Radio in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s

Network radio executives and their sponsors indicated that they had gotten the message. Even as the new law was being considered, a number of high-minded series were already in place on NBC's two networks. Network executives noted that the networks distributed many unsponsored hours of farm programs, religious programs, talks, and music-appreciation concerts for schools. The money for these “public service" activities came from sponsored programs such as The Maxwell House Hour, The Palmolive Hour, The General Motors Tamily Party, The Wrigley Review, and TheEveready Hour, among others.

As their names suggest, each of these programs was entirely supported by an individual advertiser. When they sold time to advertisers, NBC and CBS simply gave a period of airtime to the advertisers and allowed them and their advertising agencies to produce both the programs and the commercials. The networks collected the advertisers' fees and distributed them to stations across the United States.

To find out how well a program was doing, the advertisers paid ratings companies to call listeners at different times or to give families diaries to find out what station they were listening to. People listened at home, often on radios powered by car batteries. By the 1930s they also listened in cars, since car makers had begun selling models that featured built-in radios.

Network Programming

In the 1920s, the programs that listeners could hear on NBC and CBS throughout the United States were mostly musical—often “live" rather than recorded. As Chapter 10 notes, this created problems for the phonograph industry during the mid-1920s. as people listened to radio instead of buying disks. The Victor Talking Machine Company merged with RCA over worries about the future of its business. The Columbia Phonograph Company, also fearful that its business was trickling away, financed a radio network to be called the Columbia Broadcasting System. The project lost money, Columbia pulled out, and what became known as CBS proceeded on its own. In 1938, however, CBS purchased Columbia Records.

But radio was much more than music. In the 1930s and 1940s, the medium's content was more like the television of today than the radio of today. National net­works dominated radio—the NBC Red and Blue; CBS; and, beginning in 1934, the Mutual Broadcasting Company. There were also a few smaller networks of stations in some parts of the country, such as the West Coast-based Don Lee Network and the New England-based Colonial Network. The FCC became concerned that NBC's ownership of two networks gave it excessive power over radio, and it ordered NBC to sell one of them; the Supreme Court agreed. In 1943, the network sold off the weaker Blue, which became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

The Shadow was an enormously popular radio mystery program of the 1930s and 1940s, The narrator’s introduction remains a familiar part of American popular culture: ‘‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow Knows!»

Radio listeners heard talk-and-variety programs (The Breakfast Club, Arthur Godfrey) in the morning, continuing dramas (The Romance of Helen Trent, One Man's Family) in the late morning and early afternoon, children's adventure programs (The Shadow, Dick Tracy) after school, and sports broadcasts during weekends. In the evening, in addition to musical variety programs, listen­ers could hear the same genres of shows that TV viewers see today: situation comedies (The Charlie McCarthy Show, Burns and Allen, The Jack Benny Program, Allen's Alley, Blondie), general drama (The Lux Radio Theater, The Mercury Theater of the Air), quiz and game shows (Take It or Leave It, The $64,000 Question, Truth or Consequences), police shows (The FBI in Peace and War), detective programs (Philo Vance), doctor shows (Doctor Christian), mysteries (TheBlack Castle, The Shadow), and more.

News slowly developed into an important part of radio. In the 1920s, newspaper executives saw radio as a major competitor for advertising dollars. They consequently pressed the wire services (AP and UPI) to severely restrict their services to broadcasters. Soon, however, the wire services saw that there was money to be made from radio, and the newspapers realized that they could increase their sales by printing what was on the air. The major networks created their own news divisions and beefed them up during the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of World War II in Europe. President Franklin Roosevelt recognized the importance of radio for informing the nation and embarked on a series of radio talks to promote his administration's policies—popular broadcasts became known as “fireside chats."

Rethinking Radio, 1950-1970

Major changes were taking place in American society after World War II ended in 1945, and they deeply affected the radio and recording industries. Two of the most important developments were:

• The rise of television

• The baby boom

Radio and the Rise of Television

baby boom the huge spike in the population that was created during the late 1940s through the 1950s as soldiers who returned from World War II married and started families

transistor device for amplifying, controlling, and generating radio signals; a smaller replacement for the Audion vacuum tube, leading to the miniaturization of radio receivers

payola an activity in which promotion personnel pay money to radio personnel in order to ensure that they will devote airtime to artists that their recording companies represent

Jack Benny began Ms career as a vaudeville performer, but came to national attention as host of The Jack Benny Program, which was one of the most highly rated radio shows from 1932 to 1955.

When television entered the picture around 1948, executives from NBC, CBS, and ABC began to shift the profits of their radio networks into building television networks. They saw TV as the wave of the future because it combined the sound of radio with the pictures of movies. In fact, some of radio's biggest stars—Jack Benny, George Burns, Ed Wynne—moved their programs to TV, and a number of other entertainers—Milton Berle, Sid Caesar—became major celebrities as a result of the home tube. Advertisers followed them.

By 1960, more than 90 percent of homes had a television. Instead of listening to network radio, people tended to watch network television. With network audi­ences declining, nervous radio station owners began to drop their affiliations and look for other ways to make money. In total, 97 percent of all radio stations were affiliated with a network in 1947, but only 50 percent were network affiliates by 1955. Radio was undergoing a revolution.

To draw advertisers, radio executives decided that they would do what TV wasn't doing. They would devote most of their air time to broadcasting music that specific local audience segments would tune in to hear. As a result, stations around the country developed different music formats based on the kind of music they played (country, rhythm and blues, big band) and the radio personalities (called disc jockeys or DJs) who were hired to introduce the recordings.