Variety (Oct 1941)

Wednesday, Oclober 29, 1941 RADIO 39 Agricultural Expert on BVay . By Joe Bier {Farm Editor, Station IVOR, New York) When I meet people outside ol the broadcasting industry and they find out what my Job is, they are inclined 10 be amused. 'WhaU' they Bay. 'a jlew York City radio station has a {arm editor? How come?' I guess it's only natural -when you think of the primary area of a New York City 50,000 watt station to think of listeners in thickly populated in- dustrial center. They forget New Jersey whose Secretary of Agricul- tare, Willard H. Allen has just re- leased a statement showing Jersey leadi the nation in gross income per farm acre. Each New Jersey acre of crops produces a gross income of 152 per acre as against $18 lor an average acre in California or Iowa and $12 in Wisconsin. Again, Jersey, although only 45th in size in the na- ■ -tlonr ranks-thlrd-lajgrflas Jncojne. per {arm—second only in Nevada and California. Frankly, we at WOR didn't realize our potential farm audience until 1938. Then it was that Quaker Oats iponsored a once-a-week half hour quiz show—'The Man On the Farm' 'with real farmers as contestants aug- mented by brief interviews with poultry farmers from New York and ■ New Jersey. (The same company for lis 'FuU-O-Pep Poultry Feed' is still iponsoring this show over WOR to- day). The first few months of,The Man On the Farm' indicated that we had an active farm audipnce but we still had doubts of its size or diversity.- . Then, early in 1939, Julius Seebach. WOR's vice-president in -charge of programs, Eugene Thomas. Sales Uinager, and Dave Driscoll, director of Special Features and News, got to- gether and decided to experiment with a daily farm broadcast. The Farmers Digest' was presented from ( to 6:30 a.m. Most of our material was specially prepared by Transradio Press and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and'various State Agri- cultural Departments. After three months we took stock and found out hoWjWe were doing. A questionnaire was sent to hundreds of farmers through the various- State agricul- tural departments. Up until the '.questionnaire we had had little guidance as to how the ilarmers liked the program, whether it gave them the Information they desired, and whether we were presenting it at the right hour: We found that we did have an au- WHB ■ W/ AmaTi^M May a: Mm mIm paikop t \(Ctmit enupmd Utt f9 our dience and a serious-minded one at that—an audience that had begun to depend ,on our various farm reports. But that wasn't all. When the farmers began to write they got righ't down to cases. Th'ey began to ask for supplementary crop and weather re- ports. They didn't mince words when they objected-.,to the hill-billy music we thought they liked. They wanted more detailed service and standard music and hymns instead of 'corn.' Letters continued to come in dur- ing the next year. Helpful letters that gave us valuable guidance. We learned that the majorjty of farmers in our area were truck farmers, (i.e. raising fruits and vegetable.*: for the New Yprk market and shipping them to town by truck). We came to re- alize the importance of the current day's Produce Market quotations of fruits and vegetables" in New York's wholesale markets. But we learned also that there were' dairy and poultry farmers in our area and they wanted service, too. » We learned further that the aver- age farmer is a busy man and we divided 'Digest' into definite sections so that the farmer can listen at a specified time each morning for the reports that concern him most. Many farmers have written us that they have installed radios in their barns. ' Weather Vital Weather reports came in for con- sideration. Whereas, we had started by giving general weather reports from various areas we now switch directly to the oftica of the U.S. Weather Bureau in New York City's Whitehall Building for the last five minutes of each broadcast (6:55 to 7 a.m.). Here, under the direction of Dr. James Kimball, the, latest and most complete authoritative waather bulletins for the Eastern States are broadcast. The job of serving our farmers has increased to such a point that the station decided it needed one man to handle the farm program and that alone. Hence, yours truly, farm editor on Broadway. And this Job really keeps me busy. I spend a good deal of time in the area, visityjg farmers, their