Static on the Radio: The Science of Radio Salesmanship and Public Opinion

in America, 1930-1947

Rich BunnellProf. Marshall Foletta

Fall 2005

It makes me cuss and swear when some loud-mouthed punk shouts out that junk and clutters up the air. That auctioneer—if he were here, I’d gladly wring his neck so he chokes. Long-suffering folks would sing with joy, by heck. From night to morn, that blank foghorn, extolling Lifebuoy soap: I’ve never heard such corn since I was born, and never will, I hope. Then comes Teel with his spiel. How he loves to spout about your teeth and how they’ll shine and not wear out below the line. (But as for mine, they’re out.) Floor wax, too, there’s just a few, and each one is the best. So buy and try and let it dry, whilst all you do is rest, Gracie Allen’s a cute dope, so let her talk without all that soap. Bob Burns, Fisher and Molly, this trio’s all to the good, by golly, in helping war-nerves relax. So cut the gab about B.O. and wax. O sponsors, please. I’m on my knees: I beg. I plead. I pray. Deliver us from pests like these announcers with too much to say. We’ll buy your products P.D.Q. if you will just cut out a few. So limit plugs to just a line and we will be your Valentine.

—C.A. Nielsen

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch February 9, 1945

(letter to the editor)

Introduction: Radio, Designer of a Decade

“Radio is so epochal in its developments,” wrote Variety in 1926, “so swift in its almost

daily variances of new and important features, that this ‘lead’ to a general radio resume was

purposefully deferred until a day before press time.”1 Loaded with promise but bereft of context,

the field of radio broadcasting descended upon the world well before its potential was fully

realized. From its introduction to the public at the turn of the 1920’s, wireless broadcasting

floundered about for months as an invention without any real place in society, and one with

enormous technological scope that nonetheless lacked a public ready to receive it.

The medium initially emerged quietly, when the members of an anonymous electric

manufacturing company conceived the idea of linking their own wireless broadcasts to a fixed

program published in newspapers. Each broadcast was accompanied by a poll to the local radio

audience with one simple question—“Did you like it?” The public’s response was one of

thorough, overwhelming approval.2 Nonetheless, radio’s spread was initially a slow one.

Talk of radio’s potential made the rounds in publications from the era, yet a good deal of

it amounted to little more than vague, sweeping blanket statements. The Saturday Evening Post

printed an article touting the wonders of wireless, but the article gave little concrete information

other than ruminations over how this “new type of service” might “remedy the lack of adequate

means for communication in this day of unprecedented international commerce.”3 The minds of

a nation were intrigued by the concept of instant communication, but this sense of enthusiasm

had not yet solidified beyond the realm of the theoretical.

1 “Radio and Show Business.” Variety, December 29, 1926, 7.2 Waldemaar Kaempffert, “The Progress of Radio Broadcasting.” The American Review of Reviews, September 1922, 303.3 F. W. Parsons, “Everybody’s Business: A New Day in Communication.” The Saturday Evening Post, February 7, 1920, 30.

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Finally, toward the end of the year, radio received its official public introduction when

station KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast the news of Warren Harding’s victory over James M. Cox

in the 1920 presidential election.4 Over the course of the next two years, radio’s presence in the

national consciousness as a legitimate bearer of information and entertainment began to manifest

itself in a more solid form; by the beginning of 1922, Broadway performances were being

broadcast to New York listeners every hour on the hour.5

Only two years after its conception, radio had become a veritable public utility, bearing

lectures, news, stock market reports and music to its public. “A decade or more had to elapse

before the railroad, the telegraph, the generation and distribution of gas and electricity were

regarded as indispensable,” mused technology journalist Waldemar Kaempffert in an article

printed in The American Review of Reviews. “And now, after scarcely a year, it may be seriously

questioned whether the public clamor could be ignored, which would undoubtedly follow the

closing of all stations that gratuitously scatter entertainment and instruction.”6

However, as radio’s status as a public utility emerged, the question arose of how to build

up an adequate level of funds to sustain this service. Considering that magazines and newspapers

had earned funds through advertising for decades, one would expect radio to have followed suit;

but strangely enough, a number of plans arose involving the earning of funds without any

advertising whatsoever. In an article in late 1922, Scientific American posed the possibility that

the United States government take an active role in the regulation of radio broadcasting.7

Kaempffert’s idea was more ambitious, involving the formation of a “Radio Apparatus Section

of the Associated Manufacturers of Electrical Supplies” which would tax consumers at a level

4 Peter Dixon, Radio Writing (1931), 9.5 F.A. Collins, “Broadcasting Broadway by Radio.” The New York Times, January 1, 1922, 77.6 Kaempffert, 303.7 “About the Radio Round-Table: Opinions of Radio Leaders Regarding the Past, Present and Future of Broadcasting.” Scientific American, December 1922, 379.

