SEPTEMBER IN THE GOLDEN AGE
Unless otherwise noted all times are Eastern Time Zone
For current dollar equivalents consult: www.usinflationcalculator.com
SEP 1 1932 Powerful KSL/Salt Lake City leaves NBC to affiliate with CBS.
SEP 1 1935 NBC’s WMAQ/Chicago increases its power to 50,000 watts giving the city five maximum power stations.
SEP 1 1936 CBS takes control of KNX/Los Angeles.
SEP 1 1936 GOP Presidential candidate Alf Landon recommends lengthening radio station license periods from six months to five years.
SEP 1 1936 NBC takes over management of Westinghouse owned KYW/Philadelphia from the Levy brothers, owners of WCAU in that city.
SEP 1 1936 Indicative of Hollywood’s increased radio production, ad agency J. Walter Thompson increases its Los Angeles staff from two to 25 employees.
SEP 1 1936 NBC commentator John B. Kennedy tells a San Francisco convention of RCA dealers that practical television is still five to ten years away.
SEP 1 1936 Rudy Vallee punches a patron whom he suspected of throwing a bottle at him on the bandstand at the Canadian National Exposition in Toronto. (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 1 1937 CBS, billing itself as “The World’s Largest Network” issues a new rate card, charging $21,770 for an evening hour on its full chain of 104 stations. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure! on this site.)
SEP 1 1937 Chicago based Lady Esther Cosmetics, a virtually unknown brand in 1931 turned radio success story with its sponsorship of Wayne King’s orchestra, fires its ad agency Stack-Gobel for competitor Pedlar & Ryan. (See The Waltz King on this site.)
SEP 1 1938 WQXR/New York City broadcasts a tape recording of the first act of Carmen recorded in London with the Millerfilm process, common in Europe but new to the United States..
SEP 1 1939 Germany’s invasion of Poland receives fulltime coverage by the network news bureaus.
SEP 1 1939 Tennessee Valley Authority lawyer James J. Fly succeeds Frank R. McNinch as Chairman of the FCC.
SEP 1 1939 Ford presents six live, non-broadcast stage performances of The Green Hornet for ten days at its Michigan State Fair pavilion.
SEP 1 1941 NBC enforces its ban on songs with a propaganda message for any cause on its sustaining programs and refuses to clear the title or lyrics of V For Victory.
SEP 1 1941 WOR/New York City refuses to broadcast one-minute commercials after 6:00 p.m.
SEP 1 1941 Congressman Luther Daniel of Alabama begins a 15 minute weekday afternoon human interest commentary on WWDC/Washington for a reported $50 dollars a week.
SEP 1 1941 Philco begins operating W3XE(TV)/Philadelphia 15 hours a week on a 60 day commercial license.
SEP 1 1942 NBC drops its identification as The Red Network.
SEP 1 1944 General Foods moves The Aldrich Family - a Top Ten Show on NBC’s Thursday schedule for four seasons - to CBS on Friday nights where it drops to 18th in the Annual Top 50. (See The Aldrich Family on this site.)
SEP 1 1944 WJR/Detroit bans commercials in the middle of its local newscasts.
SEP 1 1945 Technical and censorship problems are blamed for the 90 minute delay of the network pool broadcast of the Japanese surrender ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri narrated by NBC’s Merrill Mueller and Webley Edwards of CBS. (See V-J Day on this site.)
SEP 1 1945 President Truman’s address during the Japanese surrender ceremonies registers a 46.8 Hooperating.
SEP 1 1946 CBS releases a survey indicating that 54% of women at home in the daytime listen to soap operas for an average of 90 minutes daily.
SEP 1 1947 Mutual joins ABC, CBS and NBC subscribing to the Nielsen Index Rating service, providing A.C. Nielsen with a combined annual network revenue of over $125,000.
SEP 1 1947 Producers begin writing children out of New York City radio shows as a new law prohibits kids under 16 from appearing without written consent by their guardians followed by a certificate of approval from the Mayor’s office.
SEP 1 1947 DuMont sets new rates for its WABD(TV)/New York City with 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. quoted at $80 per minute and $800 per hour. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions on this site.)
SEP 1 1947 Gillette pays $100,000 to Major League Baseball for television rights to the 1947 World Series.
SEP 1 1948 The CBS raid on NBC’s comedy stars begins as CBS buys Amos & Andy from Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll for $2.5 Million over three years. The comedians two are taxed at the 25% capital gains rate instead of the 80% income tax bracket. The plan then has CBS leasing Gosden & Correll’s services to Lever Brothers as technical advisors for “a minimal salary”.
SEP 1 1948 MCA receives a 10% commission in the $2.5 Million sale of Amos & Andy to CBS.
SEP 1 1948 The Chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the FCC describes the Commission’s Scott Decision granting time to atheist and other groups, “unfortunate,” and calls for a revision.
SEP 1 1949 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer begins the syndication of four radio series based on its movie properties The Hardy Family, Dr. Kildare, Maisie and Crime Does Not Pay plus the all-star MGM Theater of The Air. (See The 1949-50 Season on this site.)
SEP 1 1950 The Adventures of The Thin Man leaves the air after a nine year, multi-network run. (See The Curse of Dashiell Hammett on this site.)
SEP 1 1950 News analyst Quincy Howe, 50, leaves Network Radio after 12 years to teach journalism at the University of Illinois.
SEP 1 1950 AT&T opens its relay system providing a live television link between New York and Chicago.
SEP 1 1950 By a split vote of 4-2-1, the FCC issues its color television report favoring the CBS mechanical system but gives set manufacturers a month to respond before making the decision final.
SEP 1 1952 ABC, CBS and NBC cut nighttime radio rates by 25%.
SEP 1 1953 NBC Radio announces “revamping” its schedule with 28 new programs including Six Shooter starring James Stewart and Frank Sinatra as Rocky Fortune.
SEP 1 1953 CBS Radio tells affiliates of a “six-figure“ promotional campaign for its fall schedule including new shows 21st Precinct, Crime Classics and The Johnny Mercer Show. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped on this site.)
SEP 2 1928 Jack Benny and wife Mary Livingston make their film debut in Warner Brothers’ ten-minute short, Bright Moments.
SEP 2 1931 CBS begins a six month run of Fifteen Minutes With Bing Crosby six nights week.
SEP 2 1932 Networks begin to encourage audiences with applause and laughter to its major variety shows at the insistence of their stars.
SEP 2 1934 Early network singing star Russ Columbo dies in a freak shooting accident at age 26.
SEP 2 1935 WQAM/Miami becomes a key emergency station as the Labor Day Category 5 hurricane strikes southeast Florida killing more than 400, mostly in the Florida Keys.
SEP 2 1936 Blue begins nine weeks of broadcasting results of the Literary Digest's Presidential Poll in three 15 minute programs per week hosted by commentator John B. Kennedy.
SEP 2 1940 Stromberg-Carlson becomes the first radio set manufacturer to advertise its FM receivers
SEP 2 1941 NBC announces the completion of its Pan American Network with 92 stations agreeing to rebroadcast programs transmitted by NBC’s international shortwave stations, WRCA and WNBI.
SEP 2 1941 Popular New York City women’s show host Mary Margaret McBride moves her weekday program from WABC to WEAF with a special episode at the Vanderbilt Theater.
SEP 2 1941 Campana’s First Nighter returns for its 12th season on Network Radio, its fourth straight on CBS. (See Friday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 2 1942 One Man’s Family and I Love A Mystery actor Walter Patterson, 31, is found dead in his car, an apparent suicide.
SEP 2 1943 FCC denies the CIO’s petition to intervene in hearings regarding RCA’s sale of the Blue Network to Edward Noble.
SEP 2 1944 Veteran radio entertainer Ed McConnell, 62, begins his nine year run with Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Gang on NBC’s Saturday morning schedule. He also hosted an NBC-TV version of the show from 1950 to 1955.
SEP 2 1945 The half-hour AFRS Sunday night salute to the Armed Forces with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra and President Truman’s Victory speech to the Military on most stations scores scores a 31.3 Hooperating.
SEP 2 1946 ABC’s Breakfast Club becomes totally sold out and the highest gross billing hour in Network Radio at $4.44 Million annually.
SEP 2 1946 The political action committee of the CIO instructs its unions’ members to complain to the FCC if local stations refuse to grant free time for its transcribed messages.
SEP 2 1946 Mutual’s weeknight news commentaries of Fulton Lewis, Jr., reaches a record 207 stations buying the co-op program for local sale.
SEP 2 1946 NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City completes its Labor Day weekend of sports coverage with the National Tennis Championships from Forest Hills.
SEP 2 1949 AFM boss James Petrillo demands that his members who are also members of the American Guild of Variety Artists cancel their AGVA memberships “immediately”. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 2 1950 Frank Graham, 35 year old lead of Jeff Regan, Investigator and producer-star of Satan’s Waitin’ - both CBS shows - is found dead in his car, an obvious suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.
SEP 2 1950 Singer Snooky Lanson begins a five year contract to appear on both the weekly radio and television versions of Your Hit Parade.
SEP 2 1953 ABC Radio offers its 363 affiliates a record 18 different co-op programs totaling over 20 hours per week for local sale.
SEP 3 1929 Rudy Vallee’s weekly variety show for Standard Brands, (originally The Fleischmann Yeast Hour), begins its ten year Thursday night run on NBC
SEP 3 1934 WHAM/Rochester, New York, announces that it will no longer accept paid political advertising.
SEP 3 1935 Scripps-Howard newspapers enters broadcasting with an application to purchase WFBE/Cincinnati and change its call sign to WCPO, representing The Cincinnati Post.
SEP 3 1935 NBC sells out all periods in its prime time schedule except one half hour on Tuesday night and another 30 minute period on Sunday night. CBS and Blue also report near sell-out status.
SEP 3 1935 CBS and NBC charge that an ANPA brochure minimizing the value and effec-tiveness of broadcast advertising contains errors and misrepresentations.
SEP 3 1936 CBS sends newsman H.V. Kaltenborn, 58, to Spain to provide shortwave dispatches from the Spanish Civil War.
SEP 3 1936 Maxwell House Showboat’s afternoon dress rehearsal and two evening broad-casts draw a record breaking total audience of 32,000 at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Exposition.
SEP 3 1939 The networks carry shortwave reports at 6:14 a.m. that Great Britain and France have declared war on Nazi Germany.
SEP 3 1939 WJR/Detroit is accused by Michigan Governor Luren Dickinson of censoring his planned speech denouncing the evils of modern, cheek-to-cheek dancing.
SEP 3 1939 The Chase & Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy is broadcast from Honolulu where Bergen is vacationing.
SEP 3 1939 The networks report at 11:13 p.m. that German torpedoes have sunk the first British ship in World War II - the civilian cruise ship Athenia 250 miles west of Ireland - killing 117 persons.
SEP 3 1941 Lowell Thomas moderates a two hour retrospective on Blue reviewing Network Radio’s part in covering the two years of war as seen by the reporters and commentators on NBC’s two networks.
SEP 3 1943 Bob Hope, accompanied by Frances Langford, Tony Romano and Jack Pepper, returns from an eleven week, 20,000 mile USO tour to Great Britain, North Africa and Sicily, performing over 160 camp and hospital shows.
SEP 3 1945 FCC modifies its 1942 order requiring stations to cut transmitter power by one decibel, making the mandate “optional”.
SEP 3 1945 Comedienne Joan Davis opens Joanie’s Tea Room on CBS for Lever Brothers‘ Swan Soap with a highly publicized Million Dollar contract but her first show draws a poor 8.3 Hooperating.
SEP 3 1946 Goodman Ace takes office as the CBS Supervisor of Comedy & Variety Pro-grams. (See Easy Aces on this site.)
SEP 3 1946 University of Minnesota station KUOM begins full days of broadcasting school lessons when a severe polio epidemic closes schools and keeps children at home.
SEP 3 1946 Mel Blanc begins his one season run of The Mel Blanc Show. (See Mel Blanc on this site.)
SEP 3 1948 A New Jersey Appeals Court reverses the FCC’s Port Huron Decision of January, 1948, and rules that stations can be held responsible for libelous statements made in political speeches.
SEP 3 1948 NBC begins the three Labor Day holiday with Tex McCrary’s 15 minute docu-mentary, Death On A Weekend, warning of the dangers of careless and reckless driving.
SEP 3 1951 President Truman’s Labor Day appeal for the U.S. Defense Bonds Drive is broadcast by ABC, CBS, Liberty, Mutual, NBC and most independent stations.
SEP 3 1952 NBC Radio follows CBS’s lead by cutting nighttime rates by 23 to 30%, increasing daytime rates by 11% and reducing affiliates’ compensation by 14%.
SEP 3 1952 Bishop Fulton J. Sheen announces that he’ll leave NBC Radio’s Catholic Hour after 22 years to focus on his popular Life Is Worth Living television series on the DuMont network.
SEP 3 1952 Radio version of CBS-TV’s What’s My Line? moves from NBC after three months to CBS for a one season run while the television show remains a Sunday night fixture on CBS-TV until 1967.
SEP 3 1953 ABC abandons its attempts to buy 50,000 watt KMPC/Los Angeles from its owners headed by Gene Autry.
SEP 4 1935 KNX/Los Angeles begins broadcasts from its new $250,000 studios on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard.
SEP 4 1935 WCKY/Covington, Kentucky-Cincinnati approves plans for a new 600 foot transmitter tower - the tallest wooden structure in the United States.
SEP 4 1936 Gordon Baking Co. renews its 52 week sponsorship of The Lone Ranger on WXYZ/Detroit, WOR/New York City, WGN/Chicago and WSPD/Toledo. (See The Lone Ranger on this site.)
SEP 4 1936 Barbara Luddy succeeds Betty Lou Gerson as the female lead of First Nighter, a role she will hold for the next 13 years. (See Friday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 4 1938 NBC’s Fitch Bandwagon begins the first of seven seasons showcasing popular dance bands on Sunday evenings.
SEP 4 1939 Unitarian minister Walton Cole protests to the FCC after his speech denouncing the political talks of Father Charles Coughlin is cancelled by WJR/Detroit, anchor station for Coughlin’s independent weekly network of 60 stations.
SEP 4 1940 Summer substitution hit Quiz Kids begins its twelve season multi-network run on Blue. (See The Quiz Kids on this site.)
SEP 4 1941 President Roosevelt's speech regarding the two hour sea battle between the U.S. Destroyer Greer and a German U boat registers a 72.5 CAB rating.
SEP 4 1942 AFM boss James Petrillo makes the recording ban complete by reversing his earlier decision and prohibiting his members from making commercial transcriptions. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 4 1942 The AFM attempts to forbid GE’s non-commercial shortwave staton KGEI/San Francisco from broadcasting transcribed music to U.S. forces in the Pacific.
SEP 4 1942 NBC reports 16 sponsors of 21 programs take advantage of the network’s 10% discount for buying the full network of 125 stations.
SEP 4 1943 Distiller Schenley begins its experimental Saturday morning entertainment show Dubonnet Date with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra on Blue. The program is cancelled after 13 weeks.
