Breaking Walls

Although Jack Benny spent his TV time on September 13th, 1953 dreaming of being with Marilyn Monroe, on January 15th, 1954 she was officially taken off the market. That day she and retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio were married at San Francisco’s city hall. They would divorce the following year, but remain close friends for the rest of her life. ___________ Airing in his familiar Sundays at 7PM eastern time slot, in 1954 Benny had a radio rating of 8.2, second-highest on the air. For twenty years, Benny’s rating had never fallen out of the top ten, and twelve times he’d had a top-three show. ___________ The January 10th episode celebrated announcer Don Wilson’s twentieth anniversary with the program. In further evidence of the changing broadcast landscape, that season Benny had a TV rating of 33.3. Jack Benny would air one more season of original radio shows. ___________ Eight days later, Benny appeared on Suspense in a story called “The Face is Familiar.” 1954 was Autolite’s final season sponsoring the program. Airing Mondays at 8PM, Suspense pulled a rating of 6. While it was a far cry from the listener heights of just five years earlier, it was tied for seventh overall. ___________ The final autolite Suspense episode aired on June 7th. CBS refused to cancel the series. That fall, Antony Ellis took over as producer/director. The show would continue to air sustained by CBS until the ad department found multiple sponsorship, and the program moved to Sunday afternoons in November of 1956.

Under the sponsorship of Heinz Foods, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet moved to ABC’s potent Friday night schedule on October 14th, 1949. Ozzie Nelson had negotiated a ten year, non-cancellable contract. It guaranteed him complete creative control. ABC also had the option to bring the show to TV after 1951. Ozzie and Harriet were weary of the new medium. Universal Studios gave them the opportunity to make a film, and in 1952 the family starred in Here Come The Nelsons. The film was a hit, and everyone was convinced the Nelsons could all make the transition from radio's airwaves to TV’s small screen. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made its TV debut on Friday, October 3rd, 1952. Although the show never cracked radio’s top-fifty ratings during the 1940s, they did so in each of their final three seasons on ABC. The radio version of Ozzie and Harriet remained on the air until the end of this season. This January 8th, 1954 episode was called “FiFi La Plume.” The TV series would turn Ricky into a teenage heartthrob. It helped springboard his music career in 1957. For more information on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, tune into Breaking Walls episode 107.

People are Funny debuted on April 10th, 1942 on NBC. It was created by gameshow maven John Guedel. He was a jack of all trades who’d spent time as a WPA ditch digger, a traveling salesman, and a collector of his own rejection slips. By the fall of 1943, Guedel had negotiated a large raise from the initial production offer and made Art Linkletter the sole emcee. People Are Funny became a Friday night staple throughout the 1940s. In addition Guedel would create House Party and You Bet Your Life. By January of 1954, People Are Funny was airing on CBS Tuesday nights at 8PM for Mars Candy. With a rating of 8.4 it was radio’s top-rated show. This is audio from the January 5th, 1954 episode.

When Gunsmoke was sponsored for a single broadcast on November 21st 1952, by Chrysler Plymouth, the show drew a good rating against ABC’s This is Your FBI, and was heard by roughly 8 million people. After eighteen months on the air, on October 3rd, 1953, the critically acclaimed show got sponsorship from General Foods’ Post Toasties. But the sponsorship ended thirteen weeks later on December 26th. The show continued to air, sustained by CBS, on Saturdays at 8:30PM. The next week, on January 2nd, 1954, Gunsmoke broadcast an episode called “Stage Holdup.” It would take Jimmy Stewart’s aversion to Liggett & Myers Tobacco to land Gunsmoke its big sponsor. They wanted to sponsor The Six Shooter. Stewart declined, fearful of what a tobacco brand might do to his wholesome image. The Six Shooter went off the air in June, while Liggett & Myers sponsored Gunsmoke, beginning with the July 5th, 1954 episode. By 1956, Gunsmoke was the top rated show on radio. It was one of the few able to temporarily hold its audience in the TV era, even with the launch of Gunsmoke’s TV version.

The United States entered 1954 in an uncertain position. Years of racial discrimination were coming to the forefront. In May, Brown vs. the Board of Education would make racial segregation in schools illegal. ___________ The Korean War was over, but the communist Red Scare was reaching its height.Dwight D. Eisenhower was completing his first year as U.S. President. Elizabeth II was now Queen of England. Joseph Stalin was dead. So was Hank Williams, Maude Adams, Jim Thorpe, Herman Mankiewicz, Dooley Wilson, Robert Taft, Edwin Hubble, and Dylan Thomas. ___________ Meanwhile, radio achieved total saturation. Ninety-eight percent of homes had a radio set. There were still nineteen million U.S. houses that could only be reached by radio. However, the four national networks continued a five-year downward trend in radio ad sales. Network radio gross revenue peaked in 1948 at just under two-hundred million dollars. In 1953, it was down to one-hundred sixty million. ___________ Procter & Gamble led the way with over fourteen million dollars spent, and forty companies, including General Foods, Colgate-Palmolive, Liggett & Myers, Campbell’s Soups, S.C. Johnson, and Coca-Cola spent at least one million dollars on radio advertising. ___________ While TV hadn’t fully supplanted radio’s total reach, it had decimated it’s prime-time audience share. On CBS-TV I Love Lucy led all shows with a 58.8 rating. It was seen in over fifteen million homes each Monday evening at 9PM. Opposite on the other medium, The Lux Radio Theater was heard in just under three million. ___________ And it turned out that as McCarthyism reached its zenith, dramatic radio would spend the first six months of 1954 facing wide-spread network cancellations. These were shows that just six years earlier were at the forefront of national consciousness. ___________ Radio’s heyday was over. Tonight, we’ll go back to January of 1954 and search for more answers. ___________ Welcome to Breaking Walls, episode 123. My name is James Scully. Tonight on Breaking Walls, we open 2022 with a six-part mini-series on radio business and programming in 1954. We’ll begin with January, in a radio half-season that was for many, the end of the line. ___________ If this is your first time listening to Breaking Walls, welcome to the show! You can find this series for free on every podcasting platform, and at TheWallBreakers.com. ___________ Tonight we’ll also begin a new programming format on Breaking Walls. Going forward, I’ll be releasing each episode in parts. These parts will be available on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Once all parts of an episode are released, I’ll release the full-length episode for those who want to listen to it in the traditional format. For those listening on Youtube for the first time, please go to TheWallBreakers.com for the full lineup of past episodes in feature length.

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 98: Christmas Week 1947 with Radio's Biggest Stars ———————————— For the four major radio networks, 1947 was a year or record business: ABC saw a 7.25% gross billings increase. NBC sold out its entire primetime programming block. CBS had seventeen shows with ratings higher than fifteen. And Mutual Broadcasting had the most affiliates in the country. Total radio revenue was over five-hundred million dollars. There were now more than thirty-six million radio homes, and urban centers accounted for 60% of the US population. It was in this season that Milton Berle finally established himself on radio. The Milton Berle Show was one of a half-dozen titles showcasing Berle in his star-crossed radio career. Until 1946 he was considered radio’s best-known ratings failure. But NBC saw potential in Berle where CBS had failed. In March of 1947 they gave him his own variety show, sponsored by Philip Morris. It featured some of radio’s top comedic talent, like Arnold Stang, Pert Kelton, Arthur Q. Bryan, Jack Albertson, Ed Begley and Frank Gallop. In its second season on NBC Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m, the show’s audience jumped 40% and Berle finally cracked radio’s Top 50. In December his rating was 17.5 against Big Town on CBS.