SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EARS

What did the singers pictured above - Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford and Frank Sinatra - have in common besides great popularity with radio audiences and record buyers? 

Cigarette sponsors.

Congress banned cigarette advertising in United States broadcast media beginning on January 2, 1971. But smoke filled the air throughout Network Radio’s Golden Age. It wasn’t uncommon for cigarettes to sponsor ten or more of a season’s Top 50 programs plus many others that didn’t make the list.

Popular music was the most commonly used vehicle to advertise cigarettes through most of the era for several key marketing reasons.

First, pop music particularly appealed to younger listeners, predominately female, and tobacco companies wanted to recruit women as smokers. This market was first exploited in 1928 when American Tobacco’s shrewd president, George Washington Hill, brought The Lucky Strike Saturday Night Dance Party to NBC on Saturday night at 10:00 for a four year run.

These broadcasts introduced the legendary slogan, “Reach For A Lucky Instead of A Sweet,” which was aimed directly at young women who feared weight gain. Hill’s advertising agency, Lord & Thomas, blithely expanded on the slogan with announcer copy that included,

“Instead of eating between meals…instead of fattening sweets…beautiful women keep youthful slenderness by smoking Luckies. Luckies are a delightful alternative to fattening sweets. That’s why there’s real health in Lucky Strike. That’s why folks say, it’s good to smoke Luckies!”

The successful use of popular music to sell cigarettes led American Tobacco’s competitors to follow suite - most notably R.J. Reynolds’ long running string of Camel Caravan broadcasts featuring top dance bands led by Benny Goodman, Glen Gray, Xavier Cugat and Vaughn Monroe.  Liggett & Myers joined in with Chesterfield Time for five seasons from 1939 to 1944 with the Glenn Miller and Harry James orchestras.  (1)

Early Lucky Strike advertising also took on the fears of young potential smokers with, “,,the opinions of 20,069 physicians who maintain that Luckies are less irritating to the throat than other cigarettes.”

To emphasize this contention, American Tobacco abandoned its dance band program in 1934-35 and brought in the second reason that pop music was important to cigarette marketing - singers. After all, who could better demonstrate the notion that its cigarettes were harmless to the throat and voice than singers?  For this reason Lucky Strike sponsored the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts of 1933-34!

But the Met didn't attract the younger audience that Hill wanted - and so, Your Hit Parade was born. It’s reported that over 50 different singers appeared on Lucky Strike’s weekly countdown of hits during its 24 season run. It comes as no surprise that none of them - Buddy Clark, Joan Edwards, Bea Wain, Barry Wood, Lawrence Tibbett and Frank Sinatra included - ever reported any throat irritation from smoking Luckies.

Actually, Liggett & Myers beat American Tobacco to the punch using pop singers with 1932-33’s Music That Satisfies. The CBS Multiple Run show employed popular vocalists Ruth Etting and Arthur Tracy to sell Chesterfield Cigarettes along with a young baritone just making a name for himself, Bing Crosby. Crosby both began and ended his Network Radio career singing for Chesterfield. 

Fred Waring’s orchestra and choral group performed for Lorillard’s Old Gold Cigarettes during that first season of the Golden Age, but by 1939 Waring was hosting Chesterfield’s long-running Supper Club series that subsequently starred Perry Como, Jo Stafford and Peggy Lee over its eleven year span.

As the charts in Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953 indicate, all but a scant few of America’s most popular bands and singers worked for tobacco sponsors at some point during the Golden Age.  And their endorsements sold cigarettes by the billions.

But how much did all this cost the tobacco companies?

Network Radio gross revenue records indicate that cigarette sponsorship of programs peaked in the five years from 1936 to 1941.

Five major tobacco companies and their leading cigarette brands - American Tobacco, (Lucky Strike); Liggett & Myers, (Chesterfield); P. Lorillard, (Old Gold); Phillip Morris, (Phillip Morris), and R.J. Reynolds, (Camels) - spent a combined total of $39.6 Million during those five seasons on CBS and NBC. (2)

Not surprising, American Tobacco led the pack, (pun intended), with over $11.0 Million spent in Network Radio over the five year period.  Liggett & Myers followed close behind with almost $10.0 Million, although the company didn’t spend a penny on NBC’s two networks until the 1938-39 season. Likewise, R.J. Reynolds, which advertised its Camels exclusively on CBS until 1939-40, spent $6.5 Million. Trailing the group were Lorillard at nearly $4.0 Million and Phillip Morris with almost $2.0 Million dollars spent from 1936 through 1941.

CBS was the big winner in the networks’ competition to attract cigarette advertising, collecting a bit over $22.0 million, (55.5%), of the $39.0 Million spent by the tobacco companies over the five year span. NBC’s combined networks annual cigarette billings didn’t catch up to CBS until 1939-40, nevertheless its five year total of over $17.0 Million was nothing to sneeze at...or cough about.

(1) Chesterfield Time from 1939 to 1942 was also known as Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade.
(2) NBC totals did not separate the billings of its Red and Blue network divisions.

                        Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL   Email: [email protected]