fairs and exhibits, talk- ing with them and agricultural au- thorities about the program and learning from day to day more and more about the great farm audience that is the potentiality of any large urban station. It's been a revelation to all of us. Last but not least WOR's 'Farmer's Digest' has been profitable. We now have five participating sponsors and we hope for more. Yes, there's a place for a farm program on the schedule of a big town station and a Job, too, for a farm editor. It's been fun and I wouldn't miss it for anything. And we're still learning, by heck. Cartiaed Pablle Acoountant, T«x Coniullant and Biulnen AdvUor, la BvaUabla tor a few daya weekly t* buy exeeatlve, Inllvldoal or eoapany. Box 855, Variety, 15i W. 4eth Street, New Tork City. Renew Local Issue Forum Salt Lake_City, Oct. 28. The Salt Lake Public Affairs Forum this week begins fourth fall series on KUTA. Forum is spon- sored by 32 local civic organizations, in conjunction with the WPA Aduit Education department. The Forum discusses local problems rather than national Issues. Frank O. Gireen and LaVerne C Bane conduct it. W.& J. SLOANE, FRISCO, USING KPO PROGRAM San Francisco, Oct. 28. Another Frisco department store will use radio regularly for the first time when W. & J. Sloane goes on the air via KPO for 58 weeks start- ing Nov. 2. ■ . Firm will use a Sunday noon quar- ter tabbed 'Romance of Furniture' using Bud Heyde and Gagnier. JAPAN COUNTS ITS RECEIVERS Tokyo, Sept. 14. The Imperial Rule Assistance As- sociation is now Investigating the distributioa, _p.f... !^i<yo. seU_ among neighborhood units whose nu'mber totals a little over 1,000,000 in Japan. It is disclosed here that about 35 villages have no radio sets at all. The national life mobilization head- quarters of the foregoing association is at present arranging to install two radio sets in each of these villages. According to an. investigation, the nation's subscribers to radio broad- casting totaled 4,850,193 at the end of last year. As the total of house- holds in Japan is 14,806,234, it is seen that about 34 households out of 100 have radio sets. Of this figure, about 2,991,031, or 62%, are located in cities. Then 80.- 987, or 22%, are in towns, while the remaining 1,058,074 listen to the radio from farms. In other words, city folks enjoy radio at the rate o^ 55 out of 100 households; townspeople, 29 out of 100, and farmers only 10 out of 100. Bert Horswell Gets Okay For KNET, Palestine, Tex. Palestine, Texas, Oct 28. The Federal Communications Com- mi.uion has approved the sale of sta- tion KNET, owned and operated here by Dr. Boner Frizzell to Bert Horswell. Horswell at one time was manager of station KRIC, Beaumont and was once a Chicago station rep- resentative. Horswell will have 34% of the slock of the Palestine Broadcasting Corp., with his wife having 33% and his mother-in-law Pauline M. Gor- don, having the remaining 33%. Con- sideration is reported to be $5,000. Station operates on 1,450 kilocycles with a power of 250 watts. CKAC's New Uve Talent Montreal, Oct. 28. CKAC, La Presse French language radio station here started 'Rouleta- bille' detective serial, Friday (24) to run until Christmas. Spon.sor is Quaker Oats. Cast includes Andre Treich, Pierre Durand and Marthe Thierry. Descriptions of ski events will be aired on same station Friday nights snd Saturday mornings starting Nov. 28. to end of season by Marcel Baulu for Black Horse Brew. 'La Voix du Reve' (Dream Voice) Tue.sdays and Fridays, starts over CKAC, Nov. 4 to run until March 27 for W. K. Buckley, Ltd. Song and piano program employs Jacques Aubert, singer; Marcel Sylvain, an- nouncer; and pianists Germaine Jamelle and Aurette LeBIanc. Canary Chirps Cashable San Francisco, Oct. 28. KFRC's dressing-up of a couple of otherwise routine ideas has netted 30 minutes of cash biz. Using a specially recorded transcription of chirping canaries, station is back- grounding a Sunday a.m. organ con- cert with the bird-tweets under the billing 'Canary Chorus.' Novelty has grabbed such a chunk of attention that E)enalan dental plate cleanser and Hartz Mountain Birdseed are each underwriting a quarter-hour. Willard, Thomaa Rcooverlnr Washington, Oct. J8. Leonard Thomas, engineer at WJSV, local CBS outlet, la re- cuperating from an emergency ap- pendectomy he underwent Oct. S. Jess Willard, station manager, has returned to work after an attack of conjunctivitis. v Radio llaffi»cl|[5$. Clncinoatl.