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proportionate to their own sales to contribute to the maintenance of various radio stations.8

Still, in spite of these ambitious proposals, advertising ultimately stood out as the most

logical means of funding such an enormous public undertaking. In 1922, station WEAF in New

York broadcast the first commercial advertisement, a ten-minute talk by H.M. Blackwell of the

Queensboro Corporation touting the virtues of apartment housing at a complex called Hawthorne

Court in Jackson Heights, New York (CD track 1).9

By 1923, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, operators of Station WEAF,

had taken advantage of their station’s innovation and initiated a program in which advertisers

could broadcast sales messages at the charge of $100 for a ten-minute stretch of airtime.10 By the

decade’s end, radio’s transition into a national industry had solidified with the formation of the

Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. and the National Broadcasting Company, two major

networks formed from a series of affiliated stations and sustained via advertising funds.11

Nonetheless, the United States’ capitalist economy notwithstanding, the concept of advertising

had not necessarily arisen hand in hand with that of radio broadcasting, and the notion of directly

soliciting listeners for sales via the medium of speech was still untested and unstable.

In the middle of 1926, the dam between the public and the corporate world broke when

U.S. Attorney General John G. Sargent declared that the United States Secretary of Commerce

did not hold the power to control the nation’s rapidly expanding broadcasting system or assign

wavelengths to radio stations. The consequence of this decision was a state of virtual anarchy of

the airwaves, where multiple stations were competing for the same wavelength and radio

8 Kaempffert, 305.9 “Hawthorne Courts.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio: A Celebration of 65 Years of Great Radio Advertising (audio recording).10 Herman S. Gettinger, A Decade of Radio Advertising (1933), v.11 Ibid, vi.

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programs blanketed one another with static, much to the annoyance of listeners.12

This problem eventually reached a resolution when the United States Congress passed the

Federal Radio Law of 1927, which put all powers of national radio regulation into the hands of

an independent Federal Radio Commission. This commission was intended to be appointed by

the president to serve full-time for a term of one year to clear up “radio confusion”—within its

first year, the Commission eliminated some 300 broadcasters from the public roster.13

More importantly for fans of the bourgeoning medium, the Federal Radio Act included a

section which stipulated that, by regulation, the Commission must consider a radio station to be

serving the “public interest, convenience or necessity” before a permit could be granted for its

operation, with the same criteria in place for the renewal of said license.14 The clause, only

mentioned in passing, made up a relatively brief segment of the Act, but nevertheless was the

first official recognition that radio was an institution geared toward serving the public good.

At the end of the decade, the field of radio did not quite stand at a crossroads, but as the

national networks grew and advertising developed into a more integral factor in the operation of

a radio station, this need to serve the public interest became all the more important. Without the

watchful eye of the federal government to keep radio in check, it was almost entirely up to the

public to determine whether or not they were hearing what they wanted to hear. Without the

careful implementation of a set of self-defined industry regulations to keep advertisers from

overstepping their bounds, the future of radio in the public eye would be little more than liminal.

12 O.H. Caldwell, “How the Federal Radio Commission Brought Order Out of Chaos.” The Congressional Digest, October 1928, 266.13 Ibid, 283.14 U.S. Congress, The Radio Act of 1927, Public Law No. 632, February 23, 1927, 69th Congress.

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The Science of Salesmanship Radio reflects a phase through which much of advertising is passing—a glamorous land of make-believe in which forlorn maidens are told that they will win a husband by the use of a certain soap or face powder; in which young men will succeed in life by avoiding bad breath or by having their hair combed neatly; in which the lures of beauty and success are held out to a public that does not accept them wholeheartedly but wants to try them anyway, just in case they might work. It fattens upon a certain state of mind comparable to the way in which most people approach a fortune teller or a reader of horoscopes. They don’t quite believe it but they aren’t quite willing to disbelieve it.

