Goodrich Dealer Discs,” Broadcasting, July 15, 1937, 77; Charles Person, “Gas Industry Combines Discs and Network,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1936, 62. C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to L. R. Lohr,” April 24, 1936, Folder 525, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, xxi. Vaillant, “Bare Knuckled Broadcasting.” Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed. “General Household Gets Results with Local Disc Tieups,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1935, 52. This related to ideas of schedule balance, for the industry consensus was that a good station would offer something for everyone. “$36 Will Put Your Transcriptions on khj Los Angeles for Fifteen Minutes” (advertisement), Broadcasting, January 15, 1935, 23. Blayne Butcher, “Plotting Spots—The Multi-Station Trend,” Broadcasting, October 15, 1936, 17. Robertson, “Spot Series Turn to Multi-Station Method,” 11. Meyers, “Admen and the Shaping of American Commercial Broadcasting,” 192.

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Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 277–84. For a history of the Hummerts, including their relationship with Blackett-Sample-Hummert, see Cox, Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory . J. Frank Beatty, “Big Summer Ahead—Spot Placements Soar,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1937, 16. “Program Syndicate Is Started by Blackett-Sample-Hummert,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1936, 16. Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 253. “nbc Sets Up Adjusted Rate Structure,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1935, 7, 48; Socolow, “To Network a Nation.” From 1937 to 1941 the number of commercial sponsors on networks shrank 25 percent even as the networks’ profits increased by 50 percent. By the start of the Second World War, eleven top advertisers accounted for over half of network revenue (Bernard B. Smith, “What’s Wrong with Broadcasters,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1942, 83–89). R. R. Baker, “ ‘Home Folk’ Appeal of Small Station,” Broadcasting, May 1, 1933, 13; S. H. Bliss, “The Local Station and National Advertising,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1932, 11; “Local Shows Make Good,” Broadcasting, May 15, 1936, 6. One example from the Philadelphia station wfil was the thrice-weekly Melody Man Show. This show played hillbilly music and was aimed at rural listeners. Like many locally produced shows it had contests where listeners ­could write in to receive movie tickets from local theaters. Sig­nificantly, the program was the brainchild of the wfil station manager, Donald Withycomb. Withycomb was the former vice president of station relations for nbc and a supporter of spot sales in the network. See “The Local Program Brings Results for National Sponsors,” Broadcasting, August 1, 1935, 20. John M. Dolph, “Building the Successful Small Program,” Broadcasting, December 15, 1936, 62–63. The timing is also striking: cbs had depended on the Don Lee Regional Network for distribution of its programs but, as Dolph wrote, cbs was severing its relationship with Lee in order to strengthen its position (“Networks on the West Coast to Be Realigned on December 20th,” Broadcasting, December 15, 1936, 22). For a more detailed account of West Coast absences in the national networks, see chapter 1 and Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 95. For more on Los Angeles radio broadcasting during this time, see Williams, “From ‘Remote’ Possibilities to Entertaining ‘Difference,’ ” 40–45. Herman S. Hettinger, “Broadcast Advertising in 1936 and 1937,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1937, 9–10, 66. Hettinger and Neff, Practical Radio Advertising, 94. Ibid., 88. This is not to say that the advertising agencies did not sometimes see these local stations simply as gateways to a market they might not understand. Warren Dygert, a New York University marketing professor and an account



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Notes to Chapter Four 225

executive at the F. J. Low Advertising Agency, described small stations as being like “the good small country newspaper with an owner who ties his institution into local interests,” which develops “a loyalty and confidence on the part of the listener which can be easily transferred to the advertiser who uses the station” (Dygert, Radio as an Advertising Medium, 225). For another instance of the equation of small town stations with local newspapers, see “General Household Gets Results,” 52. Michael Biel examines music library systems as programs syndication in his exhaustive history of early recorded radio, “The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting before 1935,” 384, 500–66. This strategy repeated parent company erpi’s strategy of leasing sound playback and amplification equipment to movie theaters. See “Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1935, 97; and Therese Cassell, “Letter to Warren F. Williamson,” September 25, 1951, Folder Correspondence: World Broadcasting System, Williamson Business and Media Archives, Mahoning Valley Historical Society, Youngstown, Ohio. “New Disk Service Offered by World,” Broadcasting, September 1, 1933, 8; “Score of Broadcasters Sign for wbs Series Shown at Convention,” Broadcasting, October 15, 1933, 16. Garrod, Crawford, and Kressley, World Transcriptions Original Series, 1–11268. “Three New Series Added by wbs to Program Service,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1935, 26. Primary materials created by wbs are incredibly scarce. This next section relies on pamphlets that the company sent to the National Association of Broadcasters in 1939. Although the picture they present is of the program service’s mature operation, I believe they represent the types of advice and services that the company offered in previous years. See World Broadcasting System, “Sales Possibilities of World Weekly Continuity Service,” March 15, 1939, Pamphlet 5358, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md., 7. Ibid., 11. “Directory of Transcription and Recording Producers,” Broadcasting Yearbook 1935, 80. Associated Music Publishers, “You Hear the Round Richness of Them All,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1936, 19; MacGregor and Sollie, “Commercially Tested Electrical Transcriptions Open Your Door to a Bigger Audience,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1935; Standard Radio Advertising Company, “43 Leading Stations Have Found a New Road to Profits through the Use of Standard Program Library,” Broadcasting, May 1, 1935, 21. Horning, “Chasing Sound,” 54. Horning’s dissertation provides a fascinating history of the day-to-day practices of sound engineers in the twentieth century. In addition, the profusion of transcription producers meant that some firms were not reliable, a reputation that carried over into television production. See Moore, “Syndication of First-Run Television Recording,” 9.

226 Notes to Chapter Four 69

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Associated Music Publishers, “The Verdict of a Critical Jury,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1936, 29; “Gross Time Sales $140,000,000 in 1937,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1938, 9–10; “Library Programs Put Local Sponsor in Dominant Place,” Broadcasting, February 15, 1936, 13; “September Time Sales up, Library Discs Going Well,” Broadcasting, November 1, 1935, 8. World Broadcasting System, “Fifty Case Histories,” January 1, 1939, Pamphlet 3040, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md. C. P. MacGregor, “Program Production Guide,” 1935, Records of the C. P. MacGregor Company, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Other companies like wbs also produced numerous dramatized one-minute announcements for national companies to place on a spot basis for the nearly 50 percent of the country’s commercial radio stations that used its equipment (“Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1935, 97). “War Has Little Effect on Spot Activity,” Broadcasting, May 18, 1942, 28. “Gross Time Sales $140,000,000 in 1937,” 9–10. George Payne, “Memo to David Rosenblum,” December 23, 1935, Folder 325, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. “Discs Popular: Transcribed Program Is among First Ten on wtmj,” Broadcasting, October 1, 1935, 28; C. E. Young, “Main Street of the Air Counts Noses,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1936, 16. Robinson in Radio Networks and the Federal Government, 179, quotes the testimony of William Hedges for the fcc’s chain broadcasting investigation. “Ovaltine Discs Replace Network in Four Cities,” Broadcasting, October 15 1935, 22. The degree of affiliate elimination of network programs caused a big enough stir for nbc to reconsider its objections to split networks. See Mark Woods, “Memo to Richard C. Patterson,” August 28, 1935, Folder 294, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Roy Witmer, “Memo to Frank Mason,” February 19, 1936, Box 92, Folder 11, Records of nbc, Madison. He recommended removing spot announcements during the evening and creating live station-time programs where these announcements could air. See Niles Trammell, “Memo to Edgar Kobak,” November 27, 1935, Folder 684, Rec­ ords of nbc, Library of Congress. Roy Witmer, “Memo to Mark Woods,” December 7, 1935, Folder 325, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Dunlap, Radio in Advertising, 157; Lumley, “Habits of Radio Audience Analyzed,” 11. See, for example, Dunlap, Radio in Advertising, 157; and Lumley, “Habits of Radio Audience Analyzed,” 11. This was especially a concern for daytime radio advertising because the industry believed that the daily tasks of housewives made them listen more sporadically through the day than at night (Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 139–40).



Notes to Chapter Four 227

85

Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Broadcasting, 266–67. The amount of this proportion was determined by several different metrics in the network area but was largely based on network affiliation and the total amount of network programming carried. See Federal Communications Commission, “Report on Chain Broadcasting.” Austin C. Lescarboura, “How Much It Costs to Broadcast,” Radio Broadcast, September 1926, 367–71. Biow Company, “Bulova Time Contract with wtam,” December 31, 1929, Box 2, Folder 52, Records of nbc, Madison. A decade later the rates had dropped to between seven and fourteen dollars per evening time signal. See Niles Trammell, “Letter to R. Schuebel,” November 18, 1940, Box 75, Folder 12, Records of nbc, Madison. On a per-minute basis, the time signal rate would be fifty-four dollars per minute and the network program would be ninety cents per minute. Mark Woods, “Minutes of the June 6 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” June 7, 1933, Folder 821, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. This decision was the result of station pressure and was not without controversy within the organization. See Mark Woods, “Minutes of the August 10 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” August 10, 1933, Folder 788, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Mark Woods, “Minutes of the July 19 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” July 19, 1933, Folder 788, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; and Mark Woods, “Minutes of the July 25 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” July 25, 1933, Folder 788, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Mark Woods, “Minutes of the December 19 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” December 21, 1933, Folder 788, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Mark Woods, “Minutes of the October 25 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” October 25, 1933, Folder 788, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Demonstrating both the devaluation of day time and a desire to preserve its “class” image, the restrictions were only during the evening or between commercial and sustaining programs. See Mark Woods, “Minutes from the April 17 Control Board Meeting,” April 17, 1934, Folder 784, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Mark Woods, “Minutes of the April 24 Control Board Meeting,” April 24, 1934, Folder 784, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; and Mark Woods, “Minutes of the January 9 Meeting of Officers and Department Heads,” January 11, 1934, Folder 786, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. “Turning Down Spots,” Broadcasting, February 1, 1934, 18. Moreover, the station continued to accept “service announcements” like time or weather signals between 6:00 and 10:15 in the evening. H. H. Kynett, “Vacation Comments on Spot Broadcasting,” Broadcasting, September 1, 1934, 7. This is significant because Kynett had long been a supporter of spot broadcasting. See, for example, H. H. Kynett, “Spot Broadcasting as

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Viewed by the Advertising Agency,” Broadcast Advertising, December 1930, 14–16. Kynett, “Vacation Comments,” 7. “Ford Officials Protest Chain Breaks on Either Side of Network Programs,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1937, 16. “Fall Spot Placements Aim toward Record,” Broadcasting, August 1, 1937, 16–17, 46; “Spot Radio to Continue Upward in 1938,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1938, 13–15. “Gross Time Sales $140,000,000 in 1937,” 9–10. “Ford Officials Protest,” 16. “Ford Spot Deluge,” Broadcasting, November 15, 1936, 16. “Ford Officials Protest,” 16. Ohmer, “The Laws That Determine Interest.” “Agencies Join Station-Break Debate,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1937, 18, 108; Young and Rubicam Inc., “Letter to James W. Baldwin, nab,” February 17, 1937, Box 58, Folder 17, Records of nbc, Madison. For “selling moods,” see Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 260; and Ohmer, “The Laws that Determine Interest.” “Pryor Administers Spanking to Radio,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1937, 11. “Program Evolution,” Broadcasting, July 1, 1937, 52. “Agencies Join Station-Break Debate,” 108; “Ford Officials Protest,” 16. Young and Rubicam, “Letter to James W. Baldwin.” In this example Hedges complained that hitchhikers and cowcatchers were “very poor programming” because there was “no attempt to weave these announcements into the programming . . . as if they were chain breaks” (William Hedges, “Memo to Roy C. Witmer,” October 11, 1938, Box 94, Folder 3, Rec­ ords of nbc, Madison). “Action by Networks Forecast on Hitch-Hike Announcement,” Broadcasting, January 13, 1941, 22. “Summer Time Sales to Break All Records,” Broadcasting, May 12, 1941. “cbs Outlets Open Drive to Bar Hitch-Hike, Cow-Catcher Spots,” Broadcasting, June 21, 1943, 8. Columbia Broadcasting System, “cbs Invites Its Clients and Affiliated Stations to Remove a ‘Triple Threat’ against the Soundness and Success of Radio Advertising,” September 23, 1943, Pamphlet 303, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md., 1. Ibid., 406. Business Week, September 25, 1943, 99. See also “Return from Vacation,” September 7, 1950, Father Knows Best Radio Scripts, Papers of Eugene Rodney, ucla Arts Library Special Collections, Los Angeles, Calif. 27–29. “War Has Little Effect on Spot Activity,” 28. “$60,000,000 Spot Biz Bonanza,” Variety, November 9, 1944, 39; “S.R.O. On Webs Brings Boom for Indies Via E.T.S,” Variety, November 8, 1944, 38; “Spot

