JULY IN THE GOLDEN AG E
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JUL 1 1923 The first permanent link by telephone line is established between two stations - 210 miles from AT&T’s WEAF/New York City to millionaire Edward Green’s WMAF/South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
JUL 1 1924 The Chicago Tribune buys WDAP/Chicago and changes its call-sign two weeks later to WGN, representing “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”
JUL 1 1926 RCA agrees to buy WEAF/New York City from AT&T for $1.0 Million. (See Alchemists of The Air.)
JUL 1 1926 RCA leases exclusive use of AT&T broadcast quality lines for networking purposes.
JUL 1 1932 NBC orders a 10% pay cut for all employees.
JUL 1 1932 NBC charges 30 of its affiliates $1,500 a month for sustaining programs, remaining affiliates pay $25 per hour for nighttime sustaining programs, $15 for each sustaining daytime hour.
JUL 1 1932 Andre Kostelanetz begins a new series on CBS with a 40 piece orchestra but no spoken words during the 30 minute Friday night concerts.
JUL 1 1933 NBC boasts 154,000 requests for free trial-size packages of Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder result from two commercials on the network’s Manhattan Merry Go Round. (See Top 40 Radio’s Roots and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1933 CBS broadcasts a half-hour adaptation of Damon Runyon’s Lady For A Day from aboard the cruise ship Queen of Bermuda enroute to the island.
JUL 1 1934 The Communications Act of 1934 takes effect - the seven member Federal Communications Commission replaces the five member Federal Radio Commission.
JUL 1 1934 NBC forbids its contract talent to record for any label but RCA Victor without permission.
JUL 1 1935 Radio Guide’s second annual popularity poll draws 1,256,000 votes and names Jack Benny, Wayne King’s orchestra, Amos & Andy, Maxwell House Showboat and One Man’s Family as its winners.
JUL 1 1936 A mid-year report of metropolitan areas shows that New York City has the most radio stations at 18, Chicago follows with 12, Los Angeles has eleven, Philadelphia has ten, and Boston and San Francisco each have five.
JUL 1 1937 NBC’s Texaco Fire Chief, Ed Wynn, is cited by Treasury Department officials to have legally dodged $196,728 in income taxes by establishing personally owned cor-porations to receive his checks. (See Tuesday's All Too Ten.)
JUL 1 1937 New York’s Hotel Taft announces the installation of radios in all of its rooms giving guests their choice of four stations or Muzak.
JUL 1 1937 Esquire publishes an unflattering profile of AFM Chicago local President James Petrillo titled, The Mussolini of Music. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 1 1938 Mutual schedules a record 30 hours of dance band remotes a week to fill time for summer vacationing programs. (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 1 1938 NBC bans Johnny Mercer’s novelty song Weekend of A Private Secretary.
JUL 1 1939 With the possibility of an ASCAP dispute coming in 1941, the Standard Transcription Service announces that over 2,000 public domain selections currently in its library with more to be added in 1940. (See “By Transcription…”)
JUL 1 1939 Radio Guide magazine names singer Nelson Eddy “Radio’s Star of Stars” with the most of 729,000 votes received from readers, beating Jessica Dragonette, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Rudy Vallee.
JUL 1 1940 Westinghouse terminates NBC’s management contract for its KDKA/Pitts-burgh, KYW/Philadelphia, WBZ/Boston, WBZA/Springfield and WOWO/Fort Wayne and consolidates its Radio Division in Philadelphia.
JUL 1 1941 FCC awards first commercial television license to NBC’s WNBT(TV) in New York City.
JUL 1 1941 The Bulova Watch Company becomes television’s first advertiser with a time signal on WNBT(TV)/New York City. The day continues with an unsponsored Brooklyn vs. Philadelphia baseball game from Ebbets Field, Lever Brothers presents a video version of Uncle Jim’s Question Bee, Sun Oil simulcasts Lowell Thomas News and Procter & Gamble sponsors a TV version of Truth Or Consequences.
JUL 1 1941 NBC issues its first rate card for WNBT(TV)/New York City: $120 per hour plus production fees.
JUL 1 1941 FCC grants Muzak Corporation an experimental FM license in New York City to test its music service for subscribers equipped with special receivers.
JUL1 1942 CBS leads Variety’s count of network newscasts per week with 72, leading Blue’s 52, NBC’s 40 and Mutual’s 38. Mutual leads in news commentary programs with 57, followed by CBS with 49, Blue at 41 and NBC’s 26.
JUL 1 1942 The Atlantic Coast Network begins operations on an experimental basis with seven stations anchored by WNEW/New York.
JUL 1 1943 Rudy Vallee, 41. breaks his successful string of 14 years on NBC to join the U.S. Coast Guard as its band director. (See The 1942-43 Season and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1943 The U.S. government’s mediation effort to end the eleven month musicians union strike against transcription firms ends in 15 minutes when union chief Petrillo says his members, “…will make no more transcriptions for anyone at any time.” (See Petrillo!)
JUL 1 1943 Mutual drops its dance band remotes when the AFM refuses to play while MBS continues service to WSAY/Rochester which is in an eight month dispute with the union. (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 1 1943 WNBH/New Bedford, Massachusetts, becomes Blue’s 155th affiliate.
JUL 1 1944 Actress Dorothy Lowell, 28, who held the title role of Our Gal Sunday since 1937, dies after giving birth to a daughter. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 1 1944 Raymond Rubicam, co-founder of major broadcast advertising agency Young & Rubicam in 1923 with James Orr Young, retires as Chairman of the firm at age 52.
JUL 1 1945 Mutual commentator Upton Close leaves the air with parting blasts against fascists, communists, racial and religious intolerance, the Anti-Defamation League and “network monopolies.”
JUL 1 1945 The nation’s first small independent television station, W2XJT(TV), opens on Jamaica, Long Island, to test new equipment and explore effective methods of educational television broadcasting.
JUL 1 1946 ABC, NBC and Mutual carry a special memorial broadcast from the U.S. House of Representatives honoring late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
JUL 1 1946 Making up for lost time in World War II, the FCC authorizes 213 new AM station construction permits, 451 FM grants and 20 television station permits in the first six months of 1946.
JUL 1 1946 The Philadelphia Record agrees to buy WCAU/Philadelphia from brothers Ike and Leon Levy for $6.0 Million.
JUL 1 1946 The will of Major Edward Bowes of The Original Amateur Hour who died two weeks earlier reveals he left an estate of $4.5 Million, most of it going to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine.)
JUL 1 1947 Eleven days after its last broadcast for Woodbury Soap on NBC, mystery-comedy Mr. & Mrs. North debuts on CBS for Colgate Palmolive Peet’s Halo Shampoo. (See Married Sleuths and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1947 ABC reports its twelve shows offered to affiliates on a co-op basis are accepted as 2,700 quarter-hours on 179 stations and generating $2.0 Million in annual revenue.
JUL 1 1947 Citing higher costs, C.E. Hooper doubles its audience survey prices to $1,500 monthly for NBC and CBS, and $1,200 per month for ABC and Mutual. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 1 1947 Broadcasters Guild, Inc., a cooperative network of transcribed programming begins operations with WHN/New York, WLS/Chicago and KMPC/Hollywood as its key stations.
JUL 1 1947 FCC grants permission to New York Times owned WQXQ-FM/New York to temporarily broadcast on both its established 45.9 frequency and the reallocation-dictated 96.3 megacycles.
JUL 1 1948 New York City lawyer and Democrat activist Freda Hannock, 44, becomes the first female appointed to the FCC.
JUL 1 1948 Former FCC Chairman Charles Denny, 36, is elected Executive Vice President of NBC after serving eight months as the company’s legal counsel.
JUL 1 1948 After 22 years with NBC, Executive Vice President Frank Mullen, 51, joins the G.A. Richards group - WJR/Detroit, WGAR/Cleveland and KMPC/Los Angeles - as its chief executive.
JUL 1 1949 CBS fires 175 employees in an effort to trim operating costs by $1.5 Million.
JUL 1 1949 Dorothy Schiff, Publisher of The New York Post, sells WLIB/New York City to group of investors including the former manager of municipally owned WNYC for $150,000.
JUL 1 1949 FCC reports that 203 FM grants have been turned back during the first six months of the year and only 130 new grants have been awarded.
JUL 1 1949 Ford cancels its weekly Ford Theater on CBS and dedicates the $15,000 weekly budget to The Ford Television Theater beginning in October on CBS-TV.
JUL 1 1949 NBC estimates the number of television sets in the United States to be 1.86 Million.
JUL 1 1949 The Albert Sindlinger Company introduces its Radox method to measure radio, television and phonograph use and popularity - the system involves installation of an electric eye within the respondents’ homes connected via telephone lines to a central reporting station.
JUL 1 1949 Transit Radio reports adding 104 new advertisers including Swift, Miles Laboratories, Bendix and Sears Roebuck to its bus and streetcar broadcasts in 14 cities.
JUL 1 1950 CBS presents Dennis O’Keefe as T-Man, a summer long action feature based on a Treasury Department agent’s adventures. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
JUL 1 1950 Ralph Edwards and his staff leave for six weeks of taping Truth Or Conse-quences and This Is Your Life programs in Europe for fall broadcast on his new network, CBS, and sponsor, Philip Morris. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
JUL 1 1950 Mark Goodson & Bill Todman introduce their short lived comedy-quiz, Rate Your Mate with host Joey Adams, on CBS.
JUL 1 1951 Lloyd Nolan signs a three year, $750,000 deal with sponsor U.S. Tobacco and replaces William Gargan as Martin Kane, Private Eye on NBC radio and television.
JUL 1 1951 ABC begins closed-circuit television tests of Walter Winchell’s Sunday night news commentaries. (See Walter Winchell.)
JUL 1 1952 CBS affiliates, 143 strong, meet in New York City to demand that the network abandon its plan to cut rates, rescind its year-old 10% rate cut of 1951 and raise daytime rates by at least 20%.
JUL 1 1952 Procter & Gamble renews its nightly 45 minute block of CBS programs - Lowell Thomas News, Beulah and The Jack Smith Show - for one year at a reported one-third rate reduction. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1952 Osborne Putnam Stearns, known for five years as the recipe reciting Food Magician on WMAQ/Chicago, sues NBC for $500,000 after he is fired when his ratings drop which he blames on station-ordered format changes.
JUL 1 1952 Pianist-comedian Steve Allen, 30, takes the weeknight half-hour on CBS at 9:30 p.m. for, “… an ad-lib, free-wheeling, drop-in show for guests and audiences.”
JUL 1 1952 R.J. Reynolds Camel cigarettes renews $10.0 Million in NBC annual billings with its Grand Ole Opry and Vaughn Monroe Show on radio and Camel News Caravan plus 30 minutes of Your Show of Shows on television. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1952 Live network television via cable and microwave relay arrives in Texas cities Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
JUL 1 1952 FCC begins processing television applications for cities that have no television stations.
JUL 1 1953 KYW/Philadelphia asks FCC permission to cease FM broadcasting and donate its tower and transmitter to the Delaware Valley Educational Television Corporation.
JUL 2 1921 RCA establishes WJY/Newark to broadcast the Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier Heavyweight Championship fight to a claimed 300,000 listeners.
JUL 2 1932 NBC carries its first broadcast from Rockefeller Center - the laying of the building’s cornerstone.
JUL 2 1934 Ota Gygi, former CEO of Ed Wynn’s defunct Amalgamated Broadcasting System network, meets with Midwest stations in an attempt to form the Affiliated Radio Network.
JUL 2 1935 The police chief of Kansas City, Missouri, suing The March of Time and CBS for $250,000 in libel damages, settles for $20,000. (See The March of Time.)
JUL 2 1936 Benny Goodman’s band returns to Network Radio with weekly appearances on a CBS summertime variety hour hosted by novelist and commentator Rupert Hughes. (See The King of Swing.)
JUL 2 1937 CBS purchases the Avon Theater on New York City’s West 45th Street and renames it CBS Radio Playhouse Number Two.
JUL 2 1937 Both CBS and NBC cover the last two days of the Wimbledon tennis tournament via shortwave from courtside in Great Britain.
JUL 2 1939 The Aldrich Family debuts as Jack Benny’s summer replacement. (See The Aldrich Famiiy and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 2 1939 Vaudeville veteran Joe Howard, 61, and singer Beatrice Kay, 32, introduce The Gay Nineties Revue for its six year run on CBS.
JUL 2 1940 Gracie Allen discontinues her “Presidential campaign” and pledges all royalties from her book, How To Become President, to the Red Cross.
JUL 2 1941 The Adventures of The Thin Man begins its nine year multi-network run on NBC. (See Married Sleuths, Friday's All Time Top Ten and The Curse of Dashiell Hammett.)
JUL 2 1941 Texaco donates its hour-long Fred Allen time period on CBS during the comedian’s summer vacation to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Millions For Defense promoting Defense Bond sales.
JUL 2 1943 A U.S. House Select Committee launches an attack on the FCC, charging the agency with inefficiency and being a hindrance to the war effort.
JUL 2 1943 Columnist and Blue commentator Drew Pearson is slapped with a $1.0 Million libel suit by lobbyist John R. Monroe.
JUL 2 1945 Marlin Hurt, 40, debuts his Fibber McGee & Molly spinoff, Beulah, on CBS. He dies suddenly from a heart attack eight months later.
JUL 2 1945 Writer/actor Eddie Holden sues NBC, sponsor F.W. Fitch and MCA for $200,000, charging they stole his copyrighted name and format for Dick Powell’s summer replacement show Rogue’s Gallery. (See Dick Powell.)
JUL 2 1945 New York Telephone Co. uses radio to urge its customers to limit their calls to five minutes.
JUL 2 1945 Popular radio actor John Walsh, 36, dies suddenly in Chicago.
JUL 2 1946 Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts begins its ten season run on CBS. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 2 1950 Screen veteran William Powell begins his short summer run in the NBC turn-of-the-century sitcom, My Mother’s Husband.
JUL 2 1951 Comedy team Bob (Elliot) & Ray (Goulding) debut on NBC weekday afternoons with a quarter hour show.
JUL 2 1951 CBS opens Robert Q’s Waxworks, a 45-minute disc jockey show featuring Robert Q. Lewis for the eight week vacation period of Beulah, Jack Smith and Bob Crosby‘s 15 minute shows..
JUL 2 1951 The sitcom Meet Millie opens on CBS for three season run starring Audrey Totter succeeded by Elena Verdugo.
JUL 2 1951 Procter & Gamble renews six weekday programs on NBC - Welcome Travelers, Life Can Be Beautiful, Road of Life, Pepper Young’s Family, Backstage Wife and Right To Happiness - despite the lure of ABC’s 45% discount to obtain the programs.
JUL 2 1951 ABC debuts its hour long block of weekday dramas - When A Girl Marries, The Romance of Evelyn Winters, Lone Journey and David Amity. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 2 1951 CBS returns its option on 10:45 to 11:00 p.m. weeknights to its affiliates.
JUL 2 1951 With audience declines, ABC, CBS, Mutual and NBC cut nighttime radio rates by 10% to 15%.
JUL 2 1951 The Liberty Broadcasting System network grows to 450 affiliates.
JUL 2 1952 One hundred and fifty CBS Radio affiliates meet in New York City to protest the network’s planned rate cuts.
JUL 2 1952 The Radio Writers Guild calls a strike against the networks which involves 28 employees at CBS, 20 at NBC and 16 at ABC.
JUL 3 1935 NBC Vice President John Royal and network correspondent Max Jordan broadcast via shortwave from the rim of Mt. Vesuvius hours before the volcano erupts.
JUL 3 1936 Powell Crosley, Jr., owner of Cincinnati’s WLW and WSAI, buys control of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.
JUL 3 1937 KGMB/Honolulu remains on the air for 38 consecutive hours attempting to establish contact with Amelia Earhart whose plane disappeared over the Pacific the previous day.
JUL 3 1937 CBS “steals” coverage of the National AAU track and field meet in Milwaukee, by posting sportscaster Ted Husing on a church rooftop overlooking the stadium where NBC had paid for exclusive coverage.
JUL 3 1937 New York City AFM Local 802 rules that no non-union musician may play on the city’s stations - a move aimed at WOR’s Little Symphony which features students from the Juilliard School of Music. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 3 1939 Blondie, starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, starts its eleven year multi-network run on CBS. (See Bloonn…dee!)
JUL 3 1939 CBS drops its line charges for Hollywood originated programs which cost advertisers an additional $350 per hour.
JUL 3 1940 Bud Abbott & Lou Costello get their first network show as 13-week summer replacements for Fred Allen on NBC.
JUL 3 1941 Death Valley Days, a Blue and NBC program for eleven years, begins a summertime run on both CBS and Blue before becoming an exclusive CBS property in the fall.
JUL 3 1942 Foreign language broadcasters, led by WOV/New York, voluntarily adopt a wartime code of practices including the careful monitoring of all program content.
JUL 3 1942 Philco television station WPTZ/Philadelphia cuts its operation to five and a half hours per week for the duration.
JUL 3 1944 Half hour musical sitcom Glamour Manor starring Cliff Arquette opens its three year run on Blue’s midday schedule.
JUL 3 1945 FCC relaxes its rules and no longer requires disc jockeys to identify each phonograph record as “recorded”. (See “By Transcription…” )
JUL 3 1946 Successful West Coast mystery series The Whistler is first heard on the full CBS network as Jack Carson‘s summer replacement. (See The Whistler.)
JUL 3 1947 The U.S. House Interstate Commerce Committee indefinitely postpones its hearings on the FCC’s 1945 decision to move the FM band to 88-108 megacycles and its possible return to the 42-50 mc band.
JUL 3 1947 Zenith demonstrates its new television-telephone combination, Phonevision, for the press, predicting that it will provide immediate revenue for television production, “…in the near future.”
JUL 3 1949 NBC launches its lavish giveaway show Hollywood Calling opposite Jack Benny on CBS. (See Sunday At Seven.)
JUL 3 1949 Lionel Barrymore’s Mayor of The Town leaves the air after a seven year multi-network run.
JUL 3 1950 Garry Moore stars in a new weeknight half-hour variety show at 7:00 p.m. simulcast on CBS and CBS-TV.
JUL 3 1950 Bob Crosby’s weeknight show Club 15 is replaced on CBS for the summer at 7:30 p.m. with Stepping Out starring Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 3 1950 Sitcoms Too Many Cooks starring Hal March & Mary Jane Croft and Granby’s Green Acres with Gale Gordon & Bea Benadaret begin their summer runs on CBS. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
JUL 3 1951 Los Angeles Superior Court awards $800,000 to the owners of the Bride & Groom radio and television shows for infringement by Wedding Bells, a series produced by KLAC-TV/Los Angeles.
JUL 3 1951 Wrigley gum begins sponsorship of CBS shows Broadway Is My Beat, The Lineup, Pursuit, Romance and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar for six weeks at a budget of $660,000. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
JUL 3 1952 FCC is flooded with 485 applications for new television stations during the week - over a third for channels in Ultra-High Frequency channels.
JUL 3 1952 Television hit sitcom Mr. Peepers starring Wally Cox opens its three year run on NBC-TV.
JUL 4 1934 The 12 CBS stations carrying the kids’ serial Skippy each release 100 balloons in the Skippy Derby. Kids finding cards attached to the balloons can redeem them for tubes of the sponsor’s product, Phillips Milk of Magnesia Toothpaste.
JUL 4 1939 A reported crowd of 75,000 attends a free holiday concert by Phil Spitany’s all-girl orchestra in Chicago’s Grant Park. (See The Hour of Charm.)
JUL 4 1942 NBC’s National Barn Dance from WLS/Chicago, an hour long network feature since its debut on Blue in 1933, is cut by sponsor Alka-Seltzer to 30 minutes. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 4 1943 Jack Benny and the cast of Information Please headline the Independence Day War Bond Rally at the Hollywood Bowl. (See Information Please.)
JUL 4 1943 The OWI establishes twelve low power stations in Great Britain connected by wire to London and called The American Forces Network, to serve American service-men and women based there during the war.
JUL 4 1944 Johnson Wax moves NBC’s late night public service program, Words At War, to its Tuesday night slot at 9:30 p.m. as the 13-week summer replacement for Fibber McGee & Molly. (See Words At War.)
JUL 4 1944 Milton Berle’s struggling Let Yourself Go on Blue switches from an audience participation quiz to variety.
JUL 4 1944 George Hicks, hailed for his D-Day reports, begins a Tuesday and Thursday night commentary on Blue. (See D-Day On Radio.)
JUL 4 1945 The U.S Treasury announces the total in War Bond sales sold by Truth Or Consequences’ seven personal appearance tours during World War II is a record $219.2 Million. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 4 1945 Curtain Time, a failed Mutual light drama anthology from 1939, is revived by Mars Candies and begins its five season multi-network run on ABC.
JUL 4 1945 The OWI’s powerful American Broadcasting Station In Europe, (ABSIE), operating from London, signs off the air after 15 months of duty broadcasting news and propaganda in six languages.
JUL 4 1946 CBS gives the U.S. Army Thursday night’s FBI In Peace & War half hour for seven weeks to air the recruiting program Sound Off. (See FBI vs. FBI.)
JUL 4 1949 CBS replaces Monday-Friday strip shows Club 15, Beulah and Jack Smith Show for the summer with Spin To Win, a combination disc jockey and quiz show hosted by Warren Hull.
JUL 4 1949 Joan Davis launches her sitcom Leave It To Joan as a six-week summer replacement for the first half of Lux Radio Theater before beginning a full season run on CBS in September.
JUL 4 1949 Young & Rubicam Advertising Vice President Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, 40, joins NBC as head of network television operations.
JUL 4 1949 The first television adaptation of the radio mystery-comedy series Mr.& Mrs. North, starring Joseph Allen, Jr. and Mary Jo Taylor, debuts on NBC. (See Married Sleuths.)
JUL 4 1950 Singing host John Conte introduces his 15-minute Van Camp’s Little Show on NBC Tuesday and Thursday nights, alternating with Roberta Quinlan’s Mohawk Carpet Showroom.
JUL 5 1931 McFadden Publications switches from CBS to NBC and adds nine stations to its weekly True Story dramatizations.
JUL 5 1932 Guy Lombardo refuses to appear in Paramount’s film The Big Broadcast when he’s forced to take second billing to Bing Crosby. (See Guy Lombardo.)
JUL 5 1934 Colonel Robert McCormick turns down NBC’s offer of $1.0 Million for his WGN/Chicago.
JUL 5 1935 As it reorganizes into a fulltime network, Mutual opens sales offices in New York and Chicago.
JUL 5 1937 Benton & Bowles tells the National Association of Parents & Teachers that its client, Colgate Palmolive Peet, placed its CBS show Gangbusters at 10:00 p.m. to avoid kid listeners. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 5 1937 Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial, Arnold Grimm’s Daughter begins its four year multi-network run for General Mills. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 5 1937 Soap opera actors and writers complain that Blackett-Sample-Hummert’s new subsidiary, Featured Artists Service, is the exclusive “booking agency” for all of BSH’S programs and charges them a 5% commission.
JUL 5 1938 Bing Crosby signs a ten year contract to host NBC's Kraft Music Hall - which will be broken in eight years. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 5 1938 WSM/Nashville becomes the first station to transmit its programming from studio to transmitter via microwave relay.
JUL 5 1939 WLW/Cincinnati scores a news beat feeding NBC and Mutual reports from a plane flying over the Moorhead, Kentucky flood that killed over 80 persons.
JUL 5 1939 Bristol-Myers brings quiz show What’s My Name? with hosts Arlene Frances and Fred Uttel to NBC for 13 weeks as summer replacement for Fred Allen.
JUL 5 1939 NBC estimates it costs $500 a day to produce television programs to broad-cast to 500 sets in New York City.
JUL 5 1942 Character actor Mischa Auer debuts in The Memoirs of Mischa The Mag-nificent on CBS as Fred Allen’s summer replacement.
JUL 5 1942 NBC moves its Sunday night all-star patriotic show, Victory Parade, back 30 minutes to 6:30 p.m.
JUL 5 1943 Chick Carter, Boy Detective, spinoff of Nick Carter, Master Detective, begins its two year run on Mutual’s weekday afternoon schedule. (See Nick Carter.)
JUL 5 1944 Danny Danker, J. Walter Thompson ad executive responsible for successes of Lux Radio Theater, Kraft Music Hall and Chase & Sanborn Hour, dies of heart attack at age 41.
JUL 5 1944 WLEW/Erie, Pennsylvania, claims the industry’s first singing station break.
JUL 5 1945 Ann Sothern begins a two year run in the CBS radio adaptation of her MGM movie series as Maisie.
JUL 5 1945 Victor Borge begins his 13-week variety show as summer replacement for Fibber McGee & Molly on NBC.
JUL 5 1945 Radio writer Edmund Holden sues NBC, F.W. Fitch and others for $200,000, charging plagiarism and claiming copyright to the detective drama Rogue’s Gallery. (See Dick Powell.)
JUL 5 1946 Bob Hope completes a tour of 34 Midwest and West Coast theater dates, grossing $430,000. (See About A Song.)
JUL 5 1946 WNBT(TV)/New York City beats the newsreels by six days in showing film of the Bikini atomic tests.
JUL 5 1946 Fledgling ABC-TV adds two programs: The Society of Amateur Chess from WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia and a video adaptation of ABC Radio’s My True Story from WRGB(TV)/Schenectady.
JUL 5 1946 President Truman signs The Lanham Act giving protection to radio advertising service marks including slogans, jingles and character names.
JUL 5 1947 Arthur Godfrey trims Saturday from his local radio duties to broadcast Monday through Fridays from 6:00 to 7:45 a.m. on WCBS/New York City and 7:45 to 9:10 a.m. on WTOP/Washington, then 11:00 to 11:30 a.m. on the full CBS network. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 5 1948 New York City’s Paramount Theater reports receiving 15,000 phone calls from radio listeners seeking the title to the 20th Century Fox newsreel theme - the Mystery Melody jackpot song on ABC’s Stop The Music! (See Stop The Music!.)
JUL 5 1949 Michael Sillerman, former President of the Keystone Transcription Network, joins Fredric Ziv Productions in charge of Special Sales. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syn-dication.)
JUL 5 1949 It Pays To Be Ignorant’s Tuesday night CBS Radio broadcasts begin using transcriptions of the audio from the Monday night television version of the show. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant.)
JUL 5 1949 WGN-TV/Chicago celebrates the use of its new transmitter and antenna with a special variety program hosted by Sid Caesar.
JUL 5 1950 The U.S .Defense Department suddenly cancels the six-week tour of Truth Or Consequences to G.I. bases in Europe because of transportation problems caused by the Korean War. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
JUL 5 1950 Long running weekly serial One Man’s Family is converted into a successful 15 minute weeknight strip on NBC and remains on the air for nine more seasons. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten. )
JUL 5 1952 Bob (Elliott) & Ray (Goulding), already the early morning comedy team on WNBC/New York City, featured on NBC network weekday quarter hours at 11:30 a.m. and a Friday night half hour at 8:30, add a 30 minute Saturday night program on NBC-TV at 7:30.
JUL 6 1933 NBC and CBS both cover Major League Baseball’s first annual All Star Game - CBS donates half of its game income, ($5,000), to the Retired Players’ Fund.
JUL 6 1936 New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman sues commentator Boake Carter, CBS and sponsor Philco for $100,000, charging defamation of character for declaring him “blundering”.
