Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1943)

,adio Recruits! Help Wanted Appeals Meet Crucial Manpower Shortage Radio Helps Industry Move Down Victory Road WAR creates many problems, not the least of which is that of manpower. One of radio's little heralded, but important wartime roles, centers in its ability to provide needed workers for shipyards, foundries, airplane manufacturers, other vital production centers. While newspaper ads bring responses from workers, many already employed but seeking better jobs, radio reaches those who would like to work but scarcely know how to apply for it. How industry has used this new approach to attract new blood is told here. SHIPBUILDERS Men and women in non-essential occupations must be shown that there is a paraUel between their present occupations and one of a thousand jobs in heavy industries. To accomplish this, the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Chester, Pa., called upon WFIL to recruit more help in overalls. In Sweet Land of Liberty, Sun makes its weekly half-hour appeal. Sunday program exposes current rumors in dramatic form; presents patriotic music; up-to-the-minute news, and a dramatization from the fighting front, showing completed liberty ships in actions. Writer and show producer Don Martin pays a weekly visit to the shipyard for background material, selects a typical Sun workman for a Sunday interview spot. To the microphone come white collar workers, bank and store clerks. Wall Street runners, bootblacks, photographers, others, all of whom have become shipfitters, welders, stage builders, chippers, toolroom men, machinists, other essential craftsmen. To influence men to take positions with the Camden Shipbuilding Sc Marine Railway Co., Camden, Ma., a series of programs was begun over WLBZ, Bangor. While radio was the only form of advertising used, men came not only from Maine, but from all parts of New England. When First Lady Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Camden to sponsor the first vessel launched in the community since the first World War, personnel director H. S. Bickford had the event aired over WLBZ, also fed to WRDO, Augusta, and WCOU, Lewiston. A special Christmas Day broadcast, and a regular series of quarter-hours helped to provide man hours. Example: "Again, the rugged oaks of Maine arc being fashioned into bottoms by men and women from all over Maine. Every day, with effort that cannot be measured in hours or wage, huge stems and keels, rugged planks and stanchions are fitted together by men who have come to work to win. Ships such as those of the Camden Shipbuilding 8C Marine Railway Co. aren't built in a day. Many are the man-hours of toil and sweat before the sturdy hulls are wet! Although hundreds are bending every effort that more ships be launched more often, Camden needs more people. See to it that you and every other able man or woman finds his place at the Camden Shipyards." TRANSPORTATION The specific difficulty of the Capital Transit Co., one of America's largest and busiest transportation systems, was manpower. Men, and, yes, women to operate streetcars SEPTEMBER, 1 943 305