Variety radio directory (1937)

PROGRAM HISTORY— Continued Ted Weems' orchestra backing him up. Jack Benny's first major program was the Canada Dry Series, where, in 1932, he had a spot with George Olson and Ethel Shutta. Irvin S. Cobb was on the Gulf gasoline series. Fred Allen, of musical comedies, was sponsored by Linit. And there were many, many others including George Jessel, Harry Richman, Ruth Etting, the Mills Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, Al Jolson, Burns & Allen, and, slightly later, Block & Sully. If vaudeville did not produce the desired solo performer to win the concentrated evening audiences, then the night clubs of the prohibition era, or the motion pictures did. And the "personality" performers all accentuated the "soloness" of their solo performances with theme songs, or taglines and gags reiterated over and over until the nation absorbed them into its idiom. The effect of the solo "personality" performer, both in terms of audience and product sold, was all that could be desired. Ratings of these artists got into astronomical figures, when the size of the audience is taken into consideration. Political Personalities But the personality performer did not increase the total audience. With few exceptions, he still counted his biggest following in the lowest income brackets. Nor did the political campaign of that year help. Like the "personality" performer of the then current commercial radio programs, the presidential candidacy produced a solo performer whose results in the 1932 election, especially by income classes, showed exactly on whom the personality performer could depend for his proportionately biggest followng — the class D homes. Between politics and the audience-concentrating tactics of the advertisers, 1932-1933 had a plethora of subsidiary developments, all of the same stripe, including the important advent of newscasters. In this group were Boake Carter for Philco ; Floyd Gibbons for Palmer House ; and Lowell Thomas for Sunoco. Not only that. Mrs. Roosevelt was sponsored by Pond's, while Louis McHenry Howe appeared under the aegis of RCA. To cap it all off, there appeared the radio-name explorer. Admiral Byrd's expedition to the South Pole was broadcast by General Foods, while Phillips H. Lord (Seth Parker) undertook a cruise in an adventurous, but not too auspiciously fated schooner, for which Frigidaire largely paid the bills. Exploration became an angle for "name" twists, and eventually it was largely responsible for the stimulation of international broadcasts. By April, 1933, there were 12 programs with "personality" performers — nearly twice as many as any other ranking type. Whether this was a development that would have occurred in radio programming anyway with the advent of more sponsor money — and regardless of Amos 'n' Andy — is an idle speculation. The "personality" performer came when he did because the advertiser found in him an easy way to accumulate audiences, and not specifically because of more sponsor money in the aggregate (1933 was a notably poor revenue year for the networks). The trend might have happened some other way, at some other time. But it happened, in radio, specifically when it did because of two blackface comedians who had marshalled together a listening audience, rich and poor, so vast that it obscured for a few blissful years the technicalities of reaching listeners by income levels. Likewise, it is quite probable that because of this sudden, almost freakish turn of events, radio forever after was accused of not developing its own talent. The explanation, in part, is that sponsors clutched at a program life-saver in the 1932-33 adversity, and this life-saver was simply a borrowed success from an 22