SEP 4 1944 A Labor Day crowd of 60,000 turns out for Midwest Farmer Day in Yankton, South Dakota, and an appearance by Brace Beemer as The Lone Ranger. (See The Lone Ranger on this site.)
SEP 4 1946 FCC updates its December, 1945, FM allocation plan providing for more than 1,600 stations.
SEP 4 1946 NBC presents The City of Decision, a documentary written and narrated by Tex McCrary who witnessed the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima a year earlier.
SEP 4 1947 Marshall Field’s WJJD/Chicago is elevated to 50,000 watts.
SEP 4 1949 The talent raid on NBC continues as sponsor Philip Morris moves Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program to CBS.
SEP 4 1951 San Francisco’s Japan Peace Treaty Conference becomes the first live coast-to-coast television broadcast. President Truman’s opening address is seen on the four networks and reaches an estimated 14,670,000 viewers.
SEP 4 1951 Connecticut Senator William Benton formally proposes establishing The National Citizens Advisory Board For Radio & Television attached to the FCC which broadcasters immediately assail as an attempt of political censorship.
SEP 4 1952 AFM chief Petrillo issues a ban prohibiting band leaders from recording promotional voice tracks for play on local disc jockey programs. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 5 1932 Independent station KNX/Los Angeles editorializes that RCA is attempting a monopoly in broadcasting between its NBC and transmitter business.
SEP 5 1936 The struggling Affiliated Broadcasting Company network. fires all employees not essential to network operations.
SEP 5 1937 The Zenith Radio Corp. debuts The Zenith Foundation dramas on Blue without commercials, saying it will instead rely on listeners’ "extrasensory perception". The program was moved to CBS three months later and cancelled after 26 weeks.
SEP 5 1937 With the addition of WEOA/Evansville, Indiana and KDAL/Duluth, Minnesota, CBS grows to 106 affiliates.
SEP 5 1938 Don Becker and Carl Bixby’s daily serial Life Can Be Beautiful begins its 16 season run between NBC and CBS.
SEP 5 1938 The FTC orders the Gordon Baking Co. to stop falsely claiming in its Lone Ranger commercials that each loaf of its Silver Cup Bread contains a 2/3rds of a pint of fresh, whole milk. (See The Lone Ranger on this site.)
SEP 5 1939 Foreign language station WHOM/New York City cancels its morning German Program and replaces it with The Polish Program.
SEP 5 1940 Good News begins its third season on NBC with Fanny Brice, Dick Powell, Mary Martin and Meredith Willson but without the participation of MGM. (See Good News on this site.)
SEP 5 1940 Bing Crosby denies that he would “quit radio” if he were unable to perform ASCAP music on his Kraft Music Hall.
SEP 5 1943 Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge troupe leaves on a month long, 16 city tour to sell bonds for the Third War Loan Drive.
SEP 5 1943 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler apologizes on the air to actress Gene Tierney for saying she smoked cigars, thus ending her 20th Century Fox studio’s year long boycott against NBC and Blue.
SEP 5 1944 CBS ships a series of 19 five-minute transcribed programs by Kate Smith and her manager/announcer Ted Collins to its 146 affiliates promoting the network’s 1944-45 Sunday schedule.
SEP 5 1944 A New York Supreme Court judge dismisses Warner Brothers Music’s $100,000 suit against American Tobacco for “mishandling” its song, Don’t Sweetheart Me, by ranking it too low on Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade.
SEP 5 1944 CBS files applications with the FCC to construct UHF television stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and St. Louis.
SEP 5 1947 The U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee disputes ABC commentator Drew Pearson's charges that Ohio Congressman Robert F. Jones was once a member of the racist Black Legion and approves his appointment to the FCC.
SEP 5 1947 C.E Hooper buys a former orphanage in Norwalk, Connecticut, for its new corporate headquarters. (See Hooper Was No Easy Target on this site.)
SEP 5 1949 NBC’s Voice of Firestone becomes the first regularly scheduled AM-TV simulcast..
SEP 5 1949 American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike Light Up Time with Frank Sinatra takes over the 7:00-7:15 p.m. NBC weeknight strip held for five seasons by Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield Supper Club starring Perry Como.
SEP 5 1950 A U.S. Appeals Court denies the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors the power to censor movies shown on the state’s five television stations.
SEP 5 1950 After a decade of Procter & Gamble sponsorship on NBC, Ralph Edwards moves his Truth Or Consequences to CBS for Philip Morris. (See Truth Or Consequences on this site.)
SEP 5 1950 Jack Armstrong, All American Boy ends 18 years as an afternoon feature and enters prime time on ABC as Armstrong of The SBI (Scientific Bureau of Investigation) but is cancelled after one season.
SEP 5 1950 Dudley LeBlanc, Louisiana based producer of Hadacol tonic, heavily advertised on radio, agrees to Federal Trade Commission demands that the product’s claims to rejuvenate its users be dropped. (See Hadacol on this site.)
SEP 5 1952 NBC-TV’s Today Show displays the Library of Congress copy of the Gutenberg Bible on its 500th birthday from the network’s Washington studios after it posts an insurance premium of $300,000.
SEP 6 1933 Because sound effects men occasionally beat on drums, New York City AFM local 802 demands that they join the musicians’ union.
SEP 6 1935 Jack Benny escapes injury when the yacht in Puget Sound on which he was a guest was destroyed by fire but was beached before its gas tanks exploded.
SEP 6 1936 Gillette launches its Community Sing show starring Milton Berle on CBS following a ten week tryout on ten Yankee Network stations.
SEP 6 1936 With typical fanfare, American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes employs an armored truck service to collect and deliver pop music sales data used to compile its weekly play list for Your Hit Parade. (See The Lucky Strike Sweepstakes on this site.)
SEP 6 1937 Philco adapts the Photocrime magazine feature to a 16 week, 15 minute transcribed radio series on 200 stations and backs the show with a contest offering 2,000 prizes and a total prize value of $50,000.
SEP 6 1937 WEW/St.Louis, operated for eleven years by St. Louis University as a non-commercial station, receives permission to accept advertising.
SEP 6 1937 Cleveland stations WTAM, WGAR, WHK and WJAY all cover the Thompson Trophy Speed Race, highlight of the 1937 National Air Races held in the city.
SEP 6 1938 With the support of Governor Robert LaFollette, the University of Wisconsin, licensee of pioneer daytime educational station WHA/Madison, files a claim with the FCC to take over the facilities of NBC’s 50,000 watt fulltime WMAQ/Chicago.
SEP 6 1939 WNEW/New York City agrees to pay RCA a license fee of $300 per month to play RCA-Victor and Bluebird records.
SEP 6 1939 Decca Records warns WNEW/New York City to stop playing its discs or face legal action.
SEP 6 1940 Writer Floyd Buckley sues NBC, MCA and General Mills for $250,000 claiming the program Beat The Band was stolen from his rejected concept, Stump The Leader, subtitled, Beat The Band.
SEP 6 1940 Crosley’s shortwave station WLWO bans Gaucho Serenade because of the lyric, “…Neath your window in Rio de Janeiro I shall sing my serenade…” Gauchos are cowboys in Brazil, nowhere near Rio.
SEP 6 1942 Lionel Barrymore, 64, debuts as Mayor of The Town on NBC and begins seven year multi-network run best known for its annual dramatizations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
SEP 6 1942 Radio and nightclub singer Dale Evans, 29, makes her singing debut on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy.
SEP 6 1943 WIP/Philadelphia and WOL/Washington stay on the air all night to report news of survivors from the Congressional Limited train wreck between Philadelphia and Wash-ington that killed 79 and injured 117 passengers.
SEP 6 1945 FCC approves the sale of Crosley broadcasting properties to AVCO for $21.0 Million but seeks Congressional power to employ a bidding process, “open to all comers,” in future sales with the Commission acting as the final judge to determine “the best qualified” applicant.
SEP 6 1946 FCC reverses itself and denies KABC/San Antonio’s previously approved increase to 50,000 watts. .
SEP 6 1946 A Grand Rapids, Michigan court declares the defunct Associated Broadcasting System network officially bankrupt with $300,000 in liabilities and $32,500 in assets.
SEP 6 1946 ABC begins live television production in Chicago with a weekly video version of its radio show Stump The Author on WBKB(TV).
SEP 6 1947 In an effort to limit squealing bobby-soxers on Frank Sinatra’s return to Your Hit Parade as co-star with Doris Day, NBC places an minimum age of 18 for all ticket holders to its broadcasts.
SEP 6 1948 NBC drops its long held ban against transcribed programs and eliminates the need for two live broadcasts of shows that are repeated for the West Coast. (See The Late Shift on this site.)
SEP 6 1948 CBS pays $20,000 to its former Program Sales Manager, Robert Mann, for radio rights to his creation, Our Miss Brooks. (See Our Miss Arden on this site.)
SEP 6 1950 Willard Waterman replaces Hal Peary in title role of The Great Gildersleeve. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s) on this site.)
SEP 6 1950 Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club begins daily simulcasts on ABC radio and television.
SEP 6 1950 C.E. Hooper announces its new television rating service covering twelve New York and Ohio cities.
SEP 6 1950 WJZ-TV/New YorkCity introduces the weekday afternoon forerunner to American Bandstand on ABC-TV - a two-hour show hosted by country music star Zeke Manners.
SEP 6 1951 General Tire & Rubber Corp. changes the calls of its newly acquired KFI-TV/Los Angeles to KHJ-TV.
SEP 6 1951 After 16 years on Saturday night, Your Hit Parade moves to Thursday on NBC and begins the first of two seasons featuring Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians. (See Guy Lombardo on this site.
SEP 7 1934 Evangelist Joseph Price representing The Cosmic Science Church of Los Angeles on WNEW/New York City and WICC/Bridgeport, Connecticut, is arrested by Federal authorities for using the mails to defraud.
SEP 7 1936 NBC’s oldest commercial program, The A&P Gypsies, is cancelled after a twelve year run - two on WEAF/New York City and ten on the network.
SEP 7 1939 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reverses a lower court decision and rules NBC harmless for 1935 remarks broadcast by Al Jolson which a hotel considered libelous and was awarded $15,000 damages.
SEP 7 1940 The London Blitz begins and continues for the next 57 days. The German bombing is reported by the networks on a daily basis via shortwave - most memorably by CBS correspondent Edward R. Morrow.
SEP 7 1940 Smilin’ Ed McConnell begins his 18th consecutive season on the air, his ninth for Sherwin-Williams subsidiary, Acme Lead White Paint, with a Saturday morning quarter hour of songs and chatter.
SEP 7 1941 President Roosevelt’s Labor Day speech on all four networks registers a 50.3 Hooperating.
SEP 7 1941 General Electric’s shortwave station KGEI/San Francisco introduces its weekly record show, Musical Mail Bag, directed to servicemen and women in the Pacific. The show is also simulcast on KYA/San Francisco for stateside listeners.
SEP 7 1942 Kay Kyser is named Chairman of The Committee of 25 (leading radio personalities) enlisted by the Office of War Information to maintain morale in local communities.
SEP 7 1942 The OWI asks all stations to begin broadcasting a series of 10 one-minute transcribed announcements per day for six weeks recorded by leading newscasters that explain America’s war effort.
SEP 7 1942 Nearly 20 minutes of Norman Corwin’s final episode of An American In England series on CBS is obliterated by atmospheric conditions interrupting shortwave signals from London.
SEP 7 1943 FCC denies without comment NBC’s request for an additional half hour of evening option time from its affiliates in return for a half hour of morning time.
SEP 7 1943 The National War Labor Board begins hearing testimony from the American Federation of Musicians and the electrical transcription companies concerning the AFM’s 13-month recording ban. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 7 1943 Veteran songwriter and performer Frank Crumit dies of a heart attack at 54. At the time of his death, he and his wife Julia Sanderson were hosts of Saturday night’s Crumit & Sanderson Quiz, (aka Mr. Adam & Eve), on CBS.
SEP 7 1943 Molle Mystery Theater opens as a mystery anthology on CBS for five year run.
SEP 7 1944 Owens-Illinois Glass pays a whopping $18,500 to sponsor Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians in their new Thursday night half hour concerts on Blue at 7:00 p.m. but the opening show receives a meager Hooperating of 2.7.
SEP 7 1945 The fledgling Associated Broadcasting System network holds its first affiliate meeting for 15 stations at its headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
SEP 7 1945 Kay Kyser returns from a month long USO tour of the Pacific and asks American Tobacco for a year’s sabbatical from his Kollege of Musical Knowledge which is refused.
SEP 7 1945 After four seasons on Mutual, Gillette moves its Friday night boxing broadcasts with Don Dunphy & Bill Corum back to Blue.
SEP 7 1946 Billboard cites a C.E. Hooper report showing that twelve of Network Radio’s Top 15 shows originate in Hollywood.
SEP 7 1947 Edgar Bergen revises the variety format of his NBC show to a sitcom tailored to each week’s guest. (See Sunday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 7 1947 Host Phil Baker leaves the comedy quiz Take It Or Leave It after six seasons.
SEP 7 1947 Sponsor Carter Products places its Sunday night Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler with his 15 minute commentaries on both Mutual at 8:30 and ABC at 10:30.
SEP 7 1947 Theater Guild On The Air returns for its third season on ABC at 9:30 p.m. Sunday night, a half-hour earlier than before in an effort to increase ratings.
SEP 7 1950 Pabst Beer submits a winning bid of $125,000 for radio and television rights to the Heavyweight Championship fight between Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles.
SEP 7 1950 ABC-TV, CBS-TV and NBC-TV each pay World Series rights holder Gillette $50,000 for the pooled telecasts of the 1950 games.
SEP 8 1932 Jack Pearl, 38, introduces his Baron Munchausen on NBC’s Lucky Strike Hour, beginning a five year multi-network run. (See The 1932-33 Season on this site.)
SEP 8 1932 Alumni protests force the Eastern Intercollegiate Association to drop its ban on football broadcasts.
SEP 8 1933 FRC lifts its strict limits on the number of 50,000 watt stations allowed, clearing the way for dozens of stations to increase power to the maximum level.
SEP 8 1934 WOR/Newark is first to report the early morning fire aboard the luxury liner S.S. Morro Castle off the New Jersey coast in which 137 passengers and crew members are killed.
SEP 8 1936 Fred Astaire is in Europe and unable to appear on the premiere of his NBC variety hour for Packard automobiles. Jack Benny and Ginger Rogers substitute for him.
SEP 8 1937 New York City stations WJZ, WMCA and WOR share the same broadcast of the New York Giants vs. Eastern College Football All-Stars game with sportscasters Bill Stern, (WJZ), Stan Lomax, (WOR) and Dick Fishell, (WMCA), reporting.
SEP 8 1937 CBS broadcasts a two and a half hour George Gershwin Memorial Concert from the Hollywood Bowl starring Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Jose Iturbi, Oscar Levant and others plus the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hall Johnson Choir beginning at 12:30 a.m. in the East.
SEP 8 1939 In a rare departure from the norm, the management of KJR/Seattle and KGA/Spokane, both 5.000 watt facilities, refuse the opportunity to elevate to 50,000 watts, citing the expense to buy and operate the new equipment.
SEP 8 1939 RKO releases the first of its 18 one reel shorts based on Information Please. (See Information Please on this site.)
