Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

The U.S. spent the first ten months of 1949 in a recession. Competition for the advertising dollar was stiffer. There were now over two-thousand-six-hundred AM and FM radio stations in the country, and TV was becoming a serious threat. Over one-hundred Television stations were on the air. Only two Network Radio shows had ratings higher than a 20. Just two years earlier, there were fifteen. Radio’s...

By December Jack Benny’s rating was up to 25.4, tops on radio. On December 11th, 1949, Jack attempted to make arrangements for his Texas benefit appearance. Notre Dame football coach Frank Leahy was the guest star.

To take advantage of Capital Gains laws, Jack Benny had formed his holdings into a corporation and sold it to CBS for Two-point-two-six Million dollars. Benny opened the fall 1949 season by taking stock of his pantry. The October 2nd program got a rating of 20.3. On election night, New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer, who’d succeeded Fiorello La Guardia, won reelection. He was soon confronted with...

By the time Mel Allen broadcast Game four of the 1949 world series at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on October 8th, the world was in turmoil. The Yankees would win that day and take the series four games to one, but people's attention was turned toward world politics. The Communist People’s Republic of China was formed on October 1st and recognized by the USSR the next day. The Democratic Republic of E...

On December 23rd, 1948, CBS Chairman William Paley and CEO Frank Stanton broadcast a special closed circuit press conference to their affiliates and staff. The move was to officially announce that Jack Benny was switching his program from NBC to CBS. The change would begin with the first broadcast of the new year. When William Paley signed Jack Benny in November, he’d convinced sponsor American To...

In Breaking Walls episode 133 we spend Thanksgiving 1949 with the cast of I Love a Mystery. —————————— Highlights: • Thanksgiving Eve, 1949 • Carlton E. Morse—Budget Stretcher • The First Two I Love a Mystery Runs • Mutual Broadcasting in 1949—I Love a Mystery Relaunches • Thanksgiving Day 1949—Thorson and Boles • Mercedes McCambridge—Oscar Winner • Tony Randall’s Early Career • I Love a Mystery i...

Well, that brings our look at I Love A Mystery to a close, but there’s no mystery about what people thought of the subject of our next Breaking Walls episode. Next time on Breaking Walls, we celebrate the holidays by going shopping with the one and only Jack Benny.

Chuck Schaden interviewed Tony Randall on September 16th, 1970 at the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. Eight days later Randall’s new series The Odd Couple debuted on ABC. Randall played Felix Unger. The show ran for five seasons and became Randall’s most-remembered role. He continued acting until passing away on May 17th, 2004. After I Love A Mystery went off the air, Carlton E. Morse penned a new se...

Although the serial went off the air in 1952, in May of 1954 a new audition record was produced for CBS in Hollywood. With Russell Thorson back in Los Angeles he carried over the role of Jack, with Ben Wright as Reggie, and Parley Baer as Doc. Parley Baer was most-known for playing Chester Proudfoot on Gunsmoke. CBS didn’t pick up the series and I Love A Mystery went off the air for good.

Initially running at 7:45PM, Mutual moved I Love a Mystery to 10:15 in 1950. Although geared for teenagers, it was obviously not standard juvenile programming. Many listeners remembered tuning in under blankets with the lights down low. But, as entertaining as the program was, by 1952, television was taking over in big cities. One Man’s Family began running on TV in 1949. Tony Randall appeared in...

Tony Randall was born Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg on February 16th, 1920 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He attended Northwestern University for a year before going to New York City to study under Sanford Meisner and choreographer Martha Graham. Randall worked as an announcer at WTAG in Worcester, Massachusetts. As Anthony Randall, he starred with Jane Cowl in George Bernard Shaw's Candida and with Ethel Barrymor...

Carlotta Mercedes McCambridge was born to farming parents in Joliet, Illinois on March 16th, 1916. She graduated from Mundelein College. McCambridge began her radio career in the 1930s first in Chicago, and then in New York while also performing on Broadway. In 1949 she made her film debut opposite Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men, for which she won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and the...

Thursday, November 24th, 1949 was Thanksgiving Day. It was clear and crisp in New York as Macy’s put on its twenty-third annual parade. Floats included The Chef’s Turkey Dinner, the Snowman, and Santa’s Sleigh. Milton Berle guest-starred. WOR—Mutual aired Cornell vs. Penn at 1PM, Queen for a Day and Luncheon at Sardi’s in the late afternoon, Gabriel Heater at 7:30, and I Love A Mystery at 7:45. By...

