AUGUST IN THE GOLDEN AGE
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AUG 1 1923 RCA establishes WRC/Washington, D.C.
AUG 1 1932 ASCAP gives the NAB a September 1st deadline to agree to its demand for $1.25 Million per year in royalties from the radio industry or risk losing the ability to broad-cast copyrighted music.
AUG 1 1932 The 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles begin without radio coverage when the networks refuse to pay $100,000 for broadcast rights.
AUG 1 1932 A Dun survey reports New York to be the state with the most radio stations, 52, and Wyoming with the fewest, one.
AUG 1 1933 CBS and NBC reject McCann-Erickson Advertising’s proposal that adver-tising agencies be given a “byline” on programs they produce for clients.
AUG 1 1935 The newspaper controlled Pacific office of Press Radio Bureau serving 45 West Coast stations folds after 16 months. (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
AUG 1 1936 The Summer Olympics open in Berlin with CBS, NBC and Blue making shortwave reports to the U.S.
AUG 1 1936 NBC begins the system cue, “This is the Red (or Blue) Network of the National Broadcasting Company“, to differentiate between the two chains.
AUG 1 1937 The Blue network expands with the addition of ten affiliates in the South and Southwest including WDSU/New Orleans, WAGA/Atlanta and KXYZ/Houston.
AUG 1 1938 WHN/New York City introduces Music To Read By - an hour of instrumental classics beginning at midnight, seven nights a week. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 1 1939 Earle C. Anthony’s Blue Network affiliate, KECA/Los Angeles, abandons 1430 kc. and moves to 780 kc., formerly occupied by KEHE, bought by Anthony from Hearst Radio for $400,000.
AUG 1 1939 The Blue Network issues a retraction of Drew Pearson’s report on its Inside Story that Maryland Senator Millard Tydings had used WPA funds for personal projects on his estate.
AUG 1 1939 FCC grants Crosley’s pioneer shortwave station W8XAL/Cincinnati a commercial license as WLWO.
AUG 1 1940 BMI ships its first transcriptions of 50 non-ASCAP songs to its member stations.
AUG 1 1940 WOR/New York City opens the market’s first FM station, W2XOR.
AUG 1 1941 NBC discontinues combining billings on its Red and Blue Networks for advertiser discounts. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
AUG 1 1941 Isolationist elements in the U.S. Senate call for an investigation of alleged propaganda activities in the film and radio industries.
AUG 1 1942 The AFM bans its union members from playing in recording sessions and the U.S. Justice Department seeks an injunction against the union. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 1 1942 NBC institutes a ten percent discount for sponsors utilizing its full network of 125 stations for 13 con-secutive weeks.. (See NBC’s Chinese Menu.)
AUG 1 1942 Mutual announces network volume discounts of 50%, 60% and 75%. (See MBS = Mutual’s Bargain Sales.)
AUG 1 1942 FCC takes over operation of the CBS shortwave listening post at San Francisco.
AUG 1 1942 Philco takes its WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia off the air for two months during the installation of a new transmitter.
AUG 1 1943 NBC’s Army Hour is first to report the American air raid on Germany’s vital Ploesti oil fields in Romania.
AUG 1 1943 After six seasons as a sustaining attraction, NBC Symphony broadcasts are sponsored by General Motors.
AUG 1 1944 Plans to broadcast the CBS quiz show Take It Or Leave It from the stage of Pittsburgh’s Harris Theater are cancelled when officials note that Pennsylvania law pro-hibits any stage performances on Sundays.
AUG 1 1945 Mutual becomes the first network to put its newscasts on a 24 hour schedule. (See Mutual Led The Way.)
AUG 1 1945 RKO releases its comedy film Radio Stars On Parade featuring Ralph Edwards and Frances Langford. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 1 1946 WKNB/New Britain, Connecticut, goes on the air with a staff of 14 World War II veterans.
AUG 1 1946 Allen Stout of WROL/Knoxville is the only newsman inside Athens, Tennessee, during the election day battle between armed police of politically controlled McMinn County and local residents demanding reform led by of World War II veterans. Stout’s reports of the citizens’ victory were fed to WSM/Nashville and NBC.
AUG 1 1947 Clarence L. Menser, NBC’s Programming Vice President for five years suddenly retires.
AUG 1 1947 BMI purchases one of the world’s largest classical music libraries, Asso-ciated Music Publishers, from Muzak.
AUG 1 1947 MGM signs disc jockey Martin Block to appear in a minimum of four musical shorts annually for $5,000 each.
AUG 1 1947 The largest cash prize yet awarded by a radio show, $7,440, is won on ABC’s Break The Bank by a retired married couple of 70 year old New Jersey high school teachers.
AUG 1 1948 FCC reports network giveaway programs’ weekly prize total is $163,000,
AUG 1 1948 Jack Benny and Mary Livingston with Phil Harris and Alice Faye begin a week’s tour of Germany entertaining Occupation Troops. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 1 1948 An NBC survey estimates the number of television sets in U.S. homes to be 484,350 - a one month increase of 64,350 sets.
AUG 1 1949 Robert Q. Lewis takes over all of Arthur Godfrey’s radio and television programs except Talent Scouts for eight weeks while Godfrey vacations.
AUG 1 1949 Procter & Gamble begins transcribing its Ma Perkins on CBS for brpadcast in 25 supplemental markets. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 1 1949 Young & Rubicam ad agency executive Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, 40, is appointed NBC Vice President in charge of television.
AUG 1 1950 ABC begins daily afternoon broadcasts of the United Nations Security Council meetings from Lake Success, New York.
AUG 1 1951 The Ford Foundation allocates $1.2 Million to establish a workshop to create programs, “…of cultural, educational and entertainment qualities,” for commercial radio and television.
AUG 1 1951 CBS unveils a $6.0 Million campaign to promote its fall Network Radio schedule. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
AUG 1 1951 CBS changes its longtime chain break announcement, “This is the Columbia Broadcasting System,” to, “This is the CBS Radio Network,” and, “This is CBS Television.”
AUG 1 1952 WMAQ/Chicago is declared harmless in a $3.0 Million lawsuit brought by a promoter who claimed that fan dancer Sally Rand defamed him in an interview with Mike Wallace.
AUG 1 1952 Gulf Oil sends a television crew aloft in a plane during its NBC-TV program We The People in hopes of getting a live shot of a “flying saucer.”
AUG 1 1953 NBC celebrates the 30th anniversary of its WRC/Washington, D.C.
AUG 2 1931 The Chicago Times becomes the city’s first newspaper to ban sponsors’ names from its daily radio program listings, a move that soon spreads nationwide.
AUG 2 1932 CBS and NBC begin demanding cash in advance for all political campaign broadcasts.
AUG 2 1935 New NBC affiliate contracts place late afternoon/early evening programs Amos & Andy, Little Orphan Annie and Lowell Thomas newscasts in station option time in several Eastern and Midwest markets - but no stations cancel them.
AUG 2 1935 Leo J. Burnett leaves the Erwin-Wasey advertising firm to open his own ad agency.
AUG 2 1935 WNEW/Newark becomes one of the nation’s first stations operating 24 hours a day with the debut of Milkman’s Matinee, its daily disc jockey show from 2:00 until 7:00 a.m.
AUG 2 1936 New owner Westinghouse takes over the operation of WOWO and WGL/Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
AUG 2 1936 Attempts by the German Post Office Department to televise selected events from the Summer Olympics in 180 lines and 25 frames per second to 18 locations in Berlin are reported to be “...unclear and unsatisfactory.”
AUG 2 1937 Trading of CBS stock begins on the New York Stock Exchange.
AUG 2 1937 Pioneer station KQW/San Jose-San Francisco joins the Don Lee and Mutual networks. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 2 1937 The Association of NBC Technicians, a non-affiliated union representing all engineers employed by the network and its owned stations, wins a 15% raise for its members equal to an average $35 per month.
AUG 2 1940 The press hears a demonstration of FM broadcasts at the NAB convention in San Francisco from W10XLV which was constructed in four hours for the purpose.
AUG 2 1941 France’s most powerful shortwave station, The Voice of France, resumes broadcasting 15 hours a day under strict Nazi censorship after 14 months of silence.
AUG 2 1942 Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS Sunday evenings is re-titled Sergeant Gene Autry. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 2 1943 CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid and 18 others parachute to safety when their air transport crashes en route from New Delhi to Chunking.
AUG 2 1943 CBS relaxes its ban against recorded programs to allow the transcribed delayed broadcast of Kate Smith Speaks weekday series on eight affiliated stations.
AUG 2 1943 The AFM rules that the Blue Network’s sale means it can no longer share a musical staff with NBC and must hire its own staff of 65 union musicians at a minimum of $87 per week.
AUG 2 1943 Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia credits New York City radio stations with helping to prevent two nights of civil unrest from spreading into a race riot.
AUG 2 1945 FCC approves the $21.0 Million sale of Crosley Corp. - including WLW/Cin-cinnati - to Aviation Corporation, (AVCO).
AUG 2 1946 New Hampshire Senator Charles Tobey’s resolution to investigate the FCC and its policing of Blue Book regulations dies with the expiration of the 79th Congress.
AUG 2 1946 The Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, (CAB), votes to terminate its Crossley radio ratings service and sell its remaining contracts to competitor C.E. Hooper. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 2 1946 American Tobacco increases the weekly budget of Lucky Strike’s New York City based Your Hit Parade by $7,500 to accommodate appearances by singer Andy Russell from Hollywood. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 2 1948 ABC introduces a new pricing policy for its co-op programs intended to lower the cost for local advertisers by 20%.
AUG 2 1948 West Coast car dealer Earl (Madman) Muntz launches his brand of low priced, big screen television sets.
AUG 2 1950 Jimmy Durante signs an $800,000, four year exclusive contract with NBC radio and television. (See Goodnight, Mr. Durante...)
AUG 2 1951 ASCAP asks a New York District Court to amend a previous consent degree and allow it to force all broadcasters licensed for BMI music to also take out ASCAP blanket licenses.
AUG 3 1926 RCA chooses The National Broadcasting Company, (NBC), as the name for its new networking venture.
AUG 3 1933 Kraft Music Hall moves from Monday to Thursday night on NBC where it will remain for 16 seasons. (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 3 1934 Rumors persist in Los Angeles that CBS CEO Bill Paley has been in the city for six weeks to facilitate a switch in his network's affiliation from Don Lee’s 1,000 watt KHJ to 50,000 watt KNX. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 3 1937 Marjorie Oelrichs Duchin, wife of popular radio bandleader Eddie Duchin, dies at 29 after giving birth to a son.
AUG 3 1939 FCC rules that television channels will be identified by numbers instead of frequencies.
AUG 3 1940 Radio Day is celebrated by the New York World’s Fair and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Exposition with a simultaneous one hour broadcast at 8:00 p.m. on all networks and 500 stations headlined by Kate Smith, Rudy Vallee and Lowell Thomas.
AUG 3 1942 The U.S. Justice Department begins proceedings against the American Federation of Musicians for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 3 1942 Breakfast At Sardi’s, Tom Breneman’s popular weekday audience participation show on Blue’s Pacific Coast Network begins its successful run on the full Blue Network.
AUG 3 1942 Sterling Drug moves Hummert soap operas Amanda of Honeymoon Hill and Second Husband from Blue to CBS. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 3 1942 The International Printing Trades union calls for a discriminatory tax on radio time sales amounting to a minimum of $25 Million per year.
AUG 3 1942 Army Air Force Technical Sergeant Gene Autry gives his former agent, Harry Wurtzel. all the commissions Wurzel claimed due him since January, 1941.
AUG 3 1942 Unlike the previous week’s debut, the second broadcast in Norman Corwin’s CBS series An American In England is technically flawless.
AUG 3 1944 KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul reports remaining on the air until 2:45 a.m. to help guide a Northwest Airlines plane through a storm with 70 m.p.h. winds and to a safe landing.
AUG 3 1945 Bulova Watches becomes the first advertiser on CBS-owned WCBW(TV)/ New York City, buying four, 20-second commercials per week.
AUG 3 1946 Sportscaster Ted Husing leaves CBS after nearly 20 years saying, “I can make more in 14 weeks as a free-lancer than I can at Columbia in an entire year.”
AUG 3 1947 Eversharp moves its Top 20 Sunday night quiz show, Take It Or Leave It, from CBS to NBC. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 3 1947 Comedian Jack Paar, summer replacement for Jack Benny on NBC, fires his writers for “constant conflict” over his material.
AUG 3 1950 NBC begins four Thursday night rebroadcasts of transcribed Shakespearian dramas starring the late John Barrymore which were first aired on the network in 1937.
AUG 3 1951 Legendary NBC Vice President John F. Royal retires after 21 years with the network.
AUG 3 1951 Gillette keeps its Friday Night Fights on ABC Radio for the seventh consec-utive year turning down the bid of NBC which televises the bouts.
AUG 3 1953 NBC officially separates the activities of its radio and television divisions.
AUG 3 1953 Arthur Godfrey Time is expanded to a 90 minute weekday radio and television simulcast on CBS. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
AUG 3 1953 NBC-TV expands its morning programming with the addition of soap operas Three Steps To Heaven at 11:30 and Follow Your Heart at 11:45.
AUG 3 1953 President Eisenhower appoints South Dakota broadcaster Richard Dean to the FCC, giving the Commission its first Republican majority since its formation in 1934.
AUG 4 1932 NBC announces its first rate increase in two years - raising its early morning rates to equal its 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. charges which are half of its nighttime rates.
AUG 4 1935 Hearst begins a series 60 minute Sunday morning shows on WBBM/Chi-cago which combine reading the comics and the want ads from that day’s Chicago Herald & Examiner.
AUG 4 1936 G.A. (Dick) Richards, owner of WJR/Detroit, buys KMPC/Los Angeles for $112,000.
AUG 4 1938 The networks give full coverage to the shipboard return of flyer Lloyd (Wrong Way) Corrigan from Ireland.
AUG 4 1940 Crime Doctor begins its seven season run on the CBS Sunday night schedule.
AUG 4 1940 Talbot Mundy, 61, author of Jack Armstrong - The All American Boy, dies in Bradenton, Florida.
AUG 4 1941 Broadcasters withhold comment as the U.S. House passes a bill to tax annual advertising billing from 5% to 15%.
AUG 4 1941 Guy Lombardo completes his three year contract with the CBS Lady Esther Serenade and is replaced by Freddy Martin’s orchestra. (See Guy Lombardo.)
AUG 4 1944 The U.S. Marine Corps releases recordings made in a tank during a battle with Japanese forces on Guam which is promptly edited and broadcast by NBC, Blue and Mutual.
AUG 4 1944 The Los Angeles Police Employees Union complains to the Radio Writers Guild that too many law officers are portrayed on detective shows as “…half-witted stooges.”
AUG 4 1947 ABC sells WOOD/Grand Rapids, Michigan for $850,000 to a group headed by Harry Bittner, former General Manager of Hearst newspapers.
AUG 4 1947 DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City begins its schedule of televising the final 25 games of the New York Yankees’ season. (See Dr. Dumont’s Predictions.)
AUG 4 1948 A U.S. Congressional committee opens its investigation of the FCC with a discussion of the Commission’s Port Huron Decision involving political libel and censorship.
AUG 4 1948 Fredrick Ziv syndication firm buys transcription service World Broadcasting System from Decca Records for $1.3 Million. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.and "By Transcription...")
AUG 4 1948 Unable to reach agreement with the twelve unions representing its artists and staff, the Metropolitan Opera threatens to cancel its 1948-49 season and its Saturday afternoon broadcasts on ABC.
AUG 4 1949 WWDC/Washington agrees to purchase WOL/Washington, radio home of Mutual commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., for $300,000.
AUG 4 1949 WGN-TV/Chicago broadcasts film of a railroad depot shootout between police and a fugitive four hours after the event took place.
AUG 4 1950 Due to the Korean War, Armed Forces Radio Service resumes its wartime schedule of producing programs exclusively for service personnel overseas.
AUG 4 1952 CBS offers 30 minutes of The Original Amateur Hour for $1,000 per week to any sponsor who’ll also buy 30 minutes of the show on CBS-TV for $11,500 per week.
AUG 4 1952 WSBA-TV/Channel 43 in York, Pennsylvania, joins ABC and becomes the first UHF station to affiliate with a network.
AUG 4 1952 NBC-TV obtains exclusive rights to eleven of the twelve college football games allowed by the NCAA for $2.6 Million.
AUG 4 1953 Radio and television networks begin a week-long release of names and news of U.S. prisoners of war released in Korea.
AUG 4 1953 Haven MacQuarrie, former host of The Marriage Club and Noah Webster Says on CBS and Do You Want To Be An Actor? on NBC, dies of a heart attack in Hollywood at age 59.
Aug 5 1921 KDKA/Pittsburgh claims the first baseball play-by-play broadcast - Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia.
AUG 5 1935 Frank & Anne Hummert’s soap opera Backstage Wife begins its 24 season multi-network run. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 5 1935 The New York Daily News targets Chicago advertising agencies with a full page ad in The Chicago Tribune stating, “There are more copies of The News in use today in New York City than there will be radio sets in use tonight.”
AUG 5 1936 The New England based Colonial Network of 14 stations affiliates with Mutual.
AUG 5 1936 CBS, Mutual and NBC respond with special programs of Warner Brothers music when ASCAP informs broadcasters that they can again play music published by the studio.
AUG 5 1938 The Screen Actors Guild prohibits its members from appearing on radio for less than the AFRA scale.
AUG 5 1940 CBS notifies KVI/Tacoma that it will be dropped from the network when KIRO/Seattle - 30 miles away - boosts its power to 10,000 watts.
AUG 5 1940 AFM President Petrillo demands that concert artists leave the American Guild of Musical Artists and join his union. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 5 1941 FCC adopts a ban on co-owned stations with overlapping signals, affecting some 40 properties.
AUG 5 1945 Frank Sinatra is hailed as a hero for diving into the water and saving the life of a three year old boy who fell off the San Pedro pier and was knocked unconscious in the surf.
AUG 5 1946 Mutual claims more co-op sales than all the other networks combined with 532 sales. Commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., leads its pack with 197 sponsors followed by Cedric Foster’s 107. (See Mutual Led The Way.)
AUG 5 1946 Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor, Ed Gardner. Burns & Allen, Jim & Marian Jordan and Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll form Audience Records, Inc., to transcribe and market their stage performances
AUG 5 1948 FCC proposes a sweeping definition of lotteries that would outlaw most giveaway programs. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 5 1948 Mutual disputes the Broadcast Measurement Bureau’s coverage study citing 292 cases where station information is outdated.
AUG 5 1949 WJBK/Detroit disc jockey Ed McKenzie, (aka Jack The Bellboy), ties up a telephone exchange and 100,000 phones with the offer of five free gallons of gas for the first 100 calls to a number he announced once.
AUG 6 1931 After an activist group targets the CBS serial Skippy, the Illinois State Department of Labor rules that minors cannot be seen by the public performing on any stage, (or radio studio), between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.
AUG 6 1933 The Federal Radio Commission’s dictatorial Station Allocation Formula, based on state populations, determines that Illinois is the most over-radioed state with 10.79 more “units”, (stations), than it is "entitled".
AUG 6 1934 NBC discontinues its practice of feeding live program auditions from Los Angeles to New York City with line charges of $2,000 tp $3,000, replacing them with recorded auditions at a fraction of the cost.
AUG 6 1934 Procter & Gamble tests the drawing power of its NBC weekday serial Ma Perkins by offering a Ma Perkins Clothespin Apron to listeners who send in a dime with Oxydol box top. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums and Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 6 1934 WBBM/Chicago reports receiving 3,500 money orders for cartons of Kentucky Winners cigarettes from three days of announcements for the new product not yet in stores on Chicago Cub game broadcasts.
AUG 6 1935 An NAB survey indicates that 33% of the country’s stations - mostly major market, network affiliates - receive 75% of broadcasting’s advertising revenue. (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
AUG 6 1937 AFM President Joe Weber reports that 670 U.S. stations employ “only” 781 of his union’s members.
AUG 6 1939 Singer Dinah Shore makes her multi-network debut, eventually starring in eleven different series over 16 years.
AUG 6 1943 RCA’s Board of Directors approves the sale of the Blue Network, WJZ/New York, WENR/Chicago and KGO/San Francisco to Edward Noble for $8.0 Million pending FCC approval.
AUG 6 1943 WRGB(TV)/Schenectady begins testing one commercial hour per week for Lever Brothers and B.F. Goodrich - their halves split with a time signal for Hamilton Watch Company.
AUG 6 1944 Dr. Pepper brings Darts For Dough from WFAA/Dallas to Blue’s Sunday afternoon schedule.
AUG 6 1945 All networks interrupt programming at 11:15 a.m. with the bulletin of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
AUG 6 1945 Westinghouse and the Glenn Martin Company propose plans to develop Stratovision, a system to relay television and FM signals from planes flying in circular courses at 30,000 feet.
AUG 6 1946 NBC flagship WEAF/New York City breaks its long-standing rule against recorded programming by carrying the transcribed Skippy Hollywood Theater in prime time.
AUG 6 1946 FCC rules 4-2 to deny CBS the purchase of KQW/San Jose-San Francisco. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 6 1947 Ralph Edwards receives the American Cancer Society’s Distinguished Service Award for raising $34,120 for cancer research on NBC's Truth Or Consequences. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 6 1948 A.C. Nielsen announces the rating service will convert its current equipment used to measure AM radio listening to also incorporate FM and TV measurement. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 6 1951 NBC submits the winning bid of $1.51 Million for exclusive radio and television rights to the Rose Bowl for three years.
AUG 6 1951 Producers of ABC’s Bride & Groom accept $50,000 in lieu of the $800,000 awarded them from KLAC-TV/Los Angeles as a result of the Wedding Bells plagiarism suit.
AUG 6 1953 A California Superior Court jury awards $55,000 to a local school teacher who sued KYA/San Francisco and commentator James Tarantino for slander in calling her “...a reported commie.”
AUG 7 1927 NBC’s Blue Network introduces Network Radio’s first magazine-based program, The Collier Hour.
AUG 7 1933 Walter Winchell sues Al Jolson for punching him in public the previous month, claiming $500,000 in damages. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1934 NBC temporarily bans the broadcast of phonograph records on its owned and operated stations.
AUG 7 1935 Fred Waring files suit in a Philadelphia court to prevent the “promiscuous” play of his records on radio without his permission. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1936 Philco files suit in the New York Supreme Court charging RCA with coercion, bribery and intimidation of its employees to obtain trade secrets.
AUG 7 1939 Hollywood comedy writer Harry Conn sues Jack Benny for $65,000 claiming that Benny continued to use characters and situations created by him after their contract expired. (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1940 C.C. Bradner, the first regular newscaster on WWJ/Detroit in 1925, dies after a short illness at 61.
AUG 7 1940 Don Lee’s experimental W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles celebrates its advance from 441 to 525 line quality by expanding its programming to 14 ½ hours per week.
AUG 7 1942 Telling his NBC listeners, “I expect to be out of town next week,” news commentator H. V. Kaltenborn takes a secret Army flight to London for a week of broadcasts. (See H, V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1942 Cresta Blanca Wine commercials are turned down by NBC and CBS. Blue will accept its advertising but bans mention that it is a product of Schenley Distilleries and Mutual will run the winery spots with no strings attached.
AUG 7 1945 FCC announces it will begin processing a backlog of over 800 applications for new stations accumulated during World War II.
AUG 7 1945 New York Congressman Emanuel Cellar blasts the FCC for, “…ignoring its responsibilities to the public in favor of money-making operations.”
AUG 7 1946 Bing Crosby is joins a group of four investors who buy the Pittsburgh Pirates for $2.23 Million. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1949 William Gargan debuts as Martin Kane, Private Eye on Mutual, beginning a three season multi-network run.
AUG 7 1950 RCA demonstrates its compatible color television system in a coaxial cable hookup between New York City and Washington, D.C.
AUG 7 1953 Bill Stern leaves NBC after 16 years to join ABC for a weeknight sportscast sponsored by Anheuser-Busch. (See Bill Stern.)
AUG 7 1953 NBC President Frank White retires on doctors’ orders.
AUG 7 1953 Frank & Anne Hummert’s mystery melodrama Mr. Chameleon completes its seven year run on CBS.
AUG 7 1953 FCC approves the NTSC’s recommendations for compatible color television standards proposed by RCA.
AUG 7 1953 Collier’s, a weekly magazine since 1888, becomes a bi-weekly publication attributing, “…television’s inroads on the reading audience.”
AUG 8 1930 Colonel Charles Lindbergh speaks to the combined NBC and CBS network audiences for a quarter hour on the topic "International Aviation". His afternoon address is repeated at 11:00 p,m. by both chains.