SEP 8 1940 Lux Radio Theater opens its season on CBS with Manhattan Melodrama featuring William Powell, Myrna Loy and Don Ameche and announces plans for three name stars on every show. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! on this site.)
SEP 8 1941 Adolescent sitcom That Brewster Boy begins a four year, multi-network run on NBC.
SEP 8 1942 Former Kay Kyser band singer Ginny Simms begins successful three year run on NBC with a program incorporating talented Armed Forces personnel.
SEP 8 1942 Agent Tom Kennedy sues Red Skelton for $120,000, claiming that the comedian signed with the William Morris agency while still under contract to him.
SEP 8 1943 Blue is the first network to break the news of Italy’s surrender at 10:47 a.m. - ten seconds before CBS.
SEP 8 1943 The four national networks broadcast U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower’s announcement of Italy’s surrender - but the first 20 seconds of his announcement, recorded on a disc at 33 1/3 r.p.m., is played at 78 r.p.m.
SEP 8 1943 All networks and most independent stations carry the hour long Third War Loan kickoff show headlined by President Roosevelt, Bing Crosby, Edgar Bergen, Burns & Allen, Jimmy Durante and Dinah Shore.
SEP 8 1944 After a seven year absence, Ed Wynn returns to Network Radio as King Bubbles in the 26 week run of Happy Island on ABC. (See The 1944-45 Season on this site.)
SEP 8 1945 Fifteen representatives of the broadcast industry return from their month long, 12,000 mile mission to European countries.
SEP 8 1945 William Bendix's sitcom The Life of Riley moves from Blue to NBC and begins a string of six Top 50 seasons.
SEP 8 1945 Helen Hayes begins a Saturday night anthology series of original dramas by known playwrights for Textron fabrics on CBS for a reported $10,000 per week.
SEP 8 1946 Don Ameche and Frances Langford debut as The Bickersons on NBC’s Drene Time.
SEP 8 1946 Mutual lists 208 affiliates airing The Shadow and another 85 non-affiliates carrying the program via transcription from syndicator Charles Michelson. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 8 1947 WMCA/New York City and 150 other stations debut Tommy Dorsey’s syndicated disc jockey show two hours a day by transcription.
SEP 8 1949 ABC, CBS and NBC lawyers confer with the FCC seeking a 90 day stay of the Commission’s giveaway show ban to complete their litigation against the ruling.
SEP 8 1949 The Associated Actors & Artists of America union representing 90,000 members supports the American Guild of Variety Artists in its turf war over television with the American Federation of Musicians
SEP 8 1950 Tallulah Bankhead ends her year long,$1.0 Million lawsuit against Procter & Gamble over the shampoo jingle, “I’m Tallulah, The Tube of Prell,” and settles for $5,000. (See Tallulah’s Big Show on this site.)
SEP 9 1926 RCA announces plans to establish the NBC network. First affiliates include company owned WEAF/New York City, WTAM/Cleveland and WRC/Washington, plus WWJ/Detroit, WTIC/Hartford, WDAF/Kansas City, WCSH/Portland, Maine, WJAR/Provi-dence and KSD/St. Louis.
SEP 9 1933 Ed Wynn’s Amalgamated Broadcasting System network announces its charter stations: WBNX, New York City; WPEN, Philadelphia; WCBM, Baltimore; WOL, Washington; WDEL, Wilmington, and WTNJ, Trenton.
SEP 9 1935 WJSV/Washington stays on the air all night to claim a scoop announcing the 5:10 a.m. death of Louisiana Senator Huey Long from an assassin’s bullet.
SEP 9 1935 NBC asks the New York City AFM to reconsider its ruling that every instru-mentalist on Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour be supplemented by a stand-by union musician to be paid $18 for appearing.
SEP 9 1938 The NAB tells members that it is working with radio manufacturers to answer complaints that distributors are ignoring small stations when setting the keys on new “automatic tuning” radios.
SEP 9 1939 WLS/Chicago sells its 800,000th ticket for The National Barn Dance, presented in two Saturday night performances since 1931 in the 1,400 seat Eighth Street Theater.
SEP 9 1941 The NAB Executive Committee endorses ASCAP’s agreement with CBS and NBC that will end the networks' nine month boycott of ASCAP music on September 28th.
SEP 9 1941 Citing coverage needs for national defense, WOAI/San Antonio files for an increase in power from 50,000 to 750,000 watts, joining a similar filing by WHAS/Louisville and a filing for 650,000 watts by Cincinnati’s WLW.
SEP 9 1942 Amending its 1941 request for 650,000 watts, WLW/Cincinnati asks the FCC for a daytime power of 500,000 watts.
SEP 9 1942 The War Department credits the radio industry’s two week voluntary spot campaign promoting the use of V-Mail to have increased usage of the new photo-microfilm mail service to overseas servicemen and women by 100%.
SEP 9 1942 The University of Indiana Journalism School releases a study claiming that newscast comprehension peaks when read at 175 words per minute..
SEP 9 1944 Rudy Vallee, returned from a season’s absence for Coast Guard service, begins a two season run on NBC’s Drene Show.
SEP 9 1945 The prestigious Theater Guild On The Air, (aka The U.S. Steel Hour), begins its four season run on ABC with a weekly production/talent budget of $15,000.
SEP 9 1945 The Shadow begins its 15th year on Mutual with 234 stations carrying the show for regional sponsors, Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, (Blue Coal), Grove Laboratories and Carey Salt. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 9 1946 The NAB goes on record against the FCC’s policy to consider local market economic conditions when granting new station licenses.
SEP 9 1946 Mutual reports 207 stations carry Fulton Lewis, Jr.’s daily news commentary for local (co-op) sponsors.
SEP 9 1946 Critics hail ABC’s adaptation of John Hersey’s Hiroshima told in half-hour segments over four nights with a cast of leading radio actors headed by Everett Sloane.
SEP 9 1949 CBS cancels its sustaining giveaway shows Winner Take All and Beat The Clock after repeated failures to interest prospective sponsors.
SEP 9 1951 Rev. James McClain, formerly known as Jimmy McClain, star of NBC’s Dr. I.Q. from 1942 to 1946, begins a weekly series of sermons on the Texas State Network. (See Dr. I.Q. on this site.)
SEP 10 1933 Jimmy Durante wins his fight with MGM to appear on radio and joins Ruth Etting as substitutes for Eddie Cantor on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour while Cantor finishes filming Roman Scandals.
SEP 10 1934 NBC outlaws four dozen words used in medicinal ads including belching, belly, bloated, diarrhea, gas, infection, nausea, pimple, pregnancy, scratching, sour and stomach.
SEP 10 1934 The FTC reports that only five of 593 stations failed to respond to its request for commercial scripts in the hunt for illegal or misleading copy.
SEP 10 1934 The U.S. Lawn Tennis Association demands that NBC withdraw tennis champion Ellsworth Vines from its Forest Hills tournament announcing crew because of a magazine article he wrote critical of the group.
SEP 1935 Mutual enters its second year of operation with $1.0 Million already on its books for the 1935-35 season.
SEP 10 1935 Immediately after Governor Edward Johnson of Colorado proclaimed Traffic Safety Month on KFEL/Denver he was handed a bulletin that his nephew had been killed in an auto accident.
SEP 10 1936 NBC dispels reports that it plans to form two separate companies to operate its Red and Blue networks.
SEP 10 1937 New York City newspapers Times, Herald-Tribune and World-Telegram refuse advertising for the book “exposing” radio commercials, Poisons, Potions & Profits, subtitled, An Antidote To Radio Advertising.
SEP 10 1941 The newly created U.S. Defense Supply Board deems commercial broad-casting an essential industry for obtaining materials to maintain and repair facilities.
SEP 10 1942 Mutual announces a new wartime format that includes hourly newscasts from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, delivered by 13 different newscasters and commentators.
SEP 10 1942 The Office of War Information orders all government agencies to channel their complete network or local radio program plans through the OWI’s Radio Bureau.
SEP 10 1942 After 220 broadcasts over eight years, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music is forced off the air by the Cincinnati local of the AFM. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 10 1943 A quarrel with Fanny Brice over writer-director Phil Rapp’s on-air credits leads to Rapp leaving NBC’s successful Maxwell House Coffee Time a post he had held since its beginning as Good News in 1937. (See Baby Snooks on this site.)
SEP 10 1944 Allied troops invade Luxembourg and retake powerful Radio Luxembourg after four years and four months of Nazi control.
SEP 10 1944 CBS Sunday night stars of its programs Blondie, Baby Snooks and The Kate Smith Hour begin a series of promotional appearances in each other’s shows.
SEP 10 1945 Don Lee Broadcasting System purchases 160 acres atop Mount Wilson as the new transmitter site for its W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles for a tower that will rise 5,800 feet above sea level with a power of 40,000 watts.
SEP 10 1947 Mutual announces that The Shadow will be made available to affiliates as a co-op program. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 10 1949 Eddie Cantor receives $50,000 to headline three shows a day at Chicago’s 19 day National Television and Electric Living exposition.
SEP 10 1951 NBC openly advertises 15 minute segments of The Big Show for $12,408 per week. (See Tallulah's Big Show on this site.)
SEP 10 1952 ABC is reported following the lead of CBS and NBC by cutting its nighttime rates an average 25%, increasing its daytime rates by 5% and reducing affiliate compen-sation by 15%.
SEP 11 1928 General Electric’s W2XB(TV)/Schenectady presents the first television drama, The Queen’s Messenger.
SEP 11 1933 Irna Phillips weekday serial Today’s Children, (fka Painted Dreams), opens its first run of four years on Blue.
SEP 11 1933 CBS separates news from its publicity department and appoints Paul White as its first News Director in charge of setting up the division.
SEP 11 1936 Mutual adds 33 affiliates as far west as KWK/St. Louis to its basic network of WOR/New York City, WGN/Chicago, CKLW/Detroit and WAAB/Boston.
SEP 11 1937 CBS manages to obtain a speech by Madame Chaing Kai-shek broadcast from a temporary low power station in Hankow, the first voice transmission from China since the Japanese destroyed all radio transmitters and cut all cables..
SEP 11 1939 The major networks enter into voluntary agreement with U.S. government on handling of European war coverage.
SEP 11 1939 NBC issues a new rate card with what agencies call a confusing basic network rate of 7.3% with WLW/Cincinnati and 8.03% without WLW. (See NBC’s Chinese Menu on this site.)
SEP 11 1941 FDR’s “Shoot On Sight” speech about the torpedo attack on the destroyer USS Greer near Iceland and its ensuing battle with a Nazi submarine registers a 67.4 Hooperating and a 72.5 CAB rating.
SEP 11 1944 WIND moves its operations from Gary, Indiana, to Chicago.
SEP 11 1944 Eric Sagerquist, musical conductor for First Nighter since 1930, dies in Chicago at age 45.
SEP 11 1949 Grove Laboratories buys 450 Mutual stations for The Shadow and Blue Coal continues as the program’s sponsor on the East Coast. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 11 1949 Jack McCoy takes over host duties from George Murphy on NBC’s Hollywood Calling but Jack Benny‘s first show of the season on CBS scores a 14.7 Hooperating to the giveaway show‘s 4.0. (See Sunday At Seven on this site.)
SEP 11 1949 Theater Guild On The Air aka U.S. Steel Hour, leaves ABC after four years and begins its final four season run on NBC.
SEP 11 1949 Eddie Cantor replaces Garry Moore as host of NBC’s Take It Or Leave It for one season.
SEP 11 1950 Muzak, Inc., proposes nationwide subscription “narrowcasting” FM network.
SEP 11 1950 Country singer Jimmy Wakely begins a half-hour weekday disc-jockey/ interview show on 300 ABC stations.
SEP 11 1952 Jack Webb’s NBC Radio hit Dragnet debuts on NBC-TV. (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet on this site.)
SEP 12 1932 Bing Crosby turns down an offer from CBS to perform a sustaining show for $250 a week.
SEP 12 1936 Detroit priest Charles Coughlin cuts his weekly lectures to 30 minutes and switches to early Saturday evenings on 31 Mutual stations.
SEP 12 1938 All networks begin intensive coverage of the European crisis after carrying Adolph Hitler’s speech to the massive Nuremberg Nazi rally in which the German dictator demands a settlement with Czechoslovakia over the disputed Sudetenland.
SEP 12 1939 FCC threatens WMCA/New York City with loss of its license for violating The Communications Act of 1934 by intercepting, decoding and broadcasting German and British military messages.
SEP 12 1940 AFRA’s threatened strike against NBC, CBS and Mutual is averted when all parties agree to arbitration.
SEP 12 1940 The International Association of Police Chiefs condemns radio crime dramas as detrimental to morals and asks its members not to cooperate or supply infor-mation to its producers.
SEP 12 1941 With much fanfare, Mutual debuts Ballentine Beer’s Three Ring Time half-hour variety show starring Charles Laughton, Milton Berle, Shirley Ross and Bob Crosby’s orchestra on 82 stations. It moves to Blue three months later.
SEP 12 1941 NBC suspends dance band remotes when the AFM demands that the network exclude the broadcasts from WSMB/New Orleans, deemed “unfair“ by the union. (See Big Band Remotes on this site.)
SEP 12 1943 F. Chase Taylor takes his Colonel Stoopnagle character and cast to Richmond, Virginia, for a special broadcast on WRVA and sells $400,000 in War Bonds to the audience.
SEP 12 1943 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler‘s caustic criticism of Warner Brothers‘ film This Is The Army on Blue prompts the studio to demand an apology and ban all of its actors from appearing on the network..
SEP 12 1944 NBC correspondent Wright Bryan is wounded and captured by German troops in France. He was liberated from a prison camp in Poland in 1945.
SEP 12 1944 A Federal court dismisses the second suit by Warner Brothers Music against American Tobacco - $200,000 for “mishandling” its songs It Had To Be You and Time Waits For No One on Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade.
SEP 12 1945 FCC agrees to extend the Buffalo Broadcasting Company’s license by three months, giving it the chance to sell either WGR or WKBW, keep one of the stations, break its existing contracts and continue operating.
SEP 12 1945 FCC tells returning servicemen that it is unable to reserve FM allocations and urges them to submit applications without delay.
SEP 12 1945 Frank Sinatra, until nine months earlier the star of Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade, begins a two season Wednesday night run on CBS with Songs By Sinatra for P. Lorillard’s Old Gold Cigarettes. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears on this site.)
SEP 12 1945 C.E. Hooper announces the formation of two new divisions providing in-depth listener research for the advertising and broadcasting industries. (See Hooper Was No Easy Target on this site.)
SEP 12 1947 The Continental FM Network produces its first commercial broadcast, Stromberg-Carlson’s Treasury of Music featuring the Rochester Symphony Orchestra for 27 affiliates.
SEP 12 1947 Annual revenues for transcribed program syndicator Fredric Ziv are reported at $10.4 Million. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication on this site.I
SEP 12 1948 Television version of Meet The Press, a Mutual radio feature since 1945, debuts on seven NBC-TV affiliates.
SEP 12 1951 General Foods signs Roy Rogers & Dale Evans to a three year exclusive radio and television contract for programs on NBC.