Notes to Chapter Five 229



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War Babies Seen Completely Sold Which Means Continued Bull Market,” Variety, October 18, 1944, 28. The issue of “Tuning Versus Listening” is discussed in Arthur C. Nielsen Inc., “New Facts About Radio Research,” March 21, 1946, Pamphlet 3338, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md. Figure 10 comes from Arthur C. Nielsen Inc., “Graphic Description of the Nielsen Radio Index Information,” May 1, 1946, Pamphlet 1833, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md. “Gabbers Sell in New Garb,” Billboard, November 20, 1943, 8. “Surveys, Spot Regulation Tossed Nab’s Way by Chi Radio Management Club,” Variety, August 23, 1944, 24. Spot announcements, of which 60 percent were transcribed, represented over half of the station’s income (“Spots on the Way Out,” Business Week, December 2, 1944, 81–82). Bannister is a fascinating figure in this regard. Five years later when he and several other affiliates saw networks as the instigators of fcc deliberation on removing the requirement for station identification, he threatened to organize nbc affiliates into an independent organization. For the regulatory context of this dustup, see Socolow, “To Network a Nation,” 316–17. Socolow, “Questioning Advertising’s Influence over American Radio.” Network affiliates aired seven more spot announcements a day than did nonaffiliated stations. However, small stations aired the highest number—eightytwo a day. Local retail spots represented 23 percent of large station spots, 57 percent of medium station spots and 77 percent of small station spots (Baker, “An Analysis of Radio’s Programming,” 62). A few examples include Free and Peters Inc., “Spot Radio Costs Less Today,” October 1949, Pamphlet 714, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park, Md.; “The Spot Figures Please,” Sponsor, December 1947, 62; “Selective: It’s a Basic Medium,” Sponsor, July 18, 1949, 29–30; “Spot: Its Acceptance Is Accelerating,” Sponsor, July 1948, 33–47; “Spot: Radio’s Fastest Growing Segment,” Sponsor, July 1947, 19–25; and “Spotlight on ‘Spot,’ ” Sponsor, August 1948, 94.

Chapter Five  People with Money and Go 1

2 3 4

A highly selective list of sources focusing on radio, television, and domestic space includes Brown and Dennison, “Integrating Radio into the Home, 1923– 1929”; Couldry and McCarthy, Mediaspace; Hay, “Locating the Televisual”; Keightley, “ ‘Turn It Down!’ She Shrieked”; McCarthy, Ambient Television; Moores, “Television, Geography, and ‘Mobile Privatization’ ”; Spigel, Make Room for TV; and Tichi, Electronic Hearth. Berland, “Angels Dancing,” 39. Sterne, “Sounds Like the Mall of America,” 45. As with constructions of audience commodity markets, these theories of

230 Notes to Chapter Five

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6 7 8 9

10 11

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13 14 15 16 17

18

19

20 21

listening did not always accurately reflect actual listening practices—after all, audiences always listened in myriad ways—but they did provide a consensus assumption on which broadcasters and advertisers could base decisions. For the importance of consensus ideas for the broadcasting industry, see Streeter, Selling the Air, 201. Issues of attention, distraction, and “periodized” modes of radio listening are developed in complementary projects by Kate Lacey and Susan Douglas. This chapter, in part, represents an attempt to bring together Lacey’s focus on generalized cultural modes of perception with Douglas’s emphasis on the modes engendered by program genres. See Douglas, Listening In, 7–11; and Lacey, “Towards a Periodization of Listening,” 279–88. Sterne, The Audible Past, 208–9. Czitrom, Media and the American Mind, 77. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 248. Page, “The Nature of the Broadcast Receiver and Its Market in the United States from 1922 to 1927,” 174–82. For discussions of the cultural reception of the radio receiver in the home, see Boddy, “Archaeologies of Electronic Vision and the Gendered Spectator”; Covert, “We May Hear Too Much”; and Smulyan, “Radio Advertising in Twenties America.” Douglas, Radio Manufacturers of the 1920’s, iii-xxi. “Reaching the Mass Market,” Radio Broadcast, January 1930, 142; Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 533. These figures may be too conservative. Thomas Eoyang found the average receiver cost in 1929 to be $133.50. It fell to $36.90 in 1934. Eoyang, An Economic Study of the Radio Industry in the United States of America, 89. George Wyncote, “The Radio Industry Today,” Radio News, February 1926, 11– 14; “Can Radio Become a Style Product?” Radio Broadcast, June 1929, 72–73. “Can Radio Become a Style Product?” 72–73. H. B. Richmond, “1930 as Radio Leaders See It,” Radio News, July 1930, 8. S. I. Cole, “Midget Sets to Be Popular,” Radio News, July 1931, 17. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 125. Ibid., 355. According to Eoyang’s higher figures the drop is more drastic. Between 1929 and 1934, the average price of a radio dropped nearly 70 percent, from $133 to $37. See Eoyang, An Economic Study of the Radio Industry in the United States of America, 89. “Every Seventh Home Got New Radio Set in 1935,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1936, 52. “Dots and Dashes: Discovers 2,450,000 New Radio Homes in America,” Radio News, August 1935, 68. “cbs Census Data,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1937, 71. “Nation’s Radio Bill Nearly 750 Million; Census Shows 22,501,670 Radio Homes,” Broadcasting, February 1, 1936, 44. There is also some evidence that



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these numbers may have undercounted the actual number of radios. A cbs poll conducted by Daniel Starch in 1934 found that 91 percent of the population owned a radio, a much higher percentage than the 65 percent given in the census. Moreover, 15 percent of all families owned more than one radio, a figure that rose to 35 percent for upper income levels (Gilbert Cant, “Four-Fifths of Radios Used in Daytime,” Broadcasting, December 1, 1934, 11). However, as Steve Craig notes in “How America Adopted Radio,” 187, regional and urbanrural differences in income meant that certain areas of the country were far less likely to be able to afford radio sets, even as their prices dropped. National Broadcasting Company and Columbia Broadcasting System, The Joint Committee Study of Rural Radio Ownership and Use in the United States, 8–10. “The Radio on the Auto,” Literary Digest, July 9, 1932, 14. There are surprisingly few scholarly treatments of the car radio. My account of the history of the car radio is indebted to Matteson, The Auto Radio; and Johns, “Music on Wheels.” For amateur car radios and early commercially produced sets, see Matteson, The Auto Radio, 53, 66–67. Cant, “Four-Fifths of Radios Used in Daytime,” 11. “Radio Book,” Time, April 27, 1936, 78. A total of 2,000,000 out of 4,000,000 sets sold was predicted in 1936 in “Station and Set Makers Oppose St. Louis Plans to Bar Receivers in Autos,” Broadcasting, December 1, 1935, 44. Other surveys found fewer car radios sold—1,700,000 out of 4,000,000 for 1936—but these discrepancies do not contradict the general trend (“cbs Census Data,” 71). “cbs Census Data,” 71; Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 533. For discussions of the gendered division between day and evening programming and audiences, see Hilmes, Radio Voices. Boddy, “Archaeologies of Electronic Vision,” 114; Boddy, “ ‘Shining Centre of the Home’ ”; Hilmes, Radio Voices, 32–33; Smulyan, “Radio Advertising in Twenties America,” 299–313. National Broadcasting Company, “Broadcasting as You Need It,” 1954, Box 679, Folder 11, Records of nbc, Madison. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 151–182; Wang, “Convenient Fictions: The Construction of the Daytime Broadcast Audience, 1927–1960,”144–51. For other examples, see Frank Arnold, “High Spots in Broadcast Technique,” Broadcast Advertising, May 1929, 6; Eve M. Conradt-Eberlin, “Making Friends with the Home-Makers,” Broadcast Advertising, September 1930, 5. cbs, “She Listens—In a Buying Mood . . . To ‘Radio Sales’ Stations,” Broadcasting, December 1, 1933, 29. Scannell, Radio, Television, and Modern Life, 64. cbs, “She Listens,” 29. Halsey Kellogg and Abner Walters, “How to Reach Housewives Most Effectively,” Broadcasting, April 15, 1932, 30.

232 Notes to Chapter Five 36 37

38

39 40 41

42

43 44

45

46

Ibid. Altman, “Television/Sound”; Modleski, “The Rhythms of Receptions.” For a comparative account of the role of women’s radio programming in scheduling daily routines in Great Britain in the 1930s, see Moores, Media and Everyday Life in Modern Society, 52–56. One genre that was an exception to this was hillbilly music programs. Although most often remembered for Saturday night staples like the Grand Ole Opry, other programs such as nbc’s Farm and Home Hour that were oriented toward rural listeners were aired in the early morning and noontime hours. Broadcasters expected farmers and other working-class families to both rise early and return home for a midday meal. See Craig, “ ‘The Farmer’s Friend’ ”; Malone, Don’t Get above Your Raisin,’ 78; Wik, “The Radio in Rural America During the 1920s”; and Wik, “The usda and the Development of Radio in Rural America.” Dunlap, Radio in Advertising, 157. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas; Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 139–40. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 276–84; Riney-Kehrberg, “The Radio Diary of Mary Dyck, 1936–1955”; Rouse, “Daytime Radio Programming for the Homemaker, 1926–1956,” 315–27; Smethers and Jolliffe, “Homemaking Programs”; Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 158–59. Even Mary Margaret McBride, among the most popular and iconic of women’s daytime talk shows, alternated between local and national distribution (Ware, It’s One O’Clock and Here Is Mary Margaret McBride, 4). For a continuation of this dynamic on television, see Cassidy and White, “Innovating Women’s Television in Local and National Networks.” For a popular account (with recipes!), see Birkby, Neighboring on the Air. Walter J. Damm, “A Store Wanted to Grow Up—and Did,” Broadcasting, October 15, 1936, 19; “Department Store Gives Some Hints on Radio Selling,” Broadcasting, April 1, 1936, 30; Halper, Invisible Stars, 104–6; “ ‘Marjorie Mills Hour’ First Contract Signed by New England Regional Chain,” Broadcasting, August 31, 1942, 12; Paul Morency, “Follow-up System Aids Household Feature,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1932, 15, 34; “Novel Department Store Broadcasts on wnac,” Broadcasting, October 1, 1933, 54. Passman, The Deejays, 51. Le Roy Mark, “Reaching the ‘Bacon and Egg’ Market,” Broadcast Advertising, August 1930, 5; Julian Bentley, “Large Listening Audience at 6 A.M.,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1934, 11. Biel, “The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting before 1935,” 702; Mark Woods, “Minutes of the May 22 Control Board Meeting,” May 22, 1934, Folder 784, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to Frank Mason,” December 34, 1934, Folder 527, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; C. Lloyd Enger, “Memo to William S. Hedges,” December 34, 1934, Folder 527, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. Singer, Arthur Godfrey, 40–43.



