DECEMBER IN THE GOLDEN AGE
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DEC 1 1921 U. S. Commerce Department authorizes a second frequency - 400 meters (833.3 kilocycles) - on which AM stations may operate with an increased power of 500 to 1,000 watts for entertainment, (commercial), programming. 
 DEC 1 1929   Rudy Vallee makes his acting debut in RKO’s The Vagabond Lover which critics universally pan.  (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
DEC 1 1932   General Electric and Westinghouse agree to a consent decree and divest themselves from stock control of RCA.
DEC 1 1933   WGN/Chicago begins airing The Lone Ranger from WXYZ/Detroit three nights a week - ten months before the Mutual Network is formed. (See The Lone Ranger.)
DEC 1 1933   The Federal Radio Commission approves the applications of clear channel stations WHAS/Louisville and WBT/Charlotte to increase power from 25,000 to 50,000 watts..
DEC 1 1934   NBC debuts its three hour Saturday night Let’s Dance show featuring three orchestras - Benny Goodman, Xavier Cugat and Lyn Murray.  (See The 1934-35 Season and The King of Swing.)
DEC 1 1934   Theater owners complain as Standard Oil pays Guy Lombardo’s orchestra  $10,000 a week to front a month tour of 15 Eastern cities with free admission for those showing a driver’s license.  (See Guy Lombado.) 
DEC 1 1935   NBC bans announcers from identifying themselves at the conclusion of commercial broadcasts unless requested by the sponsor.  
DEC 1 1935   CBS-owned WBT/Charlotte begins feeding seven programs a week to 16 CBS stations to its south and west.
DEC 1 1936   Network programs originating on the West Coast surpass the number of Chicago based shows for the first time.
DEC 1 1936   Heavyweight Champion James J. Braddock begins a three nights a week series of 15 minute shows on Blue based on his life story for $1,200 a broadcast.
DEC 1 1938   KNX/Los Angeles lays off its 20 piece studio orchestra for the month in reprisal for the AFM’s demand for a 37.5% wage hike midway in its two year contract with the station.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 1 1938   FCC authorizes WCKY/Cincinnati-Covington, Kentucky, to increase power from 10,000 to 50,000 watts.
DEC 1 1938   Phillips H. Lord premieres a 16-minute stage presentation of a radio broadcast of his Gangbusters with a cast of ten actors and two sound effects technicians at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia.
DEC 1 1939   Blue establishes a compensation plan with affiliates carrying its Friday night fights for Adam Hats paying the stations for 30 minutes regardless of how much - or little - time is required for the matches.
DEC 1 1939   C.E. Hooper extends its radio rating service to West Coast cities Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 1 1939   United Fruit becomes the first sponsor of an international shortwave radio series - transmitted in Spanish from RCA’s WRCA and WNBI to Latin America.   
DEC 1 1940   BMI acquires 15,000 songs for its non-ASCAP catalog from Edward Marks Publishing.
DEC 1 1940   CBS, Mutual and NBC’s broadcasts of the inauguration of Mexican President Avila Camancho are cut short when the opposition party sabotages the network lines. 
DEC 1 1941   The New York Times begins three-minute newscasts every hour on the hour from 8:00 a.m. through 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday on WMCA/New York City.
DEC 1 1941   CBS-owned KNX/Los Angeles censors commentator Eugenia Flatto’s anti-Hitler broadcast causing her sponsor to cancel its contract with the station and move her program to KHJ.
DEC 1 1941   A ceremonial dinner at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel and 90 minute broadcast starring Dinah Shore and Frank Fay celebrate the elevation of WHN/New York City to 50,000 watts. 
DEC 1 1942   FCC’s “wartime rules” go into effect mandating reduced transmitting power and relaxed engineering standards to conserve equipment.
DEC 1 1942   To make their separation more evident, the Blue Network discontinues using the NBC chimes as part of its system cue, substituting the announced line, “This is the Blue Network.”
DEC 1 1943   Ed Klauber, former Executive Committee Chairman of CBS, is appointed Associate Director of the Office of War Information.
DEC 1 1943   Mutual reports that 20% of the year’s income has come from religious broadcasts.
DEC 1 1944   All networks and many independent stations begin broadcasting the sounds and descriptions of B-29’s bombing Tokyo recorded on film by Navy personnel.  
DEC 1 1944   The Blue Network bans local  commercials except time signals on its owned stations from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m.
DEC 1 1944   Mutual extends into Western Canada by the Don Lee network adding CKWX/ Vancouver, British Columbia.
DEC 1 1945   Borden Dairies moves its County Fair game show from ABC to the CBS Saturday afternoon schedule.
DEC 1 1945   The Bell System inaugurates its Philadelphia to New York coaxial cable with NBC’s television coverage of the Army-Navy football game transmitted from Philadelphia for broadcast on WNBT(TV)/New York.
DEC 1 1946   NAB President Justin Miller urges member stations to set aside 15 minute blocks for educational programs as the national coal strike causes schools to close for lack of heat.
DEC 1 1946   Pittsburgh area Teamsters, in a two-month feud with the city’s CIO brewery drivers, ask the AFM to boycott popular radio programs sponsored by local beers. 
DEC 1 1946   C.E. Hooper extends its service to Hawaii where four stations serve an estimated 100,000 radios.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 1 1947   Art Linkletter’s House Party returns to the CBS weekday schedule at 3:30 p.m. under sponsorship of General Electric for $1.25 Million per year.  (See A John Guedel Production.)
DEC 1 1947   CBS claims that its My Friend Irma and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts set a record as the first network-built shows to achieve Top  15 Hooperatings in just three months.  (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.) 
DEC 1 1947   The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin sells WPEN/Philadelphia for $800,000 enabling it to buy WCAU-AM & FM/Philadelphia for $2.9 Million.
DEC 1 1947   ABC’s KGO/San Francisco increases its power to 50,000 watts, replacing its 7,500 watt transmitter that had been in continuous service since 1924. 
DEC 1 1947   The NAB forms its All-Industry Music Committee to assist in what’s expected to be a “last ditch” with James Petrillo’s AFM.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 1 1947   General Electric’s WRGB(TV)/Schenectady goes commercial after six years of operation. 
DEC 1 1948  Philco reports that Bing Crosby’s transcribed Philco Radio Time is broadcast weekly on 260 ABC affiliates and 115 independent stations.  (See Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 1 1949   Skippy Peanut Butter introduces its transcribed Skippy Hollywood Theater on a CBS network of 55 stations.  (See Nets To Order.)
DEC 1 1949   Longtime radio favorite Kay Kyser's College of Musical Knowledge begins a year‘s run on NBC-TV.  (See Kay Kyser - The Ol' Professor of Swing.)
DEC 1 1950   NBC commissions a $100,000 Nielsen survey to study the weekend listening habits of radio audiences.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 1 1950  Stanley E. Hubbard, owner of KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul, claims his refusal to pay the $17,000 balance of an architect’s bill for his new television studio is because its floor won’t support six circus elephants as stipulated in their contract.  
DEC 1 1951  Transradio Press, established in March, 1934, in response to the Press-Radio Bureau, goes out of business after 17 years of service.  (See The Press Radio Bureau and The 1933-34 Season.)
DEC 1 1951  The Liberty network begins a schedule of covering 112 college basketball games through March.
DEC 1 1952  NBC moves Bob Hope’s new weekday quarter hour from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
DEC 1 1952   KGMB-TV/Honolulu becomes Hawaii’s first television station, operating on Channel 9 from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. daily with programming on kinescope recording from all mainland networks.
DEC 1 1952   The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) begins its strike against television producers and advertising agencies over fees paid to talent for commercials.
DEC 1 1953   RCA unveils its television recording system employing magnetic tape.

DEC 2 1932   The Adventures of Charlie Chan debuts on Blue beginning a sporadic 16 year multi-network run in 15 minute serial and complete half-hour episode forms.
DEC 2 1934   Engineers take WEBR/Buffalo off the air for three hours in a sympathy strike for two laid-off technicians. 
DEC 2 1934   Standard Brands replaces Eddie Cantor on NBC’s Sunday night Chase & Sanborn Hour through March 17th with The Chase & Sanborn Opera Guild.  (See The 1934-35 Season.) 
DEC 2 1935   CBS President Bill Paley assigns his Vice President Paul Kesten to the fulltime study of, “…current problems and future developments within the broadcasting industry.”
DEC 2 1935   Los Angeles jury trial begins in the $500,000 libel suit brought by KNX/Los Angeles against The Los Angeles Times resulting from a 1934 Times editorial accusing the station of, "...broadcasting false and garbled news.”
DEC 2 1937   Fannie Brice and Hanley Stafford join the permanent cast of NBC’s Good News of 1938.  (See Baby Snooks and Good News.)
DEC 2 1938   A kidnapped and beaten 18 year old girl is returned to her family farm near Washington, D.C., after her abductors are frightened by the coverage their crime receives by local network stations WRC, WMAL, WJSV and WOL. 
DEC 2 1940   NBC, which boycotted ASCAP music, cancels an appearance by Kate Smith on its Four H Clubs Salute when she insisted on singing God Bless America, an ASCAP song.  (See Kate’s Great Song.) 
DEC 2  1941  CBS holds a testimonial dinner for Edward R. Murrow attended by 1,100 at New York City's Waldorf Astoria and broadcast by the network.
DEC 2 1943   By a split vote, the FCC approves Blue affiliate WJW to move from Akron to Cleveland.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
DEC 2 1943   Julia Sanderson returns to radio for the first time after the death of her husband, Frank Crumit, with a new weekday afternoon women’s show on 190 Mutual network stations..
DEC 2 1943   Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, the Hummert’s 15 minute multiple run serial for six years, becomes a half hour, self-contained Wednesday night show on CBS and remains in 30 minute form for most of its remaining nine multi-network seasons.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 2 1944 Gillette pays $27,000 for broadcast rights to the Army-Navy football game carried on CBS with Ted Husing and Jimmy Dolan announcing, but devotes all of its commercial time to the Sixth War Loan Drive.
DEC 2 1945   Elmer Davis, former CBS commentator and Director of the Office of War Information, joins ABC for three 15 minute news analysis programs per week.
DEC 2 1945   ABC’s Quiz Kids are pitted against four U.S. Senators in a special broadcast from the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington and pass the $120.0 Million mark in total War Bonds sold with their stage appearances. (See The Quiz Kids.)
DEC 2 1945   Jack Benny introduces his “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny Because…” contest offering Victory Bonds to prize winners - by midweek over 150,000 entries had been received by NBC.  (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 2 1945   Mutual affiliates KHJ/Los Angeles and the Don Lee West Coast network begin rebroadcasting Walter Winchell’s 6:00 p.m. (PT) Sunday ABC commentaries at 8:30 p.m.  (See Walter Winchell.)
DEC 2 1946   A U.S. District Court in Chicago finds The Lea Act, (aka The Anti Petrillo Act),  unconstitutional.  The Justice Department plans an appeal to the Supreme Court. (See Petrillo!)
DEC 2 1946   AFM chief James Petrillo reacts to the court’s Lea Act decision, “Thank God for the Federal Court … where they say Congress cannot discriminate against 200,000 musicians.”  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 2 1946   The four major networks send correspondents to accompany and make daily reports on Admiral Richard Byrd’s Operation High Jump, a 100 day Antarctic expedition involving 4,000 military personnel.
DEC 2 1946   Your Hit Parade announcer Andre Baruch and his wife, singer Bea Wain, debut their Mr. & Mrs. Music afternoon disc jockey show on WMCA/New York City. 
DEC 2 1947   Chicago research firm A.C. Nielsen releases its first Network Radio monthly Top 20 in competition with C.E. Hooper’s First 15.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 2 1947   Rural comedian Bob Burns, whose NBC show was cancelled, announces that he’ll only make transcribed programs for local stations, “…to break away from agency and network domination.”  (See Bob Burns.)
DEC 2 1947   The Brooklyn Dodgers seek $100,000 for television rights to the team’s 1948 home games, double the amount paid by Ford and General Foods in 1947.
DEC 2 1948   ABC Chairman Edward Noble rejects 20th Century Fox’s bid to buy the network for $20.0 Million, two and a half times the $8.0 Million that Noble paid for ABC five years earlier. 
DEC 2 1949   Allegations by Mutual commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr. that former presidential aide Harry Hopkins gave atomic secrets to Russia triggers an investigation by The Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee.
DEC 2 1949   CBS reports annual gross time sales for its programs developed in-house have reached $17.5 Million.  (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
DEC 2 1951   New York City television critics John Crosby, Jack Gould and Jack O”Brien use their Sunday newspaper columns to attack NBC-TV for cutting its daily whimsical hit Kukla, Fran & Ollie from 30 to 15 minutes.
DEC 2 1952   Groucho Marx “charges” the donation of a pint of blood for admission to his lecture at the University of Oregon, getting 559 pints.  (See The One, The Only…Groucho!)

DEC 3 1928   The Voice of Firestone begins its 26 years of Monday night concerts on NBC, followed by three more seasons on ABC.  (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 3 1931   After 147 sustaining broadcasts on WENR/Chicago, The Sinclair (Weiner) Minstrels debut on the Blue Network and begin a nine season run, three in Annual Top 20.  (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 3 1934   Westinghouse moves its KYW - 50,000 watts at 1020 kc. - to Philadelphia after 13 years in Chicago.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
DEC 3 1934   FCC approves the Paulist Fathers’ request to move their WWL/New Orleans and WLWL/New York City to 810 kilocycles, forcing WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul and WNYC/New York City to move from 810 to 850 kc. 
DEC 3 1934   Similar to CBS, NBC institutes a policy of charging cafes and hotels for telephone line connections to accommodate remotes for bands not booked by the network’s artists service.  (See Big Band Remotes.)
DEC 3 1937   WOL/Washington, D.C., introduces The Federal Show Window, a weekly talent show featuring Federal employees. 
DEC 3 1937   Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy are booked into the Los Angeles Paramount Theater in a stage show that nets the ventriloquist $10,000 a week.  The same theater paid Bergen $275 a week two years earlier.
DEC 3 1939  The Major League Baseball Broadcasters Association is organized in New York City and elects Rosey Rowswell of Pittsburgh stations KDKA and WWSW its first President who stresses that the group is a fraternity, not a union.
DEC 3 1940   FCC concludes two days of heated testimony regarding the limits of its authority and its Network-Monopoly Investigation report.   
DEC 3 1942   CBS, Mutual and NBC agree to a 10% minimum wage increase for AFRA union performers.
DEC 3 1943   Popular studio drummer Lindley (Spike) Jones is appointed music director for NBC’s Bob Burns Show while he establishes his novelty band for RCA-Victor records.
(See Spike Jones and Bob Burns.)  
DEC 3 1943   Versatile radio actor Art Carney, 25, signs a seven year exclusive contract with CBS. 
DEC 3 1943   CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow delivers his Orchestrated Hell report from London describing a Royal Air Force nighttime bombing raid of Berlin.
DEC 3 1943   CBS begins the 26 week run of the dramatic series Mrs. Miniver, based on the MGM film, on Friday nights at 11:30 p.m.
DEC 3 1944   Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons begins seven seasons of Sunday night programs following Walter Winchell on Blue/ABC.
DEC 3 1945   The U.S. Supreme Court upsets FCC procedure by ruling that the Commission cannot grant one of two conflicting applications for the same radio frequency without a joint hearing on both requests.
DEC 3 1945   ABC launches two weekday half hour series, The Al Pearce Show and Bride & Groom.
DEC 3 1945   Sponsor Carter’s Little Liver Pills ups John J. Anthony’s weekday afternoon quarter hour of advice for troubled listeners from ten Mutual affiliates to the full network compliment of 250 stations. 
DEC 3 1945   New York Post publisher Dorothy Thackrey, owner of WLIB/New York City and KYA/San Francisco buys KMTR/Los Angeles for a reported $280,500.
DEC 3 1945   Baritone Gordon MacRae, 27, released from the Air Force, begins a weekday afternoon quarter hour of songs on CBS at 4:30 p.m.  (See The Railroad Hour.)
DEC 3 1945   Sergeant Hy Averback, a network talent in civilian life, assumes the role of disc jockey Tokyo Mose - a daily takeoff on Tokyo Rose - on 18 Armed Forces Radio Network stations from WVTR/Tokyo.
DEC 3 1947   American Tobacco deals ABC’s Wednesday night lineup a blow by canceling The Jack Paar Show. 
DEC 3 1947   The Commonwealth of Kentucky sues the four networks and 16 Kentucky stations for $1.15 Million in back franchise fees and state taxes on the grounds that they are public utilities.
DEC 3 1948  CBS announces that its Radio Sales Division will represent no more than 15 stations including its own. 
DEC 3 1948   The NLRB rejects transcription companies’ complaints that the AFM ban on recording for transcription services violates The Taft-Hartley Act.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 3 1950   Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt appears in a guest role on Eddie Cantor’s NBC-TV Colgate Comedy Hour.
DEC 3 1951   ABC-TV premieres its first Los Angeles originated coast-to-coast program, You Asked For It, hosted by Art Baker.
DEC 3 1952   NBC Board Chairman Niles Trammell resigns after 30 years with the network to become CEO of a Miami television station applicant.
DEC 3 1952   FCC reports that 136 television licenses have been granted since lifting its four year “freeze”.  
DEC 3 1953   WGAR/Cleveland is sold by the G.A. Richards estate to an investment group for $1.75 Million.
DEC 3 1953   DuMont’s 100 station network created to carry Saturday night or Sunday afternoon NFL pro football games with local team home games blacked out wins praise from the league for boosting attendance and from sponsor Westinghouse for ratings in the 20’s and 30’s. 
DEC 3 1953   Bing Crosby and associates sell KXLY AM&TV/Spokane for $1.75 Million.

DEC 4  1916 University of Wisconsin experimental station 9XM/Madison, Wisconsin, (later WHA), begins daily weather forecasts in Morse Code. 
DEC 4 1923 The National Carbon Company introduces radio’s first major variety show, The Eveready Hour on  Tuesday nights from WEAF/New York City. 


