Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

The U.S. spent the first ten months of 1949 in a recession. Competition for the advertising dollar was stiffer. There were now over two-thousand-six-hundred AM and FM radio stations in the country, and TV was becoming a serious threat.

Over one-hundred Television stations were on the air. Only two Network Radio shows had ratings higher than a 20. Just two years earlier, there were fifteen. Radio’s average Top 50 ratings were their lowest since 1937 and network radio revenue dropped for the first time since 1933.

Meanwhile, NBC, ABC, CBS, and the Dumont Network reported a combined TV income of $29.4 Million. But advertisers were learning that TV production costs were much greater than radio’s. The extra money had to come from somewhere. Radio budgets were the likely source.

On December 18th, 1949, NBC broadcast an episode of America United with a panel discussion on estimates and predictions concerning 1950. It was moderated by David Brinkley, at the time NBC’s Washington commentator.

The post-World War II world had been chaotic. Europe was rebuilding slowly as the US and Russia became the two superpowers.

That same day, as the Philadelphia Eagles were beating the Los Angeles Rams in the 1949 NFL Championship Game, Nikita Khrushchev was made The Soviet Communist Party’s secretary of the Central Committee, and single-party Communist elections were held in Bulgaria.

Two days later, Josef Stalin was awarded the Order of Lenin as part of celebrations for his seventieth birthday.

By December Jack Benny’s rating was up to 25.4, tops on radio. On December 11th, 1949, Jack attempted to make arrangements for his Texas benefit appearance. Notre Dame football coach Frank Leahy was the guest star.

To take advantage of Capital Gains laws, Jack Benny had formed his holdings into a corporation and sold it to CBS for Two-point-two-six Million dollars.

Benny opened the fall 1949 season by taking stock of his pantry. The October 2nd program got a rating of 20.3.

On election night, New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer, who’d succeeded Fiorello La Guardia, won reelection.

He was soon confronted with a police corruption scandal uncovered by Kings County DA, Miles McDonald. O'Dwyer would resign from office on August 31st, 1950.

President Truman appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. O’Dwyer would return to New York in 1951 to answer questions about his association with organized crime. He resigned as ambassador in 1952.

By the time Mel Allen broadcast Game four of the 1949 world series at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on October 8th, the world was in turmoil. The Yankees would win that day and take the series four games to one, but people's attention was turned toward world politics.

The Communist People’s Republic of China was formed on October 1st and recognized by the USSR the next day. The Democratic Republic of East Germany was formed on October 7th. On October 14th, Ten Communist Party USA leaders were sentenced to jail time. Two days later the Greek Civil war ended with a Communist surrender, and on October 24th the cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters was laid in New York.

As 1949’s holiday season approached, India adopted a constitution, while the labor government was defeated in Australian Federal elections.

A growing red scare was now deeply embedded in the media. Alger Hiss’ second perjury trial began in November, while Mahatma Gandhi's assassins were executed, and Chinese communist troops continued their march to Taiwan. Members of the media had been claiming there were potential communist cells in the entertainment industry for more than two years.

On December 23rd, 1948, CBS Chairman William Paley and CEO Frank Stanton broadcast a special closed circuit press conference to their affiliates and staff. The move was to officially announce that Jack Benny was switching his program from NBC to CBS. The change would begin with the first broadcast of the new year.

When William Paley signed Jack Benny in November, he’d convinced sponsor American Tobacco to make the jump to CBS by agreeing to pay the cigarette giant $3K per week for every ratings point lost after the migration. The move signaled that Paley was intent on not just equalling Benny’s audience on NBC, but growing it.

In December of 1948, Benny’s last month on NBC, his program rating was 25.8. His first episode rating for CBS? — 28.3. It was the most-listened to show in the U.S.

Benny ended the 48-49 season in May on a high note. His combined rating for his last three months on NBC was 22.7. His combined rating for his first three months on CBS was 25.8.

In Breaking Walls episode 133 we spend Thanksgiving 1949 with the cast of I Love a Mystery.