—Roy S. Durstine, “The Future of Radio Broadcasting in the United States”

The Annals of the American Academy, January 1935

If the 1920’s were the decade when radio gained its legs as an entertainment medium, the

1930’s were when it took form as an inescapable, integral part of American culture. At one point

merely a promising diversion but now sitting at the epicenter of the national consciousness, radio

had worked out its niche within American society and made it clear that this grapple was going

to persist. The Los Angeles Times characterized 1930 as likely to be “another period of great

advance” for the medium due to great advances in the field of international broadcasting,15 and

the corporate world weighed in when the Radio Corporation of America, long the dominant

company operating within the market of commercial radio, officially announced the beginning of

its existence as an active manufacturing organization with privately-operated research facilities.16

Finally, radio’s importance in the federal sphere was solidified in June 1934, when Congress

replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Commission, an

independent executive committee formed to regulate interstate and foreign communications—a

crucial field in which radio now played a definitive role.17

15 John S. Daggett, “Gains Foreseen in Radio Field.” The Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1930, pg. A12.16 Radio Corporation of America, The Radio Decade (1930), 5.17 Bernard B. Smith, “The Radio Boom and the Public Interest.” Harper’s Magazine, March 1945, 315.

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Even more importantly for the American economy, the realm of the wireless had cast

aside any doubts that once existed about its commercial potential, and by this point radio had

completely come into its own as a legitimate advertising medium. Over the course of the decade,

the number of paid words crossing the airwaves reportedly rose from an estimated 7 million in

1920 to a formidable 58 million in 1929—a jump applicable not only to increased radio sales but

also corporate interest in the future of the field.18 In 1930 alone, the amount of cash put forth by

advertisers toward network advertising approached $28,000,000, a significant rise from the

previous year’s total of $19,000,000.19 Although just a decade earlier radio broadcasting was a

promising technology with a hazy, ill-defined future, by the onset of the Great Depression it had

officially made a transition into the stomping ground of the salesman.

By the 1930’s, advertising had become so prominent in broadcasting that it had divided

radio programming into two classes: sponsored and sustaining. Sponsored programs were any

pieces of radio programming bolstered by advertising dollars; these programs were usually more

barefacedly centered on entertaining the audience in order to achieve a connection between this

entertainment and the sponsor. Sustaining programs ran a distant second, consisting of material

put onto the airwaves at the volition and funding of the station itself—oftentimes these particular

programs served the sole purpose of building public knowledge of the station’s existence.20

In the building of commercial programming, advertisers were profoundly aware that they

were dealing with an entirely new mode of communication with its own boundaries, rules and

tics. Radio announcer Roy S. Durstine, at the time a prominent figure in broadcast advertising,

aptly painted this new landscape in an insider piece for Scribner’s Magazine:

Every one closely associated with broadcasting honestly believes that the constantincrease in its popularity is a wonderful tribute to the inherent hardihood of radio’s appeal

18 Radio Corporation of America, 25.19 Henry Volkening, “The Abuses of Radio Broadcasting.” Current History, December 1930, 396.20 Robert West, The Rape of Radio (1941), 495.

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rather than to the past or present excellence of programme-building. The more a personlearns about it the better he realizes that it is a new and extremely difficult technic, andthat the best results cannot come from borrowing too freely from other kinds of

entertainment.21

Radio operated within a novel, distinctive framework never before experienced in the field of

human communication, and even those directly involved in parallel media, such as newspapers,

had to remap their brains in order to adapt to this sudden paradigm shift. This technological

change in the everyday lifestyle of the public was reflected tenfold in the advertising world. In

order to sell and sustain themselves, advertisers had to forge a connection to a listening public

who were themselves coming to terms with an expanding new technology—a change which

required the creation of a completely new set of rules.

These rules came slowly into being over the course of the 1930’s, as a combination of

advertisers, broadcasters and experts in the broadcasting field independently contributed to the

building of a body of marketing knowledge, best described as a science of salesmanship. Wide in

scope but unified in message, this science was expressed primarily through various forms of

print media such as pamphlets and full-length books, often delivered directly to operators of

American broadcasting stations. As a whole, the science was geared toward providing sponsors

with the ideal means to present advertising copy to a listening public, with the goal of bringing in

revenue as well as ensuring the protracted success of both the sponsor and the broadcaster.