DEC 4 1932   Walter Winchell, 35, premieres his Jergens Journal and starts his successful 24 year run of 15 minute Sunday night newscasts on Blue/ABC. (See Walter Winchell on this site.)
DEC 4 1933   Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial Ma Perkins is moved by sponsor Procter & Gamble from WLW/Cincinnati to NBC, beginning a 26 year run on NBC and CBS, all starring Virginia Payne, then 25, in the title role. 
DEC 4 1936   Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll convert the first of two Friday night Amos & Andy broadcasts of the month into 15 minute minstrel shows performed before studio audiences.
DEC 4 1936   Frank & Anne Hummert are listed a stockholders in a new process of recording and reproducing radio programs on motion picture film, Miller Phototone.
DEC 4 1938   A crowd estimated at 500 pickets the studios of WDAS/Philadelphia after the station cancels its Sunday afternoon broadcasts of controversial Detroit priest Charles Coughlin.  (See Father Coughlin.)
DEC 4 1940   Songwriter Alfred Aarons, 80, sues Irving Berlin, Kate Smith, CBS, NBC, ASCAP and 1,000 John Does for plagiarism, claiming his America My Home So Fair was stolen by Berlin in writing God Bless America.  (See Kate’s Great Song.)
DEC 4 1941  NBC reserves the name United Broadcasting System - (or UBS) - as the possible identity for its Blue network when divorced from NBC control.
DEC 4 1941   Reviving its campaign to impose an excise tax on radio, the International Allied Printing Trades union tells its members to write Congress demanding that 50% of all radio station licenses be given to non-profit labor, farm, educational or religious groups.
DEC 4 1942   Procter & Gamble’s soap opera Ma Perkins, heard weekdays on both CBS and NBC, celebrates its 10th anniversary. 
DEC 4 1942   NBC’s Information Please originates from Boston’s Symphony Hall for an audience of 2,700 who bought War Bonds for admission, generating over $4.0 Million in sales.  (See Information Please.)
DEC 4 1942   CBS cancels early soap opera Clara, Lu & Em, ending its sporadic eleven year multi-network run.
DEC 4 1944   Foreign language station WHOM/New York City converts to 50% English language programming. 
DEC 4 1944   ASCAP considers charging taxicabs a fee for the music played on their radios.  
DEC 4 1945   Red Skelton returns from the Army to his Tuesday night show on NBC.  (See Tuesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 4 1945   Tommy Dorsey announces he will hire a former member of his band, now in the Armed Forces, to become the band’s full time radio engineer to supervise all of its broadcast appearances.
DEC 4 1946   U.S. Justice Department plans to appeal to the Supreme Court after a Chicago judge rules that The Lea Act, aimed at prohibiting union featherbedding, is unconstitutional.
DEC 4 1946   Pre-trial examinations begin in newscaster Don Goddard’s $78,000 suit against NBC, fired ten months earlier for comments made about Congressman John Rankin.
DEC 4 1946   Reverend Henry Rubel, known in Network Radio as comedy writer Hal Raynor credited with Joe Penner’s famous catch phrases, (“Wanna buy a duck?” and “You nasty man!”), dies at 44.
DEC 4 1947   At the request of New Jersey Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the FCC instructs all networks to turn over a record of all time sold or given to factions critical of the committee.
DEC 4 1947   BMI announces that 800 stations have signed agreements to use its copy-righted music.
DEC 4 1950   WOV/New York City begins a reading of The Lord’s Prayer every night at 11:00 p.m., tagged with a request that listeners pray silently for the safety of American troops in Korea.
DEC 4 1950  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall sign contracts with Ziv Productions to star in the transcribed series, Bold Venture.  (See Bogart & Bacall’s Bold Venture and Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.)
DEC 4 1950   CBS-TV debuts television’s first ongoing 15-minute weekday soap opera, The First Hundred Years, at an annual time and production cost to sponsor Procter & Gamble of $1.5 Million. 
DEC 4 1950   Inventor Hubert Schlafly introduces his Teleprompter for use on CBS-TV’s serial The First Hundred Years.
DEC 4 1950   NBC-TV Vice President Pat Weaver introduces Operation Frontal Lobe, his plan to move public service and educational programming into peak viewing times. 
DEC 4 1950   The Radio-Television Manufacturers’ Association says the industry is on track to produce 10 Million television picture tubes during the year - 92% of which are 16 inches or larger.
DEC 4 1951   WMGM/New York City becomes an affiliate of Gordon McLendon’s Liberty Broadcasting System.
DEC 4 1952   Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, 47, is elected President of NBC.
DEC 4 1953   CBS serial Ma Perkins celebrates its 20th anniversary on Network Radio. 

DEC 5 1930  NBC fires 50 lower-level staff members in a budget-directed trimming of all departments. 
DEC 5 1933   The 21st Amendment becomes law, repealing The 18th Amendment and Prohibition - but networks and stations refuse to accept hard liquor advertising.
DEC 5 1933   Phillips H. Lord’s Cruise of The Seth Parker sets sail from Jones Harbor, Maine, on a planned world voyage beginning with weekly half-hour NBC broadcasts from the four-masted schooner at 13 Eastern ports. (See The 1933-34 Season.)
DEC 5 1936   Comedian Walter O’Keefe leaves Sealtest’s Saturday Night Party on NBC in a dispute over his material. 
DEC 5 1938   FCC dismisses without action the 372 complaints resulting from Orson Welles’ October 30th War of The Worlds broadcast on CBS, citing the 255 letters and petitions praising the program. (See War of The Worlds.)
DEC 5 1938   WXYZ/Detroit reports 107 stations in the United States and Australia carry The Lone Ranger either live, via Mutual or by transcription.  (See The Lone Ranger.)
DEC 5 1940   WIOD/Miami begins a week of special news broadcasts specifically for President Roosevelt every afternoon at 2:30.  The newscasts contain wire reports and dispatches for FDR and his staff vacationing aboard the USS Tuscaloosa cruising in the Caribbean.
DEC 5 1941   To comply with FCC anti-monopoly restrictions, NBC establishes its Blue network as a “separate and independent” entity.
DEC 5 1941  NBC abandons its exclusivity requirement for affiliates, allowing them to take programs from other networks when no conflicts with its own programs are involved.
DEC 5 1941   CBS Director of Research Frank Stanton takes on a second assignment as consultant to the U.S. Office of Facts & Figures.
DEC 5 1941   FCC revises its earlier claim that 249 radio stations are controlled by or affiliated with newspapers to a new total of 111 after broadcasters dispute its findings. 
DEC 5 1941   Shirley Temple, 13, begins a limited series of four Friday night half hour variety shows on CBS during the holiday season for a fee of $4,000 per broadcast.
DEC 5 1943   Philco and trade paper Variety launch their  elaborate Sunday evening hour, The Radio Hall of Fame, on 109 Blue Network stations.. (See The Radio Hall of Fame.)
DEC 5 1943   Mutual debuts its mystery anthology, The Mysterious Traveler, destined for a nine year run with Maurice Tarplin as its host-narrator.
DEC 5 1944   Musicians union head James Petrillo threatens NBC and Blue with a strike if they comply with the NLRB decision to assign “platter turner” duties to rival union NABET engineers.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 5 1945   FCC grants a block of 23 new FM licenses to applicants from 13 states.
DEC 5 1945   AFM boss Petrillo demands that the networks ban all broadcasts of foreign orchestras, except Canadian, and that all network affiliates employ union musicians.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 5 1945   Bing Crosby, Patrice Munsel and the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra headline a half-hour fund raiser for the Sister Kenny Foundation on Mutual.
DEC 5 1945   AFRS ships 500 discs of its two-hour Christmas Command Performance starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and dozens of other familiar names to its stations around the world.  (See Command Performance)
DEC 5 1946   President Truman appoints Charles R. Denny, Jr.,  34, Chairman of the FCC filling the post vacated by Paul Porters move to the Office of Price Administration.
DEC 5 1946   CBS affiliate KMBC/Kansas City begins transcribing the network’s Thursday night block of Inner Sanctum, Suspense, Crime Photographer and Mr. Keen for late hour broadcasts on separate nights for “…civic betterment by not exposing youth to the programs and encouraging juvenile delinquency.” (See Inner Sanctum and Sus...pense!)
DEC 5 1946   Paramount’s experimental W6XYZ(TV)/Los Angeles begins programming six nights a week and takes delivery on two RCA Image Orthicon cameras to cover sports events.
DEC 5 1947   Indiana Senator Homer Capehart demands a congressional investigation into what he alleges is FCC Commissioner Clifford Durr’s, “…brazen effort to sabotage the FBI.”
DEC 5 1947   Rodeo and circus performer Earl Currey, who claims to have used the name Lone Star Ranger for 25 years,  sues The Lone Ranger, Inc., for $50,000, charging interference in using his stage identity.  (See The Lone Ranger.)
DEC 5 1947   ABC kids’ serial Jack Armstrong begins a listener contest offering 1,100 radio-phonographs as prizes. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
DEC 5 1947   ABC’s coverage of the Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Heavyweight Championship fight scores a 41.5 Hooperating.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 5 1947   FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover makes his first appearance on a commercial program, addressing juvenile delinquency on ABC’s This Is Your FBI.  (See FBI Vs. FBI.)
DEC 5 1949   The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear the case of two Little Rock stations appealing an annual municipal tax of $250 plus $50 for each of their salesmen.
DEC 5 1949   The three year old FM Association of nearly 200 stations votes to merge with the NAB.
DEC 5 1950   RCA conducts a successful press preview of its improved color television system shown side-by-side with the identical images on a black and white receiver. 
DEC 5 1951   Newspaper drama Big Town is heard on two networks each week for a month as it switches from NBC to CBS. (See Big Big Town.)
DEC 5 1951   CBS buys a minority interest in Air Features, Inc., for $258,000, giving it first right of refusal to programs produced by Frank & Anne Hummert not already owned by sponsors or other networks.
DEC 5 1951   The New York Yankees refuse to allow any of its 1952 season games to be broadcast by the Mutual or Liberty networks.
DEC 5 1951   Dr. Allen DuMont reports turning down a $16.0 Million offer for his company’ three television stations, WABD(TV)/New York, WTTG(TV)/Washington and WDTV(TV)/ Pittsburgh. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
DEC 5 1952   The Green Hornet from WXYZ/Detroit  leaves Network Radio after a twelve year, multi-network run.
DEC 5 1952   The Ford Foundation reveals it has budgeted $5.0 Million for equipping educational television stations.
DEC 5 1952   Officials of the DuMont television network label as “nonsense” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s refusal to carry Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Life Is Worth Living program because it violates the network’s ban against paid religious programming.

DEC 6 1923 President Calvin Coolidge’s address to Congress is broadcast by a six station network and is heard as far West as St. Louis.
DEC 6 1935   WLW/Cincinnati reports receiving 170,000 requests in two weeks for the Lum & Abner Almanac, offered in return for the label from a fifty cent package of Horlick Malted Milk. 
DEC 6 1935   KTRH/Houston broadcasts reports from its building’s rooftop when a two-day flood of the city’s downtown area begins that eventually causes eight fatalities and $2.5 Million in damages.
DEC 6 1936   Legendary WNEW disc jockey Martin Block stages his first Make Believe Ballroom Ball at the Kreuger Auditorium in Newark with music provided by Shep Fields’ popular orchestra.
DEC 6 1937   The District of Columbia Court of Appeals rules that broadcasting stations are not public utilities, contradicting the opinion of FCC Chairman Frank McNinch. 
DEC 6 1937   WJBK/Detroit loads its schedule with five-minute newscasts on the hour, 20 hours a day.
DEC 6 1937 AFRA reports its Los Angeles local membership has swelled to over 800 members.
DEC 6 1940   CBS-owned WBBM/Chicago informs General Mills that it will discontinue its baseball play-by-play broadcasts in 1941 despite their $125,000 value in time charges to the station. 
DEC 6 1941   NBC Director of Public Service Programs Walter G. Preston, Jr., 39, is found dead in his apartment, a victim of sedative overdose. 
DEC 6 1941   FTC orders Lady Esther Cosmetics to cease and desist its commercials’ claim that its face powder is “pure” and implying that rival products contain sand or other possible poisonous impurities.   
DEC 6 1942   Fred Allen introduces his first crew of Allen’s Alley characters including Minerva Pious as Mrs. Pansy Neusbaum and Alan Reed as Falstaff Openshaw.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 6 1943   The four networks all break into regular programming at 1:00 p..m. for official communiqués from Cairo resulting from the Tehran and Cairo conferences attended by President Roosevelt. 
DEC 6 1943 The OWI broadcasts news of the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin Tehran conference over 20 shortwave transmitters in 26 languages and dialects for 24 hours.
DEC 6 1944   NBC broadcasts the 11:30 p.m. hour long Sixth War Loan Show Goes On starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Edgar Bergen, Frances Langford, Dinah Shore and others, hailed by Variety as, “…a dream show.”
DEC 6 1945   Elliott Roosevelt is revealed as Vice President and 5% owner of the group granted a new 250 watt station in Camden, Arkansas.
DEC 6 1946   FCC “liberalizes” its rule regarding the identification of transcribed programming by eliminating the identification requirement for commercials or material of one minute or less.
DEC 6 1947   ABC’s Abbott & Costello Kids’ Show begins its 18 month run on Saturday mornings. 
DEC 6 1947   C.E. Hooper reports a 26.7 rating for Truth Or Consequences on its broadcast when dancer Martha Graham is identified as Miss Hush for $21,500 in prizes. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 6 1948   NBC announces the establishment of a $2.5 Million pool to build programs and hire talent in reaction to the CBS raid on its top shows.
DON 6 1948   Don Ameche enters weekday afternoon radio for 13 weeks with American Tobacco’s short-lived talent show, Your Lucky Strike, on CBS. 
DEC 6 1948   Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts debuts as a simulcast on CBS Radio and TV, seen live on television in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.  (See Arthur Godfrey.)
DEC 6 1948   Firestone Tire & Rubber moves its Americana ahead one hour on NBC-TV to avoid competing with Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on CBS-TV.
DEC 6 1950   President Truman awards a posthumous Medal of Merit to Al Jolson for his services entertaining U.S troops during World War II and the Korean war.  
DEC 6 1952   Dennis James and Jane Pickens host an 18 hour overnight Cerebral Palsy telethon on WJZ-TV/New York City that raises over $553,500.

DEC 7 1933   Senate hearings begin on The Tugwell Bill containing strict regulations on the advertising of food and drug products.
DEC 7 1934   Standard Oil debuts The O’Flynns on CBS Friday nights for 13 weeks before deciding to back the musical comedy on Broadway.
DEC 7 1935   NBC dedicates its new Hollywood studios with a special two hour program featuring Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Rudy Vallee, Ben Bernie, Paul Whiteman and other network stars.
DEC 7 1935   As requested by FCC officials, WRC/Washington plays 30 minutes of unannounced music appropriate for nuptials heard during the  Saturday afternoon wedding of FCC attorney Frank Fletcher.
DEC 7 1936   FCC Telegraph Commissioner George Henry Payne files a $100,000 libel suit against Broadcasting magazine for an editorial accusing Payne of, “…throwing mud for the purpose of getting newspaper headlines.”
DEC 7 1937   Buffalo stations assume emergency status as a “lake effect” storm begins that leaves up to four feet of snow in the city’s northern suburbs.
DEC 7 1938  The first daily newspaper transmitted by facsimile is broadcast by The St. Louis Post Dispatch on experimental station W9XYZ.
DEC 7 1939   A St. Louis jury awards John Calvin Leonard of Chicago $500 in his $36,875 lawsuit against WIL/St. Louis for non-payment for services rendered including five years as its “radio pastor”. 
DEC 7 1940   Texaco begins its 20 years of sponsoring The Metropolitan Opera - 18 on Blue/ABC and two on CBS..
DEC 7 1941  Associated Press flashes the first bulletin of the Pearl Harbor attack at 1:07 p.m.  White House confirmation follows at 2:25 p.m. Mutual becomes first network to break the news at 2:26.  Continuing network coverage results in a Hooper reported sets in use figure of 48.9%.  (See The 1941-42 Season.)
DEC 7 1941 Navy Ensign Thomas McClelland, 37, formerly chief engineer at KLZ/Denver, dies in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming the first member of the broadcast industry killed in World War II action.
DEC 7 1941   NBC adds a fourth chime to its three-chime system cue signature at 2:45 p.m. - the signal for all newsmen, technicians and executives to report for preassigned emergency duties. 
DEC 7 1941 Jim Wahl of KGU/Honolulu provides NBC with a six minute eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack at 4:46 p.m., shortly before Hawaiian radio stations are ordered off the air for a week. 
DEC 7 1941   Mutual newsman Royal Arch Gunderson in Manila provides eyewitness reports of Japanese paratroops invading the Philippines. 
DEC 7 1941   An RCA switching error results in CBS correspondent Ford Wilkins giving his news report from Manila over both the NBC and Blue networks, concluding with, “…I return you now to CBS in New York.”.
DEC 7 1941   NBC shortwave stations WRCA and WNBI and CBS shortwave stations WCBX and WCAB shift to 24 hour operation to provide news services to Europe and Latin America. 
DEC 7 1941   NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City focuses a camera on copy from an AP teletype machine as news reports from the Pacific are printed.
DEC 7 1941   Following FCC orders broadcast by the Amateur Radio Relay League, 50,000 amateur radio stations voluntarily shut down within 20 minutes. 
DEC 7 1942   FDR’s Fireside Chat on the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack draws a 50.3 Hooperating.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 7 1942   NBC notes the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack with The Road To Victory, written and narrated by Carl Sandburg on Cavalcade of America.  (See The Cavalcade of America.)
DEC 7 1942   NBC shuffles its news staff, sending Washington bureau chief Morgan Beatty to London and recalling Robert St. John from London to replace Beatty.
DEC 7 1943   Two of the three electrical transmission lines from Boulder Dam are mysteriously cut off for 15 minutes throwing eight Los Angeles area stations off the air for brief periods.
DEC 7 1944   Cecil B. DeMille is granted a temporary restraining order to prevent AFRA from keeping him from his host duties of Lux Radio Theater which he says pays him $98,200 annually. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
DEC 7 1945   Vic & Sade concludes its 13 year multi-network run as a 15 minute weekday sitcom serial.  (See Vic & Sade.)
DEC 7 1945   ABC cancels its mid-day Farm & Homemakers’ Program, Network Radio’s oldest farm show, after an 18 year run.   
DEC 7 1946   After two months of negotiation, AFRA wins a 20% pay raise for its members on all network and transcribed programs.
DEC 7 1947   NBC replaces The Big Break on its Sunday night schedule with Horace Height’s Youth Opportunity Program, beginning a successful five season run.
DEC 7 1947   Videograph Corporation holds a preview of its seven foot tall combination jukebox and television player that, for a nickel, will play one of 40 records or three minutes of television.
DEC 7 1948   FCC approves CBS acquiring 49% of KTTV(TV)/Los Angeles from the Times-Mirror Corporation for $367,500. 
DEC 7 1949   ABC commentator Drew Pearson seeks to increase his damage suit against columnist Westbrook Pegler  from $500,000 to $1.2 Million.
DEC 7 1951   CBS Radio announces its new Selective Facilities Plan allowing advertisers to use any “reasonable” number of affiliates they wish for programs if they allow the programs’ sale to non-competitive advertisers in markets they don’t buy. 
DEC 7 1951   CBS-TV signs DuMont Network comedy star Jackie Gleason to a three year contract worth $550,000 per year.
DEC 7 1952   Television sitcom My Little Margie with Gale Storm and Charles Farrell, is adapted as a separately scripted radio series and begins a three season run on CBS.
DEC 7 1952   Veteran New York City announcer and newsreel narrator Alois Havrilla, whose career began in 1928, dies in Englewood, New Jersey, at 61.
DEC 7 1953   The U.S. Supreme Court votes 6-3 affirming an NLRB decision the WBTV(TV)/Charlotte, had the right in 1949 to fire IBEW engineers who distributed handbills disparaging the station.
DEC 7 1953   Reports by Mutual newscaster Fulton Lewis, Jr. prompts the order of a grand jury investigation into illegal gambling and sale of alcohol to minors in St. Mary's County, Maryland. 