JUL 6 1937 Benny Goodman’s band substitutes for Jack Oakie during the comedian’s 13 week summer vacation from his CBS show for Camel cigarettes. (See The King of Swing.)
JUL 6 1941 Portable radios are banned from Yankee Stadium for creating distractions during ballgames.
JUL 6 1943 Rural comedienne and vocalist Judy Canova leaves her family’s singing act to star in a successful sitcom for one season on CBS and eight more on NBC. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 6 1944 Hartford stations WTIC, WDRC, WNBC and WTHT assume 24 hour emergency aid status following the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus tent fire that killed 168 and injured 700.
JUL 6 1945 Bob Hope, appearing on NBC’s Atlantic Spotlight, becomes the first American performer to broadcast from Paris since the city’s liberation. (See Hope From Home and About A Song.)
JUL 6 1947 NBC donates its 8:30 Sunday night timeslot to the U.S. Army during Fred Allen’s 13 week summer hiatus for Front & Center, a recruiting show starring Dorothy Lamour and a parade of Hollywood guest stars.
JUL 6 1948 New York attorney and Democratic Party activist Frieda Hennock, 43, becomes the first female FCC commissioner.
JUL 6 1948 Radio’s giveaway craze continues as a Long Island woman appearing on the CBS quiz Hit The Jackpot wins a collection of prizes valued at $18,000.
JUL 6 1949 Veteran comedienne Billie Burke and Harry VonZell debut in the radio sitcom adaptation of Chicken Every Sunday on NBC for an eight week run.
JUL 6 1949 Gillette buys radio and television rights to major boxing matches from Madison Square Garden, then assigns the Friday night fights to NBC-TV and ABC Radio.
JUL 6 1949 Ampex Electric Corporation advertises its Model 300 Console Tape Recorder in the trade press - “Because Top Talent Demands High Fidelity” - $1,573.75.
JUL 6 1950 RCA Chairman David Sarnoff urges Congress to expand U.S. international broadcasting facilities to combat Soviet propaganda - estimating the initial cost at $200 Million.
JUL 6 1950 CBS's realistic police drama The Lineup begins its three year run.
JUL 6 1950 NBC introduces its documentary series, The Quick & The Dead, tracing the history of the atomic and hydrogen bombs narrated by Bob Hope.
JUL 6 1950 CBS begins simulcasting Garry Moore’s weeknight variety show on radio and television at 7:00 p.m.
JUL 6 1950 Comic strip based sitcom Blondie concludes its eleven season multi-network run. (See Bloonn…dee!)
JUL 6 1951 KSTP-TV/Minneapolis-St. Paul newscaster Bill Ingram donates a pint of his blood to the Red Cross on camera to demonstrate how simple and painless the procedure is to viewers.
JUL 6 1953 Arthur Godfrey, convalescing from hip surgery, returns to his CBS morning show simulcasts from his farm in Virginia while his cast remains in New York City. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 6 1953 R.J. Reynolds moves the Camel cigarettes show, Walk A Mile, from NBC to CBS.
JUL 6 1953 NBC-TV introduces its “Operations Daytime” weekday campaign with Glamour Girl, a Cinderella-themed audience participation show from 10:30 to 11:00 a.m. hosted by singer Harry Babbit and The Bennets, a Chicago based soap opera from 11:15 to 11:30 a.m.
JUL 7 1923 AT&T buys WCAP/Washington, D.C., installs its “toll broadcasting” concept and connects it by telephone line to WEAF/New York City.
JUL 7 1932 Hellzapoppin’ comedians Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson join Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Hour on NBC. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 7 1933 Ford Motors increases its 26 week buy of NBC’s Lum & Abner to 22 stations at a cost of $850,000.
JUL 7 1934 Denver native Paul Whiteman, his orchestra and NBC President Merlin Aylesworth headline the program celebrating KOA/Denver’s increase to 50,000 watts that stretches from 8:30 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
JUL 7 1935 Parks Johnson and Jerry Belcher bring their Vox Pop from KTRH/Houston to Blue beginning a 13 season, mullti-network run for the interview show. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 7 1936 RCA conducts an experimental broadcast of television from test channel W2XK/New York City featuring Ed Wynn, Graham McNamee and the Pickens Sisters.
JUL 7 1936 WLW/Cincinnati produces a 50th anniversary salute to the Cincinnati Reds broadcast by all five of the city’s stations and the entire Mutual network.
JUL 7 1937 With no exclusivity, CBS, NBC, Blue and Mutual all cover Major League Baseball’s All-Star game.
JUL 7 1937 A New Jersey appeals court dismisses Governor Harold Hoffman's slander suit against CBS commentator Boake Carter.
JUL 7 1939 Pepsodent renews Bob Hope’s NBC show and gives the comedian two first-class roundtrip steamship tickets to Europe plus $25,000 spending money as a bonus. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten and About A Song.)
JUL 7 1939 Fifteen minute, family sitcom The Parker Family begins its five season multi-network run on CBS.
JUL 7 1939 In the case of RCA Victor vs. Paul Whiteman & WNEW Radio, a New York judge prohibits broadcasters from playing photograph records without permission from the manufacturer and artist.
JUL 7 1940 Quiz master Bob Hawk, 32, lands two Sunday night shows for 13 summer weeks: Take Three on NBC’s WEAF/New York City at 7:00 p.m., (for Jack Benny), and Take It Or Leave It on CBS at 10:00.
JUL 7 1943 Casey, Crime Photographer based on George Harmon Coxe novels begins its nine season run on CBS.
JUL 7 1944 George Hicks of Blue’s London news bureau is awarded a $1,000 bonus for his spot coverage of the D-Day invasion that was broadcast by all the networks. (See D-Day On Radio.)
JUL 7 1945 Ford’s 30 minute Early American Dance Music is cancelled, concluding its two seasons on ABC’s Saturday night’s schedule with a Hooperating season ranking of 153rd place. It’s followed the next night with Ford’s final broadcast of The Greenfield Village Children’s Choir on ABC, tied for 192nd out of 194 ranked programs.
JUL 7 1947 AFM boss James Petrillo tells the U.S. House Labor subcommittee that he’ll prohibit members from making recordings after December 31, 1947, and from working on Network Radio after January 31, 1948. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 7 1947 Kate Smith begins a 15 minute weekday disc jockey show on WOR/New York City. (See Kate's Great Song.)
JUL 7 1947 CBS introduces Goodman Ace’s unique historical series CBS Is There, (aka You Are There), with a recreation of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination as if it were covered by CBS reporters. (See You Are There.)
JUL 7 1947 CBS anthology Escape begins a seven year run on CBS.
JUL 7 1948 Frank & Anne Hummert’s American Melody Hour is cancelled after a seven year multi-network run, the last six on CBS. (See Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
JUL 7 1948 NBC cancels its new National Minstrels Show at the last minute due to complaints from the NAACP which had previously approved the program.
JUL 7 1949 ABC lifts its seven year ban on weekday serials and directs its sales department to attempt switching sponsors of soap operas on competing networks by offering lower rates. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 7 1949 ABC cancels The Abbott & Costello Show, its $350,000 gamble in co-op programming which was too expensive for its affiliates to sell. The comedy team leaves radio after a seven year multi-network run.
JUL 7 1949 FCC denies The New York Times’ appeal on behalf of its WQXR/New York City at 1560 kc. to block the power increase to 50,000 watts of WPTR/Albany, New York, at 1540 kc.
JUL 7 1949 Miles Laboratories’ Alka Seltzer, nine-year sponsor of The Quiz Kids on Network Radio, debuts the video version of the show on NBC-TV. (See The Quiz Kids.)
JUL 7 1950 CBS dispatches newsmen Edward R. Murrow, Bill Downs and Bill Costello to cover the Korean War.
JUL 7 1950 Military leaders tell broadcasters that a return to World War II controls and restrictions are only possible if the Korean War reaches the continental United States.
JUL 7 1950 NBC suddenly cancels the William Powell sitcom My Mother’s Husband two days before its second broadcast to avoid a $5.0 Million infringement suit by rights owners to the play and film, Life With Father.
JUL 7 1951 Comic disc jockey team Bob (Elliott) & Ray (Goulding) from WHDH/Boston begin a Saturday night half-hour on NBC.
JUL 7 1952 The Republican National Convention begins in Chicago with proceedings seen on 107 television stations and heard from over 1500 radio stations.
JUL 7 1952 Bob Hope begins a series of five minute radio and television commentaries in NBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention.
JUL 7 1952 RKO and Republic Pictures inform the Screen Actors Guild that their studios are dropping out of film production for television.
JUL 7 1953 CBS introduces 21st Precinct, dismissed by critics as a carbon copy of NBC’s Dragnet, for a three year run. (See Jack Webb's Dragnet.)
JUL 8 1933 CBS covers the Collegiate Rowing Regatta off Long Beach, California, from a Goodyear blimp with reports shortwaved to KHJ/Los Angeles and forwarded to the network.
JUL 8 1935 KNX/Los Angeles applies to the FCC for a power increase from 50,000 watts to 250,000 watts.
JUL 8 1936 Westinghouse and RCA enter into Federal Court litigation over the basic television patents of Vladimir Zworykin dating back to 1923.
JUL 8 1937 John Scott Trotter, 29, replaces Jimmy Dorsey as Bing Crosby’s music conductor on Kraft Music Hall and subsequent programs - a position he’ll hold with Crosby for the next 17 years. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1940 Actor Jean Hersholt signs a unique two year contract renewal with sponsor Chesebrough granting him $10,000 every 13 weeks should his Dr. Christian on CBS be cancelled for any reason. (See Dr. Christian and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1940 After 15 years on as a team writing their own material, Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll hire a collaborator for Amos & Andy, comedy writer, Bob Ross. (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1940 Lew Valentine opens a six week run of NBC's Dr. I.Q. at the Fox Theater in Billings, Montana, the smallest city ever visited by the roaming quiz show. (See Dr. I.Q.)
JUL 8 1943 Comedians Jack Haley and Joan Davis replace Rudy Vallee on NBC's Sealtest Village Store for two Top Ten seasons. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1943 Game show Blind Date starring Arlene Francis opens on NBC as summer replacement for Frank Morgan and Fanny Brice. The program moves to Blue/ABC in October for a three season run.
JUL 8 1943 Decca Records purchases World Broadcasting System transcription service for radio stations. (See “By Transcription…”)
JUL 8 1946 CBS introduces its new singing discovery on The Jack Kirkwood Show - former Les Brown band vocalist, Doris Day.
JUL 8 1946 WBKB-TV/Chicago becomes the fifth station to join the fledgling ABC Television Network.
JUL 8 1947 The AFM rules that ABC’s Chicago-based weekday audience participation show Welcome Travelers must pay any musician performing on the show $80, plus an additional $40 every time any commercial product not the sponsor’s is mentioned. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 8 1949 Procter & Gamble discontinues its weekday broadcasts of Ma Perkins on two networks by dropping the serial’s 17-year run on NBC - but continues its seven year CBS run for another eleven seasons. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 8 1950 NBC drops its ban on network disc jockey shows and programs the Wayne Howell record show Saturday afternoons from 3:00 to 3:30 ET.
JUL 8 1950 Tales of The Texas Rangers starring Joel McCrea begins its two season run on NBC.
JUL 8 1950 Bill Stern begins a weekly half-hour Saturday night sports show on NBC-TV. (See Bill Stern.)
JUL 8 1950 Comedian Jackie Gleason, 34, replaces Jerry Lester as host of DuMont’s Cavalcade of Stars.
JUL 8 1953 Will Rogers, Jr., debuts in the homespun drama, Rogers of The Gazette, for a 26 week run on CBS.
JUL 8 1953 NBC Radio issues its 1953-54 program prices - all drastically reduced and all evening programs priced at or below $3,000 except Bob Hope, Fibber McGee & Molly and Martin & Lewis.
JUL 9 1934 First lady Eleanor Roosevelt begins her half hour commentaries on Blue for Simmons Mattresses.
JUL 9 1940 CBS, Blue and Mutual all broadcast baseball’s All Star Game from St. Louis.
JUL 9 1943 NBC boasts a line of 25 new sponsors waiting to buy in its sold-out prime time schedule.
JUL 9 1945 CBS announces plans to build two new studios on its Hollywood property, each holding audiences of 450.
JUL 9 1946 Gillette sponsors the Major League All Star Baseball Game on 300 Mutual affiliates.
JUL 9 1946 ABC proposes to sell up 100,000 shares of its stock to its affiliates.
JUL 9 1948 Faced with meeting a television budget of $3.0 Million in 1947-48, CBS fires 50 network headquarters employees.
JUL 9 1948 Hotel New Yorker in New York City makes in-room television available to guests for an additional three dollars per day.
JUL 9 1949 Adventure drama Dangerous Assignment starring Brian Donlevy begins a sporadic four year run on NBC.
JUL 9 1950 Bricks smash the front windows of KSTP AM&TV/Minneapolis-St. Paul and four bullets are fired at the station’s electrical transformers. Police relate both incidents to the three-month strike of technicians against the station.
JUL 9 1951 The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., denies rehearing its decision that Transit Radio’s broadcasts of music and commercials into public transit buses and streetcars is unconstitutional.
JUL 9 1951 Harry Heilmann, former major league baseball star and Detroit Tigers’ announcer for 16 years, dies in Detroit at age 56.
JUL 9 1951 RCA begins 30 minute daily public demonstrations of its compatible color television system side by side with simultaneous monochrome versions of the same programs.
JUL 9 1953 The U.S. Senate blocks The Johnson Bill which would force all radio and television coverage of baseball games to be non-commercial.
JUL 10 1932 The A&P grocery chain becomes first sponsor to advertise prices on Network Radio. (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
JUL 10 1932 WWSW/Pittsburgh celebrates its increase in power from 100 to 250 watts and pioneers studio recreated play-by-play reports of Pittsburgh Pirates’ away games
JUL 10 1933 As sales inducements NBC offers its 11:00 p.m. hour at half its prime time rate and CBS prices its 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. timeslot for two-thirds the prime rate.
JUL 10 1937 The New York Times publishes an editorial praising Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Charlie McCarthy. (See The 1937-38 Season.)
JUL 10 1938 CBS gets the jump on NBC and Mutual in covering Howard Hughes’ around the world flight by making connections with his plane over the Atlantic enroute to Paris.
JUL 10 1939 Transmitter trouble knocks CBS owned WABC/New York City off the air from 8:00 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. The station enlists competitors to report the problem to concerned listeners who were flooding it with calls.
JUL 10 1939 Blue’s Pacific Network relaxes its ban on transcribed programs in an effort to lure Ovaltine’s Little Orphan Annie and General Mills’ Jack Armstrong from the Don Lee chain. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
JUL 10 1940 WJBK/Detroit becomes the first applicant for a commercial FM station under the rigid new FCC rules.
JUL 10 1940 Frank Readick introduces Meet Mr. Meek on CBS for two season run.
JUL 10 1941 Signifying tighter censorship, German authorities cut the report of NBC’s Berlin correspondent Charles Lanius and refuse facilities to CBS reporter Harry Flannery.
JUL 10 1941 Baseball great Dizzy Dean debuts as a St. Louis Browns play by play announcer on KWK/St. Louis.
JUL 10 1942 U.S. War Department reports that its Army Hour on NBC is Sunday afternoon’s most popular program.
JUL 10 1943 CBS Washington bureau chief Bill Henry is first to announce the Allied invasion of Sicily at 12:18 a.m.
JUL 10 1944 Actor Herbert Marshall debuts as The Man Called X, beginning sporadic six year run on CBS and NBC.
JUL 10 1945 Former MGM star, Lieutenant Robert Taylor introduces The Navy Hour, a Tuesday night summer show at 9:00 p.m. until Amos & Andy take the slot in October.
JUL 10 1945 Game show County Fair begins its five year multi-network run on Blue with host Jack Bailey.
JUL 10 1946 Press Wireless, Inc., files with the FCC for a commercial shortwave program delivery service after a 30 day test to 60 stations proved 88% satisfactory.
JUL 10 1946 A.C. Nielsen Company’s Radio Index audience polling service signs ABC, bringing its client list to 52 and its annual billings to over $1.0 Million. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 10 1949 WJAR-TV/Providence becomes Rhode Island’s first television station.
JUL 10 1950 The television version of Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade with co-stars Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins debuts on NBC-TV.
JUL 10 1950 Comedian Ed Wynn, 63, jumps from CBS-TV to NBC-TV.
JUL 10 1953 CBS sells its Vine Street Playhouse - the Hollywood home of Lux Radio Theater for 17 years - and moves the show to the network’s Columbia Square facility. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)
JUL 10 1953 With its cancellation of The Aldrich Family on NBC-TV, Campbell Soup clears the $20,000 per week necessary and introduces the new weekly anthology, Campbell Soundstage. (See The Aldrich Family.)
JUL 11 1932 General Mills moves its kids' popular serial Skippy from NBC to CBS.
JUL 11 1932 CBS news editor Paul White is appointed the network’s Director of Press Relations.
JUL 11 1934 The Federal Communications Commission is organized to replace the Federal Radio Commission.
JUL 11 1934 Bandleader Guy Lombardo, 32, leaves The Burns & Allen Show for Pleasure Isle on NBC. His “Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven” scores the first of its five solo Top 50 seasons in 28 multi-network years. (See Guy Lombardo.)
JUL 11 1937 The major networks all respond with tribute broadcasts upon the sudden death of composer George Gershwin at age 38.
JUL 11 1937 Rain and high winds fail to interrupt performances by singers James Melton and Jane Pickens on Sealtest’s Sunday Evening Party broadcast by NBC from an outdoor shell at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Expo.
JUL 11 1940 CBS and NBC are freed from AFM threat of banning dance band remotes with the settlement of strikes at affiliates KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul and WRVA/Rich-mond. (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 11 1941 After an absence from radio for almost a year, Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler returns with a Friday night quarter hour on KNX/Los Angeles.
JUL 11 1942 AFM chief James Petrillo orders NBC to discontinue its twelve year series of sustaining concerts by the National Youth Orchestra from the Interlochen Michigan Music Camp because the 160 youngsters, average age 15, aren’t union members. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 11 1942 Off the air since the Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaii Calls - shortwaved from Honolulu - resumes its Saturday night broadcasts on Mutual.
JUL 11 1943 United Press initiates new circuits allowing its teletype service to increase speed from 40 to 60 words per minute - Associated Press follows with its increased speed two days later.s
JUL 11 1944 Radio Cherbourg becomes the first station from liberated France to go on the air with a mix of ABSIE, BBC and OWI programs.
JUL 11 1945 CBS series Casey, Press Photographer, (fka Flashbulb Casey), is re-titled Crime Photographer.
JUL 11 1947 David Sarnoff, 56, is elected Board Chairman of RCA in addition to his position as its President.
JUL 11 1947 General Foods claims television’s first singing commercial with a jingle for Post Toasties broadcast during a baseball game on WCBS-TV/New York.
JUL 11 1947 Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, Advertising Manager of American Tobacco, rejoins Young & Rubicam Advertising as Vice President in charge of radio and television. (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 11 1949 Procter & Gamble moves its two year weekday hit Welcome Travelers from ABC to NBC.
JUL 11 1949 In a budget cut, CBS cancels its sustaining You Are There which cost a reported $110,000 over 39 weeks to produce. (See You Are There.)
JUL 11 1949 Elaine Carrington’s weekday serial Marriage For Two moves from CBS to NBC for a 39 week run. (See Soft Soap & Hard Selll.)
JUL 11 1949 FCC revises its television station allocation plan which opens up 42 channels in the ultra-high frequency band making room from 2,245 new stations in 1,400 cities and towns.
JUL 11 1949 CBS-TV cuts all daytime programming for the summer except baseball games.
JUL 11 1949 NBC-TV presents a three weeks adaptation of radio hit Vic & Sade featuring only Bernadine Flynn from the radio cast. (See Vic & Sade.)
JUL 11 1951 Applications are filed with the FCC for United Paramount Theaters’ $25.0 Million merger with ABC, and UPT’s sale of WBKB-TV/Chicago to CBS for $6.0 Million.
JUL 11 1952 FCC grants a construction permit to KXLY-TV/Spokane, 47% owned by Bing Crosby.
JUL 11 1953 KROW/Oakland-San Francisco becomes the first major market station to operate its transmitter by remote control.
JUL 12 1923 WEAF/New York City broadcasts the Jess Willard vs. Luis Firpo Heavy-weight Championship bout.
JUL 12 1930 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll miss their first Amos & Andy broadcast when NBC is unable to locate a studio for their broadcast as they travel by train to Hollywood to film Check & Double Check.
JUL 12 1937 CBS challenges Blue in a summertime battle of Shakespearian drama-tizations, presenting Burgess Meredith as Hamlet opposite Blue’s 45 minute version of The Tempest with John Barrymore.
JUL 12 1937 Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine turn down a $10,000 offer for a 15 minute appearance on the CBS Shakespeare series.
JUL 12 1938 AFRA successfully negotiates its Basic Network Sustaining Agreement and obtains a 125% pay increase for network performers.
JUL 12 1939 NAB appoints a committee to negotiate with ASCAP on behalf of the broadcasting industry.
JUL 12 1939 Louisiana State Senator James Noe becomes the first station owner to have his station bear his complete last name when the FCC approves the call sign change of WBNO/New Orleans to WNOE.
JUL 12 1940 Niles Trammell, 46, an NBC executive for twelve years, is elevated to President of the network.
JUL 12 1941 CBS and NBC cancel all broadcasts from Rome after Italy’s fascist government begins strict censorship of news reports.
JUL 12 1943 CBS boasts in the week’s trade press that its Pacific Coast Network thriller, The Whistler, is heard by 551,000 families every week. (See The Whistler.)
JUL 12 1944 FCC permits KTHT/Houston to begin operating on 1230 kilocycles after its managing partner, County Judge Roy Hofheinz, agrees to retire from politics.
JUL 12 1946 Idaho Senator Glen Taylor urges the FCC to implement its “layaway” plan and withhold granting some 100 FM licenses for later assignment.
JUL 12 1946 The Adventures of Sam Spade starring Howard Duff, 33, debuts on ABC and moves to CBS two months later where it will remain for three seasons before switching to NBC. (See The Curse of Dashiell Hammett.)
JUL 12 1946 Coca-Cola, hit by an acute sugar shortage limiting production, drops sponsorship of Mutual’s Spotlight Bands for two months, saving a reported $250,000 in production and travel costs. (See Spotlight Bands.)
JUL 12 1948 Over a thousand broadcasters converge on Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention which receives gavel to gavel coverage on the radio and television networks.
JUL 12 1948 Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan tells the Hollywood Advertising Club that he believes the future of television lies in film recorded production.
JUL 12 1949 Three radio correspondents, Elsie Dick of Mutual, H.R. Knickerbocker of WOR/New York City and George Moorad of KGW/Portland, Oregon, are among 13 news correspondents killed in the crash of their plane returning from Indonesia.
JUL 12 1951 Kansas City stations KCKN, KCMO, KMBC, WDAF and WHB plus WDAF-TV launch 72 hours of emergency news and messages caused by the flooding Kansas River created by 16 inches of rain and resulting in $935 Million in damages.
JUL 12 1951 Ted Mack converts The Original Amateur Hour’s salute to Topeka, Kansas, into a fund appeal for the flooded city, beginning with a $1,000 donation from sponsor Lorillard’s Old Gold cigarettes.
JUL 13 1931 An independent study shows Network Radio gross income rose 430% between January 1, 1928 and April 1, 1931. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets’ Grosses.)
JUL 13 1934 Quaker Oats cancels Babe Ruth’s Friday night quarter hour on NBC after 13 weeks because the show is too successful in drawing over a million box tops in response to a premium offer. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
JUL 13 1938 FCC authorizes the Zenith Corporation to conduct experimental television field tests in Chicago.
JUL 13 1939 Former New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker debuts as host of Blue’s It’s Up To You.
JUL 13 1943 Gillette pays $25,000 for broadcast rights to the Major League All-Star baseball game with the money directed to buy sports equipment for Armed Forces personnel.
JUL 13 1943 Mutual loses the Major League All-Star game to CBS when the Don Lee West Coast network refuses to clear time for the Gillette sponsored game on its stations.
JUL 13 1944 KABC/San Antonio receives FCC approval to move from 1450 to 680 kilocycles and increase power 200 fold from 250 to 50,000 watts.
JUL 13 1944 DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City presents The Television Follies of 1944, a two hour, original musical featuring a large cast in ten scenes. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
JUL 13 1949 Kate Smith misses her fourth broadcast in 19 years due to the death of her grandmother.
JUL 13 1950 Inner Sanctum Mysteries, cancelled by CBS in April, begins a year’s run on ABC. (See Inner Sanctum and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 13 1951 Massive flooding of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers killing 17 and displacing over half a million people, forces Midwest radio and television stations into emergency news and communication status for over a week. .
JUL 13 1951 The NCAA turns down a television proposal from the University of Pennsylvania and puts in place a mandatory set of rules for football telecasts.
JUL 13 1952 ABC affiliate WSAZ-TV/Huntington, West Va., cuts Drew Peason’s news commentary off the air for what its management claims are, “…Pearson’s snide attack upon General Eisenhower on religious grounds.”
JUL 13 1952 WGN-TV begins Chicago’s first series of televised dance band remotes with weekly half hour pickups from the Melody Mill ballroom which it feeds to the DuMont Network. (See The Aragon's Last Stand.)
JUL 14 1923 The American Tobacco Company presents its first Lucky Strike Show of music on WEAF/New York City. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears and The Sponsor Sweepstakes.)
JUL 14 1930 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll begin their Amos & Andy broadcasts from Hollywood while filming Check & Double Check. Added network line costs amount to $15,000 per week. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1935 Norman Baker, operator of powerful XENT/Neuvo Larado, Mexico, and a cancer clinic in Muscatine, Iowa, is arrested on his return to Iowa for practicing medicine without a license.
JUL 14 1938 Howard Hughes completes his three day around the world flight in New York City, telling Network Radio audiences, “The crowd here frightens me more than anything else during the past three days.”
JUL 14 1941 WLW/Cincinnati applies to the FCC for an increase in power from 50,000 to 650,000 watts.
JUL 14 1941 The NAB recommends its members refuse payment for any programs or announcements in behalf of the national defense.
JUL 14 1942 Gene Autry enlists in the Army on his CBS show and is sued by his manager for $50,000, alleging Autry’s action constitutes evasion of contract. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1944 Former NBC News Director, Major A.A. (Abe) Schechter is assigned to General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters to become liaison between Army forces in the Pacific and the radio networks.
JUL 14 1948 Frank & Anne Hummert’s mystery melodrama Mr. Chameleon begins its five season run on CBS. (See Karl Swenson.)
JUL 14 1950 United Press European correspondent Walter Cronkite, 33, joins CBS News.
JUL 14 1950 Korean War coverage is reflected in the July 5-11 Hooperatings for early evening Network Radio newscasts - up 63% over the same period in 1949. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 14 1950 Transit Radio officials boast that its system of music and commercials via FM radio are in 4,200 buses and streetcars in 19 cities, representing 11% of the country’s public transit carriers.
JUL 14 1950 The success of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on CBS causes a glut of 15 talent shows on the networks - eight on radio and seven on television. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1951 For the first time in its 16 seasons, Your Hit Parade leaves the air for a summer hiatus. (See Saturday’s All time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1953 Wrigley Gum moves Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS-TV from Sunday night to Tuesday night opposite Milton Berle on NBC-TV and Bishop Sheen on DuMont.
