MONEY WELL SPENT

This site’s Sponsor Sweepstakes pages rank the leading advertisers according to the Quantity of Top 50 programs they sponsored as identified in Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.

But this raises the question of program Quality in terms of audience popularity: In other words, which sponsors spent their advertising budgets most effectively by reaching the most listeners with their Top 50 programs?

There are two ways to answer this question. Both employ a simple point system based on the annual ranking of each program involved - 50 points for a season‘s Number One program, 49 points for Number Two, 48 for Number Three and so on down to one point for the program that finished the season in 50th place. .

Our first list ranks the Top Ten sponsors based on the total number of points accumulated by their Top 50 programs over the 21 years of Radio’s Golden Age, (we’ll call them Ranking Points): 

Sponsor  & Total Top 50 Ranking  Points

Lever Brothers aka Unilever                                                         2,582 
General Foods                                                                                2,344 
Standard Brands                                                                            1,780 
American Tobacco                                                                         1,490 
Kraft Foods fka National Dairy Products                                     1,248 
Bristol Myers                                                                                   1,133
Colgate Palmolive Peet                                                                  1,056 
Reynolds Tobacco                                                                             809 
Andrew Jergens Co.                                                                          779 
Procter & Gamble                                                                               772

There are no real surprises on this list. Nine of these ten advertisers appear in our Sponsor Sweepstakes Top Ten.

Sterling Drug is replaced in this list by Andrew Jergens Co., longtime sponsor of Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal. Winchell’s Sunday night mix of news, commentary, gossip, slang and sound effects registered 16 seasons in the Annual Top 50 under Jergens sponsorship and was a Top Ten program over eight of those seasons.

Jergens and its Woodbury Soap division also sponsored an early Bing Crosby show plus Top 50 entries from Louella Parsons and Mr. & Mrs. North during the Golden Age.

A second way to determine advertising efficiency is by calculating the average ranking of all the Top 50 programs presented by the 126 companies that sponsored them. This method levels the playing field considerably between big conglomerates with massive budgets to spread across network schedules and small companies that had to be more selective with their limited advertising funds. .

Therefore this Top Ten of sponsors contains some surprises: 

Sponsor & Average Program Rank

S.C. Johnson Co.                                                                     5th
Pepsodent                                                                                11th 
Standard Brands                                                                     11th         
Lever Brothers                                                                         14th     
Chrysler Corp.                                                                          15th 
Texaco                                                                                       16th 
Kraft Foods                                                                                17th 
Bristol Myers                                                                             18th 
American Tobacco                                                                    19th 
William Wrigley Co.                                                                   19th

S.C. Johnson, the Racine, Wisconsin wax manufacturer, had only two products to advertise at the time - Glo-Coat floor wax and Car-Nu auto wax Johnson, through Chicago’s Needham, Louis & Brorby advertising agency, put its entire Network Radio budget into one program, Fibber McGee & Molly, from 1935-36 through 1949-50.

Jim & Marian Jordan’s sitcom began slowly on Blue’s Monday night schedule, finishing its first full season in 62nd place. The show moved to NBC on Monday at 9:00 in the spring of 1937, pitted against the rising powerhouse Lux Radio Theater. Against all odds finished in 21st place.

In March, 1938, NBC moved Fibber McGee & Molly to Tuesdays at 9:30 which became its home for the next 15 seasons, twelve under Johnson sponsorship and all twelve in the Annual Top Ten. What’s more, during eight of those dozen years Fibber McGee & Molly was the country‘s Number Two program and in 1941-42 the sitcom was Number One.

Johnson stands alone as the only advertiser on our three lists to pin its entire radio budget on just one program - but what a program it was!

Long before it was sold to Lever Brothers in 1944, Chicago’s Pepsodent Co. was a small toothpaste manufacturer struggling to survive until Lord & Thomas Advertising gambled the company’s ad budget on Amos & Andy in 1929. The nightly adventures of the two proprietors of The Fresh Air Taxi Company Incorpulated - written and performed by Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll - was an immediate sensation on NBC’s Blue Network. When the Golden Age began in 1932-33, Amos & Andy was still highly popular and remained a Top Ten contender for two more seasons. The show was moved to NBC’s Red Network in an effort to push it back into the Top Ten in 1935 but the shift failed. Nevertheless, Gosden and Correll were still a Top 20 act through the 1936-37 season when Pepsodent cancelled.