Operating in full view of a public still not quite weaned on wireless broadcasting, however, the

science was a complex one, on levels not only procedural but also psychological.

The act of producing and directing a radio program involved a degree of mental juggling

almost unheard of before the 1930’s outside of the world of politics. A successful radio director

was expected to achieve mastery of two jobs that, by themselves, would already be daunting: the

coordination of the complete staff of a radio station, as well as the appeasement of a listening 21 Durstine, Roy S. “We’re On the Air.” Scribner’s Magazine (May 1928), 626.

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audience which was ultimately the body in power. John S. Carlile, production manager of the

Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., came to the conclusion that a radio director held a similar

job to a circus ringmaster’s: “On many occasions, both in the theatre and in the radio studio,”

wrote Carlile, “nothing would be more welcome to the director than to have a circus showman at

his side, who would point with uncanny insight to those parts in a show which would entertain

and those likely to be ineffective.”22 Working in a stressful field but one also designed to appeal

to a vast and diverse public, a radio director was ultimately a showman, standing in the center of

a swirling, undefined madness. In order to pull in top dollar, however, he had to cast aside this

stress and present the public with material worth investing both time and money in; the question

that remained was how exactly to achieve a workable conclusion to this conundrum.

Home Is Where the Hertz Is—The Direct Nature of Radio Broadcasting

As a jumping-off point for most discussions of radio salesmanship, almost every scholar

inevitably touched upon the fact that radio broadcasting was a form of communication that not

only spoke directly to its audience, but also sat in its living room. Technology had never before

allowed millions of people to listen to the same information at the same time, and the potential of

this novel ability did not go unnoticed. In its direct appeal to the public, many likened radio

advertising to forms of spoken advertising of yore such as the town crier, approaching people on

the street in a bid to spread news and sell wares. Orrin G. Dunlap, radio editor of The New York

Times, even went so far as to claim that the medium was “an art, new in details but old in

principle, which is little more than a reversion to the spoken word and the direct appeal of

prehistoric days of the tribal camp fires.”23

In spite of this innovative quality, however, this directness was a tricky, awkward beast,

22 John S. Carlile, Production and Direction of Radio Programs (1939), 21.23 Orrin E Dunlap Jr,, Radio in Advertising (1931), 2.

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and had the potential of posing a threat to the success of a radio campaign if an advertiser took

advantage of it in a careless fashion. Even if it involved similar levels of planning, broadcasting a

program over the radio was by no means similar to direct modes of entertainment such as staging

a performance on Broadway. Not only was the audience not actually paying for the material it

was receiving, this audience was far less likely to be composed of a single crowd united by its

allegiance to a particular set of tastes. “To attempt to consider as a whole the radio audience with

its likes and dislikes is the utmost foolishness,” wrote radio scholar Peter Dixon. “There is no

such thing as a radio audience. There are many radio audiences, just as there are thirty or forty

theater audiences on Broadway every night.”24

In that sense, radio was a medium like no other; its audience was a wide, scattered subset

of individual human minds and personalities, each one bearing his or her own particular tastes

and personal experiences surrounding what constituted good entertainment. On top of that, with

most of the listening audience enjoying programs from within the cozy safety of their own

homes, the relationship between listener and broadcaster was virtually one-on-one, with opinions

far less likely to be swayed by the viewpoints of others. Arthur S. Garbett, director of education

for the National Broadcasting Company’s Pacific Division, offered his take on this characteristic:

No matter what effort may be made in the broadcasting studio, the final criterion of theworth of a radio program is the product of the receiver or loudspeaker. The program is at

present addressed to the listener’s understanding through the ear exclusively. It is addressed to thousands of people but they are scattered over a vast area and are

out of sight. Moreover, they are best considered as single individuals, unmoved by crowd psychology.25

With radio catering to a set of human mindsets originating from a variety of backgrounds and

disciplines, the drive for an advertiser to distinguish himself from the status quo was even more

crucial than ever before. In the field of psychology, dealing with both individual and crowd

24 Dixon, 58.25 Arthur S. Garbett, The Technique of the Radio Broadcast (1933), 3.

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psychology were gentle arts that had been developing for years, but radio somehow managed to

forge an awkward hybrid of the two, seemingly jury-rigged to throw advertisers for a loop.