DEC 8 1932   Comedian-writer Sid Silvers is abruptly fired from Jack Benny’s Canada Dry Program when Benny and wife Mary Livingston accuse him of rewriting her punch lines for himself.  
DEC 8 1933   The Senate Commerce Committee rules that sweeping changes are necessary in the Tugwell Bill affecting food and drug advertising to make it practical and enforceable. 
DEC 8 1935  Teleflash, Inc., takes over the operation of the financially failing Ticker News Service for wired radio subscribers in New York City.
DEC 8 1936   Comedy writer Dave Freedman, 39, dies in his sleep one day after testifying in his $250,000 breach of contract  lawsuit against Eddie Cantor filed a year earlier. 
DEC 8 1937  American Tobacco replaces the Wednesday edition of Your Hit Parade on NBC with Your Hollywood Parade produced with Warner Brothers and hosted by Dick Powell, joined two weeks later by Bob Hope.  (See Dick Powell.)
DEC 8 1937   Benny Goodman’s Swing School becomes the first in a series of CBS programs transmitted by the network’s shortwave station, W2XE/Wayne, New Jersey, to London for broadcast by the BBC.  (See The King of Swing.)
DEC 8 1938   Detroit priest Charles Coughlin files a $2.0 Million libel suit against The Detroit Free Press.  (See Father Coughlin.) 
DEC 8 1939   Newspaper publisher James Cox buys The Atlanta Journal and its 50,000 watt NBC affiliate WSB/Atlanta for $3.0 Million.
DEC 8 1939   The Transcontinental Broadcasting System network lists 92 affiliates, anchored by WMCA/New York City, for its projected January 1st start date of programs - mostly rebroadcasts of Frank & Anne Hummert soap operas.   
DEC 8 1940   The London offices of NBC and CBS are damaged in a two day air attack from German bombers.
DEC 8 1940   Red Barber reports the first NFL championship game heard coast-to-coast, Mutual’s broadcast of the Chicago Bears shutout of the Washington Redskins, 73-0. 
DEC 8 1941   Bert Silen and Don Bell of KZRH/Manila provide NBC with a live eyewitness report of the Japanese bombing of the city.  Both are later imprisoned by the invaders - Bell is killed, Silen survives.
DEC 8 1941  President Roosevelt’s noon address declaring war registers a daytime record 65.7 CAB rating.   (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 8 1941  All California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho stations are ordered off the air at dusk with only one minute news flashes allowed every quarter hour until midnight to prevent their signals from becoming homing beacons for Japanese planes.
DEC 8 1941  Lew Valentine, the original Dr. I.Q., leaves the NBC show to become managing partner of KPAB/Laredo, Texas, and is replaced by Jimmy McClain who had hosted Dr. I.Q. Junior during the summer.  (See Dr. I.Q.)
DEC 8 1943  NBC commentator H.V. Kaltenborn, speaking from Admiral Halsey’s Pacific headquarters, predicts that the U.S. will appoint a Secretary of Defense after World War II over the undersecretaries of the Army and Navy.  (See H.V. Kaltenborn.)
DEC 8 1943   After 13 years as a 15 minute multiple run program, Easy Aces becomes a weekly half-hour sitcom on CBS.  (See Easy Aces.)
DEC 8 1944 With the assistance of CBS technicians, Jimmy Durante in New York City and Garry Moore in Los Angeles perform their Friday night show as if they were in the same studio. (See Goodnight Mr. Durante...)
DEC 8 1945   Truth Or Consequences producer/host Ralph Edwards is awarded the Treasury Department’s Distinguished Service Citation for helping sell $519 Million in Series E Bonds.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
DEC 8 1947   Radio actress Delores Gillen, popular for her impersonations of young children and infants, dies of post-surgery complications.  At the time of her death she was featured on three network soap operas.
DEC 8 1947   Considered a broadcasting first, the Rupert Brewery uses its nightly sports report on WOR/New York City to promote its sponsorship of the televised pro football all-star game on WABD(TV) the following Sunday.
DEC 8 1947   Lew Valentine, 35, retires from his second run as radio’s Dr. I.Q. to enter the advertising business, and is replaced on the NBC quiz show by Stanley Vainrib of  KIXL/Dallas. (See Dr. I.Q.)
DEC 8 1947   Paramount’s KTLA(TV)/Los Angeles begins regular programming seven hours daily, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. 
DEC 8 1951   Pioneeer NBC foreign correspondent Dr. Max Jordan, 56, is ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Germany.
DEC 8 1952   Network Radio’s oldest sponsored musical series, The Voice of Firestone, celebrates its 25th anniversary on NBC.  (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 8 1952   AFTRA negotiates a 12½% pay raise with the television networks and a 10% raise with the radio networks.
DEC 8 1952   RCA introduces its new console television set with a 27-inch picture tube.
DEC 8 1953   New York City radio and television stations reap $250,000 in additional advertising revenue as the city’s eleven day newspaper strike ends.

DEC 9 1921 Electronics school operator Charles (Doc) Herrold’s 15 watt experimental station, known by many identities since 1909, is authorized by the Commerce Department to operate as KQW/San Jose, California. 
DEC 9 1932   First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt begins her sporadic Network Radio career of 19 years.
DEC 9 1935   Competitors and civic groups protest the FCC’s consideration to allow Texas publisher and broadcaster Amon Carter to move his KGKO/Wichita Falls to Fort Worth where he already operates two stations.
DEC 9 1937   Frank Morgan joins the permanent cast of NBC’s Good News of 1938 as comic foil to its rotating movie star hosts, Robert Young, Jimmy Stewart and Robert Taylor.
(See Frank Morgan and Good News.)
DEC 9 1938   Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater becomes The Campbell Playhouse on CBS, capitalizing on the notoriety of Welles’ War of The Worlds broadcast five weeks earlier.  (See War of The Worlds.)
DEC 9 1940   John McVane reports on NBC from London that NBC newsman Fred Bate was hospitalized with glass cuts and severe bruises when an explosion blew him across the room in the previous night’s Nazi bombing of the city.  
DEC 9 1940   Comedy panel show Can You Top This? begins as a local program on WOR/New York City.  (See Can You Top This?)  
DEC 9 1940   WMCA/New York is reported sold to Lifesaver candy manufacturer Edward J. Noble for $850,000.  Noble will sell station three years later allowing him to buy NBC’s Blue Network and its New York flagship, WJZ.
DEC 9 1941   The military ordered blackout of West Coast stations is lifted for five minute newscasts every half hour until 12:34 p.m. PT when regular schedules are resumed after 19½ hours.  Stations continue with shorter periodic blackouts on staggered schedules for four more days.
DEC 9 1941   President Roosevelt’s war message scores highest Hooperating on record - a 79.0 rating representing national audience of 90 million, approximately 80% of the population.  His CAB rating is even higher at 83.0.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 9 1941   NBC joins CBS and Mutual in banning all sirens and alarm sounds from dramatic programs for the duration of World War II.
DEC 9 1942   Canadian-born San Francisco announcer Art Linkletter, 30, is indicted on charges of falsely claiming U. S. citizenship.  His defense claims his adoptive parents never told him he was Canadian. (See People Are Funny.)
DEC 9 1944   Al Pearce begins his seventh and final prime time show - 26 weeks on CBS Saturday nights for Lewis-Howe’s Tums antacid tablets.
DEC 9 1945   CBS broadcasts an all-star hour-long tribute to composer Jerome Kern highlighted by a transcontinental duet of his Make Believe sung by Nelson Eddy in Los Angeles and Patrice Munsel in New York City.
DEC 9 1946   The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the FCC’s ruling to revoke the license of WOKO/Albany, New York.
DEC 9 1946   Edwin C. Hill begins a weekday afternoon news commentary on ABC. 
DEC 9 1946   New York Post owner Dorothy Thackrey asks the FCC to dismiss her applications for television statons in New York City and San Francisco.  
DEC 9 1948   Newscaster Robert Trout’s panel quiz, Who Said That?, heard late Sunday nights on NBC, debuts in prime time on NBC-TV’s Thursday night schedule.
DEC 9 1950   WSAI/Cincinnati is sold by Chicago’s Marshall Field to Detroit chain broadcaster Fort Industries, (aka Storer), for $350,000, which is $200,00 less than Field paid Crosley Broadcasting for the station in 1948. 
DEC 9 1950   Cuba’s demands for additional AM frequencies threatens the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement  (See The March of Change.)
DEC 9 1952   Commentator Drew Pearson leaves ABC-TV, dissatisfied with his late Sunday timeslot from 11:00 to 11:15 p.m.
DEC 9 1953   WOR-TV/New York City becomes the seventh and final television station to transmit from the tower atop the Empire State Building.

DEC 10 1931 Thirteen Los Angeles radio stations meet and give two weeks’ notice to 25% of their staff musicians in response to AFM demands for higher wages.
DEC 10 1938   Kellogg Cereals signs actress Carole Lombard for what it promises will be “a new idea in radio” - The Circle - beginning on NBC in January, 1939, with a budget equal to The Chase & Sanborn Hour.  (See The 1938-39 Season.)
DEC 10 1939   NBC dispatches remote facilities to a Los Angeles hospital where Edgar Bergen was confined with an infection - allowing Bergen and his Charlie McCarthy to appear on The Chase & Sanborn Hour.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 10 1939   CBS Director of Television Gilbert Seldes tells the Variety Club banquet, “…it will be at least 50 years before we have television perfected.”
DEC 10 1941   CBS correspondent Cecil Brown survives the sinking of the British warship HMS Repulse, hit by Japanese bombs and torpedoes off the coast of Malaya and killing over 800 crewmen. 
DEC 10 1942   CBS and NBC file appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify the FCC’s chain-monopoly regulations.
DEC 10 1943   NBC Chief Engineer O.B. Hanson tells the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee that he envisions 1,000 television stations and 25 million receivers in the United States within ten years.
DEC 10 1943   FCC permits KGNF/North Platte, Nebraska, to change its call sign to KODY as a tribute to former area resident Wild Bill Cody.
DEC 10 1944   Armed Forces Radio Service records and ships a five hour package of Christmas shows starring Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore and dozens of other headliners to 440 AFRS outlets.
DEC 10 1944   WAIT/Chicago reports success selling small “bullet proof” Bibles with steel covers as gifts for the breast pockets of servicemen in combat. 
DEC 10 1945   Singer Jack Smith takes the ten stations vacated by Vic & Sade, increasing his Procter & Gamble show’s weeknight CBS stations list to 69.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 10 1945   Philco’s WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia announces that it will leave the air for six weeks while it changes from Channel 3 to Channel 2.
DEC 10 1946   Newspaper columnist and short story author Damon Runyon dies of cancer at 62. 
DEC 10 1946   DuMont’s WTTG(TV)/Washington, D.C., operating on a 90 day license, broadcasts its first commercial program, a professional hockey match from Uline Arena, sponsored by U.S. Rubber.
DEC 10 1948   Newscaster Gabriel Heatter, 58, signs a five year, $1.0 Million exclusive contract with Mutual
DEC 10 1950   Newscaster Paul Harvey, 33, begins his legendary 56 year Network Radio career on ABC.
DEC 10 1951  President Truman authorizes the FCC to shut down radio and television stations in the event of enemy attack.
DEC 10 1951   WMGM becomes the New York City affiliate of the Liberty Broadcasting System.
DEC 10 1953   ABC newsman Chet Huntley sues a Los Angeles social activist for $200,000 after she labels him a Communist and tells his sponsors, “…he’s a dirty low-down skunk.” 

DEC 11 1930  NBC-owned WTAM/Cleveland cuts Rudy Vallee’s performance of the song, Oh, How I Cried The Morning After The Night Before With You, from its broadcast of  NBC's Fleischmann Yeast Hour as too suggestive.
DEC 11 1931 CBS begins its coverage of the 1932 Olympic Games with Ted Husing’s daily interviews of U.S. Olympic athletes.
DEC 11 1933   The American Newspaper Publishers Association and the radio industry meet to establish the Press Radio Bureau which provides stations with a ration of only two five minute news capsules a day.  (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
DEC 11 1933  Twenty employees of the pioneering CBS News Service, eliminated by the Press-Radio Bureau agreement, lose their jobs.  (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
DEC 11 1933   Clause 4-D in The Broadcasting Code of The National Recovery Act banning payola to perform songs on radio goes into effect. 
DEC 11 1933   FCC authorizes WBT/Charlotte to increase its power from 25,000 to 50,000 watts.
DEC 11 1933   A&P grocery stores buy time on WBBM/Chicago six mornings a week to announce its price specials for the day to its area store managers and customers.
DEC 11 1936   Crossley reports an East Coast rating of 45.0 for the seven-minute abdication speech by England’s King Edward VIII relayed by the BBC from London to the American radio networks at 5:00 p.m.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen,)
DEC 11 1936   U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Education Commissioner John Ward Studebaker both stun hard line educators demanding more influence in radio with statements to The Radio Education Committee complimenting broadcasters for doing a commendable job serving educational interests. 
DEC 11 1936   Brace Beemer, for seven years the Production Manager of WXYZ/Detroit and the Michigan State Network, announces his resignation effective January 30th.  (See The Lone Ranger.)
DEC 11 1938   The General Jewish Council organizes an ad-hoc network responding to the previous Sunday’s address by Detroit priest Charles Coughlin considered by many to be anti-Semitic.  (See Father Coughlin.)
DEC 11 1939   Momentum for the new Transcontinental Broadcasting System headed by Elliot Roosevelt continues to grow, announcing a weekday schedule of six hours of Frank & Anne Hummert productions.
DEC 11 1939   Critics question Carleton E. Morse’s use of his popular One Man’s Family actors Michael Raffeto, Barton Yarborough and Walter Paterson as the leads in his I Love A Mystery, heard on NBC only 30 minutes  apart on Wednesday nights.  (See I Love A Mystery and I Love A Sequel.)
DEC 11 1941  Legendary radio pioneer Dr. Frank Conrad who put 8XK/Pittsburgh on the air in 1919 - which became KDKA in 1920 - dies of a heart ailment at 67.
DEC 11 1941   KGKO/Fort Worth is put off the air for 30 minutes when a Navy training plane rips through a 12,000 volt power line at its transmitter site before landing safely with no injuries.  
DEC 11 1941   American born Mildred Gellars, 40, begins her 3½  year run as Axis Sally on Radio Berlin.
DEC 11 1942   NBC originates an all-network broadcast from the deck of the damaged cruiser USS San Francisco returned from the Pearl Harbor attack to San Francisco.
DEC 11 1943   WXYZ/Detroit broadcasts conversations between defense plant workers assembled at City Hall and crew members of The Rangoon Rambler bomber flying overhead on its stateside tour.  
DEC 11 1943   Truth Or Consequences originates its broadcast from a one-room school-house in Brookfield, Missouri, winner of the program’s scrap paper salvage contest.  (See Truth Or Consequences.) 
DEC 11 1944   Phillips Carlin, former Vice President of Programs for Blue, takes a similar position at Mutual.
DEC 11 1944   Perry Como’s 15 minute weeknight strip, Chesterfield Supper Club, co-starring Jo Stafford and Peggy Lee, begins its five season run on NBC. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears.) 
DEC 11 1944   Trade group Television Broadcasters Association holds its first convention in New York City attended by over a thousand delegates, most representing equipment manufacturers, only 20% broadcasters.
DEC 11 1950   A district court rules that KSTP/Minneapolis-St .Paul must pay $17,000 plus $3,800 in interest and lawyer fees to architects the station claimed didn’t design its new television studio floors strong enough to support six elephants.
DEC 11 1951 The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a lower court decision finding The Lorain Journal violated anti-trust laws in denying the sale of space to 40 companies who advertised on WEOL/Elyria, Ohio, eight miles away. 
DEC 11 1953   The Big Ten conference predicts an “entire collapse” of the NCAA’s control of televised college football.
DEC 11 1953   FCC approves ABC’s KECA & KECA-TV/Los Angeles becoming KABC and Storer Broadcasting’s San Antonio stations changing from KABC to KGBS.