In the summer of 1949 NBC-TV approached Carlton Morse with the possibility of coming to New York to put One Man’s Family on TV. Because the entire production would need to be re-cast, Morse had to audition a whole new group of actors. Mercedes McCambridge, who’d played on I Love A Mystery in Hollywood, was now working in New York and cast, while Russell Thorson was cast as Henry Barbour. Morse fle...

I Love A Mystery first took to the air Weekdays at 3:15PM on NBC’s West-Coast network in January of 1939. Michael Raffetto starred as Jack Packard, head of the A-1 Detective Agency, with Barton Yarborough as Texan Doc Long, and Walter Paterson as the British Reggie Yorke. The three world travelers searched for action, thrills, and mystery. From the ghost towns of wind-swept Nevada, to the jungles...

On the eve of Thanksgiving in 1949, Russian diplomat Andrey Vyshinsky told the UN General Assembly Russia fully supported Communist China’s in removing the Nationalist Chinese delegation from the UN. While US, British and French commissioners agreed to lift many industrial and diplomatic restrictions on West Germany. And Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett rejected a compromise proposal from th...

In Breaking Walls episode 132 we go back to the late 1940s and say Happy Halloween with Mutual Broadcasting. —————————— Highlights: • The Seedy Underbelly of Coney Island on The Crime Club • Take a Ride with The Mysterious Traveler • Mystery is My Hobby • Quiet Please • 1948 Halloween News with Arthur Bario • The House of Mystery • True Detective Mysteries • Halloween 1948 with Holmes and The Shad...

We’re going to stop here, but we’re not even close to finishing with I Love A Mystery. Next time on Breaking Walls, while we spend Thanksgiving with Carlton E. Morse, Russell Thorson, Jim Boles, and Tony Randall, we utter a simple statement: Bury Your Dead, Arizona. The reading material used in this episode was: American Radio Networks: A History — By Jim Cox On the Air — By John Dunning Network R...

Carlton E. Morse’ I Love A Mystery first took to the air Weekdays at 3:15PM on NBC’s West-Coast network in January of 1939. Michael Raffetto starred as Jack Packard, head of the A-1 Detective Agency, with Barton Yarborough as Texan Doc Long, and Walter Paterson as the British Reggie Yorke. The show told of three world travelers in search of action, thrills, and mystery. From the ghost towns of win...

Murder By Experts debuted over Mutual on June 13th, 1949. Written by David Kogan and Bob Arthur, it quickly gained the respect and approval from the radio world at large. Mystery writers like John Dickson Carr and Brett Halliday hosted with New York’s best character talent like Lawson Zerbe, Ann Shepherd, Santos Ortega, Ralph Bell, and William Zuckert being featured. This is from the debut episode...

On Tuesday November 2nd, 1948 The United States held its forty-first presidential election. If you’d tuned into the results early in the evening, you’d have been convinced that the pre-election polls were correct and Thomas Dewey would become the next president. You’d have been wrong. Dewey ran a low-risk campaign. His advisers believed all he had to do to win was avoid major mistakes. So Dewey sp...

At 5PM Mutual’s most famous program, The Shadow signed on. The show was in its eleventh season on the air in 1948. Andre Baruch handled emcee duties while Grace Matthews played Margo Lane. Bret Morrison was Lamont Cranston. Halloween’s episode was called “Murder By A Corpse.” This season’s Shadow rating was 13.2. It was Mutual’s highest-rated show. As night descended on New York on October 31st, t...

At 4:30PM on Sunday October 31st, 1948, True Detective Mysteries signed on. The program had a rating of 10.7. It was Mutual’s number two show overall. Based on items from True Detective magazine, the series was sponsored by Oh Henry Candy bars. Many of the stories unfolded from the criminal’s viewpoint: the show was much like Gangbusters in allowing the audience to witness the fatal mistakes that...

By October 31st, 1948, The Mutual Broadcasting System’s flagship WOR in New York was approaching its twenty-seventh anniversary. It was argued that no station matched its signal coverage. WOR-Mutual was known for its cop shows, soap operas, and on Sundays, it’s mysteries. At 4PM eastern time, House of Mystery signed on for General Foods. John Griggs was Roger Elliott, ghost hunter and scientist of...

The 1948 DNC convened in July with President Truman’s approval rating as low as 32%. Northern Democrats pushed for a strong civil rights platform, which the President was in favor of. Conservative southern Dems were opposed. Moderates feared voter alienation. When the convention adopted the civil rights plank in a close vote, Southern Dems walked out and split off, nominating Strom Thurmond for Pr...