SEP 12 1953 NBC’s National Home & Farm Hour, the network’s first program to originate from Chicago in 1928, celebrates it’s 25th anniversary on the air.
SEP 13 1931 Eddie Cantor, 39, debuts on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour and becomes Network Radios first “superstar.”
SEP 13 1932 Bandleader Ben Bernie, 41, begins his highly rated NBC series for Pabst Beer and an eleven year Network Radio career. (See Tuesday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 13 1937 Irna Phillips’ The Road of Life begins its 17 season run on NBC. The weekday serial is heard concurrently on CBS for six years before moving to CBS exclusively in 1954 for its final five seasons.
SEP 13 1937 Off the air for a year, Gertrude Berg’s serial, The Goldbergs, returns to NBC’s weekday schedule.
SEP 13 1937 Chicago stations assist the city’s schools by broadcasting classes when a polio epidemic closes the schools for two weeks.
SEP 13 1938 Network newsrooms go on 24-hour duty for complete coverage of the European crisis.
SEP 13 1939 FCC rescinds its requirement that stations must log the time and title of every phonograph record played.
SEP 13 1940 Dave Garroway, 27, a KDKA/Pittsburgh announcer for two years, joins the staff of NBC’s WMAQ/Chicago.
SEP 13 1940 Earle C. Anthony, whose KFI/Los Angeles was the first station to sign an ASCAP contract in 1923, signs with BMI to play its music, (and public domain music), exclusively on KFI and co-owned KECA beginning in November.
SEP 13 1940 Broadcast Music Inc. gets control of 4,000 Latin American songs previously controlled by ASCAP.
SEP 13 1941 Brown & Williamson Tobacco assembles a split network of 14 NBC and Blue stations for the 30 minute Renfro Valley Barn Dance originating from a barn in Renfro Valley, Kentucky.
SEP 13 1942 Radio Readers Digest opens five year series of magazine based stories on CBS.
SEP 13 1943 U.S. Housing Commissioner Nathan Straus, Jr., buys WMCA/New York City from Edward Noble for $1.25 Million, clearing the path for Noble to buy the Blue Network and its New York City flagship, WJZ.
SEP 13 1943 Lady Esther Cosmetics fires its ad agency, Pedlar & Ryan, after five years despite the huge success of its Screen Guild Players program on CBS. (See Acts of Charity on this site.)
SEP 13 1944 Jimmy Durante, Gene Kelly. Olivia DeHaviland and George Coulouris headline the special CBS program Get Out The Vote, to encourage registrations for the coming Presidential election.
SEP 13 1945 An unauthorized nationwide engineers strike at all NBC and ABC owned stations ends after 26½ hours.
SEP 13 1946 CBS successfully demonstrates its color television system in ultra-high frequencies to the FCC and press.
SEP 13 1946 George Washington Hill, President of American Tobacco and one of radio’s foremost advertisers, dies of a heart attack while vacationing in Canada at age 61. (See The Lucky Strike Sweepstakes on this site.)
SEP 13 1947 The Philadelphia Inquirer’s WFIL-TV goes on the air with the Philadelphia Eagles vs. New York Giants football game.
SEP 13 1947 RCA demonstrates its new Kinescope recording system by showing film of the Mineola, Long Island Fair on WNBT(TV)/New York City only 20 minutes after it was shot.
SEP 13 1947 RCA’s David Sarnoff calls Zenith’s Phonevision system, “…wholly impractical to expect people to pay to receive television programs.”
SEP 13 1949 A U.S. District Court in Chicago grants a temporary federal injunction against the FCC’s “anti-giveaway “ruling. (See Stop The Music! on this site.)
SEP 13 1950 Bristol-Myers cancels Break The Bank on NBC, but continues the video version of the show on NBC-TV.
SEP 13 1950 ABC-TV debuts Don McNeill’s TV Club from Chicago starring the longtime Breakfast Club host.
SEP 14 1934 WAZL/Hazleton, Pennsylvania becomes the only outlet for news in the area as 20,000 union members go on a general strike in sympathy to the striking United Textile Workers.
SEP 14 1935 Paramount Pictures takes over NBC’s Lucky Strike Hit Parade for the Hollywood premiere of its Big Broadcast of 1936 hosted by Jack Oakie with Joe Penner, Jack Haley, Ethel Merman, Charlie Ruggles and Bonnie Baker.
SEP 14 1936 Broadway talent agents tell Variety that Major Edward Bowes is paying them a five dollar bounty for every “amateur” they produce who can qualify for his Original Amateur Hour with “…a good story to tell about themselves.” (See Major Bowes' Original Money Machine on this site.)
SEP 14 1936 Lillian Lauferty’s soap opera Big Sister begins its 16 season run on CBS.
SEP 14 1936 Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial John’s Other Wife begins a six year multi-network run on NBC.
SEP 14 1936 WWJ/Detroit dedicates its new four story headquarters connected by tunnel to the co-owned Detroit News building.
SEP 14 1936 Lux Radio Theater pays tribute to MGM’s Vice President of Production, Irving Thalberg, who died that morning from pneumonia at age 37. (See Lux,,, Presents Hollywood! on this site.)
SEP 14 1938 FCC examiners approve General Electric’s application to build experimental television transmitters in Schenectady and Albany, New York, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
SEP 14 1939 WMCA/New York City flatly denies FCC charges that it intercepted, then decoded and broadcast secret German and British military messages as skeptics ask what kind of codes are so easy that a radio station can break them.
SEP14 1942 After three seasons on CBS, five on NBC and one on Mutual, General Mills moves its kids’ serial Jack Armstrong to Blue where it remains for the next nine seasons.
SEP 14 1942 Blue newsman Morgan Beatty replaces replaces John W. Vandercook on NBC’s News of The World. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 14 1942 FCC discontinues issuing new, renewed or modified amateur (ham) radio licenses, citing administrative problems due to the war.
SEP 14 1944 Many East Coast stations, including New York’s WEAF, WHN, WINS, WOR and WOV, lose power for up to five hours as a Category Two hurricane strikes the area causing $25.0 Million in property damage. WPRO/Providence, WNBH/New Bedford, Massachusetts and WSAP/Portsmouth, Virginia, each suffer towers destroyed by the storm.
SEP 14 1945 FCC concludes a whirlwind week of granting 53 licenses in the new 88.1 to 107.9 megacycle band to existing FM stations and construction permits.
SEP 14 1945 Kate Smith enjoys a 20% ratings gain with a return to the CBS Friday night schedule and a new all-music format determined by Billboard’s popularity charts. (See Kate’s Great Song on this site.)
SEP 14 1947 NBC announces a ban on all radio crime shows before 9:30 p.m.
SEP 14 1947 NBC reveals to its affiliates’ that the network’s total investment in television since its first involvement amounts to $22.0 Million.
SEP 14 1947 Garry Moore takes over from Phil Baker as host of NBC’s Take It Or Leave It.
SEP 14 1948 Lever Brothers cancels Pepsodent Toothpaste’s ten year association with Bob Hope and installs Swan Soap as Hope’s sponsor for two seasons.
SEP 14 1949 CBS joins NBC and announces that it doesn’t need or want any more radio network affiliates.
SEP 14 1951 Western anthology Death Valley Days completes its 21st and final season spanning three networks.
SEP 14 1952 NBC cancels Tales of The Texas Rangers after a two year run.
SEP 14 1953 Sportscaster Bill Stern leaves NBC after 16 years to join ABC. (See Bill Stern on this site.)
SEP 14 1953 Drug manufacturer Plough, Inc., buys WJJD/Chicago from Marshall Field for $900,000.
SEP 15 1932 CBS lifts its ban against quoting prices in commercials.
SEP 15 1933 Ed Wynn and his partners establish WBNX/New York as the flagship of their new Amalgamated Broadcasting System linking it with stations in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and Washington.
SEP 15 1933 WSM/Nashville, WCKY/Covington-Cincinnati and WHAS/Louisville form the short lived Center of Population Network.
SEP 15 1934 The Gibson Family, an original musical comedy, debuts on NBC for its very expensive 39 week run, finishing 36th in the annual rankings. (See The 1934-35 Season on this site.)
SEP 15 1936 RCA files denials with the New York Supreme Court to Philco’s charges of industrial espionage.
SEP 15 1938 The 23 station Texas State Network, affiliated with Mutual, opens with a celebratory broadcast starring Bob Hope and Gene Autry.
SEP 15 1939 The NAB, establishes a fund of $1.5 Million, to form Broadcast Music Inc., (BMI), as a music licensing alternative to ASCAP.
SEP 1939 AFM President Joe Weber reinforces a requirement that all sustaining band remotes carry a closing credit that the broadcasts are, “…through the courtesy of the American Federation of Musicians.” (See Big Band Remotes on this site.)
SEP 15 1939 A second broadcasting trade association, the National Independent Broadcasters, is formed by stations not owned or operated by a network..
SEP 15 1939 CBS raises its network rates by an average 7.5%. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure! on this site.)
SEP 15 1939 CBS, Mutual and NBC carry Colonel Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist address, America And The European War, from Washington at 10:45 p.m.
SEP 15 1941 WLW/Cincinnati feeds its coverage of the massive two-week U.S. Army war games in Louisiana to an 18 station independent network in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.
SEP 15 1941 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler complains to a U.S. Senate committee investigating unfairness and bias in radio that CBS had censored his broadcasts.
SEP 15 1941 Lady Esther Cosmetics drops its long running Monday night Lady Esther Serenade on CBS for Orson Welles’ “literary vaudeville” series that lasts only four months when Freddy Martin’s orchestra resumes the Serenade.
SEP 15 1942 Don McNeill and his Chicago based Breakfast Club cast begin a week of remote broadcasts on Blue from Montreal, Ottawa, Providence, New Haven and Pittsburgh.
SEP 15 1942 Major League Baseball votes to donate Gillette’s $100,000 paid for World Series broadcast rights to the USO.
SEP 15 1943 Fitch Shampoo begins a second edition of its Sunday evening NBC Fitch Bandwagon on Blue’s Wednesday night schedule with Freddy Martin’s orchestra.
SEP 15 1944 Mutual bans all Sunday afternoon and evening religious programs and limits those remaining to 30 minutes.
SEP 15 1944 Armed Forces Radio Service begins operations from the forward areas of New Guinea.
SEP 15 1944 After two seasons on Blue, Bristol-Myers moves Duffy’s Tavern to NBC where it will remain for the next eight years. (See Duffy Ain’t Here on this site.)
SEP 15 1945 The U.S. drops the year round War Time, (aka Daylight Saving Time), and orders clocks back one hour to Standard Time.
SEP 15 1945 New York Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine resigns after 42 years on the force to become the narrator of ABC’s Gangbusters.
SEP 15 1945 Miami stations provide live network coverage of the Category Four hurri-cane hitting south Florida with sustained winds of 165 mph.
SEP 15 1946 Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS goes on tour for six weeks as the cowboy star makes personal appearances in Chicago, New York and Boston.
SEP 15 1947 Over 3,500 delegates gather at the NAB convention in Atlantic City.
SEP 15 1947 The NAB adopts its Standard Code of Practices governing programming and commercial activities for its radio station members effective February 1, 1948.
SEP 15 1948 AFM President James Petrillo offers to negotiate an end to the union’s eight month recording ban to avoid threatened court action. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 15 1948 FCC refuses to reconsider using 44 to 50 megacycles for FM broadcasting.
SEP 15 1948 WHN/New York City, owned by Lowes, Inc., adopts the call sign WMGM with a marathon show from Hollywood starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Jane Powell and dozens of other film personalities plus the MGM studio orchestra and chorus.
SEP 15 1948 The country’s only television stations with three network affiliations are identified as WNAC-TV/Boston, (ABC, CBS & DuMont), and WTMJ-TV/Milwaukee, (ABC,CBS & NBC).
SEP 15 1950 Art Linkletter in Los Angeles and Ben Alexander in San Francisco co-host a television variety show seen on the CBS and NBC stations in both cities dedicating the microwave link between the two.
SEP 15 1952 C.E. Hooper announces the October launch of its television ratings service in 40 of the 63 cities with stations.
SEP 16 1932 NBC follows CBS and allows price advertising in commercials when delivered “...in good taste.”
SEP 16 1934 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler begins his 16 year multi-network career.
SEP 16 1935 WPTF/Raleigh, North Carolina, and its insurance company sue the maker of the station’s steel transmitter tower that collapsed during a June storm for $5,140 in alleged damages.
SEP 16 1937 FCC makes public the irregularities of operation it cited to remove Brooklyn stations WARD and WLTH from the air and awarding their shares of 1400 k.c. to WBBC and WVFW.
SEP 16 1938 CBS owned KNX/Los Angeles elevates to 50,000 watts both day and night. Its new transmitter loses power for 30 minutes three nights later during the middle of Lux Radio Theater.
SEP 16 1940 The NAB Code committee warns stations carrying Father Charles Coughlin’s weekly speeches to carefully monitor their content and be aware that the industry group may ban them when the political season concludes.
SEP 16 1940 ASCAP announces that it has signed new contracts with 120 independent stations with no network affiliation.
SEP 16 1940 Blue begins a Monday through Saturday night series of five minute news-casts with John B. Kennedy at 9:30 p.m.
SEP 16 1940 The Don Lee Network’s W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles leaves the air for 90 days as it installs its new transmitter atop Mount Wilson overlooking Hollywood.
SEP 16 1941 Rural comic Bob Burns starts six year multi-network run as The Arkansas Traveler after five seasons as the comic sidekick to Bing Crosby on Kraft Music Hall.
SEP 16 1941 FCC approves commercial television station construction permits for Philco’s WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia, Earle C. Anthony’s KFI-TV/Los Angeles and the Milwaukee Journal’s WTMJ-TV/Milwaukee.
SEP 16 1942 Haven MacQuarrie, host of NBC’s Noah Webster Says, sues MGM for $500,000, claiming that its movie, Married Bachelor, humiliated him and caused the cancellation of his former program, The Marriage Club.
SEP 16 1945 The short lived Associated Broadcasting System Network based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, begins operations without its advertised stations in New York City and Chicago.
SEP 16 1945 Norman Corwin produces the 90 minute Stars In The Afternoon from New York’s Carnegie Hall hosted by The Aldrich Family and featuring CBS East Coast stars Phil Baker, Bob Hawk, Jack Smith, Helen Hayes, Edward R. Murrow, Patrice Munsel and a 75 piece orchestra to promote the network's new season of programs.
SEP 16 1945 Noted Irish tenor and early radio star John McCormack dies at home in Ireland at 61.
SEP 16 1946 A proposed radio network, the North American Broadcasting Service, is incorporated in Las Vegas with $100,000 in capitalization and its founders predicting three thousand, (3,000), affiliates for its projected 16 hours of daily programming.
SEP 16 1946 CBS increases its inventory of co-op programs, offering its affiliates three weekday news commentaries, a nightly Red Barber sports report, a five-minute Story of The Day feature and the Tuesday and Friday editions of House Party with Art Linkletter. (See A John Guedel Production on this site.)
