Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

R M 94 190 F ACTOR Y-TO -YOU TELEVISION NEW GIANT « PICTURE TUBE Immense 151 square-inch screen on new 16" metal-glass tube . . . clear, steady, bright pictures . . . Synchronized sound and picture that a child can tune in perfectly . . . Long Distance FM Circuit... Big 12" Electro-Dynamic Panasonic Speaker . . . Available in beautiful consoles or in complete chassis (not a EASY TftfJUC kit). Buy direct at Low Fac *^^_ *"""■> tory Prices, with Low Down Payment and Long Easy Terms . . . and on 30 Days Trial! Send for 32-pagc, 4 color catalog today BUY DIRECT FROM FACTORY and SAVE! ... Also u Complele New 1950 Line of MIDWEST RADIOS S3 FM Circuit and new 3-Speed Phonograph. MIDWEST RADIO & TELEVISION CORP. Kept. X285.909 Broadway, Cincinnati 2, Ohio Pkaio land m* your new FREE 1950 Catalog. SELL DISTINCTIVE NEW Exclusive Gift Wraps. Novel 21 cards. Animated Books. Bon Bon Dishes. Bonus. Special offers. Write for , free samples exclusive Name Imprinted Decorated Stationery and feature All-Occasion samples on approval. ELMIRA GREETING CARD CO., Dept. 1 142, Elmira, New York MAKE EXTRA MONEY ^%V\UN!0N LABEL BOOK MATCHES Cm****^^ 5u'.ld steady repeat business V^^*"*^^ No ln»«*n'ent ... No Experience ^*^Trfir£?rer!islng Book Matches bring daily profit. Be a direct factory representative of the World ■> T »™S? exclusive UNION LABEL Book Match Manufacture? Prospects everywhere. We feature PETTY Glamour Girls, LAWSON WOOD almost human series GARRITY'S Hillbillies— Double books— Jumbo books— nearly .,? CS!,0/ combinations. New 1950 portfolio, 224 pagesof selling dynamiteFREE Make big profits QUICK— Daily commission in advance. Write today SUSKIP«? MATCH COMPANY Dept. V250 7528 S. Greenwood, Chicago IS, III CONSTIPATION Is Too Often Serious FREE BOOK— Explains Relation to Rectal-Colon Troubles CDVWttt *»ft» ,nd ^S*^. Avoid I Dangers |of Delay Colitis, rectal troubles and constipation are often associated together. Write today — a postcard will do — for a FREE copy of an up-to-the-minute 164-page illustrated book on these and associated ailments. McCleary Clinic and Hospital, C205 Elms Blvd., Excelsion Springs, Mo. With money going out, naturally it occurred to quite a few station owners that some better come in. On August 28, 1922, the first program with a commercial sponsor went on the air. The station was WEAF, New York, and the sponsor was the Queensboro Corporation, a real estate firm. It bought a series of ten-minute broadcasts at the rate of $35 an hour. Since it was spending money, it took full advantage of the time. The whole ten minutes was one long commercial, hammering home the glories of owning a home in Jackson Heights. Times certainly have changed. WEAF (now WNBC) would charge approximately $1200 an hour today, and many stations will not allow a middle announcement from the sponsor. Music took a long step ahead this year. The New York Philharmonic went on the air for the first time — and in Chicago, grand opera took to the air in a series of broadcasts. That was the work of Mary Garden, whose hip-swinging Salome and Thais had already stunned the sedate opera world. She had been appointed director general of the Chicago Opera Company which had fallen on evil days financially. She was willing to try anything to awaken interest — even radio. There were only a few thousand sets in Chicago, but her board objected strenuously. They thought that everyone would stay away if opera could be heard free at home. Garden had her way, however, and an astonishing thing happened. The sale of sets boomed, but so did attendance at the opera. People who never had heard operatic music before in their lives listened, loved it and went to hear it "in the flesh" as was the current and rather repellent saying. It was a lesson to be learned over and over again in the years to come. Dr. Sigmund Spaeth started his Tune Detective series which was to go on for years. And "Hello, everybody — Lopez speaking" soon was an eagerly awaited greeting. Hans von Kaltenborn did the first broadcast news analysis, a discussion of the coal strike then raging. He was on the staff of The Brooklyn Eagle, which presented him in a weekly series. Not until 1929 did he relinquish the security of a newspaper salary to devote his entire time to radio — too