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Hettinger and Neff, Practical Radio Advertising, 192. Elbert Haling, “Quality Time in Fort Worth,” Broadcasting, August 15, 1936, 44. See Gabler, Winchell, for an account of the Lindbergh trial. See also Jaker, Sulek, and Kanze, The Airwaves of New York , 134–40; and White, “Martin Block and wnew.” Biow, Butting In, 129–30; Passman, The Deejays, 66, “Milkman Stan,” Time, August 14, 1939, 45. For conflicts between sponsors and networks over daytime blocks and franchises, see Wang, “Convenient Fictions,” 277–82. See also T. F. Driscoll, “Letter to Niles Trammel,” March 25, 1935, Folder 433, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; Wm. Burke Miller, “Memo to John Royal,” March 22, 1935, Folder 433, Records of nbc, Library of Congress; John F. Royal, “Memo to Roy Witmer Re: Audition Report Beneficial Management Corp,” October 25, 1935, Folder 433, Records of nbc, Library of Congress. The implications of sponsor control are discussed at length by Murray in “Broadcast Content Regulation and Cultural Limits, 1920–1962.” Barnouw, The Golden Web, 218; Passman, The Deejays, 47–48; Singer, Arthur Godfrey, 44. This technique was one shared by Mary Margaret McBride; see Hilmes, Radio Voices, 276. For an account of Yiddish radio and its relationship to the New York Jewish community, see Kelman, “Station Identification.” For radio in the 1930s produced by African Americans, see Barlow, Voice Over, 50–58, 94–97; Newman, Entrepreneurs of Profit and Pride; and Spaulding, “A History of Black Oriented Radio in Chicago, 1929–1963.” As Newman points out, the pioneering African American radio personality Jack Cooper embraced the brokerage system not only as an advertising model but also out of his “unrelenting efforts to expand and diversify programming” (56). Passman, The Deejays, 71. The evaluation of sponsor products was technique also legendarily associated with Mary Margaret McBride; see Hilmes, Radio Voices, 282. Some disc jockeys replicated the practice used by some network shows where the host made fun of the show’s sponsors. In that situation the advertising agency still controlled the program’s production. In contrast, with disc jockey programs the sponsor often had to cede control of the programming context in which their advertising message would be delivered, something that could lead to (but did not necessarily have to cause) changes to the program form. Eberly, Music in the Air, 187–90. Abbot, Handbook of Broadcasting, 262. “The Stylish Stylus,” Broadcasting Telecasting, September 19, 1955, 168. Lazarsfeld, Radio and the Printed Page, 181. At the time the hour-long wtic show was entitled The G. Fox Morning Watch Program and was sponsored by the Hartford department store G. Fox. The

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switch was likely due to the replacement of the program’s host at the time, Ben Hawthorne, who had been drafted with Bob Steele. See Lieberman, Radio’s Morning Show Personalities, 42. “Yankee Spends to Sell A.M. Music and News,” Billboard, November 20, 1943, 8. Lazarsfeld and Dinerman, “Research for Action,” 91. Ibid., 108. Herzog found that rural women were twice as likely as urban women to listen to serials. See Herzog, “What Do We Really Know About Daytime Serial Listeners?” 9. “Non-Listening Is Your Problem,” Sponsor, February 1948, 59–60. Hilmes, Radio Voices; Newman, Radio Active, 109–38; Razlogova, “The Voice of the Listener.” Martin and Segrave, Anti-Rock. At the same time nearly 10 percent of radio homes in the lowest income level (under $2,000 annual income) had two or more radios (Columbia Broadcasting System, Radio in 1937, 37; “Four out of Five Homes Now Have Radio,” Broadcasting, May 1, 1937, 11). Columbia Broadcasting System, The Very Rich. Likewise, a 1942 survey of Glencoe, Illinois—a wealthy suburb of Chicago—found that the average home had four sets (“Four Sets Per Home,” Broadcasting, December 7, 1942, 49). Columbia Broadcasting System, Radio in 1937, 41. Columbia Broadcasting System, The Very Rich, 1. On swing, pop music, and radio, see Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 68–70, 99– 128; Sanjek, American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century, 60, 123; and Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Sox, 97. I. Keith Tyler and the High School Students of the University School, High School Students Talk It Over, Bureau of Educational Research, Ohio State University, Columbus, 1937, quoted in Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Sox, 106. As a tantalizing side note Frank Stanton was pursuing his graduate work at Ohio State University at that time, so it may be worth speculating if he encountered this work and, if so, if it influenced his future decisions. cbs, “Radio Goes to College,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1938, 5. Maria Apsan, “Nielsen Will Start to Measure TV Habits of College Students,” New York Times Online, February 20, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com. With an average of 2.6 hours on the air and 3,000,000 car radios on the road, cbs figured 7,800,000 added hours of daily listening (“Is It True What They Say About Summer?” Broadcasting, May 15, 1936, 11). The figures from nbc were somewhat lower and found that car radios operated for sixty-five minutes a day (“nbc Finds Average Auto Radio Receiver in Operation More Than an Hour a Day,” Broadcasting, June 15, 1936, 18). Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising, 95. Columbia Broadcasting System, Radio in 1937, 16.



Notes to Chapter Five 235

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Likewise, radio dealers were urged to collaborate with local car dealers to exchange customer information. They reasoned that if a family could purchase an automobile then they were prime candidates for the purchase of a home or auto receiver (Earl Whitehorne, “Dealers and Salesmen! Join This Campaign of Progress,” Radio News, October 1933, 218). Columbia Broadcasting System, An Analysis of Radio Listening in Autos, 10. National Broadcasting Company, “Radio Takes to the Road,” 1936, Box 202, Folder 1, Clark Radioana Collection, Series 45, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC. Ibid. Similar rhetoric is found in a 1937 nbc advertisement promoting the audience created by the now 4,500,000 million car radios: “With America, nbc Network Programs have taken to the road. Automobile sets have formed new listening habits, dictated new sales policies. They have proved their right to be known as sound and effective sales makers for any advertiser.” Immediately following this praise, however, the advertisement reversed itself by noting, “All this listening is bonus. All supplementary to that vast audience for which you, as an advertiser, are paying—the 24,500,000 homes. . . . which have radio receiving sets installed this year, 1937” (National Broadcasting Company, “Now, 4,500,000 Cars Have Radios,” Broadcasting, June 1, 1937, 10). This advertisement also featured an image of a crowd around a parked car listening to a baseball game. “Radio Takes to the Road,” 1936, Box 202, Folder 1, Clark Radioana Collection, Series 45, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC. Ibid. Samuel Egert, “Build Your Own Auto Radio Receiver,” Radio News, April 1930, 894–96. Graydon Smith and Philip Eyrich, “Radio for Your Car,” Radio News, March 1930, 810–12. Katherine Hulser in “Visual Browsing” has described the experience of driving as a kind of auto flânerie, noting that the windshield framed images streaming by at great speed and trained drivers in a “mode of seeing that allowed a visual command of a wide range of objects without being in a physical relationship to them. . . . Viewing the passing scenes from behind a wheel integrated roadside elements into a fleeting but satisfying glance that had more to do with submerging oneself in an experience than surveying a lovely prospect” (20). Likewise, Margaret Morse, in “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction,” has argued that there is an experiential affinity between the attentive modes of car driving, television watching, and mall strolling. A. A. Leonard, “1930 as Radio Leaders See It,” Radio News, July 1930, 10. Of course, in contrast to this rhetoric the automobile could have another important relationship to radio and the home in areas where electricity was not commonly available. Prior to the rural electrification programs of the 1930s,

80 81

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84

85 86

87

88

89

236 Notes to Chapter Five

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97 98

99

100 101 102

90 percent of farm households had electricity (Craig, “How America Adopted Radio,” 189). In these communities the car battery was often used to power the radio (Podber, “Early Radio in Rural Appalachia,” 395–96). Williams suggests that “socially . . . [it] . . . is characterized by the two apparently paradoxical yet deeply connected tendencies of modern urban industrial living: on one hand mobility, on the other the more apparently self-sufficient family home” (Television, 20). He argues that between the 1920s and the 1950s, earlier types of public technology such as railways or city lighting were replaced by technology that simultaneously serviced the ideals of mobility and a home-centered way of living. Grigsby-Grunow Company, “Whatever You Want, Wherever You Are! With Motor Majestic Auto Radio,” in Matteson, The Auto Radio, 95. Macy’s, Motor to Music Wherever You Roam! Auto Radios at Low Macy’s Prices! 1937, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). Douglas, Listening In, 226. On the rhetoric of power and mastery in the automobile, see Gartman, Auto Opium, 54. For ways in which consumers took command of this, see Franz, “Narrating Automobility.” Arvin Radios, You’ll Smile Away the Miles When You Drive with an Arvin Car Radio, 1933, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). Arvin Radios, A World of Pleasure Follows You in an Arvin Car Radio, 1993, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). Representing older ideas of community and spatial interaction, multiple vehicle occupancy and stationary listening calls into question ideas of socially isolated drivers moving at great speed through “nonspace.” Columbia Broadcasting System, An Analysis of Radio Listening in Autos, 3. Sunday listening was 120 minutes in summer, 81 minutes in winter. Weekday listening was approximately one hour in both summer and winter. Saturday was the day of lightest listening at half an hour. National Broadcasting Company, “Radio Takes to the Road,” 1936, Box 202, Folder 1, Clark Radioana Collection, Series 45, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC. “Auto Accidents Ascribed to Effect of Noise on Eyes,” Science News Letter, July 16, 1938, 41; “Auto Radio Ban Opposed,” Broadcasting, September 1, 1936, 58; George Modie, “ . . . And Fix the Radio So My Wife Can’t Get Frank Sinatra While She’s Driving,” Broadcast News, January 1947, 62; “Radio vs. Driving,” Broadcasting, January 27, 1941, 34; “Station and Set Makers Oppose,” 44. Fortnale and Mills, Radio in the Television Age, 19. “Review: Automobile Radio,” Radio Broadcast, April 1930, 309. “Radio in Automobile Calls for an Ordinance,” New York Times, January 26, 1930, 19; “Regarding Radios in Automobiles,” Radio Broadcast, February 1930,



103 104 105

106 107

108

109

110

111

112 113

114 115 116 117 118

119

Notes to Chapter Five 237

200; Stuart Mahanay, “Current Comment: Bungling in Boston,” Radio News, April 1930, 921. “Regarding Radios in Automobiles,” 200. Petrakis, The Founder’s Touch, 102. Ralph Langley, “Relieve the Monotony of Driving with Auto-Radio,” Radio News, June 1930, 1083. See also the comments of J. E. Smith, president of the National Radio Institute, in Samuel Egert, “1930 as Radio Leaders See It,” Radio News, July 1930, 10; Arthur H. Lynch, “Current Comment: Auto Radio Aids Driving,” Radio News, June, 1930, 1088; James Millen, “1930 as Radio Leaders See It,” Radio News, July 1930, 11 ; Leonard, “1930 as Radio Leaders See It,” 10. Columbia Broadcasting System, An Analysis of Radio Listening in Autos, 17. Butsch in The Making of American Audiences, 205–7, views the individu­alization of audiences as an ideological positioning that prevented collective action. William Gittinger, “Holiday Listeners,” Radio News, July 1934, 8–9. Likewise, in Radio News’ annual prediction section Ralph Austrian, the general sales manager for Emerson, noted that “the compact, portable, universal set has definitely established a permanent place for itself in the radio industry. As a second or third set in the home, it fills a definite requirement and opens up a market of infinite possibilities for 1934” (Ralph Austrian, “What Can We Expect from Radio in 1934,” Radio News, January 1934, 391). at&t, Network Broadcasting [film], 1934, http://www.archive.org (site visited on February 12, 2004). rca, “And Now . . . The rca Victor Radio Pillow,” October 12, 1931, Box 202, Folder 12, George Clark Radioana Collection, Series 45, Smithsonian National American History Museum Washington, DC. E. Jay Quinby, “A ‘Pillowful’ of Music,” Radio News, February 1932, 730. In a similar vein Radio News opened a 1937 article entitled “Keeping Peace in the Family” by stating: “It happens only too frequently that a radio program which is one man’s pleasure is another man’s annoyance” ( John Strong, “Keeping Peace in the Family With ‘Silent Radio,’ ” Radio News, February 1937, 467). “Yeah! I Know It’s Silly,” Radio News, September 1938, 38. “Grandma Wouldn’t Miss One of Those Serials for Anything,” Broadcasting, January 20, 1941, 58. “29,397,000 Homes Have Radio Sets,” Broadcasting, February 3, 1941, 11. “Big Gain Shown in Set Production,” Broadcasting, January 1, 1941, 43. “Crossley Surveys Multi-Set Homes,” Broadcasting, December 28, 1942, 58. Passman, The Deejays, 109. Lanza, Elevator Music; Patnode, “Path Not Taken”; Radano, “Interpreting Muzak,” 449–50. Jones, “Music in Factories.” It is also worth noting that Muzak in many ways functioned like a transcription music library by offering scripts, playlists, and recordings. See “Muzak Hath Charms,” Time, July 10, 1950, 15.

