Sponsor (Jan-June 1951)

Pulse Pulse of Birmingham* gives WAPI's '"Time for Benny" a 7.2 rating at 8:15 in the morning (Mon.thru Fri.) — after just five months on the air. It's the most listened-to disc jockey show in town. shows Shows like"Time for Benny" aren't unusual on \\ API. though. Matter of fact, all of the Top Ten local shows are on W\PI. So are seventeen out of the Top Twenty ! Benny's Benin's an expert on discs and downbeat. After being singer and skinbeater with swing bands for eight years, he's uniquely qualified for his post as Birmingham's top platter-chatter man. best Best thing about "Time for Benny'" is that there's time for you. It's a buy you'll want to investigate. Specially since it's on Birmingham's most popular station — in a market that's booming with business activity and defense industry. jockey Jockej Benin Carle is jusl the man to >pin new sales records for you... if you hurry. You can get all the information on available participations from Radio Sales or... 'I'n/sr: November December 1950 WAPI "The Voice of Alabama" CBS in Birmingham Represented by Radio Sales I the punctuation, and adding other visual changes. But absolutely no word cf the dialogue was touched. The script editor tumbled into the ignoim of pronouncing the "re-written" script 50% improved, and just what he wanted ! In this atmosphere of make-do and horseplay, Reis became obsessed with program techniques and began batting out scripts on his own time. There would be those later who would say that Reis was just a glory-seeker and not a great mind or artist at all. Suffice here to remark that the things he hi ought to fruition others had only talked of doing. Out of envy came slur. Reis was too much the symbol of the other fellow's disappointed hopes when he stood there behind the plateglass window in his shirtsleeves and suspenders and by a crook of his forefinger commanded the muses. "Dilettante stuff." the green-eyed chaps scoffed. "Just an engineer who went to Europe and got bitten by the avantgarde.'' The unkindest cut of all was this — "taint commercial. Reis did indeed consider radio an art. His whole thesis, as he gradually formulated it and fed it. spoonful at a time, to his contemporaries amounted to an argument that like all great modern industries radio broadcasting ought to make regular financial provision for "test laboratory" activity. It was. Reis contended, a condition of growth. This lab would deal in entertainment elements instead of chemical elements. ( Reis had once been a bacteriologist's assistant.) One of his 1936 memoranda to management reads interestingly today. He enumerated five objectives for the Workshop: 1. To act as a proving ground for experiments in radio techniques in the hope of evolving new and better forms of radio presentation; 2. To encourage new writers, actors, artists to regard radio as a medium of expression; 3. To acquaint the radio audience with radio's importance as a cultural force; to demonstrate radio's great contributions to allied arts and sciences; to illustrate, entertainingly, the complex technical and artistic organization behind the scenes; to demonstrate radio's great importance in the held ol communication: 4. To present outstanding plays and stories written for other media which lend themselves to radio treatment: 5. To present, consistently, broadcasts which encourage listeners to improve and understand their radio receivers. I This fifth objective is clearly historic in that it reflects a now-forgotten concern for static and reception. Back in 1936 radio executives were regularly given hearing tests. > Because of its 17-hour daily schedule of broadcasts, the radio industry always was hard up for new materials. The Broadway stage then produced perhaps 100 plays a year. Hollywood with its stupendous facilities, and no sponsors to please, strained to turn out around 600 movies annually. But radio any day and every day had to rack up tens of thousands of program units. Sheer pressure of the immediate job of getting on and off the air on time denied most broadcasters any real chance to stand off and study their medium. They hardly dared use even an occasional fresh voice or a >oung writer. It was naive to think of a Workshop as possible when staffed NOT MUCH WAVING IN BANJSEB W')l ^^^^^ i a we don't Banner i. ' ?»«*£? We don't WAVE in JjjSS frankly, the have the poorerinclination flv high over 32 which •£*%)$"** rest of Estate, P«t ^7ndWAVE So^°ia Them's M stirring, 62 SPONSOR