DEC 12 1901   Guglielmo Marconi, 26, receives the three-dot “S” in Morse Code in St. John’s, Newfoundland, sent via wireless from his transmitter 2,000 miles away in Poldhu, Cornwall, on the western edge of England.  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
DEC 12 1930  Professor Albert Einstein arrives in the United States, greeted by both CBS and NBC which each had paid hundreds of dollars to separate agents of his favorite charities for “exclusive first” interviews. 
DEC 12 1932   CBS prohibits the performance of any song more than once every three hours to prevent payola.
DEC 12 1935   A fire causing $300,000 in damage hits the new Post Office building where the FCC is housed in Washington, D.C., but commission files and records are unharmed.
DEC 12 1937   Actress Mae West creates a  furor with sexual innuendos in the infamous Adam & Eve sketch on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour.  (See Bergen, McCarthy And Adam & Eve.)
DEC 12 1941   NBC sells its concert and talent management divisions to four of its executives who will leave the network  to form the National Concert & Artists Corporation. 
DEC 12 1941   NBC hires an additional 100 security guards to prevent sabotage to its New York City studios and transmitters.
DEC 12 1941   WMPS/Memphis issues a pubic apology for two Blue Network items, (a Smith Brothers Cough Drops commercial and a remark by sportscaster Bill Corum), that its manager considers in poor taste at wartime.
DEC 12 1941   The wartime edict banning sirens from programs eliminates the familiar Gangbusters opening of sirens and gunshots which is replaced by an announcer without sound effects.
DEC 12 1944   Decca Records claims that Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, recorded in 1942, is the best selling record of all time with 2 million copies sold.
DEC 12 1944   The Blue Network announces six new affiliates - WCOP/Boston, KRNT/DesMoines, WPDQ/Jacksonville, WFTL/Ft. Lauderdale, WNAX/Yankton, South Dakota and WLAW/Lawrence, Massachusetts.  
DEC 12 1945   RCA engineers demonstrate an improved electronic black and white television system and a mechanical color system to a selected audience, concluding that the black and white system is ready for production while the color system will be ready in five years. 
DEC 12 1945   NBC owned WNBT(TV)/New York City temporarily increases it broadcast schedule to 17½ hours per week.
DEC 12 1946   The Detroit local of the AFM prohibits local high school bands from playing their annual Christmas concert on WJBK claiming their appearance would deny  work  to union musicians. (See Petrillo!)
DEC 12 1946   An NBC television crew films the early morning New York City tenement fire that kills over 40 and shows the films on WNBT(TV) that same evening.
DEC 12 1947   Goodman Ace leaves his position as head of CBS Comedy Development to return to the air.  (See Easy Aces and You Are There.)
DEC 12 1947   CBS Programming Vice President Robinson arrives in Hollywood to over-see the audition of a newspaper drama series starring Mickey Rooney.  (See Shorty Bell.) 
DEC 12 1947   The U.S. House Committee on Education & Labor proposes five changes to The Taft-Hartley Labor Law aimed at stopping, “…the abuses and monopolistic practices of the American Federation of Musicians."  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 12 1947   The Civil Aeronautics Authority sides with KSTP/Minneapolis-St Paul against the Twin City Metropolitan Airports Commission and allows the station to erect a 568-foot television tower in the cities’ Midway district.
DEC 12 1948   Chicago’s NFL teams, the Bears and Cardinals, break their no-television rule and allow both WGN-TV and WBKB(TV) to televise their annual game and feed it to ABC stations in the Midwest.
DEC 12 1950   Joseph Weber, 86, President of the AFM from 1900 to 1940, dies in Los Angeles. 
DEC 12 1951  After three years on NBC Lever Brothers moves newspaper drama Big Town back to CBS for the rest of its  final season.  (See Big Big Town.)
DEC 12 1951   International shortwave station WRUL/Boston celebrates the 50th anni-versary of the first Transatlantic radio signal - three dots - sent by Guglielmo Marconi’s transmitter in Poldhu, England, and received by Marconi in St. Johns, Newfoundland. 
DEC 12 1951   Writers of NBC’s Big Show are cautioned to avoid any reference to Tallulah Bankhead’s involvement in the court trial involving her maid misappropriating $4,000 of the actress’s funds.  (See Tallulah’s Big Show.)
DEC 12 1952   The St. Louis Cardinals sign an agreement with the Chicago Cubs giving them 30% of the television revenue for all games played between the two teams at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.  Similar agreements are expected to follow. 
DEC 12 1953   The National Basketball Association begins its first network television broadcasts to 50 cities on the DuMont Network.

DEC 13 1933   Yankee Network President John Shepherd 3rd is elected chairman of the National Recovery Act Radio Code Authority.
DEC 13 1936   Gillette donates three minutes of its Community Sing program on CBS for cut-in’s by affiliated stations to solicit Christmas funds for local charities.
DEC 13 1937 The North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, is signed in Havana by the United States, Canada, Mexico and Cuba, regulating the allocation of AM radio frequencies in the four countries. (See The March of Change.)
DEC 13 1937   AFM President Joe Weber reports that 256 local stations have signed contracts with the union.
DEC 13 1937   Singer Vaughn DeLeath seeks an injunction from a New York Supreme Court judge to prevent CBS from billing Kate Smith as “The First Lady of Radio”. 
DEC 13 1938   Writers Loedwick Vroom and George Butler sue NBC for $176,000 alleging that the network stole their idea for a program titled, The Understudy Hour. 
DEC 13 1938   Poet Austin Corcoran sues CBS for $175,000, alleging that it and Willis Carter, (aka Montana Slim), stole his Plain Bull verse for the song Ridin’ A Maverick.  
DEC 13 1939   The new Transcontinental Broadcasting System, scheduled to start on January 2nd, with an address by  President Roosevelt, reports it has signed 117 affiliates, which includes one CBS station, seven NBC affiliates and 23 Mutual outlets.  
DEC 13 1938   Blonde Georgia actress Patricia Wilder, 25, joins Bob Hope’s Pepsodent Show as his Southern stooge, Honeychile.  
DEC 13 1940   NBC begins a week of covering sports events with two television cameras in New York City with the professional wrestling matches from the Jamaica arena.  
DEC 13 1941   Using relaxed FCC rules allowing it to rebroadcast programs taken from U.S. shortwave stations, KFAR/Anchorage, Alaska, begins carrying NBC shows. 
DEC 13 1941   Liggett & Myers, sponsors of Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenades for Chesterfield cigarettes on CBS, prohibits Miller from appearing on Mutual’s Spotlight Bands program.  (See In The Miller Mood and Spotlight Bands.)
DEC 13 1942   Pabst Beer sponsors the Chicago Bears vs. Washington Redskins NFL Championship game on Mutual when Blue is unable to carry the game because of a time conflict with its National Vespers religious broadcast.
DEC 13 1942   New York City newspaper deliverers go on strike causing a sudden rush of holiday advertisers to the city’s radio stations.
DEC 13 1943   Irna Phillips changes the name of her NBC weekday serial Lonely Women to Today’s Children.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
DEC 13 1945   RCA previews its latest color television developments to 60 press representatives at its Princeton, New Jersey headquarters but David Sarnoff declares the perfection of color, "...is still at least five years away."
DEC 13 1945   CBS Executive Vice President Paul Kesten congratulates RCA on its successful color television demonstration then claims Sarnoff’s prediction is,  “… three or four years longer,” than expected for the CBS color system.
DEC 13 1946  Spot radio suffers a $2.0 Million loss with transcribed commercial can-cellations by Bristol-Myers, Sinclair Oil and Johnson & Johnson. 
DEC 13 1947   Singer Tony Martin rejects a $25,000 settlement from Bourgois Perfumes for “breaking a verbal 52 week commitment” and cancelling his CBS radio show after 26 weeks.
DEC 13 1947  Truth Or Consequences host Ralph Edwards asks listeners , “If you had the power, what would you give the world for Christmas?” He then directs his audience to Procter & Gamble soap operas on Christmas Day for to hear selected replies.  (See Truth Or Consequences.) 
DEC 13 1948   Bill Stern signs a new three year contract as Sports Director of NBC for a reported $2,250 per week in addition to his contract to narrate the weekly Colgate Sports Newsreel.  (See Bill Stern.)
DEC 13 1948   Bob Hope and associates bid “…in excess of $2.0 Million,” for WHAS AM-FM-TV/Louisville.
DEC 13 1951   The New York Giants baseball team joins the New York Yankees in banning Mutual and/or Liberty network coverage of their 1952 games. 
DEC 13 1951   CBS introduces two back-to-back half-hour shows from Hollywood, both similar in content and charitable purpose to Screen Guild Theater -  Hollywood Sound Stage, (cancelled in 13 weeks), and Stars In the Air, (runs for 26 weeks).  (See Acts of Charity and Monday's All Time Top Ten,)
DEC 13 1953   Dennis James hosts the 19 hour Cerebral Palsy telethon that begins at midnight on ABC television and radio, collecting $550,000 in pledges

DEC 14 1921   RCA opens WDY/Newark as a co-operative venture with General Electric.
DEC 14 1934   Reports circulate that leading magazine publishers have hired the new research firm of Clark-Hooper to measure radio listeners’ recall  of programs’ sponsors and advertising messages.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 14 1935   Bob Hope replaces Frank Parker as host of the Atlantic Family variety show on NBC.
DEC 14 1936   The U.S. Supreme Court throws out the two year old Associated Press case against KVOS/Bellingham, Washington, which accused the station of “pirating” the wire service’s material from local newspapers.
DEC 14, 1938    Jack Benny and George Burns are indicted in Federal court of smuggling jewelry into the country through a con man posing as a Nicaraguan diplomat.  Benny is fined $10,000, Burns is fined $8,000 and both receive suspended jail sentences. 
DEC 14 1938   A survey of metropolitan area stations conducted by Variety reports 1,116 musicians are employed by 52 stations. 
DEC 14 1939   Announcer-singer Bert Parks, 25, under personal contract to Eddie Cantor, sues Cantor for $2,200 in back salary and $5,000 in damages for keeping him off the air. 
DEC 14 1942   Veteran Philadelphia Inquirer and UP Washington correspondent Richard Harkness, 35, joins the Blue Network’s Washington bureau.
DEC 14 1942  Detroit radio executive and personality Cornelius Tomy, 64, known to listeners for over 20 years as Uncle Neal, dies at after a paralytic stroke. 
DEC 14 1942   FCC relaxes its rule that television stations must broadcast a minimum of 14 hours per week when wartime shortages of personnel and equipment force both NBC and CBS to reduce their New York City operations to four hours a week.
DEC 14 1945   The number of AM commercial stations authorized in the U.S. reaches 1,001. 
DEC 14 1945   The American Broadcasting Company pays The Associated Broadcasting Corporation $25,000 for exclusive use of ABC as its network identification.
DEC 14 1945   CBS gives a ten percent raise in salary to all non-union employees.
DEC 14 1945   Buffalo network stations WBEN, WEBR, WGR and WKBW assume emergency status with continual weather, traffic and news reports related to the city’s four day storm that leaves five feet of snow. 
DEC 14 1945   FCC releases its proposed AVCO Rules which give the Commission tighter control over the sales of broadcast properties.  Broadcasters have a month to comment on the rules before their enactment.
DEC 14 1945   Swiss inventor Hans Laube announces Smellovision - a device to transmit signals coordinated with television programs that triggers receivers attached to sets capable of reproducing over 2,000 aromas.
DEC 14 1948   The AFM ends its eleven month strike against recording companies. (See Petrillo!)
DEC 14 1949   KFI/Los Angeles, an NBC affiliate for 22 years, extends its affiliation con-tract for more two years after the network fails in its attempts to buy KMPC.
DEC 14 1949   FCC approves WNEW/New York increase in power to 50,000 watts giving the city seven full power stations.
DEC 14 1949   Ending a four year controversy, the FCC decides that KOB/Albuquerque may stay on 770 kilocycles shared with ABC’s clear channel WJZ/New York City. 
DEC 14 1949   Goodman & Jane Ace bring Easy Aces to DuMont Television with a Wednesday night quarter hour sitcom.  (See Easy Aces.) 
DEC 14 1950   Hadacol founder Dudley LeBlanc announces the giveaway of $500,000 in Christmas toys through 570 radio stations in the patent medicine’s marketing area.  (See Hadacol.)
DEC 14 1951   AFM President James Petrillo, also head of the union’s Chicago local, threatens to suspend salaried Chicago radio staff musicians who accept outside jobs and deprive substitutes of the work.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 14 1951   Liberty Broadcasting System Sports Director Jerry Doggett, 35, resigns to take a public relations and play by play post with the Dallas Texans baseball team of the Texas League.  (Doggett will join Vin Scully as voices of the Dodgers for 32 years in 1956.)
DEC 14 1951   R.J. Reynolds’ 15 minute television newscast reported by John Cameron Swayze, The Camel News Caravan, is seen live from coast to coast on NBC-TV for the first time.
DEC 14 1951 Independent film studios in Hollywood report sold out conditions as 13 producers occupy their facilities with productions for television.  (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.) 
DEC 14 1952   Edward R. Murrow and a CBS-TV crew of 16, including newsmen Larry LeSueur, Bob Pierpont and Bill Downs, leave to film Christmas Day In Korea to be edited and broadcast on Murrow’s See It Now on December 28th. 
DEC 14 1953   NBC-TV is reported planning to move Steve Allen’s successful late night show on its WNBT(TV)/New York City to the full network as The Tonight Show in the fall of 1954. 
DEC 14 1953   AFM union head Petrillo accuses television of forcing concert goers stay at home and asks President Eisenhower for federal funding to aid 100 concert orchestras in cities under 300,000 population. (See Petrillo!)
DEC 14 1953   Los Angeles television announcer Bill Griffith is exonerated of false and misleading advertising for reading commercials from the city’s Thrifty Vacuum Cleaner Stores which pleaded guilty to the charges.

DEC 15 1930  NBC opens WGAR/Cleveland in which it has half-interest and affiliates the new station with its Blue Network.  The network already owns WTAM/Cleveland which is affiliated with its Red chain. 
DEC 15 1933   FRC approves the leasing of WMCA/New York City to a group headed by former New York Governor and presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith.
DEC 15 1936   FCC releases a 300 page investigative report branding AT&T a monopoly and charging it with favoritism to NBC.  
DEC 15 1936   NBC raises its network rates by an average of ten percent and CBS announces a rate increase of nine percent. 
DEC 15 1937  NBC takes delivery on television’s first mobile transmitting facility contained in two full-sized buses.
DEC 15 1939   NBC televises the high-society Television Ball at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria to benefit charity and help popularize set sales in the area and to guests at the event who can see themselves on monitors in the ballroom. 
DEC 15 1940   AFM boss James Petrillo refuses to allow the 104th Regiment Engineers Band at Fort Dix to broadcast on Mutual, claiming it would,  “…throw union musicians out of work.”  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 15 1940   The Keystone Broadcasting System, a transcription network of smaller market stations begins operations.   
DEC 15  1941  The U.S. War Department issues emergency orders prohibiting the broadcast of all weather information.
DEC 15 1941    All networks and many independent stations broadcast Norman Corwin’s We Hold These Truths on the 150th anniversary of The Bill of Rights.  The program concludes with remarks from President Roosevelt and scores a 63.3 CAB rating.  (See We Hold These Truths.)
DEC 15 1941    Miller Radiofilm Corporation is formed in Los Angeles to manufacture and market the sound recording process involving film with reproduction by photo-electric eye.
DEC 15 1943   FCC announces its plan to extend station license terms to three years, staggering the initial renewal dates to spread them evenly for consideration and action.    
DEC 15 1943   The Blue Network expands its chain breaks to 30 seconds, allowing its affiliates an additional ten seconds for local sale.
DEC 15 1943   Popular singer-songwriter Thomas (Fats) Waller, 39, dies of pneumonia aboard a train in Kansas City while traveling from New York to Los Angeles.
DEC 15 1944   The plane taking bandleader Major Glenn Miller from London to France is lost over the English Channel.  (See In The Miller Mood.)
DEC 15 1944   Lever Bros. demands that NBC move the company’s Amos & Andy from Friday at 9:00 p.m. to a more desirable night and time.
DEC 15 1946   WQQW/Washington, D.C., a daytime AM station at 540 kc. goes on the air  vowing to follow the rules of the FCC’s Blue Book including a limit of four commercials per hour.
DEC 15 1947   The Associated Press inaugurates a daily newsreel service to television stations.
DEC 15 1948   NBC President Nils Trammell calls the CBS talent raid a “...healthy development” that allows his network to develop new programs and, “...prove its ability as a creative force.”
DEC 15 1949 Kids’ adventure serial Captain Midnight is cancelled after a nine year multi-network run for Ovaltine.  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
DEC 15 1950   FCC approves WHOM/Jersey City to begin identifying itself as a New York City station.
DEC 15 1950   CBS signs former school teacher turned comedian Sam Levenson, 38, to a three year contract reported to be $3,500 per week. 
DEC 15 1950   Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly begin their six-month documentary series Hear It Now, (aka A Report To The Nation), on CBS.
DEC 15 1950   Former actress Dixie Lee Crosby makes her first professional appearance since 1935 on husband Bing’s CBS radio show in a holiday skit with their four sons.
DEC 15 1950   Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, publicly denounces ABC commen-tator Drew Pearson and urges stations to stop carrying his broadcasts.
DEC 15 1950  CBS gives all employees an extra week’s pay as a Christmas bonus - ABC, Mutual and NBC award none.
DEC 15 1951   Striking engineers win a $5.91 weekly raise after shutting down St. Louis stations KTSL, KWK, KXLW, KXOK, WEW and WIL for 24 hours.
DEC 15 1952   Three years after the FCC’s controversial ruling that giveaway shows are lotteries, ABC, CBS and NBC get their day in court to argue against the decision before a three judge Federal panel in New York. 
DEC 15 1952   Republic Pictures leases 104 feature films produced between 1937 and 1948 to WCBS-TV/New York City for $200,000.  No westerns are included in the package.
DEC 15 1953   President Eisenhower orders an end to the two year blanket censorship of media due the Korean War.
DEC 15 1953   Former ABC daytime 15 minute series Art Baker’s Notebook goes into syndication to local stations.

