Variety (Dec 1940)

VTedncMlajf DecembfT 25, 1940 P^niETY RADIO 81 MUD-SllNGING AT WNYC prograrti Director of ; City- Owned N p n - Gommercial Station Has An drdeal On y^ithess^^^^S^^ — Friends Organize Da^a: to Counter- Blast Politicians TRADE AMUSED THE WRONG WORD TOR WOR^&IADIES WpodiaWnj Md.- ■ Editor, Vahiety; I'm definitely in a lather ' over Variety's award to WOR calling the women's programs, 'corny/ My dear man; I've just been extoUirig their virtues insofar as they dp eliminate recipes . and manities irom tKelT hours. Have you ever heard Pegeen Fitzgerald? No recipes there. On the Bessie Beatty program—never, unless a chef happens to be a guest. Oh, I wish I had time to write a letter, but I've jtwp little inhibitors, two arid five, who pirevent it- Boston Reaction , . Boston, Dec-24. - From the Boston reaction, Jphn Barrymore Would do well to omit further too-frequent, pseudo-comic referenpes to his too-numerous unfortunate mar- riages on thcs Rudy Vallee stanza. Many listeners hereabouts sym- pathize with some of his previ- - Qus -mates. Still others in this Catholic area frown on divorces. Besides, sppnsoi: aims prograiri at housewives. at Schbol TeiacJier pri Leave of Absence for ; 'to Study Radio Year Milwaukee, Pec; 24. ftttthT---^RaridaM7r"-Mi lwaiiK cc h -ijfh- 4altiag—Oiv er N an cy Grey J^—dailj^- Alexander Thiede,, who coriducted 40rj)iece Natipnal Youth Administra- tioh orchestra broadcasting from But I , really Jthihk" the. word ' WEEIv Bpston, ; to CBS on Sunday 'corny' shoyld be publicly retracted; (22), is leader of. Boston Women's It's an*:ihsult to intelligent listenersj Symphony here in addition to duties Catherine j4. Ruckle. vMirecting WMEX house band; school teacher- of English, driamatics and radio, has been granted a year's . leave of absence by the school board to becoine a ■ regular .meinber of , WTMJ's. staff as a sort of post gra^d- : uate course that will enable, hei- to !.return to her classes better, equipped to instruct them in the actual work- ! ings of commercial radio. I The schpolma'atn gets, her first assignment . thii week Friday (27)* morning half hour to Interpolate ad-, vertisers' blurbs between, the chatter platters airnnailed back to the station daily by Miss Grey on a five-week jaunt through the Southwest. Truman Trulllnger, attorney- and v.p. of KGY, Oiympia, Wash., is the town's new mayor. . Private broadcasters, around New York City noted with some amuse-, ment last week thie spectacle' of. a Tammany r steered City Council Committee holding ah Iiidian war dance around the figure of Seymour. Siegel, iprogram director of city- owned, non commercial Station WNYC. The. big fuss concerned two alleged • 'misrepresentations' ^during 1935 when Siegel qualified under the civil service tp continue filling a job he. had already successfully held for a year. Ih essence the politiciaris last week charged the pfSgram di- rector with: (1) Saying in 1935 he was Direc- tor of Radio in 1928 for the Uni^ yersity of Pennsylvania, whereas he didn't appear in the. records of that institution. Siegel answers he was an unofficial undergraduate radio director wHo arranged many pro- grams over WIP, Philadelphia, was . never a paid employee of the Uni- versity and never said he was; (2) . That he claimed to be a Doc- tor of Philosophy, and isn't. Siegel denies making the claim, admits that he is only a Master of Arts. Civn Service Radio Commercial broadcasters are will Ing to concede that civil service may be the bedrock of municipal reform, but the uses to which politicians can put civil service technicalities in trying to' 'smear' an opponent has caused considerable comment. In the perhaps somewhat-extreme reaction of one broadcaster: 'TM$ is swell propagancia agoinst Gouernmcnt opcrottoTi o/ radio sta. tions.' Nothing may come of the investi- gation of WNYC. The radio trade is inclined to doubt that the fireworks are anything more than an attempt to uncover, if possible, something-^ anything—against Mayor LaGuar- dia's administtation With an eye to the next municipal election. How ever radio has taken due note of the wben-did-you-stop-beating-your' wife kind of questions and the in- vestigation, as such, together with the government redtape and conniv- ving that is thereby spotlighted will be filed away-for possible use as propaganda in the future agaiiist government ownership of radio st^- tions.^ The Nbvik Regime Under Manager Morris Npvik Sta- tion WNYC, in the .period .when Siegel was program director; has ihade advances generally recpgnized the radio trade as notable fpi: a non-coirtmercial station. Frbm 1924 Mtp 1933 WNYC was two small, stu- dios arid a vag;ue. organization vvith blind mohitPring. It went off the air holidays; -took its leisure on SUn-. days and gave commercial plugs gratis to- music stores to borrow phonograph: record.s. "This and mpre ;of the same kind of . counter- charges and rebuttal material has been: organized by Siegel's friends lor use if necessary. Making a political football of a eity-owned radio statipo may 'seem a cinch to the political strategists, Siegel's friends point out, but they •re forgetting or dbri't know their pre-Novik station history. They sug^ gest that WNYC lost its nighttin:ie • «perating hours 'to cominerCial WMCA' because of sheer lazjr poii- tician failure to use the time the U. S.^' government originally granted. What WNYC gave up, free, in facili- ties years ago has recently enabled Ponald Flamm to sell WMCA foi- $850,000. So runs the Siegel defense argument, an argument that has not been publicly developed so far. "We consider WLW q definite oid in our merchandising program, ds we are jobbers^^^ of nationally advertised.products and WLW through their fine brbadcasts keep a constant wave of consumer demand hove ring over our business and that of our cus- tomer, the retail grocer. The Grocers Wholesale Compdny travels five salesirien in fourteen coiinties In Ohioi Kentucky and West Virginia. Signed: Neel Howard Geherdi Manager Grocers Wholesale Company Huntington, W. Va. Radio SalM. THE NATION'S STATION