Unless otherwise noted all times are Eastern Time Zone
For current dollar equivalents consult: www.usinflationcalculator.com
SEP 1 1932 Powerful KSL/Salt Lake City leaves NBC to affiliate with CBS.
SEP 1 1935 NBC’s WMAQ/Chicago increases its power to 50,000 watts giving the city five maximum power stations.
SEP 1 1936 CBS takes control of KNX/Los Angeles.
SEP 1 1936 GOP Presidential candidate Alf Landon recommends lengthening radio station license periods from six months to five years.
SEP 1 1936 NBC takes over management of Westinghouse owned KYW/Philadelphia from the Levy brothers, owners of WCAU in that city.
SEP 1 1936 Indicative of Hollywood’s increased radio production, ad agency J. Walter Thompson increases its Los Angeles staff from two to 25 employees.
SEP 1 1936 NBC commentator John B. Kennedy tells a San Francisco convention of RCA dealers that practical television is still five to ten years away.
SEP 1 1936 Rudy Vallee punches a patron whom he suspected of throwing a bottle at him on the bandstand at the Canadian National Exposition in Toronto. (See Thursday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 1 1937 CBS, billing itself as “The World’s Largest Network” issues a new rate card, charging $21,770 for an evening hour on its full chain of 104 stations. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure! on this site.)
SEP 1 1937 Chicago based Lady Esther Cosmetics, a virtually unknown brand in 1931 turned radio success story with its sponsorship of Wayne King’s orchestra, fires its ad agency Stack-Gobel for competitor Pedlar & Ryan. (See The Waltz King on this site.)
SEP 1 1938 WQXR/New York City broadcasts a tape recording of the first act of Carmen recorded in London with the Millerfilm process, common in Europe but new to the United States..
SEP 1 1939 Germany’s invasion of Poland receives fulltime coverage by the network news bureaus.
SEP 1 1939 Tennessee Valley Authority lawyer James J. Fly succeeds Frank R. McNinch as Chairman of the FCC.
SEP 1 1939 Ford presents six live, non-broadcast stage performances of The Green Hornet for ten days at its Michigan State Fair pavilion.
SEP 1 1941 NBC enforces its ban on songs with a propaganda message for any cause on its sustaining programs and refuses to clear the title or lyrics of V For Victory.
SEP 1 1941 WOR/New York City refuses to broadcast one-minute commercials after 6:00 p.m.
SEP 1 1941 Congressman Luther Daniel of Alabama begins a 15 minute weekday afternoon human interest commentary on WWDC/Washington for a reported $50 dollars a week.
SEP 1 1941 Philco begins operating W3XE(TV)/Philadelphia 15 hours a week on a 60 day commercial license.
SEP 1 1942 NBC drops its identification as The Red Network.
SEP 1 1944 General Foods moves The Aldrich Family - a Top Ten Show on NBC’s Thursday schedule for four seasons - to CBS on Friday nights where it drops to 18th in the Annual Top 50. (See The Aldrich Family on this site.)
SEP 1 1944 WJR/Detroit bans commercials in the middle of its local newscasts.
SEP 1 1945 Technical and censorship problems are blamed for the 90 minute delay of the network pool broadcast of the Japanese surrender ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri narrated by NBC’s Merrill Mueller and Webley Edwards of CBS. (See V-J Day on this site.)
SEP 1 1945 President Truman’s address during the Japanese surrender ceremonies registers a 46.8 Hooperating.
SEP 1 1946 CBS releases a survey indicating that 54% of women at home in the daytime listen to soap operas for an average of 90 minutes daily.
SEP 1 1947 Mutual joins ABC, CBS and NBC subscribing to the Nielsen Index Rating service, providing A.C. Nielsen with a combined annual network revenue of over $125,000.
SEP 1 1947 Producers begin writing children out of New York City radio shows as a new law prohibits kids under 16 from appearing without written consent by their guardians followed by a certificate of approval from the Mayor’s office.
SEP 1 1947 DuMont sets new rates for its WABD(TV)/New York City with 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. quoted at $80 per minute and $800 per hour. (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions on this site.)
SEP 1 1947 Gillette pays $100,000 to Major League Baseball for television rights to the 1947 World Series.
SEP 1 1948 The CBS raid on NBC’s comedy stars begins as CBS buys Amos & Andy from Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll for $2.5 Million over three years. The comedians two are taxed at the 25% capital gains rate instead of the 80% income tax bracket. The plan then has CBS leasing Gosden & Correll’s services to Lever Brothers as technical advisors for “a minimal salary”.
SEP 1 1948 MCA receives a 10% commission in the $2.5 Million sale of Amos & Andy to CBS.
SEP 1 1948 The Chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the FCC describes the Commission’s Scott Decision granting time to atheist and other groups, “unfortunate,” and calls for a revision.
SEP 1 1949 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer begins the syndication of four radio series based on its movie properties The Hardy Family, Dr. Kildare, Maisie and Crime Does Not Pay plus the all-star MGM Theater of The Air. (See The 1949-50 Season on this site.)
SEP 1 1950 The Adventures of The Thin Man leaves the air after a nine year, multi-network run. (See The Curse of Dashiell Hammett on this site.)
SEP 1 1950 News analyst Quincy Howe, 50, leaves Network Radio after 12 years to teach journalism at the University of Illinois.
SEP 1 1950 AT&T opens its relay system providing a live television link between New York and Chicago.
SEP 1 1950 By a split vote of 4-2-1, the FCC issues its color television report favoring the CBS mechanical system but gives set manufacturers a month to respond before making the decision final.
SEP 1 1952 ABC, CBS and NBC cut nighttime radio rates by 25%.
SEP 1 1953 NBC Radio announces “revamping” its schedule with 28 new programs including Six Shooter starring James Stewart and Frank Sinatra as Rocky Fortune.
SEP 1 1953 CBS Radio tells affiliates of a “six-figure“ promotional campaign for its fall schedule including new shows 21st Precinct, Crime Classics and The Johnny Mercer Show. (See CBS Packages Unwrapped on this site.)
SEP 2 1928 Jack Benny and wife Mary Livingston make their film debut in Warner Brothers’ ten-minute short, Bright Moments.
SEP 2 1931 CBS begins a six month run of Fifteen Minutes With Bing Crosby six nights week.
SEP 2 1932 Networks begin to encourage audiences with applause and laughter to its major variety shows at the insistence of their stars.
SEP 2 1934 Early network singing star Russ Columbo dies in a freak shooting accident at age 26.
SEP 2 1935 WQAM/Miami becomes a key emergency station as the Labor Day Category 5 hurricane strikes southeast Florida killing more than 400, mostly in the Florida Keys.
SEP 2 1936 Blue begins nine weeks of broadcasting results of the Literary Digest's Presidential Poll in three 15 minute programs per week hosted by commentator John B. Kennedy.
SEP 2 1940 Stromberg-Carlson becomes the first radio set manufacturer to advertise its FM receivers
SEP 2 1941 NBC announces the completion of its Pan American Network with 92 stations agreeing to rebroadcast programs transmitted by NBC’s international shortwave stations, WRCA and WNBI.
SEP 2 1941 Popular New York City women’s show host Mary Margaret McBride moves her weekday program from WABC to WEAF with a special episode at the Vanderbilt Theater.
SEP 2 1941 Campana’s First Nighter returns for its 12th season on Network Radio, its fourth straight on CBS. (See Friday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 2 1942 One Man’s Family and I Love A Mystery actor Walter Patterson, 31, is found dead in his car, an apparent suicide.
SEP 2 1943 FCC denies the CIO’s petition to intervene in hearings regarding RCA’s sale of the Blue Network to Edward Noble.
SEP 2 1944 Veteran radio entertainer Ed McConnell, 62, begins his nine year run with Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Gang on NBC’s Saturday morning schedule. He also hosted an NBC-TV version of the show from 1950 to 1955.
SEP 2 1945 The half-hour AFRS Sunday night salute to the Armed Forces with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra and President Truman’s Victory speech to the Military on most stations scores scores a 31.3 Hooperating.
SEP 2 1946 ABC’s Breakfast Club becomes totally sold out and the highest gross billing hour in Network Radio at $4.44 Million annually.
SEP 2 1946 The political action committee of the CIO instructs its unions’ members to complain to the FCC if local stations refuse to grant free time for its transcribed messages.
SEP 2 1946 Mutual’s weeknight news commentaries of Fulton Lewis, Jr., reaches a record 207 stations buying the co-op program for local sale.
SEP 2 1946 NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City completes its Labor Day weekend of sports coverage with the National Tennis Championships from Forest Hills.
SEP 2 1949 AFM boss James Petrillo demands that his members who are also members of the American Guild of Variety Artists cancel their AGVA memberships “immediately”. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 2 1950 Frank Graham, 35 year old lead of Jeff Regan, Investigator and producer-star of Satan’s Waitin’ - both CBS shows - is found dead in his car, an obvious suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.
SEP 2 1950 Singer Snooky Lanson begins a five year contract to appear on both the weekly radio and television versions of Your Hit Parade.
SEP 2 1953 ABC Radio offers its 363 affiliates a record 18 different co-op programs totaling over 20 hours per week for local sale.
SEP 3 1929 Rudy Vallee’s weekly variety show for Standard Brands, (originally The Fleischmann Yeast Hour), begins its ten year Thursday night run on NBC
SEP 3 1934 WHAM/Rochester, New York, announces that it will no longer accept paid political advertising.
SEP 3 1935 Scripps-Howard newspapers enters broadcasting with an application to purchase WFBE/Cincinnati and change its call sign to WCPO, representing The Cincinnati Post.
SEP 3 1935 NBC sells out all periods in its prime time schedule except one half hour on Tuesday night and another 30 minute period on Sunday night. CBS and Blue also report near sell-out status.
SEP 3 1935 CBS and NBC charge that an ANPA brochure minimizing the value and effec-tiveness of broadcast advertising contains errors and misrepresentations.
SEP 3 1936 CBS sends newsman H.V. Kaltenborn, 58, to Spain to provide shortwave dispatches from the Spanish Civil War.
SEP 3 1936 Maxwell House Showboat’s afternoon dress rehearsal and two evening broad-casts draw a record breaking total audience of 32,000 at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Exposition.
SEP 3 1939 The networks carry shortwave reports at 6:14 a.m. that Great Britain and France have declared war on Nazi Germany.
SEP 3 1939 WJR/Detroit is accused by Michigan Governor Luren Dickinson of censoring his planned speech denouncing the evils of modern, cheek-to-cheek dancing.
SEP 3 1939 The Chase & Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy is broadcast from Honolulu where Bergen is vacationing.
SEP 3 1939 The networks report at 11:13 p.m. that German torpedoes have sunk the first British ship in World War II - the civilian cruise ship Athenia 250 miles west of Ireland - killing 117 persons.
SEP 3 1941 Lowell Thomas moderates a two hour retrospective on Blue reviewing Network Radio’s part in covering the two years of war as seen by the reporters and commentators on NBC’s two networks.
SEP 3 1943 Bob Hope, accompanied by Frances Langford, Tony Romano and Jack Pepper, returns from an eleven week, 20,000 mile USO tour to Great Britain, North Africa and Sicily, performing over 160 camp and hospital shows.
SEP 3 1945 FCC modifies its 1942 order requiring stations to cut transmitter power by one decibel, making the mandate “optional”.
SEP 3 1945 Comedienne Joan Davis opens Joanie’s Tea Room on CBS for Lever Brothers‘ Swan Soap with a highly publicized Million Dollar contract but her first show draws a poor 8.3 Hooperating.
SEP 3 1946 Goodman Ace takes office as the CBS Supervisor of Comedy & Variety Pro-grams. (See Easy Aces on this site.)
SEP 3 1946 University of Minnesota station KUOM begins full days of broadcasting school lessons when a severe polio epidemic closes schools and keeps children at home.
SEP 3 1946 Mel Blanc begins his one season run of The Mel Blanc Show. (See Mel Blanc on this site.)
SEP 3 1948 A New Jersey Appeals Court reverses the FCC’s Port Huron Decision of January, 1948, and rules that stations can be held responsible for libelous statements made in political speeches.
SEP 3 1948 NBC begins the three Labor Day holiday with Tex McCrary’s 15 minute docu-mentary, Death On A Weekend, warning of the dangers of careless and reckless driving.
SEP 3 1951 President Truman’s Labor Day appeal for the U.S. Defense Bonds Drive is broadcast by ABC, CBS, Liberty, Mutual, NBC and most independent stations.
SEP 3 1952 NBC Radio follows CBS’s lead by cutting nighttime rates by 23 to 30%, increasing daytime rates by 11% and reducing affiliates’ compensation by 14%.
SEP 3 1952 Bishop Fulton J. Sheen announces that he’ll leave NBC Radio’s Catholic Hour after 22 years to focus on his popular Life Is Worth Living television series on the DuMont network.
SEP 3 1952 Radio version of CBS-TV’s What’s My Line? moves from NBC after three months to CBS for a one season run while the television show remains a Sunday night fixture on CBS-TV until 1967.
SEP 3 1953 ABC abandons its attempts to buy 50,000 watt KMPC/Los Angeles from its owners headed by Gene Autry.
SEP 4 1935 KNX/Los Angeles begins broadcasts from its new $250,000 studios on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard.
SEP 4 1935 WCKY/Covington, Kentucky-Cincinnati approves plans for a new 600 foot transmitter tower - the tallest wooden structure in the United States.
SEP 4 1936 Gordon Baking Co. renews its 52 week sponsorship of The Lone Ranger on WXYZ/Detroit, WOR/New York City, WGN/Chicago and WSPD/Toledo. (See The Lone Ranger on this site.)
SEP 4 1936 Barbara Luddy succeeds Betty Lou Gerson as the female lead of First Nighter, a role she will hold for the next 13 years. (See Friday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 4 1938 NBC’s Fitch Bandwagon begins the first of seven seasons showcasing popular dance bands on Sunday evenings.
SEP 4 1939 Unitarian minister Walton Cole protests to the FCC after his speech denouncing the political talks of Father Charles Coughlin is cancelled by WJR/Detroit, anchor station for Coughlin’s independent weekly network of 60 stations.
SEP 4 1940 Summer substitution hit Quiz Kids begins its twelve season multi-network run on Blue. (See The Quiz Kids on this site.)
SEP 4 1941 President Roosevelt's speech regarding the two hour sea battle between the U.S. Destroyer Greer and a German U boat registers a 72.5 CAB rating.
SEP 4 1942 AFM boss James Petrillo makes the recording ban complete by reversing his earlier decision and prohibiting his members from making commercial transcriptions. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 4 1942 The AFM attempts to forbid GE’s non-commercial shortwave staton KGEI/San Francisco from broadcasting transcribed music to U.S. forces in the Pacific.
SEP 4 1942 NBC reports 16 sponsors of 21 programs take advantage of the network’s 10% discount for buying the full network of 125 stations.
SEP 4 1943 Distiller Schenley begins its experimental Saturday morning entertainment show Dubonnet Date with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra on Blue. The program is cancelled after 13 weeks.
SEP 4 1944 A Labor Day crowd of 60,000 turns out for Midwest Farmer Day in Yankton, South Dakota, and an appearance by Brace Beemer as The Lone Ranger. (See The Lone Ranger on this site.)