In addition, from the perspective of salesmanship experts, radio differed from print media

in that, as an auditory medium, it was particularly demanding of its audience: it invaded the

personal space of the listener, while demanding his or her complete attention for a set amount of

time. The ability to capture a listener’s attention through radio was in many ways more powerful

than the printed word, but at the same time, the potential for rendering the listener uncomfortable

and embittered was high. Consequently, were an advertiser to run an ad in a newspaper as well

as broadcast it as a “plug” on the radio, the radio listener would be all the more likely to be

offended, since the auditory advertisement would have taken up a very specific block of their

time that lasted far longer than the simple turning of a page.26

The means by which a radio advertisement could hit the wrong note were multiple and

varied, but in general the chief concern expressed was that, as a simulated human presence

existing within the home as opposed to ink on paper, there was the chance that the line could be

crossed from friendliness into outright intrusion. “It has been the dream of the advertiser to find

some medium that might walk in the front door and sell wares,” wrote Dunlap.

This dream is realized in radio broadcasting. But for a guest in the home to endeavor tosell toothpaste, bonds or anything else is an extremely doubtful procedure. Many homes,protesting intrusion of agents and peddlers, have posted their doors. Some have peekholes in the door through which they can look to see who is there before they open it andbid him welcome. But it is not the nature of radio to observe placards, peek-holes orlocks, neither will it be debarred by stone walls nor for the want of a key. Nevertheless,radio should be a worthy contribution to intimate fellowship—never an intrusion.27

In working out the social mechanics of sending plugs straight into the ears of the listener, care

had to be taken in ensuring that this directness did not bleed into disturbance.

Rendering this directness even more awkward was the fact that broadcasting was a one-

26 Gettinger, 290.27 Dunlap, 13.

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way mirror—broadcasters had no means to know whether their audience had abandoned them.

“Radio work is something like shadowboxing in the dark,” wrote radio expert Ivan Firth, “and is

valuable or useless according to the amount of serious effort that is used. You can’t see the other

fellow out there in the dark, but unless you can imagine him with all the concentration at your

command you will not obtain the results for which you are striving.”28 In that sense, broadcasting

to the masses was essentially a form of social mathematics—with the exception that whatever

limited listener response might have resulted from a broadcast, the only way to tell whether an

advertisement had achieved its intended goal was whether or not the sponsor’s product began to

move off of store shelves and into the hands of consumers.

On the other hand, although the isolated nature of radio advertising had its drawbacks,

this isolation also bore certain advantages of its own. Whereas radio could be intrusive in the

wrong context, some experts saw the medium as a potentially calming presence in the life of a

typical American family: if an advertiser were effectively going to be spending upwards of two

minutes in another’s household, the most solid approach would be to use this time to make this

alien presence a natural element of one’s household life. As radio psychologists Hadley Cantril

and Gordon W. Allport wrote,

Radio is perhaps our chief potential bulwark of social solidarity … Take the case of thefamily, the institution that sociologists have always regarded as the keystone of anysociety. In recent years its functions have obviously been weakened. In a modest and unwitting way radio has added a psychological cement to the threatened structure. A radio in the home relieves an evening of boredom and is an effective competitor for entertainment outside. Children troop home from their play an hour earlier than they would otherwise, simply because Little Orphan Annie has her copyrighted adventures at a stated hour.29

Whether or not the idea of children listening to Little Orphan Annie instead of being outside

playing baseball strikes one as a positive development in society, the fact that this shift was

28 Ivan Firth, Gateway to Radio (1934), 32.29 Hadley Cantril, Ph.D. and Gordon W. Allport, Ph.D., The Psychology of Radio (1935), 24.

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taking place is indicative of the influence of radio on domestic life in the 1930’s. The presence of

a transmitter in the living room held an ambiguous appeal; just as radio possessed the power to

terrify and alienate, it was nonetheless in many ways a lot more personal of a medium than the

printed word, and thus possessed a parallel ability to connect emotionally with listeners and

become an inherent part of household life. Thus, with the position of the radio in the consumer

world established, the question remained of how exactly to harness its appeal and make sure that

listeners would consistently treat it as an endearing force in their lives.

Good Will Hunting—How Advertisers Envisioned a Satisfied Radio Audience

“Radio entertainment has become a national institution as popular as breakfast,” wrote

Ivan Firth, glibly adding, “There are plenty of people who don’t like breakfast.”30 Radio

salesmanship studies were rife with the assertion that reaching out to the public was an endless

struggle to win over the skeptical while still remaining faithful to the choir. It was by no means

beyond the radio audience to criticize a public service that, price of the receiver aside, it was

receiving for free; in that context, it was important for experts in the salesmanship field to seek

out the element that would satisfy as much of the listening public as possible without fail.