AUG 8 1931 Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, 34, begins his 26 year, multi-network career on CBS.
AUG 8 1931 INS European correspondent Max Jordan, 36, delivers his first news report on NBC’s Red Network from Switzerland via RCA shortwave facilities.
AUG 8 1937 NBC moves the production of Carlton E. Morse’s One Man’s Family from San Francisco to Los Angeles. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 8 1940 Stroh Beer’s half-hour local concert series featuring Gus Haenschen, Thomas L. Thomas and Margaret Daum, (who all commute weekly from New York City to Detroit for the program), moves from WXYZ to WJR. (See Gus Haenschen.)
AUG 8 1941 Emerson Drug’s Bromo-Seltzer adds a two-month run of its Vox Pop on Blue’s Friday night schedule to the program’s continuing Monday night series on CBS. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 8 1941 Expelled from Fascist Italy, CBS correspondent Cecil Brown opens the network’s news bureau in Singapore.
AUG 8 1943 Hollywood reporter Louella Parsons returns to the air after a ten year absence as Walter Winchell’s summer replacement on Blue for four weeks.
AUG 8 1945 The networks interrupt programming at 3:00 p.m. to announce that the Soviet Union has declared war on Japan.
AUG 8 1945 The late Major Glenn Miller’s American Band of The Allied Expeditionary Forces, now under the direction of Ray McKinley and Jerry Gray, leaves aboard ship from LeHavre for New York City. (See In The Miller Mood.)
AUG 8 1945 Ed Gardner joins Frank Sinatra and other stars returning from overseas tours to sharply criticize U.S.O. and Special Services officials, charging ignorance and incompetence. (See Duffy Ain’t Here.)
AUG 8 1945 Japanese propagandist/disc jockey Tokyo Rose, (Iva Toguri), is cited by the U.S. Navy for, “Meritorious service contributing greatly to the morale to United States Armed Services in the Pacific.”
AUG 8 1946 Brooklyn Dodgers announcer Red Barber, 38, is named CBS Director of Sports succeeding Ted Husing.
AUG 8 1946 After three years as a sustaining program, CBS packaged production, Casey Crime Photographer lands a sponsor in Anchor-Hocking Glass. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
AUG 8 1946 Paramount’s television station W6XYZ/Los Angeles promises to increase its programming from four to 15 hours a week as soon as 1,000 receivers are sold in the city.
AUG 8 1948 A Fort Worth housewife wins a Stop The Music! jackpot of prizes valued at $19,000. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 8 1949 Kate Smith and Ted Collins begin their one season run of Kate Smith Calls, a two-hour Monday night variety show on ABC,
AUG 8 1951 Houston oilman H.R. Cullen buys a minority interest in the Liberty Broadcasting System network.
AUG 8 1951 Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray sign ten year contracts with Ziv Productions to star in the weekly transcribed radio comedy Bright Star, budgeted at $12,500 per episode. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.)
AUG 8 1951 Sixty-four of the nation’s 107 television stations announce that they plan to begin broadcasting by 10:00 a.m. local time in the fall.
AUG 8 1952 Reports circulate in the Los Angeles press that NBC is negotiating to buy either KFI for $2.5 Million or KMPC for $1.0 Million as its West Coast anchor station. Neither sale took place.
AUG 8 1952 WMCA/New York City bans Rosemary Clooney’s hit Botch-A-Me and all of Mickey Katz’s Yiddish comedy records as “insensitive”.
AUG 9 1931 The Chicago Tribune appeals to Federal Court the FRC’s granting a limited conditional license to its WGN/Chicago, pending the commission’s decision to transfer WGN’s frequency to the Chicago Federation of Labor’s WCFL.
AUG 9 1934 Three thousand fans of NBC's Maxwell House Showboat crowd the docks of Erie, Pennsylvania, waiting for the imaginary ship’s arrival on its “tour” of the Great Lakes. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1935 WMCA/New York City introduces the talent show Grandma’s Night Out, limited to female contestants over 60.
AUG 9 1937 The Transamerican Network, originated by WLW/Cincinnati, claims a growing list of affiliates to its co-op venture due to start in a month: WHN/New York City, WFIL/Philadelphia, KQV/Pittsburgh and WJJD/Chicago.
AUG 9 1937 The Philadelphia CIO members’ newspaper issues a full page condemnation of CBS commentator Boake Carter for his pro-management stance in labor issues and suggests union members boycott his sponsor, Philco.
AUG 9 1939 CBS news analyst H.V. Kaltenborn flies to Europe to begin three weeks of broadcasts originating from the BBC’s London studios. (See H.V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1940 An arbitration agreement awards $10,000 to comedy writer Harry Conn and in return Jack Benny is given outright ownership to the 226 radio scripts that Conn wrote for him. (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1942 CBS debuts its weekly series Our Secret Weapon with author Rex Stout and newsman Robert Trout exposing lies contained in German propaganda directed to the United States.
AUG 9 1942 Standard Brands switches its Tenderleaf Tea commercials to its other products on NBC’s One Man’s Family due to wartime restrictions on tea sales. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1943 NBC and 86 of its affiliated station ask for modifications of the FCC’s rules to give the network an extra half hour of evening option time in exchange for a half hour on weekday mornings.
AUG 9 1944 Ted Malone, London correspondent for Blue and weekly commentator via shortwave on 162 network stations, signs a five year contract to continue his weekday commentaries for Westinghouse.
AUG 9 1945 Radio flashes first bulletins of the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki.
AUG 9 1945 President Truman’s speech to the nation about the atomic bomb and Potsdam Conference registers a 54.1 Hooperating equaling 41.5 Million adult listeners. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 9 1945 DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York and WTTG(TV)/Washington are linked via coaxial cable. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
AUG 9 1946 FCC shuts down a homemade, unlicensed 50 watt station broadcasting gospel music and sermons for 45 minutes daily from a farm home in Trenton, Nebraska.
AUG 9 1946 The NAB passes a rule prohibiting its staff members from owning any part of broadcast properties.
AUG 9 1947 Comics Bud Abbott and Lou Costello sign a five year contract with ABC for a transcribed series of shows to be offered to affiliates for co-op, (local), sponsorship.
AUG 9 1948 His contracts with Mutual and KFWB/Los Angeles expired, disc jockey Martin Block announces he’ll return to his New York City base, WNEW, and resume doing his daily program live.
AUG 9 1949 The Senate passes The McFarland Bill, the first major legislation effecting the FCC in a decade which gives the agency “cease and desist” authority, streamlines its processes and gives the seven Commissioners a raise to $15,000 a year.
AUG 9 1950 The ILGWU reports losing $150,000 a year operating its WFDR-FM/New York City.
AUG 9 1951 FCC approves Earle C. Anthony’s sale of KFI-TV/Los Angeles to General Tire & Rubber for $2.5 Million.
AUG 9 1951 NBC Radio announces its ambitious six-month People Sell Better Than Paper promotional campaign aimed at advertisers.
AUG 9 1951 Art Linkletter and Frances Langford co-host a 45-minute CBS show from the network’s KCBS/San Francisco celebrating the station’s increase in power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts.
AUG 9 1952 Gordon McLendon of the suspended Liberty Broadcasting System asks the FCC to require Western Union to relax its restrictions for its play-by-play wire service and to prevent networks or stations from obtaining exclusive contracts for sports events.
AUG 10 1934 Gus Haenschen leaves his $50,000 a year post as Music Director for the World Broadcasting System to go into private business and concentrate on his network assignments. (See Gus Haenschen.)
AUG 10 1935 U.S. Marshals and FCC investigators raid a Birmingham home and seize a 100 watt transmitter used to create noisy interference with WSGN in that city which has resisted union attempts to organize its employees.
AUG 10 1935 Fred Astaire guest stars on Your Hit Parade and introduces songs from his new film, Top Hat, after composer Irving Berlin gives sponsor Lucky Strike a two week exclusive on his score. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 10 1936 The Japanese Association of America applies to the FCC for a shortwave license relay agriculture and market news in Japanese to farmers in Northern and Central California. A similar station exists in Southern California.
AUG 10 1938 FDR son Elliot Roosevelt is named head of the newly formed 23 station Texas State Network.
AUG 10 1942 FCC and Board of War Communications Chairman James Fly denounces the discriminatory tax on radio sales proposed by the International Printing Trades union.
AUG 10 1942 The FTC orders cigarette makers R.J. Reynolds and Phillip Morris to cease and desist radio advertising that claims superiority for “medical reasons.” (See Unfiltered Cigarette Claims.)
AUG 10 1942 The Stack-Goble advertising agency of Chicago - once a major firm with the Santa Fe Railroad, Swift Meats, Sears Roebuck and Lewis Howe accounts - folds owing NBC $120,000.
AUG 10 1942 Former Amos & Andy announcer Bill Hay joins KHJ/Los Angeles with daily program of Bible readings sponsored by Forest Lawn cemetery.
AUG 10 1943 CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid is reported safe after parachuting a week earlier from a disabled Air Force transport into an uninhabited jungle in North Burma.
AUG 10 1944 NBC bans “hitch-hike” or “cow-catcher” commercials prior to the beginning or after the end of network programs.
AUG 10 1945 Japan sends its initial World War II conditional surrender offer via short-wave radio at 7:36 a.m. ET. CBS is the first network to report the news, opening its lines to affiliates 18 minutes early at 7:42 a.m. (See V-J Day.)
AUG 10 1947 Disgruntled union engineers take new station KOWL/Los Angeles off the air for two hours during its Sunday afternoon dedication broadcast.
AUG 10 1948 Ray Bolger and Paul Whiteman headline the four and a half hour inaugural broadcast of ABC’s flagship television station, WJZ-TV/New York City.
AUG 10 1949 Bob Hope and sponsor Lever Brothers appear before an American Arbitration Association panel to determine if Hope has the right to transcribe his Tuesday night NBC show. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 10 1950 CBS signs Frank Sinatra to a “long term” radio and television contract.
AUG 10 1950 With its daily afternoon broadcasts of the United Nations Security Council meetings a surprise popular and critical success, ABC begins a nightly half hour of taped highlights from each day’s meeting at 10:30 p.m.
AUG 10 1951 A.C. Nielsen reports that seven of the ten most popular Network Radio programs are CBS daytime shows -Saturday’s Armstrong Theater, Grand Central Station and Stars Over Hollywood, and weekday shows Arthur Godfrey Time, The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday and Ma Perkins. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 10 1951 Walter O’Keefe’s NBC weekday quiz show Double Or Nothing begins three weeks of originations from Armed Forces installations in Europe with tapes of the show flown back to U.S. for broadcast.
AUG 10 1952 Stop The Music! once a programming phenomenon, leaves the air after four seasons on ABC. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 10 1953 Syndicated television re-runs of Dragnet, sold in 30 markets as The Cop, are re-titled Badge 714 at the request of the International Association of Police Chiefs which considers the term “cop” to be derogatory. (See Jack Webb's Dragnet )
AUG 11 1935 Veteran NBC announcer Graham McNamee is hospitalized in Akron while covering the National Soap Box Derby and struck by one of the contestant’s cars.
AUG 11 1939 RCA Victor sends all radio stations a license agreement to broadcast its records for a monthly fee ranging from $100 to $300. Decca also informs stations of its plan to license its records. Neither plan materializes.
AUG 11 1940 The networks carry first bulletins of the Category Two hurricane striking the Georgia-South Carolina coast killing 50 persons.
AUG 11 1941 FCC bans the multiple ownership of stations with overlapping signals.
AUG 11 1941 Don Lee opens the West Coast’s first FM station, K45LA/Los Angeles with a broadcast schedule of twelve hours daily.
AUG 11 1941 Edwin Kiest, owner of The Dallas Times Herald and KRLD/Dallas, dies after a long illness at 79 and wills both the newspaper and radio station to his employees.
AUG 11 1943 FCC relaxes its freeze on new local stations to permit the construction of 100 and 200 watt facilities with equipment not needed for military purposes.
AUG 11 1945 Fifteen representatives of the broadcasting industry leave on a month long mission to England, France, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and Italy.
AUG 11 1948 Popular bandleader Blue Barron sues ABC and the producers of Stop The Music! claiming that the show’s concept was stolen from him. (See Stop The Music! )
AUG 11 1950 RCA President Frank Folsom promises to make Sunday evening on NBC from 6:30 to 8:00, "…the most powerful single time period in radio with every name star from NBC and its allied fields.” (See Tallulah’s Big Show)
AUG 11 1952 NBC announces the “re-integration” of its radio and television divisions, consolidating the two networks’ advertising, promotion, planning and research departments.
AUG 11 1952 The Screen Writers Guild goes on strike against 13 Hollywood TV film producers affecting 19 network and syndicated programs.
AUG 11 1952 Former network star Tommy Riggs takes an executive and talent position with Birmingham, Alabama, stations WAPI and and WAFM(TV).
AUG 12 1936 Philco demonstrates the broadcast of television images over a seven mile distance to a press gathering in Philadelphia.
AUG 12 1940 ASCAP rival Broadcast Music Inc. reports its membership at 392 stations representing 85% of the industry’s revenue.
AUG 12 1940 Kroger Groceries begins the practice of concluding its 55 weekday programs on radio stations across the country with The Pledge of Allegiance.
AUG 12 1942 U.S. War Department issues regulations which eliminate commercials in programs transcribed for broadcast to Armed Forces listeners serving overseas.
AUG 12 1943 Major Edward Bowes closes down his touring vaudeville units that had paid him $300,000 over eight years because they no longer showed a profit. (See Major Bowes' Original Money Machine.)
AUG 12 1944 With wartime restrictions expired, NBC‘s WNBT/New York City becomes the first television station to explain and demonstrate radar. CBS-owned WCBW follows suite three days later.
AUG 12 1946 CBS cancels its network produced summer shows Hawk Durango, Night Life and Milton Berle’s Kiss & Make Up.
AUG 12 1946 ABC asks the FCC for an “advisory opinion” before proceeding with a possible revival of Pot O Gold which the Commission once considered to be a lottery.
AUG 12 1946 Sunkist lemons buys a $75,000, 13 week spot campaign in 205 single-station markets via the Keystone Broadcasting System.
AUG 12 1949 Radio Features, Inc., producers of syndicated games Tello Test and Tune Test, seeks a restraining order from a Chicago Federal Court against the FCC’s giveaway ban due to take effect on October 1st .
AUG 12 1949 By a 2-1 vote, Bob Hope loses his arbitration hearing with Lever Brothers over his demand to transcribe his NBC programs. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 12 1949 FCC orders radio evangelist J. Harold Smith to suspend operations of his daytime station, WIBK/Knoxville, Tennessee, finding him unfit to own a license and citing his concealed interest in high-powered XERF/Villa Acuna, Mexico.
AUG 12 1951 Guy Lombardo wins his third National Speedboat Racing championship. (See Guy Lombardo.)
AUG 12 1952 The Broadcast Advertising Bureau issues a survey estimating that 70.5% of American cars, (27,425,000), are equipped with radios.
AUG 12 1952 CBS proposes a radio network discount plan to its affiliates that would give sponsors a 25% cut in rates. (See CBS Rates: Go Figure.)
AUG 12 1953 Crosley Broadcasting, which bought WINS/New York City from Hearst Radio for $1.7 Million in 1945, sells the station to a private group for $450,000 - a $1.25 Million loss.
AUG 12 1953 Marshall Field sells WJJD/Chicago to drug manufacturer Plough, Inc., for $900,000.
AUG 12 1953 The New York Supreme Court sets aside a $10,000 award given to writer Charles Carneval who sued Campbell Soup and NBC for allegedly stealing his idea for the quiz show Double Or Nothing.
AUG 13 1912 Congress passes The Radio Act of 1912 which authorizes the Department of Commerce and Labor to license, assign call-signs and regulate all radio transmissions within the United States.
AUG 13 1912 All licensed radio stations in the United States are directed to broadcast at a frequency of 360 meters, (618.6 kilocycles). A geographical boundary between call-signs beginning with W and K is drawn north from the Texas and New Mexico border.
AUG 13 1937 NBC leases a large studio for audiences at the old Warner Brothers lot on Sunset Boulevard to use for its Hollywood-based shows on Sundays.
AUG 13 1939 CBS, Mutual and NBC all cover the National Soapbox Derby from Akron, Ohio, with live reports.
AUG 13 1943 Sergeant Gene Autry is identified as one of the buyers of KPHO/Phoenix for $60,000. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 13 1944 Overlapping contracts result in different episodes of Colgate-Palmolive’s Blondie to be broadcast on Blue on Friday nights and CBS on Sunday nights for three weeks. (See Bloonn…dee!)
AUG 13 1944 Jackie Gleason and Les Tremayne debut in an NBC Sunday night variety show panned by Variety as, “…almost totally lacking in originality.”
AUG 13 1945 Secrets of atomic bomb development are revealed to the public as the War Department praises the press and radio for keeping the information confidential until the war’s end.
AUG 13 1946 H.G. Wells, who denounced his War of The Worlds when he learned of the reported chaos caused by Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of the story in 1938, dies after a long illness in London at 79. (See The War of The Worlds.)
AUG 13 1946 Financially troubled regional networks North Central Broadcasting System and the Mississippi Valley Network are placed in the hands of creditors.
AUG 13 1947 Bing Crosby technicians test the Rangertone and Magnetrack film recorders considered candidates for replacing the disc transcription process used for Crosby’s Philco Radio Time. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 13 1947 FCC renews the license of WTOL/Toledo, saying the station had cleaned up its practice of overcommercialization.
AUG 13 1947 FCC proposes to eliminate Channel One, (44 to 50 MHz), from the VHF television band, using it instead for non-government mobile services.
AUG 13 1948 Don McNeill climaxes his “Presidential Campaign” in North Philadelphia, Ohio, with a remote broadcast of his Breakfast Club on ABC from a local amphitheater before an estimated audience of 10,000.
AUG 13 1948 FCC proposes granting general use of individual radio transmitter-receivers for personal and private communications.
AUG 13 1950 The eleven month strike by IBEW technicians at WABB/Mobile, Alabama, is settled by the NLRB.
AUG 13 1951 The neighbor of a Stop The Music! jackpot winner sues for half the prize claiming she ran into the contestant’s home with the correct answer when the program called. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 13 1951 A subsidiary or Meredith Publishing buys WOW AM & TV/Omaha for $2.53 Million.
AUG 13 1953 East Coast stations assume emergency status for two days as Category Two Hurricane Barbara moves up the coastline from the Carolinas to New England killing seven persons.
AUG 13 1953 Writer John Greene sues CBS and N.W. Ayer for $505,000 alleging that they stole his idea for the program You Are There. (See You Are There.)
AUG 13 1953 Phil Rapp, creator of The Bickersons, sues NBC and others for $1.25 Million claiming plagiarism of his concept on the television network’s Saturday Night Revue.
AUG 14 1939 CBS and NBC refuse to allow any affiliates to preempt their programs to carry Mutual’s broadcasts of the World Series.
AUG 14 1941 NBC opens its new shortwave listening post for the Far East in North Hollywood.
AUG 14 1942 BMI reports its membership grows to 778 stations and 16 networks.
AUG 14 1944 The First direct broadcasts from France since D-Day begin with correspondent John McVane’s report from a mobile transmitter on NBC's News of The World. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 14 1944 Bob Hope and his USO troupe, including Jerry Colonna and Frances Langford, escape injury when their Catalina flying boat crash lands near Laurieton, New South Wales. (See Hope From Home and “Professor” Jerry Colonna.)
AUG 14 1945 C.E. Hooper registers radio listening at a 43.3 rating during the late morning hours when reports spread of a pending Japanese surrender. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 14 1945 NBC’s Max Jordan in Berne, Switzerland, is first to announce Japan's surrender to end World War II at 4:18 p.m. ET. (See V-J Day.)
AUG 14 1945 President Truman confirms the Japanese surrender in a 7:00 p.m. ET news conference.
AUG 14 1945 NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City stations a camera on the marquee of the Hotel Astor for two hours to picture the street celebration below.
AUG 14 1945 Orson Welles narrates Norman Corwin’s 15 minute commemoration of V-J Day, 14 August, on CBS at 9:45 p.m. (See V-J Day.)
AUG 14 1945 The OWI announces that the end of World War II means 1,045 of its employees, half of them involved in its radio activities, will be laid off.
AUG 14 1947 CBS buys 45% minority interest in KQW/San Jose-San Francisco.
AUG 14 1950 The Liberty Network announces an August through December football schedule featuring legendary sportscaster Ted Husing.
AUG 14 1951 Patent medicine Hadacol launches the second edition of its All Star Caravan for 47 cities with Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson and Rudy Vallee signed to appear in the larger markets for a total talent cost of $50,000 - 10% of the tour’s entire cost. Advance sales of the tonic reach $6.0 Million. (See Hadacol.)
AUG 14 1951 Newspaper and broadcasting mogul William Randolph Hearst dies of natural causes at age 88 in Los Angeles.
AUG 15 1931 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll, (aka Amos & Andy), appear at a picnic for 20,000 children in Chicago’s Washington Park, invited by The Chicago Defender in response to another black newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier’s editorial attacks on the blackface team. (See Amos & Andy - Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 15 1932 RCA introduces the Velocity (Ribbon) Microphone which becomes an industry standard.
AUG 15 1934 Calling themselves The Committee of Five For The Betterment of Radio, bandleaders Abe Lyman, Guy Lombardo, Paul Whiteman, Richard Himber and Rudy Vallee meet to eliminate suggestive song lyrics.
AUG 15 1934 Goodman & Jane Ace appear as the Radio Aces in Universal Pictures’ 20 minute Hits of Today. (See Easy Aces and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 15 1935 Humorist Will Rogers, 55, star of the CBS Top Ten show Gulf Headliners, is killed in a plane crash off Point Barrow, Alaska, with aviator Wiley Post.
AUG 15 1935 Bing Crosby appears as a guest without pay on Paul Whiteman’s Kraft Music Hall - an appearance that proved to be an audition for his taking over the show four months later. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 15 1935 Art Linkletter, 23, is appointed Program Director of KGB/San Diego. (See People Are Funny.)
AUG 15 1937 Bill Bacher, producer of Hollywood Hotel on CBS, joins Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Radio Supervisor. (See Good News.)
AUG 15 1937 Transmitter tests begin at 730 kc. for 100,000 watt XERB/Esta Rose Rita, 16 miles south of Tia Juana, which is expected to cover eleven western states in the U.S.
AUG 15 1939 Blue’s Information Please becomes first major network prime time program allowed to be transcribed for delayed broadcast on the West Coast. (See Information Please.)
AUG 15 1939 Muzak begins to offer its franchises to broadcasters in specified markets including Philadelphia where the wired music service was offered to WFIL.
AUG 15 1940 NBC releases findings of its C.E. Hooper coverage study begun in February resulting in returns from 166,000 families and showing that NBC is regularly listened to by 89.1% of the respondents. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 15 1940 WOV/New York City converts its all-Italian language programming after 6:00 p.m. to English.
AUG 15 1940 The Don Lee Network’s W6XAO/Los Angeles boasts the first televised wedding seen by an estimated 1,500 witnesses through receiving sets.
AUG 15 1941 Citing “differences in opinion,” the CBS Pacific Coast network cancels the weekly broadcasts of Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler. The Don Lee network imme-diately picks up Fidler’s contract.
AUG 15 1942 NBC News & Special Events Director A.A. (Abe) Schechter resigns to join the Office of War Information.
AUG 15 1944 All networks carry the 6:10 a.m. pool report of NBC’s Chester Morrison covering the second Allied invasion of southern France.
AUG 15 1944 Norman Corwin’s illness forces CBS to cancel its anthology series Columbia Presents Corwin after 22 weeks.
AUG 15 1945 CBS advertises in the trade press that it beat the other networks by 15 seconds with the August 10th bulletin of Japan’s conditional surrender offer.
AUG15 1945 Voluntary censorship of news in the United States is ended by Presidential decree.
AUG 15 1946 Philco Corp. signs Bing Crosby for his weekly 30 minute transcribed program on ABC at a reported $30,000 per show. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 15 1946 The DuMont Television Network presents its first regularly scheduled program, Serving Through Science, on WABD(TV)/New York and WTTG(TV)/Washington. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
AUG 15 1948 CBS-TV presents its first nightly newscast, Douglas Edwards & The News.
AUG 15 1949 ABC broadcasts a half-hour tribute to Ethel Barrymore’s 70th birthday and her 50th anniversary in show business featuring President Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bing Crosby and her brother Lionel.
