Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1943)

Department Store SERVICE DIARY For the company department store o£ Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co. of Canada, its Service Diary will be written in the hearts of CJAT listeners. Living up to its brain child's name, sponsor uses no direct advertising on this institutional offering, and a credit line is its only mention. For many men in the army, navy or air force, trail's end is Trail, B.C., and to its post office come letters to the home folks from the far corners of the world. Eager to share in those messages are fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts for whom, that week, the postman didn't ring twice. Company Store is the gobetween that makes sharing possible. Four minutes of the 30-minute offering punctuate the reading of excerpts from just such letters. Furloughs mean that via the airwaves, the friends of each, to the last man, can hear from their own lips the stories of their experiences. To accommodate the returning heroes, interviews are usually recorded in advance. To round out the program, listeners hear a short-short story. Written for the occasion, the yarns have a patriotic angle, and are frequently written around a song. Built as the answer to sponsor's request for a purely institutional program, the show has been on the air a year. Originally set up on a three-times-aweek schedule, scarcity of program material necessitated a once-a-week change over. air FAX: Listeners relax to a musical background furnished by Maestro Edwin Franko Goldman and his band. Songs by Joe Petersen, the Southern Suns' and Spike Jones and his City Slickers keep things swinging. Company Store also presents the Blue Network offering, Three Thirds of a Nation. Program director Frank Fleming turns the pages of Service Diary. First Broadcast: 1942. Broadcast Schedule: Friday, 9:30-10:00 P.M. Preceded By: Calling All Cars. Followed By: News. Sponsor: Company Store. Station: CJAT, Trail, B.C. Power: 1,000 watts. Population: 12,000. COMMENT: Only thorn in a program set-up of this kind is the possibility of shortages in source material. Sponsors who offer such shows are catering to a prime public interest, are therefore insured of wide listenership. Simple prescription for removing the thorn: schedule program on the basis of material supply, rather than public demand. It's a good bet for a once-a-weeker, but if copy supply is ample, it can work on a daily schedule. Department Stares JUNIOR LEAGUE CHILDREN'S RADIO HOUR Parents who willy-nilly are forced either to listen to their child's favorite radio programs or install a second radio in some part of the house removed from the living room, bear mute testimony to the fact that the child audience is one that cannot be ignored. That many of these programs have aroused the ire of both parents and teachers is to add insult to injury. When Hale Bros., Sacramento, Cal., department store offered juveniles an entertaining earful over KROY that got the backing of parents, it won the plaudits of both groups. By a flip of the wrist, moppets re-live the adventures of Tom Sawyer, in a once-a-week quarterhour serialization directed toward the elementary schools. The cast for the Thursday, 7:30-7:45 P.M. offering: members of the Sacramento Junior League Radio Club. Not one to have just one string to its bow, Hale Bros, also offers a weekly 30-minute variety show featuring talents students of junior high and junior college age. The 6:15 P.M. Saturday parade of talent is a delayed transcribed program which originates in one of the secondary schools of the Sacramento City Unified School District. Programs are waxed in the school auditorium during a regular school assembly. Complete presentation is written and produced by the school under faculty supervision, with KROY assistance. Elementary school children are given their innings on Friday. Radio Goes to Scliool each week in a complete 15-minute sketch at 7:45 P.M. Transcribed program originates in a different elementary 238 RADIO SHOWMANSH IP