One such element that recurred on a particularly frequent basis throughout the literature

of broadcasting was the concept of “good will.” A hopeless buzzword by its very nature, the

concept was nevertheless crucial in the envisioning of the basic needs of a radio audience, and is

easily the goal most frequently cited by radio salesmanship literati. Cutting through the industry

vagueness, Orrin G. Dunlap defined the term as “nothing more than the expression of approval

for a product which comes in the form of sales sooner or later”31—a concept almost ludicrously

simple on the surface, but applied to a public of millions, considerably more daunting of a task.

30 Firth, 19.31 Dunlap, 108.

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This expression of approval was ultimately ephemeral and easy to lose grasp of at the simplest

mistake. As Dr. Lee de Forest, American inventor and pioneer in the field of radio broadcasting,

stated, clumsy salesmanship has the ability to convert the good will carefully cultivated at great

expense by a sponsor into ill will, expressed not only against that particular sponsor, but also

against the entirety of radio broadcasting.32

The process of creating and fostering this good will involved a fragile combination of

understanding the audience’s aesthetic tastes and distastes and thereupon crafting advertisements

with these factors in mind. This was a fairly clear-cut yet tenuous process, involving the purging

of any negative or potentially disgusting characteristics from a broadcast advertisement. The

employment of coarseness and vulgarity on the airwaves had the tendency to evoke feelings of

disgust and uneasiness in the human psyche (and stomach), and for that reason did not often

receive a favorable reception from radio audiences.

This meant that advertisements for products such as laxatives, toothpaste and deodorant

were particularly frowned upon by sponsors, especially if these advertisements contained sound

effects that illustrated the bodily functions related to them in murky, graphic detail.33 A 1941

advertisement for Ipana Toothpaste (CD track 2) illustrates this point, with the announcer not

only describing the virtues of the toothpaste in cheerful detail, but also repeatedly intoning that

the buyer should massage it into his gums as regularly as possible.34

“With fear and trembling,” wrote New York advertising agency head Roy S. Durstine,

“one of the networks only a few years ago accepted a radio program for a laxative. To its great

surprise it has had almost no protest of any kind. The result is that today there are a great many

programs describing in the most intimate detail various ailments of the human body—details

32 Ibid, 4.33“New Radio Rules.” Time, May 20, 1935, 66.34 “Ipana Toothpaste.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).

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which cause an embarrassed silence to drop upon any group of people who may be listening

together.”35 Durstine’s example spotlights a crucial point regarding the concept of good will:

Regardless of whether or not advertisements for laxatives were to cause the listening public to

erupt into outrage, psychologically, the majority of the American populace possessed no active

desire to hear noises and instructions related to how to massage their gums or clean their bowels,

and the end result would be a plunge in approval. It might cause that particular sponsor’s sales to

rise, but at the potential cost of embarrassment and public hatred.

The moral and ethical qualities of a radio advertisement also held particularly grave

importance in the minds of radio salesmen—if members of the listening public felt that a plug

offended some aspect of his or her set of values, the only conceivable result would be bitterness

and alienation against the sponsor. Morality is a broad topic, so the sources of dissent could vary

wildly—a product could be perceived as falsely advertised, or a plug intended for children could

offend a parent’s sensibilities as to what should constitute acceptable radio programming. An

aspect which had a particularly large impact on a plug’s sense of moral saliency, however, was

whether or not it played upon issues of misery and carnage as a selling point.

This did not necessarily come up as a problem in cases where radio advertisers were to

refer to the Great Depression, since the rapid movement of consumer goods could only help the

economy during troubled times. However, as the 1930’s progressed and Europe veered closer

and closer toward a state of total war, one which eventually drew U.S. soldiers into direct

conflict with enemy forces, the possibilities for advertisers to be curt with issues of graveness

and offhandedly offend large sectors of their listening public were many. “It would not be a good

idea … to link a trade name with terror and calamity …” wrote Dunlap Jr., “because that would

35 Roy S. Durstine, “The Future of Radio Advertising in the United States.” The Annals of the American Academy, v. 177 (Jan. 1935), 150.