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Highlights:

• Thanksgiving Eve, 1949

• Carlton E. Morse—Budget Stretcher

• The First Two I Love a Mystery Runs

• Mutual Broadcasting in 1949—I Love a Mystery Relaunches

• Thanksgiving Day 1949—Thorson and Boles

• Mercedes McCambridge—Oscar Winner

• Tony Randall’s Early Career

• I Love a Mystery is Canceled

• Parley Baer and One Final Pilot

• Wrapping Things Up

• Looking Ahead to Christmas With Jack Benny

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The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

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The reading material used in today’s episode was:

On the Air — By John Dunning

The I Love A Mystery Companion — By Martin Grams Jr.

Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

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On the interview front:

• Parley Baer, Jim Boles, Mercedes McCambridge, Carlton E. Morse, Tony Randall, Russell and Don Wilson, were with Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at SpeakingOfRadio.com.

• Parley Baer and Himan Brown were with SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com.

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:

Sligo Creek — By Al Petteway

It All Depends on You — By Frank Sinatra

Shenandoah — By Michael Hanna

The Holly and the Ivy — By George Winston

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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

Ron Baron

Orson Orsen Chandler

Phil Erickson

Eirik Davey-Gislason

Jessica Hanna

Perri Harper

Briana Isaac

Thomas M. Joyce

Ryan Kramer

Gary Mollica

Barry Nadler

Christian Neuhaus

Aimee Pavy

Martin Schwartz

Ray Shaw

John Williams

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WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

Well, that brings our look at I Love A Mystery to a close, but there’s no mystery about what people thought of the subject of our next Breaking Walls episode.

Next time on Breaking Walls, we celebrate the holidays by going shopping with the one and only Jack Benny.

Chuck Schaden interviewed Tony Randall on September 16th, 1970 at the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. Eight days later Randall’s new series The Odd Couple debuted on ABC. Randall played Felix Unger. The show ran for five seasons and became Randall’s most-remembered role. He continued acting until passing away on May 17th, 2004.

After I Love A Mystery went off the air, Carlton E. Morse penned a new serial drama entitled Family Skeleton. He cast Mercedes McCambridge in the lead role. The Program would air weeknights on CBS from June 8th, 1953 through March 5th, 1954. It pulled a rating of 3.3 for Sweetheart Soap.

Mercedes McCambridge had many trials and tribulations. She was nominated for a second Academy Award for her role in Giant in 1956. She also voiced the demon in The Exorcist.

She won a battle with alcoholism and penned an autobiography in 1981 called The Qualities of Mercy.

Six years later her son John—a futures trader—was caught embezzling funds under McCambridge’s name after she’d given him money to invest. Mercedes refused to cooperate with her son and the company he worked for. They wanted to institute a repayment scheme which would have kept the matter from becoming public.

In November of 1987 John wrote a scathing note blaming her for his problems before killing his wife, children, and then himself.

Mercedes appeared in one final TV role in 1988. Her second husband, radio and tv writer/producer/director Fletcher Markle, passed away in 1991. She died on March 2nd, 2004 in La Jolla, California.

Although the serial went off the air in 1952, in May of 1954 a new audition record was produced for CBS in Hollywood. With Russell Thorson back in Los Angeles he carried over the role of Jack, with Ben Wright as Reggie, and Parley Baer as Doc. Parley Baer was most-known for playing Chester Proudfoot on Gunsmoke.

CBS didn’t pick up the series and I Love A Mystery went off the air for good.

Initially running at 7:45PM, Mutual moved I Love a Mystery to 10:15 in 1950. Although geared for teenagers, it was obviously not standard juvenile programming. Many listeners remembered tuning in under blankets with the lights down low.

But, as entertaining as the program was, by 1952, television was taking over in big cities. One Man’s Family began running on TV in 1949. Tony Randall appeared in telecasts.

Mutual ran as a cooperative, rather than a corporation. The network’s top stations — WOR in New York, WGN in Chicago, and Don Lee’s KHJ in Los Angeles — all boasted powerful signals. But, while Mutual had the most affiliated stations of the big four networks, many of these were small stations in rural areas. This limited their advertiser appeal.

As families left cities and farms for the suburbs, the network’s shared programming structure left it at a distinct disadvantage against NBC, CBS, and ABC. Those three networks would use their soaring revenue to move into TV. Although some Mutual affiliates developed television programming, the full network was never able to launch into TV.

With dramatic radio on its way out, the writing was on the wall. The final Mutual I Love A Mystery adventure aired on December 26th, 1952. By then the Red Scare was a major issue in the entertainment industry, as Himan Brown remembered.