SEP 4 1946 FCC updates its December, 1945, FM allocation plan providing for more than 1,600 stations.
SEP 4 1946 NBC presents The City of Decision, a documentary written and narrated by Tex McCrary who witnessed the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima a year earlier.
SEP 4 1947 Marshall Field’s WJJD/Chicago is elevated to 50,000 watts.
SEP 4 1949 The talent raid on NBC continues as sponsor Philip Morris moves Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program to CBS.
SEP 4 1951 San Francisco’s Japan Peace Treaty Conference becomes the first live coast-to-coast television broadcast. President Truman’s opening address is seen on the four networks and reaches an estimated 14,670,000 viewers.
SEP 4 1951 Connecticut Senator William Benton formally proposes establishing The National Citizens Advisory Board For Radio & Television attached to the FCC which broadcasters immediately assail as an attempt of political censorship.
SEP 4 1952 AFM chief Petrillo issues a ban prohibiting band leaders from recording promotional voice tracks for play on local disc jockey programs. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 5 1932 Independent station KNX/Los Angeles editorializes that RCA is attempting a monopoly in broadcasting between its NBC and transmitter business.
SEP 5 1936 The struggling Affiliated Broadcasting Company network. fires all employees not essential to network operations.
SEP 5 1937 The Zenith Radio Corp. debuts The Zenith Foundation dramas on Blue without commercials, saying it will instead rely on listeners’ "extrasensory perception". The program was moved to CBS three months later and cancelled after 26 weeks.
SEP 5 1937 With the addition of WEOA/Evansville, Indiana and KDAL/Duluth, Minnesota, CBS grows to 106 affiliates.
SEP 5 1938 Don Becker and Carl Bixby’s daily serial Life Can Be Beautiful begins its 16 season run between NBC and CBS.
SEP 5 1938 The FTC orders the Gordon Baking Co. to stop falsely claiming in its Lone Ranger commercials that each loaf of its Silver Cup Bread contains a 2/3rds of a pint of fresh, whole milk. (See The Lone Ranger on this site.)
SEP 5 1939 Foreign language station WHOM/New York City cancels its morning German Program and replaces it with The Polish Program.
SEP 5 1940 Good News begins its third season on NBC with Fanny Brice, Dick Powell, Mary Martin and Meredith Willson but without the participation of MGM. (See Good News on this site.)
SEP 5 1940 Bing Crosby denies that he would “quit radio” if he were unable to perform ASCAP music on his Kraft Music Hall.
SEP 5 1943 Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge troupe leaves on a month long, 16 city tour to sell bonds for the Third War Loan Drive.
SEP 5 1943 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler apologizes on the air to actress Gene Tierney for saying she smoked cigars, thus ending her 20th Century Fox studio’s year long boycott against NBC and Blue.
SEP 5 1944 CBS ships a series of 19 five-minute transcribed programs by Kate Smith and her manager/announcer Ted Collins to its 146 affiliates promoting the network’s 1944-45 Sunday schedule.
SEP 5 1944 A New York Supreme Court judge dismisses Warner Brothers Music’s $100,000 suit against American Tobacco for “mishandling” its song, Don’t Sweetheart Me, by ranking it too low on Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade.
SEP 5 1944 CBS files applications with the FCC to construct UHF television stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and St. Louis.
SEP 5 1947 The U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee disputes ABC commentator Drew Pearson's charges that Ohio Congressman Robert F. Jones was once a member of the racist Black Legion and approves his appointment to the FCC.
SEP 5 1947 C.E Hooper buys a former orphanage in Norwalk, Connecticut, for its new corporate headquarters. (See Hooper Was No Easy Target on this site.)
SEP 5 1949 NBC’s Voice of Firestone becomes the first regularly scheduled AM-TV simulcast..
SEP 5 1949 American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike Light Up Time with Frank Sinatra takes over the 7:00-7:15 p.m. NBC weeknight strip held for five seasons by Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield Supper Club starring Perry Como.
SEP 5 1950 A U.S. Appeals Court denies the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors the power to censor movies shown on the state’s five television stations.
SEP 5 1950 After a decade of Procter & Gamble sponsorship on NBC, Ralph Edwards moves his Truth Or Consequences to CBS for Philip Morris. (See Truth Or Consequences on this site.)
SEP 5 1950 Jack Armstrong, All American Boy ends 18 years as an afternoon feature and enters prime time on ABC as Armstrong of The SBI (Scientific Bureau of Investigation) but is cancelled after one season.
SEP 5 1950 Dudley LeBlanc, Louisiana based producer of Hadacol tonic, heavily advertised on radio, agrees to Federal Trade Commission demands that the product’s claims to rejuvenate its users be dropped. (See Hadacol on this site.)
SEP 5 1952 NBC-TV’s Today Show displays the Library of Congress copy of the Gutenberg Bible on its 500th birthday from the network’s Washington studios after it posts an insurance premium of $300,000.
SEP 6 1933 Because sound effects men occasionally beat on drums, New York City AFM local 802 demands that they join the musicians’ union.
SEP 6 1935 Jack Benny escapes injury when the yacht in Puget Sound on which he was a guest was destroyed by fire but was beached before its gas tanks exploded.
SEP 6 1936 Gillette launches its Community Sing show starring Milton Berle on CBS following a ten week tryout on ten Yankee Network stations.
SEP 6 1936 With typical fanfare, American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes employs an armored truck service to collect and deliver pop music sales data used to compile its weekly play list for Your Hit Parade. (See The Lucky Strike Sweepstakes on this site.)
SEP 6 1937 Philco adapts the Photocrime magazine feature to a 16 week, 15 minute transcribed radio series on 200 stations and backs the show with a contest offering 2,000 prizes and a total prize value of $50,000.
SEP 6 1937 WEW/St.Louis, operated for eleven years by St. Louis University as a non-commercial station, receives permission to accept advertising.
SEP 6 1937 Cleveland stations WTAM, WGAR, WHK and WJAY all cover the Thompson Trophy Speed Race, highlight of the 1937 National Air Races held in the city.
SEP 6 1938 With the support of Governor Robert LaFollette, the University of Wisconsin, licensee of pioneer daytime educational station WHA/Madison, files a claim with the FCC to take over the facilities of NBC’s 50,000 watt fulltime WMAQ/Chicago.
SEP 6 1939 WNEW/New York City agrees to pay RCA a license fee of $300 per month to play RCA-Victor and Bluebird records.
SEP 6 1939 Decca Records warns WNEW/New York City to stop playing its discs or face legal action.
SEP 6 1940 Writer Floyd Buckley sues NBC, MCA and General Mills for $250,000 claiming the program Beat The Band was stolen from his rejected concept, Stump The Leader, subtitled, Beat The Band.
SEP 6 1940 Crosley’s shortwave station WLWO bans Gaucho Serenade because of the lyric, “…Neath your window in Rio de Janeiro I shall sing my serenade…” Gauchos are cowboys in Brazil, nowhere near Rio.
SEP 6 1942 Lionel Barrymore, 64, debuts as Mayor of The Town on NBC and begins seven year multi-network run best known for its annual dramatizations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
SEP 6 1942 Radio and nightclub singer Dale Evans, 29, makes her singing debut on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy.
SEP 6 1943 WIP/Philadelphia and WOL/Washington stay on the air all night to report news of survivors from the Congressional Limited train wreck between Philadelphia and Wash-ington that killed 79 and injured 117 passengers.
SEP 6 1945 FCC approves the sale of Crosley broadcasting properties to AVCO for $21.0 Million but seeks Congressional power to employ a bidding process, “open to all comers,” in future sales with the Commission acting as the final judge to determine “the best qualified” applicant.
SEP 6 1946 FCC reverses itself and denies KABC/San Antonio’s previously approved increase to 50,000 watts. .
SEP 6 1946 A Grand Rapids, Michigan court declares the defunct Associated Broadcasting System network officially bankrupt with $300,000 in liabilities and $32,500 in assets.
SEP 6 1946 ABC begins live television production in Chicago with a weekly video version of its radio show Stump The Author on WBKB(TV).
SEP 6 1947 In an effort to limit squealing bobby-soxers on Frank Sinatra’s return to Your Hit Parade as co-star with Doris Day, NBC places an minimum age of 18 for all ticket holders to its broadcasts.
SEP 6 1948 NBC drops its long held ban against transcribed programs and eliminates the need for two live broadcasts of shows that are repeated for the West Coast. (See The Late Shift on this site.)
SEP 6 1948 CBS pays $20,000 to its former Program Sales Manager, Robert Mann, for radio rights to his creation, Our Miss Brooks. (See Our Miss Arden on this site.)
SEP 6 1950 Willard Waterman replaces Hal Peary in title role of The Great Gildersleeve. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s) on this site.)
SEP 6 1950 Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club begins daily simulcasts on ABC radio and television.
SEP 6 1950 C.E. Hooper announces its new television rating service covering twelve New York and Ohio cities.
SEP 6 1950 WJZ-TV/New YorkCity introduces the weekday afternoon forerunner to American Bandstand on ABC-TV - a two-hour show hosted by country music star Zeke Manners.
SEP 6 1951 General Tire & Rubber Corp. changes the calls of its newly acquired KFI-TV/Los Angeles to KHJ-TV.
SEP 6 1951 After 16 years on Saturday night, Your Hit Parade moves to Thursday on NBC and begins the first of two seasons featuring Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians. (See Guy Lombardo on this site.
SEP 7 1934 Evangelist Joseph Price representing The Cosmic Science Church of Los Angeles on WNEW/New York City and WICC/Bridgeport, Connecticut, is arrested by Federal authorities for using the mails to defraud.
SEP 7 1936 NBC’s oldest commercial program, The A&P Gypsies, is cancelled after a twelve year run - two on WEAF/New York City and ten on the network.
SEP 7 1939 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reverses a lower court decision and rules NBC harmless for 1935 remarks broadcast by Al Jolson which a hotel considered libelous and was awarded $15,000 damages.
SEP 7 1940 The London Blitz begins and continues for the next 57 days. The German bombing is reported by the networks on a daily basis via shortwave - most memorably by CBS correspondent Edward R. Morrow.
SEP 7 1940 Smilin’ Ed McConnell begins his 18th consecutive season on the air, his ninth for Sherwin-Williams subsidiary, Acme Lead White Paint, with a Saturday morning quarter hour of songs and chatter.
SEP 7 1941 President Roosevelt’s Labor Day speech on all four networks registers a 50.3 Hooperating.
SEP 7 1941 General Electric’s shortwave station KGEI/San Francisco introduces its weekly record show, Musical Mail Bag, directed to servicemen and women in the Pacific. The show is also simulcast on KYA/San Francisco for stateside listeners.
SEP 7 1942 Kay Kyser is named Chairman of The Committee of 25 (leading radio personalities) enlisted by the Office of War Information to maintain morale in local communities.
SEP 7 1942 The OWI asks all stations to begin broadcasting a series of 10 one-minute transcribed announcements per day for six weeks recorded by leading newscasters that explain America’s war effort.
SEP 7 1942 Nearly 20 minutes of Norman Corwin’s final episode of An American In England series on CBS is obliterated by atmospheric conditions interrupting shortwave signals from London.
SEP 7 1943 FCC denies without comment NBC’s request for an additional half hour of evening option time from its affiliates in return for a half hour of morning time.
SEP 7 1943 The National War Labor Board begins hearing testimony from the American Federation of Musicians and the electrical transcription companies concerning the AFM’s 13-month recording ban. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 7 1943 Veteran songwriter and performer Frank Crumit dies of a heart attack at 54. At the time of his death, he and his wife Julia Sanderson were hosts of Saturday night’s Crumit & Sanderson Quiz, (aka Mr. Adam & Eve), on CBS.
SEP 7 1943 Molle Mystery Theater opens as a mystery anthology on CBS for five year run.
SEP 7 1944 Owens-Illinois Glass pays a whopping $18,500 to sponsor Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians in their new Thursday night half hour concerts on Blue at 7:00 p.m. but the opening show receives a meager Hooperating of 2.7.
SEP 7 1945 The fledgling Associated Broadcasting System network holds its first affiliate meeting for 15 stations at its headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
SEP 7 1945 Kay Kyser returns from a month long USO tour of the Pacific and asks American Tobacco for a year’s sabbatical from his Kollege of Musical Knowledge which is refused.
SEP 7 1945 After four seasons on Mutual, Gillette moves its Friday night boxing broadcasts with Don Dunphy & Bill Corum back to Blue.
SEP 7 1946 Billboard cites a C.E. Hooper report showing that twelve of Network Radio’s Top 15 shows originate in Hollywood.
SEP 7 1947 Edgar Bergen revises the variety format of his NBC show to a sitcom tailored to each week’s guest. (See Sunday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 7 1947 Host Phil Baker leaves the comedy quiz Take It Or Leave It after six seasons.
SEP 7 1947 Sponsor Carter Products places its Sunday night Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler with his 15 minute commentaries on both Mutual at 8:30 and ABC at 10:30.
SEP 7 1947 Theater Guild On The Air returns for its third season on ABC at 9:30 p.m. Sunday night, a half-hour earlier than before in an effort to increase ratings.
SEP 7 1950 Pabst Beer submits a winning bid of $125,000 for radio and television rights to the Heavyweight Championship fight between Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles.
SEP 7 1950 ABC-TV, CBS-TV and NBC-TV each pay World Series rights holder Gillette $50,000 for the pooled telecasts of the 1950 games.
SEP 8 1932 Jack Pearl, 38, introduces his Baron Munchausen on NBC’s Lucky Strike Hour, beginning a five year multi-network run. (See The 1932-33 Season on this site.)
SEP 8 1932 Alumni protests force the Eastern Intercollegiate Association to drop its ban on football broadcasts.
SEP 8 1933 FRC lifts its strict limits on the number of 50,000 watt stations allowed, clearing the way for dozens of stations to increase power to the maximum level.
SEP 8 1934 WOR/Newark is first to report the early morning fire aboard the luxury liner S.S. Morro Castle off the New Jersey coast in which 137 passengers and crew members are killed.
SEP 8 1936 Fred Astaire is in Europe and unable to appear on the premiere of his NBC variety hour for Packard automobiles. Jack Benny and Ginger Rogers substitute for him.
SEP 8 1937 New York City stations WJZ, WMCA and WOR share the same broadcast of the New York Giants vs. Eastern College Football All-Stars game with sportscasters Bill Stern, (WJZ), Stan Lomax, (WOR) and Dick Fishell, (WMCA), reporting.
SEP 8 1937 CBS broadcasts a two and a half hour George Gershwin Memorial Concert from the Hollywood Bowl starring Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Jose Iturbi, Oscar Levant and others plus the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hall Johnson Choir beginning at 12:30 a.m. in the East.
SEP 8 1939 In a rare departure from the norm, the management of KJR/Seattle and KGA/Spokane, both 5.000 watt facilities, refuse the opportunity to elevate to 50,000 watts, citing the expense to buy and operate the new equipment.
SEP 8 1939 RKO releases the first of its 18 one reel shorts based on Information Please. (See Information Please on this site.)