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create ill will for any sponsor who attempted to capitalize on a scene of death and disaster.”36

A good example of the sort of advertising decried by Dunlap and other salesmanship

experts is a plug broadcast by Sealtest Milk in 1940 (CD track 3). In the advertisement, the

announcer claims that the nutrition of a nation is integral to the waging of a successful war effort,

declaring that “food must fight as well as men in this total war.”37 Harmless on the surface but

callous in execution, the plug had little to do with the actual situation overseas as opposed to the

selling of a stateside commodity, and its broadcasting was a rather risky moral venture.

Upon America’s eventual entrance into the Second World War, the National Association

of Broadcasters compiled a “wartime guide” for radio networks and broadcasters. The guide

featured a list of sixteen “do nots,” intended both to maintain morale as well as keep pertinent

and possibly classified information safely in the hands of the Allied powers. On the list, sitting

next to a grave warning against underestimating enemy strength, was a stern advisory for

sponsors not to undermine the importance of the war effort with crass commerce: “DO NOT

allow sponsors to use the news as a springboard for commercials. Such practices as starting

commercials with ‘Now some good news, etc.’ should never be permitted … Do not permit,

‘Here’s good news! The Bargain Basement announces drastic reductions, etc.”38 At the same

time, sponsors of war programs concerning the war carried the added burden of bringing dissent

and distaste upon the station and the network, should they “blow up” a piece of war news for the

sake of drawing listening audiences toward purchasing a sponsor’s product.39

As conceptually abstract as good will might be, the fact that its existence and importance

were generally acknowledged is interesting, in that such a concept might not only conceivably be

important on a nationwide scale, but also have a profound influence on the operation of an entire 36 Dunlap Jr., 109.37 “Sealtest Milk.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).38 Sherman H. Dryer, Radio in Wartime (1942), 19.39 Ibid, 158.

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media. With radio’s establishment of a direct line between sponsor and listener came a certain

responsibility to serve and respect these listeners, lest the public’s perception of a nationwide

institution be placed in serious jeopardy. Still, maintaining the good faith of the public was, in

the end, just another component of the intricacies surrounding the science of salesmanship, and

the advertising wizards of the 1930’s had an even greater wealth of tricks ready to unleash upon

their immensely critical audience.

Projecting, Connecting—Amplified Sincerity and an Announcer’s Success

The psychology of broadcasting was important in establishing a framework within which

radio could successfully operate, but without the proper human conduit to convey the sponsor’s

message, all of the effort that went into the construction of an advertisement would be lost. For

that reason, it was crucial that a program’s announcer be as extraordinarily qualified as possible.

The announcer was usually the first aspect of a radio advertisement that a listener would actually

pay attention to; if the first attempt at grabbing a listener’s ear were botched, the impact of the

plug would suffer at the hands of flimsy salesmanship.40

In addition, the announcer played a huge role in setting the mood of the announcement,

with the establishment of the proper mental attitude on the part of the listeners being key towards

easing them into understanding the merits of a product.41 A program where the importance of a

versatile announcer was particularly manifest was “Show Boat” on Station WLS in Chicago, a

program portraying the radio station as a “floating palace of wonder” bringing entertainment to

its listeners (CD track 4).42 In a piece for the magazine Radio Guide, Frank MacIntyre, captain

of a later version of the Show Boat, shed light on the complexities of his job: “I have to be

40 Dunlap Jr., 145.41 Firth, 210.42 CD TRACK

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master of ceremonies, announcer and actor. The master of ceremonies on a program like Show

Boat must lend color to the whole hour, blend it together, with only his voice to help him.”43

Even more important than the announcer’s ability to conduct himself at the forefront of a

radio program, however, was his ability to present a public face with which listeners would

actually identify. Radio expert Enid Day summed up the merits of this amicable approach with a

single sentence: “A daily program must be on a friendly level, with continuity which carries the

voice of authority, but not the voice of a snob.”44 Indeed, the human voice is a versatile part of

the human anatomy and can be stretched into a wide number of tonal shapes, but when combined

with the agency of radio broadcasting, only a select range of these forms actually appear to the

radio listener as casual, natural and, most importantly of all, worth one’s time and money.