AUG 15 1950 A Chicago scriptwriter sues CBS, the Chrysler Corporation and Lever Brothers for $150,000, claiming the giveaway show, Hit The Jackpot, was based on his idea, Watch Your Step, that CBS rejected in 1946.
AUG 15 1950 Gillette and Mutual submit the winning bid of $600,000 for radio and television rights to the 1950 World Series, exceeding DuMont’s offer of $510,000.
AUG 15 1952 CBS Radio affiliates approve the network cutting its nighttime rates 25% through new discounts while increasing Monday through Friday daytime rates 5.5%. The plan also reduces station compensation by 15%.
AUG 15 1952 DuMont begins its network television schedule of 29 National Football League games through December for which it paid the league $1.0 Million. (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)
AUG 15 1953 NBC presents the first of its four consecutive Saturday night episodes of Fire!, a fire prevention documentary series produced with the U.S. Forestry Service.
AUG 16 1922 AT&T puts 500 watt WEAF on the air in New York City.
AUG 16 1936 CBS leases NBC affiliate WEEI/Boston and swaps affiliation with CBS outlet WNAC five weeks later.
AUG 16 1936 Milton Berle begins as host of Gillette’s Community Sing on WNAC/Boston, three weeks before the show debuts on the CBS Sunday night schedule.
AUG 16 1937 The newly organized AFRA holds its first formal board meeting and elects Eddie Cantor its President with Vice Presidents Helen Hayes, Lawrence Tibbitt, Jascha Heifetz, Norman Field and Jimmy Wallington.
AUG 16 1937 President Roosevelt appoints Frank McNinch, former Chairman of the Federal Power Commission and FCC Chief Engineer T.A.M. Craven to fill the FCC Commissioner posts left vacant by the death of Anning Prall and the resignation of Irvin Stewart.
AUG 16 1937 Easy Aces reverts to its original theme, Have You Forgotten?, when the composer of Manhattan Serenade, Lou Alter, demands $25 plus name credit every time the song is played on the show. (See Easy Aces.)
AUG 16 1937 Martin Block, host of Make Believe Ballroom on WNEW/New York City, is named the station’s Program Director.
AUG 16 1939 In a reversal of policy NBC begins selling chain break announcements between network programs and allows transcribed commercials on its owned and operated stations.
AUG 16 1939 Fifty listeners respond to an appeal by KRLD/Dallas for a rare type of blood needed by a staff pianist after an operation.
AUG 16 1940 Listeners get their first look at Hal Peary as Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve in Paramount Pictures’ rural comedy, Comin’ Round The Mountain. starring Bob Burns. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s), Bob Burns and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 16 1943 The War Department doesn’t say where, only that Al Jolson has begun his fourth USO overseas tour entertaining Allied troops. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 16 1943 The Don Lee West Coast network accuses the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee with trying to intimidate conservative commentators by pressuring their sponsors.
AUG 16 1944 FCC opens hearings forced by the United Auto Workers’ effort to revoke the license of WHKC/Columbus, Ohio, on grounds that the station lacks impartiality in its news and commentary presentation.
AUG 16 1945 St. Louis stations increase their newscast schedules when strikes shutdown the city’s three daily newspapers for three weeks.
AUG 16 1947 Announcer Ken Carpenter is re-elected President of AFRA.
AUG 16 1947 Horace Heidt records the audition of his Youth Opportunity Program for Philip Morris.
AUG 16 1948 Baseball legend and occasional radio performer George Herman (Babe) Ruth dies of cancer at 53.
AUG 16 1948 President Truman signs anti-inflation law requiring a 20% down payment and strict credit terms on all radios, phonographs and television sets sold for more than $50.
AUG 16 1949 WOR-TV/New York City begins test programming with a Brooklyn Dodger baseball game given it for the purpose by WCBS-TV which regularly televises Dodger home games for Schaefer Beer.
AUG 16 1951 CBS broadcast of The Nation’s Nightmare, detailing crime on the New York City docks, draws threats against network personnel.
AUG 17 1936 Announcers at powerful KFI/Los Angeles are schooled to sign-off the station in English plus six foreign languages: Spanish, Japanese, German, Italian, French and Russian.
AUG 17 1937 KWK/St. Louis affiliates with the startup Transamerican Network anchored by WLW/Cincinnati.
AUG 17 1941 AFRA’s National Convention re-elects Lawrence Tibbett as its President with Viriginia Payne, Jean Hersholt, Ben Grauer, Ken Carpenter and Bill Adams as Vice Presidents.
AUG 17 1942 Garry Moore, 27, begins his weekday morning, Show With No Name, on NBC with a contest offering $500 for the best name submitted for the variety program.
AUG 17 1942 Rudy Vallee, 41, joins the U.S. Coast Guard as a bandmaster with the rank of Chief Petty Officer. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 17 1942 NBC bans the country song I’m A Prisoner of War (On A Foreign Shore) as too depressing.
AUG 17 1945 FCC officials predict that the FM broadcast band will be moved from 42-50 megacycles to 88-108 megacycles by the end of the year.
AUG 17 1947 International Silver’s anthology Silver Theater ends its ten year late Sunday afternoon run on CBS.
AUG 17 1951 NBC comedians Bob (Eliott) & Ray (Goulding) create a stir in Washington when they advise listeners to write to the Smithsonian Institution for their “Home Dismantling Kit”.
AUG 17 1951 Republic Pictures becomes the first major movie studio to sell its product to television with the one-year lease of 175 films to KTTV(TV)/Los Angeles for $250,000. No
Gene Autry or Roy Rogers Westerns are included in the package.
AUG 17 1951 ABC pays $175,000 for ten post-1942 movies from the Pine-Thomas Studios for showing on its owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Detroit.
AUG 17 1952 ABC replaces the cancelled Stop The Music! on Sunday nights with The American Music Hall's 40 piece orchestra conducted by Paul Whiteman and Glenn Osser with vocalists Larry Douglas and June Valli. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 17 1953 Continental Baking’s Wonder Bread cancel’s its weekday morning game show Grand Slam with Irene Beasley on CBS after seven consecutive years and replaces it with Make Up Your Mind hosted by Jack Sterling.
AUG 17 1953 Citing “sub-standard” talent available for his Talent Scouts show, Arthur Godfrey stages an impromptu program featuring Jeanette Davis, Frank Parker and the McGuire Sisters from his other shows. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 17 1953 NBC reports co-op sales in 36 markets for its new weeknight sportscast with Mel Allen and Russ Hodges.
AUG 18 1930 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll, (aka Amos & Andy), sign a five year radio contract with Pepsodent Toothpaste for a reported total of $1.1 Million. (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 18 1936 Scripps-Howard newspapers sponsors broadcast of the Joe Louis vs. Jack Sharkey prizefight on CBS for $10,000, but only in 20 markets. All remaining CBS affiliates receive the event as a sustaining program.
AUG 18 1937 FCC refuses to investigate listener claims of Nazi propaganda emanating from German language broadcasts on U.S. stations.
AUG 18 1939 A U.S. Appeals Court backs the Yankee Network against the FCC’s decision to grant a power boost to WMEX/Boston.
AUG 18 1942 CBS buys WEEI/Boston which the network had leased from Edison Electric for the previous six years.
AUG 18 1944 The War Labor Board votes 8-2 to seek action against the AFM when the union refuses to end its recording strike claiming the war effort is not involved in the strike.
AUG 18 1948 The U.S. Supreme Court is asked to rule if the FCC’s Blue Book is censorship of radio in violation of The Communications Act and The First Amendment.
AUG 18 1948 CBS-TV announces success in lowering sweltering studio lighting by adopting motion picture filming techniques that assure a room temperature no higher than 74 degrees.
AUG 18 1950 FCC gives KCHE/El Reno, Oklahoma permission to go silent for 60 days while it obtains new financing, reorganizes and finds new studios.
AUG 18 1952 WNBT(TV)/New York City begins programming Today’s Exercises with former Olympic swimmer and movie star Larry (Buster) Crabbe during the five minute break in NBC’s Today weekday mornings at 7:25 a.m.
AUG 18 1952 Ralph Byrd, who held the title role of Dick Tracy in 48 episodes of the television series, (plus four movie serials and two feature films), dies of a heart attack in Tarzana, California, at age 43.
AUG 18 1953 After IBEW technicians go on strike at WOR AM & TV/New York City, station officials accuse the union of damaging and stealing equipment.
AUG 18 1953 Goodson & Todman introduce their talent-panel show, Judge For Yourself, hosted by Fred Allen for a one season run on NBC-TV sponsored by Lorillard’s Old Gold cigarettes.
AUG 19 1929 Pepsodent Toothpaste introduces Freeman Gosden, 30, and Charles Correll, 39, as Amos & Andy on NBC's Blue Network. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 19 1940 KLZ/Denver celebrates its 20th anniversary on the air.
AUG 19 1941 NBC executive John F. Royal, on a 20,000 mile inspection tour of South America, says Axis powers are jamming U.S. shortwave broadcasts at an increasing rate.
AUG 19 1941 Variety quotes radio pioneer Lee DeForest’s observation that, “The defense program has television stopped - the stations can’t get equipment and those that do can’t find men to operate it.”
AUG 19 1942 The August CAB ratings for New York City rank WOR’s local show, Can You Top This? ahead of any network program with a 17.2 rating. (See Can You Top This?, Saturday's All Time Top Ten and Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 19 1942 Effie Palmer, a veteran radio actress since 1922, dies in her New Jersey home at age 52.
AUG 19 1944 NBC war correspondent Tom Treanor, 35, is killed when his Jeep is overturned in France.
AUG 19 1946 Lowell Thomas begins weeknight newscasts for Procter & Gamble on CBS stations west of Chicago while continuing his nightly broadcasts for Sun Oil on 30 NBC stations east of Chicago. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 19 1946 Martin Block signs a new four year contract with WNEW/New York City for $185,000 allowing him to record his daily show in Los Angeles and ship it east.
AUG 19 1948 FCC approves a rare swap: By allowing San Francisco stations KQW and KSFO to trade their frequencies, operating power and transmitter facilities.
AUG 19 1948 Kay Kyser records a half hour audition for a daytime show on ABC. (See Kay Kyser.)
AUG 19 1949 FCC announces it will put its sweeping definition of lotteries into effect on Oct. 1st, and outlaw most of the 38 giveaway shows on Network Radio. ABC, CBS and NBC react promptly with plans to fight the action in court.
AUG 19 1949 A one-night, all-star charity show for the Knights of Columbus headlined by Eddie Cantor, Edgar Bergen, Bob Crosby and Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra attracts a crowd of 18,000 to the University of Detroit stadium.
AUG 19 1950 WWJ AM-FM & TV/Detroit go off the air for two hours when 56 NABET engineers stage a sudden Saturday afternoon strike.
AUG 19 1950 KTLA(TV)/Los Angeles increases its program schedule to 19 hours daily.
AUG 19 1950 American Tobacco tests the video version of Your Hit Parade on Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. on NBC-TV. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 19 1951 NBC-TV is forced to make a public apology for alleged slanderous remarks made about UAW chief Walter Reuther on the previous week’s American Forum of The Air
AUG 20 1920 The Detroit News is licensed to operate experimental station 8MK which will become WWJ in 1921.
AUG 20 1930 Two New Jersey experimental television stations, W2XCR/Jersey City and W2XCD/Passaic, transmit a half-hour demonstration program hosted by George Jessel, six miles to three receivers located in New York City.
AUG 20 1934 NBC is reported negotiating to buy WLBW/Erie, Pennsylvania, for $90,000 with the intent of moving the facility to Pittsburgh or Cleveland where affiliates are giving it clearance problems.
AUG 20 1934 Phillips H. Lord’s Cruise of The Seth Parker resumes its shortwave broadcasts from Panama, beginning a weekly 15 minute sustaining series on NBC for 15 weeks.
AUG 20 1936 WLW/Cincinnati severs its corporate connection with Mutual but remains an affiliate.
AUG 20 1937 CBS announces plans to establish a television production center at New York’s Grand Central Station.
AUG 20 1940 Buffalo stations WGR and WKBW report collecting $1,200 needed to buy a new ambulance for the Red Cross through two weeks of special programs soliciting pledges.
AUG 20 1942 The Australian Radio Commission agrees to produce three programs from scripts provided by NBC: Why We Fight, We Believe and Hot Copy for broadcast to American Armed Forces stationed in the country.
AUG 20 1945 C.E. Hooper reports that Mutual newscaster Gabriel Heatter had the most listened to program of V-J week with an 11.8 average rating. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten and Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 20 1945 WWJ/Detroit celebrates its 25th Anniversary, originating in 1920 as 8MK.
AUG 20 1946 ABC adds ten new stations bringing its affiliate total to 220.
AUG 20 1947 Citing an improved financial condition, ABC withdraws its application for a public stock offering.
AUG 20 1947 James G. Harbord, RCA Board Chairman from 1930 to 1947 dies after a brief illness at 81.
AUG 20 1948 FCC is embarrassed to learn that Communications Act Section 316, under which it re-defined lotteries to outlaw giveaway shows, had been repealed by Congress two months earlier in June.
AUG 20 1951 Sponsor Colgate announces comedian Charlie Cantor will rejoin Duffy’s Tavern in the Finnegan character he created for the NBC show, now produced in Puerto Rico. (See The Two Stooges and Duffy Ain’t Here.)
AUG 20 1951 The Keystone Broadcasting System transcription network announces signing its 450th affiliate.
AUG 20 1951 Mr. & Mrs. Mike Wallace, (Buff Cobb), begin a weekday morning interview show from their apartment, Two Sleepy People, in color on WCBS-TV/New York City.
AUG 20 1951 AT&T’s new microwave system, designed for television networking, is tested in the simulcast NBC Radio’s Telephone Hour.
AUG 20 1952 Citing radio’s loss of nighttime audience to television, WVOP/Vidalia, Georgia, trades its fulltime license at 1450 k.c. for a daytime only license at 970 k.c.
AUG 21 1931 A 52-week, $400,000 network contract from Ovaltine to sponsor Little Orphan Annie tops a week in which NBC’s Chicago office signed a million dollars in new business. (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
AUG 21 1932 Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt, 50, makes his first campaign address over 25 NBC stations at a cost of $5,000.
AUG 21 1939 A non-aggression pact signed by Russia and Germany puts all network news departments on a 24 hour operational status.
AUG 21 1940 NBC relaxes its ban on laxative advertising to allow commercials for Lewis-Howe’s Nature’s Remedy.
AUG 21 1941 A convoy of 200 light trucks stretching six miles long transports 1,800 troops from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to Riverside Stadium in Washington, D.C. to attend Glenn Miller’s CBS broadcast. (See In The Miller Mood.)
AUG 21 1941 Mexico’s 21 station network affiliates with NBC’s Pan American Network.
AUG 21 1941 Claiming it had not approved the program’s content, Shell Oil cancels Art Linkletter’s Shell Comes To A Party on nine CBS West Coast stations after two broad-casts. (See People Are Funny.)
AUG 21 1945 FCC approves the CBS sale of WBT/Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. for the record breaking price of $1.505 Million.
AUG 21 1945 A seven minute ABC closed circuit promotional strategy talk, intended for executives of the network’s West Coast stations, is mistakenly broadcast to the full network during its County Fair program.
AUG 21 1946 RCA puts its new line of television sets and its Image Orthicon studio cameras in their first public demonstration at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.
AUG 21 1946 WBKB(TV)/Chicago issues its first rate card based upon the city’s reported 450 television receivers.
AUG 21 1947 NBC allows People Are Funny and Can You Top This? to join Truth Or Consequences and transcribe their East Coast broadcasts for later play on the West Coast. (See The Late Shift, People Are Funny and Can You Top This?)
AUG 21 1947 The U.S. Justice Department begins probe of the AFM to learn if union boss James Petrillo violated the Taft-Hartley Act by refusing to let his members play on network AM-FM simulcasts. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 21 1950 Nearly 20,000 persons bearing box tops for admission jam the New Orleans Arena when Dudley Leblanc launches his 15 city Hadacol Caravan of Stars tour with Mickey Rooney, Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl. (See Hadacol.)
AUG 21 1951 NBC organist Lou Webb, 51, whose playing was heard on network programs for 18 years, collapses at the keyboard and dies of a heart attack.
AUG 21 1952 The Television Authority talent union merges into the American Federation of Radio Artists creating the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, (AFTRA).
AUG 21 1953 KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul receives nationwide acclaim for arranging and broadcasting the phone conversation between a Minnesota mother and her escaped convict-murderer son in which she convinced him to surrender.
AUG 22 1923 Singing comedians Billy Jones & Ernie Hare debut as The Happiness Boys for the Happiness Candy Company on WEAF/New York City..
AUG 22 1935 KNX/Los Angeles originates Mutual’s first West Coast broadcast - a memorial service for Will Rogers from the Hollywood Bowl.
AUG 22 1939 First reports of the pending Polish crisis are reported by the networks.
AUG 22 1939 CBS announces plans to alternate the styles of the orchestras and increase production values in its nightly block of dance band remotes from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. (See Big Band Remotes.)
AUG 22 1941 FCC Chairman James Fly says the proposed 5% to 15% tax on radio advertising revenue, "...is discriminatory, unfair, a threat to jobs and jeopardizing a public service."
AUG 22 1941 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler begins a new series of weekly commentaries on Mutual with an editorial criticizing the “censorship” practiced by his former network, CBS.
AUG 22 1943 Edward R. Murrow begins a series of 15 minute Sunday afternoon commentaries from London on CBS sponsored by American Oil.
AUG 22 1944 FCC approves the sale of WSAI/Cincinnati by the Crosley Corporation to Chicago retailer and broadcastr Marshall Field for $550,000.
AUG 22 1945 The U.S. Broadcasting Mission receives its first demonstration of Germany’s Magnetophon tape recording system at Radio Luxembourg.
AUG 22 1947 ABC Sports Director Harry Wismer is hired to report the College All Stars vs. Chicago Bears football game on Mutual at the insistence of sponsor Wilson Sporting Goods.
AUG 22 1949 Members of the U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee express doubts that the FCC has the authority to define giveaway shows as lotteries and ban them.
AUG 22 1949 August ratings released by C.E. Hooper indicate that ten of the month’s Top 15 Programs are mysteries or crime shows. (See Radio’s Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 22 1950 KLAC-TV/Los Angeles is forced to cancel the appearance of eleven year old jazz pianist and vocalist, Frank (Sugar Chile) Robinson from its Palladium Ballroom broadcast because child labor laws ban minors from performing where liquor is served.
AUG 22 1951 Gertrude Berg, creator and star of The Goldbergs, signs a ten year exclusive contract with NBC-TV.
AUG 22 1952 Character actor Gale Gordon, under exclusive contract to Our Miss Brooks on CBS, is allowed to continue his role as Mayor LaTrivia on NBC’s Fibber McGee & Molly but is forced to give up his parts on NBC's The Great Gildersleeve, Halls of Ivy and Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show.
AUG 23 1935 NBC employs four mobile units to cover the U.S. Army war games from Pine Camp, New York, to demonstrate the use of radio under wartime conditions.
AUG 23 1935 Responding to complaints from Canadian broadcasters, FCC denies WLW/Cincinnati’s request to employ its 500,000 watt transmitter without the directional antenna it constructed to limit its signals to the north.
AUG 23 1937 Twentieth Century Fox capitalizes on the Walter Winchell-Ben Bernie radio “feud” with the release of Wake Up & Live headlining the two stars of the Blue Network’s Sunday night schedule. (See Walter Winchell.)
AUG 23 1937 The NAB tells members that SESAC does not control all the music it claims and stations should exercise caution before signing with the organization.
AUG 23 Chicago radio announcers Russ Russell of WGN and WCFL’s Eddie Chase are credited with helping evacuate 30 people from an apartment building that was destroyed by an early morning fire.
AUG 23 1938 With the installation of new RCA equipment, NBC resumes television transmission for one hour a day from W2XBS/New York City located in the Empire State Building.
AUG 23 1939 Newsman/author Elmer Davis joins CBS News. He becomes Director of the U.S. Office of War Information, (OWI), two and a half years later.
AUG 23 1939 NBC and CBS each assign a dozen staff members to cover the Army War Games in upstate New York.
AUG 23 1940 The Senate Interstate Commerce Committee hearings investigating The 1932 Radio Patent Pool agree with Senator Charles Tobey's charges that “some” FCC commissioners have accepted gifts and perks from RCA.
AUG 23 1940 David O. Selznick and MGM nullify an agreement that would have made Gone With The Wind the basis for a weeky half hour series on 67 CBS stations sponsored by Vick Chemical.
AUG 23 1940 Canadian composer-conductor Percy Faith, 32, is named musical con-ductor for NBC’s Carnation Contented Hour.
AUG 23 1941 Veteran radio actor Wilmer Walter, star of NBC’s David Harum, dies at 57 after a short illness.
AUG 23 1944 Army censors fail to catch CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood’s premature report of Germany’s surrender of France, setting off celebrations two days ahead of the actual event.
AUG 23 1945 A U.S. Navy cargo ship is named in memory of NBC correspondent Tom Treanor who died in France while covering Patton’s Third Army in 1944.
AUG 23 1946 Citing labor difficulties and government restrictions on wheat, General Mills cancels two of its oldest daytime serials on CBS, Valiant Lady and The Light of The World.
(See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 23 1946 George Storer’s Fort Industry buys WJBK/Detroit for $550,000, a new record price for a 250 watt station.
AUG 23 1946 Mutual reports a record 552 local sales for its eleven co-op programs. Fulton Lewis Jr.’s nightly news commentary leads the pack with 199 local sponsors.
AUG 23 1946 Mutual’s full network of 315 stations broadcasts the Annual College All Star Football Game from Soldier Field in Chicago.
AUG 23 1948 ABC offers a Monday through Friday quarter hour commentary by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her daughter Anna on its full network for $1.03 Million per year from which the ladies would receive $169,000.
AUG 23 1948 AFRA prohibits Dr. I.Q.from using non-union announcers from NBC affiliate KSTP in its seven weeks of broadcasts from Minneapolis - telling the show to instead hire union members from other stations as the star’s assistants. (See Dr. I.Q.)
AUG 24 1932 The NAB accepts “under protest” ASCAP’s demand for “commission” reimbursement - 3% of stations’ net revenue for the first year, 4% for the second and 5% for the third.
AUG 24 1935 MGM presents Jack Benny hosting an hour long variety show on Blue to celebrate his new film, The Broadway Melody of 1936. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 24 1939 Responding to broadcasters’ requests, RCA-Victor delays implementation of licensing its phonograph records to radio stations by three months.
AUG 24 1939 NBC’s news department goes on a 24 hour schedule for the weekend during the Polish crisis, CBS follows suite the next night.
AUG 24 1940 Television pioneer Dr. Paul Nipkow, who first spoke of picture transmission in the 1890’s and invented some of its earliest components, dies at 80 in Berlin.
AUG 24 1941 Mutual music critic Floyd Neale, 54, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.
AUG 24 1942 FCC grants a rare new radio license during wartime to KTKN/ Ketchikan, Alaska. The 1,000 watt facility at 920 kc., requested by the Office of War Information, Is designed to serve the nearby military and civilian population.
AUG 24 1943 FCC authorizes standard four letter call signs for FM stations replacing letter and number combinations.
AUG 24 1943 The AFRA national board approves the union’s merger with The American Guild of Musical Artists.
AUG 24 1943 WLW/Cincinnati staff singer Doris Day, 21, is taken by ambulance from the station and undergoes an emergency appendectomy.
AUG 24 1944 Tightened regulations on laxative advertising force Lewis-Howe’s Nature’s Remedy to drop sponsorship of Mutual’s American Women’s Jury originating from WNAC/Boston.
AUG 24 1945 The AFM says it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that station employees who handle records and transcriptions rightfully belong in engineers’ unions. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 24 1946 WSM’s Grand Ole Opry originates outside of Nashville for the first time in its 21 years, broadcasting from the Texas State Fair in Dallas. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 24 1946 Abbott & Costello embark on a 14 city tour of performances to benefit The Lou Costello, Jr. Youth Foundation.
AUG 24 1948 ABC President Mark Woods denies the Communist Party’s demand for equal time to respond to the network’s documentary, Communism - US Brand, which the Communists call, “… dishonest and unfair.”
AUG 24 1948 A 22 year old sailor wins radio’s biggest giveaway show award to date, $24,000 in prizes, on the CBS program Hit The Jackpot.
AUG 24 1949 WDGY/Minneapolis-St. Paul, formerly a daytime only station, utilizes nine towers to begin operating with 50,000 watts days and 25,000 watts at night at 1130 kc.
AUG 24 1950 The U.S. House Appropriations Committee approves $41.3 Million for the construction of six new high power radio transmitters for Voice of America broadcasts.