238 Notes to Chapter Five 120

121

122 123

124

125

126

127

128 129

William Boddy in Fifties Television, 45, notes that radio receiver production increased between 1,200 and 1,500 percent between April 1942 and spring 1944 and that many in the radio industry recognized that radio set consumption alone could not sustain those levels of production and personnel. Even after the war, the radio industry was still managed by the Office of Price Administration, which allotted materials and set price structures. These controls favored the production of the smaller table sets over the larger models by a significant margin. A total of 85 percent of the allocations were for table models (“Postwar Radio Markets,” Radio News, May 1946, 13–14). fm Radio-Electronics Engineering, November-December 1943, 52–55. The great demand for sets cut down the cutthroat pricing practices of the prewar period for a time. However, as manufacturers formed to fill wartime military contracts converted to peacetime production the earlier competitive practices resumed (“Radio Sales to Rise,” Radio News, March 1946, 28). “Spot Radio News,” Radio News, December 1946, 12. Arvin Radios, Beautiful! 1946, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 4 Ways to Delight Your Family This Christmas . . . , 1946, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). Trav-Ler Radio Corporation, All through the House . . . Trav-Ler, 1948, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http:// scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). Zenith also used the same advertising appeals for its portables. An advertisement in Look Magazine from September 1947 advised potential consumers to “carry your fun from room to room with the ‘Holiday.’ ” The ad added that the Holiday model was able to pick up programs outdoors, thereby allowing you to “take your favorite programs wherever you go” (Zenith Radio Corporation, Carry Your Fun from Room to Room with The “Holiday,” 1947, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu (site visited on March 3, 2002). The majority of sets were table or portable models: 48 percent were table models, 33 percent consoles, 8 percent console combinations, 4 percent table combinations, and 7 percent portables (“Radio Market Survey,” fm and Television, March 1947, 69–70). Gruber, “Out-of-School Radio-Listening Habits of High School Students,” 326. Ibid., 327. Mary Celeste Kearney in “Recycling Judy and Corliss” provides a terrifically insightful analysis of the rise of teen-girl entertainment as a cross-media phenomenon during this period by using two properties, A Date with Judy and Meet Corliss Archer, both of which had radio incarnations as well as print,

Notes to Conclusion 239



130 131

132 133

134 135

136 137 138

139

140 141 142

143

comic, television, and film iterations. On the construction and growth of teenage markets, see Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage, 205–07; Massoni, “ ‘Teena Goes to Market’ ”; Palladino, Teenagers, 97–115; and Schrum, “ ‘Teena Means Business’ ” and Some Wore Bobby Sox. On teens and swing music, see Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Sox, 97–128. “$500,000 Program Sells $8,000,000 in Teen-Age Dresses,” Sponsor, March 1947, 28. “Teen-Age Market: ‘It’s Terif,’ ” Business Week, June 8, 1946, 74. “$500,000 Program Sells $8,000,000 in Teen-Age Dresses,” 30; “Teentimers Band Tie Up,” Variety, November 14, 1945, 34. “Listeners Are People . . . Not Homes,” Sponsor, May 1948, 28. “The Big Plus: Amazing Facts about ‘Outside the Home’ Listening,” Sponsor, July 4, 1949, 19–21, 47; “The Big Plus: Continuing Story Finds Out of Home Listening Offers 25% Bonus,” Sponsor, November 7, 1949, 21–23, 56–57; “Uncounted Millions,” Sponsor, July 4, 1949, 62. As a competitor of Crossley and Hooper, Pulse used a diary method to capture the sum of radio listening habits rather than using a telephone-based coincidental approach. This allowed the company to track out-of-home listening (“No Answer Answered,” Newsweek, July 3, 1950, 40). “Listeners Are People . . . Not Homes,” 132. “Radio’s Uncounted Millions,” Sponsor, April 24, 1950, 22–23. jwt News, “Media: Auto Radio Audience Affords Big Bonus,” November 14, 1949, Records of the J. Walter Thomson Advertising Agency, Duke University Special Collections Library, Durham, N.C., 2. who–am, “In Iowa They Turn on the Ignition—Then the Radio,” Sponsor, November 1948, 19. Meehan, “Why We Don’t Count,” 118. “Out-of-Home Listening Goes Commercial,” Sponsor, April 9, 1951, 54–55. Merlin Aylesworth, “Radio Is Doomed . . . But Its Stars Will Be Tops in Television,” Look, April 26, 1949, 66. Bernard Smith, “Television: There Ought to Be a Law,” Harper’s, September 1948, 34.

Conclusion 1 2

3 4 5

“Open-End Game,” Time, April 28, 1947, 66–68. For more on Colman and Ziv, see Becker, “A Syndicated Show in a Network World.” Hay, “Locating the Televisual,” 214. Ibid., 205–34; Lembo, “Components of a Viewing Culture.” Attention to the representations of place, modes of audience address, and audience experiences acts as a brake on reading too much formal continuity into institutional structures and formats. While there may be a formal similarity

240 Notes to Conclusion

between the transcription library–based programs of the 1930s and Alan Freed’s 45 rpm record disc jockeying in the 1950s, the two cannot be mistaken if heard. While moralists may have condemned equally the bobby-soxer Sinatra fans of the 1940s and the rock and roll “delinquent” Elvis fans of the 1950s, history does not equate these cultural formations.

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Index

A&P Gypsies (program), 29, 196n38 abc (American Broadcasting Company), 73, 77–78 absorption and deferral dynamic, 8–9 A. C. Nielsen Company, 147–48, 168 advertised products: announcers on, 160, 233nn55–56; automobile-related, 168, 171–72; brand-name establishment of, 61, 121, 124; crosspromotion and highlighting of, 61–62, 115, 207n54, 207–8n55; distribution issues and, 19, 28, 31–32; evaluations of, 233n55; examples and types of, 32, 144; identification with, 10, 119, 121; integrated vs. separated from program, 53–54, 105–6, 115–16, 119–22, 137–38; library services’ recommendations on, 131–32 Advertisers Radio Service (arc), 198–99n77 advertisers/sponsors: anxieties of, 7, 118–19; appeal of smaller programs for, 127–30; block programming

and, 161–65; car radio listeners and, 168–70, 235n83; controversies over station break spots and, 143–44; cross-promotion possibilities for, 61–62, 115, 207n54, 207–8n55; of daytime programming, 160–61; development of radio and, 36–41; exclusive representation favored by, 40; local and regional type of, 124–25; of local programming, 43–44; making fun of, 160, 233n56; national vs. local, 22, 117–18; network’s requirements for, 27, 31, 196n30; by percentage of network types, 63; percentage of radio time covered by, 205n20; programs “on spec” for, 64–65; of quiz shows, 207n53; radio advertising ideal of, 126; radio personalities named for, 119–20; selling regional audience to, 57–63; shift toward larger, 31–32; smaller audiences valued by, 32–34; split networks and, 20–21, 28–32; of sports programming, 55; stations

258 Index

advertisers/sponsors (cont.) purchased by, 75; supplementation and size of, 122–27; techniques and structural needs of, 19–21; technology and expansion of markets by, 23–26; teenage listeners and, 167–68, 180; time slot preferences of, 53; transcription campaigns of, 91, 215n49; transcriptions’ appeal for, 101–6, 217n90. See also advertised products advertising: appropriate techniques debated, 117–18; audience research shaped by, 9; capitalism and social legitimation linked in, 9–10; circumscribed role of, 221n1; controversies over station break spots in, 141–44; cross-promotion in, 61–62, 115, 207n54, 207–8n55; distribution issues and, 19, 28, 31–32; family circle trope in, 153; formal address and indirect associations in, 118–22; four major styles of, 223n29; geographically specific signifiers in, 105–6; goodwill and justification for, 13, 54–55, 87, 92, 104–5, 115–21, 128, 137, 141, 146, 188; handbook of, 129–30; hard vs. soft sell in, 105–6, 115–16, 119–22, 134; intimacy and presence ideas in, 100–101; listening experience and, 11; new strategy for, 137–44; programming content separate from, 53–54, 105–6, 115–16, 119–22, 137–38; programs without, 29; quarter hour segments in, 161; rationalization of local, 20–21, 39–41; repetition in, 134; “selective,” 35, 198n69; spots vs. sponsorship in, 146; tracking success of, 41–42; venues of, 199n83; World War II exemptions benefiting, 147. See also advertised products; advertisers/sponsors; markets and market

definition; spots and spot broadcasting; station representatives Aerovox Wireless Corporation, 154–55 African Americans: in melting pot of radio, 17, 18; as “other” in radio, 194n2; as radio market, 163, 186; as radio personalities, 233n54 Aitkin-Kynett (firm), 140–41 Allen, Fred, 4 amateur operators, 21–22, 119, 153 American Association of Advertising Agencies, 141 American Broadcasting Company (abc), 73, 77–78 American Network (fm), 73, 75 American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ascap), 84–85 American system of broadcasting, 79–81 American Woman’s Jury, The (program), 56 Amos ’n’ Andy (program), 32, 136 ampex (company), 78 Anderson, Benedict, 3 announcers: accents of, 56–57; on advertised products, 160, 233nn55–56; advertising spots by, 115–16, 120–21; Arthur Godfrey’s style, 160; content controlled by, 163–64; local newspaper music critic, 132; multiple locations of, 176 Answer Man, The (program), 56 Apothecary Magazine (periodical), 61–62 arc (Advertisers Radio Service), 198–99n77 Armed Forces Radio Service, 78 Armstrong, Edwin, 73 Arvin Radio Corporation, 172, 173, 178 ascap (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), 84–85



Associated Music Publishers, 132 at&t: alternative to, 73–74, 114; radio distribution monopoly of, 2, 21–22, 83–84; rates of, 30, 50, 203n7. See also Western Electric; wiredinterconnection network model Atlantic Coast Network, 75 attention and distraction: approaches to, 230n5; car radios and domesticity in, 170–75; commercials in context of, 116, 120–22, 150; concept of, 8–9; daytime management of, 120, 156–66, 226n84; jingles and other techniques and, 134, 148–49, 161; listening in, 11, 120; multiple-set households and, 166–70; new network strategies and, 152–53; nonlistening females on, 165–66. See also audience construction practices; listening experience; spaces of listening audience construction practices: audience reception and, 11; emerging field of, 45; limitations of, 20; postwar changes in, 181–82; quantitative analysis of, 45; of regional networks, 57–63; segmentation in, 14–15; station power and coverage in, 59, 125; station representatives’ role in, 11–12, 36, 40–46. See also markets and market definition audience participation programs, 55–57, 224n52 audiences: appeal of radio for, 21; assumptions about, 2–3, 92, 120–21, 142, 156; channel changing by, 147–48; “class” definition of, 32–33, 53–54, 119, 157, 166, 227n93; as commodity, 9, 20, 152, 193n25, 206n39; expectations of, 99–100; flow over time of, 118, 147–48, 161–62; individualization of, 151, 175–83, 237n107; letters of, 61, 207n45; local advertis-

Index 259

ing and, 127–28; local programming for, 21, 195n11; multiple identities possible for, 3–4; national networks’ concerns about, 136–38; national networks’ definition of, 22–26, 103; radio conventions understood by, 137–38; regional, 48–49, 52–63; resistance and accommodation by, 121–22; separation of sender from, 7, 118–19; smaller vs. larger, 10, 32–34; tactics to garner large, 162–63; teenagers as, 167–68, 179–80. See also audience construction practices; listening experience; mass audiences; niche audiences; radio ownership Audiotone Broadcasting System, 85 Austrian, Ralph, 237n108 authenticity, 98–99, 112, 222–23n28 automobile manufacturers, 141–42; Chevrolet, 91, 123–25, 129, 223n33. See also car radios; driving Automobile Radio Corporation, 171 Ayer, N. W., 128, 141–42 Aylesworth, Merlin, 87–88, 110, 182 Bannister, Harry, 42, 149, 200n97, 229n123 baseball programs, 54–57, 205n25, 205n30 Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne (bbdo), 65, 103–4, 143 Battle of Boros (program), 206n34 Bayer Corporation, 145 Bay State Broadcasting Company. See Colonial Network; Yankee Network Beech-Nut Corporation, 104–6, 218n98 Bell Labs, 93 Benton, William, 178 Berland, Jody, 56, 151–52 Biel, Michael, 218n101, 225n59 Biltmore Agreement, 204n16 Bing Time (program), 78 Biow, Milton, 117, 162