—Friends of the late Harry M. D.iugherly protested remarks of Peter Grant over WLW, Cincinnati, about the career and character of the Harding administration a'..oi ncy-:;c er.-.l. So on a later broadcast Grant re-painted tlje picture on a. basis of Daugherty's bequests to charity and Daugherty emerged a Idiidiy old man full of virtue. Charlotte, N. C—Station WET, Charlotte, has been officially designated 'bugler' for the First Army while on maneuvers. Farm editor Grady Cole, who signs on the outlet at 5 a m., bugles reveille at 6:10, assembly at 6:15, mess at 6:30 and sick call at 7 o'clock. Ccl's are broadcast by the station and picked up by portable sets carriej by the First Army troops. Kalamazoo, Mich. — 'One Woman's World,' three-mornings-a-week femme comment series over local station WKZO, is broadcast by Mrs. Evelyn Courtney from her own home. It's a slrictly informal session, with Mrs. Courtney handling personal phone calls or casual droppers-in as part of the show. Toungstown, O.—Officials of the Ward Esking Co. at Youn^.slown last week (18) issued a warning that a prank.''cr was notifying residents by telephone that they had won $50 throu,;h a Ward contest o;i V/FMJ, Youngstown. The baking company ."said it sponsors no contests over the the radio station. Pltlsborgh—Pittsburgh radio listeners have been writing in to V.'JAS and KQV, both under same management, telling them how much the voices of Ernest Neff, newscaster at former station, and Lowell Scott, who airs the news at the latter, sound alike. Which isn't so surprising since they're one and the same guy under aliases. Seattle—Maury Rider, operations manager, and Jim Upthcgrov'e, an- nouncer, of KIRO last week, Journeyed to a lake near Marysville to tran- scribe the opening of the duck hunting season from a rowboat. Cincinnati.—Kroger Baking Co. imported. to Cincinnati last week 10 infants, along with their mothers, who, as the stunt had it, took their monikers from Linda, the heroine of the account's 'Linda's First Love' serial. The event was tied up with Better Parenthood Week. Boston.—Arch Macdonald, WBZ announcer, is happy that television is still 'around the corner' when he handled the Harvard-Dartmouth game wearing a cutaway coat and morning pants. Just before the game he was best man at his brother's wedding and when .authorities decided to ad- vance game time one^alf hour, he was caught with his formats on. Channel Changes f^sCoBtlnued from pace 33^^ ideas, a new type of experimental permit could be issued. Additional wattage might be allowed for par- ticular programs, with the ^an con- tinued against its use for Commercial operation. Whether any license- holder would be interested In going forward on this basis Is highly con- jectural, it i£ agreed. On the matter of olear channels, there is no denying a trend toward wiping out the privilege of exclusive night-time use of a particular fre- quency. Duplication is only a ques- tion of time, and withsthe New Deal majority on the Commish sold on the ic)ea of providing more competi- tion the placing of additional stations on the 24 reserved stripes is most appealing. Gradual dfminution of- the number of I-A ribbons seems most likely, though there will be strong arguments that the basic policy ought to be preserved In order to assure 'service to the sparsely- settled sectors. The stations in thickly-populated Eastern areas with I-A ratings are most likely to lose their jealously- guarded positions. Though the regu- lators have done nothing with the Ed Craney plea for permission to put KGIR on the WEAF channel, it seems certain that tha New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and other Eastern plants with clear fre- quencies must get ready—to—move over and make room for another occupant in the near future. Among the applications pending for right to muscle in are WNYC, WJJD, WCKY, WHAT, WBNF, WRUF, and KMflC. BnSalo.-^ack Guinan, formerly of WCAU, Philadelphia, is new spieler at WGR-WKBW, replacing Merwin Morrison. -s KENNY BAKEN PORTUNI HeFFA AIMOIMM'9 IRCNEtTM mhuM w«M- nor nam COiUMBIA NETWORK coast-to-coast « K,8.T., I C.9.T., 7 .M.8.T., a P.S.T. KDYL'i new 5000-watt direciionid broadcading pattern fiu the inter- mountain population setup like ■ glove. Ample power, directed wher* it does the most good! IalT lake city