Radio showmanship (Sept 1940-May 1941)

IPut by ZENN That The Very Same Last year 77*e New Yorker carried a story of a Long Island man who went to Abercrombie & Fitch, the famous New York sporting goods store, to buy a barometer. It seems that he had always wanted a barometer and finally succumbed to a glamorous window display to the tune of a $35 purchase. The barometer being large, his home being distant, he ordered it delivered. Unfortunately, when it was delivered, the indicator hand was jammed down hard at the left on the word "hurricane." He was furious at the indignity of receiving a broken barometer. He shook it and shook it but no amount of shaking would adjust it, whereupon he wrote the store a scorching letter of complaint. He drove into town to mail the letter, and when he came back, he found his house blown away — barometer and all. There may be an object lesson in this for the businessman who constantly prays for some barometer of the buying public's interest— yet may be disregarding one of the handiest and most practical indexes of public interest — namely, that simple staple of American life ordinarily referred to as "the show business." Big league radio entertainment, with its daily hold on the voluntary action of millions of people, provides a pattern of public thinking of indisputable accuracy. It, as Kenneth ( roode says in Showmanship in Business, commercial success consists oi Find out what people like in! do more of it and — Find out what people don't like and do le^s of it — then radio showmanship is a barometer that provides an unfailing incisure of public taste. Radio, s i ecu. Sports -the big four RADIO SHOWMANSHIP