Breaking Walls

On Easter Sunday 1950, The Jack Benny Program, then airing Sunday evenings on CBS radio to a season rating of 20.7, broadcast their Easter episodes, aptly titled "Fifty Cents to a Bum."

When NBC launched Monitor on June 12th, 1955, it was a true magazine of the air, running over NBC radio stations from Saturday mornings until Midnight Sunday in four hour blocks, completely taking over NBC’s airtime on the weekends. The program offered actualities, remotes, comedy, and variety. Affiliates were free to pick up or put down the show in four hour increments.

In the early 1960s, CBS countered with their own version called, Dimension. Burgess Meredith hosted a show called American Landscape. He brought the listener to various American cultural institutions, like this trip to the old drug store.

This audio is hard to find and was digitized from an original transcription record.

One of the last original episodes of Jack Benny's radio program to air was the April 10th, 1955 show, which aired on CBS. In this episode an Easter stroll results in high jinks and hilarity.

In the midst of radio's highest-rated season, on Tuesday January 6th, 1948 Fibber McGee and Molly broadcast an episode from Hollywood in which the McGees get robbed. Too bad the robber opened the wrong door upon exiting.

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 102: The Return of Johnny Dollar (1955)

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At a CBS radio affiliates meeting in September of 1955, John Karole VP of Sales, predicted CBS’s time sold would be more than the other three networks combined.

Affiliates were given a Segmented Selling Plan. The plan offered a five-minute segment for twenty-one hundred dollars. Privately, many of the local stations grumbled. CBS had recently instituted income-slashing one-year contracts. Affiliate compensation was cut twenty percent.

But, Frank Stanton, President of CBS, boasted that since the birth of radio advertising, more than eight billion dollars had been spent on commercials. Eight million new radios had been manufactured in 1955—forty-five percent more the previous year.

Five-minute newscasts would dominate the tops of most hours. The network was now selling news advertising at its highest rate in history.

CBS was excited to announce evening programs with name-brand talent and The $64,000 Question would air simulcast on CBS Radio.

They were also substantially increasing dramatic production.

This included two evening strips at 8PM that would air five nights per week for fifteen minutes each night. One was to be Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, starring Gerald Mohr, who had just finished a successful run as Christopher Storm on TV’s Foreign Intrigue. Mohr recorded an audition on August 29th, 1955.

After the story end of the July 30th, 1950 episode of The Saint on NBC airwaves called "The Case of the Previewed Crime," Vincent Price came on for a PSA on racial and religious tolerance.

Written and directed by Robert Arthur and David Kogan, The Mysterious Traveler fired aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System on December 5th, 1943.

The lonely sound of a distant locomotive heralded the arrival of the sinister narrator (portrayed by Maurice Tarplin), who introduced himself each week.

Although mostly sustained and often discontinued and revived, The show was popular enough with Mutual listening audiences that it later spawned a comic book and a magazine.

In 1982 Jim Jordan, famous from the radio era as Fibber McGee, spoke via the telephone with John Dunning for his 71KNUS radio program from Denver. During the course of the conversation, Jordan recalled not taking Fibber McGee and Molly into TV with his late-wife Marian.

On February 2nd, 1958, Vincent Price was the special guest star (playing himself) alongside Bob Bailey in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. The episode is entitled, "The Price of Fame Matter."

This recording is from the Armed Forces Radio Network, and therefore all station identification and advertising spots have been removed.

On March 28th, 1943, Orson Welles subbed as host on Jack Benny's Grape Nuts Flakes Program on NBC. This is that broadcast.