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

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On Wednesday nights at 10PM eastern time during the 1947-48 radio season, The Big Story took to the air live from New York on NBC. Ernest Chappell announced and some of New York’s most well-known character actors appeared.

The series grew out of a real crime case. Bernard J. Prockter, independent producer of radio shows, read a Newsweek account of how two Chicago Times reporters had worked for months on a 14-year-old murder case, writing more than 30 stories before uncovering evidence that led to a pardon for a man wrongly convicted. He wondered if a series built around reporters and their "big stories” would work on the air.

It did better than that.

The show premiered on April 2nd, 1947 and by the Autumn was topping Bing Crosby on ABC in their head-to-head ratings battle. In a season of inflated audiences, The Big Story played a tremendous role in Bing’s ratings nosedive. It won its time slot with a 16.1.

In Prockter’s eyes, crime thrillers were the stuff of radio drama. The show concentrated on long-closed murder cases or other violent crimes against society.

The reporter’s and his or her profession was lionized. The names of all characters were changed, except the name of the reporter and the newspaper. At the end of each drama, the real reporter was brought before the microphone and given a $500 reward in the name of the sponsor, Pall Mall Cigarettes.

Many reporters looked upon the award with amusement, their real-life characteristics were often changed to the point that, within the story, they barely recognized themselves.