Broadcasting (July - Dec 1940)

KENO, LAS VEGAS, TO START SEPT. 1 AUTHORIZED for construction on June 5, the new KENO, Las Vegas, Nevada, operating with 250 watts on 1370 kc. fulltime, will go on the air about Sept. 1, according to George Penn Foster, general manager. Nevada Broadcasting Co., operator, is co-owned by Foster and Maxwell Kelch, who is chief engineer. The firm has taken over the one-story building formerly occupied by a night club. The Meadows, and is remodeling it. Three new studios are being built, including one to accommodate 300 persons. All studios will be airconditioned and artificially lighted. A Collins transmitter and speech input equipment, with Wincharger vertical radiator, is being installed. Balance of equipment is RCA. Foster, before coming to the West Coast two years ago, was with NBC, CBS and Mutual network in Atlantic City, as producer. Kelch is well-known in West Coast radio, having been engineer with various stations and also a consultant. John Strock will be commercial manager. Bob White joins the staif as announcer-producer. Other personnel has not yet been selected. Station has contracted for Thesaurus. Studios and transmitter site will be located two miles ouu of Las Vegas, on the Boulder Highway. BROADWAY LISTENS AT SUNRISE WABC Discovers Early Birds Are Tuned to Their Radios and Dawn Programs Prove Surprise Mr. Hayes FLOYD MACK, newscaster of WOR, who once was a radio engineer, is working on the construction of a composite high fidelity dual-channel home recording system, automatic recordchanging phonograph, FM receiver, shortwave receiver. WHEN Arthur Hull Hayes, new sales manager of WABC, New York, decided that early morninghours ought to pay in New York, since other sections find them profitable, he met with doubts from skeptical oldtimers. But he went ahead with his idea, and WABC's opening time was moved from 7 :30 to 6:30 a.m. Worst problem was the 6:30-7 half-hour, and it was solved by placing Larry Elliott, veteran CBS announcer, at the mike and letting him run amuck as the Rising Son. The successful Phil Cook participating quarter-hour. Morning Almanac, was placed in the 7-8 slot. "Why don't you turn off your radio and go back to bed like a decent citizen?", Elliot inquires of his (at first) startled listeners. "If you're silly enough to get out of bed at this ungodly hour, it's your fault . . . don't expect me to entertain you . . . I'm tired too." Listening License WABC knew, from the first, that it had something good in Rising Son. Mail in response to Elliot's admonition that anyone who wanted to listen to this pi'ogram was required to obtain a listening WICHITA WINGS— TO SALES! so GREAT IS KANSAS' FAME as a producer of wheat that national advertisers too often overlook her other wealth. In Wichita — industrial hub of the Jayhawk State — three great factories are working extra shifts to meet the world demand for airplanes. With the encouragement of the War Department, which favors an inland aircraft industry, Wichita's importance to Aviation grows each year. Not only Airplanes, but also Flour, Oil Field Equipment, Building Materials, Appliances and Foodstuffs are produced in thriving MANHATTAN • TOPEKA* . ',Ji HUTCHINSON • O PrfATT WICHITA oCHANuTE PONCA CITV « O K L A H BARTLESviLLt TULSA ^ :> M A I-- Wichita. In the KFH Airea are 1,384 plants, turning out 338 million dollars' worth of goods annually. And this is the market which only THAT SELLING STATION FOR KANSAS can tap. There are 292,421 radio homes in KFH-land, and they respond readily to the sales impact of KFH Radio. Your Edward Petry & Co. office can clear time for you. THAT SELLING STATION FOR KANSAS KFH WICHITA The Only Full Time CBS Outlet for Kansas CBS o 5000 DAY • CP. 5000 NIGHT (ready soon) • CALL ANY EDWARD PETRY OFFICE license, lest the "big black wagon" draw up to the back door and take them away, was sufficient to induce sponsors (Ford Motor, Kondon Mfg., Gordon Baking, and Pall Mall Cigarettes) to schedule 100word and one-minute announcements on the programs. It remained for Rising Son's newest sponsor, however — the Federal Life & Casualty Co. — to put the show to a concrete mail-pulling test. On July 8, Federal Life