JUL 15 1926 RCA closes WJY/Newark to concentrate its New York City broadcast operations on WEAF and WJZ.
JUL 15 1932 The radio networks flatly refuse to pay the $100,000 demanded by the U.S. Olympic Committee for broadcast rights to the 1932 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles.
JUL 15 1932 After two years of being known as Olive Palmer on NBC’s Palmolive Hour, soprano Virginia Rea again appears under her own name on Paul Whiteman’s Pontiac Hour. (See Gus Haenschen and Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
JUL 15 1935 After six seasons on Blue, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll move their Amos & Andy to NBC. (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1935 NBC enters the transcription library business with its Thesaurus designed to compete with the established World and Standard subscription services. (See “By Transcription…”)
JUL 15 1935 To become self-supporting, the FCC considers taxing stations based on their wavelength and power.
JUL 15 1935 FCC opens hearings on AT&T’s application to test television wire connec-tions between New York City and Philadelphia. The NAB and a group of film producers both oppose the application.
JUL 15 1937 WLW/Cincinnati provides direct reports for Mutual of the Sullivan, Indiana, mine explosion that killed 20.
JUL 15 1937 Jack Benny, aboard the S.S. Normandie, 300 miles at sea, refuses to appear on an NBC program from the ship, explaining, “When I’m on vacation, I’m on vacation.” (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1939 FCC cancels all hearings for six weeks to catch-up on, "…a 'mountain' of pending cases."
JUL 15 1939 Controversial Detroit priest and commentator Charles Coughlin refuses to respond to Mutual commentator Elliot Roosevelt’s charges that he is an anti-Semite and silver speculator. (See Father Coughlin.)
JUL 15 1941 The ANPA demands a stay in the FCC hearings on the issue of newspaper ownership of radio stations.
JUL 15 1942 CBS introduces a 15% discount for advertisers buying its entire network for programs. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure!)
JUL 15 1942 The U.S War Department takes control of Alaskan stations KFQD/Anchor-age, KFAR/Fairbanks, KINY/Juneau and KGBU/Ketchikan for the rest of World War II.
JUL 15 1942 AFM chief James Petrillo pulls the Teddy Powell and Richard Himber bands from NBC remotes in protest to a labor dispute at KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 15 1943 Threatened by AFM boss Petrillo to pull his members from the network, Mutual drops music program service to WSAY/Rochester, New York - a station deemed “unfair” by the union.
JUL 15 1943 AFM musicians at WNEW/New York City go on a two-day strike until the station agrees not to play British-made records, banned by the union in August, 1942.
JUL 15 1943 CBS announces 49 advertisers have taken advantage of its 15% discount by buying the full network since the plan went into effect a year earlier. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure!)
JUL 15 1943 WCPO/Cincinnati reports that its May-June afternoon Hooperating rose 52.7% when it replaced Cincinnati Reds baseball broadcasts with disc jockey shows and local newscasts. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 15 1944 Jack Benny, accompanied by Carole Landis, Martha Tilton, Larry Adler, June Brunner and Captain Lanny Ross, tours New Guinea entertaining Allied troops. (See Sunday At Seven and Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 15 1945 After seven months on ABC, One Man’s Family returns to NBC's Sunday afternoon schedule at 3:30 p.m. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1946 The Veterans Administration distributes free transcriptions of its new public service show, Here’s To Veterans, featuring 13 of Network Radio’s top attractions, each headlining one of the programs.
JUL 15 1946 AFM President James Petrillo’s lawyers file for a dismissal in U.S. District Court to the government’s charge that his calling a strike against WAAF/Chicago is a violation of The Lea Act, contending the law to be unconstitutional. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 15 1947 A Marshall Islands native wins a $1,000 reward after finding a small plastic globe dropped into the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles 20 months earlier by NBC’s People Are Funny. (See People Are Funny, Tuesday's All Time Top Ten and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1948 The Houston Post, owner of KPRC/Houston, files suit in Federal court to balance the FCC’s Port Huron Decision with Texas state law concerning the editing of politicians’ statements and libel laws.
JUL 15 1949 The NAB releases its promotional film, How To Make Customers Out of People, with the message that radio can deliver an audience for one-third the cost of printed media.
JUL 15 1949 Mutual revamps its rate card to allow discounts for advertisers buying fewer “basic” network stations. (See MBS = Mutual’s Bargain Sales.)
JUL 15 1949 Texaco, sponsor of Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater on radio and television, drops the radio show when Berle demands a raise to $10,000 a week.
JUL 15 1949 FCC drops its requirement that stations must locally advertise their applications to the Commission for 90 days.
JUL 15 1949 ABC offers its new Kate Smith Calls in quarter hour segments to four non-competing sponsors.
JUL 15 1949 The Omaha World-Herald sells its KOWH & KOAD-FM to Omaha brewer Robert Storz and his son, Todd. (See Top 40 Radio's Roots.)
JUL 15 1949 Jefferson-Standard’s WBTV(TV)/Charlotte, North Carolina, becomes the Carolinas’ first television station.
JUL 16 1922 Comedians Eugene & Willie Howard star in the inaugural broadcast of KFI/Los Angeles owned by Packard, Hudson and Essex automobile dealer Earle C. Anthony.
JUL 16 1929 California Cadillac dealer Don Lee affiliates his KHJ/Los Angeles and KFRC/San Francisco with CBS, making the network a coast-to-coast chain.
JUL 16 1934 Under pressure from its subscribers, the Press Radio Bureau moves its nightly news release to stations back three hours from 9:30 to 6:30 p.m. (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
JUL 16 1934 Kate Smith begins her new three year exclusive contract at CBS with a 15 minute sustaining show on Monday, Thursday and Friday nights at 8:00 p.m. (See Kate’s Great Song and Friday's All Time Top Ten.
JUL 16 1936 Popular bandleader Orville Knapp, 28, dies when the plane he was piloting crashes in the Massachusetts coastal resort community of Beverly.
JUL 16 1940 BMI makes its first shipment of 50 transcribed songs to member stations with 450 more scheduled to be shipped before the end of the year.
JUL 16 1941 FCC grants two FM construction permits to MGM for Los Angeles and Ventura counties and another FM permit to CBS for Los Angeles.
JUL 16 1943 NBC reports that the six city tour of Information Please resulted in War Bond sales totaling $275.2 Million. (See Information Please.)
JUL 16 1947 CBS announces that Edward R. Murrow is relinquishing his network executive position and returning to the air with a weeknight newscast and commentary in late September.
JUL 16 1947 FCC grants the first TV and FM licenses since the World War II freeze.
JUL 16 1948 Reversing his previous stand against television, Ted Collins agrees to televise the home games of his Boston Yanks pro football team on WNAC-TV.
JUL 16 1951 After 17 years of paying $5,000 for appearances by major film stars on Lux Radio Theater, sponsor Lever Brothers cuts the top pay to $4,000. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)
JUL 16 1951 CBS splits into six separate divisions: Radio network & stations, Television network & stations, Laboratories, (color television development), CBS-Columbia, (set manufacturing), Columbia Records and Hytron Electronics.
JUL 16 1952 President Truman signs The McFarland Bill - the first major revision to the Communications Act in 18 years - which permits the FCC to issue cease & desist orders, repeals the FCC power to revoke licenses of parties found guilty of Federal anti-trust laws and creates shorter deadlines for FCC actions on filings.
JUL 17 1932 CBS experiments with lapel microphones on actors roaming in New York City’s Taft Hotel while performing in The Transient.
JUL 17 1934 The newly formed Federal Communication Commission creates a three-person Broadcasting Division to exercise regulatory powers.
JUL 17 1934 Union musicians return to San Francisco stations after walking out for three days in sympathy for the West Coast Longshoremen’s strike.
JUL 17 1935 FCC Commissioner Thad Brown recommends the license revocation of KFBI/Abiline, Kansas, formerly owned by “goat gland doctor” John R. Brinkley.
JUL 17 1936 FCC approves the CBS purchase of KNX/Los Angeles for $1.3 Million.
JUL 17 1939 Bandleader Horace Heidt, 38, is rushed to Doctors’ Hospital in New York City for an emergency appendectomy immediately after his show on NBC.
JUL 17 1940 Preparing with CBS to shed ASCAP music at the end of the year, NBC informs bandleaders that all sustaining programs on the network must contain at least one non-ASCAP song.
JUL 17 1941 CBS conducts a 20 minute test broadcast of Peter Goldmark’s mechanical color television system transmitted from the Chrysler Tower to the CBS board room three blocks away.
JUL 17 1943 NBC broadcasts a half-hour performance by Bob Hope and Frances Langford for Allied troops in Great Britain shortwaved to America by BBC at 2:30 p.m. (See Hope From Home and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 17 1943 Captain Glenn Miller and his Army Air Force Band introduce the weekly program I Sustain The Wings on CBS. (See In The Miller Mood.)
JUL 17 1944 New York Post owner Dorothy Thackrey buys WLIB/New York City for a reported $225,000.
JUL 17 1945 ABC newsman Norman Paige becomes the first reporter to describe a battle at sea involving his own ship - from 50 miles off Tokyo at 11:30 a.m.
JUL 17 1945 NBC newsman Morgan Beatty becomes the U.S. network pool reporter for the Potsdam, Germany, Peace Conference.
JUL 17 1946 FCC approves the sale of WXYZ/Detroit and WOOD/Grand Rapids from King-Trendle Broadcasting to ABC for $3.7 Million. (See The Lone Ranger.)
JUL 17 1948 A Huntington, West Virginia, listener turns down a $7,300 prize he won on Mutual’s Three For The Money because he, “…wanted to live in peace and obscurity.” The show insisted and he relented.
JUL 17 1952 ABC’s The Lone Ranger begins to incorporate two-minute transcribed interviews with heroic U.S. war veterans during breaks in the drama’s action. (See The Lone Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 17 1953 A controversial bill authored by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy requiring radio and television stations to permanently record all programming is set aside by the Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee.
JUL 17 1953 Mutual presents its plan to affiliates to cut option time from nine to five hours daily and reimbursing the stations with commercial time within network programs instead of cash.
JUL 17 1953 FCC reports that it has authorized 522 television stations of which 202 are on the air.
JUL 18 1932 FCC hearings begin on the Westinghouse application to move KYW and its 1020 kc frequency from Chicago to Philadelphia.
JUL 18 1932 His contract expired three days earlier, Bing Crosby quits CBS by telegram within an hour of his show after agreeing to a 15% pay cut but then finding that his new contract boosted the network’s commission as his booking agent.
JUL 18 1933 CBS breaks its ban on advertising agency “by-lines” with an announcement crediting McCann-Erickson as the producer of a program.
JUL 18 1934 Ben Bernie makes his feature film debut in Paramount’s Shoot The Works co-starring comedian Jack Oakie.
JUN 18 1938 AFRA bans its members and members of SAG from appearing without pay on Network Radio shows.
JUL 18 1942 NBC carries a performance by the non-union University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra over the protests of the AFM. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 18 1943 Walter Winchell’s Sunday night Jergens Journal is broadcast for the first time by the entire Blue Network of 141 affiliates, eliminating the ten NBC stations pre-viously carrying the program. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 18 1944 FCC approves the $800,000 sale of KECA/Los Angeles from Earle C. Anthony to the Blue Network.
JUL 18 1944 FCC refuses Democrat party appeals that it pass judgment on the networks’ ban of the campaign song Don’t Change Horses In The Middle of The Stream.
JUL 18 1944 FCC approves the sale of WQXR/New York City to The New York Times for $1.0 Million and WINX/Washington, D.C., to The Washington Post for $500,000.
JUL 18 1945 Maxwell-Wirges Music, Inc., publishes Chiquita Banana, the first pop song based on a commercial jingle - this one sung by Patti Clayton for the previous eight months in United Fruit spots.
JUL 18 1946 FCC approves the sale of WINS/New York from Hearst Radio to Crosley Corp. for $1.7 Million when plans are dropped to make part of the purchase price payable in broadcast time.
JUL 18 1946 Ford signs with CBS and Madison Square Garden to televise a minimum of 20 sports events - excluding boxing - over the next fall and winter months.
JUL 18 1947 After losing $180,000, daytime AM station WQQW/Washington, D.C., becomes the first station constructed after World War II to go up for sale.
JUL 18 1948 A listener to ABC’s Stop The Music! wins $17,000 in prizes by identifying the show’s Mystery Melody, the Fox Movietone News theme, as The World Events March. (See Stop The Music!)
JUL 18 1949 FCC denies the petition of WHOM/Jersey City, to move its main studio to New York City citing that New York already has 14 stations and Jersey City has only one, although WHOM is primarily a foreign language station.
JUL 18 1949 Veteran newsman Earl Godwin moves from ABC’s WMAL/Washington, D.C. to its cross-town NBC rival, WRC, where he will also comment on the weeknight NBC News of The World. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 18 1951 University of Pennsylvania ends its revolt and agrees to the NCAA’s plan of limited football telecasts.
JUL 18 1952 Unification of NBC’s radio and television divisions leads to speculation that the network has plans to eventually sell time on the two programming services for one combined rate.
JUL 18 1952 An overnight transmitter engineer at NBC’s WRC/Washington claims to see six flying discs at 2:00 a.m.
JUL 18 1953 On summer hiatus from NBC-TV’s Texaco Star Theater, Milton Berle opens a two week engagement at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas for a reported $50,000.
JUL 19 1931 NBC affiliate KFI/Los Angeles celebrates its elevation to 50,000 watts with a special program featuring Amos & Andy, Paul Whiteman, James Melton and Billy Jones & Ernie Hare.
JUL 19 1932 Veteran New York Sun reporter Edwin C. Hill begins his 20 year multi-network career at CBS.
JUL 19 1940 The Don Lee Network of 32 West Coast stations cuts off Mutual’s feed of Adolph Hitler’s speech to the German Reichstag while CBS and NBC stations carry the address in full.
JUL 19 1941 FCC Chairman James Fly suggests that the length of broadcast licenses may be extended from one to two years.
JUL 19 1943 The networks report the first Allied bombing of Rome eight minutes aftar it began.
JUL 19 1943 Mutual correspondent Raymond Clapper reports the bombing of Rome as he saw it from the nose of a B-17 bomber.
JUL 19 1943 Mutual cuts its option time with affiliates to five and a half hours daily - Blue, CBS and NBC continue to require nine hours a day. (See Mutual Led The Way and MBS: Mutual's Bargain Sales.)
JUL 19 1943 WOR/New York City begins familiarizing its staff with television using the facilities of DuMont’s W2XWV with an hour-long show featuring the Vincent Lopez band and children’s personality Uncle Don.
JUL 19 1944 The networks give full coverage to the three day Democratic National Convention in Chicago
JUL 19 1945 Original Amateur Hour host Major Edward Bowes, 71, retires from Network Radio. He dies eleven months later. (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine. and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 19 1946 FCC upholds atheist groups’ rights to broadcast their views but refuses to censure San Francisco area stations KPO, KFRC and KQW as requested in the athiests’ complaint.
JUL 19 1947 Appearing on CBS Views The Press hosted by Don Hollenbeck, a New York Sun executive asserts that Hollenbeck is a Communist sympathizer.
JUL 19 1948 Eve Arden, 40, debuts as Our Miss Brooks on CBS, beginning successful nine year run. (See Our Miss Arden.)
JUL 19 1948 Lever Brothers agrees to Bob Hope’s demands for more money to cover his travel expenses, requiring a shift in sponsors from Lever’s Pepsodent to another of its products with a greater ad budget. (See Hope From Home and About A Song.)
JUL 19 1950 Garry Moore, 35, debuts a 60-minute variety show on CBS-TV as the eight week summer replacement for Arthur Godfrey & His Friends which becomes the come-dian’s breakthrough television series.
JUL 19 1951 C.E. Hooper announces plans for “duplex” Hooperatings to measure both radio and television program popularity with the company’s random telephone surveys. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 19 1952 WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul stages its fifth annual Aquatennial Radio Show from the Minneapolis Auditorium starring Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Polly Bergen, Julius LaRosa, Frank Parker and Marion Marlow.
JUL 19 1952 WOR-TV/New York City premieres its All Night Show - an overnight interview and variety show running from midnight to 5:00 a.m. six nights a week hosted by veteran disc jockey Fred Robbins.
JUL 20 1931 NBC issues orders to all department heads to cut costs in every area except salaries.
JUL 20 1931 All New York City newspapers and news syndicates begin deleting any commercial credits to program sponsors in their radio log listings.
JUL 20 1935 Producer Phillips H. Lord introduces his new crime fighting series, G-Men, for a ten-week run on NBC. The program is then reformatted to become the legendary Gangbusters which has a 22 year multi-network run.
JUL 20 1936 Procter & Gamble augments its weekday broadcasts of Ma Perkins on NBC with transcriptions of the program broadcast on 50 additional stations.
JUL 20 1936 KFWB/Los Angeles announces it will only broadcast imported foreign-made records to avoid “legal entanglements” with U.S. music societies.
JUL 20 1937 Pioneering radio developer Guglielmo Marconi, 63, dies of a heart attack in Rome. (See Alchemists of The Air on this site.)
JUL 20 1937 NBC opens its new Washington, D.C., studios with three days of separate parties for the press, advertisers and government officials.
JUL 20 1942 Mutual expands its co-op sales department soliciting business for limited groups of affiliated stations.
JUL 20 1948 DuMont Television moves its 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. Tuesday program, The Court of Current Issues, to Monday nights to avoid the competition of Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater on NBC-TV.
JUL 20 1949 Married team Ozzie Nelson & Harriet Hilliard sign a ten year, $1.0 Million contract to move their Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet sitcom from CBS to ABC. (See Ozzie & Harriet and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 20 1949 Equitable Life Assurance turns down NBC’s bid to move Friday’s top-rated This Is Your FBI from ABC. (See FBI vs. FBI and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 20 1950 NBC asks its affiliates for an additional five hours of option time per week, 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
JUL 20 1950 FCC clears CBS of all complaints brought against it and renews its licenses for WCBS & WCBS-TV/New York City, WBBM/Chicago, KCBS/San Jose-San Francisco, WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul, WEEI-FM/Boston and WTOP-FM/Washington, D.C.
JUL 20 1950 Bandleader Sammy Kaye sues CBS and Liggett & Myers Tobacco for $400,000 charging that they stole his original idea for the radio and television program, The ABC’s of Music.
JUL 20 1950 After 25 years of ownership, Warner Brothers sells KFWB/Los Angeles for $350,000 to its longtime manager Harry Maizlish and Schine Enterprises. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
JUL 20 1952 Fred Allen is reported hospitalized in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with chronic high blood pressure and a mild infection causing doctors to order a six-month rest, cancelling his plans to host NBC-TV’s Two For The Money.
JUL 21 1931 CBS opens experimental television station W2XAB in New York City with a 45 minute program starring Kate Smith and George Gershwin.
JUL 21 1932 CBS begins synchronized sight and sound broadcasting for two hours every weeknight from its year old experimental television station, W2XAB/New York City.
JUL 21 1933 Al Jolson sucker punches Walter Winchell to the ringside floor at the Hollywood Legion Stadium for an item Winchell had reported critical of Jolson’s wife, Ruby Keeler. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1938 Major Edward Bowes appears on his Original Amateur Hour shortly after the amputation of the ring finger on his left hand, the result of a boating accident. (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1940 Germany bans the origination of all Mutual broadcasts in retaliation for the Don Lee Network’s cutting off Hitler’s speech two days earlier.
JUL 21 1941 FCC postpones its network anti-monopoly orders for six weeks - from August 2 until September 16.
JUL 21 1941 The four major networks sign a two year labor agreement with the American Federation of Musicians. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 21 1941 President Roosevelt’s noon address to Congress - extending the draft beyond one year - is transcribed at his request for broadcast by the networks at a later hour when a greater audience is available.
JUL 21 1941 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon, 21, is appointed Sports Director of WJR/Detroit.
JUL 21 1944 Blondie is broadcast by CBS on Monday and Blue on Friday as the sitcom moves between the two networks for the summer. (See Bloonn…dee!)
JUL 21 1945 Your Hit Parade star Lawrence Tibbett leaves the show and embarks on an overseas USO tour. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1945 Mutual cancels the appearance of hypnotist Ralph Slater at the last minute for fears that mentally disturbed listeners might fall into trances, real or imagined.
JUL 21 1947 AT&T withdraws its proposed coaxial cable rates after a wave of television industry protests and allows its New York City to Washington, D.C. transmissions to temporarily remain free of charge.
JUL 21 1947 The new Zoomar lens gets its first test in WCBS-TV’s telecast of the Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Cincinnati Reds game at Ebbets Field and successfully “zooms” between short and long distances smoothly.
JUL 21 1948 The major radio and television networks report coverage of the major political conventions came at a total cost of $1.8 Million.
JUL 21 1949 Celebrating its 18th anniversary in television, CBS-TV broadcasts A Giant In A Hurry, a 30 minute retrospective starring comedian Abe Burrows.
JUL 21 1950 Character actor Willard Waterman is signed to replace Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve on the NBC sitcom. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s) and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1950 ABC, CBS and NBC refuse to meet with a committee from the Association of National Advertisers which lobbies for a 15% reduction in radio and television rates.
JUL 21 1952 Stunned by their million dollar losses from coverage of the protracted Republican convention two weeks earlier, the networks begin covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
JUL 21 1952 Bob Hope resumes his five minute radio and television commentaries in NBC’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention. (See About A Song.)
JUL 21 1952 Denver becomes the first city without television to obtain a station since the FCC freeze ended as KFEL-TV goes on the air.
JUL 21 1953 Jack Pearl as Baron Munchausen and sidekick Cliff (Sharlie) Hall return to NBC with a comedy quiz, The Baron & The Bee, for a 26 week run.
JUL 22 1932 Pioneer radio inventor Dr. Reginald Fessenden, 65, dies at his home in Bermuda. (See Alchemists of The Air.)
JUL 22 1933 The WLS Barn Dance becomes The National Barn Dance when sponsor Alka-Seltzer networks one hour of the Saturday night show from Chicago to WJR/Detroit and KDKA/Pittsburgh. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 22 1934 Transradio Press reports the death of Public Enemy John Dillinger, five minutes after he is killed by law officers in Chicago, to its subscribers not limited by Press Radio Bureau restrictions. (See The Press-Radio Bureau.)
JUL 22 1936 The month-long strike by 4,000 workers at RCA’s Camden, New Jersey, manufacturing plant ends.
JUL 22 1937 NBC formally dedicates its new Washington, D.C., studios for network-owned stations WRC and WMAL.
JUL 22 1938 Chicago originated Curtain Time, considered a copy of First Nighter, begins the first of three network runs totaling six seasons over 13 years.
JUL 22 1940 Confusion over FCC requirements and procedural rules prompts RCA to halt all television experiments and programming during August and September.
JUL 22 1941 Adam Hats becomes the first sponsor of televised sports with coverage of the Red Burman vs. Melio Bettina heavyweight fight from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on WNBT(TV)/New York City.
JUL 22 1944 Jack Benny arrives in New Guinea for a series of USO shows. (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 22 1946 Field Enterprises, (group owner Marshall Field), buys KJR/Seattle for $700,000, to accompany its recent purchase of KOIN/Portland, Oregon.
JUL 22 1946 Early broadcasting developer Lee DeForest begins a six month assignment with American Television Laboratories, Inc., to develop a picture tube magnifying and projection system.
JUL 22 1947 WADC/Akron challenges the FCC’s power over programming in a U.S. Court of Appeals after the Commission turned down the station’s application for 50,000 watts commenting that it had to be, “…more than a spigot for network (CBS) programs.”
JUL 22 1947 Jack Benny heads a group including Eddie Cantor, Perry Como, Rudy Vallee and Art Linkletter to form a foundation providing USO type entertainment units to tour the nearly 200 veterans hospitals.
JUL 22 1947 Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles cancels its contract with KTLA(TV) to televise boxing matches due to slumping attendance - but its professional wrestling contract remains intact.
JUL 22 1948 FM inventor Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong sues RCA and NBC for infringement on five of his basic FM patents.
JUL 22 1949 Singer/composer Jack Owens, 36, known to listeners of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club since the mid-1930’s as The Cruising Crooner, leaves the Chicago-based ABC show to pursue West Coast television offers.
JUL 22 1949 Carnation Milk threatens to move its Contented Hour from NBC after 17 seasons if the network can’t find a less competitive timeslot for it.
JUL 22 1949 Former Kansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Alf Landon sells KTLN/Denver for $45,000 to Arkansas broadcaster Leonard Cole.
JUL 22 1949 Jack Benny tells sponsor American Tobacco and CBS that he’ll do live television but wants nothing to do with kinescope recordings because of their poor quality.
(See Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 22 1950 CBS broadcasts the 60-minute Aquatennial Radio Show from WCCO/ Minneapolis-St. Paul, starring Eddie Cantor, Garry Moore and Janette Davis hosted by Cedric Adams at the 10,000 seat Minneapolis Auditorium.
JUL 22 1951 WLOU/Louisville suspends operations for 60 days to prepare its new format appealing to the Negro audience.
JUL 22 1952 AFRA calls AFM chief James Petrillo “an obstructionist” and “destructive” for prohibiting AFM members from joining AFRA. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 23 1927 NBC's Red, Blue and Pacific networks combine to produce a night of the first coast-to-coast variety programs sponsored by Buick.
JUL 23 1934 NBC refuses to rehire 13 union musicians who walked off their jobs and joined the San Francisco general strike without the required two weeks’ notice.
JUL 23 1937 FCC Chairman Anning Prall, 67, dies of heart failure at his summer home in Maine.
JUL 23 1941 FCC begins its formal inquiry about the “propriety” of newspapers owning broadcast properties.
JUL 23 1941 The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee recommends an excise tax of 5% to 15% on station time sales over $100,000 per year.
JUL 23 1941 NBC News opens its shortwave listening post at Bellmore, Long Island, with a staff of 24 engineers and linguists.
JUL 23 1941 Aldrich Family star Ezra Stone, 23, is drafted into the Army but is granted time off to continue his radio work until August, 1942. (See The Aldrich Family and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 23 1943 A year long FTC investigation finds no violation of law in the four major networks’ rates or discount plans.
JUL 23 1943 CBS rescinds its ban against patent medicine manufacturers sponsoring its newscasts.
JUL 23 1945 Manufacturers Motorola and Stromberg-Carlson reject the FCC suggestion that new FM receivers be built with both the old and new FM frequency bands.
JUL 23 1947 Kate Smith, whose Kate Smith Speaks had been a daily noontime feature on CBS for eight seasons, moves the series to Mutual, charging CBS with “...censorship restrictions.”
JUL 23 1947 Mutual reports 225 affiliates have locally sold its new co-op program, Kate Smith Speaks.
JUL 23 1947 Weekday serial Wendy Warren & The News replaces Kate Smith Speaks on CBS and begins its eleven year run on the network. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 23 1948 Radio and television networks prepare to cover presidential candidate Henry Wallace’s Third Party two-day convention in Philadelphia.
JUL 23 1948 Lucille Ball introduces My Favorite Husband on CBS for three seasons. The sitcom is considered the radio forerunner to I Love Lucy. (See The 1948-49 Season.)
