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Oracle: Radio 129
of NBC were captured. For many years NBC had been the commanding power in broadcasting and CBS the aggressive second; even during the war, when virtually all salable time was sold, NBC held its position because it had almost a monopoly of popular comedy, and as a result it attracted the most powerful affiliated stations. The situation was favorable to experiment because CBS needed to draw attention to itself and, at the same time, was making enough money to invest in programs that might not pay off. Its economic position allowed fairly young people in both the executive and program branches of CBS to work out their ideas; Corwin, William N. Robson, Irving Ries, and other directors had a workshop at their disposal; at the same time the network worked on programs for sale. Unfortunately, the hardest thing in radio is to develop a comedy program; Benny, Allen, Cantor, Burns and Allen, Hope, Durante, had all come to radio with long experience in other fields; by a strange fatality, if they ever were placed on the CBS network, they did not stay there, and no new talent quite measured up to them in appeal. Although CBS sold as many as twenty program packages to sponsors (six of them news, four quiz and giveaways) the network had to establish itself more firmly; it had to meet the expenses of television and the reduction in radio income which success in television would bring. By seducing the great comedians away from NBC in 1949, the network fortified its entire schedule; the periods before and after the famous programs became more desirable, and a sponsor taking one of these might also buy a period on another night, at a sizable discount. The CBS atmosphere of enterprise, success, and optimism came to station-owners at a low point, when they were beginning to lose faith in radio and were still afraid of television; a paralysis of the will was spreading to them when they were galvanized into action by the spectacular business deals and the exceptional publicity that centered around Jack Benny's capital-gains problems; a new excitement was generated, and broadcasting was the better for it.
The situation of the two chief rivals had been reversed. It was