SEP 8 1940 Lux Radio Theater opens its season on CBS with Manhattan Melodrama featuring William Powell, Myrna Loy and Don Ameche and announces plans for three name stars on every show. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! on this site.)
SEP 8 1941 Adolescent sitcom That Brewster Boy begins a four year, multi-network run on NBC.
SEP 8 1942 Former Kay Kyser band singer Ginny Simms begins successful three year run on NBC with a program incorporating talented Armed Forces personnel.
SEP 8 1942 Agent Tom Kennedy sues Red Skelton for $120,000, claiming that the comedian signed with the William Morris agency while still under contract to him.
SEP 8 1943 Blue is the first network to break the news of Italy’s surrender at 10:47 a.m. - ten seconds before CBS.
SEP 8 1943 The four national networks broadcast U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower’s announcement of Italy’s surrender - but the first 20 seconds of his announcement, recorded on a disc at 33 1/3 r.p.m., is played at 78 r.p.m.
SEP 8 1943 All networks and most independent stations carry the hour long Third War Loan kickoff show headlined by President Roosevelt, Bing Crosby, Edgar Bergen, Burns & Allen, Jimmy Durante and Dinah Shore.
SEP 8 1944 After a seven year absence, Ed Wynn returns to Network Radio as King Bubbles in the 26 week run of Happy Island on ABC. (See The 1944-45 Season on this site.)
SEP 8 1945 Fifteen representatives of the broadcast industry return from their month long, 12,000 mile mission to European countries.
SEP 8 1945 William Bendix's sitcom The Life of Riley moves from Blue to NBC and begins a string of six Top 50 seasons.
SEP 8 1945 Helen Hayes begins a Saturday night anthology series of original dramas by known playwrights for Textron fabrics on CBS for a reported $10,000 per week.
SEP 8 1946 Don Ameche and Frances Langford debut as The Bickersons on NBC’s Drene Time.
SEP 8 1946 Mutual lists 208 affiliates airing The Shadow and another 85 non-affiliates carrying the program via transcription from syndicator Charles Michelson. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 8 1947 WMCA/New York City and 150 other stations debut Tommy Dorsey’s syndicated disc jockey show two hours a day by transcription.
SEP 8 1949 ABC, CBS and NBC lawyers confer with the FCC seeking a 90 day stay of the Commission’s giveaway show ban to complete their litigation against the ruling.
SEP 8 1949 The Associated Actors & Artists of America union representing 90,000 members supports the American Guild of Variety Artists in its turf war over television with the American Federation of Musicians
SEP 8 1950 Tallulah Bankhead ends her year long,$1.0 Million lawsuit against Procter & Gamble over the shampoo jingle, “I’m Tallulah, The Tube of Prell,” and settles for $5,000. (See Tallulah’s Big Show on this site.)
SEP 9 1926 RCA announces plans to establish the NBC network. First affiliates include company owned WEAF/New York City, WTAM/Cleveland and WRC/Washington, plus WWJ/Detroit, WTIC/Hartford, WDAF/Kansas City, WCSH/Portland, Maine, WJAR/Provi-dence and KSD/St. Louis.
SEP 9 1933 Ed Wynn’s Amalgamated Broadcasting System network announces its charter stations: WBNX, New York City; WPEN, Philadelphia; WCBM, Baltimore; WOL, Washington; WDEL, Wilmington, and WTNJ, Trenton.
SEP 9 1935 WJSV/Washington stays on the air all night to claim a scoop announcing the 5:10 a.m. death of Louisiana Senator Huey Long from an assassin’s bullet.
SEP 9 1935 NBC asks the New York City AFM to reconsider its ruling that every instru-mentalist on Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour be supplemented by a stand-by union musician to be paid $18 for appearing.
SEP 9 1938 The NAB tells members that it is working with radio manufacturers to answer complaints that distributors are ignoring small stations when setting the keys on new “automatic tuning” radios.
SEP 9 1939 WLS/Chicago sells its 800,000th ticket for The National Barn Dance, presented in two Saturday night performances since 1931 in the 1,400 seat Eighth Street Theater.
SEP 9 1941 The NAB Executive Committee endorses ASCAP’s agreement with CBS and NBC that will end the networks' nine month boycott of ASCAP music on September 28th.
SEP 9 1941 Citing coverage needs for national defense, WOAI/San Antonio files for an increase in power from 50,000 to 750,000 watts, joining a similar filing by WHAS/Louisville and a filing for 650,000 watts by Cincinnati’s WLW.
SEP 9 1942 Amending its 1941 request for 650,000 watts, WLW/Cincinnati asks the FCC for a daytime power of 500,000 watts.
SEP 9 1942 The War Department credits the radio industry’s two week voluntary spot campaign promoting the use of V-Mail to have increased usage of the new photo-microfilm mail service to overseas servicemen and women by 100%.
SEP 9 1942 The University of Indiana Journalism School releases a study claiming that newscast comprehension peaks when read at 175 words per minute..
SEP 9 1944 Rudy Vallee, returned from a season’s absence for Coast Guard service, begins a two season run on NBC’s Drene Show.
SEP 9 1945 The prestigious Theater Guild On The Air, (aka The U.S. Steel Hour), begins its four season run on ABC with a weekly production/talent budget of $15,000.
SEP 9 1945 The Shadow begins its 15th year on Mutual with 234 stations carrying the show for regional sponsors, Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, (Blue Coal), Grove Laboratories and Carey Salt. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 9 1946 The NAB goes on record against the FCC’s policy to consider local market economic conditions when granting new station licenses.
SEP 9 1946 Mutual reports 207 stations carry Fulton Lewis, Jr.’s daily news commentary for local (co-op) sponsors.
SEP 9 1946 Critics hail ABC’s adaptation of John Hersey’s Hiroshima told in half-hour segments over four nights with a cast of leading radio actors headed by Everett Sloane.
SEP 9 1949 CBS cancels its sustaining giveaway shows Winner Take All and Beat The Clock after repeated failures to interest prospective sponsors.
SEP 9 1951 Rev. James McClain, formerly known as Jimmy McClain, star of NBC’s Dr. I.Q. from 1942 to 1946, begins a weekly series of sermons on the Texas State Network. (See Dr. I.Q. on this site.)
SEP 10 1933 Jimmy Durante wins his fight with MGM to appear on radio and joins Ruth Etting as substitutes for Eddie Cantor on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour while Cantor finishes filming Roman Scandals.
SEP 10 1934 NBC outlaws four dozen words used in medicinal ads including belching, belly, bloated, diarrhea, gas, infection, nausea, pimple, pregnancy, scratching, sour and stomach.
SEP 10 1934 The FTC reports that only five of 593 stations failed to respond to its request for commercial scripts in the hunt for illegal or misleading copy.
SEP 10 1934 The U.S. Lawn Tennis Association demands that NBC withdraw tennis champion Ellsworth Vines from its Forest Hills tournament announcing crew because of a magazine article he wrote critical of the group.
SEP 1935 Mutual enters its second year of operation with $1.0 Million already on its books for the 1935-35 season.
SEP 10 1935 Immediately after Governor Edward Johnson of Colorado proclaimed Traffic Safety Month on KFEL/Denver he was handed a bulletin that his nephew had been killed in an auto accident.
SEP 10 1936 NBC dispels reports that it plans to form two separate companies to operate its Red and Blue networks.
SEP 10 1937 New York City newspapers Times, Herald-Tribune and World-Telegram refuse advertising for the book “exposing” radio commercials, Poisons, Potions & Profits, subtitled, An Antidote To Radio Advertising.
SEP 10 1941 The newly created U.S. Defense Supply Board deems commercial broad-casting an essential industry for obtaining materials to maintain and repair facilities.
SEP 10 1942 Mutual announces a new wartime format that includes hourly newscasts from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, delivered by 13 different newscasters and commentators.
SEP 10 1942 The Office of War Information orders all government agencies to channel their complete network or local radio program plans through the OWI’s Radio Bureau.
SEP 10 1942 After 220 broadcasts over eight years, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music is forced off the air by the Cincinnati local of the AFM. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 10 1943 A quarrel with Fanny Brice over writer-director Phil Rapp’s on-air credits leads to Rapp leaving NBC’s successful Maxwell House Coffee Time a post he had held since its beginning as Good News in 1937. (See Baby Snooks on this site.)
SEP 10 1944 Allied troops invade Luxembourg and retake powerful Radio Luxembourg after four years and four months of Nazi control.
SEP 10 1944 CBS Sunday night stars of its programs Blondie, Baby Snooks and The Kate Smith Hour begin a series of promotional appearances in each other’s shows.
SEP 10 1945 Don Lee Broadcasting System purchases 160 acres atop Mount Wilson as the new transmitter site for its W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles for a tower that will rise 5,800 feet above sea level with a power of 40,000 watts.
SEP 10 1947 Mutual announces that The Shadow will be made available to affiliates as a co-op program. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 10 1949 Eddie Cantor receives $50,000 to headline three shows a day at Chicago’s 19 day National Television and Electric Living exposition.
SEP 10 1951 NBC openly advertises 15 minute segments of The Big Show for $12,408 per week. (See Tallulah's Big Show on this site.)
SEP 10 1952 ABC is reported following the lead of CBS and NBC by cutting its nighttime rates an average 25%, increasing its daytime rates by 5% and reducing affiliate compen-sation by 15%.
SEP 11 1928 General Electric’s W2XB(TV)/Schenectady presents the first television drama, The Queen’s Messenger.
SEP 11 1933 Irna Phillips weekday serial Today’s Children, (fka Painted Dreams), opens its first run of four years on Blue.
SEP 11 1933 CBS separates news from its publicity department and appoints Paul White as its first News Director in charge of setting up the division.
SEP 11 1936 Mutual adds 33 affiliates as far west as KWK/St. Louis to its basic network of WOR/New York City, WGN/Chicago, CKLW/Detroit and WAAB/Boston.
SEP 11 1937 CBS manages to obtain a speech by Madame Chaing Kai-shek broadcast from a temporary low power station in Hankow, the first voice transmission from China since the Japanese destroyed all radio transmitters and cut all cables..
SEP 11 1939 The major networks enter into voluntary agreement with U.S. government on handling of European war coverage.
SEP 11 1939 NBC issues a new rate card with what agencies call a confusing basic network rate of 7.3% with WLW/Cincinnati and 8.03% without WLW. (See NBC’s Chinese Menu on this site.)
SEP 11 1941 FDR’s “Shoot On Sight” speech about the torpedo attack on the destroyer USS Greer near Iceland and its ensuing battle with a Nazi submarine registers a 67.4 Hooperating and a 72.5 CAB rating.
SEP 11 1944 WIND moves its operations from Gary, Indiana, to Chicago.
SEP 11 1944 Eric Sagerquist, musical conductor for First Nighter since 1930, dies in Chicago at age 45.
SEP 11 1949 Grove Laboratories buys 450 Mutual stations for The Shadow and Blue Coal continues as the program’s sponsor on the East Coast. (See The Shadow Nos. on this site.)
SEP 11 1949 Jack McCoy takes over host duties from George Murphy on NBC’s Hollywood Calling but Jack Benny‘s first show of the season on CBS scores a 14.7 Hooperating to the giveaway show‘s 4.0. (See Sunday At Seven on this site.)
SEP 11 1949 Theater Guild On The Air aka U.S. Steel Hour, leaves ABC after four years and begins its final four season run on NBC.
SEP 11 1949 Eddie Cantor replaces Garry Moore as host of NBC’s Take It Or Leave It for one season.
SEP 11 1950 Muzak, Inc., proposes nationwide subscription “narrowcasting” FM network.
SEP 11 1950 Country singer Jimmy Wakely begins a half-hour weekday disc-jockey/ interview show on 300 ABC stations.
SEP 11 1952 Jack Webb’s NBC Radio hit Dragnet debuts on NBC-TV. (See Jack Webb’s Dragnet on this site.)
SEP 12 1932 Bing Crosby turns down an offer from CBS to perform a sustaining show for $250 a week.
SEP 12 1936 Detroit priest Charles Coughlin cuts his weekly lectures to 30 minutes and switches to early Saturday evenings on 31 Mutual stations.
SEP 12 1938 All networks begin intensive coverage of the European crisis after carrying Adolph Hitler’s speech to the massive Nuremberg Nazi rally in which the German dictator demands a settlement with Czechoslovakia over the disputed Sudetenland.
SEP 12 1939 FCC threatens WMCA/New York City with loss of its license for violating The Communications Act of 1934 by intercepting, decoding and broadcasting German and British military messages.
SEP 12 1940 AFRA’s threatened strike against NBC, CBS and Mutual is averted when all parties agree to arbitration.
SEP 12 1940 The International Association of Police Chiefs condemns radio crime dramas as detrimental to morals and asks its members not to cooperate or supply infor-mation to its producers.
SEP 12 1941 With much fanfare, Mutual debuts Ballentine Beer’s Three Ring Time half-hour variety show starring Charles Laughton, Milton Berle, Shirley Ross and Bob Crosby’s orchestra on 82 stations. It moves to Blue three months later.
SEP 12 1941 NBC suspends dance band remotes when the AFM demands that the network exclude the broadcasts from WSMB/New Orleans, deemed “unfair“ by the union. (See Big Band Remotes on this site.)
SEP 12 1943 F. Chase Taylor takes his Colonel Stoopnagle character and cast to Richmond, Virginia, for a special broadcast on WRVA and sells $400,000 in War Bonds to the audience.
SEP 12 1943 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler‘s caustic criticism of Warner Brothers‘ film This Is The Army on Blue prompts the studio to demand an apology and ban all of its actors from appearing on the network..
SEP 12 1944 NBC correspondent Wright Bryan is wounded and captured by German troops in France. He was liberated from a prison camp in Poland in 1945.
SEP 12 1944 A Federal court dismisses the second suit by Warner Brothers Music against American Tobacco - $200,000 for “mishandling” its songs It Had To Be You and Time Waits For No One on Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade.
SEP 12 1945 FCC agrees to extend the Buffalo Broadcasting Company’s license by three months, giving it the chance to sell either WGR or WKBW, keep one of the stations, break its existing contracts and continue operating.
SEP 12 1945 FCC tells returning servicemen that it is unable to reserve FM allocations and urges them to submit applications without delay.
SEP 12 1945 Frank Sinatra, until nine months earlier the star of Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade, begins a two season Wednesday night run on CBS with Songs By Sinatra for P. Lorillard’s Old Gold Cigarettes. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears on this site.)
SEP 12 1945 C.E. Hooper announces the formation of two new divisions providing in-depth listener research for the advertising and broadcasting industries. (See Hooper Was No Easy Target on this site.)
SEP 12 1947 The Continental FM Network produces its first commercial broadcast, Stromberg-Carlson’s Treasury of Music featuring the Rochester Symphony Orchestra for 27 affiliates.
SEP 12 1947 Annual revenues for transcribed program syndicator Fredric Ziv are reported at $10.4 Million. (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication on this site.I
SEP 12 1948 Television version of Meet The Press, a Mutual radio feature since 1945, debuts on seven NBC-TV affiliates.
SEP 12 1951 General Foods signs Roy Rogers & Dale Evans to a three year exclusive radio and television contract for programs on NBC.