JUL 23 1949 An audience of 10,000 attend the Aquatennial Radio Show broadcast on CBS from the Minneapolis Auditorium starring Bob Hope, Arthur Godfrey, Joan Edwards, Buddy Lester, Monica Lewis, and hosted by Cedric Adams.
JUL 23 1950 Gene Autry, a ten year star of CBS Radio, debuts his new filmed adventure series on CBS-TV, the first television show to feature sound tracks created specifically for it by AFM musicians.
JUL 23 1952 CBS announces a 25% rate cut during its nighttime hours and a 20% increase in its daytime rates.
JUL 23 1952 Actor Charlie Chaplin sues NBC commentator Hy Gardner for $3.0 Million, claiming that Gardner’s broadcasts implied that he was a Communist.
JUL 23 1952 WTVN-TV/Columbus, Ohio, captures five minutes of “flying saucers” hovering over the city.
JUL 24 1930 Rudy Vallee’s Connecticut Yankees band begins a six-week string of one-night appearances that guarantees the NBC star a record breaking fee between $18,000 and $20,000 per week. His Thursday night Fleischmann Yeast Hour will originate from whatever city his band is performing. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 24 1933 President Roosevelt outlines the goals of the National Recovery Administration, (NRA), over a combined hookup of CBS, both NBC networks and most independent stations.
JUL 24 1933 Associated Press instructs photographers not to picture personalities at microphones with network or station name plates.
JUL 24 1935 The wired Ticker News Service, with music and news, begins operation in Philadelphia claiming an initial 250 clients, mostly hotels, restaurants and bars.
JUL 24 1937 An AFM rule that stations without house bands must pay musicians double scale causes the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to move its weekly CBS program from WCAU/Philadelphia to WHP/Harrisburg
JUL 24 1945 The NAB estimates the cash value of donated programs and announce-ments by the broadcast industry to the Seventh War Loan Drive is $23.5 Million.
JUL 24 1946 General Electric introduces its first postwar line of Musaphonic console AM-FM radio phonographs priced from $450 to $600.
JUL 24 1946 The major networks cover the second Pacific atomic bomb tests from Bikini atoll flawlessly, overcoming the technical problems that plagued the first broadcasts of tests a month earlier.
JUL 24 1949 Folk balladeer Burl Ives begins his seven week replacement series for Walter Winchell’s Sunday night commentaries sponsored by Kaiser-Frazer autos on ABC.
JUL 24 1949 Network Radio veteran John J. Anthony adapts his “human relations” Goodwill Hour to television for a short run on WPIX(TV)/New York City.
JUL 24 1950 FCC authorizes CBS-owned KCBS/San Jose-San Francisco to increase its power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts.
JUL 24 1953 The all-industry National Television System Committee agrees on the RCA compatible color television method and prepares filing with FCC for its approval. CBS drops its non-compatible system and endorses the NTSC petition.
JUL 24 1953 FCC proposes extending television licenses from one year to three years, the same length as radio station licenses.
JUL 24 1953 Veteran newsman and CBS-TV What’s My Line? host John Daly, 39, is appointed ABC’s Vice President of News & Special Events.
JUN 25 1922 AT&T opens WBAY/New York City, announcing its “toll broadcasting” (aka “sponsorship”) concept, charging $40 to $50 for 15 minutes of time.
JUN 25 1938 Senior FCC lawyer, Major Alfred Dalrymple, 61, dies when struck by an automobile on a Washington street.
JUL 25 1940 A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds radio broadcasters' right to play phonograph records without paying license fees to record companies or artists.
JUL 25 1940 KFEL/Denver becomes the first station to ban ASCAP songs, relying instead upon public domain and BMI music.
JUL 25 1941 The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee introduces its $3.5 Billion Tax Defense Bill that would impose an extra tax of 5% to 15% on broadcasters’ on net revenue exceeding $100,000.
JUL 25 1941 A Washington, D.C., District Court fines the Trans Ocean Press news agency $1,000 in penalties and another $15,000 in court costs for not registering as an agent of Nazi Germany.
JUL 25 1942 The owner of KFPI/Dublin, Texas, on the air since 1924, shuts the station down due to shortages of qualified personnel and replacement equipment.
JUL 25 1943 The networks interrupt late Sunday afternoon programs with the bulletin of Benito Mussolini’s resignation as Premier of Italy.
JUL 25 1944 Chairman James Fly asks Congress if his FCC has the power to, “…disapprove the transfer of a station from one owner to another merely because the price is considered inordinately high.”
JUL 25 1945 ABC’s Breakfast Club celebrates “Christmas In July” with yuletide music, sells $2,500 in War Bonds and collects $2,000 in gifts for 25 servicemen who spent the previous Christmas in foxholes.
JUL 25 1945 Actor Craig Reynolds sues NBC and Philip Morris for $100,000 charging that the Ginny Simms Show format was stolen from his program concept for Veterans’ Canteen.
JUL 25 1946 Arthur Godfrey signs a new five year contract to continue his early morning local programs on CBS-owned WABC/New York City and WTOP/Washington, D.C., in addition to his mid-morning program on the CBS network. (See Arthur Godfrey .)
JUL 25 1946 FCC awards Chicago’s fourth television construction permit to ABC.
JUL 25 1948 Arlene Francis replaces Walter Winchell during the commentator’ six week vacation with a celebrity interview show from the Stork Club on ABC.
JUL 25 1948 Pilot Radio Corporation introduces its 15 pound Candid model television set with a three-inch picture tube for $99.50.
JUL 25 1949 Johnny Desmond, 29, former vocalist with Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band, replaces Jack Owens in the cast of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club on ABC. (See In The Miller .)
JUL 25 1949 FCC approves KING/Seattle buying the city’s only television station, KRSC(TV), for $375,000.
JUL 25 1951 Bing Crosby signs a new contract with Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield cigarettes paying him $30,000 a week for his CBS radio show. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears, Wednesday's All Time Top Ten and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 25 1952 Arthur Godfrey announces that he is finished working on Fridays . Five days later he says it was all a mistake and he’ll continue doing his Friday shows. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 25 1952 WPIX(TV)/New York City offers a $500 bounty to its remote camera crews for any authentic shots of flying saucers.
JUL 26 1934 KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul obtains National Guard permission to drive its news truck equipped with a shortwave transmitter through the streets of Minneapolis during the violent truckers’ strike.
JUL 26 1935 Blue’s highly rated Phil Baker, The Armour Jester, is cancelled because the packing company’s new president expresses a dislike for radio advertising. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 26 1935 FCC gives conditional permission to AT&T for coaxial cable transmission tests of television images between New York City and Philadelphia.
JUL 26 1937 AFM President Joseph Weber declares a ban on sustaining dance band remotes beginning in mid-August to, “…increase musician employment.” (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 26 1937 All radio stations go silent for one minute at noon to honor FCC Chairman Anning Prall who died three days earlier of a heart attack at age 66.
JUL 26 1938 Paramount Pictures announces its purchase of 26% of the stock in DuMont Laboratories for $212,000. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
JUL 26 1939 Actress Virginia Campbell, 25, suffers television’s first known case of “Klieg Light Poisoning” caused by NBC’s intense studio lights - similar to a temporary ailment caused by brilliant lights used in Technicolor filming.
JUL 26 1944 Actor Alan Reed, (aka Teddy Berman), wins $300 in arbitration from Abie’s Irish Rose producer Anne Nichols, claiming he was unjustly fired from the NBC sitcom.
JUL 26 1944 General Electric’s receiver sales manager predicts that FM’s popularity will outpace television in the three years after World War II, resulting in 500 new FM stations and 25 Million listeners.
JUL 26 1945 The March of Time leaves ABC concluding its 14 year sporadic multi-network run. (See The March of Time.)
JUL 26 1946 FCC warns holders of FM conditional grants and construction permits to proceed immediately to build their stations or risk losing permits.
JUL 26 1946 Armed Forces Radio Service closes its San Francisco offices and moves its news division to Los Angeles..
JUL 26 1946 CBS-TV uses its new remote equipment in televising the Brooklyn vs. Pittsburgh ballgame from Ebbets Field on WCBW(TV)/New York City.
JUL 26 1948 Westinghouse applies for Channel 8 in Pittsburgh for further testing of its Stratovision system transmitting television signals from converted B-29 bombers circling between 25,000 and 30,000 feet.
JUL 26 1953 Radio and television networks flash the news of the Korean War Armistice at 9:00 p.m.
JUL 27 1931 Chet Luack and Norris Goff move their Lum & Abner from KTHS/Hot
Springs, Arkansas, to NBC, beginning a 22 year multi-network run.
JUL 27 1931 CBS reports receiving 2,900 unsolicited scripts over the previous two years, from which it accepted one.
JUL 27 1936 John Shepard 3rd announces formation of the Colonial Network in the New England states as a companion chain to his Yankee Network.
JUL 27 1937 Four announcements on WLW/Cincinnati offering free pictures of Tommy Riggs and his fictitious alter-ego Betty Lou, result in 32,000 mailed requests.
JUL 27 1939 Mr. District Attorney, a 15-minute Multiple Run weeknight program on Blue is converted to 30-minutes and moved to NBC as the summer replacement for Bob Hope’s Pepsodent Show. (See Mr. District Attorney and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1939 FCC rules that all stations must log the title of every phonograph record it broadcasts.
JUL 27 1939 Kay Kyser breaks all San Francisco attendance records, 10,000 patrons in a week at the Bal Tabarin nightclub where his orchestra played for scale - as a thanks for the owners’ support of his band in its early years. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1942 CBS premieres Victory Theater, a weekly half hour of patriotic themed variety by CBS stars as the summer replacement for the first half of Lux Radio Theater.
JUL 27 1942 CBS begins the seven week series An American In England written by Norman Corwin and narrated by Edward R. Murrow originating at the BBC studios in London but technical problems in shortwave transmission make parts of it unintelligible.
JUL 27 1942 Mutual commentator Cal Tinny angers military officials by charging trading post profits are directed to slush funds used for beer parties.
JUL 27 1943 The Blue Network tells advertisers that it will begin accepting transcriptions of nighttime programs from other networks for broadcast on its daytime schedule.
JUL 27 1943 Jack Benny and his USO unit including harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler with actresses Anna Lee and Wini Shaw, arrive in the Middle East to begin their three month tour entertaining Allied troops.
JUL 27 1943 Blue broadcasts a retraction to an statement by Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler that separately married actors Gertrude Lawrence and Hugh Marlow were engaged to each other.
JUL 27 1945 The U.S. War Production Board lifts its restrictions on the production and sale of tubes and other components for radios and electronic gear.
JUL 27 1946 ABC claims the first televised golf tournament coverage - the All American Tournament from Chicago.
JUL 27 1946 NBC Radio cuts off Bill Stern’s broadcast of the All American Golf Tournament’s climactic final hole to clear time for Frank Morgan’s sitcom The Fabulous Dr Tweedy. (See Bill Stern.)
JUL 27 1947 After seven seasons on CBS, Eversharp moves its comedy quiz Take It Or Leave It to NBC. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1947 CBS adopts a 2% cash discount plan for its WCBS/New York. WBBM/ Chicago, WEEI/Boston, KNX/Los Angeles, WTOP/Washington, KMOX/St Louis and WCCO/Minneapolis-St Paul.
JUL 27 1949 The Broadcast Measurement Bureau estimates that nearly 39.3 Million families in the United States, or 94.2% of all homes, have at least one radio in good working order.
JUL 27 1951 Stockholders of both ABC and United Paramount Theaters approve the merger of their companies.
JUL 27 1951 CBS completes its restructuring, making radio and television two semi-autonomous divisions.
JUL 27 1951 NBC affiliates protest the network selling the six seconds required for its system cue chimes for advertising, which it claims could generate an annual $6.0 Million in additional revenue for local stations.
JUL 27 1951 CBS star Arthur Godfrey leaves on a two month vacation after causing protests for his comments favoring price controls in the United States. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 27 1953 R.J. Reynolds cancels Camel cigarettes’ Bob Hawk Show on CBS, ending their twelve year association when Hawk refuses a pay cut from his established $7,000 per week. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1953 Radio script writer John Greene sues CBS and other parties involved with the program You Are There for $505,000, claiming it was stolen from a concept he submitted to the network in 1945. (See You Are There.)
JUL 27 1953 Arthur Godfrey, gone nearly three months for his hip surgery and recovery, returns to the Talent Scouts simulcast on CBS Radio and Television via remote facilities from his Virginia farm. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1953 Steve Allen, 31, moves into the late night slot on WNBT(TV)/New York City replacing Jerry Lester’s Broadway Open House. The program would evolve into NBC-TV’s Tonight Show a year later.
JUL 27 1953 RCA Chairman David Sarnoff informs the NBC affiliates meeting that he will assume the presidency of the network for the rest of the year replacing the retiring Frank White.
JUL 28 1932 ASCAP breaks off talks with the NAB, refusing a 25% increase in music fees which would result in an estimated $2.5 Million over two years.
JUL 28 1934 The Minneapolis Tribune and St. Paul Dispatch’s WRHM/Minneapolis-St. Paul becomes WTCN representing “Twin City Newspapers.”
JUL 28 1936 The U.S. Commerce Department estimates radio’s audience to be 20 million American families with half of them the residents of five states: New York, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
JUL 28 1937 The FTC issues cease and desist orders to the makers of No-Doz caffeine tablets for claiming in its radio spots that a million drivers depend on its tablets and Calamo Reducing Bath Salts, which promises weight loss in bathing.
JUL 28 1940 Germany rescinds its ban against Mutual broadcasts originating from the country.
JUL 28 1940 FCC announces that it will work with the Radio Manufacturers Association to form the National Television Systems Committee to, “…work out television’s remaining problems.”
JUL 28 1943 FDR’s speech to the nation about the fall of Mussolini draws a CAB esti-mated 55 million listeners. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & NIelsen on this site.)
JUL 28 1944 Remick Music Corporation, publisher of It Had To Be You and Time Waits For No One, sues American Tobacco for $200,000 and seeks an injunction against Your Hit Parade’s weekly hit song survey, claiming its songs were ignored.
JUL 28 1945 An engineer’s eye-witness account gives WOR/New York City a five minute beat on the news of a B-25 crashing into the fog-shrouded 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building killing 14 and causing $1.0 Million in damages.
JUL 28 1947 Lever Brothers shifts Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and My Friend Irma to before and after Lux Radio Theater on the CBS Monday night schedule, making all three Top Ten shows. (See Monday’s All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 28 1947 Mutual cancels its Hooperating service as C.E. Hooper doubles it network charges to $60,000 annually. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 28 1948 A Pennsylvania court rules in favor of owners and producers of The Lone Ranger by ordering a touring rodeo performer, Earl Currey, to abandon his mask and the name Lone Star Ranger. (See The Lone Ranger.)
JUL 28 1948 FCC suspends the construction permit of WTVJ(TV)/Miami pending a hearing of its finances.
JUL 28 1949 Lorillard’s Old Gold cigarettes moves The Original Amateur Hour from Wednesday to Thursday nights on ABC Radio and trims it from 60 to 45 minutes.
JUL 28 1949 Producers of the CBS reality-based crime drama, Wanted, scramble to replace its recorded program dealing with a wanted fugitive who was hunted down by the FBI and shot a few days earlier.
JUL 28 1950 One of the original radio-television simulcasts, We The People, is split into two separate shows on NBC both on Friday night a 8:30 and both sponsored by Gulf Oil.
JUL 28 1950 The Washington Post acquires WOIC(TV) from Bamberger Department Stores and rechristens it to match its radio property, WTOP-TV.
JUL 28 1952 Long running radio comedy Amos & Andy debuts as a 30 minute sitcom on CBS-TV.
JUL 29 1914 AT&T establishes the first transcontinental telephone call between New York City and San Francisco.
JUL 29 1931 NBC’s early musical, The Palmolive Hour, is cancelled after four seasons. (See Frank Munn’s Golden Voice and Gus Haenschen.)
JUL 29 1935 The one year old Lux Radio Theater leaves New York and Blue’s Sunday afternoon schedule for Hollywood and a successful 19 season Monday night run on CBS (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! and Monday's All Time Top Ten.
JUL 29 1935 Peoples Drug Stores gives WJSV sportscaster Arch McDonald a specially built studio in its downtown Washington, D.C., location for listeners who want to watch his broadcasts.
JUL 29 1936 General Mills responds to an FTC order and discontinues its false claims that part of the proceeds from the sale of Wheaties go to charity.
JUL 29 1936 CBS and NBC each begin 19 nights of summaries of the Olympic games from Berlin - Bill Henry and Ted Husing reporting for CBS, Bill Slater and Howard Deietze for NBC.
JUL 29 1937 U.S. Congressman Samuel Dickstein accuses New York City stations WBNX, WFAB, WHOM, WBBC, and WWRL of selling time to brokers who resold it to German language program producers favorable to the Nazis .
JUL 29 1940 Powerful shortwave station WLWO/Cincinnati agrees to broadcast U.S. Weather Service tropical storm and hurricane warnings every three hours in English, Spanish and Portuguese when they are issued for Central and South American countries.
JUL 29 1941 Crosley’s 75,000 watt Cincinnati shortwave station, WLWO, begins European service from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily, alternating broadcasts in English, French, Spanish and German.
JUL 29 1942 A Minneapolis man who learned of a $43,000 inheritance on the CBS Court of Missing Heirs a year earlier, murders his wife after arguments over his spending habits.
JUL 29 1943 Floyd George, 14 year old cast member of NBC’s Hawthorne House, dies when a backyard cave-in buries him beneath four feet of soil.
JUL 29 1944 Members of Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force band, renamed The Flying American Band of The Supreme Allied Command, escape injury when a Nazi rocket destroys their quarters two hours after they left. (See In The Miller Mood.)
JUL 29 1946 Emerson Drug’s Bromo Seltzer replaces the Jackie Coogan sitcom Forever Ernest on the CBS Monday night schedule with Inner Sanctum. (See Inner Sanctum and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 29 1946 New Hampshire Senator Charles Tobey calls for a “full dress investigation” of the FCC, especially its alleged, "...control of radio programs’ abridgment of freedom of speech."
JUL 29 1947 Boris Karloff notifies Lights Out sponsor Eversharp that he wants to leave the ABC show because he considers it too gruesome.
JUL 29 1948 Broadcast organizations from 61 nations cover the opening of the London Olympics.
JUL 29 1949 Kay Kyser leaves Network Radio after a dozen years, eleven in the Top 50 and two in the Top Ten. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 29 1949 W.H. Mason, 51 year old program director of KBKI/Alice, Texas, dies of gunshot wounds fired by a deputy sheriff he had accused on the air of being a brothel owner.
JUL 29 1949 Milton Berle signs a new three year contract to host NBC-TV’s Texaco Star Theater paying $10,000 a week for 39 weeks the first year, then $11,500 a week and $13,000 a week the third year.
JUL 29 1950 The television adaptation of One Man’s Family, off the air for seven months, returns to NBC-TV.
JUL 29 1953 ABC Radio notes the Korean war cease fire with its two-part Korea Story narrated by Dick Powell and Helen Hayes.
JUL 30 1930 NBC opens its pioneering television station W2XBS/New York City.
JUL 30 1932 The governing committee’s $100,000 demand for broadcast rights to the 1932 Olympics prevents live network coverage from Los Angeles.
JUL 30 1932 Bing Crosby begins appearing on the weekly CBS show California Melodies for no payment, “…just to prove that CBS can’t get along without me,” while his brother Everett negotiates a new contract with the network.
JUL 30 1932 Powerful KFI/Los Angeles begins a nightly 11:30 p.m. half hour series reporting Olympic games results for listeners in New Zealand and Australia.
JUL 30 1935 One of four experimental “high fidelity” AM stations, W9XBY/Kansas City, reports satisfactory results in its field strength tests at 1530 kilocycles.
JUL 30 1936 Future network star Hildegarde, (Snell), 30, makes her radio debut on Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Yeast Hour.
JUL 30 1937 The AFM gives broadcasters an ultimatum that any station playing phono-graph records or musical transcriptions must also hire a number of union musicians that it deems “satisfactory”. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 30 1937 The American Federation of Radio Artists, (AFRA), talent union is formed.
JUL 30 1939 Japan’s Ministry of Communications orders three new 50,000 watt transmitters and increases its shortwave broadcasts to North America in English and Japanese by six hours a day.
JUL 30 1940 WTMJ/Milwaukee is approved by the FCC to increase power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts with a new transmitter system, but National Defense Act shortages make it unable to obtain the necessary steel towers or copper wiring.
JUL 30 1942 The U.S. Justice Department authorizes an injunction suit against the AFM’s strike against recorded music. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 30 1942 The American Theater Wing introduces its weekly Stage Door Canteen on CBS with host Bert Lytell and guests Burns & Allen, Irving Berlin and Helen Hayes.
JUL 30 1943 NBC announces the sale of its Blue network and stations WJZ/New York, WENR/Chicago and KGO/San Francisco to Edward Noble for $8.0 Million, subject to FCC approval and contingent on Noble’s selling WMCA/New York City.
JUL 30 1944 Marine Sergeant Lee Powell, 35, the original Lone Ranger in films, is reported killed in action in the South Pacific. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
JUL 30 1945 The NAB, ABC, CBS and NBC each protest the FCC's proposed requirements that all FM stations must originate at least two hours of programs daily that are not broadcast elsewhere.
JUL 30 1947 ABC sells WOOD/Grand Rapids, Michigan - acquired a year earlier in the network’s purchase of WXYZ/Detroit.
JUL 30 1947 A midyear television report indicates a U.S. total of eleven commercial stations serving 47,500 homes and 11,000 public places equipped with TV receivers.
JUL 30 1949 Game show What's My Name? with hostess Arlene Francis is cancelled on ABC after a sporadic eleven year run on three networks.
JUL 30 1951 Joe E. Brown substitutes for Don McNeill as host of ABC’s Breakfast Club for the final six weeks of McNeill’s two month vacation, replacing Peter Donald who emceed the show for the first two weeks.
JUL 31 1930 The Shadow is first heard on CBS as the nameless narrator of a mystery anthology series. (See The Shadow Nos.)
JUL 31 1932 Both CBS and NBC report their first drop in revenue from the same month a year earlier since 1928.
JUL 31 1932 FCC approves WSAI/Cincinnati boosting its power from 500 to 2,500 watts when owner Crosley Broadcasting devises the nation’s first directional antenna system to avoid interfering with other stations.
JUL 31 1932 Thomas (Tommie) Malie, armless radio singer and songwriter, (Looking At The World Through Rose Colored Glasses and Tie Me To Your Apron Strings), dies in Chicago at 35.
JUL 31 1933 General Mills introduces Jack Armstrong, The All American Boy on CBS, beginning its 18 years of the program’s sponsorship across all four networks. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
JUL 31 1933 NBC reports 50,000 visitors took the hour-long guided tour of its Chicago studios in July, many of them in the city for the World’s Fair.
JUL 31 1935 The unpopular Press Radio Bureau closes its West Coast office in Los Angeles - three of its key executives join Hearst’s new International News Service bureau in the city. (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
JUL 31 1936 Despite his fall to 13th place in the 1935-36 ratings after three years at Number One, Eddie Cantor signs a three picture contract with 20th Century Fox paying him $1.0 Million.
JUL 31 1937 CBS, Mutual and NBC all cover the America’s Cup yacht races from Newport, Rhode Island.
JUL 31 1938 Sponsor Fitch Shampoo pays $750 for seven miles of phone lines installed from Hardwick, Vermont, to a summer camp for the blind so Jerry Belcher can interview sightless kids on NBC’s Interesting Neighbors show.
JUL 31 1941 Variety publishes a special issue commemorating the 25th anniversary of ASCAP.
JUL 31 1941 BMI completes its first year in business with a net profit and $605,000 in assets.
JUL 31 1942 Firestone Tire & Rubber becomes the first NBC sponsor to order all 125 stations on the network and receive a 10% discount.
JUL 31 1945 Mutual refuses The Friends of Democracy political group’s request to respond to a sermon by Dr. Walter Maier on the network’s Lutheran Hour which they charge was political propaganda against the country’s best interests.
JUL 31 1946 Mutual reports its affiliates WNOE/New Orleans and WIBC/Indianapolis have applied for 50,000 watts while another 52 affiliates have filed for power increases of lesser amounts.
JUL 31 1947 Ezra Stone, Vic Damone, Fred Waring’s glee club and Pennsylvania’s governor are among the guests for the dedication broadcast of WFMZ(FM)/Allentown, put on the air by five former servicemen funded by local stockholders.
JUL 31 1949 ABC introduces its giveaway show offering a $25,000 new house as its major prize, Chance of A Lifetime, hosted by John Reed King. The program has a sporadic three year run.
JUL 31 1949 NBC introduces its new sitcom, The Ethel Merman Show, due for a 13-week Sunday night run.
JUL 31 1949 Meredith Willson begins a four week Sunday night run for General Foods on NBC-TV. (See Meredith Willson.)
JUL 31 1950 For the fourth consecutive year, Robert Q. Lewis hosts Arthur Godfrey Time for the vacationing Godfrey on CBS for two months.
JUL 31 1950 BMI distributes a record $2.2 Million in royalties in fiscal 1949-50.
JUL 31 1952 Fred Allen, 58, scheduled to begin the new radio-television quiz show Two For The Money on NBC, is stricken with a serious virus attack.
JUL 31 1952 BMI concludes the fiscal year with over $5.6 Million in revenues.
JUL 31 1953 CBS signs Red Skelton to a long term radio and television contract.
JUL 31 1953 WXKW/Albany, New York, plagued with technical problems with 10,000 watts at 850 kc., leaves the air after five years with $300,000 provided in great part by competitors WPTR and WTRY for its television application.
JUL 31 1953 FCC station income reports show that 94 of the country’s 108 television stations made money in 1952, and 17 of them turned profits of $1.0 Million or more.
GLOSSARY
AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union - AFL = American Federation of Labor - AFM = American Federation of Musicians - AFRA = American Federation of Radio Artists - AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Service - AFTRA = American Federation of Radio & Television Artists - AGVA = American Guild of Variety Artists - ANA = Association of National Advertisers - ANPA = American Newspaper Publishers Association - AP = Associated Press - ARB = American Research Bureau - ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers - BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - BMB = Broadcast Measurement Bureau - BMI = Broadcast Music, Inc. - CAB = Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting - CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System - CIO = Congress of Industrial Organizations - CST = Central Standard Time - CWA = Communications Workers of America - EST = Eastern Standard Time - FCC = Federal Communications Commission - FRC = Federal Radio Commission - FTC = Federal Trade Commission - IAPTA = International Allied Printing Trades Association - IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News Service - IRS = Internal Revenue Service - LBS = Liberty Broadcasting System - MBS = Mutual Broadcasting System - MCA = Music Corporation of America - MST = Mountain Standard Time - NAB = National Association of Broadcasters - NABET = National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians - NARBA = North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement - NARTB = National Association of Radio & Television Broadcasters, (fka NAB) - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - PTA = Parent Teachers Association - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - RMA = Radio Manufacturers Association - SAG = Screen Actors Guild - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - SPCA = Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press.
