Breaking Walls

Under the sponsorship of Heinz Foods, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet moved to ABC’s potent Friday night schedule on October 14th, 1949. Ozzie Nelson had negotiated a ten year, non-cancellable contract. It guaranteed him complete creative control.

ABC also had the option to bring the show to TV after 1951.

Ozzie and Harriet were weary of the new medium. Universal Studios gave them the opportunity to make a film, and in 1952 the family starred in Here Come The Nelsons. The film was a hit, and everyone was convinced the Nelsons could all make the transition from radio's airwaves to TV’s small screen. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made its TV debut on Friday, October 3rd, 1952.

Although the show never cracked radio’s top-fifty ratings during the 1940s, they did so in each of their final three seasons on ABC. The radio version of Ozzie and Harriet remained on the air until the end of this season.

This January 8th, 1954 episode was called “FiFi La Plume.”

The TV series would turn Ricky into a teenage heartthrob. It helped springboard his music career in 1957. For more information on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, tune into Breaking Walls episode 107.

People are Funny debuted on April 10th, 1942 on NBC. It was created by gameshow maven John Guedel. He was a jack of all trades who’d spent time as a WPA ditch digger, a traveling salesman, and a collector of his own rejection slips. By the fall of 1943, Guedel had negotiated a large raise from the initial production offer and made Art Linkletter the sole emcee.

People Are Funny became a Friday night staple throughout the 1940s. In addition Guedel would create House Party and You Bet Your Life.

By January of 1954, People Are Funny was airing on CBS Tuesday nights at 8PM for Mars Candy. With a rating of 8.4 it was radio’s top-rated show.

This is audio from the January 5th, 1954 episode.

On December 15th, 1969 William Conrad sat down with interviewer Chris Lambesis for a conversation about his career in radio. During the course of the conversation, Conrad gave his feelings on former Gunsmoke co-star Howard McNear, and told a beautiful story about Parley Baer's eulogy for Howard earlier that year.

When Gunsmoke was sponsored for a single broadcast on November 21st 1952, by Chrysler Plymouth, the show drew a good rating against ABC’s This is Your FBI, and was heard by roughly 8 million people.

After eighteen months on the air, on October 3rd, 1953, the critically acclaimed show got sponsorship from General Foods’ Post Toasties. But the sponsorship ended thirteen weeks later on December 26th. The show continued to air, sustained by CBS, on Saturdays at 8:30PM. The next week, on January 2nd, 1954, Gunsmoke broadcast an episode called “Stage Holdup.”

It would take Jimmy Stewart’s aversion to Liggett & Myers Tobacco to land Gunsmoke its big sponsor. They wanted to sponsor The Six Shooter. Stewart declined, fearful of what a tobacco brand might do to his wholesome image.

The Six Shooter went off the air in June, while Liggett & Myers sponsored Gunsmoke, beginning with the July 5th, 1954 episode.

By 1956, Gunsmoke was the top rated show on radio. It was one of the few able to temporarily hold its audience in the TV era, even with the launch of Gunsmoke’s TV version.

The United States entered 1954 in an uncertain position. Years of racial discrimination were coming to the forefront. In May, Brown vs. the Board of Education would make racial segregation in schools illegal.

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The Korean War was over, but the communist Red Scare was reaching its height.Dwight D. Eisenhower was completing his first year as U.S. President. Elizabeth II was now Queen of England. Joseph Stalin was dead. So was Hank Williams, Maude Adams, Jim Thorpe, Herman Mankiewicz, Dooley Wilson, Robert Taft, Edwin Hubble, and Dylan Thomas.

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Meanwhile, radio achieved total saturation. Ninety-eight percent of homes had a radio set. There were still nineteen million U.S. houses that could only be reached by radio. However, the four national networks continued a five-year downward trend in radio ad sales. Network radio gross revenue peaked in 1948 at just under two-hundred million dollars. In 1953, it was down to one-hundred sixty million.

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Procter & Gamble led the way with over fourteen million dollars spent, and forty companies, including General Foods, Colgate-Palmolive, Liggett & Myers, Campbell’s Soups, S.C. Johnson, and Coca-Cola spent at least one million dollars on radio advertising.

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While TV hadn’t fully supplanted radio’s total reach, it had decimated it’s prime-time audience share. On CBS-TV I Love Lucy led all shows with a 58.8 rating. It was seen in over fifteen million homes each Monday evening at 9PM. Opposite on the other medium, The Lux Radio Theater was heard in just under three million.

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And it turned out that as McCarthyism reached its zenith, dramatic radio would spend the first six months of 1954 facing wide-spread network cancellations. These were shows that just six years earlier were at the forefront of national consciousness.

