In Breaking Walls episode 146 we spotlight the Jay Kholos, Elliott Lewis, and Rod Serling series The Zero Hour in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its debut on the Mutual Broadcasting System in December of 1973.

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Highlights:

• Radio Drama Coming Back in 1973

• Jay Kholos Conceives The Zero Hour — Rod Serling Will Host

• The Zero Hour Is On the Air

• WRVR and Selling Radio Shows In the 1970s

• Nixon On The Hot Seat

• AFTRA’s Moving Goal Posts — Kholos Must Sell The Zero Hour’s Rights

• Selling The Zero Hour to Mutual

• Elliott Lewis and Jay Kholos Leave The Zero Hour

• Mutual Cancels The Zero Hour and Rod Serling is Disappointed

• Life After Radio Drama

• Looking Ahead to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater

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The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• On The Air — By John Dunning

• A Pictorial History of Radio’s First 75 Years — By B. Eric Rhoads

• The Radio Career of Rod Serling — By Martin Grams Jr’s

The archive from Digital Deli’s Zero Hour page.

As well as articles from:

• The Arizona Republic

• The Associated Press

* The Cleveland Plain Dealer

* Pacific Stars and Stripes

• The San Mateo Times

• The Van Wert Times Bulletin

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On the interview front:

• Himan Brown and Howard Duff spoke with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Howard Duff, Elliott Lewis, Les Tremayne, Janet Waldo, and Paula Winslowe spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these chats at Speakingofradio.com

• Mary Jane Croft, Byron Kane, and Elliott Lewis spoke with SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com

• Jay M. Kholos was interviewed by Yours Truly, James Scully in January 2018

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

• Caravan — By Eighty Drums Around The World

• What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve — By Nancy Wilson

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A special thank you to Ted Davenport, Jerry Haendiges, and Gordon Skene.

For Ted go to RadioMemories.com, for Jerry, visit OTRSite.com, and for Gordon, please go to PastDaily.com.

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Thank you to:

Tony Adams

Steven Allmon

Orson Orsen Chandler

Phil Erickson

Jessica Hanna

Perri Harper

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Earl Millard

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Ray Shaw

Filipe A Silva

John Williams

Jim W.

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

Although The Zero Hour went off the air in the spring of 1974, the people involved didn’t stop working.

Rod Serling always kept a full schedule. His final radio performance was part of Fantasy Park. A fantasy rock concert aired by nearly two-hundred stations in 1974 and 1975.

Always a heavy smoker, on May 3rd, 1975, Serling had a heart attack. A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that a risky open-heart surgery was necessary. On June 26th, Serling had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York.

He was just fifty. His funeral and burial took place on July 2nd in Seneca, New York.

Elliott Lewis would continue in Television, before again working with Mutual on radio dramas at the end of the decade.

Jay Kholos continued innovating, eventually forming the theater company, Orchard Street Productions, in 2001. These days he lives in Nashville, where Kholos writes music and scripts for his own productions, while Orchard Street also licenses musicals and plays for local, regional and North American tours.

Once Mutual finished running the last of the Lewis-directed Jay Kholos episodes of The Zero Hour on March 14th, 1974, they went dark for six weeks. They were busy completely changing the format.

Now, one star would be featured in five different anthologies during a week. The show returned on April 29th. The first week’s star was Mel Torme. “Bye Bye Narco” was the first new script produced under Mutual’s umbrella.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 16th, 1974

“Rod Serling, master writer of the mysterious and macabre, is playing a game of suspense with the good earth. On the side, he serves as host of The Zero Hour, a weekday radio mystery series beamed by the Mutual Broadcasting System.

“Serling's feelings about the recent upsurge in radio drama prompted a call to his rural home. It soon became apparent that he is disappointed with radio drama and TV.

“Serling made it clear that he has nothing to do with the writing or producing of the twenty-five minute dramas. "I've caught the show about three times. One was passable and two I would have flunked off the air. What they're trying to do—and they may succeed—is a show that is contemporary. But it sounds campy.”

“Serling said, "The same thing applies to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. It has to be relevant stuff for 1974. Short of that, why not resurrect old Shadow recordings? So far, I have yet to see either show relate to our time, either in story or technique. if they're selling us nostalgia, they've succeeded. It's thoroughly reminiscent of radio thirty years ago.”