Copyright © 2018, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: [email protected]
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JUL 1 1923 The first permanent link by telephone line is established between two stations - 210 miles from AT&T’s WEAF/New York City to millionaire Edward Green’s WMAF/South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
JUL 1 1924 The Chicago Tribune buys WDAP/Chicago and changes its call-sign two weeks later to WGN, representing “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”
JUL 1 1926 RCA agrees to buy WEAF/New York City from AT&T for $1.0 Million. (See Alchemists of The Air.)
JUL 1 1926 RCA leases exclusive use of AT&T broadcast quality lines for networking purposes.
JUL 1 1932 NBC orders a 10% pay cut for all employees.
JUL 1 1932 NBC charges 30 of its affiliates $1,500 a month for sustaining programs, remaining affiliates pay $25 per hour for nighttime sustaining programs, $15 for each sustaining daytime hour.
JUL 1 1932 Andre Kostelanetz begins a new series on CBS with a 40 piece orchestra but no spoken words during the 30 minute Friday night concerts.
JUL 1 1933 NBC boasts 154,000 requests for free trial-size packages of Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder result from two commercials on the network’s Manhattan Merry Go Round. (See Top 40 Radio’s Roots and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1933 CBS broadcasts a half-hour adaptation of Damon Runyon’s Lady For A Day from aboard the cruise ship Queen of Bermuda enroute to the island.
JUL 1 1934 The Communications Act of 1934 takes effect - the seven member Federal Communications Commission replaces the five member Federal Radio Commission.
JUL 1 1934 NBC forbids its contract talent to record for any label but RCA Victor without permission.
JUL 1 1935 Radio Guide’s second annual popularity poll draws 1,256,000 votes and names Jack Benny, Wayne King’s orchestra, Amos & Andy, Maxwell House Showboat and One Man’s Family as its winners.
JUL 1 1936 A mid-year report of metropolitan areas shows that New York City has the most radio stations at 18, Chicago follows with 12, Los Angeles has eleven, Philadelphia has ten, and Boston and San Francisco each have five.
JUL 1 1937 NBC’s Texaco Fire Chief, Ed Wynn, is cited by Treasury Department officials to have legally dodged $196,728 in income taxes by establishing personally owned cor-porations to receive his checks. (See Tuesday's All Too Ten.)
JUL 1 1937 New York’s Hotel Taft announces the installation of radios in all of its rooms giving guests their choice of four stations or Muzak.
JUL 1 1937 Esquire publishes an unflattering profile of AFM Chicago local President James Petrillo titled, The Mussolini of Music. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 1 1938 Mutual schedules a record 30 hours of dance band remotes a week to fill time for summer vacationing programs. (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 1 1938 NBC bans Johnny Mercer’s novelty song Weekend of A Private Secretary.
JUL 1 1939 With the possibility of an ASCAP dispute coming in 1941, the Standard Transcription Service announces that over 2,000 public domain selections currently in its library with more to be added in 1940. (See “By Transcription…”)
JUL 1 1939 Radio Guide magazine names singer Nelson Eddy “Radio’s Star of Stars” with the most of 729,000 votes received from readers, beating Jessica Dragonette, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Rudy Vallee.
JUL 1 1940 Westinghouse terminates NBC’s management contract for its KDKA/Pitts-burgh, KYW/Philadelphia, WBZ/Boston, WBZA/Springfield and WOWO/Fort Wayne and consolidates its Radio Division in Philadelphia.
JUL 1 1941 FCC awards first commercial television license to NBC’s WNBT(TV) in New York City.
JUL 1 1941 The Bulova Watch Company becomes television’s first advertiser with a time signal on WNBT(TV)/New York City. The day continues with an unsponsored Brooklyn vs. Philadelphia baseball game from Ebbets Field, Lever Brothers presents a video version of Uncle Jim’s Question Bee, Sun Oil simulcasts Lowell Thomas News and Procter & Gamble sponsors a TV version of Truth Or Consequences.
JUL 1 1941 NBC issues its first rate card for WNBT(TV)/New York City: $120 per hour plus production fees.
JUL 1 1941 FCC grants Muzak Corporation an experimental FM license in New York City to test its music service for subscribers equipped with special receivers.
JUL1 1942 CBS leads Variety’s count of network newscasts per week with 72, leading Blue’s 52, NBC’s 40 and Mutual’s 38. Mutual leads in news commentary programs with 57, followed by CBS with 49, Blue at 41 and NBC’s 26.
JUL 1 1942 The Atlantic Coast Network begins operations on an experimental basis with seven stations anchored by WNEW/New York.
JUL 1 1943 Rudy Vallee, 41. breaks his successful string of 14 years on NBC to join the U.S. Coast Guard as its band director. (See The 1942-43 Season and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1943 The U.S. government’s mediation effort to end the eleven month musicians union strike against transcription firms ends in 15 minutes when union chief Petrillo says his members, “…will make no more transcriptions for anyone at any time.” (See Petrillo!)
JUL 1 1943 Mutual drops its dance band remotes when the AFM refuses to play while MBS continues service to WSAY/Rochester which is in an eight month dispute with the union. (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 1 1943 WNBH/New Bedford, Massachusetts, becomes Blue’s 155th affiliate.
JUL 1 1944 Actress Dorothy Lowell, 28, who held the title role of Our Gal Sunday since 1937, dies after giving birth to a daughter. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 1 1944 Raymond Rubicam, co-founder of major broadcast advertising agency Young & Rubicam in 1923 with James Orr Young, retires as Chairman of the firm at age 52.
JUL 1 1945 Mutual commentator Upton Close leaves the air with parting blasts against fascists, communists, racial and religious intolerance, the Anti-Defamation League and “network monopolies.”
JUL 1 1945 The nation’s first small independent television station, W2XJT(TV), opens on Jamaica, Long Island, to test new equipment and explore effective methods of educational television broadcasting.
JUL 1 1946 ABC, NBC and Mutual carry a special memorial broadcast from the U.S. House of Representatives honoring late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
JUL 1 1946 Making up for lost time in World War II, the FCC authorizes 213 new AM station construction permits, 451 FM grants and 20 television station permits in the first six months of 1946.
JUL 1 1946 The Philadelphia Record agrees to buy WCAU/Philadelphia from brothers Ike and Leon Levy for $6.0 Million.
JUL 1 1946 The will of Major Edward Bowes of The Original Amateur Hour who died two weeks earlier reveals he left an estate of $4.5 Million, most of it going to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine.)
JUL 1 1947 Eleven days after its last broadcast for Woodbury Soap on NBC, mystery-comedy Mr. & Mrs. North debuts on CBS for Colgate Palmolive Peet’s Halo Shampoo. (See Married Sleuths and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1947 ABC reports its twelve shows offered to affiliates on a co-op basis are accepted as 2,700 quarter-hours on 179 stations and generating $2.0 Million in annual revenue.
JUL 1 1947 Citing higher costs, C.E. Hooper doubles its audience survey prices to $1,500 monthly for NBC and CBS, and $1,200 per month for ABC and Mutual. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 1 1947 Broadcasters Guild, Inc., a cooperative network of transcribed programming begins operations with WHN/New York, WLS/Chicago and KMPC/Hollywood as its key stations.
JUL 1 1947 FCC grants permission to New York Times owned WQXQ-FM/New York to temporarily broadcast on both its established 45.9 frequency and the reallocation-dictated 96.3 megacycles.
JUL 1 1948 New York City lawyer and Democrat activist Freda Hannock, 44, becomes the first female appointed to the FCC.
JUL 1 1948 Former FCC Chairman Charles Denny, 36, is elected Executive Vice President of NBC after serving eight months as the company’s legal counsel.
JUL 1 1948 After 22 years with NBC, Executive Vice President Frank Mullen, 51, joins the G.A. Richards group - WJR/Detroit, WGAR/Cleveland and KMPC/Los Angeles - as its chief executive.
JUL 1 1949 CBS fires 175 employees in an effort to trim operating costs by $1.5 Million.
JUL 1 1949 Dorothy Schiff, Publisher of The New York Post, sells WLIB/New York City to group of investors including the former manager of municipally owned WNYC for $150,000.
JUL 1 1949 FCC reports that 203 FM grants have been turned back during the first six months of the year and only 130 new grants have been awarded.
JUL 1 1949 Ford cancels its weekly Ford Theater on CBS and dedicates the $15,000 weekly budget to The Ford Television Theater beginning in October on CBS-TV.
JUL 1 1949 NBC estimates the number of television sets in the United States to be 1.86 Million.
JUL 1 1949 The Albert Sindlinger Company introduces its Radox method to measure radio, television and phonograph use and popularity - the system involves installation of an electric eye within the respondents’ homes connected via telephone lines to a central reporting station.
JUL 1 1949 Transit Radio reports adding 104 new advertisers including Swift, Miles Laboratories, Bendix and Sears Roebuck to its bus and streetcar broadcasts in 14 cities.
JUL 1 1950 CBS presents Dennis O’Keefe as T-Man, a summer long action feature based on a Treasury Department agent’s adventures. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
JUL 1 1950 Ralph Edwards and his staff leave for six weeks of taping Truth Or Conse-quences and This Is Your Life programs in Europe for fall broadcast on his new network, CBS, and sponsor, Philip Morris. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
JUL 1 1950 Mark Goodson & Bill Todman introduce their short lived comedy-quiz, Rate Your Mate with host Joey Adams, on CBS.
JUL 1 1951 Lloyd Nolan signs a three year, $750,000 deal with sponsor U.S. Tobacco and replaces William Gargan as Martin Kane, Private Eye on NBC radio and television.
JUL 1 1951 ABC begins closed-circuit television tests of Walter Winchell’s Sunday night news commentaries. (See Walter Winchell.)
JUL 1 1952 CBS affiliates, 143 strong, meet in New York City to demand that the network abandon its plan to cut rates, rescind its year-old 10% rate cut of 1951 and raise daytime rates by at least 20%.
JUL 1 1952 Procter & Gamble renews its nightly 45 minute block of CBS programs - Lowell Thomas News, Beulah and The Jack Smith Show - for one year at a reported one-third rate reduction. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1952 Osborne Putnam Stearns, known for five years as the recipe reciting Food Magician on WMAQ/Chicago, sues NBC for $500,000 after he is fired when his ratings drop which he blames on station-ordered format changes.
JUL 1 1952 Pianist-comedian Steve Allen, 30, takes the weeknight half-hour on CBS at 9:30 p.m. for, “… an ad-lib, free-wheeling, drop-in show for guests and audiences.”
JUL 1 1952 R.J. Reynolds Camel cigarettes renews $10.0 Million in NBC annual billings with its Grand Ole Opry and Vaughn Monroe Show on radio and Camel News Caravan plus 30 minutes of Your Show of Shows on television. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 1 1952 Live network television via cable and microwave relay arrives in Texas cities Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
JUL 1 1952 FCC begins processing television applications for cities that have no television stations.
JUL 1 1953 KYW/Philadelphia asks FCC permission to cease FM broadcasting and donate its tower and transmitter to the Delaware Valley Educational Television Corporation.
JUL 2 1921 RCA establishes WJY/Newark to broadcast the Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier Heavyweight Championship fight to a claimed 300,000 listeners.
JUL 2 1932 NBC carries its first broadcast from Rockefeller Center - the laying of the building’s cornerstone.
JUL 2 1934 Ota Gygi, former CEO of Ed Wynn’s defunct Amalgamated Broadcasting System network, meets with Midwest stations in an attempt to form the Affiliated Radio Network.
JUL 2 1935 The police chief of Kansas City, Missouri, suing The March of Time and CBS for $250,000 in libel damages, settles for $20,000. (See The March of Time.)
JUL 2 1936 Benny Goodman’s band returns to Network Radio with weekly appearances on a CBS summertime variety hour hosted by novelist and commentator Rupert Hughes. (See The King of Swing.)
JUL 2 1937 CBS purchases the Avon Theater on New York City’s West 45th Street and renames it CBS Radio Playhouse Number Two.
JUL 2 1937 Both CBS and NBC cover the last two days of the Wimbledon tennis tournament via shortwave from courtside in Great Britain.
JUL 2 1939 The Aldrich Family debuts as Jack Benny’s summer replacement. (See The Aldrich Famiiy and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 2 1939 Vaudeville veteran Joe Howard, 61, and singer Beatrice Kay, 32, introduce The Gay Nineties Revue for its six year run on CBS.
JUL 2 1940 Gracie Allen discontinues her “Presidential campaign” and pledges all royalties from her book, How To Become President, to the Red Cross.
JUL 2 1941 The Adventures of The Thin Man begins its nine year multi-network run on NBC. (See Married Sleuths, Friday's All Time Top Ten and The Curse of Dashiell Hammett.)
JUL 2 1941 Texaco donates its hour-long Fred Allen time period on CBS during the comedian’s summer vacation to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Millions For Defense promoting Defense Bond sales.
JUL 2 1943 A U.S. House Select Committee launches an attack on the FCC, charging the agency with inefficiency and being a hindrance to the war effort.
JUL 2 1943 Columnist and Blue commentator Drew Pearson is slapped with a $1.0 Million libel suit by lobbyist John R. Monroe.
JUL 2 1945 Marlin Hurt, 40, debuts his Fibber McGee & Molly spinoff, Beulah, on CBS. He dies suddenly from a heart attack eight months later.
JUL 2 1945 Writer/actor Eddie Holden sues NBC, sponsor F.W. Fitch and MCA for $200,000, charging they stole his copyrighted name and format for Dick Powell’s summer replacement show Rogue’s Gallery. (See Dick Powell.)
JUL 2 1945 New York Telephone Co. uses radio to urge its customers to limit their calls to five minutes.
JUL 2 1945 Popular radio actor John Walsh, 36, dies suddenly in Chicago.
JUL 2 1946 Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts begins its ten season run on CBS. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 2 1950 Screen veteran William Powell begins his short summer run in the NBC turn-of-the-century sitcom, My Mother’s Husband.
JUL 2 1951 Comedy team Bob (Elliot) & Ray (Goulding) debut on NBC weekday afternoons with a quarter hour show.
JUL 2 1951 CBS opens Robert Q’s Waxworks, a 45-minute disc jockey show featuring Robert Q. Lewis for the eight week vacation period of Beulah, Jack Smith and Bob Crosby‘s 15 minute shows..
JUL 2 1951 The sitcom Meet Millie opens on CBS for three season run starring Audrey Totter succeeded by Elena Verdugo.
JUL 2 1951 Procter & Gamble renews six weekday programs on NBC - Welcome Travelers, Life Can Be Beautiful, Road of Life, Pepper Young’s Family, Backstage Wife and Right To Happiness - despite the lure of ABC’s 45% discount to obtain the programs.
JUL 2 1951 ABC debuts its hour long block of weekday dramas - When A Girl Marries, The Romance of Evelyn Winters, Lone Journey and David Amity. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 2 1951 CBS returns its option on 10:45 to 11:00 p.m. weeknights to its affiliates.
JUL 2 1951 With audience declines, ABC, CBS, Mutual and NBC cut nighttime radio rates by 10% to 15%.
JUL 2 1951 The Liberty Broadcasting System network grows to 450 affiliates.
JUL 2 1952 One hundred and fifty CBS Radio affiliates meet in New York City to protest the network’s planned rate cuts.
JUL 2 1952 The Radio Writers Guild calls a strike against the networks which involves 28 employees at CBS, 20 at NBC and 16 at ABC.
JUL 3 1935 NBC Vice President John Royal and network correspondent Max Jordan broadcast via shortwave from the rim of Mt. Vesuvius hours before the volcano erupts.
JUL 3 1936 Powell Crosley, Jr., owner of Cincinnati’s WLW and WSAI, buys control of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.
JUL 3 1937 KGMB/Honolulu remains on the air for 38 consecutive hours attempting to establish contact with Amelia Earhart whose plane disappeared over the Pacific the previous day.
JUL 3 1937 CBS “steals” coverage of the National AAU track and field meet in Milwaukee, by posting sportscaster Ted Husing on a church rooftop overlooking the stadium where NBC had paid for exclusive coverage.
JUL 3 1937 New York City AFM Local 802 rules that no non-union musician may play on the city’s stations - a move aimed at WOR’s Little Symphony which features students from the Juilliard School of Music. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 3 1939 Blondie, starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, starts its eleven year multi-network run on CBS. (See Bloonn…dee!)
JUL 3 1939 CBS drops its line charges for Hollywood originated programs which cost advertisers an additional $350 per hour.
JUL 3 1940 Bud Abbott & Lou Costello get their first network show as 13-week summer replacements for Fred Allen on NBC.
JUL 3 1941 Death Valley Days, a Blue and NBC program for eleven years, begins a summertime run on both CBS and Blue before becoming an exclusive CBS property in the fall.
JUL 3 1942 Foreign language broadcasters, led by WOV/New York, voluntarily adopt a wartime code of practices including the careful monitoring of all program content.
JUL 3 1942 Philco television station WPTZ/Philadelphia cuts its operation to five and a half hours per week for the duration.
JUL 3 1944 Half hour musical sitcom Glamour Manor starring Cliff Arquette opens its three year run on Blue’s midday schedule.
JUL 3 1945 FCC relaxes its rules and no longer requires disc jockeys to identify each phonograph record as “recorded”. (See “By Transcription…” )
JUL 3 1946 Successful West Coast mystery series The Whistler is first heard on the full CBS network as Jack Carson‘s summer replacement. (See The Whistler.)
JUL 3 1947 The U.S. House Interstate Commerce Committee indefinitely postpones its hearings on the FCC’s 1945 decision to move the FM band to 88-108 megacycles and its possible return to the 42-50 mc band.
JUL 3 1947 Zenith demonstrates its new television-telephone combination, Phonevision, for the press, predicting that it will provide immediate revenue for television production, “…in the near future.”
JUL 3 1949 NBC launches its lavish giveaway show Hollywood Calling opposite Jack Benny on CBS. (See Sunday At Seven.)
JUL 3 1949 Lionel Barrymore’s Mayor of The Town leaves the air after a seven year multi-network run.
JUL 3 1950 Garry Moore stars in a new weeknight half-hour variety show at 7:00 p.m. simulcast on CBS and CBS-TV.
JUL 3 1950 Bob Crosby’s weeknight show Club 15 is replaced on CBS for the summer at 7:30 p.m. with Stepping Out starring Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 3 1950 Sitcoms Too Many Cooks starring Hal March & Mary Jane Croft and Granby’s Green Acres with Gale Gordon & Bea Benadaret begin their summer runs on CBS. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
JUL 3 1951 Los Angeles Superior Court awards $800,000 to the owners of the Bride & Groom radio and television shows for infringement by Wedding Bells, a series produced by KLAC-TV/Los Angeles.
JUL 3 1951 Wrigley gum begins sponsorship of CBS shows Broadway Is My Beat, The Lineup, Pursuit, Romance and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar for six weeks at a budget of $660,000. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
JUL 3 1952 FCC is flooded with 485 applications for new television stations during the week - over a third for channels in Ultra-High Frequency channels.
JUL 3 1952 Television hit sitcom Mr. Peepers starring Wally Cox opens its three year run on NBC-TV.
JUL 4 1934 The 12 CBS stations carrying the kids’ serial Skippy each release 100 balloons in the Skippy Derby. Kids finding cards attached to the balloons can redeem them for tubes of the sponsor’s product, Phillips Milk of Magnesia Toothpaste.
JUL 4 1939 A reported crowd of 75,000 attends a free holiday concert by Phil Spitany’s all-girl orchestra in Chicago’s Grant Park. (See The Hour of Charm.)
JUL 4 1942 NBC’s National Barn Dance from WLS/Chicago, an hour long network feature since its debut on Blue in 1933, is cut by sponsor Alka-Seltzer to 30 minutes. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 4 1943 Jack Benny and the cast of Information Please headline the Independence Day War Bond Rally at the Hollywood Bowl. (See Information Please.)
JUL 4 1943 The OWI establishes twelve low power stations in Great Britain connected by wire to London and called The American Forces Network, to serve American service-men and women based there during the war.
JUL 4 1944 Johnson Wax moves NBC’s late night public service program, Words At War, to its Tuesday night slot at 9:30 p.m. as the 13-week summer replacement for Fibber McGee & Molly. (See Words At War.)
JUL 4 1944 Milton Berle’s struggling Let Yourself Go on Blue switches from an audience participation quiz to variety.
JUL 4 1944 George Hicks, hailed for his D-Day reports, begins a Tuesday and Thursday night commentary on Blue. (See D-Day On Radio.)
JUL 4 1945 The U.S Treasury announces the total in War Bond sales sold by Truth Or Consequences’ seven personal appearance tours during World War II is a record $219.2 Million. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 4 1945 Curtain Time, a failed Mutual light drama anthology from 1939, is revived by Mars Candies and begins its five season multi-network run on ABC.
JUL 4 1945 The OWI’s powerful American Broadcasting Station In Europe, (ABSIE), operating from London, signs off the air after 15 months of duty broadcasting news and propaganda in six languages.
JUL 4 1946 CBS gives the U.S. Army Thursday night’s FBI In Peace & War half hour for seven weeks to air the recruiting program Sound Off. (See FBI vs. FBI.)
JUL 4 1949 CBS replaces Monday-Friday strip shows Club 15, Beulah and Jack Smith Show for the summer with Spin To Win, a combination disc jockey and quiz show hosted by Warren Hull.
JUL 4 1949 Joan Davis launches her sitcom Leave It To Joan as a six-week summer replacement for the first half of Lux Radio Theater before beginning a full season run on CBS in September.
JUL 4 1949 Young & Rubicam Advertising Vice President Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, 40, joins NBC as head of network television operations.
JUL 4 1949 The first television adaptation of the radio mystery-comedy series Mr.& Mrs. North, starring Joseph Allen, Jr. and Mary Jo Taylor, debuts on NBC. (See Married Sleuths.)
JUL 4 1950 Singing host John Conte introduces his 15-minute Van Camp’s Little Show on NBC Tuesday and Thursday nights, alternating with Roberta Quinlan’s Mohawk Carpet Showroom.
JUL 5 1931 McFadden Publications switches from CBS to NBC and adds nine stations to its weekly True Story dramatizations.
JUL 5 1932 Guy Lombardo refuses to appear in Paramount’s film The Big Broadcast when he’s forced to take second billing to Bing Crosby. (See Guy Lombardo.)
JUL 5 1934 Colonel Robert McCormick turns down NBC’s offer of $1.0 Million for his WGN/Chicago.
JUL 5 1935 As it reorganizes into a fulltime network, Mutual opens sales offices in New York and Chicago.
JUL 5 1937 Benton & Bowles tells the National Association of Parents & Teachers that its client, Colgate Palmolive Peet, placed its CBS show Gangbusters at 10:00 p.m. to avoid kid listeners. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 5 1937 Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial, Arnold Grimm’s Daughter begins its four year multi-network run for General Mills. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 5 1937 Soap opera actors and writers complain that Blackett-Sample-Hummert’s new subsidiary, Featured Artists Service, is the exclusive “booking agency” for all of BSH’S programs and charges them a 5% commission.
JUL 5 1938 Bing Crosby signs a ten year contract to host NBC's Kraft Music Hall - which will be broken in eight years. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 5 1938 WSM/Nashville becomes the first station to transmit its programming from studio to transmitter via microwave relay.
JUL 5 1939 WLW/Cincinnati scores a news beat feeding NBC and Mutual reports from a plane flying over the Moorhead, Kentucky flood that killed over 80 persons.
JUL 5 1939 Bristol-Myers brings quiz show What’s My Name? with hosts Arlene Frances and Fred Uttel to NBC for 13 weeks as summer replacement for Fred Allen.
JUL 5 1939 NBC estimates it costs $500 a day to produce television programs to broad-cast to 500 sets in New York City.
JUL 5 1942 Character actor Mischa Auer debuts in The Memoirs of Mischa The Mag-nificent on CBS as Fred Allen’s summer replacement.
JUL 5 1942 NBC moves its Sunday night all-star patriotic show, Victory Parade, back 30 minutes to 6:30 p.m.
JUL 5 1943 Chick Carter, Boy Detective, spinoff of Nick Carter, Master Detective, begins its two year run on Mutual’s weekday afternoon schedule. (See Nick Carter.)
JUL 5 1944 Danny Danker, J. Walter Thompson ad executive responsible for successes of Lux Radio Theater, Kraft Music Hall and Chase & Sanborn Hour, dies of heart attack at age 41.
JUL 5 1944 WLEW/Erie, Pennsylvania, claims the industry’s first singing station break.
JUL 5 1945 Ann Sothern begins a two year run in the CBS radio adaptation of her MGM movie series as Maisie.
JUL 5 1945 Victor Borge begins his 13-week variety show as summer replacement for Fibber McGee & Molly on NBC.
JUL 5 1945 Radio writer Edmund Holden sues NBC, F.W. Fitch and others for $200,000, charging plagiarism and claiming copyright to the detective drama Rogue’s Gallery. (See Dick Powell.)
JUL 5 1946 Bob Hope completes a tour of 34 Midwest and West Coast theater dates, grossing $430,000. (See About A Song.)
JUL 5 1946 WNBT(TV)/New York City beats the newsreels by six days in showing film of the Bikini atomic tests.
JUL 5 1946 Fledgling ABC-TV adds two programs: The Society of Amateur Chess from WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia and a video adaptation of ABC Radio’s My True Story from WRGB(TV)/Schenectady.
JUL 5 1946 President Truman signs The Lanham Act giving protection to radio advertising service marks including slogans, jingles and character names.
JUL 5 1947 Arthur Godfrey trims Saturday from his local radio duties to broadcast Monday through Fridays from 6:00 to 7:45 a.m. on WCBS/New York City and 7:45 to 9:10 a.m. on WTOP/Washington, then 11:00 to 11:30 a.m. on the full CBS network. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 5 1948 New York City’s Paramount Theater reports receiving 15,000 phone calls from radio listeners seeking the title to the 20th Century Fox newsreel theme - the Mystery Melody jackpot song on ABC’s Stop The Music! (See Stop The Music!.)
JUL 5 1949 Michael Sillerman, former President of the Keystone Transcription Network, joins Fredric Ziv Productions in charge of Special Sales. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syn-dication.)
JUL 5 1949 It Pays To Be Ignorant’s Tuesday night CBS Radio broadcasts begin using transcriptions of the audio from the Monday night television version of the show. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant.)
JUL 5 1949 WGN-TV/Chicago celebrates the use of its new transmitter and antenna with a special variety program hosted by Sid Caesar.
JUL 5 1950 The U.S .Defense Department suddenly cancels the six-week tour of Truth Or Consequences to G.I. bases in Europe because of transportation problems caused by the Korean War. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
JUL 5 1950 Long running weekly serial One Man’s Family is converted into a successful 15 minute weeknight strip on NBC and remains on the air for nine more seasons. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten. )
JUL 5 1952 Bob (Elliott) & Ray (Goulding), already the early morning comedy team on WNBC/New York City, featured on NBC network weekday quarter hours at 11:30 a.m. and a Friday night half hour at 8:30, add a 30 minute Saturday night program on NBC-TV at 7:30.
JUL 6 1933 NBC and CBS both cover Major League Baseball’s first annual All Star Game - CBS donates half of its game income, ($5,000), to the Retired Players’ Fund.
JUL 6 1936 New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman sues commentator Boake Carter, CBS and sponsor Philco for $100,000, charging defamation of character for declaring him “blundering”.
JUL 6 1937 Benny Goodman’s band substitutes for Jack Oakie during the comedian’s 13 week summer vacation from his CBS show for Camel cigarettes. (See The King of Swing.)