260 Index

Black, Frank, 110, 219n115 Blackett-Sample-Hummert (bsH), 126–27 blackface minstrelsy, 171 Blackstone Plantation (program), 29, 196n38 Blair, John, 35, 43–45, 199n84, 201n100 Block, Martin, 162, 165–66 block programming, 14, 161–66, 181. See also disc jockey shows “Blue Book” (fcc), 149 Bob Crosby Orchestra program, 64 Boddy, William, 237–38n120 Boston: radio ownership in, 166–67 Boston Advertising Club, 58 Boston Consolidated Gas Company, 207n53 Boston Globe, 56 Boston Herald-Traveler, 67 Boston Symphony Orchestra pro­ gram, 64 Bowen, Scott Howe: on liveness, 99–100; as nonexclusive station representative, 37–39; on sales, 199n79; Yankee Network as client of, 51–52 Bowker, Geoffrey, 19 Brainard, Bertha, 109, 219n108 broadcasting industry: approach to, 8–9; European vs. American models of, 191n5, 193n24; local and national conflicts among, 12; as local entities, 4; overcommercialization lament of, 149. See also radio; television Broadcasting Magazine (periodical): advertisements in, 38, 60–61, 85, 106–7; on Chevrolet’s advertising campaign, 123–24, 223n33; on merger talks, 200n90; on multiple radio sets, 177; on multiple station advertising, 125– 26; on network affiliates, 47, 67–69, 74, 209n75; on recorded presentation, 98; on sound effects and preproduc-

tion, 98; on specialized audiences, 33; on spot broadcasting, 42, 122, 140–43; on station representatives, 43 Broadcasting Yearbook (periodical), 132 Browder, Earl, 74 Brown and Hart Advertising agency, 217n90 Brunswick Recordings, 214n44 bsH (Blackett-Sample-Hummert), 126–27 Bulova, Arde, 162 Bulova Company, 115–17, 139 Burns, Robert, 207n45 Butcher, Blayne, 125–26 Butsch, Richard, 237n107 cab (Crossley Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting) ratings, 58, 196n38, 206n40, 206n44, 239n135 call letters announcements, 115, 138, 229n123 Camel Cigarettes, 64 Campbell Soup, 141–42 capitalism: development of transcriptions and, 80; social legitimation linked to, 9–10; technocratic thinking in, 217n74 card rate. See rates and revenues car radios: advertisement highlighting, 172–73; approach to, 231n24; cultural form and technologies of, 170–72, 174–75; day vs. evening use of, 169; drivetime programming for, 181; driveway moments with, 192n18; explosion of popularity of, 155–56; golden age image of, 151; income demographic of owners of, 168; multiple occupants listening to, 172, 175, 236n90; number of listening hours due to, 168–70, 234n76, 235n83; number of sets of, 154, 231n26 cbs (Columbia Broadcasting System): on car radio listeners, 168–69, 172;



as competition, 113; contract on time options, 135; coverage limits of, 27; hitchhiker, cowcatcher, and station break spot policy of, 145–46; homemaking show of, 157–58; integration promoted by, 19; live programs promoted by, 87–88; as national unifier, 2; on radio ownership, 166–67; rates and revenues of, 30–32, 76, 197n41; sales bureau of, 201n106; Shepard’s affiliation with, 47–48, 51, 64, 66–67; split networks and, 20–21, 28, 29, 31; station break spots and, 141–42; sustaining programs of, 29–30, 64–65, 208n64; teenage listeners and, 167–68; wbs purchased by, 221n135; wire access of, 86 Century of Progress Trade Fair (Chicago), 113 cfm (Chicago Federation of Musicians), 88 Chanan, Michael, 218n102 Chandu the Magician (program), 104–5 Chevrolet: air time for spots of, 223n33; supplementary spots of, 123–25, 129; transcription campaign of, 91 Chevrolet Chronicles (program), 91, 123 Chicago: African-American radio in, 163; Century of Progress Trade Fair in, 113; radio ownership in suburb of, 234n69 Chicago Federation of Musicians (cfm), 88 Chicago Herald-Examiner, 199n83 Chicago Roundtable of the Air (program), 163 Chrysler Motor Company, 213n26 classification systems: in knowledge production, 19; in network coverage, 23–26, Clear Channel, 193n33

Index 261

Cohen, Lizabeth, 195n15 Cole, S. I., 154–55 Collier’s magazine, 179 Colman, Ronald, 184 Colonial Network: advertisements of, 58–62; affiliate announcement of, 1; as case study, 12; control of schedule on, 67–68; finances of, 212n108, 212n110; gaps filled by, 48; key station of, 69, 212n108; as local, regional, and national entity, 48–49; origin and structure of, 50–51, 67; success of, 47 Columbia Broadcasting System. See cbs (Columbia Broadcasting System) commercial pragmatists, 41, 200n92 Communications Act (1934), 4, 5, 18 Conrad, Frank, 84 consumer culture: audience segmentation and, 14–15; “calling markets into being,” 193n26; good life and better living defined in, 10; radio in context of, 9. See also advertising; audience construction practices; markets and market definition Coolidge, Calvin, 85 Cooper, Jack, 233n54 Cordoba, Pedro de, 98 Coughlin, Father, 68 Couldry, Nick, 192–93n22 Cowan, Howard, 215n45 Craig, Steve, 230–31n21 Crary, Jonathan, 8 Crosby, Bing, 77–78, 184 Crosby, Bob, 64 Crosley (manufacturer), 155 Crosley, Powell, 55 Crosley Radio Corporation, 174 Crossley Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting (cab) ratings, 58, 196n38, 206n40, 206n44, 239n135

262 Index

cultural production: car radios and, 170–72, 174–75; challenges to, 10; specificity of, 8–9 cultural uplift concept, 22–23, 195n15 Curtin, Michael, 191–92n7 Czitrom, Daniel, 153 Damm, Walter, 198–99n77 Date with Judy, A (program), 238n129 Davis, Red, 218n98 daytime programming: audience attention sporadic in, 120, 226n84; devaluation of, 227n93; drivetime segment of, 181; for homemakers, 156–58; oscillating listening and, 165–66; problematics and spot broadcasting in, 152–53, 182–83; serial programs in, 66, 159–60; signal reliability and, 27–28, 196n33; smaller advertisers in, 127–30; sustaining programs as dominating, 53; typical spots on, 134, 147 Decca Records, 221n135 DeForest, Lee, 83 Dewey, Thomas E., 71 disc jockey shows: in daytime programming, 162–64; legacy of, 186, 188; library services compared with, 239n5; listeners’ desires highlighted in, 56; network broadcasting’s demise and, 6; showmanship and, 165–66; for teenagers, 180; World War II contests of, 177–78 Dolph, John, 33–34, 128, 224n54 Don Juan (film), 83 Don Lee Regional Network, 203n7, 224n54 Douglas, Susan: on attention and distraction, 230n5; on listening modes, 3–4, 8, 192n17; on mobile privatization, 194n10, 214n33; on quiz shows, 55 Down the Midway (program), 133

dramatic programming: advertising potential of, 105, 158–59; aesthetics of simulation in, 99; early experiments with, 85; mass-market type of, 152–53; sales of, 132; women as listeners to, 234n64; women producers of, 165–66 driving: accident rates and, 172, 174–75; advertisements linked to, 171–72; images framed by windshield in, 235n88; multiple occupants and, 172, 175, 236n90; pleasures of, 170–71. See also car radios Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder, 70, 145 Dygert, Warren, 224–25n58 Earnshaw-Young (firm), 104–5 economics: Fordist, 118; geographic differences in, 50, 203n5; selling audience based on, 62–63; technological system juxtaposed to, 19–21; of transcription recordings, 95–96, 101–3, 108, 125, 216n65 Ed and Zeb (program), 132 Edison Tone Tests, 98, 214n29 Egert, Samuel, 170–71 8xk (Pittsburgh), 84 81 Principal American Markets (map), 23 Electrical Research Products Inc. (erpi), 83–84, 213n18, 215n45, 225n60 electrification programs, 235n89 Elsey, F. Arthur, 104–5 Emerson (manufacturer), 155 Enger, C. Lloyd, 111 Eoyang, Thomas, 230n11, 230n17 erpi (Electrical Research Products Inc.), 83–84, 213n18, 215n45, 225n60 ethereal hearth concept, 153 ethnicity: spots geared to, 163 European public service models, 191n5, 193n24 Eyrich, Philip, 171



F. J. Low Advertising Agency, 224–25n58 Farm and Home Hour (program), 232n38 Father Knows Best (program), 147 fcc (Federal Communications Commission): on broadcasters’ public service responsibilities, 149; chain broadcasting hearings and report of, 72, 135, 137, 209n67, 226n76; fm experimental station and, 73; freedom of speech and, 74, 211n101; news copy submitted to, 52; policymaking process of, 217n74; on signal reliability, 28; on station identification, 115, 229n123; station relocation denied by, 67; station renewal request to, 204–5n28; stations’ complaints to, 66 Federal Radio Commission. See frc (Federal Radio Commission) Felix, Edgar, 216n65 Fessenden, Reginald, 84 Feuer, Jane, 123 fidelity concepts, 92–96, 220n121 film: aesthetic standards and, 89; authentic sound effects for, 98–99; mixing device for, 216n70; silent to sound transition in, 78–79, 216n60; sound motion technology for, 82– 83; transcription recording process and, 95–96; Vitaphone system and, 83–84, 213n18. See also theaters flow. See segmentation and flow dynamics; spatial and temporal flow Fly, James, 72, 74, 145 fm stations, 73–74 Ford, Art, 180 Ford Motor Co., 141–42 formats (postwar). See postwar radio Fox, J. Leslie, 41–42 Fox Film: Movietone system, 83, 213n18 frc (Federal Radio Commission): call letters rule of, 138; live radio empha-

Index 263

sized by, 89; policymaking process of, 217n74; transcription recordings ruling of, 88, 91–92, 216–17n72; on transcriptions vs. phonograph records, 97 Free and Sleininger (firm), 44, 45, 199n84 Freed, Alan, 239n5 freedom of speech, 74, 211n101 Friendly Neighbor, The (program), 133 G. Fox Morning Watch Program, The, 233n61 Galvin, Paul, 172, 174 Gammons, Earl, 140 gbi (Group Broadcasters Inc.), 51–52, 73 General Electric, 83 General Household Utilities, 125 General Mills, 147 General Tire and Rubber Company, 75 geographical identities: advertisers’ recognition of local, 121–22; con­ sumerism mapped in, 10, 119; demographic and spatial categories of, 20; development of transcriptions and, 80; marketing regional audience based on, 57–63; multiple station advertising and, 125–26; national networks’ classification of, 23–26, ; programming focused on, 52–57; spot sales and national brands in, 35–36; supplementary advertising spots geared for, 122–27; transcriptions and reaching specific, 101–6. See also local radio stations; niche audiences; regional networks; space and spatial relationships geography of media production, 19, 151–53, 191–92n7, 192–93n22 Gilman, Don, 30 Gilroy, Ralph, 204n9 Godfrey, Arthur, 160, 165–66 Golden, Barry, 100–101

264 Index

golden age narrative, 2–3. See also network radio era Goldsmith, Alfred, 86–87, 90–91, 97 Goode, Kenneth, 33 good life and better living ideal, 10 Grand Ole Opry (program), 222–23n28, 232n38 Great Depression: advertising dollars tight in, 39, 119–20, 127, 224n51; de­ clining sales of phonograph records in, 108; ideas about radio in, 200n92; radio ownership in, 154–55; rate re­ductions in, 30; transcriptions valued in, 101 Gretchen McMullen Household Hour (program), 61 Group Broadcasters Inc. (gbi), 51–52, 73 Guignard Review of Modern Composers, The (program), 133 Gulf (program), 144 Hall, Stuart, 10, 81 Hammond, Alfie, 32–33 Happiness Boys, The (program), 85, 119 Harkness, William, 215n45 Harlow, Roy, 53–54 Harper’s magazine, 182 Harrison, H., 82 Hauptmann, Bruno, 162 Hawthorne, Ben, 233n61 Hay, James, 9, 186–87 Hearst Radio, 67 Hedges, William S., 70, 72, 198–99n77, 228n111 hermeneutics: radio compared with, 7, 118–19 Herzog, Herta, 55, 234n64 Hettinger, Herman: on advertising, 63, 195n19; as audience intellectual, 41; on audiences, 33, 129; radio ad­ vertising handbook of, 129–30; on regional programs, 57

Hilmes, Michele, 157, 191n5, 193n24, 194n2, 212n107 Hoey, Fred, 56–57 homemaking and cooking shows: advertisement of, 157–58; advertisers’ disdain for, 158–59; impetus for, 156–57; on local stations, 159–60; product cross-promotion and uses on, 61; revenues from, 75; sponsorship of, 133; transcriptions of, 125 Hooper, Claude, 43, 206n40, 239n135 Horn, C. W., 27, 109–10, 219n108, 219n110, 220n119 Horning, Susan Schmidt, 225n68 Hulser, Katherine, 235n88 identity: multiple categories and mo­ dalities of, 3–4; national networks on creating national, 22–23; niche audiences and social, 45; spots geared to ethnicity, 163. See also geographical identities; individuality imagined community concept (Anderson), 2–4, 187 income levels: network affiliate locations and, 24, 195n23; radio ownership by, 154, 166–68, 234n68, 234–35n79 independent radio stations: listening habits survey by, 177; network affiliations and, 67, 72, 132; postwar proliferation of, 179–80; programming of, 55–57, 162–63; rates and revenues of, 64, 139; ratings and, 65; spots on, 90, 122, 134–35; transcriptions on, 94. See also local radio stations individuality: listening experience based on, 151, 175–83, 237n107; radio as embodiment of, 10 information network, 18–19 integral package theory of operation, 30–31 Intercity-Group, 209n75



