Sponsor (Nov 1947-Oct 1948)

1 AO/< Mary Lee Taylor broadcast her Pet Milk program direct from the sponsor's M.«9*9'^ test kitchen over St. Louis' KMOX. The novelty plus sound effects produced over-afi Home economics programs, conceived in the test kitchens of radio stations, advertising agencies, and advertisers in the late twenties and early thirties, have during the current decade almost passed from the commercial broadcast scene. The duo that remain in network radio, Mary Lee Taylor and Betty Crocker, like their few local contempor' aries in Oklahoma City, Chicago, and points north, east, south, and west, have continued to gather sizable audiences. That's because they have been able to keep up with the times. Although they're all in part based upon the skillet-andsaucepan approach, they're no longer Lily Tish'ish. They've added entertainment to the information they bring to the microphone. Everything from quiz to drama and name guest stars is currently found on a home economics program. Sponsors have discovered that kitchen personalities and a mike with the rattle of pots and pans offstage do not make a 1947 program. Not only must the authority be able to talk to her listeners as though she were in the same room and a personal friend but she must be a modem, not a hooveraproned relic. When radio was young and sponsors were tyros in the field of broadcast advertising, almost all major food advertisers took a fling at selling the housewife via the cookery routine. There were Pillsbury's Kitchen Closeups and R. B. Davis' Mystery Chef on CBS. Borden had Jane Ellison's Magic Recipes and Kraft Mrs. Goudiss Forecast School of Cooking on NBC. General Mills started Betty Crocker on WCCO, Minneapolis, and moved it to NBC in 1927. Pet Milk came to the air with Mary Lee Taylor in the fall of 1933, spending $26,400 of its $358,600 1933 advertising budget for the program. DECEMBER 1947 Since then, only Betty Crocker and Mary Lee Taylor have continued nationally to deliver radio-inspired sales for their sponsors. Most local test kitchens in radio stations have since removed the white tile and ancient Kelvinators. Home economics sessions reached their zenith in the field of multiple sponsors. It's a simple matter to "sell" a number of food items as the air instructor tells the housewife what to do with them. Nevertheless most advertisers have found other participating programs (women's gossip, news, disk jockey sessions, quiz, breakfast club, Mr. and Mrs., and musical clock broadcasts) deliver at a lower cost per listener. Betty Crocker is General Mills' housename. There have been as many as 20 Crockers on the air at one time, either regionally or locally. She's never photographed and when the picture of her appears in advertisements it's a piece of "art." As the years have gone on, she has been modernized and never permitted to become dowdy. Mary Lee Taylor is the Pet Milk house name. Unlike Betty Crocker, Miss Taylor has been one person on the air down through the years, Mrs. Susan Cost of St. Louis. Amazing though it may seem Mrs. Cost looks younger, more vivacious today than she did in November 1933 when she appeared before the KMOX microphone and broadcast for the first time as Mary Lee Taylor. The secret of the program's success is that just as Mrs. Cost appears (in her pictures) to have grown younger with the years so has the script discarded the stuffy, stilted verbiage of years ago for the simple down-toearth dialogue of today. Typical of the 1933 continuity is John Cole's "Pardon me if I seem to speak indistinctly — my mouth is watering." What Keeps a Home Economies Program Alive? ■m O/l "y Mary Lee Taylor still helps i*'"* • wives sans kitchen clatter