AUG 24 1952 CBS Radio issues a new rate card raising daytime prices by 11.1% and lowering nighttime prices through discounts by as much as 30%.
AUG 24 1953 CBS Radio agrees to its affiliates’ demand not to lower network rates further for one year.
AUG 24 1953 Des Moines is the largest city on the FCC’s list of markets without television that will receive priority in its hearings for new stations. St. Louis is the largest city with only one station.
AUG 25 1930 A public demonstration of television, transmitted from Jersey City to New York City, is deemed a failure when early evening conditions are considered “too light” to see the tiny screens and technical problems interrupt the blurry showing sponsored by Jenkins Television Corporation and The New York Evening Journal.
AUG 25 1933 Unions IBEW and IATSE begin sparring to represent technicians at Los Angeles stations.
AUG 25 1940 Kansas City Journal columnist John Cameron Swayze, 34, rejoins KMBC/ Kansas City as a newscaster - he had originally been on its staff in 1931.
AUG 25 1941 NBC ships 2,000 phonograph records and radio program transcriptions to the Panama Canal Zone for the entertainment of the American troops manning 200 anti-aircraft batteries.
AUG 25 1941 FCC says its shortwave listening posts in Portland, Oregon; Kingsville, Texas; Guilford, Maryland, and Santurce, Puerto Rico have become very important because, “…almost every political, diplomatic or military move is presaged by shifts in propaganda treatment..”
AUG 25 1942 The Gallup Poll reports that 73% of the public surveyed agree with the Justice Department action against the AFM recording strike. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 25 1943 FDR’s Canadian-American Friendship speech from Ottawa on all four networks registers a 24.9 rating. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 25 1943 Frank Sinatra pays a sum “...in excess of $50,000.” to bandleader Tommy Dorsey to sever Sinatra’s employment contract which guaranteed Dorsey and his manager 43% of the singer’s earnings.
AUG 25 1945 Quiz show Give And Take hosted by John Reed King begins its eight year sporadic run on CBS.
AUG 25 1946 Announcer Ken Carpenter beats Virginia Payne, (Ma Perkins), by one vote to become the new President of AFRA, succeeding Lawrence Tibbett.
AUG 25 1947 Movie actors Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, John Garfield, Myrna Loy and Ray Milland, form Radio Repertory Theater, Inc., to produce transcribed radio dramas for syndication.
AUG 25 1948 The Metropolitan Opera settles its labor problems allowing it to stage its 1948-49 season and Saturday afternoon broadcasts on ABC.
AUG 25 1948 FCC rules against any temporary authorization allowing daytime-only stations to operate past sunset.
AUG 25 1949 AFRA petitions the FCC to deny WATL/Atlanta the renewal of its license because of, “…flagrant disregard of government regulations,” in the station where the union and IBEW have been on strike for eight months.
AUG 25 1949 Robert Young’s sitcom Father Knows Best begins its four year run on NBC. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 25 1949 RCA informs the FCC that its all-electronic, compatible color television system is ready for mass production.
AUG 25 1950 Sportscaster Harry Wismer, 37, resigns after four years as General Manager of WJR/Detroit over differences with its owner, G.A. (Dick) Richards.
AUG 25 1951 ABC begins a two-month period in which 20 television network advertisers and 18 radio network sponsors, 75% of them new business, will add $23.2 Million in gross revenue to the networks. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
AUG 26 1932 NBC broadcasts the first of five weekly installments of its adaptation of the RKO movie, The Phantom, then invites listeners to enter a contest with their scripts for a concluding sixth chapter. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 26 1935 The four year old March of Time is converted from a weekly half-hour to a 15 minute weeknight show on CBS.
AUG 26 1938 Interviewed on his 65th birthday, broadcasting pioneer Lee DeForest calls radio, “sickening”, adding, “Not only are the programs poor, with too much swing and crooning, but the commercials are maddening.”
AUG 26 1939 The first televised major league baseball game, Brooklyn vs. Cincinnati, is broadcast by NBC‘s W2XBS/New York City with Red Barber describing the action and doing commercials for Wheaties and Procter & Gamble Soap.
AUG 26 1946 Ad agencies and producers of NBC’s Wednesday night shows, Duffy’s Tavern, The Great Gildersleeve, Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge and The Frank Morgan Show, meet to plot promotional plans to blunt the effect of Bing Crosby’s new series on ABC. (See The 1946-47 Season and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 26 1947 FCC grants the license of WOKO/Albany, New York, to the Governor Dongan Broadcasting Corp., which takes over the station from its former owners who lost its license for stock concealment.
AUG 26 1950 Heavily advertised on local radio, The Hadacol Caravan of Stars headlined by Mickey Rooney, attracts an Atlanta stadium audience of 23,000 - all admitted by presenting a box top from the $1.25 patent medicine (See Hadacol.)
AUG 26 1950 Smilin’ Ed McConnell, a kids’ radio personality for 25 years, makes his television debut on NBC with a weekly show.
AUG 26 1951 Dinah Shore begins a second season of twice-weekly, 15-minute shows on NBC-TV after signing a five year, $1.0 Million contract with the network.
AUG 27 1934 CBS is reported negotiating with The Oakland Tribune’s KLX/Oakland to replace its San Francisco affiliate, Don Lee’s KFRC. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 27 1934 WLW/Cincinnati reports 5,000 visitors a month attend its weekend tours of the station’s 500,000 watt transmitter facility in Mason, Ohio, 23 miles from the city.
AUG 27 1935 Broadcasters agree to terms of the FTC to reject advertisers deemed “questionable” by the Commission.
AUG 27 1936 KWK/St. Louis, KSO/Des Moines, WMT/Cedar Rapids, KOIL/Omaha and KFOR/Lincoln affiliate with Mutual, joining partial affiliates WSM/Nashville, WFIL/Phila-delphia, WBAL/Baltimore, and WGAR/Cleveland in the network’s drive for nationwide coverage. (See Mutual Led The Way.)
AUG 27 1939 WMCA/New York City broadcasts the short, cryptic information contained in several German and British ship-to-shore military messages obtained when radio operator Stanley Wolff intercepts the coded signals.
AUG 27 1940 A lengthy speech by Vice Presidential candidate Charles McNary on NBC pre-empts Meredith Willson’s homecoming tribute show from San Francisco. (See Meredith Willson.)
AUG 27 1941 The U.S. Senate Finance Committee deletes a 5% to 15% punitive tax on radio station net revenues over $100,000 from The 1941 Tax Act as was demanded by printing trades unions.
AUG 27 1942 Idaho Senator D. Worth Clark charges AFM President Petrillo with “gangster tactics” in forbidding his members to make records as a Senate committee is appointed to investigate the union. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 27 1942 Kay Kyser’s outstanding efforts to sell War Bonds and entertain troops qualify him to be the subject of NBC’s March of Time. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten,)
AUG 27 1943 CBS News Director Paul White issues widely circulated memo to newscaster Cecil Brown outlining the network’s policy against editorializing.
AUG 27 1943 The CIO files a petition with the FCC to participate in the hearings involved with the sale of the Blue Network to Edward Noble with the admitted intent to obtain more time on Network Radio.
AUG 27 1943 Blue Network President Mark Woods denies Andrew Jergens, Inc. the right to repeat Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal by transcription on any additional CBS and NBC stations than the twelve already allowed to do so. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 27 1944 Lawrence Tibbett is re-elected President of AFRA.
AUG 27 1945 To promote Joan Davis’ new CBS show for Swan Soap, Lever Brothers’ agency Young & Rubicam offers 500 newspapers a free weekly column, Joan of Hollywood.
AUG 27 1946 Philco signs with ABC to carry its recorded Bing Crosby variety show on Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m. beginning October 16 over 211 affiliates with up to 400 more stations to be contracted separately to carry the program. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 27 1946 NBC puts sponsor Phillip Morris on notice to improve its poorly performing Rudy Vallee Show or risk losing its Tuesday night timeslot.
AUG 27 1946 Vox Pop opens its eighth and final season on CBS with a remote broadcast from the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 27 1947 FCC approves AT&T adding 512 additional miles of coaxial cable to complete coast-to-coast television connections at an estimated construction cost of $10.9 Million.
AUG 27 1948 Time magazine senior editor Whittaker Chambers, appearing on Mutual’s Meet The Press, accuses Alger Hiss, President of The Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, of having been a Communist.
AUG 27 1949 Southeast Florida stations assume emergency status as a Category 4 hurricane reaches landfall at West Palm Beach causing flooding and property damage estimated at $52.0 Million.
AUG 27 1950 Frank & Anne Hummert’s American Album of Familiar Music begins its 20th season on Network Radio. (See Gus Haenschen and Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
AUG 27 1950 Sponsor General Foods cancels the television debut of The Aldrich Family and fires actress Jean Muir from the cast,, bowing to rumors that she had Communist sympathies. (See The Aldrich Family.)
AUG 27 1951 In a package plan similar to NBC’s Operation Tandem, CBS begins offering one, 60-second commercial in four network shows - My Friend Irma, Grand Central Station, Mr. Chameleon and People Are Funny - for $15,000 per week.
AUG 27 1951 AT&T estimates that the addition of West Coast cities to a network’s microwave transmission charges from New York City to 43 affiliates will increase costs from $452 per half hour to $608.
AUG 27 1952 Bob Hope turns down a $17,000 per week offer from General Foods to do a 15-minute weekday radio show, contingent on his giving up his nighttime program.
AUG 27 1953 FCC grants an AM station construction permit for Guam, its furthest West jurisdiction, which will be the only radio station for the island’s 100,000 residents.
AUG 27 1953 Mark Stevens replaces Lee Tracy as Martin Kane, Private Eye on NBC-TV - the fourth actor to portray the role on the U.S. Tobacco series.
AUG 28 1922 AT&T’s WEAF/New York City broadcasts its first “toll broadcasting” commercial - a ten minute sales talk promoting the new Hawthorne Court Apartments in Queens. Developer Queensland Corporation was charged $50 for the time. The station claimed that $127,000 in sales resulted from the one commercial.
AUG 28 1927 NBC begins its regular Sunday night network programming with Major Bowes’ Capitol Family. (See Major Bowes' Original Money Machine.)
AUG 28, 1931 NBC acquires WMAQ/Chicago from The Chicago Daily News.
AUG 28 1932 Sponsor Wrigley Gum “leaks” to the press that its popular soap opera stars Myrt & Marge are actually Myrtle Vail, the 44 year old creator of the series and her 19 year old daughter, Donna Damerel.
AUG 28 1933 NBC reports that 60% of its sponsors are incorporating premium giveaways in their commercials. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
AUG 28 1935 Montana Congressman Joseph Monaghan blasts the FCC for, “…time and time again approving the trafficking in radio licenses by members of the Radio Trust,” and “…approving leases then hiding the papers in secret files.”
AUG 28 1937 Arthur Godfrey leaves his post as host of the CBS show, Professor Quiz, claiming it limited his creativity - sponsor Nash-Kelvinator says it was because he demanded a raise over his $750 a week. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
AUG 28 1939 With war in Europe imminent, CBS and its New York City anchor, WABC, extend their daily sign-off time one hour to 2:00 a.m.
AUG 28 1939 Dr. I.Q. shifts from Blue to NBC’s 56 station network and begins roving among major city theaters with a broadcast from Pittsburgh’s Stanley Theater. (See Dr. I.Q.)
AUG 28 1939 In an economic move, American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cancels 30 of the 76 CBS stations carrying Your Hit Parade and 30 of the 85 NBC stations carrying Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge. (See Nets To Order.)
AUG 28 1939 NBC's W2XBS(TV)/New York City expands its programming with up to 15 hours per week.
AUG 28 1940 WJR/Detroit listeners to Michigan Governor Luren Dickinson’s campaign speech originating from WJIM/Lansing complain of piano music from an unknown source drowning out the first three minutes of his address.
AUG 28 1941 Blue introduces Heirs of Liberty, a series of six, 15 minute programs profiling American patriots, narrated by Raymond Massey, Walter Huston, Charles Laughton, Richard Waring and Maurice Evans who volunteer their talent.
AUG 28 1942 Sportscaster Bob Elson provides Mutual’s coverage of the College All-Stars vs. Chicago Bears football game despite a heavy fog that prevents him from seeing the field plus the World War II ban that prevents his describing his weather related handicap.
AUG 28 1942 Edgar Bergen and his Charlie McCarthy return from Alaska and the Aleutian Islands where authorities report that he performed 51 shows for Allied troops in twelve days. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 28 1943 AFRA approves merging with the American Guild of Musical Artists, (AGMA).
AUG 28 1945 Paul McGrath assumes the role of host Raymond on Inner Sanctum, replacing Raymond Edward Johnson in Army service. (See Inner Sanctum and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 28 1946 American Tobacco’s George Washington Hill pulls Lucky Strike and Pall Mall billing for the Jack Benny and Frank Morgan shows worth $3.0 Million from Ruthrauff & Ryan Advertising and awards it to Foote, Cone & Beldiing. (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
AUG 28 1947 WNBC/New York City celebrates the 25th anniversary of radio’s first acknowledged commercial - a ten minute lecture for the Queensboro Corporation’s Jackson Heights apartment development on WEAF in 1922.
AUG 28 1947 WBIX/Rome, Georgia, becomes the first postwar-licensed station to leave the air and turn back its license to the FCC.
AUG 28 1950 Comedienne Joan Davis leaves series radio after a sporadic multi-network run of nine years.
AUG 28 1950 Meet The Press co-owners Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak sue Mutual for $1.25 Million over the network’s cancellation of the program and replacing it with Reporters’ Roundup.
AUG 28 1950 RCA Chairman David Sarnoff tells the VFW’s National Convention that the United States will have international television within five years and, “…The Voice of America will become the Voice and Vision of America.”
AUG 28 1951 The broadcasting industry supported Broadcast Measurement Bureau is dissolved after seven years, two controversial radio station coverage surveys and a debt of $100.000.
AUG 28 1952 FCC approves the $2.25 Million sale of KOA/Denver from NBC to a group headed by Bob Hope.
AUG 28 1953 The World Transcription Service reports a “30 to 45%” increase in business over 1952 with 40% of its new clients adding World to another leased library. (See “By Transcription…”)
AUG 28 1953 Meet The Press creators Martha Roundtree and Lawrence Spivak settle their lawsuit against Mutual for undisclosed terms and Roundtree sells her interest in the program to Spivak.
AUG 28 1953 NBC-TV’s The Big Story salutes the newspaper exploits of ABC’s Walter Winchell and presents him with sponsor Pall Mall cigarettes’ $500 award. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten and Walter Winchell )
AUG 29 1932 KNX/Los Angeles broadcasts the play by play of a “world’s championship” chess match played in a Goodyear blimp flying over the city.
AUG 29 1935 An Army Air Force bomber flies from Dayton to Cincinnati controlled by a Sperry automatic robot and radio compass guided by the beam of WLW. The plane’s return flight was guided by the beam of WHIO/Dayton.
AUG 29 1939 CBS and NBC log a week’s total of 159 shortwave reports from Europe during the unfolding Polish crisis.
AUG 29 1940 CBS demonstrates its color television system for the first time to FCC officials.
AUG 29 1941 Twin City stations KSTP, WCCO, WLOL and WTCN agree to share a single broadcast of University of Minnesota football games played at Seattle, Ann Arbor and Iowa City with a sportscaster from each station reporting one quarter.
AUG 29 1942 Glenn Miller makes his feature film debut in the 20th Century Fox musical, Sun Valley Serenade. (See In The Miller Mood.)
AUG 29 1942 Blue’s seven hour I Pledge America featuring Fanny Brice, Amos & Andy, Orson Welles, Dinah Shore, Edward G. Robinson, Bob Burns and Meredith Willson sells over $10.4 Million in War Bonds.
AUG 29 1943 Blue cuts Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler’s broadcast for twelve seconds of “disputed material”.
AUG 29 1944 The NAB unveils its Broadcast Measurement Bureau - a new radio ratings system involving the bulk mailing of a million postcards to homes at a cost of a dollar apiece.
AUG 29 1945 RCA-Victor introduces its new unbreakable, high-fidelity vinyl phonograph records.
AUG 29 1945 U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower tells radio executives touring Germany that broadcasting can help speed the “de-nazification” of the country.
AUG 29 1947 CBS orders its West Coast censor to cut any ad-lib remarks from Arthur Godfrey’s transcribed broadcasts considered potentially offensive after its station relations representatives report affiliate complaints about him.
AUG 29 1949 FCC bans giveaway programs as a violation of lottery laws and the networks prepare to seek an immediate injunction. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 29 1949 Actor George Murphy is fired as host of NBC’s giveaway show Hollywood Calling because producers want more emphasis put on the show’s contest and prize elements. (See Hollywood Calling.)
AUG 29 1949 Celebrating the 15th anniversary of Lux Radio Theater, sponsor Lever Brothers, CBS and 20th Century Fox launch a four month contest to find “America’s Most Beautiful 15 Year Old Girl.” (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 29 1949 Former child movie star Roddy MacDowell, 20, begins a ten-month weekday afternoon disc jockey run on KMPC/Los Angeles.
AUG 29 1952 CBS Radio sets $4,500 as the maximum price for any of its half-hour shows in the 1952-53 season
AUG 29 1952 Former CBS Sports Director Ted Husing, turned successful disc jockey on WMGM/New York City, returns to the network to report the Little League World Series title game from Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
AUG 30 1934 West Coast radio and television station pioneer Don Lee, 53, dies in Los Angeles from acute indigestion.
AUG 30 1934 The U.S. Justice Department files suit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law asking for the dissolution of ASCAP.
AUG 30 1935 WLW/Cincinnati brands ACLU charges that the station censors news of labor strikes to be untrue.
AUG 30 1936 After 12 years on WEAF - and subsequently NBC - Major Bowes’ Sunday afternoon Capitol Gang presents its last show before moving to CBS along with Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour.
AUG 30 1937 NBC reports problems in getting newsmen and equipment into Shanghai to cover the Sino-Japanese War.
AUG 30 1937 A New York Supreme Court judge issues an injunction against Transradio Press from broadcasting a real time recreation of the Joe Louis vs. Tommy Farr Heavyweight Championship fight saying it infringed on NBC’s exclusive rights.
AUG 30 1939 Nazi Germany decrees imprisonment for any citizens caught listening to foreign broadcasts.
AUG 30 1943 FCC Chairman James Fly labels charges made by a congressional committee lawyer that he wrongfully sought draft deferments for commission engineering personnel as, “…an unprincipled bid for headlines.”
AUG 30 1943 Evangelist/politician Gerald L.K. Smith sues WXYZ/Detroit for $100,000 claiming the station defamed him by allegedly stating that he trampled on the American flag during a speech.
AUG 30 1945 Wilson Sporting Goods sponsors broadcast of the Green Bay Packers vs. College All Stars football game on Mutual’s 246 affiliates.
AUG 30 1946 CBS grants a 10% raise to all non-union employees making less than $100 per week.
AUG 30 1946 FCC denies the $950,000 sale of KQW/San Jose-San Francisco to CBS. Calling the decision “unjust and capricious”, CBS and KQW petition the Commission for a rehearing.
AUG 30 1946 FCC approves the call-sign change of CBS-owned WABC/New York to WCBS and WCBS/Springfield, Illinois to WCVS effective November 1st.
AUG 30 1948 Arthur Godfrey’s weekday morning show is expanded by 30 sponsored minutes making his total annual billings worth $4.5 Million to CBS. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
AUG 30 1948 NBC-TV announces six programs on kinescope film available to non-interconnected affiliates: Howdy Doody, Musical Miniatures, Story of The Week, TV Screen Magazine, American Song and Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One.
AUG 30 1951 Louisiana patent medicine promoter and heavy radio advertiser Dudley LeBlanc sells his Hadacol brand tonic to New York interests for $8.0 Million. (See Hadacol.)
AUG 31 1920 Detroit News station 8MK, (later WWJ/Detroit), broadcasts the Detroit city election returns.
AUG 31 1931 Bing Crosby, 28, debuts on CBS with a new $1,500 weekly contract calling for six sustaining, 15-minute shows a week.
AUG 31 1934 The annual College All Stars vs. NFL Champion Chicago Bears charity football game described by sportscaster Bob Elson from Soldier Field is broadcast by WGN/Chicago and shared with NBC.
AUG 31 1939 AFRA negotiates a minimum talent fee of $15 per program for Network Radio performers.
AUG 31 1936 Major Ed Bowes hosts a non-broadcast performance of his Original Amateur Hour at Detroit’s Masonic Auditorium for Chrysler employees and featuring employees of the company which becomes his sponsor in September. (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 31 1939 CBS tallies its eight-month 1939 studio audience total through August to be over 1.12 million persons.
AUG 31 1941 Lawrence Tibbett succeeds Eddie Cantor as President of AFRA.
AUG 31 1941 Prestigious anthology The Prudential Hour opens its nine year run on CBS.
AUG 31 1941 Fibber McGee & Molly spinoff The Great Gildersleeve begins its 16 season run on NBC. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s) and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 31 1941 Time magazine misinterprets Crossley and Hooper survey data to state that radio listening had declined 6.3% over the 1940-41 season. (See The 1940-41 Season.)
AUG 31 1942 The Adventures of Superman, a syndicated program since 1940, opens its seven season run on Mutual replacing Jack Armstrong which moves to Blue. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
AUG 31 1942 Kids’ weekday afternoon serial Hop Harrigan, Ace of The Airways begins a six year run on Blue.
AUG 31 1942 CBS buys WEEI/Boston from Edison Electric for $500,000.
AUG 31 1942 U.S. Army reports that local radio stations produce more than 600 programs per week directed to Armed Forces personnel in nearby camps.
AUG 31 1943 President Roosevelt calls Blue commentator Drew Pearson, “...a chronic liar,” after Pearson’s critical remarks about the State Department’s attitude toward Russia.
AUG 31 1944 The American FM Network dissolves after four years of sporadic operation.
AUG 31 1944 Frank Morgan becomes the solo host of NBC’s Maxwell House Coffee Time when General Foods moves his co-star, Fanny Brice, to the CBS Sunday schedule. (See Good News, Frank Morgan and Baby Snooks.)
AUG 31 1945 President Truman abolishes the Office of War Information, assigning its activities to a temporary International Information Service of the State Department.
AUG 31 1946 NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City begins its special Labor Day weekend sports programming with coverage of the New York Giants vs. Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game.
AUG 31 1948 AFRA elects Clayton (Bud) Collyer its National President.
AUG 31 1949 Trade paper Variety reports that nighttime, (7:00 to 10:00 p.m.) on NBC-TV is 74% sold out for the 1949-50 season and prime time on CBS-TV is 66% sold.
AUG 31 1949 ABC, CBS and NBC file separate suits in New York District Court seeking an injunction against the FCC’s giveaway show ban. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 31 1951 The NLRB cites IATSE for an illegal jurisdictional strike over the operation of television Teleprompters with the IBEW which was assigned the duty by NBC-TV.
AUG 31 1953 In a first-time networking arrangement, Liggett & Myers considers simul-casting its Chesterfield Supper Club starring Perry Como on NBC-TV and Mutual Radio but drops the idea in favor of taping the television show for later broadcast on radio.
GLOSSARY
AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union - AFL = American Federation of Labor - AFM = American Federation of Musicians - AFRA = American Federation of Radio Artists - AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Service - AFTRA = American Federation of Radio & Television Artists - AGVA = American Guild of Variety Artists - ANA = Association of National Advertisers - ANPA = American Newspaper Publishers Association - AP = Associated Press - ARB = American Research Bureau - ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers - BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - BMB = Broadcast Measurement Bureau - BMI = Broadcast Music, Inc. - CAB = Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting - CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System - CIO = Congress of Industrial Organizations - CST = Central Standard Time - CWA = Communications Workers of America - EST = Eastern Standard Time - FCC = Federal Communications Commission - FRC = Federal Radio Commission - FTC = Federal Trade Commission - IAPTA = International Allied Printing Trades Association - IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News Service - IRS = Internal Revenue Service - LBS = Liberty Broadcasting System - MBS = Mutual Broadcasting System - MCA = Music Corporation of America - MST = Mountain Standard Time - NAB = National Association of Broadcasters - NABET = National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians - NARBA = North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement - NARTB = National Association of Radio & Television Broadcasters, (fka NAB) - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - PTA = Parent Teachers Association - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - RMA = Radio Manufacturers Association - SAG = Screen Actors Guild - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - SPCA = Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press - VFW = Veterans of Foreign Wars - WPA = Works Progress Administration
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: [email protected]
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AUG 1 1923 RCA establishes WRC/Washington, D.C.