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Radio’s heyday was over. Tonight, we’ll go back to January of 1954 and search for more answers.

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Welcome to Breaking Walls, episode 123. My name is James Scully. Tonight on Breaking Walls, we open 2022 with a six-part mini-series on radio business and programming in 1954. We’ll begin with January, in a radio half-season that was for many, the end of the line.

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If this is your first time listening to Breaking Walls, welcome to the show! You can find this series for free on every podcasting platform, and at TheWallBreakers.com.

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Tonight we’ll also begin a new programming format on Breaking Walls. Going forward, I’ll be releasing each episode in parts. These parts will be available on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Once all parts of an episode are released, I’ll release the full-length episode for those who want to listen to it in the traditional format. For those listening on Youtube for the first time, please go to TheWallBreakers.com for the full lineup of past episodes in feature length.

There will be a programming format change coming to Breaking Walls beginning on January 1st, 2022.

Going forward, I’ll be releasing each episode in parts. These parts will be available on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Once all parts of an episode are released, I’ll release the full-length episode for those who want to listen to it in the traditional format.

It's an easier way to break down content, to get content up onto Youtube, which requires all files uploaded to be a movie file, and to make the parts of each episode more easily digestible for you, the audience.

If you want to listen to new episodes in the traditional full-length format immediately, as of January 1st, you'll be able to do so at Patreon.com/TheWallBreakers for as little as $1 per month.

If you have any questions, email me: [email protected]

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 99: New Year's 1948 On The Air

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Between nine and ten o’clock on Wednesday nights during 1947-48, NBC aired two of the top-fifteen shows on the air. The first was Duffy’s Tavern, who broadcast to a 23.9 rating in January 1948.

The brainchild of star Ed Gardner, the show debuted as part of CBS’s Forecast pilot series on July 30th, 1940. By the winter of 1947 it was in the midst of its fourth season on NBC.

Duffy’s Tavern was allegedly located in manhattan on 3rd avenue and 23rd street. It was the “eyesore of the East side” where the “elite meet to eat.”

Duffy never made an appearance, but his disagreeable nature was a constant source of anxiety for Archie, thanks to his frequent telephone calls.

Gardner’s heavily New York-accented Archie has inspired several characters in the years since.

Garry Moore was the special guest for the evening and Alan Reed voices the accountant who has come to check on Duffy's books.

In November of 1947, Roma Wines announced they were dropping their sponsorship of Suspense. Roma’s last episode was on November 20th, 1947.

As CBS began to sustain the show’s cost, they indicated they were no longer interested in offering Suspense to an alcohol brand. For the next five weeks Suspense shifted to Friday evenings live, coast-to-coast at 9:30PM eastern time.

December 26th, 1947 was the last of those Fridays. Director William Spier chose Ozzie and Harriet Nelson to star as a husband and wife driven to despair by a hateful invalid uncle. It was called “Too Little To Live On,” and written by Robert L. Richards, who also wrote “The House in Cypress Canyon.”

“Too Little To Live On” is a masterpiece in long-scene radio drama.

The next week, Suspense began a new hour-long format, hosted by Robert Montgomery. William Spier’s last date with the production was January 24th, 1948. He married June Havoc the next day.

The Nelsons vacated their Sunday at 6PM time slot to take over the Friday at 9:30 position Suspense occupied here. Although their CBS rating climbed to 13.4 that season, in the fall Ozzie and Harriet Nelson left for NBC.

On Christmas night, 1948, The Judy Canova Show and its 16.6 rating signed on live coast-to-coast for NBC from Hollywood at 9:30PM eastern time. Then in its sixth season on the air, the show had settled into a solid Saturday audience get.

Born in November of 1913, Judy Canova was from Jacksonville, Florida. Early in her career she was typed as a hayseed. Publicity for her show in the fall of 1943 depicted her with shotgun and wolf traps. It created a pigtails-and-calico fad on college campuses everywhere.

Canova told tall tales about her pig, Loverboy, or about Cousin Ureenus, who loved chopped-liver ice cream. Mel Blanc and Ruby Dandridge were large parts of the cast.

On Christmas night, Judy was convinced that her publicity agent was getting her the wrong kind of publicity.

In June of 1980 famed radio announcer Don Wilson, who starred on Jack Benny's program for decades, sat down with Chuck Schaden for a conversation about his life and career (full interview here - http://www.speakingofradio.com/interviews/wilson-don-announcer/).

During the conversation Don Wilson spoke of Jack Benny's comedic philosophy and the program's yearly Palm Springs Christmas season shows.