This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 97: Thanksgiving 1947—The Most Popular Season in Radio History

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Earlier in 1947 Bing Crosby and ABC signed Al Jolson to a $50,000 contract for ten Philco Radio Time guest appearances. Jolson showed up for just one Philco Radio Time appearance when Jolson signed another contract—to host Crosby’s former NBC show, The Kraft Music Hall.

Crosby was forced to rely on a mix of movie star guests and drop-ins from other ABC shows. In a season of inflated ratings Crosby lost 20% of his audience, falling out of the season’s Top 50 for the first and only time.

The Kraft people weren’t complaining. In the three seasons since Crosby’s acrimonious departure from NBC, Kraft had seen its Music Hall rating cut in half. Meanwhile, Al Jolson was hot again after the success of his filmed biography, The Jolson Story, which earned six Academy Award nominations and won two Oscars.

It proved to be a good investment. The 60-year-old singer pushed the show’s rating back into first place on Thursday and a return into the season’s Top 20 with a rating of 18.9.

At 9:30PM, opposite the Sealtest Village Store on NBC, Casey, Crime Photographer took to the air, live, coast-to-coast over all CBS stations. Casey was a newspaper photographer, which made for a decidedly unique kind of gumshoe. By the late 1940s, the show had established itself as a primetime hit. During the 1947-48 season, it had a rating of 15.6.

It starred Staats Cotsworth as Casey and was then sponsored by Anchor Hocking. Although by 1947 Staats was entrenched as a prime-time star, he also retained the male lead in the daytime melodrama Front Page Farrell.