“I'm not bad rapping it,” he said. “It's just not what I expected. I realize the economics of the situation. I wouldn’t want to spend my time writing a provocative radio drama and get a check that would buy me a carton of cigarettes. Radio drama currently has the value of an antique."

“Won't it change for the better? “I don't know," Serling said. “I have no idea. I'm frequently wrong, anyhow. I thought Nixon would be out of office by now. And I thought Sonny Liston would be heavyweight boxing champion for 20 years.”

“Summing up his feelings about radio and television, Serling said, “I feel the same way about radio as I do television as an art form. It doesn't rise to the occasion like it should...although television occasionally has.”

“Radio today is more of a display case than an art form.” — Raymond P. Hart

The Zero Hour in the new format ran thirteen additional weeks before being canceled after the July 26th, 1974, episode. In total, one-hundred-thirty episodes of The Zero Hour were produced. Most can be heard today.

Associated Press, December 21st, 1973, New York City.

“The script appears strange at first. Its directions are for the ear, not the eye, and say things like: "DOORBELL ON. FOOTSTEPS. DOOR OPENED. TRAFFIC IN BG."

"That traffic noise is 25 years old," laughs Jimmy Dwan, a veteran CBS sound effects man. "You can hear a doorman shouting on it somewhere. That doorman, he's been dead twenty years." Dwan's recorded sound effects are old, but not his script. It's of 1973 vintage, written solely for radio.

“Yes, radio.

“It's part of a brave new effort by two networks to bring back, in limited form, the golden days of coast-to-coast radio drama that most everyone remembers, but hasn't heard in more than a decade.

“The Mutual Broadcasting System fired the first shot Monday with The Zero Hour, a 30-minute five-nights-a-week thriller serial hosted by writer-narrator Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame.

“Mutual, which says it has six-hundred-thirty affiliates, bought the series after lengthy studies proved there existed a sufficient market for radio drama on a network basis. Advertisers liked the idea, too, according to Mutual's president C. Edward Little: "We got a tremendous amount of client interest after we announced it," adding that the show will be fed from Mutual's Washington D.C., headquarters each weeknight at 7PM.

"We feel that we'll start off with one-hundred-fifty to two-hundred stations."

“The series will be offered on a "first refusal" basis to Mutual affiliates.

“They also said that if the show clicks, other radio projects such as new comedy or anthology series, may follow. But they emphasized that such shows are strictly in the talking stages.” — Jay Sharbutt

Once Mutual purchased the rights to The Zero Hour, they removed Elliott Lewis as director and Jay Kholos no longer had anything to do with the production. Both had good things to say about each other, but not for Mutual.

Hey everyone, James Scully here. This Saturday, December 16th, is the 188th anniversary of the Great Fire of 1835. It burned the entire financial district in New York City to the ground. The fire was so big it could be seen from Philadelphia, 90 miles away.

I’m doing two walking tours, one at 12PM and one at 4PM on the anniversary in conjunction with the audio fiction soap opera set in 1835 NYC I've developed called Burning Gotham — http://burninggotham.com/. Burning Gotham was a 2022 Tribeca Film Festival audio selection.

Join us as we explore lower Manhattan and the notable sights and scandals of 1830s New York, with a close look at 1835 and how a single year forever changed New York City in big ways.

Included here are links where you can buy tickets to both — https://linktr.ee/thewallbreakers

I hope to see you there!

One of the radio veterans featured in this episode was Byron Kane. Another was Paula Winslowe.

By October 1973, it was obvious that Jay Kholos couldn’t afford to keep funding new episodes of The Zero Hour thanks to AFTRA’s changing terms. He looked to make a deal with a network. The Mutual Broadcasting System and C. Edward Little were interested.

A deal came together quickly. A press conference announcing the move was set for November 1st. We heard that presser at the beginning of this episode. The Zero Hour would be moving to Mutual on December 17th, 1973.

Before new episodes could be broadcast, Mutual would air the thirteen five-part episodes already directed by Elliott Lewis.

Janet Waldo, famous for her portrayal of Corliss Archer as well as Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop, and Emmy Lou on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, was featured in this episode of The Zero Hour.

With AFTRA’s moving goal posts meaning that producing more episodes of The Zero Hour would cost significantly more money, in the fall of 1973, Jay Kholos had to look for either a potential production partner or a buyer.

In the meantime, The Zero Hour continued to air in syndication over stations like WRVR in New York.