risky! In Hollywood there was trouble which was to be echoed in radio three years later. The big money-makers of the year were good, clean drama: Harold Lloyd in "Grandma's Boy," Norma Talmadge in "Smilin' Through" and the Gish sisters in "Orphans of the Storm." However, many other films were featuring scenes of drinking, even though the country was supposed to be dry, of wild parties and some pretty hot kissing. A series of headline scandals in the private lives of several stars focussed additional attention on the movies. Talk of censorship of the screen began in deadly earnest. All of a sudden, Hollywood was blamed for everything from "Flaming Youth's" petting parties to the newly fashionable use of lipstick, rouge and liquid face powder. Churches, women's clubs and parent-teacher associations began to lobby for local censorship. The major movie companies got together in a hurry, called in former Postmaster Will Hays to administer a Code of Rules, and voluntarily cleaned themselves up. Curiously enough, just the opposite was happening in radio. Really spicy programs were coming out of KFKB at Milford, Kansas, and as the years went by they were to become more highly flavored. There were the widely followed broadcasts, of "Doctor" John Romulus Brinkley, known as "The Goat Gland Doc." He advertised rejuvenation operations for $750 and did a roaring business. There was no control of the air as we know it today beyond the individual taste of the station owner. So we have the curious contrast of WEAF pondering the delicacy of mentioning "so intimate a subject as toothpaste" on the air the following year while Brinkley was broadcasting case histories in vivid detail and what might be called a barnyard vocabulary. Who could stop him? He owned his station. The air was free, wasn't it? It was to become a lot freeer and salesmen of unlisted stocks, cure-alls and get-rich-quick schemes found it a happy hunting ground for a while. The National Association of Broadcasters wrote a Fair Practice Code in 1925, but Brinkley wasn't a member, so he just ignored its rules. In 1927, the Federal Radio Commission (later to become the powerful Federal Communications Commission) was created. It revoked his license in 1930, but that did not stop the Doc. He moved to Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas. There he built the 100,000 watt XER, then the most powerful in the world. With it he proceeded to jam the airways, ignoring all U. S. wave lengths and drowning out stations all the way to the Canadian border. There was nothing the disconcerted U. S. stations could do for ten long years until the Treaty of Havana was signed in 1940. That joined us, Canada, Mexico and some Central American countries in an agreement setting up new wave lengths for all concerned, and put the Goat Gland Doctor out of business. But he was a sharp thorn in the side of the new industry while he lasted. But let us get back to 1922, and a conversation that was taking place in the Bamberger Department Store's Station in Newark. This was WOR which was to become the key station of the vast Mutual Network when it was formed twelve years later. It was housed in a corner of the sporting goods and radio department. Studio, office and rehearsal hall were all in one little room. The walls were soundproofed with oriental rugs, draperies and shawls. It would be hard to imagine anything more different from the big, bare, efficiently engineered studios of today. When the new station took the air for the first time, WJZ courteously maintained silence during its premiere broadcast, so that there would be no "air clash," since both operated on approximately the same frequency. WOR's first show was a record of Al Jolson singing "April Showers," and the advertising theme was "Get a radio. No records to buy. No up-keep. A lifetime of entertainment free." The assistant operator was a young man named A. J. Poppele, now WOR's vice-president in charge of engineering. Two months after the opening, the chief operator said, "Jack, I don't think radio has a future. I'm getting out." That was the way things stood until 1923 and the first real show. NEXT MONTH Concert singer Graham McNamee tries something new. Why Jones and Hare were called "The Happiness Boys." Radio's first big show, The Eveready Hour, takes the air.