Interwoven Pair (program), 119 Ipana Troubadours, The (program), 85, 144 J. Walter Thompson (firm), 42, 120 James, E. P. H., 107 Jarvis, Al, 162 Jazz Singer, The (film), 78, 83 Jell-O Hour (program), 144 jingles, 134, 148–49 Jolson, Al, 78 Jones, Billy, 119 Judis, Bernice, 162, 164 Karol, John J., 45 kdka (Pittsburgh), 81 Kearney, Mary Celeste, 238n129 Kellogg, Halsey, 158 Kendrick, A. J., 90–91, 95, 98, 214n44 Key, Pierre, 34–35 kfjz (Fort Worth), 160–61 kfwb (Los Angeles), 162 King Features, 199n83 Kirkpatrick, Bill, 191–92n7 Kobak, Edgar, 111, 136 Kynett, H. H., 140–41, 227n96 kyw (Chicago), 159–60 Lacey, Kate, 8, 230n5 Lady Esther’s Wayne King Orchestra (program), 29, 196n38 LaFount, Harold, 97 Langley, Ralph, 174 Lastra, James, 7, 8, 95, 212n6, 216n60, 216n70 Latham, John Ralph, 43 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 165 Lear, William, 172 Lennen and Mitchell (firm), 125–26 Lenthall, Bruce, 200n92 Leonard, A. A., 171 Lescarboura, Austin, 86–87, 90–91 library services: advertising and, 131– 34; control vs. autonomy issues and,

Index 265

129–30; disc jockeying compared with, 239n5; diversity of programs available due to, 131–33; emergence of, 13, 225n59; Muzak compared with, 237n119; recordings specifically for, 98–99, 112. See also sound-on-disc transcription recordings Life magazine, 42 Lindbergh, Charles, 85, 162 Lin-X Acme Quality Floor Treatment, 207–8n55 listening experience: advertising in­ dustry’s view of, 11; block programming and, 164–66; changes in space and mode of, 5, 8–9, 13–14; diverse styles of, 154; flow in, 118, 147–48, 161–62; hearing distinguished from, 192n17; housewives and conditions of, 156–58; ideal defined by broadcasters, 13–14, 152–53, 156, 168–69; ideal revised, 153; individualization of, 151, 175–83, 237n107; liveness and superior quality touted in, 86–87; “national voice” in, 56–57, 206n36; pleasures of driving linked to, 170– 75; quality and fidelity of transcrip­ tions for, 92–96, 220n121; spot broad­ casting’s role in shaping, 117–18; striped programming schedule for, 53; of students, 179–80; theories vs. practices of, 229–30n4. See also audiences; car radios; radio ownership; spaces of listening liveness and live programs: alternatives to, 130–34; challenges to, 81, 100–101; critique of, 99–100; ideological vs. ontological, 123; imagined community created by, 3; length of events and, 55; locally produced, 51; national networks’ promotion of, 87–88; phono­graph records compared with, 92; radio defined as, 79–80, 84, 86–89,

266 Index

liveness and live programs (cont.) 114; recorded for sale, 85; recorded programs compared with, 77–80, 214n29; recording of, 123; teen programs as, 180; transcription recording process similar to, 96–97; transcriptions as supplement to, 90–91, 94–95 localism: use of term, 191–92n7 local programs: cancellation threat for, 65–66, 68; as percentage of air time, 135; transcription libraries as kits for, 130–34; transcriptions for, 124 local radio stations: announcers’ accents on, 56–57; autonomy of, 117–18, 129–30; community announcements on, 159–61; community connections of, 59–60; complaints to fcc by, 66; legacy of, 188; library services for, 130–34; local businesses highlighted on, 123–24; loyalty of audiences for, 127–28; market size and, 26–27; national networks and, 22–23, 65–66; programming of, 21, 80, 159–65; rationalization of advertising on, 20–21, 39–41, 224–25n58; “rebirth” of, 14; spot broadcasting on, 34–36; spot revenue for, 65. See also independent radio stations; regional networks Lohr, Lenox, 70–71, 113 Lone Ranger, The (program), 113 Look magazine, 182, 238n125 Loviglio, Jason, 206n36 Low, F. J., 224–25n58 Lum and Abner (program), 132 Macy’s department store, 171 Mademoiselle magazine, 180 Majestic theater, 171 Major League Baseball, 54–57, 205n25, 205n30 Manhattan Merry Go Round (program), 70, 145

Marchand, Roland, 153 Marjorie Mills Hour, The (program), 75 markets and market definition: called “into being,” 193n26; data for, 44, 201n109; demographic and geographic categories of, 20; national networks’ definition and coverage of, 23–26; network-sponsor differences in, 28–32; political pressures to create, 206n39; segmentation and, 118; of spot broadcasting, 35–36; station representatives’ role in, 11–12, 34–36, 40–46; of Yankee Network, 57–63. See also audience construction practices; consumer culture Marshall Field’s department store, 159 Martin, Halloween, 159 Mason, Frank, 1, 136 mass audiences: national networks’ emphasis on, 6, 10, 43; radio as dominant media for, 153; spot broadcasting and, 200n97; strategy to appeal to, 166–70 mass production, 10, 124 Maxfield, Joseph, 82 Maxwell House, 147 Mayflower Broadcasting Company, 204–5n28 Mayflower Doctrine, 74, 204–5n28 Maytag company, 215n49 McBride, Mary Margaret, 232n41, 233n55 McCann-Erickson (firm), 104–5 McCarthy, Anna, 192–93n22 McChesney, Robert, 81 McClellan, George, 197n43 McGregor, Charles, 132 McLendon, Gordon, 6 McMullen, Gretchen, 61 Meehan, Eileen, 181 Meet Corliss Archer (program), 238n129 Melody Man Show (program), 224n52



Michelson, Charles, 132 Midgely, C. E., 65 Milkman’s Matinee (program), 162, 180 mobile privatization concept, 171, 194n10, 214n33, 236n90 Modleski, Tania, 158 mood programming, 14, 161–66, 181. See also disc jockey shows Morning Watch (program), 164 Morse, Margaret, 235n88 Morton, David, 213n15 Movietone system, 83, 213n18 musical clock programs, 159–62, 182–83 Musical Moments (program), 123, 129 music programming: audience attention not sustained for, 158–59; for car radio listeners, 170, 172–73; country or “hillbilly” type of, 222–23n28, 224n52, 232n38; in daytime programming of, 159–63, 232n38; ethnic genres of, 163; functional type of, 178; library services for, 130–33; as percentage of noncommercial programs, 208n61; phonograph records for, 162; recorded for sale, 85; recorded vs. studio musicians for, 87–88; recordings used for, 84–85; split network and, 29; station sound philosophy and, 164; as sustaining programs, 64–65; for teenagers, 167–68, 180; Top 40 in, 6, 189; transcriptions for, 77–78; World War II contests in, 177–78. See also disc jockey shows; library services; phonograph records; soundon-disc transcription recordings Mutual Network: affiliates of, 1, 66, 68–69, 72–73; formation of, 52; gentle­man’s agreement concerning, 69, 209n75; as nbc competitor, 113; regional programs distributed via, 49

Index 267

Muzak Corporation, 178, 237n119 My Favorite Story (program), 184 N. W. Ayer (firm), 128, 141–42 nab (National Association of Broadcasters), 72, 97, 142–43, 210–11n91, 215n45 Napoli, Phillip, 194n10, 214n33 National Association of Broadcasters (nab), 72, 97, 142–43, 210–11n91, 215n45 National Barn Dance (program), 222–23n28 National Broadcasting Company. See nbc (National Broadcasting Company) national networks: accountability in, 34; advertisements of, 60–61; audience concerns of, 136–38; audiences defined by, 22–26, 103; broadcasters’ definition of, 21–26, 101; on car radio listeners, 168–70, 234n76, 235n83; competition among, 27, 199n82; coverage limits of, 23–29, 48, 122; cowcatcher and hitchhiker ads on programs from, 144–50; hegemony of, 4, 5, 18, 72; legacy of, 185–89; limited, hybrid nature of, 19–20, 188– 89; listening ideal of, 13–14, 152–53, 156, 168–69; live programs pro­ moted by, 87–88; mass audiences emphasized by, 6, 10, 43; merger talks of, 40, 200n90; morning and afternoon sponsorships limited on, 53; multiple program sources as threat to, 1–2; program balance ideal of, 126–27, 223n41; rates of, 69–70, 76; recorded programs and, 12–13, 87–88; regional network audience compared with, 57–63; sales bureaus of, 44–45, 201n106; sponsors’ con­ flict with, 28–32; sports programming rejected by, 55; station break

268 Index

national networks (cont.) spots and, 137–44; strategies for multiple-set households, 166–70; transcription and recording services of, 106–14; vertical integration of, 218n102. See also network affiliations; specific networks National Public Radio (npr), 192n18 National Radio Advertisers, 199n83 National Radio Advertising Company, 214n44 nbc (National Broadcasting Company): affiliations and policy of, 1–2, 135–36; alleged merger talks of, 40, 200n90; baseball broadcasts opposed by, 55, 205n30; on car radio listeners, 169–70, 172, 234n76, 235n83; coverage limits of, 24–25, 27; development plan of, 23–25; hitchhiker, cowcatcher, and station break spot policy of, 145, 147; integration promoted by, 19; live programs promoted by, 87–88; Local Service Bureau of, 219n107; music programming of, 232n38; networks defined by, 22, 26, 101; owner of, 86, 90, 218n102; phonograph records and, 90, 159–60; program placement options of, 39; rates and revenues of, 30–32, 76, 197n41, 197n53, 199n79; recording of programs on, 123; regional network’s conflicts with, 60–61, 64; sales bureau of, 44–45; Shepard’s affiliation with, 60–61, 66–75; split networks and, 20–21, 28–30, 69–70, 226n78; spots and revenues of, 134–35; station break spots and, 140–42; sustaining programs of, 29–30, 64–65, 208n64; teen programming of, 180; transcription and recording services of, 106–14, 218n101, 220n127; wire

access of, 86. See also nbc-Blue; nbc-Red nbc-Blue: characteristics of, 27, 68; contract shifted to nbc-Red, 67, 72; coverage of, 24–25, 27, 30–31; fcc mandated divestment of, 73; restructuring of, 74–75; stations affiliated with, 1, 31, 66, 209n75; time option policy of, 68 nbc-Red: characteristics of, 27, 68; coverage of, 24–25, 27, 30–31; fcc mandated divestment of, 73; nbcBlue contract shifted to, 72; stations affiliated with, 31, 66, 209n75; time option policy of, 68 neighbor networks: use of term, 59. See also regional networks nern (New England Regional Network), 74–75 network affiliations: benefits of, 64–65; call letters announcement and, 138; contracts of, 68–69, 72–73, 135–37, 208–9n66, 209n67; negotiations in, 66–72, 209n69; petition for, 27; regional-national tensions in, 1–2, 12, 47–48, 51, 60–61, 63–66, 72–76; requirements for, 200n97; shift from fewer high-powered stations to more lower-powered, 30–32; split networks and, 29, 226n78; spot broadcasting and, 133–37; transcriptions’ popularity and, 91, 108–14, 215n49; West Coast expansion of, 27 Network Broadcasting (film), 176 network interconnections concept, 12, 18 network radio era: challenges to myths of, 185–86; complexity and fissures of, 3–5; cultural memory of, 2–3, 151; demise of, 6; geography of, 19; limited, hybrid nature of, 19–20,



188–89; multiple program sources in, 1–2; as primary medium, 8–9; realities vs. rhetoric of, 2–5, 11–12; spatial and temporal fragmentation of mode, 116, 144; transcriptions central to, 78–79; unification envisioned in, 17–18 networks: continuous reconfigurations of, 20–21; interconnection logic of, 18; national broadcasters’ definition of, 21–26, 101; radio after, 14–15; transcriptions as redefining, 101, 104–6. See also national networks; regional networks; split networks; specific networks New England: economic strength of market in, 62–63; geography and demographics of, 50; marketing audience of, 57–62; news stories related to, 52–53. See also Colonial Network; Yankee Network New England Drug Show, 61–62, 207n54 New England Grocer and Tradesman (periodical), 61 New England Regional Network (nern), 74–75 New Hampshire: car radios condemned in, 174 Newman, Kathy, 36 Newman, Mark, 233n54 news programming: on kidnapping of Lindbergh baby, 162; on morning shows, 160–61; print media agreements on, 204n16; on regional networks, 52–53; standardized language of, 204–5n28 New York: Yiddish radio in, 163 New York Advertising Club, 43, 98, 107 niche audiences: block programming for, 161–65; construction of, 10; postwar increase in, 180–81; potential of,

