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

I just phoned CBS news headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I’m told that they’ll resume scheduled programming at 10AM. NBC has canceled all programming until further notice. Mutual and The Blue Network are interspersing news throughout the day. The Stock Exchange will observe two minutes of silence and Mayor La Guardia will be holding a rally in Madison Square. As for me, I’ve been momentarily dis...

As part of my job I’ve been sent by CBS to Union Square. I decided to stop by my high school alma mater, I’m at the Church of St. Francis Xavier on sixteenth street. They’re having a sunrise mass filled with prayer for our soldiers and other war workers. The people are stoic. Now isn’t the time to lose ourselves in emotion. Sunrise is at 5:25AM. I hear American troops have turned the tide of battl...

The man you just heard was CBS news reporter Robert Trout. Born in Wake County, North Carolina on October 15th, 1909, he grew up in Washington, D.C., entering broadcasting in 1931 as an announcer at WJSV, an independent station in Alexandria, Virginia. In the summer of 1932 WJSV was acquired by CBS, bringing Trout into the young network. He soon became an invaluable member of William S. Paley’s te...

Tuesday, June 6th, 1944 at about 12:45 in the morning. We’re at Bill Pogue’s Bar on the Corner of 88th street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. I just finished a twelve hour shift. I need a nightcap before I go back into that low-hanging fog. Did you hear the President tonight? We took Rome. One up and two to go. ____________ Only the German outlets that are saying the invasion has started. Paris...

In Breaking Walls episode 151 it’s the spring of 1944 and Jack Benny’s sponsor, General Foods, thinks he’s in a slump. Benny got mad and it changed the broadcasting landscape forever. Tonight, we’ll find out how and why. —————————— Highlights: • Benny's Early Radio Career in the 1930s and Ratings Peak • Early Problems with General Foods • Dennis Day Leaves for World War II • Jack Fires General Foo...

In the fall of 1944 after Jack’s switch to Lucky Strike, General Foods did move a show opposite Jack. It wound up being The Kate Smith Show. The company uprooted Smith’s Friday program, countering Benny with a One-Hundred-Seventy-Thousand-Dollar ad campaign. While they did temporarily put a dent into Benny’s rating, Kate Smith lost forty-percent of her audience, dropping to ninety-third place in t...

June 4th, 1944 was the last Grape Nuts Flakes sponsored Jack Benny Program. Jack took out a full page ad in Variety thanking General Foods and their agency Young and Rubicam for ten years of partnership. Six days later, the American Cigarette and Cigar Company deposited two hundred thousand dollars in a special exploitation account for the program. On June 23rd they wrote to Jack stipulating some...

While the cast of Jack Benny became famous in their own right, Benny’s show had great guest-stars, as Dennis Day remembered. On the May 28th, 1944 episode Jack is in talks with Warner Brothers to make a film about his life. Naturally Jack thinks he’ll star, write, and direct it. Unfortunately for him, Warner Brothers has other ideas. They want Danny Kaye to play Jack and Jack to play Jack’s father...

With Jack’s contract with General Foods nearing its close, the only thing left to do was count down the remaining episodes. On May 21st, 1944, Jack and the gang discussed split personalities. Jack thinks it's ridiculous, but later realizes he has one too. In other news this episode marks the debut of the spoof commercial for Sympathy Cough Syrup. Its tagline “Sympathy spelled backwards is Yhtapmys...

By the Spring of 1944 Jack Benny’s cast had become its most familiar incarnation. Frank Nelson had begun to develop into Benny’s nemesis, as he remembered in this interview clip. Phil Harris was a lovable and vain drunk. Mel Blanc could play any character imaginable. Others like Bea Benaderet, John Brown, and Sarah Berner rounded out the cast. Most importantly Jack was known to be the exact opposi...

In early May 1944 Jack and the rest of his cast were still traveling around military bases in the Pacific Northwest. On May 7th they were at the Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, Washington as Dick Haymes continued substituting for the now departed Dennis Day. The rating for this episode was 20.1, although lower than his season average, it was still tied for third overall, and first on Sunday e...

By the spring of 1944, Benny’s ratings had continued slipping. That season, his 23.7 rating meant he’d lost roughly four million weekly listeners in just three years. At the end of this season, his contract with General Foods was up. Here's Jack Benny talking about that time. There was tension between the two parties because Benny had helped save Jell-O from going out of business. Jack was also up...