DEC 16 1932   WLW/Cincinnati announces construction of an 820 foot transmitting antenna to beam its 50,000 watt signal and to use with its planned 500,000 watt transmitter.
DEC 16 1932   NBC begins selling time on its Chicago stations, WMAQ and WENR, by the word - a minimum of 50 and maximum of 200 words per commercial.
DEC 16 1933   Bad shortwave reception from the Byrd Expedition compel CBS to temporarily cut its Saturday night segments from the South Pole from 15 to five minutes.
DEC 16 1935   British readers of London’s World Radio report good daily reception of New York stations, WABC, WEAF, WHN, WJZ and WNEW; Boston’s WAAB, WBZ and WNAC; WTIC/Hartford, WLW/Cincinnati; WCAU/Philadelphia; WHAM/Rochester; WIOD/Miami; WGY/Schenectady, and WBT/Charlotte.  
DEC 16 1935  A Friday night telephone request program on WIRE/Indianapolis is can-celled after attracting over 17,000 calls, prompting Indiana Bell to threaten a charge of $1,700 per month for specially installed lines and equipment.
DEC 16 1939   KNX/Los Angeles stays on the air overnight for a Salvation Army Christmas fund raising drive starring Lum & Abner that results in $15,000 for the charity.   
DEC 16 1940   AFM President Petrillo agrees to allow Armed Forces bands to play on radio after the networks assure him that no union musicians will lose their jobs as a result. (See Petrillo!)
DEC 16 1940   The Supreme Court refuses to review a lower court decision that allows radio stations to play phonograph records without payment to record companies or recording artists.
DEC 16 1940   FCC reports that with war in Europe, 58 U.S. stations have dropped foreign language programs, leaving 199 remaining with periods of Spanish, German, Italian, Polish and Hebrew programming. 
DEC 16 1940   FCC proposes a new call sign system to identify FM stations involving: (1) The letters W or K to indicate its location east or west of the Mississippi, followed by (2) Numbers to identify its frequency, and (3) The initial(s) of its city of license. 
DEC 16 1942   General Tire & Rubber Co. purchases New England’s Yankee Network including WNAC/Boston, WEAN/Providence, WAAB/Worcester, WIIC/Bridgeport, two FM stations and the Colonial Network for $1.2 Million.
DEC 16 1945   One year and a day after Glenn Miller is lost over the English Channel, the last 21 sidemen from his Army Air Force band are discharged from the service and his widow is officially informed that he is presumed dead.  (See In The Miller Mood.)
DEC 16 1945   ABC’s broadcast of the National Football League championship game between the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Rams registers a 7.1 Hooperating.  (See Radio Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 16 1945   Walter Winchell tells listeners, “…insiders expect a very sharp downturn in the stock market before the holidays,” and a sell-off results the following day.  (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 16 1946   The St. Louis Post Dispatch announces a $1.0 Million expansion in the facilities of its KSD/St. Louis including the erection of four, 450-foot transmitting towers enabling its increase in power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts.
DEC 16 1946   DuMont Laboratories demonstrates to the FCC its new color television tube capable of receiving images from both the CBS sequential system and the RCA simultaneous method. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
DEC 16 1946   Former New York City Police Commissioner and Gangbusters narrator Lewis J. Valentine, 64, dies in New York.
DEC 16 1947   The California Supreme Court upholds two lower court rulings favoring AFRA’s suspension of Cecil B. DeMille.  (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 16 1947   Ratings king C.E. Hooper makes an appearance on the CBS show We The People and makes one of his survey’s random phone calls.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.) 
DEC 16 1948   Mutual cancels its four year old musical game show, What’s The Name of That Song?
DEC 16 1950   Abbott & Costello, Jimmy Durante and Spike Jones headline a 90 minute late night simulcast on NBC-owned WMAQ and WNBQ(TV)/Chicago to benefit the Chicago Boys’ Club. 
DEC 16 1951   Ralston-Purina cancels The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters after a multi-network run of eight years.  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
DEC 16 1951   The trend-setting radio police drama Dragnet premieres on NBC-TV.  (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet.)
DEC 16 1951   Philip Morris  cancels Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program after a four season, multi-network run.
DEC 16 1951   WPIX(TV)/New York broadcasts the first film coverage within three hours of that afternoon’s Elizabethtown, New Jersey, airliner crash which killed 56.
DEC 16 1952   America’s Town Meeting on ABC originates from Tokyo with five corres-pondents addressing the topic,  “What Are The Answers From Korea?”
DEC 16 1953   FCC grants the first AM construction permit on 540 kilocycles to applicants in Clarksville, Tennessee and approves the switch of KFMB/San Diego from 550 to 540 kc.
DEC 16 1953   National Football League Commissioner Bert Bell praises television coverage for boosting the league’s 1953 total attendance to an estimated two million fans.
DEC 16 1953   Kraft Television Theater becomes the first dramatic program televised in RCA’s compatible color system.
DEC 16 1953   KDKA/Pittsburgh radio pioneer Jackson McQuiston, often called “The Father of Radio Advertising,” dies of a heart attack in St. Petersburg, Florida at 78.  

DEC 17 1936   Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, 33, with dummy Charlie McCarthy, makes his Network Radio debut on Rudy Vallee’s variety hour on NBC.  (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 17 1936   Bing Crosby sues KGFJ/Los Angeles to prevent it from playing his records labeled, “Not licensed for broadcast.” 
DEC 17 1936   Chicago Federation of Musicians President James C. Petrillo bans members of his local from making records or transcriptions after February 1, 1937, and, “…to end for all time the menace of canned music competition.” (See Petrillo!)
DEC 17 1937   FCC Chairman Frank McNinch demands full details of the Mae West “incident” on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour the previous Sunday.  (See Bergen, McCarthy and Adam & Eve.)
DEC 17 1937 The first facsimile newspaper transmitted by radio is issued by KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul.
DEC 17 1937   Baptist minister Nelson Rand, continuity director and sportscaster at WOKO and WABY/Albany, New York,  one of the few clergymen working full time in commercial radio, dies of heart failure at 50.
DEC 17 1938  CBS enters the record business with the purchase of the American Record Corp. for $800,000 in a deal that also includes the Columbia Phonograph Co., onetime owner of the network and from which CBS received its name.
DEC 17 1939   MGM sales representative James Bowen provides NBC with exclusive shortwave descriptions of the German battleship Admiral Graf Spree’s scuttling from Montevideo Bay, Uruguay.
DEC 17 1939   Red Skelton, 26, breaks into Network Radio with a guest appearance on NBC’s Avalon Time starring country singer Red Foley.  Skelton joins the cast two weeks later.  (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 17 1941   The AFM prohibits dance bands from performing remote broadcasts outside of the hours stipulated in their contracts - virtually eliminating afternoon remotes.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 17 1944   Harry Wismer reports the NFL Championship between the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers on Blue while Red Barber and Connie Desmond cover the game for the Giants’ home station, WHN. 
DEC 17 1944   Don Ameche returns as host of NBC's Chase & Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 17 1945   Major music publisher Edward B. Marks, whose firm was the first to leave ASCAP for BMI in 1941, dies in New York at 80.
DEC 17 1945   KFRU/Columbia, Missouri, donates time to the city’s school system for classes during a flu epidemic that closes the schools for a week.
DEC 17 1947   In an effort to bring all of its programs under his network’s direct control, CBS President Frank Stanton says the network will no longer honor advertisers’ automatic program renewals.
DEC 17 1947   FCC grants The New York Daily News a second oral hearing to win a New York City FM license after the newspaper reveals that Commissioners Denny and Webster voted against it without attending the first hearing.
DEC 17 1947   Scripps-Howard’s WEWS(TV)/Cleveland becomes the country’s 15th licensed television station.
DEC 17 1948   Sponsor Rexall Drugs refuses to move its Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show from NBC to CBS which would have added to the CBS raid of NBC’s Sunday night comedy lineup. 
DEC 17 1948   NBC signs the comedy team of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis to a five year radio and television contract guaranteeing them a minimum of $150,000 annually.
DEC 17 1951   Edgar Bergen leaves Los Angeles with two cargo planes loaded with his Operation Santa Claus Christmas gifts destined for Army and Navy hospitals in 13 states.
DEC 17 1951   After several rate disputes, General Foods informs NBC-TV that it’s moving its weekday afternoon Bert Parks Show to CBS-TV. 
DEC 17 1951   WNBT(TV)/New York City sells sponsorship of its unique nightly sign-off announcements featuring pretty Mary Kay casually talking about the next day’s programs, to a weight loss pill. The station claims the girl attracts 2,000 pieces of fan mail a week.   
DEC 17 1953   FCC unanimously approves the NTSC recommendation of RCA’s compatible color television standards after Commissioner Frieda Hennock walks out in protest.
DEC 17 1953   Dr. Allen DuMont denies reports that negotiations are underway with either Westinghouse or Mutual to purchase his manufacturing business or television network.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)

DEC 18 1931  Massachusetts’ women’s organizations protest the “third degree” sequences in Amos & Andy's storyline broadcast on WBZ/Springfield-Boston as being “horrifying to children” at their bedtimes.
DEC 18 1933   President Roosevelt appoints Harry Shaw, President of The Waterloo (Iowa) Broadcasting Corp., as the first of three members to the National Recovery Administration’s Radio Broadcasting Code Committee.
DEC 18 1933   Unpaid employees are designated “priority creditors” as an auction of Ed Wynn’s bankrupt Amalgamated Broadcasting System’s assets raises $10,000.
DEC 18 1935   The March of Time, converted from a 30 minute weekly format to a weeknight Multiple Run on CBS loses over half its audience and is cancelled by sponsors  Remington Rand and Wrigley Gum.  (See The March of Time.)
DEC 18 1938   Jim Jordan brings his Fibber McGee & Company cast to Omaha for a Christmas Charity show at the Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum sponsored by NBC affiliate WOW.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly.)
DEC 18 1939   NBC’s Washington, D.C., stations WRC and WMAL report collecting 50,000 dolls and toys in their annual Doll’s House campaign for hospitalized and indigent children. 
DEC 18 1939   Noted columnist and radio commentator Heywood Broun, 51, dies in New York City of pneumonia. 
DEC 18 1940   Plaintiff James Lyons sues Ben Bernie and his agent, MCA, for $13,000 each claiming they stole an idea used on Bernie’s program that he had submitted to MCA in 1937. 
DEC 18 1945   WBBM/Chicago vocalist Janette Davis, 29, begins a 13 week series of weeknight quarter hour shows on CBS at 11:15 p.m.  (See Arthur Godfrey.) 
DEC 18 1948   WDSU-TV/New Orleans begins operations on Channel 6 for the area‘s estimated 2,000 television sets.
DEC 18 1949   BMI reports a continually growing rooster of 541 subscribing stations.
DEC 18 1945   General Mills buys 30 minutes of prime time on CBS owned WCBW(TV)/ New York City to present a film depicting the history of cake baking.
DEC 18 1946   After five years of litigation, attorneys for The Guiding Light creator Irna Phillips settle for "...a sum in excess of $125,000,” to be paid to NBC promotion manager Emmons Carlson who claimed half ownership of the serial.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
DEC 18 1949   Gruen Watches cancels its half-sponsorship of Hollywood Calling, NBC’s poorly rated Sunday night giveaway show opposite Jack Benny on CBS.  (See Hollywood Calling and Sunday At Seven.)
DEC 18 1950   CBS asks all employees to sign a loyalty oath similar to Civil Service and NBC oaths disclosing any current or past Communist Party ties.
DEC 18 1950  NBC opens its remodeled Studio 8-H in Radio City, claimed to be the largest and best equipped television studio in the country, with a presentation of Robert Montgomery’s Lucky Strike Theater. 
DEC 18 1951   NBC’s Welcome Travelers reports receiving 50,000 letters nominating families, “… who best typify the Christmas spirit all year long,” qualifying them for a $10,000 package of tax-paid prizes.
DEC 18 1953   NBC Radio cuts the time of its signature three-chime system cue from five to three seconds, matching the time allotted to the cue on NBC-TV.
DEC 18 1953   Dragnet writer James Mosher sues Jack Webb’s Mark VII Productions for $9,100 in re-run fees claiming he wasn’t paid for 28 episodes repeated on NBC-TV. (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet.)
DEC 18 1953   WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia presents the first program and commercial in color by a local station - Technicolor scenes from Walt Disney’s Living Desert and color slides advertising sponsor Fels Naptha soap.

DEC 19  1913   AT&T divests its interest in Western Union to avoid violation of anti-trust laws.
DEC 19 1932   Future NBC President Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, 24, joins the continuity department of KHJ/Los Angeles.
DEC 19 1932   The BBC opens its Empire Service of daily shortwave broadcasts to five zones - Australia & New Zealand, India, Africa, West Africa and Canada. 
DEC 19 1934   FCC expands the AM radio band from 1500 to 1600 kilocycles, initially allowing experimental stations at 1530, 1550 and 1570 kc.
DEC 19 1935   NBC broadcasts a special program hailing the appointment of singer and comedienne Elsie Janis, 45, as the network’s first female announcer.
DEC 19 1935   Squibb cancels To Arms For Peace, on CBS’s Thursday night schedule at 9:30 p.m. featuring classical music and pacifist messages from literary notables. 
DEC 19 1935   Script writer Dave Freedman sues Eddie Cantor for $250,000 in royalties dating back to 1931. 
DEC 19 1938   Fans of controversial Detroit priest Charles Coughlin begin nine months of picketing WMCA/New York City when the station cancels his Sunday afternoon broadcasts.  (See Father Coughlin.)
DEC 19 1939   NBC denies that American Home Products has cancelled its nightly programs Easy Aces and Mr. Keen, also scheduled to begin on January 2nd on the new Transcontinental Broadcasting System network.  (See Easy Aces.)
DEC 19 1939   The Court of Missing Heirs, (aka Are You A Missing Heir?), begins its three year prime time run on CBS.
DEC 19 1942   Los Angeles stations KFAC, KFI, KHJ and KNX are assigned to immed-iately broadcast and relay to other stations all blackout orders from the FCC and U.S. Army Air Force Fourth Interceptor Command.
DEC 19 1942  The U.S. Office of Price Administration orders thousands of discs containing government produced programs and announcements to be melted down for materials used in the production of synthetic rubber.
DEC 19 1944   Blue reshuffles its prime time lineup, moving Ed Wynn, Counterspy, Famous Jury Trials, The Man Called X and Guy Lombardo to new time periods while dropping Fred Waring and Gangbusters.
DEC 19 1945   Former CBS newsman Elmer Davis returns to radio after his wartime duty as head of the Office of War Information with a15 minute news commentary three times a week on ABC .
DEC 19 1945   Catholic groups protesting the play A Family Portrait convince CBS to refuse to allow Helen Hayes to present the controversial drama on her Textron Theater, substituting instead the traditional Christmas play, A Child Is Born. 
DEC 19 1945   FCC announces its FM allocation plans providing for 1,500 metropolitan and rural stations.
DEC 19 1947   WBOM/Oak Ridge, Tennessee, applies to change its call sign to WATO because of the former’s implied association to the atomic bomb which station owners insist was purely coincidental.
DEC 19 1947   FCC reverses itself and calls for a rehearing of the three principals competing for an FM license in Brockton,  Massachusetts, after allegations that its first decision was based on its controversial Blue Book standards.
DEC 19 1947   WCBS-TV/New York City begins regular daytime commercial operation with the audience participation show The Missus Goes A’Shopping originated from supermarkets in the city.
DEC 19 1948   Bing Crosby, whose transcribed Philco Radio Time is heard weekly on 260 ABC affiliates and 115 independent stations, appears on film singing Silent Night with the Mitchell Boys Choir in NBC-TV’s Philco Playhouse production of A Christmas Carol.  
DEC 19 1949   The AFRS records the 414th and last original program in its acclaimed Command Performance series of shows.  Budget cuts force the network to shift to transcribed repeat broadcasts.  (See Command Performance.)
DEC 19 1949    The Washington, D.C., Public Utilities Commission approves the Transit Radio system of music, news and commercials planned and partially installed in the area’s 1,500 buses by WWDC-FM.
DEC 19 1951   ABC presents a five and a half hour overnight reading of the 3,100 names of U. S. prisoners of war held by the North Koreans and Chinese.  CBS-TV and NBC-TV each remain on air until dawn with video rolls of the names.
DEC 19 1951   Popular One Man’s Family, I Love A Mystery and Dragnet actor Barton Yarborough, 50, dies of a blood clot on the brain three days after his debut as co-star in the television version of Dragnet.  (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet.)
DEC 19 1951   Don McNeill leaves television when Philco  cancels sponsorship of his TV Club show on ABC-TV.
DEC 19 1952   The Washington Post, owner of WTOP AM&TV/Washington, D.C., buys WMBR AM&TV/Jacksonville, Florida for $2.47 Million.  

DEC 20 1933   CBS announces the restoration of full salary to employees who took a 15% pay cut in May, 1932.
DEC 20 1936   NBC’s embattled Good Will Court leaves the air after 13 weeks as sponsor Standard Brands replaces it with Do You Want To Be An Actor? a two month old program from KFWB/Los Angeles. (See The 1936-37 Season.)
DEC 20 1937   AFRA proposes a new major network minimum scale of $25 for a 15 minute evening commercial program, $50 for 30 minutes and $75 for an hour.  The proposed television rate is $50 per performance. 
DEC 20 1937   Elliott Roosevelt, 27, second son of FDR, is appointed President of Hearst Radio and its ten stations including WINS/New York City and KEHE/Los Angeles.
DEC 20 1938   After 15 years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals grants one of the basic patents to the electronic television system, the Iconoscope and Kinescope tubes, to Dr. Vladimir Zworykin.
DEC 20 1943   NBC commentator H.V. Kaltenborn, returned from a South Pacific tour, tells a press luncheon that he doesn’t think World War II will be over until 1946.  (See H.V. Kaltenborn.)
DEC 20 1945   FCC Commissioner Charles Denny proposes doing away with station identification at network breaks on the half-hour to give advertisers a full 30 seconds of commercial time.
DEC 20 1945   FCC grants another 33 FM licenses in nine states bringing the number of approved FM applications since October to 230.
DEC 20 1945   General Foods merges its back-to-back Thursday night NBC shows starring Dinah Shore and Burns & Allen into a one time, hour-long holiday special that Variety reviews as, “…a delectable Christmas dish.”
DEC 20 1946  Mutual sets a precedent by obtaining permission to transcribe the Senate War Investigating Committee hearings into charges that Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo illegally aided war contractors.  (See Mutual Led The Way.)  
DEC 20 1946  Multi-talented Donald O’Connor, 21, joins the cast of Borden Dairies’ Ginny Simms Show on CBS.
DEC 20 1946   WNEW/New York City devotes 24 hours to fund raising for the city’s Sydenham Hospital.
DEC 20 1946   FCC grants television construction permits in Los Angeles to ABC, NBC, The Los Angeles Times-Mirror, Paramount Pictures, KFI & KECA owner Earle C. Anthony and KLAC owner Dorothy Thackrey.
DEC 20 1947   Mutual’s Family Theater presents a special Christmas show featuring Bing Crosby, Ethel Barrymore, Perry Como, Kate Smith and many film stars.
DEC 20 1948   Following its settlement with record companies the previous week, the AFM ends its eleven month strike against transcription services.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 20 1948   News commentator Henry J. Taylor, heard on Mutual for three years, moves back to ABC.
DEC 20 1948   An engineers’ strike at WTMJ/Milwaukee ends in 45 minutes when supervisors take over the station’s controls and keep it on the air.
DEC 20 1950   U.S. General Douglas MacArthur orders a complete censorship of news from the Korean War front.
DEC 20 1950  Admiral Corporation President Ross Siraguss tells a Chicago luncheon that CBS President Frank Stanton offered to sell him the network’s color television system in 1949, “…lock,stock and barrel,” for $3.0 Million.
DEC 20 1951  CBS-TV re-applies for membership in the NARTB, (fka NAB), after leaving the group 19 months earlier. 
DEC 20 1951   Comparing it to the invention to the printing press, physicist Francis Rawdon Smith and the Toogood Recording Company of Chicago demonstrate their Multitape magnetic recording tape duplication process to the press. 