Index 269

33; social identities and, 45; spots as means of cultivating, 127–29. See also teenagers and college students Nielsen ratings, 147–48, 168 North Dakota: nbc affiliates in, 27 Northwestern University, 181 npr (National Public Radio), 192n18 Ohio State University, 167, 234n73 OHriginals brand clothing, 180 100,000 Group of American Cities, 23 open-end game: use of term, 184–85 option time policy: description of, 65–66, 209n67; of nbc vs. cbs, 68, 135; Shepard’s interpretation of, 68–69 Orthophonic system (Victor), 82, 213n15 Pacific Coast network (nbc), 27 Pallo-Phonophone, 83 Patents Pool agreement (1920), 83 Patterson, Richard, Jr., 67, 109, 110, 220n119 Pepsi-Cola, 149 Peters, H. Preston, 37, 198n69 Peters, John Durham, 7, 118–19 Petrillo, James, 88 Petry, Edward: alleged merger talks of, 40, 200n90; associate and offices of, 199nn83–84; as exclusive station representative, 37, 39–40, 116; nbc’s entry into transcriptions and, 110–11; network’s staff compared with, 45; Yankee Network as client of, 52 Philco, 77 Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia, 70 Phonofilm, 83 phonograph records: declining sales of, 108; early radio’s use of, 84–85; Edison Tone Tests for, 98, 214n29; home recording instrument and, 214n30; individual selection of, 86;

270 Index

phonograph records (cont.) live programs recorded on, 85; made into transcription recordings, 89–97; for music programming, 162; nbc’s response to, 90; as percentage of programming, 78; technology of, 82–83, 92, 215n56; transcriptions distinguished from, 12, 79, 91–94, 97 Pierre Key’s Radio Annual for 1933 (periodical), 34–35 Pop Concerts (program), 131–32 Poppele, J. R., 94–95 postnetwork radio, 14–15 postwar radio: approach to, 6–7; discourses of the new in, 185; independent radio stations in, 179–80; niche audiences in, 180–81; transformations in, 5–6 presence: concept of, 84, 86–87. See also liveness and live programs Price-Waterhouse (firm), 58 print media: advertising by, 23, 59, 120, 178, 195n19; advertising representatives and, 39; announcer pulled from, 132; news stories on radio and, 52, 204n16; product cross-promotion in, 61–62; small stations compared with small papers, 224–25n58; syndication and advertising models of, 42–43, 126, 130–31, 199n83, 201n100; World War II restrictions on, 147 Proctor and Gamble, 121, 126, 133 program distribution patterns and technologies: approach to, 11; commodity distribution linked to, 19, 28; fm, 73; gaps in, 20–21; spots and medium of, 129–30. See also liveness and live programs; networks; programs and programming; sound-on-disc transcription recordings programming aesthetics (form and content): approach to, 11; flow in, 118, 147–48, 161–62

program producers and production: alternatives in, 14; hybrid and varied forms used in, 2; paradigm shift highlighted in, 184–85; by regional networks, 52; women as, 165–66 programs and programming: adver­ tising separate vs. integrated in, 53– 54, 105–6, 115–16, 119–22, 137–38; affiliation status and, 64–65; audience participation type of, 55–57, 224n52; blocks of, 14, 161–66, 181; for car radio listeners, 169–70; familial differences over, 175–77, 179–80, 237n111; “holding power” of, 147–48; immovables of, 210n77; live vs. re­ corded, 77–80; localized transcriptions of, 124; magazine style of, 118, 186; opening credits and postludes introduced for, 137–38; options expanding for, 1–2, 63–64; originating source and cost of, 26–27; percentage of noncommercial, 208n61; quality of, touted for national networks, 22–23; quiz shows as, 55–56, 207n53; on regional networks, 50–57; schedule balance in, 126–27, 223n41; split network’s effects on, 29–32; sports programming, 54–57, 66, 205n25, 205n30; station sound philosophy and, 164; station tested, for advertisers, 43–44; striped schedule of, 53; talk shows as, 232n41, 233n55; theater as model for, 53–54; understanding success and failure of, 58. See also daytime programming; dramatic programming; homemaking and cooking shows; liveness and live programs; local programs; music programming; news programming; sound-on-disc transcription recordings; sustaining programs Pryor, Arthur, 143 public interest ideal, 64, 89, 135, 210n77



Public Opinion Quarterly (period­ ical), 45 Pulse reporting company, 181, 239n135 Quality Time (program), 160–61 Quiz of Two Cities, The (program), 56, 206n34 quiz shows, 55–56, 207n53 Quizzing the Wives (program), 56, 207n53 radio: affect vs. content of, 100; as commercial entity, 81, 84, 116, 144; components and properties of, 6–7, 10; definitions of, 79–80, 84, 86–89, 114; ideal form of, 22–23; interwar, 6–7; national corporate type of, 193n33; percentage of time sold on, 205n20; public interest ideal of, 64, 89, 135, 210n77; push-button mobility via, 171–72; rules and norms of practices, 7, 118–19; as secondary medium, 8–9, 150, 156, 164, 192n18; spatial context of reception of, 151–52. See also network radio era; networks; postwar radio Radio Annuals (periodical), 59, 62–63 Radio Broadcast (periodical), 85, 174, 216n65 Radio Manufacturers Association, 174, 178 Radio News (periodical): on car radios and driving, 170–71, 174; on multiple radio sets, 175–77, 237n108; on print advertising, 42–43; radio nation envisioned in, 17–18; on radio pillows, 176, 237n111; on smaller audiences, 32–33; on Sound Studios, 96; on supplementarity model, 90 radio ownership: appeal of, 21; cost of, 119, 154, 230n11, 230n17; expansion of, 152–55; geographic and socioeconomic differences in, 50, 203n5; of hand-built sets, 154, 156;

Index 271

by income bracket, 154, 166–68, 234n68, 234–35n79; of multiple sets, 14, 154–55, 166, 175–79; by population and household percentages, 155, 230–31n21; World War II’s effects on, 177–78, 237–38n120, 238n121. See also car radios; spaces of listening Radio Patent agreement (1926), 21 radiophonic concept, 9 radio pillows, 176 radio stations: “class” of, 60–61; equipment rented by, 130–31; exclusive representation favored by, 40; multi­ ple program sources of, 1–2; national networks’ rationale for adding, 26– 27; network affiliation’s benefits for, 64–65; network rates for, 197n41; rate cutting by, 40, 199–200n86; re­corded announcements for, 85, 213n26; split networks and networks’ conflict with, 29–30; “stinker,” 31; supplementary spots on multiple, 123–24; twenty-four-hour schedule of, 162. See also independent radio stations; local radio stations; specific stations Rambeau, Bill, 198–99n77 rates and revenues: of affiliated vs. unaffiliated stations, 64, 208n60; contracts and agreements on, 68–69, 72–73, 135–37, 208–9n66, 209n67; in depression era, 120, 127, 224n51; differences in, in single area, 125; for library services, 131; of line charges, 30, 50, 203n7; minimum purchases for advertisers, 127; of national advertising, 2; of national networks vs. local stations, 69–70; nbc investigation of, 134–36; percentage from network programs, 139, 226–27n86; of regional and national networks, compared, 76; of regional network’s key station, 212n108, 212n110;

272 Index

rates and revenues (cont.) reorganization of, 30–32; for spots, 65, 134–35, 138–39, 227nn88–89; from transcriptions, 109 ratings: as commodity, 181–82; costs of, 128; early survey techniques of, 43, 58; limits of, 206n40, 206n44; new measures for, 147–48; postwar measures of, 181, 239n135. See also cab (Crossley Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting) ratings Raymer, Paul, 85, 198n69, 199n84 rca Victor: home recording instrument of, 214n30; nbc and Victor owned by, 86, 90, 218n102; nbc’s tensions with, 108, 111; Ortho­ phonic system, 82, 213n15; radio patent agreement and, 21; tran­ scription policy and, 108, 111–13; transcription quality of, 220n121; vertical integration of, 218n102 Read, Oliver, 214n30 recorded programs and programming: live programs compared with, 77–80, 214n29; national networks’ denigration of, 87–88; presentation as, 98; of spots, 85, 213n26; as threat to networks, 12–13; tradition of using, 84–85. See also phonograph records; sound-on-disc transcription recordings recordings: conflation of term, 77–78. See also phonograph records; recorded programs and programming; sound-on-disc transcription recordings regional networks: advertisements of, 51, 57–60, 62; early mention of, 201n2; implications of successful, 75–76; inadvertent image of, 17–18; legacy of, 185–87; line charges paid

by, 203n7; list of, 202–3n3; marketing and audience construction of, 57–63, 128; national networks’ rela­ tionship with, 47–49; number of, 12, 49–50; programming of, 50–57; scale jumping of, 193n23; structure and multiple forms of, 4, 48–51. See also Colonial Network; Mutual Net­work; network affiliations; split networks; Yankee Network retailers and distributors. See advertised products Rio Grande Oil company, 105 Robertson, Bruce, 123–24 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 74 Rosenblum, David, 68 Rosenblum, Lloyd H., 41 Royal, John, 71 Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Hour (program), 32 Runyon, Paul, 47 rural electrification programs, 235n89 Russell, Frank, 67, 74 Sam ’n’ Henry (program), 85 Sarnoff, David, 113 Saturday Evening Post, 178 scales: concept of, 186–87, 192–93n22; connecting local and national, 124, 161; jumping of, 48–49, 193n23; of mode of address, 13; of radio operations, 9, 11–12, 76; station representatives and, 46, 114. See also local radio stations; national networks; regional networks; spatial and temporal flow Schneider, Helen, 165 Schudson, Michael, 221n1 Sconce, Jeffrey, 194n3 segmentation and flow dynamics: audience construction practices and, 14–15; cautions about continuity and, 239n5; in daytime program-



ming, 161–66; legacy of, 189; measurement of, 147–48; of postnetwork radio, 14–15; postwar changes in, 179–81; spot announcements and, 13. See also spatial and temporal flow service announcements, 134, 146, 227n95 Seventeen magazine, 180 Shadow, The (program), 113 Shaw, Donald S., 26, 29, 44–45 Shepard, John, Jr., 75 Shepard, John, III: background of, 50; on Biltmore Agreement, 204n16; conflicts and negotiations with national networks, 1–2, 47–48, 63–64, 66–75, 209n69; on cowcatcher spot, 70; equal time provisions case and, 204–5n28; on gbi, 51; illustration of, 48; line charges paid by, 203n7; marketing and audience construction of, 57–63; nab and, 72, 210–11n91; politics of, 53, 71, 74, 204–5n28; programming under, 52–55; on split networks, 69–70; success of, 75–76. See also Colonial Network; Yankee Network showmanship: defined, 165–66 Shrine of the Little Flower (program), 68 signals: fm quality, 73–74; interference of, 21; reliability of, 27–28, 196n33; time signals, 115–17 Slotten, Hugh, 217n74 Smith, Bernard, 182 Smith, Graydon, 171 Smith, Neil, 192–93n22 Smulyan, Susan, 194n3 Smythe, Dallas, 20, 193n25 Soat, Raymond, 85, 213n26, 214n44 sound-on-disc transcription recordings: advantages of, 101–6, 217n90; advertisement of, 204n10; challenges faced by, 89–90; competition issues

Index 273

and, 199n82; description and development of, 12–13, 79–85; economic savings with, 95–96, 101–3, 108, 125, 216n65; first regularly scheduled use of, 77–78; frc ruling on, 88, 91–92, 97, 216–17n72; legacy of, 187; licensing system of, 83–84, 213n18; liveness ideas and, 84–89; national networks’ denigration of, 87–88; national net­ works’ offering of, 106–14; as per­ centage of programming, 78–79; phonograph records distinguished from, 12, 79, 91–94, 97; popularity of, 184–85; produced for broadcasts not public, 96–97; production of, 51–52, 110, 219n113, 220n127, 225n68; pro­ motion of, 97–98, 101–3; quality and fidelity of, 92–96, 220n121; in “quality” discourses, 98–101; supplementarity model for marketing, 90–91; supplementary advertisements on, 123–24; test recordings, 212n4; on Yankee Network, 51. See also library services; spots and spot broadcasting; wbs (World Broadcasting System) Sound Studios: nbc programs prepared by, 214n44; nbc staff from, 110; physical studios of, 96; recorded presentation and, 98; supplementarity model of, 90–91; Vitaphone system licensed to, 83–84 sound technologies: advancements in, 79–84; aesthetic standards and, 89; engineers and terminology of, 94, 216n60, 225n68; inscription metaphor in, 95; licensing of, 213n18; possibilities of, 85. See also film; phonograph records; sound-on-disc transcription recordings Southern New England Telephone Company, 133