AUG 1 1932 ASCAP gives the NAB a September 1st deadline to agree to its demand for $1.25 Million per year in royalties from the radio industry or risk losing the ability to broad-cast copyrighted music.
AUG 1 1932 The 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles begin without radio coverage when the networks refuse to pay $100,000 for broadcast rights.
AUG 1 1932 A Dun survey reports New York to be the state with the most radio stations, 52, and Wyoming with the fewest, one.
AUG 1 1933 CBS and NBC reject McCann-Erickson Advertising’s proposal that adver-tising agencies be given a “byline” on programs they produce for clients.
AUG 1 1935 The newspaper controlled Pacific office of Press Radio Bureau serving 45 West Coast stations folds after 16 months. (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
AUG 1 1936 The Summer Olympics open in Berlin with CBS, NBC and Blue making shortwave reports to the U.S.
AUG 1 1936 NBC begins the system cue, “This is the Red (or Blue) Network of the National Broadcasting Company“, to differentiate between the two chains.
AUG 1 1937 The Blue network expands with the addition of ten affiliates in the South and Southwest including WDSU/New Orleans, WAGA/Atlanta and KXYZ/Houston.
AUG 1 1938 WHN/New York City introduces Music To Read By - an hour of instrumental classics beginning at midnight, seven nights a week. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 1 1939 Earle C. Anthony’s Blue Network affiliate, KECA/Los Angeles, abandons 1430 kc. and moves to 780 kc., formerly occupied by KEHE, bought by Anthony from Hearst Radio for $400,000.
AUG 1 1939 The Blue Network issues a retraction of Drew Pearson’s report on its Inside Story that Maryland Senator Millard Tydings had used WPA funds for personal projects on his estate.
AUG 1 1939 FCC grants Crosley’s pioneer shortwave station W8XAL/Cincinnati a commercial license as WLWO.
AUG 1 1940 BMI ships its first transcriptions of 50 non-ASCAP songs to its member stations.
AUG 1 1940 WOR/New York City opens the market’s first FM station, W2XOR.
AUG 1 1941 NBC discontinues combining billings on its Red and Blue Networks for advertiser discounts. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
AUG 1 1941 Isolationist elements in the U.S. Senate call for an investigation of alleged propaganda activities in the film and radio industries.
AUG 1 1942 The AFM bans its union members from playing in recording sessions and the U.S. Justice Department seeks an injunction against the union. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 1 1942 NBC institutes a ten percent discount for sponsors utilizing its full network of 125 stations for 13 con-secutive weeks.. (See NBC’s Chinese Menu.)
AUG 1 1942 Mutual announces network volume discounts of 50%, 60% and 75%. (See MBS = Mutual’s Bargain Sales.)
AUG 1 1942 FCC takes over operation of the CBS shortwave listening post at San Francisco.
AUG 1 1942 Philco takes its WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia off the air for two months during the installation of a new transmitter.
AUG 1 1943 NBC’s Army Hour is first to report the American air raid on Germany’s vital Ploesti oil fields in Romania.
AUG 1 1943 After six seasons as a sustaining attraction, NBC Symphony broadcasts are sponsored by General Motors.
AUG 1 1944 Plans to broadcast the CBS quiz show Take It Or Leave It from the stage of Pittsburgh’s Harris Theater are cancelled when officials note that Pennsylvania law pro-hibits any stage performances on Sundays.
AUG 1 1945 Mutual becomes the first network to put its newscasts on a 24 hour schedule. (See Mutual Led The Way.)
AUG 1 1945 RKO releases its comedy film Radio Stars On Parade featuring Ralph Edwards and Frances Langford. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 1 1946 WKNB/New Britain, Connecticut, goes on the air with a staff of 14 World War II veterans.
AUG 1 1946 Allen Stout of WROL/Knoxville is the only newsman inside Athens, Tennessee, during the election day battle between armed police of politically controlled McMinn County and local residents demanding reform led by of World War II veterans. Stout’s reports of the citizens’ victory were fed to WSM/Nashville and NBC.
AUG 1 1947 Clarence L. Menser, NBC’s Programming Vice President for five years suddenly retires.
AUG 1 1947 BMI purchases one of the world’s largest classical music libraries, Asso-ciated Music Publishers, from Muzak.
AUG 1 1947 MGM signs disc jockey Martin Block to appear in a minimum of four musical shorts annually for $5,000 each.
AUG 1 1947 The largest cash prize yet awarded by a radio show, $7,440, is won on ABC’s Break The Bank by a retired married couple of 70 year old New Jersey high school teachers.
AUG 1 1948 FCC reports network giveaway programs’ weekly prize total is $163,000,
AUG 1 1948 Jack Benny and Mary Livingston with Phil Harris and Alice Faye begin a week’s tour of Germany entertaining Occupation Troops. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 1 1948 An NBC survey estimates the number of television sets in U.S. homes to be 484,350 - a one month increase of 64,350 sets.
AUG 1 1949 Robert Q. Lewis takes over all of Arthur Godfrey’s radio and television programs except Talent Scouts for eight weeks while Godfrey vacations.
AUG 1 1949 Procter & Gamble begins transcribing its Ma Perkins on CBS for brpadcast in 25 supplemental markets. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 1 1949 Young & Rubicam ad agency executive Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, 40, is appointed NBC Vice President in charge of television.
AUG 1 1950 ABC begins daily afternoon broadcasts of the United Nations Security Council meetings from Lake Success, New York.
AUG 1 1951 The Ford Foundation allocates $1.2 Million to establish a workshop to create programs, “…of cultural, educational and entertainment qualities,” for commercial radio and television.
AUG 1 1951 CBS unveils a $6.0 Million campaign to promote its fall Network Radio schedule. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
AUG 1 1951 CBS changes its longtime chain break announcement, “This is the Columbia Broadcasting System,” to, “This is the CBS Radio Network,” and, “This is CBS Television.”
AUG 1 1952 WMAQ/Chicago is declared harmless in a $3.0 Million lawsuit brought by a promoter who claimed that fan dancer Sally Rand defamed him in an interview with Mike Wallace.
AUG 1 1952 Gulf Oil sends a television crew aloft in a plane during its NBC-TV program We The People in hopes of getting a live shot of a “flying saucer.”
AUG 1 1953 NBC celebrates the 30th anniversary of its WRC/Washington, D.C.
AUG 2 1931 The Chicago Times becomes the city’s first newspaper to ban sponsors’ names from its daily radio program listings, a move that soon spreads nationwide.
AUG 2 1932 CBS and NBC begin demanding cash in advance for all political campaign broadcasts.
AUG 2 1935 New NBC affiliate contracts place late afternoon/early evening programs Amos & Andy, Little Orphan Annie and Lowell Thomas newscasts in station option time in several Eastern and Midwest markets - but no stations cancel them.
AUG 2 1935 Leo J. Burnett leaves the Erwin-Wasey advertising firm to open his own ad agency.
AUG 2 1935 WNEW/Newark becomes one of the nation’s first stations operating 24 hours a day with the debut of Milkman’s Matinee, its daily disc jockey show from 2:00 until 7:00 a.m.
AUG 2 1936 New owner Westinghouse takes over the operation of WOWO and WGL/Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
AUG 2 1936 Attempts by the German Post Office Department to televise selected events from the Summer Olympics in 180 lines and 25 frames per second to 18 locations in Berlin are reported to be “...unclear and unsatisfactory.”
AUG 2 1937 Trading of CBS stock begins on the New York Stock Exchange.
AUG 2 1937 Pioneer station KQW/San Jose-San Francisco joins the Don Lee and Mutual networks. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 2 1937 The Association of NBC Technicians, a non-affiliated union representing all engineers employed by the network and its owned stations, wins a 15% raise for its members equal to an average $35 per month.
AUG 2 1940 The press hears a demonstration of FM broadcasts at the NAB convention in San Francisco from W10XLV which was constructed in four hours for the purpose.
AUG 2 1941 France’s most powerful shortwave station, The Voice of France, resumes broadcasting 15 hours a day under strict Nazi censorship after 14 months of silence.
AUG 2 1942 Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS Sunday evenings is re-titled Sergeant Gene Autry. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 2 1943 CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid and 18 others parachute to safety when their air transport crashes en route from New Delhi to Chunking.
AUG 2 1943 CBS relaxes its ban against recorded programs to allow the transcribed delayed broadcast of Kate Smith Speaks weekday series on eight affiliated stations.
AUG 2 1943 The AFM rules that the Blue Network’s sale means it can no longer share a musical staff with NBC and must hire its own staff of 65 union musicians at a minimum of $87 per week.
AUG 2 1943 Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia credits New York City radio stations with helping to prevent two nights of civil unrest from spreading into a race riot.
AUG 2 1945 FCC approves the $21.0 Million sale of Crosley Corp. - including WLW/Cin-cinnati - to Aviation Corporation, (AVCO).
AUG 2 1946 New Hampshire Senator Charles Tobey’s resolution to investigate the FCC and its policing of Blue Book regulations dies with the expiration of the 79th Congress.
AUG 2 1946 The Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, (CAB), votes to terminate its Crossley radio ratings service and sell its remaining contracts to competitor C.E. Hooper. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 2 1946 American Tobacco increases the weekly budget of Lucky Strike’s New York City based Your Hit Parade by $7,500 to accommodate appearances by singer Andy Russell from Hollywood. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 2 1948 ABC introduces a new pricing policy for its co-op programs intended to lower the cost for local advertisers by 20%.
AUG 2 1948 West Coast car dealer Earl (Madman) Muntz launches his brand of low priced, big screen television sets.
AUG 2 1950 Jimmy Durante signs an $800,000, four year exclusive contract with NBC radio and television. (See Goodnight, Mr. Durante...)
AUG 2 1951 ASCAP asks a New York District Court to amend a previous consent degree and allow it to force all broadcasters licensed for BMI music to also take out ASCAP blanket licenses.
AUG 3 1926 RCA chooses The National Broadcasting Company, (NBC), as the name for its new networking venture.
AUG 3 1933 Kraft Music Hall moves from Monday to Thursday night on NBC where it will remain for 16 seasons. (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 3 1934 Rumors persist in Los Angeles that CBS CEO Bill Paley has been in the city for six weeks to facilitate a switch in his network's affiliation from Don Lee’s 1,000 watt KHJ to 50,000 watt KNX. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 3 1937 Marjorie Oelrichs Duchin, wife of popular radio bandleader Eddie Duchin, dies at 29 after giving birth to a son.
AUG 3 1939 FCC rules that television channels will be identified by numbers instead of frequencies.
AUG 3 1940 Radio Day is celebrated by the New York World’s Fair and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Exposition with a simultaneous one hour broadcast at 8:00 p.m. on all networks and 500 stations headlined by Kate Smith, Rudy Vallee and Lowell Thomas.
AUG 3 1942 The U.S. Justice Department begins proceedings against the American Federation of Musicians for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 3 1942 Breakfast At Sardi’s, Tom Breneman’s popular weekday audience participation show on Blue’s Pacific Coast Network begins its successful run on the full Blue Network.
AUG 3 1942 Sterling Drug moves Hummert soap operas Amanda of Honeymoon Hill and Second Husband from Blue to CBS. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 3 1942 The International Printing Trades union calls for a discriminatory tax on radio time sales amounting to a minimum of $25 Million per year.
AUG 3 1942 Army Air Force Technical Sergeant Gene Autry gives his former agent, Harry Wurtzel. all the commissions Wurzel claimed due him since January, 1941.
AUG 3 1942 Unlike the previous week’s debut, the second broadcast in Norman Corwin’s CBS series An American In England is technically flawless.
AUG 3 1944 KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul reports remaining on the air until 2:45 a.m. to help guide a Northwest Airlines plane through a storm with 70 m.p.h. winds and to a safe landing.
AUG 3 1945 Bulova Watches becomes the first advertiser on CBS-owned WCBW(TV)/ New York City, buying four, 20-second commercials per week.
AUG 3 1946 Sportscaster Ted Husing leaves CBS after nearly 20 years saying, “I can make more in 14 weeks as a free-lancer than I can at Columbia in an entire year.”
AUG 3 1947 Eversharp moves its Top 20 Sunday night quiz show, Take It Or Leave It, from CBS to NBC. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 3 1947 Comedian Jack Paar, summer replacement for Jack Benny on NBC, fires his writers for “constant conflict” over his material.
AUG 3 1950 NBC begins four Thursday night rebroadcasts of transcribed Shakespearian dramas starring the late John Barrymore which were first aired on the network in 1937.
AUG 3 1951 Legendary NBC Vice President John F. Royal retires after 21 years with the network.
AUG 3 1951 Gillette keeps its Friday Night Fights on ABC Radio for the seventh consec-utive year turning down the bid of NBC which televises the bouts.
AUG 3 1953 NBC officially separates the activities of its radio and television divisions.
AUG 3 1953 Arthur Godfrey Time is expanded to a 90 minute weekday radio and television simulcast on CBS. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
AUG 3 1953 NBC-TV expands its morning programming with the addition of soap operas Three Steps To Heaven at 11:30 and Follow Your Heart at 11:45.
AUG 3 1953 President Eisenhower appoints South Dakota broadcaster Richard Dean to the FCC, giving the Commission its first Republican majority since its formation in 1934.
AUG 4 1932 NBC announces its first rate increase in two years - raising its early morning rates to equal its 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. charges which are half of its nighttime rates.
AUG 4 1935 Hearst begins a series 60 minute Sunday morning shows on WBBM/Chi-cago which combine reading the comics and the want ads from that day’s Chicago Herald & Examiner.
AUG 4 1936 G.A. (Dick) Richards, owner of WJR/Detroit, buys KMPC/Los Angeles for $112,000.
AUG 4 1938 The networks give full coverage to the shipboard return of flyer Lloyd (Wrong Way) Corrigan from Ireland.
AUG 4 1940 Crime Doctor begins its seven season run on the CBS Sunday night schedule.
AUG 4 1940 Talbot Mundy, 61, author of Jack Armstrong - The All American Boy, dies in Bradenton, Florida.
AUG 4 1941 Broadcasters withhold comment as the U.S. House passes a bill to tax annual advertising billing from 5% to 15%.
AUG 4 1941 Guy Lombardo completes his three year contract with the CBS Lady Esther Serenade and is replaced by Freddy Martin’s orchestra. (See Guy Lombardo.)
AUG 4 1944 The U.S. Marine Corps releases recordings made in a tank during a battle with Japanese forces on Guam which is promptly edited and broadcast by NBC, Blue and Mutual.
AUG 4 1944 The Los Angeles Police Employees Union complains to the Radio Writers Guild that too many law officers are portrayed on detective shows as “…half-witted stooges.”
AUG 4 1947 ABC sells WOOD/Grand Rapids, Michigan for $850,000 to a group headed by Harry Bittner, former General Manager of Hearst newspapers.
AUG 4 1947 DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City begins its schedule of televising the final 25 games of the New York Yankees’ season. (See Dr. Dumont’s Predictions.)
AUG 4 1948 A U.S. Congressional committee opens its investigation of the FCC with a discussion of the Commission’s Port Huron Decision involving political libel and censorship.
AUG 4 1948 Fredrick Ziv syndication firm buys transcription service World Broadcasting System from Decca Records for $1.3 Million. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.and "By Transcription...")
AUG 4 1948 Unable to reach agreement with the twelve unions representing its artists and staff, the Metropolitan Opera threatens to cancel its 1948-49 season and its Saturday afternoon broadcasts on ABC.
AUG 4 1949 WWDC/Washington agrees to purchase WOL/Washington, radio home of Mutual commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., for $300,000.
AUG 4 1949 WGN-TV/Chicago broadcasts film of a railroad depot shootout between police and a fugitive four hours after the event took place.
AUG 4 1950 Due to the Korean War, Armed Forces Radio Service resumes its wartime schedule of producing programs exclusively for service personnel overseas.
AUG 4 1952 CBS offers 30 minutes of The Original Amateur Hour for $1,000 per week to any sponsor who’ll also buy 30 minutes of the show on CBS-TV for $11,500 per week.
AUG 4 1952 WSBA-TV/Channel 43 in York, Pennsylvania, joins ABC and becomes the first UHF station to affiliate with a network.
AUG 4 1952 NBC-TV obtains exclusive rights to eleven of the twelve college football games allowed by the NCAA for $2.6 Million.
AUG 4 1953 Radio and television networks begin a week-long release of names and news of U.S. prisoners of war released in Korea.
AUG 4 1953 Haven MacQuarrie, former host of The Marriage Club and Noah Webster Says on CBS and Do You Want To Be An Actor? on NBC, dies of a heart attack in Hollywood at age 59.
Aug 5 1921 KDKA/Pittsburgh claims the first baseball play-by-play broadcast - Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia.
AUG 5 1935 Frank & Anne Hummert’s soap opera Backstage Wife begins its 24 season multi-network run. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 5 1935 The New York Daily News targets Chicago advertising agencies with a full page ad in The Chicago Tribune stating, “There are more copies of The News in use today in New York City than there will be radio sets in use tonight.”
AUG 5 1936 The New England based Colonial Network of 14 stations affiliates with Mutual.
AUG 5 1936 CBS, Mutual and NBC respond with special programs of Warner Brothers music when ASCAP informs broadcasters that they can again play music published by the studio.
AUG 5 1938 The Screen Actors Guild prohibits its members from appearing on radio for less than the AFRA scale.
AUG 5 1940 CBS notifies KVI/Tacoma that it will be dropped from the network when KIRO/Seattle - 30 miles away - boosts its power to 10,000 watts.
AUG 5 1940 AFM President Petrillo demands that concert artists leave the American Guild of Musical Artists and join his union. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 5 1941 FCC adopts a ban on co-owned stations with overlapping signals, affecting some 40 properties.
AUG 5 1945 Frank Sinatra is hailed as a hero for diving into the water and saving the life of a three year old boy who fell off the San Pedro pier and was knocked unconscious in the surf.
AUG 5 1946 Mutual claims more co-op sales than all the other networks combined with 532 sales. Commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., leads its pack with 197 sponsors followed by Cedric Foster’s 107. (See Mutual Led The Way.)
AUG 5 1946 Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor, Ed Gardner. Burns & Allen, Jim & Marian Jordan and Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll form Audience Records, Inc., to transcribe and market their stage performances
AUG 5 1948 FCC proposes a sweeping definition of lotteries that would outlaw most giveaway programs. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 5 1948 Mutual disputes the Broadcast Measurement Bureau’s coverage study citing 292 cases where station information is outdated.
AUG 5 1949 WJBK/Detroit disc jockey Ed McKenzie, (aka Jack The Bellboy), ties up a telephone exchange and 100,000 phones with the offer of five free gallons of gas for the first 100 calls to a number he announced once.
AUG 6 1931 After an activist group targets the CBS serial Skippy, the Illinois State Department of Labor rules that minors cannot be seen by the public performing on any stage, (or radio studio), between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.
AUG 6 1933 The Federal Radio Commission’s dictatorial Station Allocation Formula, based on state populations, determines that Illinois is the most over-radioed state with 10.79 more “units”, (stations), than it is "entitled".
AUG 6 1934 NBC discontinues its practice of feeding live program auditions from Los Angeles to New York City with line charges of $2,000 tp $3,000, replacing them with recorded auditions at a fraction of the cost.
AUG 6 1934 Procter & Gamble tests the drawing power of its NBC weekday serial Ma Perkins by offering a Ma Perkins Clothespin Apron to listeners who send in a dime with Oxydol box top. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums and Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 6 1934 WBBM/Chicago reports receiving 3,500 money orders for cartons of Kentucky Winners cigarettes from three days of announcements for the new product not yet in stores on Chicago Cub game broadcasts.
AUG 6 1935 An NAB survey indicates that 33% of the country’s stations - mostly major market, network affiliates - receive 75% of broadcasting’s advertising revenue. (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
AUG 6 1937 AFM President Joe Weber reports that 670 U.S. stations employ “only” 781 of his union’s members.
AUG 6 1939 Singer Dinah Shore makes her multi-network debut, eventually starring in eleven different series over 16 years.
AUG 6 1943 RCA’s Board of Directors approves the sale of the Blue Network, WJZ/New York, WENR/Chicago and KGO/San Francisco to Edward Noble for $8.0 Million pending FCC approval.
AUG 6 1943 WRGB(TV)/Schenectady begins testing one commercial hour per week for Lever Brothers and B.F. Goodrich - their halves split with a time signal for Hamilton Watch Company.
AUG 6 1944 Dr. Pepper brings Darts For Dough from WFAA/Dallas to Blue’s Sunday afternoon schedule.
AUG 6 1945 All networks interrupt programming at 11:15 a.m. with the bulletin of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
AUG 6 1945 Westinghouse and the Glenn Martin Company propose plans to develop Stratovision, a system to relay television and FM signals from planes flying in circular courses at 30,000 feet.
AUG 6 1946 NBC flagship WEAF/New York City breaks its long-standing rule against recorded programming by carrying the transcribed Skippy Hollywood Theater in prime time.
AUG 6 1946 FCC rules 4-2 to deny CBS the purchase of KQW/San Jose-San Francisco. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 6 1947 Ralph Edwards receives the American Cancer Society’s Distinguished Service Award for raising $34,120 for cancer research on NBC's Truth Or Consequences. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 6 1948 A.C. Nielsen announces the rating service will convert its current equipment used to measure AM radio listening to also incorporate FM and TV measurement. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 6 1951 NBC submits the winning bid of $1.51 Million for exclusive radio and television rights to the Rose Bowl for three years.
AUG 6 1951 Producers of ABC’s Bride & Groom accept $50,000 in lieu of the $800,000 awarded them from KLAC-TV/Los Angeles as a result of the Wedding Bells plagiarism suit.
AUG 6 1953 A California Superior Court jury awards $55,000 to a local school teacher who sued KYA/San Francisco and commentator James Tarantino for slander in calling her “...a reported commie.”
AUG 7 1927 NBC’s Blue Network introduces Network Radio’s first magazine-based program, The Collier Hour.
AUG 7 1933 Walter Winchell sues Al Jolson for punching him in public the previous month, claiming $500,000 in damages. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1934 NBC temporarily bans the broadcast of phonograph records on its owned and operated stations.
AUG 7 1935 Fred Waring files suit in a Philadelphia court to prevent the “promiscuous” play of his records on radio without his permission. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1936 Philco files suit in the New York Supreme Court charging RCA with coercion, bribery and intimidation of its employees to obtain trade secrets.
AUG 7 1939 Hollywood comedy writer Harry Conn sues Jack Benny for $65,000 claiming that Benny continued to use characters and situations created by him after their contract expired. (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1940 C.C. Bradner, the first regular newscaster on WWJ/Detroit in 1925, dies after a short illness at 61.
AUG 7 1940 Don Lee’s experimental W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles celebrates its advance from 441 to 525 line quality by expanding its programming to 14 ½ hours per week.
AUG 7 1942 Telling his NBC listeners, “I expect to be out of town next week,” news commentator H. V. Kaltenborn takes a secret Army flight to London for a week of broadcasts. (See H, V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1942 Cresta Blanca Wine commercials are turned down by NBC and CBS. Blue will accept its advertising but bans mention that it is a product of Schenley Distilleries and Mutual will run the winery spots with no strings attached.
AUG 7 1945 FCC announces it will begin processing a backlog of over 800 applications for new stations accumulated during World War II.
AUG 7 1945 New York Congressman Emanuel Cellar blasts the FCC for, “…ignoring its responsibilities to the public in favor of money-making operations.”
AUG 7 1946 Bing Crosby is joins a group of four investors who buy the Pittsburgh Pirates for $2.23 Million. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 7 1949 William Gargan debuts as Martin Kane, Private Eye on Mutual, beginning a three season multi-network run.
AUG 7 1950 RCA demonstrates its compatible color television system in a coaxial cable hookup between New York City and Washington, D.C.
AUG 7 1953 Bill Stern leaves NBC after 16 years to join ABC for a weeknight sportscast sponsored by Anheuser-Busch. (See Bill Stern.)
AUG 7 1953 NBC President Frank White retires on doctors’ orders.
AUG 7 1953 Frank & Anne Hummert’s mystery melodrama Mr. Chameleon completes its seven year run on CBS.
AUG 7 1953 FCC approves the NTSC’s recommendations for compatible color television standards proposed by RCA.
AUG 7 1953 Collier’s, a weekly magazine since 1888, becomes a bi-weekly publication attributing, “…television’s inroads on the reading audience.”
AUG 8 1930 Colonel Charles Lindbergh speaks to the combined NBC and CBS network audiences for a quarter hour on the topic "International Aviation". His afternoon address is repeated at 11:00 p,m. by both chains.