The company then put its budget into a new weekly comedy/variety show hosted by comedian Bob Hope in 1938. It was a shrewd move as Hope was a rising star in movies and his radio ratings reflected it. By the time Pepsodent was sold to Lever Brothers in 1944, Hope had scored five consecutive Top Ten seasons and during the final two under the Chicago‘s company‘s sponsorship he delivered the nation‘s highest rated program. .

Unlike Johnson Wax and Pepsodent which sponsored just one or two winning programs, Standard Brands, Lever Brothers, Kraft, Bristol Myers and American Tobacco presented a number of popular programs that are profiled on our Sponsor Sweepstakes page.

On the other hand, Chrysler Corp. was another selective sponsor. After getting its feet wet with Ed Wynn‘s Gulliver sitcom in 1935-36, the car company stole Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour from Standard Brands and NBC in 1936 and installed the show into CBS’s Thursday night schedule for the next seven seasons, five of them resulting in Top Ten finishes. With nothing to sell to the public during World War II, the car manufacturer retired from Network Radio and didn’t return until 1949-50 when it picked up Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life. The comedy quiz closed out the Golden Age with three seasons in the Annual Top Ten.

Texaco started strong in Network Radio’s Golden Age with Ed Wynn’s Fire Chief show in 1932-33. Billed as “The Perfect Fool,“ Wynn registered three consecutive Top Ten finishes with his Tuesday night variety show on NBC. Wynn literally ran out of gas in 1935 when he left Texaco and NBC for CBS and the short-lived sitcom Gulliver sponsored by Chrysler’s Plymouth Auto division.

Texaco was off the air for year but returned in 1936-37 with a new Eddie Cantor vehicle on CBS that scored two seasons in the Annual Top Five. When Cantor walked before the 1938-39 season, the petroleum company opened its first Texaco Star Theater, a Vaudeville-like format hosted by thespians Adolph Menjou and John Barrymore. That quickly proved to be a mistake, so Texaco installed comedian Ken Murray as the show’s host. Murray efforts resulted in two Top 50 seasons, but Texaco clearly wanted a star for its Star Theater. It found one in Fred Allen who delivered four solid seasons of Top 50 ratings for Texaco until illness forced him off the air in 1944.

With Allen’s departure Texaco dropped out of Network Radio‘s prime time race for ratings. However, the company remained in radio for a long time afterwards. In 1940 Texaco began its 64 years of sponsoring the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of The Metropolitan Opera, hosted by legendary announcer Milton Cross from the series’ first broadcast on Christmas Day, 1931, until his death in early January, 1975.

The final entry in this list of effective advertisers is Chicago chewing gum manufacturer, Wm. Wrigley Co. Wrigley began the Golden Age with the nightly sponsorship of Myrt & Marge, Network Radio’s first successful prime time soap opera. The continuing CBS drama of two Broadway showgirls registered three strong Top 50 seasons every weeknight at 7:00 - a considerable accomplishment because it was slotted opposite Amos & Andy.

Myrt & Marge dropped out of the Annual Top 50 in 1936 and Wrigley didn’t have another program on the list for the next 14 seasons until it picked up the CBS sitcom Life With Luigi in 1949-50. J. Carrol Naish’s Luigi remained in the Top 50 for the final four seasons of the Golden Age, peaking in the Top Ten of 1952-53.

Wrigley was the first and only sponsor of Gene Autry’s long-running Melody Ranch on CBS, beginning in January, 1940. The cowboy craze of early television helped push Autry‘s weekly mix of western adventure and music into the upper half of the Top 50 lists from 1950-51 through 1952-53.

The company’s third Top 50 entry in the final year of the Golden Age was a third CBS show, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. 

Summary: Five of the Top Ten advertisers from Sponsor Sweepstakes list survived these two measurements: American Tobacco, Bristol Myers, Kraft Foods, Lever Brothers and Standard Brands. Yes, they all had the money to spend in reaching millions of listeners. But just as importantly - perhaps more so - they knew where to spend it.

                                  Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL    Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com