JUL 6 1941 Portable radios are banned from Yankee Stadium for creating distractions during ballgames.
JUL 6 1943 Rural comedienne and vocalist Judy Canova leaves her family’s singing act to star in a successful sitcom for one season on CBS and eight more on NBC. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 6 1944 Hartford stations WTIC, WDRC, WNBC and WTHT assume 24 hour emergency aid status following the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus tent fire that killed 168 and injured 700.
JUL 6 1945 Bob Hope, appearing on NBC’s Atlantic Spotlight, becomes the first American performer to broadcast from Paris since the city’s liberation. (See Hope From Home and About A Song.)
JUL 6 1947 NBC donates its 8:30 Sunday night timeslot to the U.S. Army during Fred Allen’s 13 week summer hiatus for Front & Center, a recruiting show starring Dorothy Lamour and a parade of Hollywood guest stars.
JUL 6 1948 New York attorney and Democratic Party activist Frieda Hennock, 43, becomes the first female FCC commissioner.
JUL 6 1948 Radio’s giveaway craze continues as a Long Island woman appearing on the CBS quiz Hit The Jackpot wins a collection of prizes valued at $18,000.
JUL 6 1949 Veteran comedienne Billie Burke and Harry VonZell debut in the radio sitcom adaptation of Chicken Every Sunday on NBC for an eight week run.
JUL 6 1949 Gillette buys radio and television rights to major boxing matches from Madison Square Garden, then assigns the Friday night fights to NBC-TV and ABC Radio.
JUL 6 1949 Ampex Electric Corporation advertises its Model 300 Console Tape Recorder in the trade press - “Because Top Talent Demands High Fidelity” - $1,573.75.
JUL 6 1950 RCA Chairman David Sarnoff urges Congress to expand U.S. international broadcasting facilities to combat Soviet propaganda - estimating the initial cost at $200 Million.
JUL 6 1950 CBS's realistic police drama The Lineup begins its three year run.
JUL 6 1950 NBC introduces its documentary series, The Quick & The Dead, tracing the history of the atomic and hydrogen bombs narrated by Bob Hope.
JUL 6 1950 CBS begins simulcasting Garry Moore’s weeknight variety show on radio and television at 7:00 p.m.
JUL 6 1950 Comic strip based sitcom Blondie concludes its eleven season multi-network run. (See Bloonn…dee!)
JUL 6 1951 KSTP-TV/Minneapolis-St. Paul newscaster Bill Ingram donates a pint of his blood to the Red Cross on camera to demonstrate how simple and painless the procedure is to viewers.
JUL 6 1953 Arthur Godfrey, convalescing from hip surgery, returns to his CBS morning show simulcasts from his farm in Virginia while his cast remains in New York City. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 6 1953 R.J. Reynolds moves the Camel cigarettes show, Walk A Mile, from NBC to CBS.
JUL 6 1953 NBC-TV introduces its “Operations Daytime” weekday campaign with Glamour Girl, a Cinderella-themed audience participation show from 10:30 to 11:00 a.m. hosted by singer Harry Babbit and The Bennets, a Chicago based soap opera from 11:15 to 11:30 a.m.
JUL 7 1923 AT&T buys WCAP/Washington, D.C., installs its “toll broadcasting” concept and connects it by telephone line to WEAF/New York City.
JUL 7 1932 Hellzapoppin’ comedians Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson join Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Hour on NBC. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 7 1933 Ford Motors increases its 26 week buy of NBC’s Lum & Abner to 22 stations at a cost of $850,000.
JUL 7 1934 Denver native Paul Whiteman, his orchestra and NBC President Merlin Aylesworth headline the program celebrating KOA/Denver’s increase to 50,000 watts that stretches from 8:30 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
JUL 7 1935 Parks Johnson and Jerry Belcher bring their Vox Pop from KTRH/Houston to Blue beginning a 13 season, mullti-network run for the interview show. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 7 1936 RCA conducts an experimental broadcast of television from test channel W2XK/New York City featuring Ed Wynn, Graham McNamee and the Pickens Sisters.
JUL 7 1936 WLW/Cincinnati produces a 50th anniversary salute to the Cincinnati Reds broadcast by all five of the city’s stations and the entire Mutual network.
JUL 7 1937 With no exclusivity, CBS, NBC, Blue and Mutual all cover Major League Baseball’s All-Star game.
JUL 7 1937 A New Jersey appeals court dismisses Governor Harold Hoffman's slander suit against CBS commentator Boake Carter.
JUL 7 1939 Pepsodent renews Bob Hope’s NBC show and gives the comedian two first-class roundtrip steamship tickets to Europe plus $25,000 spending money as a bonus. (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten and About A Song.)
JUL 7 1939 Fifteen minute, family sitcom The Parker Family begins its five season multi-network run on CBS.
JUL 7 1939 In the case of RCA Victor vs. Paul Whiteman & WNEW Radio, a New York judge prohibits broadcasters from playing photograph records without permission from the manufacturer and artist.
JUL 7 1940 Quiz master Bob Hawk, 32, lands two Sunday night shows for 13 summer weeks: Take Three on NBC’s WEAF/New York City at 7:00 p.m., (for Jack Benny), and Take It Or Leave It on CBS at 10:00.
JUL 7 1943 Casey, Crime Photographer based on George Harmon Coxe novels begins its nine season run on CBS.
JUL 7 1944 George Hicks of Blue’s London news bureau is awarded a $1,000 bonus for his spot coverage of the D-Day invasion that was broadcast by all the networks. (See D-Day On Radio.)
JUL 7 1945 Ford’s 30 minute Early American Dance Music is cancelled, concluding its two seasons on ABC’s Saturday night’s schedule with a Hooperating season ranking of 153rd place. It’s followed the next night with Ford’s final broadcast of The Greenfield Village Children’s Choir on ABC, tied for 192nd out of 194 ranked programs.
JUL 7 1947 AFM boss James Petrillo tells the U.S. House Labor subcommittee that he’ll prohibit members from making recordings after December 31, 1947, and from working on Network Radio after January 31, 1948. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 7 1947 Kate Smith begins a 15 minute weekday disc jockey show on WOR/New York City. (See Kate's Great Song.)
JUL 7 1947 CBS introduces Goodman Ace’s unique historical series CBS Is There, (aka You Are There), with a recreation of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination as if it were covered by CBS reporters. (See You Are There.)
JUL 7 1947 CBS anthology Escape begins a seven year run on CBS.
JUL 7 1948 Frank & Anne Hummert’s American Melody Hour is cancelled after a seven year multi-network run, the last six on CBS. (See Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
JUL 7 1948 NBC cancels its new National Minstrels Show at the last minute due to complaints from the NAACP which had previously approved the program.
JUL 7 1949 ABC lifts its seven year ban on weekday serials and directs its sales department to attempt switching sponsors of soap operas on competing networks by offering lower rates. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 7 1949 ABC cancels The Abbott & Costello Show, its $350,000 gamble in co-op programming which was too expensive for its affiliates to sell. The comedy team leaves radio after a seven year multi-network run.
JUL 7 1949 FCC denies The New York Times’ appeal on behalf of its WQXR/New York City at 1560 kc. to block the power increase to 50,000 watts of WPTR/Albany, New York, at 1540 kc.
JUL 7 1949 Miles Laboratories’ Alka Seltzer, nine-year sponsor of The Quiz Kids on Network Radio, debuts the video version of the show on NBC-TV. (See The Quiz Kids.)
JUL 7 1950 CBS dispatches newsmen Edward R. Murrow, Bill Downs and Bill Costello to cover the Korean War.
JUL 7 1950 Military leaders tell broadcasters that a return to World War II controls and restrictions are only possible if the Korean War reaches the continental United States.
JUL 7 1950 NBC suddenly cancels the William Powell sitcom My Mother’s Husband two days before its second broadcast to avoid a $5.0 Million infringement suit by rights owners to the play and film, Life With Father.
JUL 7 1951 Comic disc jockey team Bob (Elliott) & Ray (Goulding) from WHDH/Boston begin a Saturday night half-hour on NBC.
JUL 7 1952 The Republican National Convention begins in Chicago with proceedings seen on 107 television stations and heard from over 1500 radio stations.
JUL 7 1952 Bob Hope begins a series of five minute radio and television commentaries in NBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention.
JUL 7 1952 RKO and Republic Pictures inform the Screen Actors Guild that their studios are dropping out of film production for television.
JUL 7 1953 CBS introduces 21st Precinct, dismissed by critics as a carbon copy of NBC’s Dragnet, for a three year run. (See Jack Webb's Dragnet.)
JUL 8 1933 CBS covers the Collegiate Rowing Regatta off Long Beach, California, from a Goodyear blimp with reports shortwaved to KHJ/Los Angeles and forwarded to the network.
JUL 8 1935 KNX/Los Angeles applies to the FCC for a power increase from 50,000 watts to 250,000 watts.
JUL 8 1936 Westinghouse and RCA enter into Federal Court litigation over the basic television patents of Vladimir Zworykin dating back to 1923.
JUL 8 1937 John Scott Trotter, 29, replaces Jimmy Dorsey as Bing Crosby’s music conductor on Kraft Music Hall and subsequent programs - a position he’ll hold with Crosby for the next 17 years. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1940 Actor Jean Hersholt signs a unique two year contract renewal with sponsor Chesebrough granting him $10,000 every 13 weeks should his Dr. Christian on CBS be cancelled for any reason. (See Dr. Christian and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1940 After 15 years on as a team writing their own material, Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll hire a collaborator for Amos & Andy, comedy writer, Bob Ross. (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1940 Lew Valentine opens a six week run of NBC's Dr. I.Q. at the Fox Theater in Billings, Montana, the smallest city ever visited by the roaming quiz show. (See Dr. I.Q.)
JUL 8 1943 Comedians Jack Haley and Joan Davis replace Rudy Vallee on NBC's Sealtest Village Store for two Top Ten seasons. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 8 1943 Game show Blind Date starring Arlene Francis opens on NBC as summer replacement for Frank Morgan and Fanny Brice. The program moves to Blue/ABC in October for a three season run.
JUL 8 1943 Decca Records purchases World Broadcasting System transcription service for radio stations. (See “By Transcription…”)
JUL 8 1946 CBS introduces its new singing discovery on The Jack Kirkwood Show - former Les Brown band vocalist, Doris Day.
JUL 8 1946 WBKB-TV/Chicago becomes the fifth station to join the fledgling ABC Television Network.
JUL 8 1947 The AFM rules that ABC’s Chicago-based weekday audience participation show Welcome Travelers must pay any musician performing on the show $80, plus an additional $40 every time any commercial product not the sponsor’s is mentioned. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 8 1949 Procter & Gamble discontinues its weekday broadcasts of Ma Perkins on two networks by dropping the serial’s 17-year run on NBC - but continues its seven year CBS run for another eleven seasons. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 8 1950 NBC drops its ban on network disc jockey shows and programs the Wayne Howell record show Saturday afternoons from 3:00 to 3:30 ET.
JUL 8 1950 Tales of The Texas Rangers starring Joel McCrea begins its two season run on NBC.
JUL 8 1950 Bill Stern begins a weekly half-hour Saturday night sports show on NBC-TV. (See Bill Stern.)
JUL 8 1950 Comedian Jackie Gleason, 34, replaces Jerry Lester as host of DuMont’s Cavalcade of Stars.
JUL 8 1953 Will Rogers, Jr., debuts in the homespun drama, Rogers of The Gazette, for a 26 week run on CBS.
JUL 8 1953 NBC Radio issues its 1953-54 program prices - all drastically reduced and all evening programs priced at or below $3,000 except Bob Hope, Fibber McGee & Molly and Martin & Lewis.
JUL 9 1934 First lady Eleanor Roosevelt begins her half hour commentaries on Blue for Simmons Mattresses.
JUL 9 1940 CBS, Blue and Mutual all broadcast baseball’s All Star Game from St. Louis.
JUL 9 1943 NBC boasts a line of 25 new sponsors waiting to buy in its sold-out prime time schedule.
JUL 9 1945 CBS announces plans to build two new studios on its Hollywood property, each holding audiences of 450.
JUL 9 1946 Gillette sponsors the Major League All Star Baseball Game on 300 Mutual affiliates.
JUL 9 1946 ABC proposes to sell up 100,000 shares of its stock to its affiliates.
JUL 9 1948 Faced with meeting a television budget of $3.0 Million in 1947-48, CBS fires 50 network headquarters employees.
JUL 9 1948 Hotel New Yorker in New York City makes in-room television available to guests for an additional three dollars per day.
JUL 9 1949 Adventure drama Dangerous Assignment starring Brian Donlevy begins a sporadic four year run on NBC.
JUL 9 1950 Bricks smash the front windows of KSTP AM&TV/Minneapolis-St. Paul and four bullets are fired at the station’s electrical transformers. Police relate both incidents to the three-month strike of technicians against the station.
JUL 9 1951 The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., denies rehearing its decision that Transit Radio’s broadcasts of music and commercials into public transit buses and streetcars is unconstitutional.
JUL 9 1951 Harry Heilmann, former major league baseball star and Detroit Tigers’ announcer for 16 years, dies in Detroit at age 56.
JUL 9 1951 RCA begins 30 minute daily public demonstrations of its compatible color television system side by side with simultaneous monochrome versions of the same programs.
JUL 9 1953 The U.S. Senate blocks The Johnson Bill which would force all radio and television coverage of baseball games to be non-commercial.
JUL 10 1932 The A&P grocery chain becomes first sponsor to advertise prices on Network Radio. (See The Gold In The Golden Age.)
JUL 10 1932 WWSW/Pittsburgh celebrates its increase in power from 100 to 250 watts and pioneers studio recreated play-by-play reports of Pittsburgh Pirates’ away games
JUL 10 1933 As sales inducements NBC offers its 11:00 p.m. hour at half its prime time rate and CBS prices its 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. timeslot for two-thirds the prime rate.
JUL 10 1937 The New York Times publishes an editorial praising Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Charlie McCarthy. (See The 1937-38 Season.)
JUL 10 1938 CBS gets the jump on NBC and Mutual in covering Howard Hughes’ around the world flight by making connections with his plane over the Atlantic enroute to Paris.
JUL 10 1939 Transmitter trouble knocks CBS owned WABC/New York City off the air from 8:00 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. The station enlists competitors to report the problem to concerned listeners who were flooding it with calls.
JUL 10 1939 Blue’s Pacific Network relaxes its ban on transcribed programs in an effort to lure Ovaltine’s Little Orphan Annie and General Mills’ Jack Armstrong from the Don Lee chain. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
JUL 10 1940 WJBK/Detroit becomes the first applicant for a commercial FM station under the rigid new FCC rules.
JUL 10 1940 Frank Readick introduces Meet Mr. Meek on CBS for two season run.
JUL 10 1941 Signifying tighter censorship, German authorities cut the report of NBC’s Berlin correspondent Charles Lanius and refuse facilities to CBS reporter Harry Flannery.
JUL 10 1941 Baseball great Dizzy Dean debuts as a St. Louis Browns play by play announcer on KWK/St. Louis.
JUL 10 1942 U.S. War Department reports that its Army Hour on NBC is Sunday afternoon’s most popular program.
JUL 10 1943 CBS Washington bureau chief Bill Henry is first to announce the Allied invasion of Sicily at 12:18 a.m.
JUL 10 1944 Actor Herbert Marshall debuts as The Man Called X, beginning sporadic six year run on CBS and NBC.
JUL 10 1945 Former MGM star, Lieutenant Robert Taylor introduces The Navy Hour, a Tuesday night summer show at 9:00 p.m. until Amos & Andy take the slot in October.
JUL 10 1945 Game show County Fair begins its five year multi-network run on Blue with host Jack Bailey.
JUL 10 1946 Press Wireless, Inc., files with the FCC for a commercial shortwave program delivery service after a 30 day test to 60 stations proved 88% satisfactory.
JUL 10 1946 A.C. Nielsen Company’s Radio Index audience polling service signs ABC, bringing its client list to 52 and its annual billings to over $1.0 Million. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 10 1949 WJAR-TV/Providence becomes Rhode Island’s first television station.
JUL 10 1950 The television version of Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade with co-stars Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins debuts on NBC-TV.
JUL 10 1950 Comedian Ed Wynn, 63, jumps from CBS-TV to NBC-TV.
JUL 10 1953 CBS sells its Vine Street Playhouse - the Hollywood home of Lux Radio Theater for 17 years - and moves the show to the network’s Columbia Square facility. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)
JUL 10 1953 With its cancellation of The Aldrich Family on NBC-TV, Campbell Soup clears the $20,000 per week necessary and introduces the new weekly anthology, Campbell Soundstage. (See The Aldrich Family.)
JUL 11 1932 General Mills moves its kids' popular serial Skippy from NBC to CBS.
JUL 11 1932 CBS news editor Paul White is appointed the network’s Director of Press Relations.
JUL 11 1934 The Federal Communications Commission is organized to replace the Federal Radio Commission.
JUL 11 1934 Bandleader Guy Lombardo, 32, leaves The Burns & Allen Show for Pleasure Isle on NBC. His “Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven” scores the first of its five solo Top 50 seasons in 28 multi-network years. (See Guy Lombardo.)
JUL 11 1937 The major networks all respond with tribute broadcasts upon the sudden death of composer George Gershwin at age 38.
JUL 11 1937 Rain and high winds fail to interrupt performances by singers James Melton and Jane Pickens on Sealtest’s Sunday Evening Party broadcast by NBC from an outdoor shell at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Expo.
JUL 11 1940 CBS and NBC are freed from AFM threat of banning dance band remotes with the settlement of strikes at affiliates KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul and WRVA/Rich-mond. (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 11 1941 After an absence from radio for almost a year, Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler returns with a Friday night quarter hour on KNX/Los Angeles.
JUL 11 1942 AFM chief James Petrillo orders NBC to discontinue its twelve year series of sustaining concerts by the National Youth Orchestra from the Interlochen Michigan Music Camp because the 160 youngsters, average age 15, aren’t union members. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 11 1942 Off the air since the Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaii Calls - shortwaved from Honolulu - resumes its Saturday night broadcasts on Mutual.
JUL 11 1943 United Press initiates new circuits allowing its teletype service to increase speed from 40 to 60 words per minute - Associated Press follows with its increased speed two days later.s
JUL 11 1944 Radio Cherbourg becomes the first station from liberated France to go on the air with a mix of ABSIE, BBC and OWI programs.
JUL 11 1945 CBS series Casey, Press Photographer, (fka Flashbulb Casey), is re-titled Crime Photographer.
JUL 11 1947 David Sarnoff, 56, is elected Board Chairman of RCA in addition to his position as its President.
JUL 11 1947 General Foods claims television’s first singing commercial with a jingle for Post Toasties broadcast during a baseball game on WCBS-TV/New York.
JUL 11 1947 Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, Advertising Manager of American Tobacco, rejoins Young & Rubicam Advertising as Vice President in charge of radio and television. (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 11 1949 Procter & Gamble moves its two year weekday hit Welcome Travelers from ABC to NBC.
JUL 11 1949 In a budget cut, CBS cancels its sustaining You Are There which cost a reported $110,000 over 39 weeks to produce. (See You Are There.)
JUL 11 1949 Elaine Carrington’s weekday serial Marriage For Two moves from CBS to NBC for a 39 week run. (See Soft Soap & Hard Selll.)
JUL 11 1949 FCC revises its television station allocation plan which opens up 42 channels in the ultra-high frequency band making room from 2,245 new stations in 1,400 cities and towns.
JUL 11 1949 CBS-TV cuts all daytime programming for the summer except baseball games.
JUL 11 1949 NBC-TV presents a three weeks adaptation of radio hit Vic & Sade featuring only Bernadine Flynn from the radio cast. (See Vic & Sade.)
JUL 11 1951 Applications are filed with the FCC for United Paramount Theaters’ $25.0 Million merger with ABC, and UPT’s sale of WBKB-TV/Chicago to CBS for $6.0 Million.
JUL 11 1952 FCC grants a construction permit to KXLY-TV/Spokane, 47% owned by Bing Crosby.
JUL 11 1953 KROW/Oakland-San Francisco becomes the first major market station to operate its transmitter by remote control.
JUL 12 1923 WEAF/New York City broadcasts the Jess Willard vs. Luis Firpo Heavy-weight Championship bout.
JUL 12 1930 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll miss their first Amos & Andy broadcast when NBC is unable to locate a studio for their broadcast as they travel by train to Hollywood to film Check & Double Check.
JUL 12 1937 CBS challenges Blue in a summertime battle of Shakespearian drama-tizations, presenting Burgess Meredith as Hamlet opposite Blue’s 45 minute version of The Tempest with John Barrymore.
JUL 12 1937 Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine turn down a $10,000 offer for a 15 minute appearance on the CBS Shakespeare series.
JUL 12 1938 AFRA successfully negotiates its Basic Network Sustaining Agreement and obtains a 125% pay increase for network performers.
JUL 12 1939 NAB appoints a committee to negotiate with ASCAP on behalf of the broadcasting industry.
JUL 12 1939 Louisiana State Senator James Noe becomes the first station owner to have his station bear his complete last name when the FCC approves the call sign change of WBNO/New Orleans to WNOE.
JUL 12 1940 Niles Trammell, 46, an NBC executive for twelve years, is elevated to President of the network.
JUL 12 1941 CBS and NBC cancel all broadcasts from Rome after Italy’s fascist government begins strict censorship of news reports.
JUL 12 1943 CBS boasts in the week’s trade press that its Pacific Coast Network thriller, The Whistler, is heard by 551,000 families every week. (See The Whistler.)
JUL 12 1944 FCC permits KTHT/Houston to begin operating on 1230 kilocycles after its managing partner, County Judge Roy Hofheinz, agrees to retire from politics.
JUL 12 1946 Idaho Senator Glen Taylor urges the FCC to implement its “layaway” plan and withhold granting some 100 FM licenses for later assignment.
JUL 12 1946 The Adventures of Sam Spade starring Howard Duff, 33, debuts on ABC and moves to CBS two months later where it will remain for three seasons before switching to NBC. (See The Curse of Dashiell Hammett.)
JUL 12 1946 Coca-Cola, hit by an acute sugar shortage limiting production, drops sponsorship of Mutual’s Spotlight Bands for two months, saving a reported $250,000 in production and travel costs. (See Spotlight Bands.)
JUL 12 1948 Over a thousand broadcasters converge on Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention which receives gavel to gavel coverage on the radio and television networks.
JUL 12 1948 Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan tells the Hollywood Advertising Club that he believes the future of television lies in film recorded production.
JUL 12 1949 Three radio correspondents, Elsie Dick of Mutual, H.R. Knickerbocker of WOR/New York City and George Moorad of KGW/Portland, Oregon, are among 13 news correspondents killed in the crash of their plane returning from Indonesia.
JUL 12 1951 Kansas City stations KCKN, KCMO, KMBC, WDAF and WHB plus WDAF-TV launch 72 hours of emergency news and messages caused by the flooding Kansas River created by 16 inches of rain and resulting in $935 Million in damages.
JUL 12 1951 Ted Mack converts The Original Amateur Hour’s salute to Topeka, Kansas, into a fund appeal for the flooded city, beginning with a $1,000 donation from sponsor Lorillard’s Old Gold cigarettes.
JUL 13 1931 An independent study shows Network Radio gross income rose 430% between January 1, 1928 and April 1, 1931. (See The Gold In The Golden Age and Radio Nets’ Grosses.)
JUL 13 1934 Quaker Oats cancels Babe Ruth’s Friday night quarter hour on NBC after 13 weeks because the show is too successful in drawing over a million box tops in response to a premium offer. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
JUL 13 1938 FCC authorizes the Zenith Corporation to conduct experimental television field tests in Chicago.
JUL 13 1939 Former New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker debuts as host of Blue’s It’s Up To You.
JUL 13 1943 Gillette pays $25,000 for broadcast rights to the Major League All-Star baseball game with the money directed to buy sports equipment for Armed Forces personnel.
JUL 13 1943 Mutual loses the Major League All-Star game to CBS when the Don Lee West Coast network refuses to clear time for the Gillette sponsored game on its stations.
JUL 13 1944 KABC/San Antonio receives FCC approval to move from 1450 to 680 kilocycles and increase power 200 fold from 250 to 50,000 watts.
JUL 13 1944 DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City presents The Television Follies of 1944, a two hour, original musical featuring a large cast in ten scenes. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
JUL 13 1949 Kate Smith misses her fourth broadcast in 19 years due to the death of her grandmother.
JUL 13 1950 Inner Sanctum Mysteries, cancelled by CBS in April, begins a year’s run on ABC. (See Inner Sanctum and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 13 1951 Massive flooding of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers killing 17 and displacing over half a million people, forces Midwest radio and television stations into emergency news and communication status for over a week. .
JUL 13 1951 The NCAA turns down a television proposal from the University of Pennsylvania and puts in place a mandatory set of rules for football telecasts.
JUL 13 1952 ABC affiliate WSAZ-TV/Huntington, West Va., cuts Drew Peason’s news commentary off the air for what its management claims are, “…Pearson’s snide attack upon General Eisenhower on religious grounds.”
JUL 13 1952 WGN-TV begins Chicago’s first series of televised dance band remotes with weekly half hour pickups from the Melody Mill ballroom which it feeds to the DuMont Network. (See The Aragon's Last Stand.)
JUL 14 1923 The American Tobacco Company presents its first Lucky Strike Show of music on WEAF/New York City. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears and The Sponsor Sweepstakes.)
JUL 14 1930 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll begin their Amos & Andy broadcasts from Hollywood while filming Check & Double Check. Added network line costs amount to $15,000 per week. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1935 Norman Baker, operator of powerful XENT/Neuvo Larado, Mexico, and a cancer clinic in Muscatine, Iowa, is arrested on his return to Iowa for practicing medicine without a license.
JUL 14 1938 Howard Hughes completes his three day around the world flight in New York City, telling Network Radio audiences, “The crowd here frightens me more than anything else during the past three days.”
JUL 14 1941 WLW/Cincinnati applies to the FCC for an increase in power from 50,000 to 650,000 watts.
JUL 14 1941 The NAB recommends its members refuse payment for any programs or announcements in behalf of the national defense.
JUL 14 1942 Gene Autry enlists in the Army on his CBS show and is sued by his manager for $50,000, alleging Autry’s action constitutes evasion of contract. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1944 Former NBC News Director, Major A.A. (Abe) Schechter is assigned to General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters to become liaison between Army forces in the Pacific and the radio networks.
JUL 14 1948 Frank & Anne Hummert’s mystery melodrama Mr. Chameleon begins its five season run on CBS. (See Karl Swenson.)
JUL 14 1950 United Press European correspondent Walter Cronkite, 33, joins CBS News.
JUL 14 1950 Korean War coverage is reflected in the July 5-11 Hooperatings for early evening Network Radio newscasts - up 63% over the same period in 1949. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 14 1950 Transit Radio officials boast that its system of music and commercials via FM radio are in 4,200 buses and streetcars in 19 cities, representing 11% of the country’s public transit carriers.
JUL 14 1950 The success of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on CBS causes a glut of 15 talent shows on the networks - eight on radio and seven on television. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1951 For the first time in its 16 seasons, Your Hit Parade leaves the air for a summer hiatus. (See Saturday’s All time Top Ten.)
JUL 14 1953 Wrigley Gum moves Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS-TV from Sunday night to Tuesday night opposite Milton Berle on NBC-TV and Bishop Sheen on DuMont.