AUG 8 1931 Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, 34, begins his 26 year, multi-network career on CBS.
AUG 8 1931 INS European correspondent Max Jordan, 36, delivers his first news report on NBC’s Red Network from Switzerland via RCA shortwave facilities.
AUG 8 1937 NBC moves the production of Carlton E. Morse’s One Man’s Family from San Francisco to Los Angeles. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 8 1940 Stroh Beer’s half-hour local concert series featuring Gus Haenschen, Thomas L. Thomas and Margaret Daum, (who all commute weekly from New York City to Detroit for the program), moves from WXYZ to WJR. (See Gus Haenschen.)
AUG 8 1941 Emerson Drug’s Bromo-Seltzer adds a two-month run of its Vox Pop on Blue’s Friday night schedule to the program’s continuing Monday night series on CBS. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 8 1941 Expelled from Fascist Italy, CBS correspondent Cecil Brown opens the network’s news bureau in Singapore.
AUG 8 1943 Hollywood reporter Louella Parsons returns to the air after a ten year absence as Walter Winchell’s summer replacement on Blue for four weeks.
AUG 8 1945 The networks interrupt programming at 3:00 p.m. to announce that the Soviet Union has declared war on Japan.
AUG 8 1945 The late Major Glenn Miller’s American Band of The Allied Expeditionary Forces, now under the direction of Ray McKinley and Jerry Gray, leaves aboard ship from LeHavre for New York City. (See In The Miller Mood.)
AUG 8 1945 Ed Gardner joins Frank Sinatra and other stars returning from overseas tours to sharply criticize U.S.O. and Special Services officials, charging ignorance and incompetence. (See Duffy Ain’t Here.)
AUG 8 1945 Japanese propagandist/disc jockey Tokyo Rose, (Iva Toguri), is cited by the U.S. Navy for, “Meritorious service contributing greatly to the morale to United States Armed Services in the Pacific.”
AUG 8 1946 Brooklyn Dodgers announcer Red Barber, 38, is named CBS Director of Sports succeeding Ted Husing.
AUG 8 1946 After three years as a sustaining program, CBS packaged production, Casey Crime Photographer lands a sponsor in Anchor-Hocking Glass. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
AUG 8 1946 Paramount’s television station W6XYZ/Los Angeles promises to increase its programming from four to 15 hours a week as soon as 1,000 receivers are sold in the city.
AUG 8 1948 A Fort Worth housewife wins a Stop The Music! jackpot of prizes valued at $19,000. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 8 1949 Kate Smith and Ted Collins begin their one season run of Kate Smith Calls, a two-hour Monday night variety show on ABC,
AUG 8 1951 Houston oilman H.R. Cullen buys a minority interest in the Liberty Broadcasting System network.
AUG 8 1951 Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray sign ten year contracts with Ziv Productions to star in the weekly transcribed radio comedy Bright Star, budgeted at $12,500 per episode. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.)
AUG 8 1951 Sixty-four of the nation’s 107 television stations announce that they plan to begin broadcasting by 10:00 a.m. local time in the fall.
AUG 8 1952 Reports circulate in the Los Angeles press that NBC is negotiating to buy either KFI for $2.5 Million or KMPC for $1.0 Million as its West Coast anchor station. Neither sale took place.
AUG 8 1952 WMCA/New York City bans Rosemary Clooney’s hit Botch-A-Me and all of Mickey Katz’s Yiddish comedy records as “insensitive”.
AUG 9 1931 The Chicago Tribune appeals to Federal Court the FRC’s granting a limited conditional license to its WGN/Chicago, pending the commission’s decision to transfer WGN’s frequency to the Chicago Federation of Labor’s WCFL.
AUG 9 1934 Three thousand fans of NBC's Maxwell House Showboat crowd the docks of Erie, Pennsylvania, waiting for the imaginary ship’s arrival on its “tour” of the Great Lakes. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1935 WMCA/New York City introduces the talent show Grandma’s Night Out, limited to female contestants over 60.
AUG 9 1937 The Transamerican Network, originated by WLW/Cincinnati, claims a growing list of affiliates to its co-op venture due to start in a month: WHN/New York City, WFIL/Philadelphia, KQV/Pittsburgh and WJJD/Chicago.
AUG 9 1937 The Philadelphia CIO members’ newspaper issues a full page condemnation of CBS commentator Boake Carter for his pro-management stance in labor issues and suggests union members boycott his sponsor, Philco.
AUG 9 1939 CBS news analyst H.V. Kaltenborn flies to Europe to begin three weeks of broadcasts originating from the BBC’s London studios. (See H.V. Kaltenborn and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1940 An arbitration agreement awards $10,000 to comedy writer Harry Conn and in return Jack Benny is given outright ownership to the 226 radio scripts that Conn wrote for him. (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1942 CBS debuts its weekly series Our Secret Weapon with author Rex Stout and newsman Robert Trout exposing lies contained in German propaganda directed to the United States.
AUG 9 1942 Standard Brands switches its Tenderleaf Tea commercials to its other products on NBC’s One Man’s Family due to wartime restrictions on tea sales. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 9 1943 NBC and 86 of its affiliated station ask for modifications of the FCC’s rules to give the network an extra half hour of evening option time in exchange for a half hour on weekday mornings.
AUG 9 1944 Ted Malone, London correspondent for Blue and weekly commentator via shortwave on 162 network stations, signs a five year contract to continue his weekday commentaries for Westinghouse.
AUG 9 1945 Radio flashes first bulletins of the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki.
AUG 9 1945 President Truman’s speech to the nation about the atomic bomb and Potsdam Conference registers a 54.1 Hooperating equaling 41.5 Million adult listeners. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 9 1945 DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York and WTTG(TV)/Washington are linked via coaxial cable. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
AUG 9 1946 FCC shuts down a homemade, unlicensed 50 watt station broadcasting gospel music and sermons for 45 minutes daily from a farm home in Trenton, Nebraska.
AUG 9 1946 The NAB passes a rule prohibiting its staff members from owning any part of broadcast properties.
AUG 9 1947 Comics Bud Abbott and Lou Costello sign a five year contract with ABC for a transcribed series of shows to be offered to affiliates for co-op, (local), sponsorship.
AUG 9 1948 His contracts with Mutual and KFWB/Los Angeles expired, disc jockey Martin Block announces he’ll return to his New York City base, WNEW, and resume doing his daily program live.
AUG 9 1949 The Senate passes The McFarland Bill, the first major legislation effecting the FCC in a decade which gives the agency “cease and desist” authority, streamlines its processes and gives the seven Commissioners a raise to $15,000 a year.
AUG 9 1950 The ILGWU reports losing $150,000 a year operating its WFDR-FM/New York City.
AUG 9 1951 FCC approves Earle C. Anthony’s sale of KFI-TV/Los Angeles to General Tire & Rubber for $2.5 Million.
AUG 9 1951 NBC Radio announces its ambitious six-month People Sell Better Than Paper promotional campaign aimed at advertisers.
AUG 9 1951 Art Linkletter and Frances Langford co-host a 45-minute CBS show from the network’s KCBS/San Francisco celebrating the station’s increase in power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts.
AUG 9 1952 Gordon McLendon of the suspended Liberty Broadcasting System asks the FCC to require Western Union to relax its restrictions for its play-by-play wire service and to prevent networks or stations from obtaining exclusive contracts for sports events.
AUG 10 1934 Gus Haenschen leaves his $50,000 a year post as Music Director for the World Broadcasting System to go into private business and concentrate on his network assignments. (See Gus Haenschen.)
AUG 10 1935 U.S. Marshals and FCC investigators raid a Birmingham home and seize a 100 watt transmitter used to create noisy interference with WSGN in that city which has resisted union attempts to organize its employees.
AUG 10 1935 Fred Astaire guest stars on Your Hit Parade and introduces songs from his new film, Top Hat, after composer Irving Berlin gives sponsor Lucky Strike a two week exclusive on his score. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 10 1936 The Japanese Association of America applies to the FCC for a shortwave license relay agriculture and market news in Japanese to farmers in Northern and Central California. A similar station exists in Southern California.
AUG 10 1938 FDR son Elliot Roosevelt is named head of the newly formed 23 station Texas State Network.
AUG 10 1942 FCC and Board of War Communications Chairman James Fly denounces the discriminatory tax on radio sales proposed by the International Printing Trades union.
AUG 10 1942 The FTC orders cigarette makers R.J. Reynolds and Phillip Morris to cease and desist radio advertising that claims superiority for “medical reasons.” (See Unfiltered Cigarette Claims.)
AUG 10 1942 The Stack-Goble advertising agency of Chicago - once a major firm with the Santa Fe Railroad, Swift Meats, Sears Roebuck and Lewis Howe accounts - folds owing NBC $120,000.
AUG 10 1942 Former Amos & Andy announcer Bill Hay joins KHJ/Los Angeles with daily program of Bible readings sponsored by Forest Lawn cemetery.
AUG 10 1943 CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid is reported safe after parachuting a week earlier from a disabled Air Force transport into an uninhabited jungle in North Burma.
AUG 10 1944 NBC bans “hitch-hike” or “cow-catcher” commercials prior to the beginning or after the end of network programs.
AUG 10 1945 Japan sends its initial World War II conditional surrender offer via short-wave radio at 7:36 a.m. ET. CBS is the first network to report the news, opening its lines to affiliates 18 minutes early at 7:42 a.m. (See V-J Day.)
AUG 10 1947 Disgruntled union engineers take new station KOWL/Los Angeles off the air for two hours during its Sunday afternoon dedication broadcast.
AUG 10 1948 Ray Bolger and Paul Whiteman headline the four and a half hour inaugural broadcast of ABC’s flagship television station, WJZ-TV/New York City.
AUG 10 1949 Bob Hope and sponsor Lever Brothers appear before an American Arbitration Association panel to determine if Hope has the right to transcribe his Tuesday night NBC show. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 10 1950 CBS signs Frank Sinatra to a “long term” radio and television contract.
AUG 10 1950 With its daily afternoon broadcasts of the United Nations Security Council meetings a surprise popular and critical success, ABC begins a nightly half hour of taped highlights from each day’s meeting at 10:30 p.m.
AUG 10 1951 A.C. Nielsen reports that seven of the ten most popular Network Radio programs are CBS daytime shows -Saturday’s Armstrong Theater, Grand Central Station and Stars Over Hollywood, and weekday shows Arthur Godfrey Time, The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday and Ma Perkins. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 10 1951 Walter O’Keefe’s NBC weekday quiz show Double Or Nothing begins three weeks of originations from Armed Forces installations in Europe with tapes of the show flown back to U.S. for broadcast.
AUG 10 1952 Stop The Music! once a programming phenomenon, leaves the air after four seasons on ABC. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 10 1953 Syndicated television re-runs of Dragnet, sold in 30 markets as The Cop, are re-titled Badge 714 at the request of the International Association of Police Chiefs which considers the term “cop” to be derogatory. (See Jack Webb's Dragnet )
AUG 11 1935 Veteran NBC announcer Graham McNamee is hospitalized in Akron while covering the National Soap Box Derby and struck by one of the contestant’s cars.
AUG 11 1939 RCA Victor sends all radio stations a license agreement to broadcast its records for a monthly fee ranging from $100 to $300. Decca also informs stations of its plan to license its records. Neither plan materializes.
AUG 11 1940 The networks carry first bulletins of the Category Two hurricane striking the Georgia-South Carolina coast killing 50 persons.
AUG 11 1941 FCC bans the multiple ownership of stations with overlapping signals.
AUG 11 1941 Don Lee opens the West Coast’s first FM station, K45LA/Los Angeles with a broadcast schedule of twelve hours daily.
AUG 11 1941 Edwin Kiest, owner of The Dallas Times Herald and KRLD/Dallas, dies after a long illness at 79 and wills both the newspaper and radio station to his employees.
AUG 11 1943 FCC relaxes its freeze on new local stations to permit the construction of 100 and 200 watt facilities with equipment not needed for military purposes.
AUG 11 1945 Fifteen representatives of the broadcasting industry leave on a month long mission to England, France, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and Italy.
AUG 11 1948 Popular bandleader Blue Barron sues ABC and the producers of Stop The Music! claiming that the show’s concept was stolen from him. (See Stop The Music! )
AUG 11 1950 RCA President Frank Folsom promises to make Sunday evening on NBC from 6:30 to 8:00, "…the most powerful single time period in radio with every name star from NBC and its allied fields.” (See Tallulah’s Big Show)
AUG 11 1952 NBC announces the “re-integration” of its radio and television divisions, consolidating the two networks’ advertising, promotion, planning and research departments.
AUG 11 1952 The Screen Writers Guild goes on strike against 13 Hollywood TV film producers affecting 19 network and syndicated programs.
AUG 11 1952 Former network star Tommy Riggs takes an executive and talent position with Birmingham, Alabama, stations WAPI and and WAFM(TV).
AUG 12 1936 Philco demonstrates the broadcast of television images over a seven mile distance to a press gathering in Philadelphia.
AUG 12 1940 ASCAP rival Broadcast Music Inc. reports its membership at 392 stations representing 85% of the industry’s revenue.
AUG 12 1940 Kroger Groceries begins the practice of concluding its 55 weekday programs on radio stations across the country with The Pledge of Allegiance.
AUG 12 1942 U.S. War Department issues regulations which eliminate commercials in programs transcribed for broadcast to Armed Forces listeners serving overseas.
AUG 12 1943 Major Edward Bowes closes down his touring vaudeville units that had paid him $300,000 over eight years because they no longer showed a profit. (See Major Bowes' Original Money Machine.)
AUG 12 1944 With wartime restrictions expired, NBC‘s WNBT/New York City becomes the first television station to explain and demonstrate radar. CBS-owned WCBW follows suite three days later.
AUG 12 1946 CBS cancels its network produced summer shows Hawk Durango, Night Life and Milton Berle’s Kiss & Make Up.
AUG 12 1946 ABC asks the FCC for an “advisory opinion” before proceeding with a possible revival of Pot O Gold which the Commission once considered to be a lottery.
AUG 12 1946 Sunkist lemons buys a $75,000, 13 week spot campaign in 205 single-station markets via the Keystone Broadcasting System.
AUG 12 1949 Radio Features, Inc., producers of syndicated games Tello Test and Tune Test, seeks a restraining order from a Chicago Federal Court against the FCC’s giveaway ban due to take effect on October 1st .
AUG 12 1949 By a 2-1 vote, Bob Hope loses his arbitration hearing with Lever Brothers over his demand to transcribe his NBC programs. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 12 1949 FCC orders radio evangelist J. Harold Smith to suspend operations of his daytime station, WIBK/Knoxville, Tennessee, finding him unfit to own a license and citing his concealed interest in high-powered XERF/Villa Acuna, Mexico.
AUG 12 1951 Guy Lombardo wins his third National Speedboat Racing championship. (See Guy Lombardo.)
AUG 12 1952 The Broadcast Advertising Bureau issues a survey estimating that 70.5% of American cars, (27,425,000), are equipped with radios.
AUG 12 1952 CBS proposes a radio network discount plan to its affiliates that would give sponsors a 25% cut in rates. (See CBS Rates: Go Figure.)
AUG 12 1953 Crosley Broadcasting, which bought WINS/New York City from Hearst Radio for $1.7 Million in 1945, sells the station to a private group for $450,000 - a $1.25 Million loss.
AUG 12 1953 Marshall Field sells WJJD/Chicago to drug manufacturer Plough, Inc., for $900,000.
AUG 12 1953 The New York Supreme Court sets aside a $10,000 award given to writer Charles Carneval who sued Campbell Soup and NBC for allegedly stealing his idea for the quiz show Double Or Nothing.
AUG 13 1912 Congress passes The Radio Act of 1912 which authorizes the Department of Commerce and Labor to license, assign call-signs and regulate all radio transmissions within the United States.
AUG 13 1912 All licensed radio stations in the United States are directed to broadcast at a frequency of 360 meters, (618.6 kilocycles). A geographical boundary between call-signs beginning with W and K is drawn north from the Texas and New Mexico border.
AUG 13 1937 NBC leases a large studio for audiences at the old Warner Brothers lot on Sunset Boulevard to use for its Hollywood-based shows on Sundays.
AUG 13 1939 CBS, Mutual and NBC all cover the National Soapbox Derby from Akron, Ohio, with live reports.
AUG 13 1943 Sergeant Gene Autry is identified as one of the buyers of KPHO/Phoenix for $60,000. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 13 1944 Overlapping contracts result in different episodes of Colgate-Palmolive’s Blondie to be broadcast on Blue on Friday nights and CBS on Sunday nights for three weeks. (See Bloonn…dee!)
AUG 13 1944 Jackie Gleason and Les Tremayne debut in an NBC Sunday night variety show panned by Variety as, “…almost totally lacking in originality.”
AUG 13 1945 Secrets of atomic bomb development are revealed to the public as the War Department praises the press and radio for keeping the information confidential until the war’s end.
AUG 13 1946 H.G. Wells, who denounced his War of The Worlds when he learned of the reported chaos caused by Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of the story in 1938, dies after a long illness in London at 79. (See The War of The Worlds.)
AUG 13 1946 Financially troubled regional networks North Central Broadcasting System and the Mississippi Valley Network are placed in the hands of creditors.
AUG 13 1947 Bing Crosby technicians test the Rangertone and Magnetrack film recorders considered candidates for replacing the disc transcription process used for Crosby’s Philco Radio Time. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 13 1947 FCC renews the license of WTOL/Toledo, saying the station had cleaned up its practice of overcommercialization.
AUG 13 1947 FCC proposes to eliminate Channel One, (44 to 50 MHz), from the VHF television band, using it instead for non-government mobile services.
AUG 13 1948 Don McNeill climaxes his “Presidential Campaign” in North Philadelphia, Ohio, with a remote broadcast of his Breakfast Club on ABC from a local amphitheater before an estimated audience of 10,000.
AUG 13 1948 FCC proposes granting general use of individual radio transmitter-receivers for personal and private communications.
AUG 13 1950 The eleven month strike by IBEW technicians at WABB/Mobile, Alabama, is settled by the NLRB.
AUG 13 1951 The neighbor of a Stop The Music! jackpot winner sues for half the prize claiming she ran into the contestant’s home with the correct answer when the program called. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 13 1951 A subsidiary or Meredith Publishing buys WOW AM & TV/Omaha for $2.53 Million.
AUG 13 1953 East Coast stations assume emergency status for two days as Category Two Hurricane Barbara moves up the coastline from the Carolinas to New England killing seven persons.
AUG 13 1953 Writer John Greene sues CBS and N.W. Ayer for $505,000 alleging that they stole his idea for the program You Are There. (See You Are There.)
AUG 13 1953 Phil Rapp, creator of The Bickersons, sues NBC and others for $1.25 Million claiming plagiarism of his concept on the television network’s Saturday Night Revue.
AUG 14 1939 CBS and NBC refuse to allow any affiliates to preempt their programs to carry Mutual’s broadcasts of the World Series.
AUG 14 1941 NBC opens its new shortwave listening post for the Far East in North Hollywood.
AUG 14 1942 BMI reports its membership grows to 778 stations and 16 networks.
AUG 14 1944 The First direct broadcasts from France since D-Day begin with correspondent John McVane’s report from a mobile transmitter on NBC's News of The World. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 14 1944 Bob Hope and his USO troupe, including Jerry Colonna and Frances Langford, escape injury when their Catalina flying boat crash lands near Laurieton, New South Wales. (See Hope From Home and “Professor” Jerry Colonna.)
AUG 14 1945 C.E. Hooper registers radio listening at a 43.3 rating during the late morning hours when reports spread of a pending Japanese surrender. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 14 1945 NBC’s Max Jordan in Berne, Switzerland, is first to announce Japan's surrender to end World War II at 4:18 p.m. ET. (See V-J Day.)
AUG 14 1945 President Truman confirms the Japanese surrender in a 7:00 p.m. ET news conference.
AUG 14 1945 NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City stations a camera on the marquee of the Hotel Astor for two hours to picture the street celebration below.
AUG 14 1945 Orson Welles narrates Norman Corwin’s 15 minute commemoration of V-J Day, 14 August, on CBS at 9:45 p.m. (See V-J Day.)
AUG 14 1945 The OWI announces that the end of World War II means 1,045 of its employees, half of them involved in its radio activities, will be laid off.
AUG 14 1947 CBS buys 45% minority interest in KQW/San Jose-San Francisco.
AUG 14 1950 The Liberty Network announces an August through December football schedule featuring legendary sportscaster Ted Husing.
AUG 14 1951 Patent medicine Hadacol launches the second edition of its All Star Caravan for 47 cities with Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson and Rudy Vallee signed to appear in the larger markets for a total talent cost of $50,000 - 10% of the tour’s entire cost. Advance sales of the tonic reach $6.0 Million. (See Hadacol.)
AUG 14 1951 Newspaper and broadcasting mogul William Randolph Hearst dies of natural causes at age 88 in Los Angeles.
AUG 15 1931 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll, (aka Amos & Andy), appear at a picnic for 20,000 children in Chicago’s Washington Park, invited by The Chicago Defender in response to another black newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier’s editorial attacks on the blackface team. (See Amos & Andy - Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 15 1932 RCA introduces the Velocity (Ribbon) Microphone which becomes an industry standard.
AUG 15 1934 Calling themselves The Committee of Five For The Betterment of Radio, bandleaders Abe Lyman, Guy Lombardo, Paul Whiteman, Richard Himber and Rudy Vallee meet to eliminate suggestive song lyrics.
AUG 15 1934 Goodman & Jane Ace appear as the Radio Aces in Universal Pictures’ 20 minute Hits of Today. (See Easy Aces and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 15 1935 Humorist Will Rogers, 55, star of the CBS Top Ten show Gulf Headliners, is killed in a plane crash off Point Barrow, Alaska, with aviator Wiley Post.
AUG 15 1935 Bing Crosby appears as a guest without pay on Paul Whiteman’s Kraft Music Hall - an appearance that proved to be an audition for his taking over the show four months later. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 15 1935 Art Linkletter, 23, is appointed Program Director of KGB/San Diego. (See People Are Funny.)
AUG 15 1937 Bill Bacher, producer of Hollywood Hotel on CBS, joins Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Radio Supervisor. (See Good News.)
AUG 15 1937 Transmitter tests begin at 730 kc. for 100,000 watt XERB/Esta Rose Rita, 16 miles south of Tia Juana, which is expected to cover eleven western states in the U.S.
AUG 15 1939 Blue’s Information Please becomes first major network prime time program allowed to be transcribed for delayed broadcast on the West Coast. (See Information Please.)
AUG 15 1939 Muzak begins to offer its franchises to broadcasters in specified markets including Philadelphia where the wired music service was offered to WFIL.
AUG 15 1940 NBC releases findings of its C.E. Hooper coverage study begun in February resulting in returns from 166,000 families and showing that NBC is regularly listened to by 89.1% of the respondents. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 15 1940 WOV/New York City converts its all-Italian language programming after 6:00 p.m. to English.
AUG 15 1940 The Don Lee Network’s W6XAO/Los Angeles boasts the first televised wedding seen by an estimated 1,500 witnesses through receiving sets.
AUG 15 1941 Citing “differences in opinion,” the CBS Pacific Coast network cancels the weekly broadcasts of Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler. The Don Lee network imme-diately picks up Fidler’s contract.
AUG 15 1942 NBC News & Special Events Director A.A. (Abe) Schechter resigns to join the Office of War Information.
AUG 15 1944 All networks carry the 6:10 a.m. pool report of NBC’s Chester Morrison covering the second Allied invasion of southern France.
AUG 15 1944 Norman Corwin’s illness forces CBS to cancel its anthology series Columbia Presents Corwin after 22 weeks.
AUG 15 1945 CBS advertises in the trade press that it beat the other networks by 15 seconds with the August 10th bulletin of Japan’s conditional surrender offer.
AUG15 1945 Voluntary censorship of news in the United States is ended by Presidential decree.
AUG 15 1946 Philco Corp. signs Bing Crosby for his weekly 30 minute transcribed program on ABC at a reported $30,000 per show. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 15 1946 The DuMont Television Network presents its first regularly scheduled program, Serving Through Science, on WABD(TV)/New York and WTTG(TV)/Washington. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
AUG 15 1948 CBS-TV presents its first nightly newscast, Douglas Edwards & The News.
AUG 15 1949 ABC broadcasts a half-hour tribute to Ethel Barrymore’s 70th birthday and her 50th anniversary in show business featuring President Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bing Crosby and her brother Lionel.
AUG 15 1950 A Chicago scriptwriter sues CBS, the Chrysler Corporation and Lever Brothers for $150,000, claiming the giveaway show, Hit The Jackpot, was based on his idea, Watch Your Step, that CBS rejected in 1946.
