NAB reports (Jan-Dec 1944)

many communities as high as 250 per cent above the pre-drive rate. “The Signal Corps drive, August 10th through the 23rd, upped recruits over 800 per cent. “ ‘Army Specialists’ were sought from October 5th to 19th, and on the Baseball Allocation Plan, a tie-up with baseball broadcasts, from September 21st to October 5th. By mid-October quotas for these mechanics for three branches of the Army were passed. This was con¬ sidered a particular achievement, in view of the enormous pressure from industry for this type of skilled technical personnel. “ ‘Non-Combat Pilots’ was carried for one week begin¬ ning November 2nd. The CAA hoped for 50,000 returns. At the end of the 7-day period a total of 104 inquiries was assured. “ ‘Don’t Travel at Christmas’' — A breakdown of trans¬ portation during Christmas of 1942 loomed unless civil¬ ian travel was curtailed. Radio went to work. On many railroads less traveled than last Christmas. The Office of Defense Transportation reported the muchfeared breakdown completely averted. And all soldiers who wanted to get home got there. “ ‘V-Mail’ — This was an Army and Navy problem. One sack of V-Mail equals 65 sacks of regular mail. The week before the radio campaign, one-half million V-Mail letters were handled — during the third week of the cam¬ paign, one-and-a-quarter million — 116 per cent increase. Today the increase is between 150 to 200 per cent.” That was in May of 1943. “ ‘Shoe Rationing’— This campaign was so secret the OWI called it Oyster Campaign. It had to be broken on Sunday at 3:00 P. M. to eliminate a run on shoe stores. No Sunday newspapers could be used because they were all printed Saturday night. Radio had not only to tell consumers they couldn’t buy without ration coupons, it also had to tell shoe dealers they couldn’t open Monday. Very few instances of dealers not hearing were reported. “Recruitment of War Workers through the U. S. Employment Service gained 21 per cent in January 1943 over the previous month, with radio help.” All this happened in the first year of the war, when the responsibilities of war had to be explained to a nation which was almost stubborn for peace before Pearl Harbor. Instilling the idea. of war was a major job alone without undertaking to promote and make effective its various processes such as I just covered in the War Advertising Council report. How did radio do it? You will remember I said that in the beginning adver¬ tisers went on the radio with announcements and programs and guessed at the right continuity, the right kind of pro¬ gram content, the right time of day or night, and were joined in this guessing game by radio people themselves. Suppose the government had been faced with the same necessity? The answer is that radio had developed scientific meas¬ urement of size and type of audiences and how to reach them. This was another slow and painstaking process in bringing the medium to the point where, in 1942, it had strategic importance to this nation at war. Radio knew, for example, that twenty million women listened regularly to daytime serials or soap operas, as they are frequently called. Here was the place for wartime messages on con¬ servation, salvage, Civilian Defense and a host of sub¬ jects most appropriately directed to the homemakers of our country. Radio knew the size and type of audiences which lis¬ tened to its popular comedians, its musical shows, news, public forums, sports broadcasts — everything on the pro¬ gram schedule. Each one presented opportunities for reaching certain types of individuals or large mixed audi¬ ences. The War Advertising Council report mentioned the Baseball Allocation Plan. This meant that messages directed to men who would make the best Army Specialists were inserted in the play-by-play accounts of baseball games — because it was a known fact that the men of all classes and particularly men of technical skill, mechanics, machinists and others, were listening to baseball broad¬ casts. It produced results. This knowledge of radio’s potentialities existed not only on a national basis, with regard to network and nationally July 28, 1944 — 252 syndicated transcribed programs, it was just as much alive in the minds of station managers who had local programs with particular possibilities in local broadcast areas. The five War Bond Campaigns illustrate better than anything else what stations have done in their home towns to further the war effort. The reports of local station activities in behalf of the five War Bond drives fill a tremendous filing space at the headquarters of the National Association of Broadcasters. Stations filled huge auditoriums with pur¬ chasers of individual War Bonds who came to see radio talent shows— they held bond rallies on the city streets — they brought in public officials and returned war heroes for special broadcasts— they organized and promoted civic club drives — they worked with the city schools on doorto-door canvasses — they helped stage movie premieres — they devoted entire program schedules, 18 and 19 hours at a stretch, to bond selling — they set up bond booths in their own reception rooms — they sent their own personnel out on the street selling and delivering bonds to purchasers who called in as a result of broadcasts. In morale-building activities, stations have staged camp shows, sent travelling troupes over wide areas to entertain members of the armed forces, picked up and broadcast practice maneuvers, sent out to all parts of the world and brought back the recorded voices of loved ones from that area, so the home folks could hear them, broadcast for jobs for returning veterans, equipped hospitals with sound systems and radio receivers, in short, pursued every avenue of activity wherein they might perform a public service as centers of local communication. The full story of individual station cooperation with the war effort may never be told. It is too great to be recorded. It has been of such a nature as to defy factual analysis. It can best be described as whole radio station staffs, everyone engaged in broadcast operations, living, breathing and feeling the war with such intensity that it has per¬ meated every word and every program emanating from their transmitters. This kind of Americanism cannot be reduced to writing. It can only be felt by the millions who listen and are inspired. I want to give you another example that points up the magnitude of radio’s contribution to America at war. In common with the other advertising media broadcasting has kept a running record of the contributions which have been made by the advertisers and the industry itself toward the support of the war effort. It was radio’s wish to figure this contribution in terms of time on the air . . . one hour programs, half-hour programs, fifteen-minute programs and announcements, and at first the records were kept on that basis. A diffi¬ culty, however, was soon encountered. The Government desired to know what was the total contribution of all ad¬ vertising media toward the war. One newspaper page, plus one magazine page, plus one billboard, plus one-hour on the air equals what? We had to arrive at a common denominator. The obvious answer was to express the re¬ sult in terms of dollars. A technical method was reached for solving this problem in the radio field and the results surprised even the broad¬ casters themselves. During 1943 the total contribution of advertisers, broadcasting stations and networks, to the campaigns carried on by the Government in furtherance of the war amounted to the very considerable sum of slightly in excess of $202,000,000. What does all this demonstrate? It demonstrates radio’s effectiveness as a medium of communication in time of war. Radio has the same effectiveness in a peacetime economy but with less public significance . . . for it is not so readily apparent that radio’s operation in the public interest con¬ stitutes two-fisted maintenance of the American way of life. Public service groups . . . organized for the promotion of health, safety, law enforcement and general social ad¬ vancement . . . should profit much from a study of radio’s record in this war. They will learn that radio is phenome¬ nally effective. It reaches people and causes them to feel and act. It does so by virtue of its trained personnel, technical equipment and years of experience in its form of public approach. They will learn that the people of radio are instinctively attuned to public service. Such people can be inspired to the pitch of a crusade for a laudable