JUL 15 1926 RCA closes WJY/Newark to concentrate its New York City broadcast operations on WEAF and WJZ.
JUL 15 1932 The radio networks flatly refuse to pay the $100,000 demanded by the U.S. Olympic Committee for broadcast rights to the 1932 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles.
JUL 15 1932 After two years of being known as Olive Palmer on NBC’s Palmolive Hour, soprano Virginia Rea again appears under her own name on Paul Whiteman’s Pontiac Hour. (See Gus Haenschen and Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
JUL 15 1935 After six seasons on Blue, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll move their Amos & Andy to NBC. (See Amos & Andy: Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1935 NBC enters the transcription library business with its Thesaurus designed to compete with the established World and Standard subscription services. (See “By Transcription…”)
JUL 15 1935 To become self-supporting, the FCC considers taxing stations based on their wavelength and power.
JUL 15 1935 FCC opens hearings on AT&T’s application to test television wire connec-tions between New York City and Philadelphia. The NAB and a group of film producers both oppose the application.
JUL 15 1937 WLW/Cincinnati provides direct reports for Mutual of the Sullivan, Indiana, mine explosion that killed 20.
JUL 15 1937 Jack Benny, aboard the S.S. Normandie, 300 miles at sea, refuses to appear on an NBC program from the ship, explaining, “When I’m on vacation, I’m on vacation.” (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1939 FCC cancels all hearings for six weeks to catch-up on, "…a 'mountain' of pending cases."
JUL 15 1939 Controversial Detroit priest and commentator Charles Coughlin refuses to respond to Mutual commentator Elliot Roosevelt’s charges that he is an anti-Semite and silver speculator. (See Father Coughlin.)
JUL 15 1941 The ANPA demands a stay in the FCC hearings on the issue of newspaper ownership of radio stations.
JUL 15 1942 CBS introduces a 15% discount for advertisers buying its entire network for programs. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure!)
JUL 15 1942 The U.S War Department takes control of Alaskan stations KFQD/Anchor-age, KFAR/Fairbanks, KINY/Juneau and KGBU/Ketchikan for the rest of World War II.
JUL 15 1942 AFM chief James Petrillo pulls the Teddy Powell and Richard Himber bands from NBC remotes in protest to a labor dispute at KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 15 1943 Threatened by AFM boss Petrillo to pull his members from the network, Mutual drops music program service to WSAY/Rochester, New York - a station deemed “unfair” by the union.
JUL 15 1943 AFM musicians at WNEW/New York City go on a two-day strike until the station agrees not to play British-made records, banned by the union in August, 1942.
JUL 15 1943 CBS announces 49 advertisers have taken advantage of its 15% discount by buying the full network since the plan went into effect a year earlier. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure!)
JUL 15 1943 WCPO/Cincinnati reports that its May-June afternoon Hooperating rose 52.7% when it replaced Cincinnati Reds baseball broadcasts with disc jockey shows and local newscasts. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 15 1944 Jack Benny, accompanied by Carole Landis, Martha Tilton, Larry Adler, June Brunner and Captain Lanny Ross, tours New Guinea entertaining Allied troops. (See Sunday At Seven and Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 15 1945 After seven months on ABC, One Man’s Family returns to NBC's Sunday afternoon schedule at 3:30 p.m. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1946 The Veterans Administration distributes free transcriptions of its new public service show, Here’s To Veterans, featuring 13 of Network Radio’s top attractions, each headlining one of the programs.
JUL 15 1946 AFM President James Petrillo’s lawyers file for a dismissal in U.S. District Court to the government’s charge that his calling a strike against WAAF/Chicago is a violation of The Lea Act, contending the law to be unconstitutional. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 15 1947 A Marshall Islands native wins a $1,000 reward after finding a small plastic globe dropped into the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles 20 months earlier by NBC’s People Are Funny. (See People Are Funny, Tuesday's All Time Top Ten and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 15 1948 The Houston Post, owner of KPRC/Houston, files suit in Federal court to balance the FCC’s Port Huron Decision with Texas state law concerning the editing of politicians’ statements and libel laws.
JUL 15 1949 The NAB releases its promotional film, How To Make Customers Out of People, with the message that radio can deliver an audience for one-third the cost of printed media.
JUL 15 1949 Mutual revamps its rate card to allow discounts for advertisers buying fewer “basic” network stations. (See MBS = Mutual’s Bargain Sales.)
JUL 15 1949 Texaco, sponsor of Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater on radio and television, drops the radio show when Berle demands a raise to $10,000 a week.
JUL 15 1949 FCC drops its requirement that stations must locally advertise their applications to the Commission for 90 days.
JUL 15 1949 ABC offers its new Kate Smith Calls in quarter hour segments to four non-competing sponsors.
JUL 15 1949 The Omaha World-Herald sells its KOWH & KOAD-FM to Omaha brewer Robert Storz and his son, Todd. (See Top 40 Radio's Roots.)
JUL 15 1949 Jefferson-Standard’s WBTV(TV)/Charlotte, North Carolina, becomes the Carolinas’ first television station.
JUL 16 1922 Comedians Eugene & Willie Howard star in the inaugural broadcast of KFI/Los Angeles owned by Packard, Hudson and Essex automobile dealer Earle C. Anthony.
JUL 16 1929 California Cadillac dealer Don Lee affiliates his KHJ/Los Angeles and KFRC/San Francisco with CBS, making the network a coast-to-coast chain.
JUL 16 1934 Under pressure from its subscribers, the Press Radio Bureau moves its nightly news release to stations back three hours from 9:30 to 6:30 p.m. (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
JUL 16 1934 Kate Smith begins her new three year exclusive contract at CBS with a 15 minute sustaining show on Monday, Thursday and Friday nights at 8:00 p.m. (See Kate’s Great Song and Friday's All Time Top Ten.
JUL 16 1936 Popular bandleader Orville Knapp, 28, dies when the plane he was piloting crashes in the Massachusetts coastal resort community of Beverly.
JUL 16 1940 BMI makes its first shipment of 50 transcribed songs to member stations with 450 more scheduled to be shipped before the end of the year.
JUL 16 1941 FCC grants two FM construction permits to MGM for Los Angeles and Ventura counties and another FM permit to CBS for Los Angeles.
JUL 16 1943 NBC reports that the six city tour of Information Please resulted in War Bond sales totaling $275.2 Million. (See Information Please.)
JUL 16 1947 CBS announces that Edward R. Murrow is relinquishing his network executive position and returning to the air with a weeknight newscast and commentary in late September.
JUL 16 1947 FCC grants the first TV and FM licenses since the World War II freeze.
JUL 16 1948 Reversing his previous stand against television, Ted Collins agrees to televise the home games of his Boston Yanks pro football team on WNAC-TV.
JUL 16 1951 After 17 years of paying $5,000 for appearances by major film stars on Lux Radio Theater, sponsor Lever Brothers cuts the top pay to $4,000. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)
JUL 16 1951 CBS splits into six separate divisions: Radio network & stations, Television network & stations, Laboratories, (color television development), CBS-Columbia, (set manufacturing), Columbia Records and Hytron Electronics.
JUL 16 1952 President Truman signs The McFarland Bill - the first major revision to the Communications Act in 18 years - which permits the FCC to issue cease & desist orders, repeals the FCC power to revoke licenses of parties found guilty of Federal anti-trust laws and creates shorter deadlines for FCC actions on filings.
JUL 17 1932 CBS experiments with lapel microphones on actors roaming in New York City’s Taft Hotel while performing in The Transient.
JUL 17 1934 The newly formed Federal Communication Commission creates a three-person Broadcasting Division to exercise regulatory powers.
JUL 17 1934 Union musicians return to San Francisco stations after walking out for three days in sympathy for the West Coast Longshoremen’s strike.
JUL 17 1935 FCC Commissioner Thad Brown recommends the license revocation of KFBI/Abiline, Kansas, formerly owned by “goat gland doctor” John R. Brinkley.
JUL 17 1936 FCC approves the CBS purchase of KNX/Los Angeles for $1.3 Million.
JUL 17 1939 Bandleader Horace Heidt, 38, is rushed to Doctors’ Hospital in New York City for an emergency appendectomy immediately after his show on NBC.
JUL 17 1940 Preparing with CBS to shed ASCAP music at the end of the year, NBC informs bandleaders that all sustaining programs on the network must contain at least one non-ASCAP song.
JUL 17 1941 CBS conducts a 20 minute test broadcast of Peter Goldmark’s mechanical color television system transmitted from the Chrysler Tower to the CBS board room three blocks away.
JUL 17 1943 NBC broadcasts a half-hour performance by Bob Hope and Frances Langford for Allied troops in Great Britain shortwaved to America by BBC at 2:30 p.m. (See Hope From Home and Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 17 1943 Captain Glenn Miller and his Army Air Force Band introduce the weekly program I Sustain The Wings on CBS. (See In The Miller Mood.)
JUL 17 1944 New York Post owner Dorothy Thackrey buys WLIB/New York City for a reported $225,000.
JUL 17 1945 ABC newsman Norman Paige becomes the first reporter to describe a battle at sea involving his own ship - from 50 miles off Tokyo at 11:30 a.m.
JUL 17 1945 NBC newsman Morgan Beatty becomes the U.S. network pool reporter for the Potsdam, Germany, Peace Conference.
JUL 17 1946 FCC approves the sale of WXYZ/Detroit and WOOD/Grand Rapids from King-Trendle Broadcasting to ABC for $3.7 Million. (See The Lone Ranger.)
JUL 17 1948 A Huntington, West Virginia, listener turns down a $7,300 prize he won on Mutual’s Three For The Money because he, “…wanted to live in peace and obscurity.” The show insisted and he relented.
JUL 17 1952 ABC’s The Lone Ranger begins to incorporate two-minute transcribed interviews with heroic U.S. war veterans during breaks in the drama’s action. (See The Lone Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 17 1953 A controversial bill authored by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy requiring radio and television stations to permanently record all programming is set aside by the Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee.
JUL 17 1953 Mutual presents its plan to affiliates to cut option time from nine to five hours daily and reimbursing the stations with commercial time within network programs instead of cash.
JUL 17 1953 FCC reports that it has authorized 522 television stations of which 202 are on the air.
JUL 18 1932 FCC hearings begin on the Westinghouse application to move KYW and its 1020 kc frequency from Chicago to Philadelphia.
JUL 18 1932 His contract expired three days earlier, Bing Crosby quits CBS by telegram within an hour of his show after agreeing to a 15% pay cut but then finding that his new contract boosted the network’s commission as his booking agent.
JUL 18 1933 CBS breaks its ban on advertising agency “by-lines” with an announcement crediting McCann-Erickson as the producer of a program.
JUL 18 1934 Ben Bernie makes his feature film debut in Paramount’s Shoot The Works co-starring comedian Jack Oakie.
JUN 18 1938 AFRA bans its members and members of SAG from appearing without pay on Network Radio shows.
JUL 18 1942 NBC carries a performance by the non-union University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra over the protests of the AFM. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 18 1943 Walter Winchell’s Sunday night Jergens Journal is broadcast for the first time by the entire Blue Network of 141 affiliates, eliminating the ten NBC stations pre-viously carrying the program. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 18 1944 FCC approves the $800,000 sale of KECA/Los Angeles from Earle C. Anthony to the Blue Network.
JUL 18 1944 FCC refuses Democrat party appeals that it pass judgment on the networks’ ban of the campaign song Don’t Change Horses In The Middle of The Stream.
JUL 18 1944 FCC approves the sale of WQXR/New York City to The New York Times for $1.0 Million and WINX/Washington, D.C., to The Washington Post for $500,000.
JUL 18 1945 Maxwell-Wirges Music, Inc., publishes Chiquita Banana, the first pop song based on a commercial jingle - this one sung by Patti Clayton for the previous eight months in United Fruit spots.
JUL 18 1946 FCC approves the sale of WINS/New York from Hearst Radio to Crosley Corp. for $1.7 Million when plans are dropped to make part of the purchase price payable in broadcast time.
JUL 18 1946 Ford signs with CBS and Madison Square Garden to televise a minimum of 20 sports events - excluding boxing - over the next fall and winter months.
JUL 18 1947 After losing $180,000, daytime AM station WQQW/Washington, D.C., becomes the first station constructed after World War II to go up for sale.
JUL 18 1948 A listener to ABC’s Stop The Music! wins $17,000 in prizes by identifying the show’s Mystery Melody, the Fox Movietone News theme, as The World Events March. (See Stop The Music!)
JUL 18 1949 FCC denies the petition of WHOM/Jersey City, to move its main studio to New York City citing that New York already has 14 stations and Jersey City has only one, although WHOM is primarily a foreign language station.
JUL 18 1949 Veteran newsman Earl Godwin moves from ABC’s WMAL/Washington, D.C. to its cross-town NBC rival, WRC, where he will also comment on the weeknight NBC News of The World. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 18 1951 University of Pennsylvania ends its revolt and agrees to the NCAA’s plan of limited football telecasts.
JUL 18 1952 Unification of NBC’s radio and television divisions leads to speculation that the network has plans to eventually sell time on the two programming services for one combined rate.
JUL 18 1952 An overnight transmitter engineer at NBC’s WRC/Washington claims to see six flying discs at 2:00 a.m.
JUL 18 1953 On summer hiatus from NBC-TV’s Texaco Star Theater, Milton Berle opens a two week engagement at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas for a reported $50,000.
JUL 19 1931 NBC affiliate KFI/Los Angeles celebrates its elevation to 50,000 watts with a special program featuring Amos & Andy, Paul Whiteman, James Melton and Billy Jones & Ernie Hare.
JUL 19 1932 Veteran New York Sun reporter Edwin C. Hill begins his 20 year multi-network career at CBS.
JUL 19 1940 The Don Lee Network of 32 West Coast stations cuts off Mutual’s feed of Adolph Hitler’s speech to the German Reichstag while CBS and NBC stations carry the address in full.
JUL 19 1941 FCC Chairman James Fly suggests that the length of broadcast licenses may be extended from one to two years.
JUL 19 1943 The networks report the first Allied bombing of Rome eight minutes aftar it began.
JUL 19 1943 Mutual correspondent Raymond Clapper reports the bombing of Rome as he saw it from the nose of a B-17 bomber.
JUL 19 1943 Mutual cuts its option time with affiliates to five and a half hours daily - Blue, CBS and NBC continue to require nine hours a day. (See Mutual Led The Way and MBS: Mutual's Bargain Sales.)
JUL 19 1943 WOR/New York City begins familiarizing its staff with television using the facilities of DuMont’s W2XWV with an hour-long show featuring the Vincent Lopez band and children’s personality Uncle Don.
JUL 19 1944 The networks give full coverage to the three day Democratic National Convention in Chicago
JUL 19 1945 Original Amateur Hour host Major Edward Bowes, 71, retires from Network Radio. He dies eleven months later. (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine. and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 19 1946 FCC upholds atheist groups’ rights to broadcast their views but refuses to censure San Francisco area stations KPO, KFRC and KQW as requested in the athiests’ complaint.
JUL 19 1947 Appearing on CBS Views The Press hosted by Don Hollenbeck, a New York Sun executive asserts that Hollenbeck is a Communist sympathizer.
JUL 19 1948 Eve Arden, 40, debuts as Our Miss Brooks on CBS, beginning successful nine year run. (See Our Miss Arden.)
JUL 19 1948 Lever Brothers agrees to Bob Hope’s demands for more money to cover his travel expenses, requiring a shift in sponsors from Lever’s Pepsodent to another of its products with a greater ad budget. (See Hope From Home and About A Song.)
JUL 19 1950 Garry Moore, 35, debuts a 60-minute variety show on CBS-TV as the eight week summer replacement for Arthur Godfrey & His Friends which becomes the come-dian’s breakthrough television series.
JUL 19 1951 C.E. Hooper announces plans for “duplex” Hooperatings to measure both radio and television program popularity with the company’s random telephone surveys. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 19 1952 WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul stages its fifth annual Aquatennial Radio Show from the Minneapolis Auditorium starring Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Polly Bergen, Julius LaRosa, Frank Parker and Marion Marlow.
JUL 19 1952 WOR-TV/New York City premieres its All Night Show - an overnight interview and variety show running from midnight to 5:00 a.m. six nights a week hosted by veteran disc jockey Fred Robbins.
JUL 20 1931 NBC issues orders to all department heads to cut costs in every area except salaries.
JUL 20 1931 All New York City newspapers and news syndicates begin deleting any commercial credits to program sponsors in their radio log listings.
JUL 20 1935 Producer Phillips H. Lord introduces his new crime fighting series, G-Men, for a ten-week run on NBC. The program is then reformatted to become the legendary Gangbusters which has a 22 year multi-network run.
JUL 20 1936 Procter & Gamble augments its weekday broadcasts of Ma Perkins on NBC with transcriptions of the program broadcast on 50 additional stations.
JUL 20 1936 KFWB/Los Angeles announces it will only broadcast imported foreign-made records to avoid “legal entanglements” with U.S. music societies.
JUL 20 1937 Pioneering radio developer Guglielmo Marconi, 63, dies of a heart attack in Rome. (See Alchemists of The Air on this site.)
JUL 20 1937 NBC opens its new Washington, D.C., studios with three days of separate parties for the press, advertisers and government officials.
JUL 20 1942 Mutual expands its co-op sales department soliciting business for limited groups of affiliated stations.
JUL 20 1948 DuMont Television moves its 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. Tuesday program, The Court of Current Issues, to Monday nights to avoid the competition of Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater on NBC-TV.
JUL 20 1949 Married team Ozzie Nelson & Harriet Hilliard sign a ten year, $1.0 Million contract to move their Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet sitcom from CBS to ABC. (See Ozzie & Harriet and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 20 1949 Equitable Life Assurance turns down NBC’s bid to move Friday’s top-rated This Is Your FBI from ABC. (See FBI vs. FBI and Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 20 1950 NBC asks its affiliates for an additional five hours of option time per week, 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
JUL 20 1950 FCC clears CBS of all complaints brought against it and renews its licenses for WCBS & WCBS-TV/New York City, WBBM/Chicago, KCBS/San Jose-San Francisco, WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul, WEEI-FM/Boston and WTOP-FM/Washington, D.C.
JUL 20 1950 Bandleader Sammy Kaye sues CBS and Liggett & Myers Tobacco for $400,000 charging that they stole his original idea for the radio and television program, The ABC’s of Music.
JUL 20 1950 After 25 years of ownership, Warner Brothers sells KFWB/Los Angeles for $350,000 to its longtime manager Harry Maizlish and Schine Enterprises. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
JUL 20 1952 Fred Allen is reported hospitalized in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with chronic high blood pressure and a mild infection causing doctors to order a six-month rest, cancelling his plans to host NBC-TV’s Two For The Money.
JUL 21 1931 CBS opens experimental television station W2XAB in New York City with a 45 minute program starring Kate Smith and George Gershwin.
JUL 21 1932 CBS begins synchronized sight and sound broadcasting for two hours every weeknight from its year old experimental television station, W2XAB/New York City.
JUL 21 1933 Al Jolson sucker punches Walter Winchell to the ringside floor at the Hollywood Legion Stadium for an item Winchell had reported critical of Jolson’s wife, Ruby Keeler. (See Walter Winchell and Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1938 Major Edward Bowes appears on his Original Amateur Hour shortly after the amputation of the ring finger on his left hand, the result of a boating accident. (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1940 Germany bans the origination of all Mutual broadcasts in retaliation for the Don Lee Network’s cutting off Hitler’s speech two days earlier.
JUL 21 1941 FCC postpones its network anti-monopoly orders for six weeks - from August 2 until September 16.
JUL 21 1941 The four major networks sign a two year labor agreement with the American Federation of Musicians. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 21 1941 President Roosevelt’s noon address to Congress - extending the draft beyond one year - is transcribed at his request for broadcast by the networks at a later hour when a greater audience is available.
JUL 21 1941 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon, 21, is appointed Sports Director of WJR/Detroit.
JUL 21 1944 Blondie is broadcast by CBS on Monday and Blue on Friday as the sitcom moves between the two networks for the summer. (See Bloonn…dee!)
JUL 21 1945 Your Hit Parade star Lawrence Tibbett leaves the show and embarks on an overseas USO tour. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1945 Mutual cancels the appearance of hypnotist Ralph Slater at the last minute for fears that mentally disturbed listeners might fall into trances, real or imagined.
JUL 21 1947 AT&T withdraws its proposed coaxial cable rates after a wave of television industry protests and allows its New York City to Washington, D.C. transmissions to temporarily remain free of charge.
JUL 21 1947 The new Zoomar lens gets its first test in WCBS-TV’s telecast of the Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Cincinnati Reds game at Ebbets Field and successfully “zooms” between short and long distances smoothly.
JUL 21 1948 The major radio and television networks report coverage of the major political conventions came at a total cost of $1.8 Million.
JUL 21 1949 Celebrating its 18th anniversary in television, CBS-TV broadcasts A Giant In A Hurry, a 30 minute retrospective starring comedian Abe Burrows.
JUL 21 1950 Character actor Willard Waterman is signed to replace Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve on the NBC sitcom. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s) and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 21 1950 ABC, CBS and NBC refuse to meet with a committee from the Association of National Advertisers which lobbies for a 15% reduction in radio and television rates.
JUL 21 1952 Stunned by their million dollar losses from coverage of the protracted Republican convention two weeks earlier, the networks begin covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
JUL 21 1952 Bob Hope resumes his five minute radio and television commentaries in NBC’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention. (See About A Song.)
JUL 21 1952 Denver becomes the first city without television to obtain a station since the FCC freeze ended as KFEL-TV goes on the air.
JUL 21 1953 Jack Pearl as Baron Munchausen and sidekick Cliff (Sharlie) Hall return to NBC with a comedy quiz, The Baron & The Bee, for a 26 week run.
JUL 22 1932 Pioneer radio inventor Dr. Reginald Fessenden, 65, dies at his home in Bermuda. (See Alchemists of The Air.)
JUL 22 1933 The WLS Barn Dance becomes The National Barn Dance when sponsor Alka-Seltzer networks one hour of the Saturday night show from Chicago to WJR/Detroit and KDKA/Pittsburgh. (See Saturday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 22 1934 Transradio Press reports the death of Public Enemy John Dillinger, five minutes after he is killed by law officers in Chicago, to its subscribers not limited by Press Radio Bureau restrictions. (See The Press-Radio Bureau.)
JUL 22 1936 The month-long strike by 4,000 workers at RCA’s Camden, New Jersey, manufacturing plant ends.
JUL 22 1937 NBC formally dedicates its new Washington, D.C., studios for network-owned stations WRC and WMAL.
JUL 22 1938 Chicago originated Curtain Time, considered a copy of First Nighter, begins the first of three network runs totaling six seasons over 13 years.
JUL 22 1940 Confusion over FCC requirements and procedural rules prompts RCA to halt all television experiments and programming during August and September.
JUL 22 1941 Adam Hats becomes the first sponsor of televised sports with coverage of the Red Burman vs. Melio Bettina heavyweight fight from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on WNBT(TV)/New York City.
JUL 22 1944 Jack Benny arrives in New Guinea for a series of USO shows. (See Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 22 1946 Field Enterprises, (group owner Marshall Field), buys KJR/Seattle for $700,000, to accompany its recent purchase of KOIN/Portland, Oregon.
JUL 22 1946 Early broadcasting developer Lee DeForest begins a six month assignment with American Television Laboratories, Inc., to develop a picture tube magnifying and projection system.
JUL 22 1947 WADC/Akron challenges the FCC’s power over programming in a U.S. Court of Appeals after the Commission turned down the station’s application for 50,000 watts commenting that it had to be, “…more than a spigot for network (CBS) programs.”
JUL 22 1947 Jack Benny heads a group including Eddie Cantor, Perry Como, Rudy Vallee and Art Linkletter to form a foundation providing USO type entertainment units to tour the nearly 200 veterans hospitals.
JUL 22 1947 Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles cancels its contract with KTLA(TV) to televise boxing matches due to slumping attendance - but its professional wrestling contract remains intact.
JUL 22 1948 FM inventor Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong sues RCA and NBC for infringement on five of his basic FM patents.
JUL 22 1949 Singer/composer Jack Owens, 36, known to listeners of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club since the mid-1930’s as The Cruising Crooner, leaves the Chicago-based ABC show to pursue West Coast television offers.
JUL 22 1949 Carnation Milk threatens to move its Contented Hour from NBC after 17 seasons if the network can’t find a less competitive timeslot for it.
JUL 22 1949 Former Kansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Alf Landon sells KTLN/Denver for $45,000 to Arkansas broadcaster Leonard Cole.
JUL 22 1949 Jack Benny tells sponsor American Tobacco and CBS that he’ll do live television but wants nothing to do with kinescope recordings because of their poor quality.
(See Lucky Gets Benny.)
JUL 22 1950 CBS broadcasts the 60-minute Aquatennial Radio Show from WCCO/ Minneapolis-St. Paul, starring Eddie Cantor, Garry Moore and Janette Davis hosted by Cedric Adams at the 10,000 seat Minneapolis Auditorium.
JUL 22 1951 WLOU/Louisville suspends operations for 60 days to prepare its new format appealing to the Negro audience.
JUL 22 1952 AFRA calls AFM chief James Petrillo “an obstructionist” and “destructive” for prohibiting AFM members from joining AFRA. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 23 1927 NBC's Red, Blue and Pacific networks combine to produce a night of the first coast-to-coast variety programs sponsored by Buick.
JUL 23 1934 NBC refuses to rehire 13 union musicians who walked off their jobs and joined the San Francisco general strike without the required two weeks’ notice.
JUL 23 1937 FCC Chairman Anning Prall, 67, dies of heart failure at his summer home in Maine.
JUL 23 1941 FCC begins its formal inquiry about the “propriety” of newspapers owning broadcast properties.
JUL 23 1941 The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee recommends an excise tax of 5% to 15% on station time sales over $100,000 per year.
JUL 23 1941 NBC News opens its shortwave listening post at Bellmore, Long Island, with a staff of 24 engineers and linguists.
JUL 23 1941 Aldrich Family star Ezra Stone, 23, is drafted into the Army but is granted time off to continue his radio work until August, 1942. (See The Aldrich Family and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 23 1943 A year long FTC investigation finds no violation of law in the four major networks’ rates or discount plans.
JUL 23 1943 CBS rescinds its ban against patent medicine manufacturers sponsoring its newscasts.
JUL 23 1945 Manufacturers Motorola and Stromberg-Carlson reject the FCC suggestion that new FM receivers be built with both the old and new FM frequency bands.
JUL 23 1947 Kate Smith, whose Kate Smith Speaks had been a daily noontime feature on CBS for eight seasons, moves the series to Mutual, charging CBS with “...censorship restrictions.”
JUL 23 1947 Mutual reports 225 affiliates have locally sold its new co-op program, Kate Smith Speaks.
JUL 23 1947 Weekday serial Wendy Warren & The News replaces Kate Smith Speaks on CBS and begins its eleven year run on the network. (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
JUL 23 1948 Radio and television networks prepare to cover presidential candidate Henry Wallace’s Third Party two-day convention in Philadelphia.
JUL 23 1948 Lucille Ball introduces My Favorite Husband on CBS for three seasons. The sitcom is considered the radio forerunner to I Love Lucy. (See The 1948-49 Season.)