inaugurated a three-a-week, 100-word announcement series on the program. From their very first announcement, it asked for mail, otfering listeners a free book of household hints. Neither Hayes, nor Federal Life's agency, Green-Brodie Inc., knew in advance what restilts the program would produce in its first week. They expected there might be a couple of hundred replies. But the first day's mail, alone, went higher than their estimate for the entire week! And the next four days (with the announcements being made on alternate days) kept pace. Rising Son finished its first week of Federal Life announcements with 1,200 mail replies and over 50 telephone inquiries! Unusual in itself, the "mail count" provided only half the story of Federal's first-week experience with the program. For, as the sponsor's agency put it in a letter to Hayes : "Federal's men had a chance to do what even the radio station seldom can — they interviewed the respondents in the audience while delivering the book of household hints which Elliot had offered. I'm sure you'll be interested to know that: All Types of Families "They found the Rising Son audience made up not only of mill and factory families, but with a surprisingly large number of middle and upper class families, as well. "There was an unusually great loyalty to Larry Elliot evident on the part of all his listeners. They asked many questions about him, and indicated that they listen to his program regularly, despite the extremely early hour at which it is broadcast. "This loyalty was further borne out by the fact that in a large proportion of these homes the family , had framed and conspicuously displayed Larry Elliot's 'License to Listen' to the program." Enthusiastic over their results on Rising Son, Federal Life already has contracted with WABC for an additional program, 15 minutes of Zeke Manners & His Gang, Sunday mornings, 11:15 to 11:30. The old-timers who raised eyebrows when Hayes first proposed an earlier opening time for WABC have long since been convinced. Now they're watching witho'ut comment Hayes' latest move of putting WABC on the air every morning at 6:25 a.m. — and, in fact, expecting that before long Hayes will be reaching out for an audience from 6 o'clock on. And getting it! EVEN AT GOLF the thoughts of Robert Tincher, manager of WNAX, Yankton, S. D., are never far from radio. Here he putts away on the "Ye Idle Hour" fourhole golf course, a feature of the 1940 WNAX staff picnic. Jim Gies contrived the hazards: holes cut through transcriptions, tunnels of conduits, traps of tube packing cases. Phil Hoffman, WNAX commercial manager, copped the trophy — a golf club lollipop. ASCAP Sued Over Songs SUIT for $6,000,000 damages was filed July 15 in New York Supreme Court against ASCAP and Southern Music Publishing Co. by Perry Bradford, acting on behalf of Perry Bradford Inc., Acme Music Publishing Co. and Blues Music Co. Bradford charges that in February, 1934, he was loaned $100 by Southern Music, to be repaid in 60 days, in return for which Bradford turned over the rights to 40 songs as collateral, but that return of the songs was refused upon request and after payment of the $100. Bradford, who claims 15 of the compositions as his own, the remainder being the property of Acme and Blues, also alleges that ASCAP collected royalties on the songs, listing Southern Music as an ASCAP member. According to Herman Finkelstein of Schwartz & Frohlich. New York, ASCAP counsel, Bradford executed an assignment to Southern Music for the compositions and ASCAP licensed the works, relying on the assignment. LONGEST on the air with political convention coverage was MBS, devoting 30 hours to the four-day Democratic convention and 33 hours 52 minutes to the five-day Republican. It claimed a scoop on the Democratic platform when Fulton Lewis jr. secured a copy and read it 2^/^ hours before the ofiicial reading by Senator Wagner. UISPH SPARTAHBURG^ There's new life in an old established station and new life in a famous old market. WSPA and Piedmont, South Carolina make a swell combination for sales. Write for rates. 1000 Watts • 920 Kc. H'a£t&i S^unvn, Gent Mgr. Page 128 • August J, J 940 BROADCASTING • Broadcast Advertising