AUG 15 1950 Gillette and Mutual submit the winning bid of $600,000 for radio and television rights to the 1950 World Series, exceeding DuMont’s offer of $510,000.
AUG 15 1952 CBS Radio affiliates approve the network cutting its nighttime rates 25% through new discounts while increasing Monday through Friday daytime rates 5.5%. The plan also reduces station compensation by 15%.
AUG 15 1952 DuMont begins its network television schedule of 29 National Football League games through December for which it paid the league $1.0 Million. (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)
AUG 15 1953 NBC presents the first of its four consecutive Saturday night episodes of Fire!, a fire prevention documentary series produced with the U.S. Forestry Service.
AUG 16 1922 AT&T puts 500 watt WEAF on the air in New York City.
AUG 16 1936 CBS leases NBC affiliate WEEI/Boston and swaps affiliation with CBS outlet WNAC five weeks later.
AUG 16 1936 Milton Berle begins as host of Gillette’s Community Sing on WNAC/Boston, three weeks before the show debuts on the CBS Sunday night schedule.
AUG 16 1937 The newly organized AFRA holds its first formal board meeting and elects Eddie Cantor its President with Vice Presidents Helen Hayes, Lawrence Tibbitt, Jascha Heifetz, Norman Field and Jimmy Wallington.
AUG 16 1937 President Roosevelt appoints Frank McNinch, former Chairman of the Federal Power Commission and FCC Chief Engineer T.A.M. Craven to fill the FCC Commissioner posts left vacant by the death of Anning Prall and the resignation of Irvin Stewart.
AUG 16 1937 Easy Aces reverts to its original theme, Have You Forgotten?, when the composer of Manhattan Serenade, Lou Alter, demands $25 plus name credit every time the song is played on the show. (See Easy Aces.)
AUG 16 1937 Martin Block, host of Make Believe Ballroom on WNEW/New York City, is named the station’s Program Director.
AUG 16 1939 In a reversal of policy NBC begins selling chain break announcements between network programs and allows transcribed commercials on its owned and operated stations.
AUG 16 1939 Fifty listeners respond to an appeal by KRLD/Dallas for a rare type of blood needed by a staff pianist after an operation.
AUG 16 1940 Listeners get their first look at Hal Peary as Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve in Paramount Pictures’ rural comedy, Comin’ Round The Mountain. starring Bob Burns. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s), Bob Burns and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 16 1943 The War Department doesn’t say where, only that Al Jolson has begun his fourth USO overseas tour entertaining Allied troops. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 16 1943 The Don Lee West Coast network accuses the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee with trying to intimidate conservative commentators by pressuring their sponsors.
AUG 16 1944 FCC opens hearings forced by the United Auto Workers’ effort to revoke the license of WHKC/Columbus, Ohio, on grounds that the station lacks impartiality in its news and commentary presentation.
AUG 16 1945 St. Louis stations increase their newscast schedules when strikes shutdown the city’s three daily newspapers for three weeks.
AUG 16 1947 Announcer Ken Carpenter is re-elected President of AFRA.
AUG 16 1947 Horace Heidt records the audition of his Youth Opportunity Program for Philip Morris.
AUG 16 1948 Baseball legend and occasional radio performer George Herman (Babe) Ruth dies of cancer at 53.
AUG 16 1948 President Truman signs anti-inflation law requiring a 20% down payment and strict credit terms on all radios, phonographs and television sets sold for more than $50.
AUG 16 1949 WOR-TV/New York City begins test programming with a Brooklyn Dodger baseball game given it for the purpose by WCBS-TV which regularly televises Dodger home games for Schaefer Beer.
AUG 16 1951 CBS broadcast of The Nation’s Nightmare, detailing crime on the New York City docks, draws threats against network personnel.
AUG 17 1936 Announcers at powerful KFI/Los Angeles are schooled to sign-off the station in English plus six foreign languages: Spanish, Japanese, German, Italian, French and Russian.
AUG 17 1937 KWK/St. Louis affiliates with the startup Transamerican Network anchored by WLW/Cincinnati.
AUG 17 1941 AFRA’s National Convention re-elects Lawrence Tibbett as its President with Viriginia Payne, Jean Hersholt, Ben Grauer, Ken Carpenter and Bill Adams as Vice Presidents.
AUG 17 1942 Garry Moore, 27, begins his weekday morning, Show With No Name, on NBC with a contest offering $500 for the best name submitted for the variety program.
AUG 17 1942 Rudy Vallee, 41, joins the U.S. Coast Guard as a bandmaster with the rank of Chief Petty Officer. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 17 1942 NBC bans the country song I’m A Prisoner of War (On A Foreign Shore) as too depressing.
AUG 17 1945 FCC officials predict that the FM broadcast band will be moved from 42-50 megacycles to 88-108 megacycles by the end of the year.
AUG 17 1947 International Silver’s anthology Silver Theater ends its ten year late Sunday afternoon run on CBS.
AUG 17 1951 NBC comedians Bob (Eliott) & Ray (Goulding) create a stir in Washington when they advise listeners to write to the Smithsonian Institution for their “Home Dismantling Kit”.
AUG 17 1951 Republic Pictures becomes the first major movie studio to sell its product to television with the one-year lease of 175 films to KTTV(TV)/Los Angeles for $250,000. No
Gene Autry or Roy Rogers Westerns are included in the package.
AUG 17 1951 ABC pays $175,000 for ten post-1942 movies from the Pine-Thomas Studios for showing on its owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Detroit.
AUG 17 1952 ABC replaces the cancelled Stop The Music! on Sunday nights with The American Music Hall's 40 piece orchestra conducted by Paul Whiteman and Glenn Osser with vocalists Larry Douglas and June Valli. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 17 1953 Continental Baking’s Wonder Bread cancel’s its weekday morning game show Grand Slam with Irene Beasley on CBS after seven consecutive years and replaces it with Make Up Your Mind hosted by Jack Sterling.
AUG 17 1953 Citing “sub-standard” talent available for his Talent Scouts show, Arthur Godfrey stages an impromptu program featuring Jeanette Davis, Frank Parker and the McGuire Sisters from his other shows. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 17 1953 NBC reports co-op sales in 36 markets for its new weeknight sportscast with Mel Allen and Russ Hodges.
AUG 18 1930 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll, (aka Amos & Andy), sign a five year radio contract with Pepsodent Toothpaste for a reported total of $1.1 Million. (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 18 1936 Scripps-Howard newspapers sponsors broadcast of the Joe Louis vs. Jack Sharkey prizefight on CBS for $10,000, but only in 20 markets. All remaining CBS affiliates receive the event as a sustaining program.
AUG 18 1937 FCC refuses to investigate listener claims of Nazi propaganda emanating from German language broadcasts on U.S. stations.
AUG 18 1939 A U.S. Appeals Court backs the Yankee Network against the FCC’s decision to grant a power boost to WMEX/Boston.
AUG 18 1942 CBS buys WEEI/Boston which the network had leased from Edison Electric for the previous six years.
AUG 18 1944 The War Labor Board votes 8-2 to seek action against the AFM when the union refuses to end its recording strike claiming the war effort is not involved in the strike.
AUG 18 1948 The U.S. Supreme Court is asked to rule if the FCC’s Blue Book is censorship of radio in violation of The Communications Act and The First Amendment.
AUG 18 1948 CBS-TV announces success in lowering sweltering studio lighting by adopting motion picture filming techniques that assure a room temperature no higher than 74 degrees.
AUG 18 1950 FCC gives KCHE/El Reno, Oklahoma permission to go silent for 60 days while it obtains new financing, reorganizes and finds new studios.
AUG 18 1952 WNBT(TV)/New York City begins programming Today’s Exercises with former Olympic swimmer and movie star Larry (Buster) Crabbe during the five minute break in NBC’s Today weekday mornings at 7:25 a.m.
AUG 18 1952 Ralph Byrd, who held the title role of Dick Tracy in 48 episodes of the television series, (plus four movie serials and two feature films), dies of a heart attack in Tarzana, California, at age 43.
AUG 18 1953 After IBEW technicians go on strike at WOR AM & TV/New York City, station officials accuse the union of damaging and stealing equipment.
AUG 18 1953 Goodson & Todman introduce their talent-panel show, Judge For Yourself, hosted by Fred Allen for a one season run on NBC-TV sponsored by Lorillard’s Old Gold cigarettes.
AUG 19 1929 Pepsodent Toothpaste introduces Freeman Gosden, 30, and Charles Correll, 39, as Amos & Andy on NBC's Blue Network. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 19 1940 KLZ/Denver celebrates its 20th anniversary on the air.
AUG 19 1941 NBC executive John F. Royal, on a 20,000 mile inspection tour of South America, says Axis powers are jamming U.S. shortwave broadcasts at an increasing rate.
AUG 19 1941 Variety quotes radio pioneer Lee DeForest’s observation that, “The defense program has television stopped - the stations can’t get equipment and those that do can’t find men to operate it.”
AUG 19 1942 The August CAB ratings for New York City rank WOR’s local show, Can You Top This? ahead of any network program with a 17.2 rating. (See Can You Top This?, Saturday's All Time Top Ten and Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 19 1942 Effie Palmer, a veteran radio actress since 1922, dies in her New Jersey home at age 52.
AUG 19 1944 NBC war correspondent Tom Treanor, 35, is killed when his Jeep is overturned in France.
AUG 19 1946 Lowell Thomas begins weeknight newscasts for Procter & Gamble on CBS stations west of Chicago while continuing his nightly broadcasts for Sun Oil on 30 NBC stations east of Chicago. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 19 1946 Martin Block signs a new four year contract with WNEW/New York City for $185,000 allowing him to record his daily show in Los Angeles and ship it east.
AUG 19 1948 FCC approves a rare swap: By allowing San Francisco stations KQW and KSFO to trade their frequencies, operating power and transmitter facilities.
AUG 19 1948 Kay Kyser records a half hour audition for a daytime show on ABC. (See Kay Kyser.)
AUG 19 1949 FCC announces it will put its sweeping definition of lotteries into effect on Oct. 1st, and outlaw most of the 38 giveaway shows on Network Radio. ABC, CBS and NBC react promptly with plans to fight the action in court.
AUG 19 1949 A one-night, all-star charity show for the Knights of Columbus headlined by Eddie Cantor, Edgar Bergen, Bob Crosby and Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra attracts a crowd of 18,000 to the University of Detroit stadium.
AUG 19 1950 WWJ AM-FM & TV/Detroit go off the air for two hours when 56 NABET engineers stage a sudden Saturday afternoon strike.
AUG 19 1950 KTLA(TV)/Los Angeles increases its program schedule to 19 hours daily.
AUG 19 1950 American Tobacco tests the video version of Your Hit Parade on Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. on NBC-TV. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 19 1951 NBC-TV is forced to make a public apology for alleged slanderous remarks made about UAW chief Walter Reuther on the previous week’s American Forum of The Air
AUG 20 1920 The Detroit News is licensed to operate experimental station 8MK which will become WWJ in 1921.
AUG 20 1930 Two New Jersey experimental television stations, W2XCR/Jersey City and W2XCD/Passaic, transmit a half-hour demonstration program hosted by George Jessel, six miles to three receivers located in New York City.
AUG 20 1934 NBC is reported negotiating to buy WLBW/Erie, Pennsylvania, for $90,000 with the intent of moving the facility to Pittsburgh or Cleveland where affiliates are giving it clearance problems.
AUG 20 1934 Phillips H. Lord’s Cruise of The Seth Parker resumes its shortwave broadcasts from Panama, beginning a weekly 15 minute sustaining series on NBC for 15 weeks.
AUG 20 1936 WLW/Cincinnati severs its corporate connection with Mutual but remains an affiliate.
AUG 20 1937 CBS announces plans to establish a television production center at New York’s Grand Central Station.
AUG 20 1940 Buffalo stations WGR and WKBW report collecting $1,200 needed to buy a new ambulance for the Red Cross through two weeks of special programs soliciting pledges.
AUG 20 1942 The Australian Radio Commission agrees to produce three programs from scripts provided by NBC: Why We Fight, We Believe and Hot Copy for broadcast to American Armed Forces stationed in the country.
AUG 20 1945 C.E. Hooper reports that Mutual newscaster Gabriel Heatter had the most listened to program of V-J week with an 11.8 average rating. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten and Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 20 1945 WWJ/Detroit celebrates its 25th Anniversary, originating in 1920 as 8MK.
AUG 20 1946 ABC adds ten new stations bringing its affiliate total to 220.
AUG 20 1947 Citing an improved financial condition, ABC withdraws its application for a public stock offering.
AUG 20 1947 James G. Harbord, RCA Board Chairman from 1930 to 1947 dies after a brief illness at 81.
AUG 20 1948 FCC is embarrassed to learn that Communications Act Section 316, under which it re-defined lotteries to outlaw giveaway shows, had been repealed by Congress two months earlier in June.
AUG 20 1951 Sponsor Colgate announces comedian Charlie Cantor will rejoin Duffy’s Tavern in the Finnegan character he created for the NBC show, now produced in Puerto Rico. (See The Two Stooges and Duffy Ain’t Here.)
AUG 20 1951 The Keystone Broadcasting System transcription network announces signing its 450th affiliate.
AUG 20 1951 Mr. & Mrs. Mike Wallace, (Buff Cobb), begin a weekday morning interview show from their apartment, Two Sleepy People, in color on WCBS-TV/New York City.
AUG 20 1951 AT&T’s new microwave system, designed for television networking, is tested in the simulcast NBC Radio’s Telephone Hour.
AUG 20 1952 Citing radio’s loss of nighttime audience to television, WVOP/Vidalia, Georgia, trades its fulltime license at 1450 k.c. for a daytime only license at 970 k.c.
AUG 21 1931 A 52-week, $400,000 network contract from Ovaltine to sponsor Little Orphan Annie tops a week in which NBC’s Chicago office signed a million dollars in new business. (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
AUG 21 1932 Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt, 50, makes his first campaign address over 25 NBC stations at a cost of $5,000.
AUG 21 1939 A non-aggression pact signed by Russia and Germany puts all network news departments on a 24 hour operational status.
AUG 21 1940 NBC relaxes its ban on laxative advertising to allow commercials for Lewis-Howe’s Nature’s Remedy.
AUG 21 1941 A convoy of 200 light trucks stretching six miles long transports 1,800 troops from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to Riverside Stadium in Washington, D.C. to attend Glenn Miller’s CBS broadcast. (See In The Miller Mood.)
AUG 21 1941 Mexico’s 21 station network affiliates with NBC’s Pan American Network.
AUG 21 1941 Claiming it had not approved the program’s content, Shell Oil cancels Art Linkletter’s Shell Comes To A Party on nine CBS West Coast stations after two broad-casts. (See People Are Funny.)
AUG 21 1945 FCC approves the CBS sale of WBT/Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. for the record breaking price of $1.505 Million.
AUG 21 1945 A seven minute ABC closed circuit promotional strategy talk, intended for executives of the network’s West Coast stations, is mistakenly broadcast to the full network during its County Fair program.
AUG 21 1946 RCA puts its new line of television sets and its Image Orthicon studio cameras in their first public demonstration at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.
AUG 21 1946 WBKB(TV)/Chicago issues its first rate card based upon the city’s reported 450 television receivers.
AUG 21 1947 NBC allows People Are Funny and Can You Top This? to join Truth Or Consequences and transcribe their East Coast broadcasts for later play on the West Coast. (See The Late Shift, People Are Funny and Can You Top This?)
AUG 21 1947 The U.S. Justice Department begins probe of the AFM to learn if union boss James Petrillo violated the Taft-Hartley Act by refusing to let his members play on network AM-FM simulcasts. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 21 1950 Nearly 20,000 persons bearing box tops for admission jam the New Orleans Arena when Dudley Leblanc launches his 15 city Hadacol Caravan of Stars tour with Mickey Rooney, Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl. (See Hadacol.)
AUG 21 1951 NBC organist Lou Webb, 51, whose playing was heard on network programs for 18 years, collapses at the keyboard and dies of a heart attack.
AUG 21 1952 The Television Authority talent union merges into the American Federation of Radio Artists creating the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, (AFTRA).
AUG 21 1953 KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul receives nationwide acclaim for arranging and broadcasting the phone conversation between a Minnesota mother and her escaped convict-murderer son in which she convinced him to surrender.
AUG 22 1923 Singing comedians Billy Jones & Ernie Hare debut as The Happiness Boys for the Happiness Candy Company on WEAF/New York City..
AUG 22 1935 KNX/Los Angeles originates Mutual’s first West Coast broadcast - a memorial service for Will Rogers from the Hollywood Bowl.
AUG 22 1939 First reports of the pending Polish crisis are reported by the networks.
AUG 22 1939 CBS announces plans to alternate the styles of the orchestras and increase production values in its nightly block of dance band remotes from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. (See Big Band Remotes.)
AUG 22 1941 FCC Chairman James Fly says the proposed 5% to 15% tax on radio advertising revenue, "...is discriminatory, unfair, a threat to jobs and jeopardizing a public service."
AUG 22 1941 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler begins a new series of weekly commentaries on Mutual with an editorial criticizing the “censorship” practiced by his former network, CBS.
AUG 22 1943 Edward R. Murrow begins a series of 15 minute Sunday afternoon commentaries from London on CBS sponsored by American Oil.
AUG 22 1944 FCC approves the sale of WSAI/Cincinnati by the Crosley Corporation to Chicago retailer and broadcastr Marshall Field for $550,000.
AUG 22 1945 The U.S. Broadcasting Mission receives its first demonstration of Germany’s Magnetophon tape recording system at Radio Luxembourg.
AUG 22 1947 ABC Sports Director Harry Wismer is hired to report the College All Stars vs. Chicago Bears football game on Mutual at the insistence of sponsor Wilson Sporting Goods.
AUG 22 1949 Members of the U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee express doubts that the FCC has the authority to define giveaway shows as lotteries and ban them.
AUG 22 1949 August ratings released by C.E. Hooper indicate that ten of the month’s Top 15 Programs are mysteries or crime shows. (See Radio’s Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 22 1950 KLAC-TV/Los Angeles is forced to cancel the appearance of eleven year old jazz pianist and vocalist, Frank (Sugar Chile) Robinson from its Palladium Ballroom broadcast because child labor laws ban minors from performing where liquor is served.
AUG 22 1951 Gertrude Berg, creator and star of The Goldbergs, signs a ten year exclusive contract with NBC-TV.
AUG 22 1952 Character actor Gale Gordon, under exclusive contract to Our Miss Brooks on CBS, is allowed to continue his role as Mayor LaTrivia on NBC’s Fibber McGee & Molly but is forced to give up his parts on NBC's The Great Gildersleeve, Halls of Ivy and Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show.
AUG 23 1935 NBC employs four mobile units to cover the U.S. Army war games from Pine Camp, New York, to demonstrate the use of radio under wartime conditions.
AUG 23 1935 Responding to complaints from Canadian broadcasters, FCC denies WLW/Cincinnati’s request to employ its 500,000 watt transmitter without the directional antenna it constructed to limit its signals to the north.
AUG 23 1937 Twentieth Century Fox capitalizes on the Walter Winchell-Ben Bernie radio “feud” with the release of Wake Up & Live headlining the two stars of the Blue Network’s Sunday night schedule. (See Walter Winchell.)
AUG 23 1937 The NAB tells members that SESAC does not control all the music it claims and stations should exercise caution before signing with the organization.
AUG 23 Chicago radio announcers Russ Russell of WGN and WCFL’s Eddie Chase are credited with helping evacuate 30 people from an apartment building that was destroyed by an early morning fire.
AUG 23 1938 With the installation of new RCA equipment, NBC resumes television transmission for one hour a day from W2XBS/New York City located in the Empire State Building.
AUG 23 1939 Newsman/author Elmer Davis joins CBS News. He becomes Director of the U.S. Office of War Information, (OWI), two and a half years later.
AUG 23 1939 NBC and CBS each assign a dozen staff members to cover the Army War Games in upstate New York.
AUG 23 1940 The Senate Interstate Commerce Committee hearings investigating The 1932 Radio Patent Pool agree with Senator Charles Tobey's charges that “some” FCC commissioners have accepted gifts and perks from RCA.
AUG 23 1940 David O. Selznick and MGM nullify an agreement that would have made Gone With The Wind the basis for a weeky half hour series on 67 CBS stations sponsored by Vick Chemical.
AUG 23 1940 Canadian composer-conductor Percy Faith, 32, is named musical con-ductor for NBC’s Carnation Contented Hour.
AUG 23 1941 Veteran radio actor Wilmer Walter, star of NBC’s David Harum, dies at 57 after a short illness.
AUG 23 1944 Army censors fail to catch CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood’s premature report of Germany’s surrender of France, setting off celebrations two days ahead of the actual event.
AUG 23 1945 A U.S. Navy cargo ship is named in memory of NBC correspondent Tom Treanor who died in France while covering Patton’s Third Army in 1944.
AUG 23 1946 Citing labor difficulties and government restrictions on wheat, General Mills cancels two of its oldest daytime serials on CBS, Valiant Lady and The Light of The World.
(See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
AUG 23 1946 George Storer’s Fort Industry buys WJBK/Detroit for $550,000, a new record price for a 250 watt station.
AUG 23 1946 Mutual reports a record 552 local sales for its eleven co-op programs. Fulton Lewis Jr.’s nightly news commentary leads the pack with 199 local sponsors.
AUG 23 1946 Mutual’s full network of 315 stations broadcasts the Annual College All Star Football Game from Soldier Field in Chicago.
AUG 23 1948 ABC offers a Monday through Friday quarter hour commentary by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her daughter Anna on its full network for $1.03 Million per year from which the ladies would receive $169,000.
AUG 23 1948 AFRA prohibits Dr. I.Q.from using non-union announcers from NBC affiliate KSTP in its seven weeks of broadcasts from Minneapolis - telling the show to instead hire union members from other stations as the star’s assistants. (See Dr. I.Q.)
AUG 24 1932 The NAB accepts “under protest” ASCAP’s demand for “commission” reimbursement - 3% of stations’ net revenue for the first year, 4% for the second and 5% for the third.
AUG 24 1935 MGM presents Jack Benny hosting an hour long variety show on Blue to celebrate his new film, The Broadway Melody of 1936. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 24 1939 Responding to broadcasters’ requests, RCA-Victor delays implementation of licensing its phonograph records to radio stations by three months.
AUG 24 1939 NBC’s news department goes on a 24 hour schedule for the weekend during the Polish crisis, CBS follows suite the next night.
AUG 24 1940 Television pioneer Dr. Paul Nipkow, who first spoke of picture transmission in the 1890’s and invented some of its earliest components, dies at 80 in Berlin.
AUG 24 1941 Mutual music critic Floyd Neale, 54, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.
AUG 24 1942 FCC grants a rare new radio license during wartime to KTKN/ Ketchikan, Alaska. The 1,000 watt facility at 920 kc., requested by the Office of War Information, Is designed to serve the nearby military and civilian population.
AUG 24 1943 FCC authorizes standard four letter call signs for FM stations replacing letter and number combinations.
AUG 24 1943 The AFRA national board approves the union’s merger with The American Guild of Musical Artists.
AUG 24 1943 WLW/Cincinnati staff singer Doris Day, 21, is taken by ambulance from the station and undergoes an emergency appendectomy.
AUG 24 1944 Tightened regulations on laxative advertising force Lewis-Howe’s Nature’s Remedy to drop sponsorship of Mutual’s American Women’s Jury originating from WNAC/Boston.
AUG 24 1945 The AFM says it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that station employees who handle records and transcriptions rightfully belong in engineers’ unions. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 24 1946 WSM’s Grand Ole Opry originates outside of Nashville for the first time in its 21 years, broadcasting from the Texas State Fair in Dallas. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 24 1946 Abbott & Costello embark on a 14 city tour of performances to benefit The Lou Costello, Jr. Youth Foundation.
AUG 24 1948 ABC President Mark Woods denies the Communist Party’s demand for equal time to respond to the network’s documentary, Communism - US Brand, which the Communists call, “… dishonest and unfair.”
AUG 24 1948 A 22 year old sailor wins radio’s biggest giveaway show award to date, $24,000 in prizes, on the CBS program Hit The Jackpot.
AUG 24 1949 WDGY/Minneapolis-St. Paul, formerly a daytime only station, utilizes nine towers to begin operating with 50,000 watts days and 25,000 watts at night at 1130 kc.
AUG 24 1950 The U.S. House Appropriations Committee approves $41.3 Million for the construction of six new high power radio transmitters for Voice of America broadcasts.