SEP 12 1953 NBC’s National Home & Farm Hour, the network’s first program to originate from Chicago in 1928, celebrates it’s 25th anniversary on the air.
SEP 13 1931 Eddie Cantor, 39, debuts on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour and becomes Network Radios first “superstar.”
SEP 13 1932 Bandleader Ben Bernie, 41, begins his highly rated NBC series for Pabst Beer and an eleven year Network Radio career. (See Tuesday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 13 1937 Irna Phillips’ The Road of Life begins its 17 season run on NBC. The weekday serial is heard concurrently on CBS for six years before moving to CBS exclusively in 1954 for its final five seasons.
SEP 13 1937 Off the air for a year, Gertrude Berg’s serial, The Goldbergs, returns to NBC’s weekday schedule.
SEP 13 1937 Chicago stations assist the city’s schools by broadcasting classes when a polio epidemic closes the schools for two weeks.
SEP 13 1938 Network newsrooms go on 24-hour duty for complete coverage of the European crisis.
SEP 13 1939 FCC rescinds its requirement that stations must log the time and title of every phonograph record played.
SEP 13 1940 Dave Garroway, 27, a KDKA/Pittsburgh announcer for two years, joins the staff of NBC’s WMAQ/Chicago.
SEP 13 1940 Earle C. Anthony, whose KFI/Los Angeles was the first station to sign an ASCAP contract in 1923, signs with BMI to play its music, (and public domain music), exclusively on KFI and co-owned KECA beginning in November.
SEP 13 1940 Broadcast Music Inc. gets control of 4,000 Latin American songs previously controlled by ASCAP.
SEP 13 1941 Brown & Williamson Tobacco assembles a split network of 14 NBC and Blue stations for the 30 minute Renfro Valley Barn Dance originating from a barn in Renfro Valley, Kentucky.
SEP 13 1942 Radio Readers Digest opens five year series of magazine based stories on CBS.
SEP 13 1943 U.S. Housing Commissioner Nathan Straus, Jr., buys WMCA/New York City from Edward Noble for $1.25 Million, clearing the path for Noble to buy the Blue Network and its New York City flagship, WJZ.
SEP 13 1943 Lady Esther Cosmetics fires its ad agency, Pedlar & Ryan, after five years despite the huge success of its Screen Guild Players program on CBS. (See Acts of Charity on this site.)
SEP 13 1944 Jimmy Durante, Gene Kelly. Olivia DeHaviland and George Coulouris headline the special CBS program Get Out The Vote, to encourage registrations for the coming Presidential election.
SEP 13 1945 An unauthorized nationwide engineers strike at all NBC and ABC owned stations ends after 26½ hours.
SEP 13 1946 CBS successfully demonstrates its color television system in ultra-high frequencies to the FCC and press.
SEP 13 1946 George Washington Hill, President of American Tobacco and one of radio’s foremost advertisers, dies of a heart attack while vacationing in Canada at age 61. (See The Lucky Strike Sweepstakes on this site.)
SEP 13 1947 The Philadelphia Inquirer’s WFIL-TV goes on the air with the Philadelphia Eagles vs. New York Giants football game.
SEP 13 1947 RCA demonstrates its new Kinescope recording system by showing film of the Mineola, Long Island Fair on WNBT(TV)/New York City only 20 minutes after it was shot.
SEP 13 1947 RCA’s David Sarnoff calls Zenith’s Phonevision system, “…wholly impractical to expect people to pay to receive television programs.”
SEP 13 1949 A U.S. District Court in Chicago grants a temporary federal injunction against the FCC’s “anti-giveaway “ruling. (See Stop The Music! on this site.)
SEP 13 1950 Bristol-Myers cancels Break The Bank on NBC, but continues the video version of the show on NBC-TV.
SEP 13 1950 ABC-TV debuts Don McNeill’s TV Club from Chicago starring the longtime Breakfast Club host.
SEP 14 1934 WAZL/Hazleton, Pennsylvania becomes the only outlet for news in the area as 20,000 union members go on a general strike in sympathy to the striking United Textile Workers.
SEP 14 1935 Paramount Pictures takes over NBC’s Lucky Strike Hit Parade for the Hollywood premiere of its Big Broadcast of 1936 hosted by Jack Oakie with Joe Penner, Jack Haley, Ethel Merman, Charlie Ruggles and Bonnie Baker.
SEP 14 1936 Broadway talent agents tell Variety that Major Edward Bowes is paying them a five dollar bounty for every “amateur” they produce who can qualify for his Original Amateur Hour with “…a good story to tell about themselves.” (See Major Bowes' Original Money Machine on this site.)
SEP 14 1936 Lillian Lauferty’s soap opera Big Sister begins its 16 season run on CBS.
SEP 14 1936 Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial John’s Other Wife begins a six year multi-network run on NBC.
SEP 14 1936 WWJ/Detroit dedicates its new four story headquarters connected by tunnel to the co-owned Detroit News building.
SEP 14 1936 Lux Radio Theater pays tribute to MGM’s Vice President of Production, Irving Thalberg, who died that morning from pneumonia at age 37. (See Lux,,, Presents Hollywood! on this site.)
SEP 14 1938 FCC examiners approve General Electric’s application to build experimental television transmitters in Schenectady and Albany, New York, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
SEP 14 1939 WMCA/New York City flatly denies FCC charges that it intercepted, then decoded and broadcast secret German and British military messages as skeptics ask what kind of codes are so easy that a radio station can break them.
SEP14 1942 After three seasons on CBS, five on NBC and one on Mutual, General Mills moves its kids’ serial Jack Armstrong to Blue where it remains for the next nine seasons.
SEP 14 1942 Blue newsman Morgan Beatty replaces replaces John W. Vandercook on NBC’s News of The World. (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten on this site.)
SEP 14 1942 FCC discontinues issuing new, renewed or modified amateur (ham) radio licenses, citing administrative problems due to the war.
SEP 14 1944 Many East Coast stations, including New York’s WEAF, WHN, WINS, WOR and WOV, lose power for up to five hours as a Category Two hurricane strikes the area causing $25.0 Million in property damage. WPRO/Providence, WNBH/New Bedford, Massachusetts and WSAP/Portsmouth, Virginia, each suffer towers destroyed by the storm.
SEP 14 1945 FCC concludes a whirlwind week of granting 53 licenses in the new 88.1 to 107.9 megacycle band to existing FM stations and construction permits.
SEP 14 1945 Kate Smith enjoys a 20% ratings gain with a return to the CBS Friday night schedule and a new all-music format determined by Billboard’s popularity charts. (See Kate’s Great Song on this site.)
SEP 14 1947 NBC announces a ban on all radio crime shows before 9:30 p.m.
SEP 14 1947 NBC reveals to its affiliates’ that the network’s total investment in television since its first involvement amounts to $22.0 Million.
SEP 14 1947 Garry Moore takes over from Phil Baker as host of NBC’s Take It Or Leave It.
SEP 14 1948 Lever Brothers cancels Pepsodent Toothpaste’s ten year association with Bob Hope and installs Swan Soap as Hope’s sponsor for two seasons.
SEP 14 1949 CBS joins NBC and announces that it doesn’t need or want any more radio network affiliates.
SEP 14 1951 Western anthology Death Valley Days completes its 21st and final season spanning three networks.
SEP 14 1952 NBC cancels Tales of The Texas Rangers after a two year run.
SEP 14 1953 Sportscaster Bill Stern leaves NBC after 16 years to join ABC. (See Bill Stern on this site.)
SEP 14 1953 Drug manufacturer Plough, Inc., buys WJJD/Chicago from Marshall Field for $900,000.
SEP 15 1932 CBS lifts its ban against quoting prices in commercials.
SEP 15 1933 Ed Wynn and his partners establish WBNX/New York as the flagship of their new Amalgamated Broadcasting System linking it with stations in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and Washington.
SEP 15 1933 WSM/Nashville, WCKY/Covington-Cincinnati and WHAS/Louisville form the short lived Center of Population Network.
SEP 15 1934 The Gibson Family, an original musical comedy, debuts on NBC for its very expensive 39 week run, finishing 36th in the annual rankings. (See The 1934-35 Season on this site.)
SEP 15 1936 RCA files denials with the New York Supreme Court to Philco’s charges of industrial espionage.
SEP 15 1938 The 23 station Texas State Network, affiliated with Mutual, opens with a celebratory broadcast starring Bob Hope and Gene Autry.
SEP 15 1939 The NAB, establishes a fund of $1.5 Million, to form Broadcast Music Inc., (BMI), as a music licensing alternative to ASCAP.
SEP 1939 AFM President Joe Weber reinforces a requirement that all sustaining band remotes carry a closing credit that the broadcasts are, “…through the courtesy of the American Federation of Musicians.” (See Big Band Remotes on this site.)
SEP 15 1939 A second broadcasting trade association, the National Independent Broadcasters, is formed by stations not owned or operated by a network..
SEP 15 1939 CBS raises its network rates by an average 7.5%. (See CBS Rates - Go Figure! on this site.)
SEP 15 1939 CBS, Mutual and NBC carry Colonel Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist address, America And The European War, from Washington at 10:45 p.m.
SEP 15 1941 WLW/Cincinnati feeds its coverage of the massive two-week U.S. Army war games in Louisiana to an 18 station independent network in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.
SEP 15 1941 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler complains to a U.S. Senate committee investigating unfairness and bias in radio that CBS had censored his broadcasts.
SEP 15 1941 Lady Esther Cosmetics drops its long running Monday night Lady Esther Serenade on CBS for Orson Welles’ “literary vaudeville” series that lasts only four months when Freddy Martin’s orchestra resumes the Serenade.
SEP 15 1942 Don McNeill and his Chicago based Breakfast Club cast begin a week of remote broadcasts on Blue from Montreal, Ottawa, Providence, New Haven and Pittsburgh.
SEP 15 1942 Major League Baseball votes to donate Gillette’s $100,000 paid for World Series broadcast rights to the USO.
SEP 15 1943 Fitch Shampoo begins a second edition of its Sunday evening NBC Fitch Bandwagon on Blue’s Wednesday night schedule with Freddy Martin’s orchestra.
SEP 15 1944 Mutual bans all Sunday afternoon and evening religious programs and limits those remaining to 30 minutes.
SEP 15 1944 Armed Forces Radio Service begins operations from the forward areas of New Guinea.
SEP 15 1944 After two seasons on Blue, Bristol-Myers moves Duffy’s Tavern to NBC where it will remain for the next eight years. (See Duffy Ain’t Here on this site.)
SEP 15 1945 The U.S. drops the year round War Time, (aka Daylight Saving Time), and orders clocks back one hour to Standard Time.
SEP 15 1945 New York Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine resigns after 42 years on the force to become the narrator of ABC’s Gangbusters.
SEP 15 1945 Miami stations provide live network coverage of the Category Four hurri-cane hitting south Florida with sustained winds of 165 mph.
SEP 15 1946 Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS goes on tour for six weeks as the cowboy star makes personal appearances in Chicago, New York and Boston.
SEP 15 1947 Over 3,500 delegates gather at the NAB convention in Atlantic City.
SEP 15 1947 The NAB adopts its Standard Code of Practices governing programming and commercial activities for its radio station members effective February 1, 1948.
SEP 15 1948 AFM President James Petrillo offers to negotiate an end to the union’s eight month recording ban to avoid threatened court action. (See Petrillo! on this site.)
SEP 15 1948 FCC refuses to reconsider using 44 to 50 megacycles for FM broadcasting.
SEP 15 1948 WHN/New York City, owned by Lowes, Inc., adopts the call sign WMGM with a marathon show from Hollywood starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Jane Powell and dozens of other film personalities plus the MGM studio orchestra and chorus.
SEP 15 1948 The country’s only television stations with three network affiliations are identified as WNAC-TV/Boston, (ABC, CBS & DuMont), and WTMJ-TV/Milwaukee, (ABC,CBS & NBC).
SEP 15 1950 Art Linkletter in Los Angeles and Ben Alexander in San Francisco co-host a television variety show seen on the CBS and NBC stations in both cities dedicating the microwave link between the two.
SEP 15 1952 C.E. Hooper announces the October launch of its television ratings service in 40 of the 63 cities with stations.
SEP 16 1932 NBC follows CBS and allows price advertising in commercials when delivered “...in good taste.”
SEP 16 1934 Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler begins his 16 year multi-network career.
SEP 16 1935 WPTF/Raleigh, North Carolina, and its insurance company sue the maker of the station’s steel transmitter tower that collapsed during a June storm for $5,140 in alleged damages.
SEP 16 1937 FCC makes public the irregularities of operation it cited to remove Brooklyn stations WARD and WLTH from the air and awarding their shares of 1400 k.c. to WBBC and WVFW.
SEP 16 1938 CBS owned KNX/Los Angeles elevates to 50,000 watts both day and night. Its new transmitter loses power for 30 minutes three nights later during the middle of Lux Radio Theater.
SEP 16 1940 The NAB Code committee warns stations carrying Father Charles Coughlin’s weekly speeches to carefully monitor their content and be aware that the industry group may ban them when the political season concludes.
SEP 16 1940 ASCAP announces that it has signed new contracts with 120 independent stations with no network affiliation.
SEP 16 1940 Blue begins a Monday through Saturday night series of five minute news-casts with John B. Kennedy at 9:30 p.m.
SEP 16 1940 The Don Lee Network’s W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles leaves the air for 90 days as it installs its new transmitter atop Mount Wilson overlooking Hollywood.
SEP 16 1941 Rural comic Bob Burns starts six year multi-network run as The Arkansas Traveler after five seasons as the comic sidekick to Bing Crosby on Kraft Music Hall.
SEP 16 1941 FCC approves commercial television station construction permits for Philco’s WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia, Earle C. Anthony’s KFI-TV/Los Angeles and the Milwaukee Journal’s WTMJ-TV/Milwaukee.
SEP 16 1942 Haven MacQuarrie, host of NBC’s Noah Webster Says, sues MGM for $500,000, claiming that its movie, Married Bachelor, humiliated him and caused the cancellation of his former program, The Marriage Club.
SEP 16 1945 The short lived Associated Broadcasting System Network based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, begins operations without its advertised stations in New York City and Chicago.
SEP 16 1945 Norman Corwin produces the 90 minute Stars In The Afternoon from New York’s Carnegie Hall hosted by The Aldrich Family and featuring CBS East Coast stars Phil Baker, Bob Hawk, Jack Smith, Helen Hayes, Edward R. Murrow, Patrice Munsel and a 75 piece orchestra to promote the network's new season of programs.
SEP 16 1945 Noted Irish tenor and early radio star John McCormack dies at home in Ireland at 61.
SEP 16 1946 A proposed radio network, the North American Broadcasting Service, is incorporated in Las Vegas with $100,000 in capitalization and its founders predicting three thousand, (3,000), affiliates for its projected 16 hours of daily programming.
SEP 16 1946 CBS increases its inventory of co-op programs, offering its affiliates three weekday news commentaries, a nightly Red Barber sports report, a five-minute Story of The Day feature and the Tuesday and Friday editions of House Party with Art Linkletter. (See A John Guedel Production on this site.)