DEC 21 1906 Canadian physicist Reginald Fessenden, working with GE engineer Ernst Alexanderson, is assigned experimental call-sign VE2CV for their 50,000 watt transmitter at Brant Rock, Massachusetts.  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
DEC 21 1933   Eddie Cantor hosts a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria for ad agencies and producers in a campaign against admitting studio audiences to programs because they’re not representative of radio audiences as a whole.
DEC 21 1935   Harry Reser’s Cliquot Club Eskimos band, first heard on WEAF/New York City in 1925 and NBC in 1926, returns after an absence of 30 months with a weekly show on CBS.
DEC 21 1936   The cash-strapped Affiliated Broadcasting Company network fires most of its employees and cuts its programming to nine hours a day, all provided by its remaining affiliates including traffic court broadcasts from Evansville, Indiana, and a string trio from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
DEC 21 1937   Twentieth Century Fox rushes Love & Hisses into release, its second film in four months to capitalize on the Walter Winchell-Ben Bernie “feud” promoted on their Sunday night Blue Network programs. (See Radio Goes To The Movies and Walter Winchell on this site.)
DEC 21 1937   Stage, screen and radio comedian Ted Healy, 45, suffers a fatal heart attack in Hollywood.
DEC 21 1937   RCA-Victor tells its distributors that they are not allowed to give or sell any of its records at wholesale price to radio stations.
DEC 21 1937   Heavy rains flood the transmitter of new station WGRC/New Albany, Indiana, cancelling its first week of broadcast. 
DEC 21 1939   Citing low ratings, producers of NBC’s Avalon Time refuse to renew Red Skelton’s contract with the show. 
DEC 21 1940   Popular bandleader Hal Kemp, 36, dies in Madera, California, from pneumonia suffered after an auto accident.  (See Kay Kyser- The Ol' Professor of Swing.)
DEC 21 1940   Paramount Pictures announces signing Blue’s Quiz Kids for a series of short subject films.  (See The Quiz Kids and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
DEC 21 1941   Mutual sportscaster Bob Elson is cut off the air when he describes the weather at the Chicago Bears vs. New York Giants pro football game in violation of the War Department prohibition
DEC 21 1942   AT&T begins using a 1,600 mile buried telephone and broadcast cable from Omaha to Sacramento to prevent weather caused interruption of service.
DEC 21 1943   Standard Brands presents its All Star Christmas Show on CBS headlined by NBC stars Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Fred Allen and Bob Burns. 
DEC 21 1943   Philco announces plans for a postwar television network and applies to the FCC for Channels 9 in New York City and Channel 4 in Washington, D.C. to link with its WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia.
DEC 21 1944   New York Archbishop Francis Spelllman and the School of Liturgical Music choir substitute for the hospitalized Major Bowes in a Christmas broadcast of The Original Amateur Hour aired without commercials. 
DEC 21 1945   Mutual begins a weeknight series of 15-minute business related newscasts featuring commentator Henry J. Taylor on 280 affiliates sponsored by General Motors. 
DEC 21 1948   C.E. Hooper upsets the trend to Nielsen metered survey by signing NBC for it’s 1949 National Hooperatings.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.) 
DEC 21 1948   John Shepard, Jr., founder of WNAC/Boston, WEAN/Providence and the Yankee Network, dies at 91.
DEC 21 1948   KRLD/Dallas is knocked off the air for two hours when its two 478-foot towers collapse in heavy winds and the station switches to standby equipment. 
DEC 21 1948   Paramount Pictures is reported seeking to sell its 30% of DuMont Laboratories for $10 Million.  It originally paid $164,000 for the stock.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
DEC 21 1950   Six months of  FCC hearings into license renewals for WJR/Detroit, WGAR/Cleveland and KMPC/Los Angeles, tainted by charges that owner G.A. (Dick) Richards ordered newscasts slanted against Democrats, end with 18,000 pages of testimony from 275 witnesses and 1,200 exhibits - but no decision expected for months.  
DEC 21 1951   KSD/St. Louis, WMPS/Memphis and WMIX/Mount Vernon, Illinois, provide the first reports from the scene of the West Frankfort, Illinois, coal mine explosion that killed 120 miners.
DEC 21 1951   FCC approves AVCO-Crosley’s WINS/New York City to operate 24 hours at 50,000 watts, up from 10,000 watts at night.
DEC 21 1951   NBC announces a Christmas raise of 5% for all non-union employees earning less than $7,500 per year and CBS awards a week’s pay to all non-union employees.
DEC 21 1951  Eighteen production companies report that over two dozen television series are already underway or locked in for filming in early 1952.
DEC 21 1951   DuMont Network Sports Director Tom Gallery, 52, resigns to become NBC Sports Director.
DEC 21 1951   William Boyd, (aka Hopalong Cassidy), refuses to renew his television contracts with General Foods and NBC, preferring to enter the syndication market with his 54 feature films.
DEC 21 1952   Film from Edward R. Murrow’s Christmas trip, On My Way To Korea, is broadcast on his CBS-TV See It Now program. 
DEC 21 1952   WFPG-TV/Atlantic City, the first Ultra High Frequency television station in the East, begins operations on Channel 46.
DEC 21 1952  American Tobacco fires This Is Show Business panelist George S. Kaufman when he quips on Lucky Strike’s CBS-TV talent show, “Let’s make this one program on which no one sings Silent Night.”
DEC 21 1953   FCC denies the petition of St. Louis University to exclude CBS from applying for Channel 11 in St. Louis, unless the network agrees to divest another of its holdings if it wins the channel. 

DEC 22 1933   Twin City stations KSTP and WCCO refuse to run suggestive commercials for the sex-oriented road show movie, The Sins of Love, showing at the Shubert Theater, owned and sublet by Minneapolis Mayor A.G. Bainbridge. 
DEC 22 1934   Meredith Willson introduces The Big Ten, a weekly half-hour on NBC’s Pacific Coast Network presenting the ten most popular songs of the week listed in Variety.  (See Meredith Willson and Top 40 Radio’s Roots.)
DEC 22 1935   The Metropolitan Opera Auditions begins its sporadic Sunday afternoon and evening run of 23 years on NBC and Blue/ABC.
DEC 22 1935   General Motors brings the entire cast and orchestra of its Sunday night concert series on Blue to Detroit’s Masonic Auditorium for broadcast of The General Motors Family Christmas Radio Party. 
DEC 22 1937   Universal Pictures finds no program willing to pay $20,000 for an interview with its newsreel cameraman who filmed the Japanese bombing and sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay in China’s Yangtze River on December 12th. 
DEC 22 1937  NBC’s WRC/Washington, D.C., reports collecting 28,700 toys and dolls for distribution at Christmas to area hospitals and underprivileged neighborhoods by police and firemen.
DEC 22 1938   Frank Morgan stops the show by losing his pants and creating a several sustained minutes of audience laughter on NBC’s Good News broadcast.  (See Frank Morgan and Good News.)
DEC 22 1939   The new Transcontinental Broadcasting System announces the signing of newsman Boake Carter for a weeknight series of commentaries when the network commences on January 2nd.  
DEC 22 1941   The U.S. Weather Bureau issues strict restrictions on weather information that can be broadcast during wartime.
DEC 22 1941   Broadcast industry trade groups form the War Broadcasting Council to deal with civil and military agencies during wartime.
DEC 22 1941   General Electric’s 100,000 watt shortwave station WGEO/Schenectady signs off and engineers begin to dismantle its transmitter for shipment to San Francisco where the government has purchased it for programming beamed to the Orient with the call sign KWID.
DEC 22 1941   Scott Howe Bowen, who created the first national station sales representation firm and established 15% as the sales commission norm, dies of a heart attack at 53.  At the time of his death he owned WIBX/Utica, New York. 
DEC 22 1943 Veteran radio actor and former concert baritone Percy Hemus, 65, collapses and dies in the RCA Building shortly after appearing on NBC’s Road of Life serial.
DEC 22 1947   The FM Association requests the FCC to extend FM licenses to three years, identical to AM station licenses.
DEC 22 1949   Determining that its owners quickly corrected its violations of broadcasting horse race results, the FCC approves for the license renewal of WTUX/Wilmington, Delaware.  
DEC 22 1950   Dr. Walter Damrosch, considered the dean of classical music education on radio, dies of a heart attack in New York City at 88.
DEC 22 1950   Adam Hat Stores announce plans to drop sponsorship of  Drew Pearson but deny the move was caused by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s repeated criticism of the ABC commentator. 
DEC 22 1950   FCC revokes the licenses of WMAW/Milwaukee and WTNJ/Trenton, New Jersey for stock and ownership manipulations.
DEC 22 1950   A Federal court upholds the FCC decision favoring CBS color television technology but prohibits its commercial development pending a decision by the Supreme Court.
DEC 22 1951   NBC-TV’s Your Hit Parade goes outdoors for a special Christmas episode from Rockefeller Plaza's ice rink with its huge decorated tree.
DEC 22 1951   A drunk barges into Jim Hawthorne’s late night audience participation show at KNX/Los Angeles, seizes the microphone and shouts a ten minute diatribe against the United Nations while Hawthorne and station engineers grapple with him and the audience laughs, thinking it’s all an act. 
DEC 22 1952   Edgar Bergen’s Operation Santa Claus reports collecting 45,000 pounds in Christmas gifts to be given to hospitalized veterans. (See Sunday’s All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 22 1953   Philip Morris orders another 24 stations for its hit CBS-TV sitcom, I Love Lucy, bringing the lineup of affiliates for the program to 130.

DEC 23 1900   Physics professor Reginald Fessenden, 34, creates the first wireless voice transmission - over a one mile distance at Cobb Island, Maryland, saying, “Hello, test, one, two, three, four”.  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
DEC 23 1928  NBC inaugurates the coast-to-coast networking to 58 stations.
DEC 23 1932   Don Lee’s KHJ/Los Angeles begins transmitting television broadcasts with 1,000 watts of power for one hour nightly although it’s estimated that less than a dozen homes  are equipped to receive them.
DEC 23 1933   CBS restores the remaining 7½% of the 15% pay cut ordered for all employees in June, 1932. 
DEC 23 1935   Audits indicate that 52,364 persons attend New York City network and local station broadcasts in a week.
DEC 23 1937   CBS director William Robson succeeds Irving Reis as Director of The Columbia Workshop.
DEC 23 1937  In the wake of the Adam & Eve fiasco, NBC bans mention of Mae West’s name on any program.  (See Bergen, McCarthy And Adam & Eve.)
DEC 23 1940   CBS announces the formation of its Latin America Network comprised of 39 AM and 25 shortwave stations in 18 Central and South American countries.
DEC 23 1940   CBS stops broadcasting ASCAP music.
DEC 23 1940   Ralph Edwards leaves his weekday announcing assignments on Life Can Be Beautiful and Against The Storm to concentrate on his Truth Or Consequences.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
DEC 23 1940   CBS Director of Children’s Programs and Let’s Pretend producer Nila Mack, 49, suffers first and second degree burns when attempting to extinguish a fire in her New York City apartment.  (See Let's Pretend.)
DEC 23 1940   NBC cancels the weeknight remotes by Artie Shaw’s orchestra when Shaw flatly refuses to provide the network with a list of his songs before the broadcasts for its weeding out ASCAP material.  (See Big Band Remotes.) 
DEC 23 1941 FCC approves the ownership transfer of WJZ/New York City, KGO/San Francisco and WENR/Chicago from NBC to RCA, clearing the path for the total separation of the NBC Red and Blue networks.
DEC 23 1943  Radio actor Carleton Brickert, 52, the first President of AFRA’s Chicago local, dies shortly after collapsing at a rehearsal of Abie’s Irish Rose at NBC in New York City.
DEC 23 1946  Westinghouse, which operates stations in six major markets, announces an 11% across the board increase in its rates effective January 1st .
DEC 23 1949   Mutual and MGM break off negotiations to form a co-operative program production partnership.
DEC 23 1951   Goodyear Tire presents No Room At The Inn on ABC-TV, the first television adaptation of its acclaimed ABC radio series, The Greatest Story Ever Told.  
DEC 23 1952 CBS signs Procter & Gamble to its Power Plan: one participating spot nightly from 8:30 to 9:00 on Wednesday’s FBI In Peace & War, Thursday’s Meet Millie and Friday’s Mr. Keen for $14,500 per week.  
DEC 23 1952   AFRA’s first labor strike in its 15 years begins at Chicago stations WLS and WGN AM&TV.
DEC 23 1953   FCC approves Crosley’s sale of WINS/New York City to private interests for $450,000.
DEC 23 1953   Owners of The New York Post sell KLAC-TV/Los Angeles to newspaper publisher Copley Press for $1.735 Million.
DEC 23 1953   General Teleradio buys Phillips H. Lord Productions and the rights to Lord’s programs including We The People, Gangbusters and Counterspy for $1.0 Million.

​DEC 24 1906   Reginald Fessenden speaks and plays his violin on the first widely heard radio broadcast - beamed from Ernst Alexanderson’s 50,000 watt transmitter from the coast of Brant Rock, Massachusetts. (Note:  Date disputed by some historians.)  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
DEC 24 1922  WGY/Schenectady broadcasts a Christmas greeting from President Coolidge recorded on GE’s Pallophotophone film recording process.
DEC 24 1933   NBC conducts a nationwide on-air audition directed to potential sponsors for Fred Waring’s orchestra and comedian Ken Murray beginning at 12:15 a.m.
DEC 24 1934   Hudson Autos debuts The Kate Smith Revue on 75 CBS stations for a reported $5,000 per week. (See Kate's Great Song.)
DEC 24 1935   CBS and NBC refuse to negotiate with Warner Brothers separately from ASCAP for use of music from seven publishers controlled by the studio.
DEC 24 1935   CBS gives all employees who have been with the network one year a week’s salary Christmas bonus. 
DEC 24 1936   The Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Blue become the first sponsored series to be sent via shortwave to foreign countries.
DEC 24 1938   Both CBS and NBC eliminate credits to the Press Radio Bureau in their four daily newscasts.  (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
DEC 24 1939   The Blue Network broadcasts live Christmas Eve broadcasts via shortwave from Europe’s Maginot Line and Siegfried Line trenches.  CBS follows with broadcasts from London, Berlin and a chapel near the Maginot Line.
DEC 24 1939   Shirley Temple,11, makes her radio debut in the CBS Screen Guild Theater adaptation of The Blue Bird. (See Acts of Charity and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 24 1940  A Tacoma, Washington, court rules ASCAP to be an illegal combination in restraint of trade.
DEC 24 1940   Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll present the first of their traditional Amos & Andy Christmas shows in which Amos explains the meaning of The Lord’s Prayer to his young daughter.  (See Christmas In The Air.)
DEC 24 1940   Practical jokers go to elaborate lengths to sneak a live cow into NBC’s Studio 8-H and Johnny Presents program as a Christmas gift to Musical Director Ray Bloch who had recently bought a farm. 
DEC 24 1941  Eddie Cantor, Red Skelton, Fibber McGee & Molly and other NBC stars headline Bristol-Meyers’ hour-long show to benefit the Red Cross.
DEC 24 1941   Radio character actor Lee Millar, a regular on Lux Radio Theater and Dr. Christian and the voice of Walt Disney’s Pluto, dies of a heart attack at 53.
DEC 24 1942  Bing Crosby isn’t allowed to sing his new smash hit White Christmas on the Christmas Eve Kraft Music Hall because the producer of NBC’s Abbott & Costello Show obtained a two hour clearance on the song weeks earlier.
DEC 24 1942   Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Ginny Simms and Dinah Shore headline a special hour long episode of AFRS’ Command Performance broadcast  by all networks and most independent stations plus the CBC, BBC and shortwave facilities.  (See Christmas In The Air.)
DEC 24 1943   President Roosevelt, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Lionel Barrymore and remote pickups from American service personnel in Europe, Africa and the South Pacific are featured in the Office of War Information’s hour long Christmas Eve In The Battle Zones broadcast by all four networks and many independent stations.
DEC 24 1947 Panelist Harry Hershfield creates unexpected hilarity on Can You Top This? when his false teeth fall our as he delivers a punch line.  (See Can You Top This? and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 24 1948   RKO releases the 8-minute comedy short It Pays To Be Ignorant based on the CBS comedy panel show. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
DEC 24 1951   Hallmark Cards presents the world premiere of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s Amahl & The Night Visitors - the first opera commissioned for television - beginning a Christmas tradition on the network for the next 15 consecutive years. 
DEC 24 1952   Drew Pearson begins a new series of commentaries on the DuMont Network, Wednesday nights from 7:30 to 7:45.
DEC 24 1952   Pabst Beer replaces its Blue Ribbon Bouts on CBS-TV for one night with a Christmas Eve presentation featuring David Rose’s 40 piece orchestra, ballerina Maria Tallchief and host Gene Lockhart.
DEC 24 1953   A low-power television station goes into operation at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, paid for by $30,000 in profits from the base PX and movie theater.