JUL 23 1949 An audience of 10,000 attend the Aquatennial Radio Show broadcast on CBS from the Minneapolis Auditorium starring Bob Hope, Arthur Godfrey, Joan Edwards, Buddy Lester, Monica Lewis, and hosted by Cedric Adams.
JUL 23 1950 Gene Autry, a ten year star of CBS Radio, debuts his new filmed adventure series on CBS-TV, the first television show to feature sound tracks created specifically for it by AFM musicians.
JUL 23 1952 CBS announces a 25% rate cut during its nighttime hours and a 20% increase in its daytime rates.
JUL 23 1952 Actor Charlie Chaplin sues NBC commentator Hy Gardner for $3.0 Million, claiming that Gardner’s broadcasts implied that he was a Communist.
JUL 23 1952 WTVN-TV/Columbus, Ohio, captures five minutes of “flying saucers” hovering over the city.
JUL 24 1930 Rudy Vallee’s Connecticut Yankees band begins a six-week string of one-night appearances that guarantees the NBC star a record breaking fee between $18,000 and $20,000 per week. His Thursday night Fleischmann Yeast Hour will originate from whatever city his band is performing. (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 24 1933 President Roosevelt outlines the goals of the National Recovery Administration, (NRA), over a combined hookup of CBS, both NBC networks and most independent stations.
JUL 24 1933 Associated Press instructs photographers not to picture personalities at microphones with network or station name plates.
JUL 24 1935 The wired Ticker News Service, with music and news, begins operation in Philadelphia claiming an initial 250 clients, mostly hotels, restaurants and bars.
JUL 24 1937 An AFM rule that stations without house bands must pay musicians double scale causes the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to move its weekly CBS program from WCAU/Philadelphia to WHP/Harrisburg
JUL 24 1945 The NAB estimates the cash value of donated programs and announce-ments by the broadcast industry to the Seventh War Loan Drive is $23.5 Million.
JUL 24 1946 General Electric introduces its first postwar line of Musaphonic console AM-FM radio phonographs priced from $450 to $600.
JUL 24 1946 The major networks cover the second Pacific atomic bomb tests from Bikini atoll flawlessly, overcoming the technical problems that plagued the first broadcasts of tests a month earlier.
JUL 24 1949 Folk balladeer Burl Ives begins his seven week replacement series for Walter Winchell’s Sunday night commentaries sponsored by Kaiser-Frazer autos on ABC.
JUL 24 1949 Network Radio veteran John J. Anthony adapts his “human relations” Goodwill Hour to television for a short run on WPIX(TV)/New York City.
JUL 24 1950 FCC authorizes CBS-owned KCBS/San Jose-San Francisco to increase its power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts.
JUL 24 1953 The all-industry National Television System Committee agrees on the RCA compatible color television method and prepares filing with FCC for its approval. CBS drops its non-compatible system and endorses the NTSC petition.
JUL 24 1953 FCC proposes extending television licenses from one year to three years, the same length as radio station licenses.
JUL 24 1953 Veteran newsman and CBS-TV What’s My Line? host John Daly, 39, is appointed ABC’s Vice President of News & Special Events.
JUN 25 1922 AT&T opens WBAY/New York City, announcing its “toll broadcasting” (aka “sponsorship”) concept, charging $40 to $50 for 15 minutes of time.
JUN 25 1938 Senior FCC lawyer, Major Alfred Dalrymple, 61, dies when struck by an automobile on a Washington street.
JUL 25 1940 A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds radio broadcasters' right to play phonograph records without paying license fees to record companies or artists.
JUL 25 1940 KFEL/Denver becomes the first station to ban ASCAP songs, relying instead upon public domain and BMI music.
JUL 25 1941 The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee introduces its $3.5 Billion Tax Defense Bill that would impose an extra tax of 5% to 15% on broadcasters’ on net revenue exceeding $100,000.
JUL 25 1941 A Washington, D.C., District Court fines the Trans Ocean Press news agency $1,000 in penalties and another $15,000 in court costs for not registering as an agent of Nazi Germany.
JUL 25 1942 The owner of KFPI/Dublin, Texas, on the air since 1924, shuts the station down due to shortages of qualified personnel and replacement equipment.
JUL 25 1943 The networks interrupt late Sunday afternoon programs with the bulletin of Benito Mussolini’s resignation as Premier of Italy.
JUL 25 1944 Chairman James Fly asks Congress if his FCC has the power to, “…disapprove the transfer of a station from one owner to another merely because the price is considered inordinately high.”
JUL 25 1945 ABC’s Breakfast Club celebrates “Christmas In July” with yuletide music, sells $2,500 in War Bonds and collects $2,000 in gifts for 25 servicemen who spent the previous Christmas in foxholes.
JUL 25 1945 Actor Craig Reynolds sues NBC and Philip Morris for $100,000 charging that the Ginny Simms Show format was stolen from his program concept for Veterans’ Canteen.
JUL 25 1946 Arthur Godfrey signs a new five year contract to continue his early morning local programs on CBS-owned WABC/New York City and WTOP/Washington, D.C., in addition to his mid-morning program on the CBS network. (See Arthur Godfrey .)
JUL 25 1946 FCC awards Chicago’s fourth television construction permit to ABC.
JUL 25 1948 Arlene Francis replaces Walter Winchell during the commentator’ six week vacation with a celebrity interview show from the Stork Club on ABC.
JUL 25 1948 Pilot Radio Corporation introduces its 15 pound Candid model television set with a three-inch picture tube for $99.50.
JUL 25 1949 Johnny Desmond, 29, former vocalist with Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band, replaces Jack Owens in the cast of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club on ABC. (See In The Miller .)
JUL 25 1949 FCC approves KING/Seattle buying the city’s only television station, KRSC(TV), for $375,000.
JUL 25 1951 Bing Crosby signs a new contract with Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield cigarettes paying him $30,000 a week for his CBS radio show. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears, Wednesday's All Time Top Ten and Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 25 1952 Arthur Godfrey announces that he is finished working on Fridays . Five days later he says it was all a mistake and he’ll continue doing his Friday shows. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 25 1952 WPIX(TV)/New York City offers a $500 bounty to its remote camera crews for any authentic shots of flying saucers.
JUL 26 1934 KSTP/Minneapolis-St.Paul obtains National Guard permission to drive its news truck equipped with a shortwave transmitter through the streets of Minneapolis during the violent truckers’ strike.
JUL 26 1935 Blue’s highly rated Phil Baker, The Armour Jester, is cancelled because the packing company’s new president expresses a dislike for radio advertising. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 26 1935 FCC gives conditional permission to AT&T for coaxial cable transmission tests of television images between New York City and Philadelphia.
JUL 26 1937 AFM President Joseph Weber declares a ban on sustaining dance band remotes beginning in mid-August to, “…increase musician employment.” (See Big Band Remotes.)
JUL 26 1937 All radio stations go silent for one minute at noon to honor FCC Chairman Anning Prall who died three days earlier of a heart attack at age 66.
JUL 26 1938 Paramount Pictures announces its purchase of 26% of the stock in DuMont Laboratories for $212,000. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
JUL 26 1939 Actress Virginia Campbell, 25, suffers television’s first known case of “Klieg Light Poisoning” caused by NBC’s intense studio lights - similar to a temporary ailment caused by brilliant lights used in Technicolor filming.
JUL 26 1944 Actor Alan Reed, (aka Teddy Berman), wins $300 in arbitration from Abie’s Irish Rose producer Anne Nichols, claiming he was unjustly fired from the NBC sitcom.
JUL 26 1944 General Electric’s receiver sales manager predicts that FM’s popularity will outpace television in the three years after World War II, resulting in 500 new FM stations and 25 Million listeners.
JUL 26 1945 The March of Time leaves ABC concluding its 14 year sporadic multi-network run. (See The March of Time.)
JUL 26 1946 FCC warns holders of FM conditional grants and construction permits to proceed immediately to build their stations or risk losing permits.
JUL 26 1946 Armed Forces Radio Service closes its San Francisco offices and moves its news division to Los Angeles..
JUL 26 1946 CBS-TV uses its new remote equipment in televising the Brooklyn vs. Pittsburgh ballgame from Ebbets Field on WCBW(TV)/New York City.
JUL 26 1948 Westinghouse applies for Channel 8 in Pittsburgh for further testing of its Stratovision system transmitting television signals from converted B-29 bombers circling between 25,000 and 30,000 feet.
JUL 26 1953 Radio and television networks flash the news of the Korean War Armistice at 9:00 p.m.
JUL 27 1931 Chet Luack and Norris Goff move their Lum & Abner from KTHS/Hot
Springs, Arkansas, to NBC, beginning a 22 year multi-network run.
JUL 27 1931 CBS reports receiving 2,900 unsolicited scripts over the previous two years, from which it accepted one.
JUL 27 1936 John Shepard 3rd announces formation of the Colonial Network in the New England states as a companion chain to his Yankee Network.
JUL 27 1937 Four announcements on WLW/Cincinnati offering free pictures of Tommy Riggs and his fictitious alter-ego Betty Lou, result in 32,000 mailed requests.
JUL 27 1939 Mr. District Attorney, a 15-minute Multiple Run weeknight program on Blue is converted to 30-minutes and moved to NBC as the summer replacement for Bob Hope’s Pepsodent Show. (See Mr. District Attorney and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1939 FCC rules that all stations must log the title of every phonograph record it broadcasts.
JUL 27 1939 Kay Kyser breaks all San Francisco attendance records, 10,000 patrons in a week at the Bal Tabarin nightclub where his orchestra played for scale - as a thanks for the owners’ support of his band in its early years. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1942 CBS premieres Victory Theater, a weekly half hour of patriotic themed variety by CBS stars as the summer replacement for the first half of Lux Radio Theater.
JUL 27 1942 CBS begins the seven week series An American In England written by Norman Corwin and narrated by Edward R. Murrow originating at the BBC studios in London but technical problems in shortwave transmission make parts of it unintelligible.
JUL 27 1942 Mutual commentator Cal Tinny angers military officials by charging trading post profits are directed to slush funds used for beer parties.
JUL 27 1943 The Blue Network tells advertisers that it will begin accepting transcriptions of nighttime programs from other networks for broadcast on its daytime schedule.
JUL 27 1943 Jack Benny and his USO unit including harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler with actresses Anna Lee and Wini Shaw, arrive in the Middle East to begin their three month tour entertaining Allied troops.
JUL 27 1943 Blue broadcasts a retraction to an statement by Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler that separately married actors Gertrude Lawrence and Hugh Marlow were engaged to each other.
JUL 27 1945 The U.S. War Production Board lifts its restrictions on the production and sale of tubes and other components for radios and electronic gear.
JUL 27 1946 ABC claims the first televised golf tournament coverage - the All American Tournament from Chicago.
JUL 27 1946 NBC Radio cuts off Bill Stern’s broadcast of the All American Golf Tournament’s climactic final hole to clear time for Frank Morgan’s sitcom The Fabulous Dr Tweedy. (See Bill Stern.)
JUL 27 1947 After seven seasons on CBS, Eversharp moves its comedy quiz Take It Or Leave It to NBC. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1947 CBS adopts a 2% cash discount plan for its WCBS/New York. WBBM/ Chicago, WEEI/Boston, KNX/Los Angeles, WTOP/Washington, KMOX/St Louis and WCCO/Minneapolis-St Paul.
JUL 27 1949 The Broadcast Measurement Bureau estimates that nearly 39.3 Million families in the United States, or 94.2% of all homes, have at least one radio in good working order.
JUL 27 1951 Stockholders of both ABC and United Paramount Theaters approve the merger of their companies.
JUL 27 1951 CBS completes its restructuring, making radio and television two semi-autonomous divisions.
JUL 27 1951 NBC affiliates protest the network selling the six seconds required for its system cue chimes for advertising, which it claims could generate an annual $6.0 Million in additional revenue for local stations.
JUL 27 1951 CBS star Arthur Godfrey leaves on a two month vacation after causing protests for his comments favoring price controls in the United States. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
JUL 27 1953 R.J. Reynolds cancels Camel cigarettes’ Bob Hawk Show on CBS, ending their twelve year association when Hawk refuses a pay cut from his established $7,000 per week. (See Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1953 Radio script writer John Greene sues CBS and other parties involved with the program You Are There for $505,000, claiming it was stolen from a concept he submitted to the network in 1945. (See You Are There.)
JUL 27 1953 Arthur Godfrey, gone nearly three months for his hip surgery and recovery, returns to the Talent Scouts simulcast on CBS Radio and Television via remote facilities from his Virginia farm. (See Arthur Godfrey and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 27 1953 Steve Allen, 31, moves into the late night slot on WNBT(TV)/New York City replacing Jerry Lester’s Broadway Open House. The program would evolve into NBC-TV’s Tonight Show a year later.
JUL 27 1953 RCA Chairman David Sarnoff informs the NBC affiliates meeting that he will assume the presidency of the network for the rest of the year replacing the retiring Frank White.
JUL 28 1932 ASCAP breaks off talks with the NAB, refusing a 25% increase in music fees which would result in an estimated $2.5 Million over two years.
JUL 28 1934 The Minneapolis Tribune and St. Paul Dispatch’s WRHM/Minneapolis-St. Paul becomes WTCN representing “Twin City Newspapers.”
JUL 28 1936 The U.S. Commerce Department estimates radio’s audience to be 20 million American families with half of them the residents of five states: New York, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
JUL 28 1937 The FTC issues cease and desist orders to the makers of No-Doz caffeine tablets for claiming in its radio spots that a million drivers depend on its tablets and Calamo Reducing Bath Salts, which promises weight loss in bathing.
JUL 28 1940 Germany rescinds its ban against Mutual broadcasts originating from the country.
JUL 28 1940 FCC announces that it will work with the Radio Manufacturers Association to form the National Television Systems Committee to, “…work out television’s remaining problems.”
JUL 28 1943 FDR’s speech to the nation about the fall of Mussolini draws a CAB esti-mated 55 million listeners. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & NIelsen on this site.)
JUL 28 1944 Remick Music Corporation, publisher of It Had To Be You and Time Waits For No One, sues American Tobacco for $200,000 and seeks an injunction against Your Hit Parade’s weekly hit song survey, claiming its songs were ignored.
JUL 28 1945 An engineer’s eye-witness account gives WOR/New York City a five minute beat on the news of a B-25 crashing into the fog-shrouded 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building killing 14 and causing $1.0 Million in damages.
JUL 28 1947 Lever Brothers shifts Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and My Friend Irma to before and after Lux Radio Theater on the CBS Monday night schedule, making all three Top Ten shows. (See Monday’s All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 28 1947 Mutual cancels its Hooperating service as C.E. Hooper doubles it network charges to $60,000 annually. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
JUL 28 1948 A Pennsylvania court rules in favor of owners and producers of The Lone Ranger by ordering a touring rodeo performer, Earl Currey, to abandon his mask and the name Lone Star Ranger. (See The Lone Ranger.)
JUL 28 1948 FCC suspends the construction permit of WTVJ(TV)/Miami pending a hearing of its finances.
JUL 28 1949 Lorillard’s Old Gold cigarettes moves The Original Amateur Hour from Wednesday to Thursday nights on ABC Radio and trims it from 60 to 45 minutes.
JUL 28 1949 Producers of the CBS reality-based crime drama, Wanted, scramble to replace its recorded program dealing with a wanted fugitive who was hunted down by the FBI and shot a few days earlier.
JUL 28 1950 One of the original radio-television simulcasts, We The People, is split into two separate shows on NBC both on Friday night a 8:30 and both sponsored by Gulf Oil.
JUL 28 1950 The Washington Post acquires WOIC(TV) from Bamberger Department Stores and rechristens it to match its radio property, WTOP-TV.
JUL 28 1952 Long running radio comedy Amos & Andy debuts as a 30 minute sitcom on CBS-TV.
JUL 29 1914 AT&T establishes the first transcontinental telephone call between New York City and San Francisco.
JUL 29 1931 NBC’s early musical, The Palmolive Hour, is cancelled after four seasons. (See Frank Munn’s Golden Voice and Gus Haenschen.)
JUL 29 1935 The one year old Lux Radio Theater leaves New York and Blue’s Sunday afternoon schedule for Hollywood and a successful 19 season Monday night run on CBS (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! and Monday's All Time Top Ten.
JUL 29 1935 Peoples Drug Stores gives WJSV sportscaster Arch McDonald a specially built studio in its downtown Washington, D.C., location for listeners who want to watch his broadcasts.
JUL 29 1936 General Mills responds to an FTC order and discontinues its false claims that part of the proceeds from the sale of Wheaties go to charity.
JUL 29 1936 CBS and NBC each begin 19 nights of summaries of the Olympic games from Berlin - Bill Henry and Ted Husing reporting for CBS, Bill Slater and Howard Deietze for NBC.
JUL 29 1937 U.S. Congressman Samuel Dickstein accuses New York City stations WBNX, WFAB, WHOM, WBBC, and WWRL of selling time to brokers who resold it to German language program producers favorable to the Nazis .
JUL 29 1940 Powerful shortwave station WLWO/Cincinnati agrees to broadcast U.S. Weather Service tropical storm and hurricane warnings every three hours in English, Spanish and Portuguese when they are issued for Central and South American countries.
JUL 29 1941 Crosley’s 75,000 watt Cincinnati shortwave station, WLWO, begins European service from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily, alternating broadcasts in English, French, Spanish and German.
JUL 29 1942 A Minneapolis man who learned of a $43,000 inheritance on the CBS Court of Missing Heirs a year earlier, murders his wife after arguments over his spending habits.
JUL 29 1943 Floyd George, 14 year old cast member of NBC’s Hawthorne House, dies when a backyard cave-in buries him beneath four feet of soil.
JUL 29 1944 Members of Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force band, renamed The Flying American Band of The Supreme Allied Command, escape injury when a Nazi rocket destroys their quarters two hours after they left. (See In The Miller Mood.)
JUL 29 1946 Emerson Drug’s Bromo Seltzer replaces the Jackie Coogan sitcom Forever Ernest on the CBS Monday night schedule with Inner Sanctum. (See Inner Sanctum and Monday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 29 1946 New Hampshire Senator Charles Tobey calls for a “full dress investigation” of the FCC, especially its alleged, "...control of radio programs’ abridgment of freedom of speech."
JUL 29 1947 Boris Karloff notifies Lights Out sponsor Eversharp that he wants to leave the ABC show because he considers it too gruesome.
JUL 29 1948 Broadcast organizations from 61 nations cover the opening of the London Olympics.
JUL 29 1949 Kay Kyser leaves Network Radio after a dozen years, eleven in the Top 50 and two in the Top Ten. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
JUL 29 1949 W.H. Mason, 51 year old program director of KBKI/Alice, Texas, dies of gunshot wounds fired by a deputy sheriff he had accused on the air of being a brothel owner.
JUL 29 1949 Milton Berle signs a new three year contract to host NBC-TV’s Texaco Star Theater paying $10,000 a week for 39 weeks the first year, then $11,500 a week and $13,000 a week the third year.
JUL 29 1950 The television adaptation of One Man’s Family, off the air for seven months, returns to NBC-TV.
JUL 29 1953 ABC Radio notes the Korean war cease fire with its two-part Korea Story narrated by Dick Powell and Helen Hayes.
JUL 30 1930 NBC opens its pioneering television station W2XBS/New York City.
JUL 30 1932 The governing committee’s $100,000 demand for broadcast rights to the 1932 Olympics prevents live network coverage from Los Angeles.
JUL 30 1932 Bing Crosby begins appearing on the weekly CBS show California Melodies for no payment, “…just to prove that CBS can’t get along without me,” while his brother Everett negotiates a new contract with the network.
JUL 30 1932 Powerful KFI/Los Angeles begins a nightly 11:30 p.m. half hour series reporting Olympic games results for listeners in New Zealand and Australia.
JUL 30 1935 One of four experimental “high fidelity” AM stations, W9XBY/Kansas City, reports satisfactory results in its field strength tests at 1530 kilocycles.
JUL 30 1936 Future network star Hildegarde, (Snell), 30, makes her radio debut on Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Yeast Hour.
JUL 30 1937 The AFM gives broadcasters an ultimatum that any station playing phono-graph records or musical transcriptions must also hire a number of union musicians that it deems “satisfactory”. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 30 1937 The American Federation of Radio Artists, (AFRA), talent union is formed.
JUL 30 1939 Japan’s Ministry of Communications orders three new 50,000 watt transmitters and increases its shortwave broadcasts to North America in English and Japanese by six hours a day.
JUL 30 1940 WTMJ/Milwaukee is approved by the FCC to increase power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts with a new transmitter system, but National Defense Act shortages make it unable to obtain the necessary steel towers or copper wiring.
JUL 30 1942 The U.S. Justice Department authorizes an injunction suit against the AFM’s strike against recorded music. (See Petrillo!)
JUL 30 1942 The American Theater Wing introduces its weekly Stage Door Canteen on CBS with host Bert Lytell and guests Burns & Allen, Irving Berlin and Helen Hayes.
JUL 30 1943 NBC announces the sale of its Blue network and stations WJZ/New York, WENR/Chicago and KGO/San Francisco to Edward Noble for $8.0 Million, subject to FCC approval and contingent on Noble’s selling WMCA/New York City.
JUL 30 1944 Marine Sergeant Lee Powell, 35, the original Lone Ranger in films, is reported killed in action in the South Pacific. (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
JUL 30 1945 The NAB, ABC, CBS and NBC each protest the FCC's proposed requirements that all FM stations must originate at least two hours of programs daily that are not broadcast elsewhere.
JUL 30 1947 ABC sells WOOD/Grand Rapids, Michigan - acquired a year earlier in the network’s purchase of WXYZ/Detroit.
JUL 30 1947 A midyear television report indicates a U.S. total of eleven commercial stations serving 47,500 homes and 11,000 public places equipped with TV receivers.
JUL 30 1949 Game show What's My Name? with hostess Arlene Francis is cancelled on ABC after a sporadic eleven year run on three networks.
JUL 30 1951 Joe E. Brown substitutes for Don McNeill as host of ABC’s Breakfast Club for the final six weeks of McNeill’s two month vacation, replacing Peter Donald who emceed the show for the first two weeks.
JUL 31 1930 The Shadow is first heard on CBS as the nameless narrator of a mystery anthology series. (See The Shadow Nos.)
JUL 31 1932 Both CBS and NBC report their first drop in revenue from the same month a year earlier since 1928.
JUL 31 1932 FCC approves WSAI/Cincinnati boosting its power from 500 to 2,500 watts when owner Crosley Broadcasting devises the nation’s first directional antenna system to avoid interfering with other stations.
JUL 31 1932 Thomas (Tommie) Malie, armless radio singer and songwriter, (Looking At The World Through Rose Colored Glasses and Tie Me To Your Apron Strings), dies in Chicago at 35.
JUL 31 1933 General Mills introduces Jack Armstrong, The All American Boy on CBS, beginning its 18 years of the program’s sponsorship across all four networks. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
JUL 31 1933 NBC reports 50,000 visitors took the hour-long guided tour of its Chicago studios in July, many of them in the city for the World’s Fair.
JUL 31 1935 The unpopular Press Radio Bureau closes its West Coast office in Los Angeles - three of its key executives join Hearst’s new International News Service bureau in the city. (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
JUL 31 1936 Despite his fall to 13th place in the 1935-36 ratings after three years at Number One, Eddie Cantor signs a three picture contract with 20th Century Fox paying him $1.0 Million.
JUL 31 1937 CBS, Mutual and NBC all cover the America’s Cup yacht races from Newport, Rhode Island.
JUL 31 1938 Sponsor Fitch Shampoo pays $750 for seven miles of phone lines installed from Hardwick, Vermont, to a summer camp for the blind so Jerry Belcher can interview sightless kids on NBC’s Interesting Neighbors show.
JUL 31 1941 Variety publishes a special issue commemorating the 25th anniversary of ASCAP.
JUL 31 1941 BMI completes its first year in business with a net profit and $605,000 in assets.
JUL 31 1942 Firestone Tire & Rubber becomes the first NBC sponsor to order all 125 stations on the network and receive a 10% discount.
JUL 31 1945 Mutual refuses The Friends of Democracy political group’s request to respond to a sermon by Dr. Walter Maier on the network’s Lutheran Hour which they charge was political propaganda against the country’s best interests.
JUL 31 1946 Mutual reports its affiliates WNOE/New Orleans and WIBC/Indianapolis have applied for 50,000 watts while another 52 affiliates have filed for power increases of lesser amounts.
JUL 31 1947 Ezra Stone, Vic Damone, Fred Waring’s glee club and Pennsylvania’s governor are among the guests for the dedication broadcast of WFMZ(FM)/Allentown, put on the air by five former servicemen funded by local stockholders.
JUL 31 1949 ABC introduces its giveaway show offering a $25,000 new house as its major prize, Chance of A Lifetime, hosted by John Reed King. The program has a sporadic three year run.
JUL 31 1949 NBC introduces its new sitcom, The Ethel Merman Show, due for a 13-week Sunday night run.
JUL 31 1949 Meredith Willson begins a four week Sunday night run for General Foods on NBC-TV. (See Meredith Willson.)
JUL 31 1950 For the fourth consecutive year, Robert Q. Lewis hosts Arthur Godfrey Time for the vacationing Godfrey on CBS for two months.
JUL 31 1950 BMI distributes a record $2.2 Million in royalties in fiscal 1949-50.
JUL 31 1952 Fred Allen, 58, scheduled to begin the new radio-television quiz show Two For The Money on NBC, is stricken with a serious virus attack.
JUL 31 1952 BMI concludes the fiscal year with over $5.6 Million in revenues.
JUL 31 1953 CBS signs Red Skelton to a long term radio and television contract.
JUL 31 1953 WXKW/Albany, New York, plagued with technical problems with 10,000 watts at 850 kc., leaves the air after five years with $300,000 provided in great part by competitors WPTR and WTRY for its television application.
JUL 31 1953 FCC station income reports show that 94 of the country’s 108 television stations made money in 1952, and 17 of them turned profits of $1.0 Million or more.
GLOSSARY
AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union - AFL = American Federation of Labor - AFM = American Federation of Musicians - AFRA = American Federation of Radio Artists - AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Service - AFTRA = American Federation of Radio & Television Artists - AGVA = American Guild of Variety Artists - ANA = Association of National Advertisers - ANPA = American Newspaper Publishers Association - AP = Associated Press - ARB = American Research Bureau - ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers - BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - BMB = Broadcast Measurement Bureau - BMI = Broadcast Music, Inc. - CAB = Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting - CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System - CIO = Congress of Industrial Organizations - CST = Central Standard Time - CWA = Communications Workers of America - EST = Eastern Standard Time - FCC = Federal Communications Commission - FRC = Federal Radio Commission - FTC = Federal Trade Commission - IAPTA = International Allied Printing Trades Association - IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News Service - IRS = Internal Revenue Service - LBS = Liberty Broadcasting System - MBS = Mutual Broadcasting System - MCA = Music Corporation of America - MST = Mountain Standard Time - NAB = National Association of Broadcasters - NABET = National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians - NARBA = North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement - NARTB = National Association of Radio & Television Broadcasters, (fka NAB) - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - PTA = Parent Teachers Association - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - RMA = Radio Manufacturers Association - SAG = Screen Actors Guild - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - SPCA = Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press.
Copyright © 2018, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: [email protected]