AUG 24 1952 CBS Radio issues a new rate card raising daytime prices by 11.1% and lowering nighttime prices through discounts by as much as 30%.
AUG 24 1953 CBS Radio agrees to its affiliates’ demand not to lower network rates further for one year.
AUG 24 1953 Des Moines is the largest city on the FCC’s list of markets without television that will receive priority in its hearings for new stations. St. Louis is the largest city with only one station.
AUG 25 1930 A public demonstration of television, transmitted from Jersey City to New York City, is deemed a failure when early evening conditions are considered “too light” to see the tiny screens and technical problems interrupt the blurry showing sponsored by Jenkins Television Corporation and The New York Evening Journal.
AUG 25 1933 Unions IBEW and IATSE begin sparring to represent technicians at Los Angeles stations.
AUG 25 1940 Kansas City Journal columnist John Cameron Swayze, 34, rejoins KMBC/ Kansas City as a newscaster - he had originally been on its staff in 1931.
AUG 25 1941 NBC ships 2,000 phonograph records and radio program transcriptions to the Panama Canal Zone for the entertainment of the American troops manning 200 anti-aircraft batteries.
AUG 25 1941 FCC says its shortwave listening posts in Portland, Oregon; Kingsville, Texas; Guilford, Maryland, and Santurce, Puerto Rico have become very important because, “…almost every political, diplomatic or military move is presaged by shifts in propaganda treatment..”
AUG 25 1942 The Gallup Poll reports that 73% of the public surveyed agree with the Justice Department action against the AFM recording strike. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 25 1943 FDR’s Canadian-American Friendship speech from Ottawa on all four networks registers a 24.9 rating. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
AUG 25 1943 Frank Sinatra pays a sum “...in excess of $50,000.” to bandleader Tommy Dorsey to sever Sinatra’s employment contract which guaranteed Dorsey and his manager 43% of the singer’s earnings.
AUG 25 1945 Quiz show Give And Take hosted by John Reed King begins its eight year sporadic run on CBS.
AUG 25 1946 Announcer Ken Carpenter beats Virginia Payne, (Ma Perkins), by one vote to become the new President of AFRA, succeeding Lawrence Tibbett.
AUG 25 1947 Movie actors Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, John Garfield, Myrna Loy and Ray Milland, form Radio Repertory Theater, Inc., to produce transcribed radio dramas for syndication.
AUG 25 1948 The Metropolitan Opera settles its labor problems allowing it to stage its 1948-49 season and Saturday afternoon broadcasts on ABC.
AUG 25 1948 FCC rules against any temporary authorization allowing daytime-only stations to operate past sunset.
AUG 25 1949 AFRA petitions the FCC to deny WATL/Atlanta the renewal of its license because of, “…flagrant disregard of government regulations,” in the station where the union and IBEW have been on strike for eight months.
AUG 25 1949 Robert Young’s sitcom Father Knows Best begins its four year run on NBC. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 25 1949 RCA informs the FCC that its all-electronic, compatible color television system is ready for mass production.
AUG 25 1950 Sportscaster Harry Wismer, 37, resigns after four years as General Manager of WJR/Detroit over differences with its owner, G.A. (Dick) Richards.
AUG 25 1951 ABC begins a two-month period in which 20 television network advertisers and 18 radio network sponsors, 75% of them new business, will add $23.2 Million in gross revenue to the networks. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets' Grosses.)
AUG 26 1932 NBC broadcasts the first of five weekly installments of its adaptation of the RKO movie, The Phantom, then invites listeners to enter a contest with their scripts for a concluding sixth chapter. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
AUG 26 1935 The four year old March of Time is converted from a weekly half-hour to a 15 minute weeknight show on CBS.
AUG 26 1938 Interviewed on his 65th birthday, broadcasting pioneer Lee DeForest calls radio, “sickening”, adding, “Not only are the programs poor, with too much swing and crooning, but the commercials are maddening.”
AUG 26 1939 The first televised major league baseball game, Brooklyn vs. Cincinnati, is broadcast by NBC‘s W2XBS/New York City with Red Barber describing the action and doing commercials for Wheaties and Procter & Gamble Soap.
AUG 26 1946 Ad agencies and producers of NBC’s Wednesday night shows, Duffy’s Tavern, The Great Gildersleeve, Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge and The Frank Morgan Show, meet to plot promotional plans to blunt the effect of Bing Crosby’s new series on ABC. (See The 1946-47 Season and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 26 1947 FCC grants the license of WOKO/Albany, New York, to the Governor Dongan Broadcasting Corp., which takes over the station from its former owners who lost its license for stock concealment.
AUG 26 1950 Heavily advertised on local radio, The Hadacol Caravan of Stars headlined by Mickey Rooney, attracts an Atlanta stadium audience of 23,000 - all admitted by presenting a box top from the $1.25 patent medicine (See Hadacol.)
AUG 26 1950 Smilin’ Ed McConnell, a kids’ radio personality for 25 years, makes his television debut on NBC with a weekly show.
AUG 26 1951 Dinah Shore begins a second season of twice-weekly, 15-minute shows on NBC-TV after signing a five year, $1.0 Million contract with the network.
AUG 27 1934 CBS is reported negotiating with The Oakland Tribune’s KLX/Oakland to replace its San Francisco affiliate, Don Lee’s KFRC. (See Three Letter Calls.)
AUG 27 1934 WLW/Cincinnati reports 5,000 visitors a month attend its weekend tours of the station’s 500,000 watt transmitter facility in Mason, Ohio, 23 miles from the city.
AUG 27 1935 Broadcasters agree to terms of the FTC to reject advertisers deemed “questionable” by the Commission.
AUG 27 1936 KWK/St. Louis, KSO/Des Moines, WMT/Cedar Rapids, KOIL/Omaha and KFOR/Lincoln affiliate with Mutual, joining partial affiliates WSM/Nashville, WFIL/Phila-delphia, WBAL/Baltimore, and WGAR/Cleveland in the network’s drive for nationwide coverage. (See Mutual Led The Way.)
AUG 27 1939 WMCA/New York City broadcasts the short, cryptic information contained in several German and British ship-to-shore military messages obtained when radio operator Stanley Wolff intercepts the coded signals.
AUG 27 1940 A lengthy speech by Vice Presidential candidate Charles McNary on NBC pre-empts Meredith Willson’s homecoming tribute show from San Francisco. (See Meredith Willson.)
AUG 27 1941 The U.S. Senate Finance Committee deletes a 5% to 15% punitive tax on radio station net revenues over $100,000 from The 1941 Tax Act as was demanded by printing trades unions.
AUG 27 1942 Idaho Senator D. Worth Clark charges AFM President Petrillo with “gangster tactics” in forbidding his members to make records as a Senate committee is appointed to investigate the union. (See Petrillo!)
AUG 27 1942 Kay Kyser’s outstanding efforts to sell War Bonds and entertain troops qualify him to be the subject of NBC’s March of Time. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten,)
AUG 27 1943 CBS News Director Paul White issues widely circulated memo to newscaster Cecil Brown outlining the network’s policy against editorializing.
AUG 27 1943 The CIO files a petition with the FCC to participate in the hearings involved with the sale of the Blue Network to Edward Noble with the admitted intent to obtain more time on Network Radio.
AUG 27 1943 Blue Network President Mark Woods denies Andrew Jergens, Inc. the right to repeat Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal by transcription on any additional CBS and NBC stations than the twelve already allowed to do so. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 27 1944 Lawrence Tibbett is re-elected President of AFRA.
AUG 27 1945 To promote Joan Davis’ new CBS show for Swan Soap, Lever Brothers’ agency Young & Rubicam offers 500 newspapers a free weekly column, Joan of Hollywood.
AUG 27 1946 Philco signs with ABC to carry its recorded Bing Crosby variety show on Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m. beginning October 16 over 211 affiliates with up to 400 more stations to be contracted separately to carry the program. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 27 1946 NBC puts sponsor Phillip Morris on notice to improve its poorly performing Rudy Vallee Show or risk losing its Tuesday night timeslot.
AUG 27 1946 Vox Pop opens its eighth and final season on CBS with a remote broadcast from the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 27 1947 FCC approves AT&T adding 512 additional miles of coaxial cable to complete coast-to-coast television connections at an estimated construction cost of $10.9 Million.
AUG 27 1948 Time magazine senior editor Whittaker Chambers, appearing on Mutual’s Meet The Press, accuses Alger Hiss, President of The Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, of having been a Communist.
AUG 27 1949 Southeast Florida stations assume emergency status as a Category 4 hurricane reaches landfall at West Palm Beach causing flooding and property damage estimated at $52.0 Million.
AUG 27 1950 Frank & Anne Hummert’s American Album of Familiar Music begins its 20th season on Network Radio. (See Gus Haenschen and Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
AUG 27 1950 Sponsor General Foods cancels the television debut of The Aldrich Family and fires actress Jean Muir from the cast,, bowing to rumors that she had Communist sympathies. (See The Aldrich Family.)
AUG 27 1951 In a package plan similar to NBC’s Operation Tandem, CBS begins offering one, 60-second commercial in four network shows - My Friend Irma, Grand Central Station, Mr. Chameleon and People Are Funny - for $15,000 per week.
AUG 27 1951 AT&T estimates that the addition of West Coast cities to a network’s microwave transmission charges from New York City to 43 affiliates will increase costs from $452 per half hour to $608.
AUG 27 1952 Bob Hope turns down a $17,000 per week offer from General Foods to do a 15-minute weekday radio show, contingent on his giving up his nighttime program.
AUG 27 1953 FCC grants an AM station construction permit for Guam, its furthest West jurisdiction, which will be the only radio station for the island’s 100,000 residents.
AUG 27 1953 Mark Stevens replaces Lee Tracy as Martin Kane, Private Eye on NBC-TV - the fourth actor to portray the role on the U.S. Tobacco series.
AUG 28 1922 AT&T’s WEAF/New York City broadcasts its first “toll broadcasting” commercial - a ten minute sales talk promoting the new Hawthorne Court Apartments in Queens. Developer Queensland Corporation was charged $50 for the time. The station claimed that $127,000 in sales resulted from the one commercial.
AUG 28 1927 NBC begins its regular Sunday night network programming with Major Bowes’ Capitol Family. (See Major Bowes' Original Money Machine.)
AUG 28, 1931 NBC acquires WMAQ/Chicago from The Chicago Daily News.
AUG 28 1932 Sponsor Wrigley Gum “leaks” to the press that its popular soap opera stars Myrt & Marge are actually Myrtle Vail, the 44 year old creator of the series and her 19 year old daughter, Donna Damerel.
AUG 28 1933 NBC reports that 60% of its sponsors are incorporating premium giveaways in their commercials. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
AUG 28 1935 Montana Congressman Joseph Monaghan blasts the FCC for, “…time and time again approving the trafficking in radio licenses by members of the Radio Trust,” and “…approving leases then hiding the papers in secret files.”
AUG 28 1937 Arthur Godfrey leaves his post as host of the CBS show, Professor Quiz, claiming it limited his creativity - sponsor Nash-Kelvinator says it was because he demanded a raise over his $750 a week. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
AUG 28 1939 With war in Europe imminent, CBS and its New York City anchor, WABC, extend their daily sign-off time one hour to 2:00 a.m.
AUG 28 1939 Dr. I.Q. shifts from Blue to NBC’s 56 station network and begins roving among major city theaters with a broadcast from Pittsburgh’s Stanley Theater. (See Dr. I.Q.)
AUG 28 1939 In an economic move, American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cancels 30 of the 76 CBS stations carrying Your Hit Parade and 30 of the 85 NBC stations carrying Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge. (See Nets To Order.)
AUG 28 1939 NBC's W2XBS(TV)/New York City expands its programming with up to 15 hours per week.
AUG 28 1940 WJR/Detroit listeners to Michigan Governor Luren Dickinson’s campaign speech originating from WJIM/Lansing complain of piano music from an unknown source drowning out the first three minutes of his address.
AUG 28 1941 Blue introduces Heirs of Liberty, a series of six, 15 minute programs profiling American patriots, narrated by Raymond Massey, Walter Huston, Charles Laughton, Richard Waring and Maurice Evans who volunteer their talent.
AUG 28 1942 Sportscaster Bob Elson provides Mutual’s coverage of the College All-Stars vs. Chicago Bears football game despite a heavy fog that prevents him from seeing the field plus the World War II ban that prevents his describing his weather related handicap.
AUG 28 1942 Edgar Bergen and his Charlie McCarthy return from Alaska and the Aleutian Islands where authorities report that he performed 51 shows for Allied troops in twelve days. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 28 1943 AFRA approves merging with the American Guild of Musical Artists, (AGMA).
AUG 28 1945 Paul McGrath assumes the role of host Raymond on Inner Sanctum, replacing Raymond Edward Johnson in Army service. (See Inner Sanctum and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 28 1946 American Tobacco’s George Washington Hill pulls Lucky Strike and Pall Mall billing for the Jack Benny and Frank Morgan shows worth $3.0 Million from Ruthrauff & Ryan Advertising and awards it to Foote, Cone & Beldiing. (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
AUG 28 1947 WNBC/New York City celebrates the 25th anniversary of radio’s first acknowledged commercial - a ten minute lecture for the Queensboro Corporation’s Jackson Heights apartment development on WEAF in 1922.
AUG 28 1947 WBIX/Rome, Georgia, becomes the first postwar-licensed station to leave the air and turn back its license to the FCC.
AUG 28 1950 Comedienne Joan Davis leaves series radio after a sporadic multi-network run of nine years.
AUG 28 1950 Meet The Press co-owners Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak sue Mutual for $1.25 Million over the network’s cancellation of the program and replacing it with Reporters’ Roundup.
AUG 28 1950 RCA Chairman David Sarnoff tells the VFW’s National Convention that the United States will have international television within five years and, “…The Voice of America will become the Voice and Vision of America.”
AUG 28 1951 The broadcasting industry supported Broadcast Measurement Bureau is dissolved after seven years, two controversial radio station coverage surveys and a debt of $100.000.
AUG 28 1952 FCC approves the $2.25 Million sale of KOA/Denver from NBC to a group headed by Bob Hope.
AUG 28 1953 The World Transcription Service reports a “30 to 45%” increase in business over 1952 with 40% of its new clients adding World to another leased library. (See “By Transcription…”)
AUG 28 1953 Meet The Press creators Martha Roundtree and Lawrence Spivak settle their lawsuit against Mutual for undisclosed terms and Roundtree sells her interest in the program to Spivak.
AUG 28 1953 NBC-TV’s The Big Story salutes the newspaper exploits of ABC’s Walter Winchell and presents him with sponsor Pall Mall cigarettes’ $500 award. (See Wednesday's All Time Top Ten and Walter Winchell )
AUG 29 1932 KNX/Los Angeles broadcasts the play by play of a “world’s championship” chess match played in a Goodyear blimp flying over the city.
AUG 29 1935 An Army Air Force bomber flies from Dayton to Cincinnati controlled by a Sperry automatic robot and radio compass guided by the beam of WLW. The plane’s return flight was guided by the beam of WHIO/Dayton.
AUG 29 1939 CBS and NBC log a week’s total of 159 shortwave reports from Europe during the unfolding Polish crisis.
AUG 29 1940 CBS demonstrates its color television system for the first time to FCC officials.
AUG 29 1941 Twin City stations KSTP, WCCO, WLOL and WTCN agree to share a single broadcast of University of Minnesota football games played at Seattle, Ann Arbor and Iowa City with a sportscaster from each station reporting one quarter.
AUG 29 1942 Glenn Miller makes his feature film debut in the 20th Century Fox musical, Sun Valley Serenade. (See In The Miller Mood.)
AUG 29 1942 Blue’s seven hour I Pledge America featuring Fanny Brice, Amos & Andy, Orson Welles, Dinah Shore, Edward G. Robinson, Bob Burns and Meredith Willson sells over $10.4 Million in War Bonds.
AUG 29 1943 Blue cuts Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler’s broadcast for twelve seconds of “disputed material”.
AUG 29 1944 The NAB unveils its Broadcast Measurement Bureau - a new radio ratings system involving the bulk mailing of a million postcards to homes at a cost of a dollar apiece.
AUG 29 1945 RCA-Victor introduces its new unbreakable, high-fidelity vinyl phonograph records.
AUG 29 1945 U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower tells radio executives touring Germany that broadcasting can help speed the “de-nazification” of the country.
AUG 29 1947 CBS orders its West Coast censor to cut any ad-lib remarks from Arthur Godfrey’s transcribed broadcasts considered potentially offensive after its station relations representatives report affiliate complaints about him.
AUG 29 1949 FCC bans giveaway programs as a violation of lottery laws and the networks prepare to seek an immediate injunction. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 29 1949 Actor George Murphy is fired as host of NBC’s giveaway show Hollywood Calling because producers want more emphasis put on the show’s contest and prize elements. (See Hollywood Calling.)
AUG 29 1949 Celebrating the 15th anniversary of Lux Radio Theater, sponsor Lever Brothers, CBS and 20th Century Fox launch a four month contest to find “America’s Most Beautiful 15 Year Old Girl.” (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 29 1949 Former child movie star Roddy MacDowell, 20, begins a ten-month weekday afternoon disc jockey run on KMPC/Los Angeles.
AUG 29 1952 CBS Radio sets $4,500 as the maximum price for any of its half-hour shows in the 1952-53 season
AUG 29 1952 Former CBS Sports Director Ted Husing, turned successful disc jockey on WMGM/New York City, returns to the network to report the Little League World Series title game from Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
AUG 30 1934 West Coast radio and television station pioneer Don Lee, 53, dies in Los Angeles from acute indigestion.
AUG 30 1934 The U.S. Justice Department files suit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law asking for the dissolution of ASCAP.
AUG 30 1935 WLW/Cincinnati brands ACLU charges that the station censors news of labor strikes to be untrue.
AUG 30 1936 After 12 years on WEAF - and subsequently NBC - Major Bowes’ Sunday afternoon Capitol Gang presents its last show before moving to CBS along with Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour.
AUG 30 1937 NBC reports problems in getting newsmen and equipment into Shanghai to cover the Sino-Japanese War.
AUG 30 1937 A New York Supreme Court judge issues an injunction against Transradio Press from broadcasting a real time recreation of the Joe Louis vs. Tommy Farr Heavyweight Championship fight saying it infringed on NBC’s exclusive rights.
AUG 30 1939 Nazi Germany decrees imprisonment for any citizens caught listening to foreign broadcasts.
AUG 30 1943 FCC Chairman James Fly labels charges made by a congressional committee lawyer that he wrongfully sought draft deferments for commission engineering personnel as, “…an unprincipled bid for headlines.”
AUG 30 1943 Evangelist/politician Gerald L.K. Smith sues WXYZ/Detroit for $100,000 claiming the station defamed him by allegedly stating that he trampled on the American flag during a speech.
AUG 30 1945 Wilson Sporting Goods sponsors broadcast of the Green Bay Packers vs. College All Stars football game on Mutual’s 246 affiliates.
AUG 30 1946 CBS grants a 10% raise to all non-union employees making less than $100 per week.
AUG 30 1946 FCC denies the $950,000 sale of KQW/San Jose-San Francisco to CBS. Calling the decision “unjust and capricious”, CBS and KQW petition the Commission for a rehearing.
AUG 30 1946 FCC approves the call-sign change of CBS-owned WABC/New York to WCBS and WCBS/Springfield, Illinois to WCVS effective November 1st.
AUG 30 1948 Arthur Godfrey’s weekday morning show is expanded by 30 sponsored minutes making his total annual billings worth $4.5 Million to CBS. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
AUG 30 1948 NBC-TV announces six programs on kinescope film available to non-interconnected affiliates: Howdy Doody, Musical Miniatures, Story of The Week, TV Screen Magazine, American Song and Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One.
AUG 30 1951 Louisiana patent medicine promoter and heavy radio advertiser Dudley LeBlanc sells his Hadacol brand tonic to New York interests for $8.0 Million. (See Hadacol.)
AUG 31 1920 Detroit News station 8MK, (later WWJ/Detroit), broadcasts the Detroit city election returns.
AUG 31 1931 Bing Crosby, 28, debuts on CBS with a new $1,500 weekly contract calling for six sustaining, 15-minute shows a week.
AUG 31 1934 The annual College All Stars vs. NFL Champion Chicago Bears charity football game described by sportscaster Bob Elson from Soldier Field is broadcast by WGN/Chicago and shared with NBC.
AUG 31 1939 AFRA negotiates a minimum talent fee of $15 per program for Network Radio performers.
AUG 31 1936 Major Ed Bowes hosts a non-broadcast performance of his Original Amateur Hour at Detroit’s Masonic Auditorium for Chrysler employees and featuring employees of the company which becomes his sponsor in September. (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 31 1939 CBS tallies its eight-month 1939 studio audience total through August to be over 1.12 million persons.
AUG 31 1941 Lawrence Tibbett succeeds Eddie Cantor as President of AFRA.
AUG 31 1941 Prestigious anthology The Prudential Hour opens its nine year run on CBS.
AUG 31 1941 Fibber McGee & Molly spinoff The Great Gildersleeve begins its 16 season run on NBC. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s) and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
AUG 31 1941 Time magazine misinterprets Crossley and Hooper survey data to state that radio listening had declined 6.3% over the 1940-41 season. (See The 1940-41 Season.)
AUG 31 1942 The Adventures of Superman, a syndicated program since 1940, opens its seven season run on Mutual replacing Jack Armstrong which moves to Blue. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
AUG 31 1942 Kids’ weekday afternoon serial Hop Harrigan, Ace of The Airways begins a six year run on Blue.
AUG 31 1942 CBS buys WEEI/Boston from Edison Electric for $500,000.
AUG 31 1942 U.S. Army reports that local radio stations produce more than 600 programs per week directed to Armed Forces personnel in nearby camps.
AUG 31 1943 President Roosevelt calls Blue commentator Drew Pearson, “...a chronic liar,” after Pearson’s critical remarks about the State Department’s attitude toward Russia.
AUG 31 1944 The American FM Network dissolves after four years of sporadic operation.
AUG 31 1944 Frank Morgan becomes the solo host of NBC’s Maxwell House Coffee Time when General Foods moves his co-star, Fanny Brice, to the CBS Sunday schedule. (See Good News, Frank Morgan and Baby Snooks.)
AUG 31 1945 President Truman abolishes the Office of War Information, assigning its activities to a temporary International Information Service of the State Department.
AUG 31 1946 NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City begins its special Labor Day weekend sports programming with coverage of the New York Giants vs. Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game.
AUG 31 1948 AFRA elects Clayton (Bud) Collyer its National President.
AUG 31 1949 Trade paper Variety reports that nighttime, (7:00 to 10:00 p.m.) on NBC-TV is 74% sold out for the 1949-50 season and prime time on CBS-TV is 66% sold.
AUG 31 1949 ABC, CBS and NBC file separate suits in New York District Court seeking an injunction against the FCC’s giveaway show ban. (See Stop The Music!)
AUG 31 1951 The NLRB cites IATSE for an illegal jurisdictional strike over the operation of television Teleprompters with the IBEW which was assigned the duty by NBC-TV.
AUG 31 1953 In a first-time networking arrangement, Liggett & Myers considers simul-casting its Chesterfield Supper Club starring Perry Como on NBC-TV and Mutual Radio but drops the idea in favor of taping the television show for later broadcast on radio.
GLOSSARY
AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union - AFL = American Federation of Labor - AFM = American Federation of Musicians - AFRA = American Federation of Radio Artists - AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Service - AFTRA = American Federation of Radio & Television Artists - AGVA = American Guild of Variety Artists - ANA = Association of National Advertisers - ANPA = American Newspaper Publishers Association - AP = Associated Press - ARB = American Research Bureau - ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers - BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - BMB = Broadcast Measurement Bureau - BMI = Broadcast Music, Inc. - CAB = Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting - CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System - CIO = Congress of Industrial Organizations - CST = Central Standard Time - CWA = Communications Workers of America - EST = Eastern Standard Time - FCC = Federal Communications Commission - FRC = Federal Radio Commission - FTC = Federal Trade Commission - IAPTA = International Allied Printing Trades Association - IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News Service - IRS = Internal Revenue Service - LBS = Liberty Broadcasting System - MBS = Mutual Broadcasting System - MCA = Music Corporation of America - MST = Mountain Standard Time - NAB = National Association of Broadcasters - NABET = National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians - NARBA = North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement - NARTB = National Association of Radio & Television Broadcasters, (fka NAB) - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - PTA = Parent Teachers Association - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - RMA = Radio Manufacturers Association - SAG = Screen Actors Guild - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - SPCA = Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press - VFW = Veterans of Foreign Wars - WPA = Works Progress Administration
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: [email protected]