A year after his re-election, President Nixon was knee-deep in the Watergate scandal. On October 10th, 1973, VP Spiro Agnew resigned, pleading no contest to charges of tax evasion and money laundering, part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme in which he accepted nearly thirty-thousand dollars in bribes while governor of Maryland.

According to The New York Times, Nixon “sought advice from senior Congressional leaders about a replacement.” The advice was unanimous in favor of Gerald Ford. Ford agreed to the nomination, telling his wife that the Vice Presidency would be “a nice conclusion” to his career.

On October 12th, President Nixon officially named Gerald Ford as Veep.

The energy crisis was becoming a major issue. Nixon assured the public saying Americans wouldn’t be running out of gasoline, air travel wouldn’t stop, and heating oil would be plentiful in the winter months. Though the crisis would require some sacrifice on everyone’s part. He outlined a plan which included using less heat, less gasoline, cutting down on highway speeds as well as cutting down on lighting at home and at work. General consensus felt things would get worse before they got better.

Meanwhile on November 10th a ceasefire was achieved in the Middle-East. A tenuous agreement was reached between Egypt and Israel that put an end to military conflict.

By the middle of November, the Nixon White House sought to put a positive spin on things – launching what was called “The President Fights For His Administration’s Credibility.”

Nixon’s dwindling support from Capitol Hill Republicans caused him to make a round of addresses, primarily in Republican stronghold cities, in order to reiterate his case and help approval.

The reviews were mixed – some thought it was a valiant attempt to rescue a bad situation, while others were more convinced than ever that Nixon needed to step down.

Hey everyone! James Scully here. I’m doing a webinar and walking tour this week in conjunction with the audio fiction soap opera set in 1835 NYC I've developed called Burning Gotham — http://burninggotham.com/

The walking tours have been very popular. I'm doing one this coming Saturday 12/09/2023 in Lower Manhattan with Eyes on Manhattan at 1PM — https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/eyesonmanhattan/items/506819/calendar/2023/12/?flow=no&full-items=yes

And for those who can't come and are interested in this wild period of U.S. and NYC history, I'm doing a webinar with the New York Adventure Club this Friday 12/08/2023 at 5:30PM eastern time — https://www.nyadventureclub.com/event/1830s-nyc-a-decade-of-social-political-geographical-upheaval-webinar-registration-752806914747/

Also, next Saturday, December 16th, is the 188th anniversary of the Great Fire of 1835. It burned the entire financial district to the ground under very interesting circumstances. I’ll have two tours that day.

Included here are links where you can buy tickets to all of these. This week’s webinar is $10 and Saturday’s walking tour is $35 — https://linktr.ee/thewallbreakers

I'd love to see you there!

Once Jay Kholos sold the show to various radio stations, it was generally up to those stations to sell the show to sponsors. In New York, The Zero Hour was running on WRVR 106.7-FM.

WRVR-FM was initially a public radio station owned and operated by The Riverside Church in New York. It began broadcasting on January 1st, 1961.

The Riverside Church, located in Morningside Heights, is an interdenominational, interracial, and international church, and has long been a center of activism and social justice.

WRVR was the first station to win a Peabody for its entire programming, in part for its documentary coverage of the civil rights movement in Birmingham in 1963. In addition to religious and philosophical discussions with Riverside clergy and theologians, WRVR programming included addresses by political and cultural leaders, like Indira Gandhi, Aldous Huxley, John F. Kennedy, and Margaret Mead. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his pivotal “Beyond Vietnam” speech at the Riverside Church over WRVR-FM on April 4th, 1967.

The station also featured the heralded weekly program Just Jazz with Ed Beach.

In September 1971, WRVR went commercial and shifted to a news format, with the exception of Just Jazz, which continued until 1973. By then, WRVR was experimenting with radio drama in both golden age and new time productions.

On September 4th, 1973, part two of The Zero Hour’s “Wife of the Red-Haired Man” took to the air.

Radio legend Mary Jane Croft, who was also the wife of Elliott Lewis, was featured in this episode. Years later, she spoke to SPERDVAC about her radio career and late husband.

In September of 1973, WRVR was advertising a World Hockey Association exhibition matchup which featured legends Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull.

The New York Raiders and later The Golden Blades were intended to be the upstart WHA’s flagship franchise. They were, however, unable to compete with the NHL’s New York Rangers and the expansion New York Islanders.

After just two seasons, The Golden Blades moved to San Diego. The WHA folded after eight years in 1979 with four teams: The Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets, joining the NHL.