DEC 25 1930  Popular tenor Morton Downey begins a schedule of a shows seven days a week on CBS. 
DEC 25 1931   NBC and Blue begin 27 years of broadcasting performances of the Metropolitan Opera with Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel.
DEC 25 1931   Milton Cross, 34, begins his 43 year multi-network run as host of the weekly Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
DEC 25 1932   KFWB/Los Angeles eliminates all commercials during Christmas Day.
DEC 25 1933   American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes becomes the first sponsor of NBC’s Metropolitan Opera. broadcasts. 
DEC 25 1934   CBS presents the first broadcast of Lionel Barrymore’s legendary version of A Christmas Carol in a three hour Christmas afternoon variety show hosted by Alexander Woollcott and sponsored by Nash Motors.  (See Christmas In The Air .)
DEC 25 1936  WHOM/Jersey City leaves the air for 17 hours to give its employees a day off for Christmas.
DEC 25 1937  The NBC Symphony under the direction of Arturo Toscanini, 70, begins its 18 year run on the network. 
DEC 25 1942   Coca Cola spends a reported $200,000 to sponsor the twelve hour Victory Parade Christmas Party of Spotlight Bands featuring 43 popular orchestras in a series of 15 minute remote broadcasts from military bases on the Blue Network of 142 stations. (See Spotlight Bands.)
DEC 25 1942   Elgin Watches debuts the first of its seven Christmas afternoon two hour all-star programs, A Christmas Salute To America’s Armed Forces on CBS, starring Bob Hope, Don Ameche, Bette Davis, Abbott & Costello, Judy Garland, Gracie Fields and others.  (See Christmas In The Air.)
DEC 25 1943   All networks broadcast King George VI’s Christmas morning message relayed from London by the BBC.
DEC 25 1943   NBC presents the three hour Christmas Reunion program with newsman Robert St. John introducing Amos & Andy, Jose Iturbi, Rudy Vallee’s Coast Guard Band, Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony plus remote pick-ups from around the globe.
DEC 25 1943   Elgin’s second Christmas afternoon two-hour show on CBS and shortwaved worldwide headlines Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny and Fibber McGee & Molly - all NBC stars.  
DEC 25 1944   KFI/Los Angeles cancels all Christmas Day station break announcements between 6:00 a.m. and midnight to substitute greetings from Southern California service personnel recorded overseas.  Their families are then given copies of the recordings. 
DEC 25 1944   Blue stages a two hour Christmas afternoon special featuring network stars Paul Whiteman, Walter Winchell, Ed Wynn, Alan Young, William Bendix, Gracie Fields and others.
DEC 25 1944   Elgin’s third annual Christmas afternoon two hour show on CBS again stars Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Jack Benny with Burns & Allen and Ginny Simms. 
DEC 25 1945   Mutual claims the world’s most extensive network connection in an hour of two way conversations between troops stationed in Europe and Asia and their families at various points in the United States.
DEC 25 1945   Elgin’s fourth two-hour Christmas afternoon show on CBS again stars NBC’s Bob Hope, Red Skelton and Jack Benny.
DEC 25 1946   Comic legend and Charlie McCarthy’s favorite foil, W.C. Fields, dies at 66.
DEC 25 1946   Bob Hope headlines Elgin Watches’ fifth annual two-hour Christmas afternoon special on CBS with Edgar Bergen, Amos & Andy, Roy Rogers, Don Ameche, Ginny Simms, Benny Goodman, Bob Crosby and Victor Borge. 
DEC 25 1946  ABC presents its own 90-minute Christmas night special program featuring Walter Winchell, Henry Morgan, Don McNeill, Tom Breneman, Basil Rathbone, Lum & Abner and Paul Whiteman’s orchestra.
DEC 25 1947   Eight Procter & Gamble soap operas on NBC and CBS suspend their storylines for listeners’ responses to Truth Or Consequences host Ralph Edwards’ question, “What would you give to the world for Christmas?”
DEC 25 1947   Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy, Amos & Andy, Don Ameche and Doris Day lead the parade of stars in Elgin’s annual Christmas afternoon show on CBS.
DEC 25 1947  Former NBC foreign correspondent Roy Porter, 40, dies of natural causes while in Fairfield, Iowa, to attend the funeral of his mother in law. 
DEC 25 1947  DuMont presents a live television adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring John Carradine employing 22 actors over a 12 set stage on WABD(TV)/New York City and relayed to stations in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. ​
DEC 25 1948 Elgin’s seventh annual two hour Christmas afternoon show switches to NBC starring Bob Hope, Al Jolson, Edgar Bergen, Don Ameche, Danny Thomas and Jo Stafford with a talent and production cost of $50,000. CBS responds with a show sponsored by Wrigley Gum headlined by Bing Crosby, Lionel Barrymore, Gene Autry and Burns & Allen.  NBC claims a Hooperating victory of 10.0 against a 6.8 on CBS.
DEC 25 1948   The Hamilton Watch Company presents its Christmas afternoon Holiday Party on NBC-TV starring Pearl Bailey, ventriloquist Paul Winchell and comics Smith & Dale from the Kingsbridge Veterans Hospital in the Bronx.
DEC 25 1948  Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch moves to Saturday night on CBS, clearing the cowboy’s Sunday night timeslot for Jack Benny’s occupancy in January.  (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 25 1949   The CBS Christmas afternoon broadcast of The Man Who Came To Dinner starring Jack Benny, Gregory Peck, Charles Boyer, Dorothy McGuire, Rosalind Russell, Gene Kelly and Henry Fonda is universally panned by critics. 
DEC 25 1949   KHJ/Los Angeles and the Don Lee West Coast network drop their Sunday night repeat broadcasts of Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal from ABC.  (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 25 1950   Mutual of Omaha Insurance sponsors Mutual Calling, the first of five annual Christmas afternoon hour long  programs on Mutual which allow relatives to talk with family members serving overseas in the Armed Forces.
DEC 25 1950   CBS West Coast comedian Steve Allen begins his weeknight half-hour series on CBS-TV.
DEC 25 1950   Walt Disney debuts on television with the CBS-TV Christmas Day special One Hour In Wonderland starring Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy and featuring Disney with his animated characters. 
DEC 25 1951   Walt Disney makes his second Christmas afternoon appearance on CBS-TV in a one-hour retrospective of his films, both animated and live action. 
DEC 25 1952   CBS star Arthur Godfrey hosts the NBC-TV  special Number One Yuletide Square at the request of General Motors President Charles Wilson.  Godfrey later tells his CBS audience that he was treated at NBC, “…like poison.” 
DEC 25 1952   Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll make their television debut in a cameo on CBS-TV’s Amos & Andy Show, featuring Amos’s explanation of The Lord’s Prayer, a Christmas tradition on their radio show.  (See Christmas In The Air.)
DEC 25 1953   Gillette spends $250,000 to replace its ABC Radio and NBC-TV Friday boxing program with a  special Christmas night variety show starring Tyrone Power, Eddie Fisher, Rosemary Clooney, Victor Borge and the Boston Pops orchestra.

DEC 26 1938   President Roosevelt is given a television set for the White House by the American Television Corporation although Washington D.C. is still without a television station.
DEC 26 1940   NBC and Blue join CBS and stop broadcasting ASCAP music.
DEC 26 1941   British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s noon address to Congress on all networks registers a 44.7 CAB rating.   (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 26 1941   20th Century Fox signs Glenn Miller and Betty Grable to co-star in its musical biography of Miller, Melody Man, to be filmed when the bandleader returns to civilian life.  (See In The Miller Mood.)
DEC 26 1941  All San Antonio stations begin the Penny A Plane campaign, asking listeners to drop a penny into collection boxes every time the Allies shoot down an enemy plane with the funds given to the government for military use.
DEC 26 1942  Mutual’s  Fulton Lewis, Jr., leads all co-op programs with 31 sponsors on 56 stations earning the conservative commentator a reported $2,500 a week.
DEC 26 1942  The Boston Symphony settles a five year dispute with the AFM and returns to Network Radio with a Saturday night series of concerts on Blue.
DEC 26 1944   No network clears time for the NFL Championship Game, forcing sponsor Wilson Sporting Goods to create its own 61 station network for the broadcast of the Chicago Bears’ 41-21 win over the Washington Redskins.
DEC 26 1945   WNOX/Knoxville has the first interviews with witnesses of an early morning explosion that killed 24 coal miners at Pineville, Kentucky, and immediately generates $1,000 for a survivors’ fund.  
DEC 26 1946  ABC-TV creates the industry’s second simulcast by televising the broadcast of America’s Town Meeting from the studio of WRGB(TV)/Schenectady.  
DEC 26 1947   New York City Mayor O’Dwyer praises the city’s stations which assumed emergency status during a four day,  two foot snowfall that paralyzed the area.
DEC 26 1948  After 17 years, Jack Benny's program is broadcast for the final time on NBC  before switching to CBS.  (See Sunday At Seven, Lucky Gets Benny and Network Jumpers.)
DEC 26 1948   After eleven seasons, Edgar Bergen “retires” from radio and leaves NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour - returning ten months later to CBS for Coca Cola. (See Sunday’s All Time Top Ten and Network Jumpers.)
DEC 26 1948   Walter Winchell concludes his 16 season Jergens Journal run for Andrew Jergens Co. before switching to the sponsorship of Kaiser-Frazer automobiles.  (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 26 1950   FCC approves General Tire & Rubber’s acquisition of the Don Lee West Coast radio and television properties for $12.32 Million.   
DEC 26 1950   CBS demonstrates its new, 17-inch direct view color television picture tube.
DEC 26 1951   Veteran NBC and Mutual news executive A.A. (Abe) Schechter is named executive in charge of NBC-TV’s new morning program, Today, due to begin the following month. 
DEC 26 1952  Procter & Gamble cancels its weekday serial Big Sister after a 16 year run on CBS and replaces it with a second daily run of The Road of Life already heard on NBC. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
DEC 26 1952  Carlton E. Morse’s chilling series, I Love A Mystery leaves the air after a sporadic multi-network run spanning 13 years.  (See I Love A Mystery and I Love A Sequel.)
DEC 26 1952   Republic Pictures leases 119 feature films to Los Angeles stations KTTV(TV) and KLAC-TV, (the same package leased to WCBS-TV/New York City), plus 15 John Wayne westerns for $350,000.

DEC 27 1932   New York’s 6,200 seat Radio City Music Hall opens - the first phase of the building that will become the home of NBC. 
DEC 27 1932   Eddie Cantor leads Variety’s annual radio popularity poll of 150 correspondents followed by Ed Wynn, Jack Pearl, Amos & Andy and Burns & Allen.   
DEC 27 1935   Founding President of NBC Merlin Aylesworth, 49, resigns to become Board Chairman of RKO.  (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
DEC 27 1935   The National Independent Broadcasters is formed with 100 low-wattage stations as a non-profit co-op designed to obtain national advertising business for its members.  
DEC 27 1937   Fulton Lewis, Jr., 34, delivers his first news commentary on the Mutual network from WOL/Washington. 
DEC 27 1939   A Federal court grants an injunction and damages to Time, Incorporated, against producer Anschel Barshay using The Voice of Time in marketing his radio programs and phonograph records.   (See The March of Time.)
DEC 27 1939   Glenn Miller’s band and the Andrews Sisters replace Paul Whiteman’s orchestra on the CBS Wednesday night half-hour for Liggett & Myers' Chesterfield cigarettes. (See In The Miller Mood.)
DEC 27 1940   Paramount Pictures capitalizes on the radio “feud” between Jack Benny & Fred Allen with the release of Love Thy Neighbor starring the two comedians.  (See The Feud and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
DEC 27 1942   A.C. Nielsen inaugurates its Audimeter radio survey service, sampling 1,000 homes east of the Mississippi. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
DEC 27 1943   Broadway Showtime, condensing past musical comedy hits into 30 minutes, begins its three season run on CBS for Ballentine Beer.   
DEC 27 1944   FCC refuses to ban newspaper ownership of broadcast properties affecting some 280 existing newspaper owned or affiliated stations.
DEC 27 1944  Colgate Palmolive Peet begins its two year sponsorship of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge on NBC under its “lend lease” terms with American Tobacco.  (See Kay Kyser - The Old Professor of Swing and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 27 1944   Eddie Cantor reports his Give A Gift To A Yank Who Gave campaign resulted in over 1.5 Million Christmas gifts donated to hospitalized veterans.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 27 1945   A new audience participation show, Wiseacres hosted by Arthur Godfrey, is “previewed” without advance notice at 11:15 p.m. over WEVD/New York City and recorded for copyright purposes.
DEC 27 1946   FCC resumes its license renewal hearings of municipally owned WCAM/ Camden, New Jersey, in jeopardy of revocation for leasing the facilities without Commission approval.
DEC 27 1946   Rights holder NBC refuses Paramount’s request to televise the Rose Bowl game in Los Angeles although NBC still has no television station in the market.  The net-work also refuses to allow DuMont to film highlights of the game.
DEC 27 1947  Singer Tony Martin settles his suit against Bourgois Perfumes for cancelling his CBS show for $17,500 - $7,500 less than the $25,000 settlement he rejected two weeks earlier.
DEC 27 1947  Jack Benny launches a covered wagon’s month long eastward tour of 30 cities for the March of Dimes with “Ten Pennies From Benny” and plans to meet the wagon in Washington, D.C. with a second donation of 500,000 pennies. (See Sunday At Seven  and Your Money Or Your Life.)
DEC 27 1948   AFRA polls its members and rejects the CBS and NBC proposals to broadcast transcribed repeats of their most popular programs during the summer months. 
DEC 27 1948   CBS officially drops its ban on recorded programs with the weekday afternoon 15 minute broadcasts of Procter & Gamble’s What Makes You Tick, switched over from ABC.
DEC 27 1948   FCC approves the $500,000 sale of WPAT/Paterson, New Jersey and its FM station, WNNJ, to The Passaic Daily News.
DEC 27 1948   In an address at Ohio Northern University, FCC Commissioner Robert Jones indicated that the Stratovision system of transmitting television signals from planes might be the answer to providing service to rural areas. 
DEC 27 1950   CBS President Frank Stanton denies Admiral Corporation President Ross Siraguss’ statement that he offered to sell the network’s color television system to Admiral for $3.0 Million.
DEC 27 1951   Dragnet recognizes the death of its co-star Barton Yarborough with its episode, The Big Sorrow.  (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet.)
DEC 27 1951   Popular West Coast radio actor and star of the CBS series The Lineup, Wally Maher, dies at 43.
DEC 27 1951   WJBW/New Orleans celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special  two hour program.
DEC 27 1953   The DuMont television network claims 140 affiliates carry its live coverage of the NFL Championship Game between the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)  

DEC 28 1931 Vaughn DeLeath, (aka The First Lady of Radio), leaves NBC after ten years to begin a new series of shows on CBS.
DEC 28 1931  Chicago musicians union boss James Petrillo orders his members to go on strike against the city’s radio stations over disputed hours beginning on New Year's Eve.  WCFL, owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor, is excepted from the strike.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 28 1933  Edwin Armstrong receives his first patents for Frequency Modulation (FM) Radio.
DEC 28 1934   A Federal judge in Seattle reverses his earlier decision and lifts an injunc-tion preventing KVOS/Bellingham from broadcasting news found in local newspapers.
DEC 28 1937   NBC and General Foods offices in San Francisco are flooded with 30,000 ticket requests for the two Jack Benny broadcasts scheduled for the city in January in a 660 seat auditorium.  (See Benny's Double Plays.)
DEC 28 1939   Amos & Andy announcer Bill Hay settles his management suit with Chet  Lauck & Norris Goff, (Lum & Abner), out of court for $5,000.
DEC 28 1941   Japanese forces cut into the shortwave broadcasts of General Electric’s KGEI directed to the Pacific with fake “bulletins” of a Japanese invasion of San Francisco. 
DEC 28 1941  New York City stations WOR and WJZ broadcast the UP dispatch of bombs found in a Philadelphia police station - but Philadelphia stations withhold the news at the request of police who are seeking the culprits.  
DEC 28 1941  Phil Baker, 45, replaces Bob Hawk as host of Eversharp’s Take It Or Leave It on CBS beginning a six year run on the comedy quiz, five in the Annual Top 20.   (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 28 1942   Jack Benny and his radio cast entertain 2,500 service personnel with a 95 minute show at the Lakehurst New Jersey Naval Air Training Station.
DEC 28 1944   In the continued absence of 70 year old Major Bowes from The Original Amateur Hour on CBS, (hospitalized from exhaustion), sponsor Standard Brands substitutes a program promoting the Red Cross featuring Vox Pop hosts Parks Johnson and Warren Hull.
DEC 28 1945   George Washington Hill of American Tobacco is reported to offer Bing Crosby $15,000 a week to leave Kraft Music Hall for Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade when Crosby’s contract legalities with Kraft are resolved.
DEC 28 1945   Bertha Brainard, 55, NBC Program Package Sales Manager and early Program Director of the network, retires after 23 years' association with NBC.  (See The Magic Key.)
DEC 28 1945   AFM President James Petrillo relaxes the union’s ban on broadcasting AM programs over FM stations by allowing WBOE(FM)/Cleveland, owned by the city’s school system, to broadcast The CBS School of The Air.
DEC 28 1946   The U.S. Treasury Department ends its cycle of transcribed 15-minute Treasury Salute programs on 1,000 stations, estimating the broadcasters donated a total of $2.1 Million in time for its 13 week run.
DEC 28 1947   Ticket sales for the NFL Championship game between the Chicago Cardinals and Philadelphia Eagles are so poor that the league allows the game to be televised on Chicago’s WBKB(TV).
DEC 28 1947  Dr. Rolf Kaltenborn, son of the NBC newsman, announces plans for his new Pioneer Radio Network, charging listeners a subscription fee for programs.
DEC 28 1948   After a seven day trial, a Federal Court jury reaches no decision in the $600,000 suit against producers Jack Barry and Dan Ehrenreich, Mutual and General Foods by William Evans for stealing the name and concept for  the show Juvenile Jury.
DEC 28 1949   A New York jury dismisses a $600,000 suit charging the producers of Mutual’s Juvenile Jury with stealing the panel show’s name and concept from Chicago writer William Evans.
DEC 28 1949   Liberty Broadcasting System President Gordon McLendon announces that his network will add live coverage of Major League baseball games to its schedule of re-created games in 1950. 
DEC 28 1951   Duffy’s Tavern leaves the air after a multi-network run of eleven years.  (See Duffy Ain’t Here.)
DEC 28 1951 General Foods begins a weeknight five-minute news summary with Win Eliot at 9:55 p.m. on ABC. 
DEC 28 1951  Westinghouse agrees to spend a record $4.0 Million with CBS Radio and Television for sponsorship of the 1952 political conventions, Presidential election coverage and a 13 week series of programs in the fall between the events.  
DEC 28 1952   CBS-TV’s See It Now presents Edward R. Murrow’s Christmas Day In Korea - the documentary produced in the war zone by his crew of 16 newsmen and photographers - hailed in Variety as, “…an historic chapter in the new American journalism.”   