On April 23rd, 1944 The Jack Benny Program took to the air, broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia. It would be Dennis Day’s last show until March 17th, 1946. He’d be departing for the Navy. In April of 1944 Dennis Day was twenty-seven years old. He’d been starring on Jack Benny’s show since 1939, rounding into a very talented performer. Day had great comic timing and the ability to mimic v...

Mel Blanc joined the show on February 19th, 1939. Benny was adding a new touch to the miser theme: a polar bear, who would live in his basement and help protect his money. The bear was christened Carmichael, and in 1941, according to Rochester, he ate the gas man. On Sunday December 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Manila, thrusting the United States into World War II. That evening, The J...

In March of 1932 Jack Benny was headlining on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when friend Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on Ed’s radio show. At the time Benny had no great interest in radio, but he went on Sullivan’s quarter-hour show March 19th, 1932, as a favor. His first line was “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who c...

In Breaking Walls episode 150 we parachute into Easter Sunday, 1944 for a day of radio, recollections, and reconciliation. It’s now less than two months before D-Day and U.S. citizens are awaiting word of a full-scale European invasion with held breath. —————————— Highlights: • Cracks In The Nazi Foundation • Invitation To Learning at 11:30AM • Ceiling Unlimited with Joseph Cotton at 2PM • The Lif...

At 11:15PM over Mutual’s WOR in New York, Duke Ellington was on the air with music from The famous Hurricane Nightclub on 49th street and broadway in New York City. The next day, The British Royal Air Force dropped a record thirty-six hundred tons of bombs in a single raid on Germany, France and Belgium. On Tuesday April 11th, the Soviets took more northern territory in Crimea. German forces immed...

At 10:30PM eastern time on NBC’s WEAF, The Bob Crosby Show took to the air in New York with the just-heard Les Tremayne as co-host and Shirley Mitchell as the special guest. This episode’s rating was 13.8. Earlier this evening, Shirley Mitchell played Leila Ransom on NBC’s The Great Gildersleeve. Opposite The Bob Crosby Show, The Adventures of The Thin Man took to the air on CBS. Based on the 1934...

In the Spring of 1944, Fred Allen was finishing up his fourth season as host of The Texaco Star Theater on CBS. He’d been on the air for over a decade, but it was while he was hosting Texaco on December 6th, 1942 that Fred debuted Allen’s Alley. Allen used to read the newspaper column of O.O. McIntyre, called “Thoughts While Strolling.” McIntyre wrote about sights and sounds he’d met walking throu...

Edgar Bergen first came to the attention of American audiences on Rudy Vallée’s NBC Royal Gelatin Hour on December 17th, 1936. How could ventriloquism work on radio? Perhaps Rudy Vallée himself put it best the night Bergen debuted. Five months later NBC gave Bergen his own show on Sundays at 8PM. He was an instant smash hit. Don Ameche worked with Bergen in those years. He was emcee on December 12...

At 7PM eastern time over Mutual Broadcasting’s flagship WOR, The Mysterious Traveler went on the air. Written and directed by Robert Arthur and David Kogan, The Mysterious Traveler debuted on Mutual December 5th, 1943. Maurice Tarplin played the title role with a good-natured malevolence. The traveler mostly narrated from an omniscient perch. He rode a phantom train by night. The opening signature...

When we were last with Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve in episode 149 of Breaking Walls he was gearing up for his local mayoral campaign, while simultaneously struggling to break away from his ex-fiancé Leila Ransom, voiced by the just-heart Shirley Mitchell. On Easter Sunday, Gildy’s mayoral campaign for Summerfield officially began, and he went to church. This episode took to the air at 6:30PM east...

At 6PM over NBC’s WEAF, The Catholic Hour took to the air with an address from Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. Fulton John Sheen was born on May 8th, 1895 in El Paso, Illinois. He was ordained a priest in 1919, quickly becoming a renowned theologian. He won the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923 and went on to teach theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America....

Between 4PM and 5:30 eastern war time, NBC broadcast Easter services from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as well as the NBC symphony with Arturo Toscanini. CBS broadcast Orchestra music and The Family Hour. The Blue Network aired Music and the Mary Small Revue. Mutual Broadcasting’s flagship WOR aired Abe Lincoln’s Story and Green Valley, U.S.A.. At 5:30, Mutual’s most popular program took...

At 3:30PM over Mutual’s WOR in New York, Bulldog Drummond took to the air. It was directed by the just-heard Himan Brown. It starred Santos Ortega, known as Sandy to his friends. Jackson Beck was the announcer. Bulldog Drummond was a British inspector popularized in the Paramount detective films of the 1930s. It was first broadcast April 13th, 1941. It spent its entire nearly eight year run on the...