274 Index

space and spatial relationships: fragmentation of, 116, 144; gaps and scales in, 186–89; geographical identities as categories in, 20; golden age of radio images of, 151; instantaneous connections across, 84; media and production of, 151–53, 191–92n7; of multiple occupants and car radios, 172, 175, 236n90; separation of sender and receiver in, 7, 118–19. See also segmentation and flow dynamics; spatial and temporal flow spaces of listening: car radios in bubble of, 168–75; daytime programming for, 156–66; as ideal setting, 13–14, 152–53, 156, 168–69; individual experience emphasized in, 151, 175– 83, 237n107; legacy of, 188; media and production of, 151–53, 191–92n7; multiple-set households and, 14, 154–55, 166, 175–77; nonlisteners in, 165–66; radio sets by room, 155, 179; shifted to youth, 167–68, 179–80 spatial and temporal flow: advertising as separate vs. integrated in, 53–54, 105–6, 115–16, 119–22, 137–38; concepts in, 118; hitchhiker and cowcatcher spots and, 144–50; localization and multistation trends in, 122–27; in programming aesthetics, 118, 147–48, 161–62; smaller advertisers and smaller programs in, 127–30; spot broadcasting, network affiliates, and, 134–37; station break announcements and, 137–44; transcription libraries as program kits and, 130–34. See also segmentation and flow dynamics split networks: approval for, 197n43; attempt to phase out, 30–31; conflicts over, 1–2, 29–32, 69–70; definition of, 20, 28; implications of, 11, 20–21,

29; national networks’ reconsideration of, 226n78 Sponsor (periodical), 35, 181 sports programming, 54–57, 66, 205n25, 205n30 spots and spot broadcasting: on affiliated vs. unaffiliated stations, 229n125; automobile-related, 168, 171–72; block programming and, 161–65; choice emphasized in, 45; context of, 118–22; cooperative to link stations for, 51; cowcatcher and hitchhiker types of, 70, 144–50, 228n111; customizing and defining markets for, 38, 40–46, 59; definition of, 13, 34–35; development of, 11–13; diverse techniques of, 115–18, 120, 134; exclusive handling of, 37, 39–40; four major styles of, 223n29; ideas for promoting, 198n75; legacy of, 187–88; live vs. transcribed, 129–30, 134–35, 141–42; mass audience to draw, 200n97; of musical clock programs, 160–61; network affiliates and, 133–37; for niche audiences, 127–30; recorded and distributed, 85, 213n26; respectability gained for, 184–85; sales of, 35–36, 65, 116, 198–99n77; separate from vs. integrated in program, 53–54, 105–6, 115–16, 119–22, 137–38; spot sales role of station representatives, 35–36, 38, 40–41, 116; success of, 41–42; as supplements to national campaigns, 122–27; transcription companies as gatekeepers for, 104; transcription libraries as kits for, 130–34. See also sound-on-disc transcription recordings; station break announcements Standard Oil Corporation, 31 Standard Radio Inc., 132



Stanton, Frank, 234n73 Star, Susan Leigh, 19 Starch, Daniel, 230–31n21 station break announcements: advertising spot rates in, 134, 138–40, 227nn88–89; Bulova’s time signal announcement as, 115–17; as negative spots, 137–44 station representatives: advertise­ ments of, 85; as audience intellectuals, 11–12, 36, 40–46; individuals as, 198–99n77; multiple offices and reach of, 199n84; print media models as influences on, 42–43, 199n83, 201n100; radio advertising ideal of, 126; rate cutting by sta­tions and, 40, 199–200n86; of regional networks, 51–52; roles and rates of, 20–21, 37– 41; on selective advertising, 198n69; specific geographic areas and, 101; spot sales role of, 35–36, 38, 40–41, 116. See also Bowen, Scott Howe; Petry, Edward station sound philosophy, 164 Steele, Bob, 233n61 Sterne, Jonathan, 8, 81, 152 Storz, Todd, 5–6 Strasser, Susan, 193n26 Streeter, Thomas, 58, 194n3, 206n39, 217n74 Strong, Walter A., 23 studios, 52, 96, 204n14 Sunday Drivers (program), 169–70 Sunday listening, 169–70, 172, 236n98 Sundial, The (program), 160 Susman, Warren, 79 sustaining programs: charges for, 197n53, 208n64; daytime dominated by, 53; functions of, 64–65; lack of revenues from, 20, 109; in nbc-Blue vs. -Red network, 72; networks’ provision of, 29–30, 64–65, 208n64;

Index 275

transcription programs aired instead of, 135–36 Swing Your Partner (program), 131 talk shows, 232n41, 233n55 Tarzan of the Apes (program), 98–99, 132 technological systems: advertisers and geographical expansion of, 23–26; complex, multiple systems, 7; cultural articulation of, 81; development of, 79–80; economic orientation juxtaposed to, 19–21; fm transmission, 73–74; groundwave vs. skywave signals, 27–28; instantaneous communication in, 84; integrative function of, 19; licensing of, 213n18; mobile privatization and, 171, 194n10, 214n33, 236n90; obscured by centralization narratives, 18; push-button mobility, 171–72; quality and fidelity in, 92–96, 220n121; telephony, 21–22, 82, 133; test for comparing live and recorded programs, 214n29. See also program distribution patterns and technologies; sound-on-disc transcription recordings; sound technologies; wired-interconnection network model teenagers and college students: advertisers’ and networks’ interest in, 167–68, 180; cross-media attention to, 238n129; listening habits of, 179–80 Teentimer’s Canteen (program), 180 Telecommunications Act (1996), 193n33 telephone technology, 21–22, 82, 133. See also at&t television: daytime serials on, 159; liveness and, 123; postwar growth of, 182; radio models adopted in, 118;

276 Index

television (cont.) radio replaced by, 3, 5, 182; “rhythms of reception” of, 158; transition to, 185 televisual concept, 9 theaters: advertisements for, 171; equipment leased to, 225n60; as model for radio, 53–54; silent-tosound conversions of, 83. See also film Thesaurus (nbc library service), 112, 136, 160 Thomas, Lloyd, 109, 219n108 Thompson, J. Walter, 42, 120 time: fragmentation of, 116, 144; instantaneous connections in, 84 Time magazine, 184 time slots and timing: advertising differences and, 120–21; audiences targeted by, 45; baseball coverage and, 54–55; competition for, 63; contracts and conflicts over, 68–69, 72–73, 135–37, 208–9n66, 209n67; flow in, 118, 147–48, 161–62; multiple airings in, 105; program balance in, 126–27, 223n41; of regional vs. national programs, 53; of sponsored serial programs in daytime, 66; transcriptions as useful in, 103, 105, 217n90. See also option time policy Top 40, 6, 189 Trammell, Niles, 55, 74, 112, 136, 226n80 Transco Company, 51, 132, 204n10 transcription: use of term, 79. See also sound-on-disc transcription recordings transistors, 185 Travers, Linus, 164 Trav-Ler Radio Corporation, 179 uncertainty problem, 34–35 University of Chicago Roundtable, The (program), 64

Unknown Hands (program), 98–99, 218n98 Valle, Rudy, 32 Variety (periodical), 77, 78 Victor Records. See rca Victor Vitaphone system, 83–84, 213n18. See also Western Electric Voynow, Edward, 199n83 waab (Boston): fcc renewal request of, 204–5n28; financial losses of, 212n108; national affiliations of, 67, 69, 204n9; programming of, 54, 66 Walters, Abner, 158 Wang, Jennifer, 157, 226n84 Warner Brothers, 83, 213n18, 216n70 wbs (World Broadcasting System): advertisement of, 101–3; cbs purchase of, 221n135; central role of, 80; challenges faced by, 89–90; clients of, 132–33; as competition, 113; documentary sources on, 225n64; institutional practices of, 81; library service of, 98–99, 112, 130–33; lobbying by, 97; machines purchased from, 91; network redefined by, 101, 104–6; programs produced by, 51–52, 98–99, 123, 131–32, 218n98; technology utilized by, 82. See also Sound Studios wbz and wbza (Springfield, Mass.), 60, 72, 74 wcae (Pittsburgh), 198–99n77 wcco (Minneapolis), 140 wcrw (Chicago), 88 wday (Fargo), 144 weaf (New York), 21 wean (Providence, R.I.): crosspromotion and service of, 61; national affiliations of, 50–51, 69, 74, 209n75, 211n102; programming of, 54



Weaver, Sylvester “Pat,” 118, 186 weei (Boston), 67, 209n75 Welch, Walter L., 214n30 West Coast: limited expansion to, 27; line charges on, 203n7; network realignments on, 224n54; some programs rebroadcast for, 128; sponsors based on, 105 Western Electric: new players of, 131; promotional film of, 176; sound research of, 82–83, 213n18; transcription quality of, 220n121 Western Electric Recording System (Vitaphone system), 83–84, 213n18 Western Electric Sound Projector System, 83 Westinghouse Corporation, 84, 178, 219n108 wfbr (Baltimore), 29 wfil (Philadelphia), 224n52 wgn (Chicago), 52, 55 Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, 100–101, 158 whdh (Boston), 67, 74 whk (Cleveland), 198–99n77 who (Des Moines), 181, 198–99n77 wicc (Bridgeport, Conn.): national affiliations of, 1–2, 67, 69, 74, 209n75, 211n102; programming of, 54 Williams, Raymond: on communications technology, 79; on flow, 118, 187; on mobile privatization, 171, 194n10, 214n33, 236n90 wired-interconnection network model: alternative to, 73–74; at&t’s monopoly on, 2, 21–22, 83–84; decision to use, 194n3; line charges in, 30, 50, 203n7; priority access to, 86; program origination and charges in, 26–27; transcriptions’ quality over, 219n110

Index 277

wis (Columbia, S.C.), 133 Withycomb, Donald, 109, 111, 219n108, 224n52 Witmer, Roy: on audiences and spots, 136–37; position of, 219n108; on split networks and sponsors, 30; on station affiliations, 1–2, 135–36; transcription policy and, 109, 112–13, 220n119 wjsv (Washington, D.C.), 160 wls (Chicago), 222–23n28 wlw (Cincinnati), 52, 55 wmal (Washington, D.C.), 160, 198–99n77 wmaq (Chicago), 55, 198–99n77 wmaq (New York), 198–99n77 wmt (Waterloo, Iowa), 198–99n77 wnac (Boston): contract language for, 210n79; cross-promotion and service of, 61; national affiliations of, 47, 50–51, 53, 67, 69, 74, 209n75; profits of, 76; programming of, 54, 66, 164; ratings of, 58; spot business of, 198–99n77 wnew (New York), 162, 164–65, 180 woc (Iowa), 198–99n77 women, 156–59, 165, 234n64; teenage, 167, 179–80, 238n129. See also homemaking and cooking shows w1xoj (Paxton, Mass.), 73–74 Woods, Mark, 220n119 wor (New York), 52, 94, 165, 177 World Adventurer’s Club (program), 132 World War II: cowcatcher and hitchhiker ads controversy during, 145–46; listening habit changes in, 177–78; number of car radios during, 168; radio receiver production and, 237–38n120, 238n121 wpro (Providence), 67, 209n75 wptf (Raleigh, N.C.), 144, 198–99n77

278 Index

wqam (Miami), 198–99n77 wqxr (New York), 149 Wrigley, William, 205n30 wtam (Cleveland), 139 wtic (Hartford), 67, 74, 164, 233n61 wtmj (Milwaukee), 198–99n77 Wurtzler, Steve J., 213n12 wwj (Detroit), 42, 149 wxyz (Detroit), 52 Yankee Network: advertisements of, 57–63; as case study, 12; control of schedule on, 67–68; crosspromotion by, 61–62, 207nn53–54, 207–8n55; finances of, 76; as local, regional, and national entity, 48–49; marketing and audience construc-

tion of, 57–63; national network affiliations of, 66–75; orchestra and dramatic company of, 52, 204n14; programming of, 50–57, 73, 164; spot business of, 198–99n77; success of, 47; trade show broadcasts of, 61–62, 207n54 Yankee Network Players, 204n14 Yankee News Service, 204n16 Yankee Tune Factory, The (program), 164 Young and Rubicam (firm), 120, 142–43, 144 Your Hit Parade (program), 167 Zenith Radio Corporation, 238n125 Ziv, Frederic, 184

is an assistant professor of media studies at the Catholic University of America. Alexander Russo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Russo, Alexander, 1974– Points on the dial : golden age radio beyond the networks / Alexander Russo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8223-4517-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8223-4532-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Radio broadcasting—United States—History. 2. Radio programs—Social aspects—United States. I. Title. PN1991.3.U6R87 2010 384.54ˇ43—dc22 2009037179