DEC 29 1933  Washington Senator Clarence Dill, sponsor of The Radio Act of 1927, accuses the FRC of inefficiency and a “do nothing” policy.  
DEC 29 1935  Six West Coast stations join NBC’s Blue Network: KECA/Los Angeles, KGO/San Francisco, KFSD/San Diego, KJR/Seattle, KGA/Spokane and KEX/Portland. (See Three Letter Calls.)  
DEC 29 1935   Blue’s first year bill for its permanent program line from Omaha to its new West Coast terminal in San Francisco, figured at $84 per mile, will be $130,000.  Perma-nently looping the new affiliates adds another $125,000.
DEC 29 1935   WNBX/Springfield, Vermont, beomes the first station in the state to allow commercials on Sundays.
DEC 29 1936   The Don Lee West Coast Network, anchored by KHJ/Los Angeles, KFRC/San Francisco, KGB/San Diego and KDB/Santa Barbara, leaves CBS  and joins Mutual, giving MBS coast-to-coast coverage. (See The 1936-37 Season.)
DEC 29 1936   Mutual links its new West Coast affiliates with the Midwest by adding KSO/Des Moines, WMT/Cedar Rapids, KWK/St. Louis, WHB/Kansas City, KOIL/Omaha, KFOR/Lincoln and KFEL/Denver.
DEC 29 1936   CBS replaces the Don Lee Network with its new Pacific Coast network consisting of its KNX/Los Angeles, plus KSFO/San Francisco, KOL/Seattle, KVI/Tacoma, KOIN/Portland and KFBY/Spokane.  .
DEC 29 1936   The California Radio System network is formed by the Hearst and McClatchy newspaper chains involving Hearst’s KEHE/Los Angeles and KYA/San Francisco, and McClatchy’s KFBK/Sacramento, KMJ/Fresno, KWG/Stockton and KERN/Bakersfield.
DEC 29 1936   A heavy sleet and snow storm knocks WSB/Atlanta off the air for 36 hours and forces CBS affiliate WGST to obtain its network programs over the air from WBT/ Charlotte and WHAS/Louisville when AT&T lines fail in the storm.
DEC 29 1936   Movie comic Jack Oakie debuts on CBS for two successful seasons of Jack Oakie’s College.
DEC 29 1939   After two years of delay, Mexico ratifies The North American Broadcasting Agreement that calls for the frequency change of 90% of America’s AM stations.  (See The March of Change) 
DEC 29 1939   Mutual adds the operators of New England’s Colonial Network, the Don Lee West Coast Network and Cleveland‘s United Broadcasting Corporation to its stockholders, along with WOR and WGN.  
DEC 29 1939   Former CBS Vice President and member of the original Federal Radio Commission,  Henry J. Bellows, dies at 54 after a long illness in Minneapolis.
DEC 29 1939  A frustrated Polish immigrant, armed with a wooden mallet, invades the studio of WSAR/Fall River, Massachusetts, and rants for 20 minutes against the Nazi invasion of Poland into a dead microphone before police remove him.   
DEC 29 1940   WNEW/New York City stages an all-night benefit for the Bundles For Britain Fund featuring many top bandleaders, (Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, etc.), who jam with Charlie Barnett’s orchestra for donations.
DEC 29 1941   Reports circulate that NBC executives Mark Woods and Ed Kobak will be appointed to head the newly incorporated Blue Network.
DEC 29 1941   FDR’s Fireside Chat on national security over the four networks and many independent stations registers a 59.0 Hooperating. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper  & Niesen .)
DEC 29 1942   Advertising pioneer Albert Lasker, 62, retires and his agency, Lord & Thomas, dissolves to become Foote, Cone & Belding.
DEC 29 1942   Noted composer, conductor and former NBC Music Director Robert Hood Bowers dies at 64.
DEC 29 1943  Time, Inc., and former Young & Rubicam ad agency head Chester LaRoche each buy 12½ % of the Blue Network from Edward Noble for a total of $1.0 Million.  (See The March of Time.)
DEC 29 1943   FCC makes a half-hearted objection to newspapers buying or building new radio stations but doesn’t object to those already controlled by publishers. 
DEC 29 1943   On orders of Henry Ford, a foe of swing music, the auto manufacturer cancels a planned weeknight quarter hour on Blue featuring Tommy Dorsey’s popular orchestra.  (See The 1943-44 Season.)
DEC 29 1944   Radio Luxembourg, recaptured by Allied forces in September, returns to the air after four days of silence for security purposes during a German counter-offensive.
DEC 29 1944   FCC postpones “...for an indefinite period” its Order 119, requiring the recording of all Network Radio programs, due to the wartime shortages of “...scarce material and skilled personnel.”
DEC 29 1944   AFRA reports its membership grew by 3,000 over the year, swelling the union’s ranks to 18,000 members..
DEC 29 1945   NBC’s Truth Or Consequences begins its first  “mystery person” giveaway contest, Mister Hush.  The jackpot  prize value would reach $13,000 after five weeks, when he was identified as former Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 29 1946  Fred Allen publicly complains that NBC censors delete previously approved lines from his Sunday night show just 45 minutes before air time.
DEC 29 1947  WFIL-FM/Philadelphia and The Philadelphia Inquirer become the first media to regularly transmit daily news digests by facsimile.
DEC 29 1949  Mark Woods, President of ABC since 1942, is elected the network’s Vice Chairman and Robert Kintner, succeeds Woods as its President. 
DEC 29 1948  The Internal Revenue Service denies Jack Benny’s selling his services to CBS for capital gains to cut his tax liability - but the comedian nevertheless switches networks on January 2.  (See The 1948-49 Season and Network Jumpers.)
DEC 29 1950   An FCC examiner rules that churches should not be licensed to operate broadcast stations if they are to be used to promote religious interests.  
DEC 29 1952 With Procter & Gamble’s cancellation as sponsor, CBS drops the nightly Jack Smith & Dinah Shore quarter hour of music and replaces it with a trimmed down version of the juvenile sitcom Junior Miss for 26 weeks. 
DEC 29 1952   Mutual drops its nightly schedule of MGM produced programs replacing them with ten network produced half hours - The Falcon, Hall of Fantasy, That Hammer Guy, High Adventure, Crime Fighters, Crime File of Flamond, Official Detective, John Steele Adventurer, Movie Quiz and True Or False. 
DEC 29 1952   Bing Crosby Enterprises gives a press demonstration of its magnetic videotape process deemed, “…Twenty times better than that of last year.”
DEC 29 1952   Veteran bandleader and arranger Fletcher Henderson dies of a stroke in his New York City home at 54.

DEC 30 1899  The Bell Telephone Company is reorganized and incorporated as The American Telephone & Telegraph Company, (AT&T).
DEC 30 1934  NBC and CBS report a combined 20 hours of programs originate per week from the West Coast.
DEC 30 1934   CBS debuts National Amateur Night, considered to be Network Radio’s first talent competition, hosted by Ray Perkins and sponsored by Feen-A-Mint chewing gum laxative. 
DEC 30 1935  ASCAP temporarily extends its current blanket licenses to broadcasters less the Warner Brothers catalog of songs which was withdrawn from ASCAP in November.
DEC 30 1936  The Jack Benny-Fred Allen “feud” begins with Allen’s disparaging remarks about Benny’s violin playing.  (See The Feud and Mr. Allen Meets Mr. Benny.)
DEC 30 1936   KHJ/Los Angeles originates a 90 minute dedication program on Mutual commemorating MBS becoming a nationwide network with the affiliation of the Don Lee West Coast network. 
DEC 30 1938   AFRA files a complaint against NBC/Chicago for attempting to prohibit the unionization of sound effects technicians.
DEC 30 1939   After eight weeks of scrambling to capitalize and organize,  the new Transcontinental Broadcasting System fails to produce the $245,000 in capital for its February 1st start.  Elliott Roosevelt, founding President of the proposed network, resigns. 
DEC 30 1939   Benny Goodman leaves his weekly Camel cigarette show after three and a half seasons.  (See The King of Swing.)
DEC 30 1940  Cedric Foster, 40, leaves his post as Manager of WTHT/Hartford and joins Mutual as a news commentator and beginning a 27 year career with the network..
DEC 30 1941  Network pickups from the four AM stations in Manila cease, signaling the pre-ordered dismantling and destruction of the facilities to prevent them from falling into the hands of Japanese invasion forces.
DEC 30 1941   NBC’s Hollywood office announces a specified percentage of tickets for the Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Kay Kyser and Fibber McGee & Molly  broadcasts will be reserved for Armed Forces personnel.
DEC 30 1942   Mystery/comedy series Mr. & Mrs. North replaces The Adventures of The Thin Man and begins its four year run on CBS, followed by eight more on NBC.  (See Married Sleuths and The Curse of Dashiell Hammett.)
DEC 30 1942   AFRA wins an American Arbitration Association case granting performers each $10 talent fees for recorded dress rehearsals of Blackett-Sample-Hummert soap operas.
DEC 30 1943   FCC “tentatively” rescinds its 1941 ruling that bans newspaper ownership of broadcast stations. 
DEC 30 1943   Armed Forces Radio Service reports its growth to 306 outlets.
DEC 30 1944   Newspaper-broadcasting cross-ownership continues as the Philadelphia Bulletin buys WPEN/Philadelphia for $620,000. 
DEC 30 1946   The NAB estimates there are 60.85 Million radios in the United States a jump of 2.0 Million since 1945.
DEC 30 1946  WOKO/Albany, New York, ordered off the air on February 1, 1947, is granted an extension to March 1.
DEC 30 1948  NBC announces that it will double its programming budget for radio to $5.0 Million to fight the effects of the raid on its personalities by CBS.
DEC 30 1948   The Pulse daytime local radio ratings in New York City for December credit WOR with seven of the top ten programs and WNEW with the other three.
DEC 30 1951  After a 20 year multi-network run The Carnation Contented Hour leaves the air.
DEC 30 1952 AFRA’s strike against WGN AM&TV/Chicago ends.
DEC 30 1952   FCC closes 1952 by authorizing 175 new television stations, leaving only five states: Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming, without stations.
DEC 30 1952   Miami’s Orange Bowl parade is the first televised program transmitted on AT&T’s northbound cable.

DEC 31 1907 Reginald Fessenden makes his second holiday broadcast from Brant Rock, Massachusetts which is reported heard as far away as Puerto Rico by the U.S. Navy.  (See Alchemists of The Air.)
DEC 31 1919 US phonograph record sales for the year are reported at 25 Million, introducing many stage and vaudeville performers to the potential of in-home entertainment. 
DEC 31 1929   Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians present the first of their legendary New Year’s Eve broadcasts with a half hour on CBS at 11:30 p.m. followed by a half hour on NBC at midnight. (See Guy Lombardo on this site.)
DEC 31 1930  CBS boasts a four hour New Year’s Eve show at 11:00 p.m. featuring 14 bands from three continents and eight cities.  
DEC 31 1931  Twelve Chicago radio stations avert a musicians union strike and force local President James Petrillo to cancel his demands for 35 hours’ pay for 30 hours work. (See Petrillo!)
DEC 31 1931 Walter Winchell introduces a sequence of five bands celebrating New Year’s Eve from Paris, Montreal, New York City, New Orleans and San Francisco on NBC‘s Lucky Strike  Hour.  (See Walter Winchell.)
DEC 31 1931 CBS broadcasts its five and a half hour New Year’s Eve program of 22 dance bands from 13 cities across the country’s time zones while NBC counters with six hours of twelve bands in twelve cities.
DEC 31 1932 CBS finishes the year with $1.62 Million net profit, NBC trails with $1.05 Million.  (See Radio Nets’ Grosses.)
DEC 31 1932 American Tobacco is reported to be Network Radio’s biggest advertiser of the year with $3.0 spent for Lucky Strike cigarettes and nearly $2.0 for Cremo cigars.  (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
DEC 31 1934   International News Service European-based reporter Max Jordan, 39, joins NBC as Network Radio’s first foreign correspondent.
DEC 31 1934   WLW/Cincinnati begins testing its 500,000 watt transmitter under the experimental call sign W8XO with a one hour concert and draws listener response from Alaska and Hawaii.
DEC 31 1934   The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that 25.55 Million radios are in use in America, nearly half of the entire world’s total.
DEC 31 1936   The U.S. Commerce Department estimates that Americans bought eight million radios in 1936 at a total cost of $440.0 Million.
DEC 31 1938  FCC reports its greatest rush of protest mail of the year came in the last two weeks of January when 21,118 pieces of mail arrive either denouncing Detroit priest Charles Coughlin or opposing the stations that banned him.  (See Father Coughlin.)
DEC 31 1940  U.S. Government prepares suit against ASCAP,  BMI, CBS and NBC in Milwaukee Federal Court  alleging eight “criminal” counts ranging from illegal discrimin-ation to price fixing to unlawful boycotts. 
DEC 31 1940  With the war in Europe, Broadcasting magazine reports that 779 U.S. radio stations subscribe to one or more news wire services.
DEC 31 1940   The sale of 1.2 Million Bing Crosby records at 35 cents each by Decca Records results in 1940 royalties of $125,000 paid by the company to the singer.
DEC 31 1940   ASCAP reports a last minute rush of 87 subscriber renewals from inde-pendent stations before the network and affiliate boycott of the Society begins at midnight.
DEC 31 1941  The U.S. Justice Department files anti-trust actions against RCA-NBC, CBS and the networks’ executives in an effort to dismantle network-station affiliation agreements, force NBC to sell its Blue network and make CBS sell three of its owned stations.
DEC 31 1941  FCC reports it has eleven monitoring stations and 80 secondary listening posts around the United States which detected 251 unlicensed stations in 1941.
DEC 31 1941   FM receiver sales in 1941 indicate that 180,000 FM sets are in use.
DEC 31 1942  FCC approves the $1.24 Million sale of the 21 station Yankee Network and its six New England stations to General Tire & Rubber.  Commissioners Durr and Walker dissented because the application should have been subject to a hearing.
DEC 31 1942  General Foods cancels the West Coast broadcast of The Aldrich Family and substitutes The Victory Bond Drive being carried by other Coast stations when Aldrich star Norman Tokar is diagnosed with a strep throat.  (See The Aldrich Family and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
DEC 31 1943   Chicago ad agency Blackett, Sample & Hummert dissolves and becomes Dancer, Fitzgerald & Sample.
DEC 31 1943   Frank & Anne Hummert leave Blackett, Sample & Hummert to form Hummert Radio Productions.
DEC 31 1943   Truth Or Consequences’ two-year total of War Bonds sold reaches $225 Million. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.) 
DEC 31 1944   Noted war correspondent and author Quentin Reynolds joins CBS as host of Radio Readers Digest. 
DEC 31 1945   Sterling Drug cancels its CBS serials Amanda and Second Husband to sponsor ABC’s new weekday afternoon half-hour Bride & Groom on 140 stations.
DEC 31 1945  Philco claims invention of the first “true FM detector” that eliminates AM noise in its new FM radios.
DEC 31 1946   Manufacturers report that 15 Million radios were produced during the year, but less than 1% receive the new 88-108 megacycle FM band. 
DEC 31 1946   U.S. total television set ownership is reported at 6,000 sets. 
DEC 31 1947  Garry Moore and Red Skelton substitute for Jimmy Durante when the 54 year old comedian is hospitalized and misses his NBC show. (See Goodnight, Mr. Durante...)
DEC 31 1947   AFM boss James Petrillo orders his 195,000 members to refuse to work for the nation’s 770 record companies and transcription services - beginning a yearlong walkout protesting their creating “canned” music without additional compensation.  (See Petrillo!)
DEC 31 1947   Movie western and radio stars Roy Rogers, 37, and Dale Evans, 36, are married in Davis, Oklahoma.
DEC 31 1948   Trade paper Billboard estimates that 54 Network Radio shows gave away a total of $4.3 Million in cash and prizes in 1948.
DEC 31 1948   Mutual’s weekday show Queen For A Day claims it tops all giveaway programs with an estimated $655,000 in cash and merchandise prizes awarded in 1948. 
DEC 31 1948   U.S. total television ownership is reported at One Million sets.
DEC 31 1948   ASCAP’s gratis licenses to the television industry expire but the music licensing group extends the policy for an additional two months. 
DEC 31 1949   U.S. total television ownership is reported at Four Million sets.
DEC 31 1949   After the FCC denies the sale of its WHAS AM-FM-TV/Louisville to both AVCO and Bing Crosby Enterprises, The Louisville Courier-Journal calls off negotiations with a group headed by Gene Autry and takes the stations off the market.
DEC 31 1949  NBC reports the 1949 gross billings of its television network and five owned stations to be $6.4 Million, which represents a $3.5 Million loss for the company.  CBS-TV trails in billings at $2.4 Million, ABC-TV at $1.1 Million and DuMont at $920,000.
DEC 31 1950   Bowing to affiliate complaints, NBC cancels its plans to reduce nighttime radio rates in markets served by television.
DEC 31 1950   U.S. total television ownership is reported at Ten Million sets.
DEC 31 1951   Edward R. Murrow leads ten CBS newsmen through the 60 minute Challenge of The Fifties analysis of current affairs.  The program is repeated on New Years Day with visuals added on CBS-TV.
DEC 31 1951   Billed as the largest package of sponsored newscasts in Network Radio history, Johnson Wax begins a schedule of four newscasts per day on Mutual.
DEC 31 1951  MGM debuts its weekly six-hour schedule of programs produced for Mutual -  including Dr. Kildare, The Gracie Fields Show, The Hardy Family, Crime Does Not Pay and The MGM Theater of The Air.
DEC 31 1951   The Joint Network Radio Committee estimates that U.S. Radio ownership is up 9.7% to 105.3 Million receivers.
DEC 31 1951  FCC reports total local radio station revenues for the year are up 5.6% but network revenues are down 10%.
DEC 31 1951  Colgate Palmolive Peet premieres its weekday quiz on NBC-TV, The Big Payoff, hosted by Randy Merriman and former Miss America Bess Myerson offering mink coats as the show’s grand prizes.  
DEC 31 1951  NBC’s 1951 television revenue is reported at $59 Million - up 180% over 1950 - opposed to its radio revenue of $54 Million - down 11.5%
DEC 31 1952   FCC approves the sale of KMPC/Los Angeles to a group headed by Gene Autry for $800,000. 
DEC 31 1952  Mutual newscaster Fulton Lewis, Jr., claims the most successful co-op program and the largest commercial radio network of any scheduled program with 364 stations and 752 local sponsors .
DEC 31 1952   Rheingold Beer ushers in the New Year with hour-long transcribed show at 11:30 p.m. by Guy Lombardo’s orchestra on New York stations WCBS, WJZ, WMCA, WMGM, WNBC and WNEW.  (See Guy Lombardo.) 
DEC 31 1952   FCC finishes 1952 authorizing a total of 175 new television stations, 133 new AM stations and 33 new FM stations.
DEC 31 1953   After a three month trial, affiliate complaints force Mutual to abandon its policy of offering free programming to stations in lieu of payments. 

                                                                GLOSSARY
AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - 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 - 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 - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News 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 - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press

            Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL    Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com