The tricky factor that lies therein is that radio broadcasting is not merely a science that

one can break down into the formula that sincerity equals success. Stripped of any ambitions

toward personal or financial gain, the default state of human discourse is sincerity, but that by no

means meant that John Q. Homeowner’s friendly neighbor down the street could abandon his

lawnmower, leap onto the airwaves and sell peanuts and mattresses to the masses out of sheer

everyman charisma. Leaving much to the imagination, radio had the tendency of skeletonizing

the personality of the speaker or performer, in turn spawning a critical and individualistic nature

in the radio audience that it does not necessarily possess when speaking to people in person.45

In the eyes of many, the radio presence who held the keenest understanding of this divide

was none other than U.S. President Frankin Delano Roosevelt, who famously conducted a series

of “fireside chats” with the public over the course of his lengthy term of office (CD track 5).46

Bearing the reputation of being a president for the people, Roosevelt delivered these chats in a 43 West, Rape of Radio, 31.44 Enid Day, Radio Broadcasting for Retailers (1947), 28.45 Cantril, 14.46 “Franklin Delano Roosevelt” (audio recording). First Fifty Years of Radio: The 1930’s, Part 5.

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warm, humble but patrician tone, one which has outlived the ages and become one of the most

famous relics of the New Deal era. However, the reason that these broadcasts were so successful

with listeners is not necessarily that Roosevelt spoke in such a way by his very nature. It is

perhaps more accurate to infer that he approached his broadcasts bearing an understanding of the

sheer power of the human voice, and in the process became a symbolic glimmer of hope, beloved

by millions and offering a nation a way out of economic turmoil.47

In the field of radio salesmanship, Roosevelt’s verbal versatility earned him the treatment

of a veritable deity. Expressing himself in short sentences and employing frequent, effective use

of dramatic pauses, the president’s methods of connecting with his audience mirrored those of

the most respected advertisers, thus essentially rendering the leader of the free world the ideal

radio salesman. British radio expert William Freeman, observing American radio from abroad,

offered a succinct take on Roosevelt’s success: “He has mastered every trick in the box, and all

those mannerisms we now associate with the President’s delivery are precisely the mannerisms

that every effective radio speaker must learn. God gave the President his voice; Groton and

Harvard gave him his accent. To that extent he is inimitable.”48

In layman’s terms, listeners came to expect from the typical radio announcer exactly what

they received from Franklin Roosevelt: a simulated physical presence which commanded respect

but at the same time did so in a personable, friendly way which lacked any vague modicum of

condescension. The path toward radio success, as painted by the canon of radio salesmanship

scholars, was to take an approach that combined sincerity with the charisma demanded by the

idea that millions upon millions of people might be listening to you. “The greatest orators on the

radio today are not orators in the ordinary sense of the word,” wrote Robert West, president of

47 Cantril, 208.48 William Freeman, Hear! Hear!: An Informal Guide to Public Speaking After Dinner, on the Lecture Platform, Over the Radio (1941), 157.

18

the Radio Arts Guild of America. “President Roosevelt’s speeches are as the conversation of one

man of the people to another.”49

With this maxim in mind, it was easy for members of the public to assume that being an

announcer was a simple job. “To the average listener, all that seems to be required of the radio

announcer is that he stand before a microphone and read a prepared statement with a reasonably

good voice,” wrote John S. Carlile. “And many a lad throughout the country is sure that his voice

is pleasanter than the one he hears on the radio.”50 On the contrary, announcing was excessively

difficult and involved a lot of subtle nuances often overlooked. Radio announcers had to be

adept at topical ad libbing for stretches of up to fifteen minutes—a skill involving a combination

of knowledge of world events and the refined speaking skills necessary to convert these events

into words smooth-flowing enough for listeners. On top of that, the intellectual qualities of an

announcer were just as important as his speaking skills; knowledge of at least one foreign

language was a must, and many networks by the end of the 1930’s would not consider an

applicant without a college degree.51 Thus, the process by which one became an announcer was

grueling and demanding.

As a key figure in the Columbia Broadcasting System production team, Carlile was

intimately familiar with the process by which his corporation hired announcers; in his book

Production and Direction of Radio Programs, the broadcaster laid out the steps of the process in

detail. The early stages of a potential announcer’s audition process involved the reading of

relatively simple material that they might conceivably read on the air: first they were given a

sheet of paper and asked to read the station’s opening and closing identification, and then recite a

section of the news of the day. After that, the process became more intricate and closely-tied to

49 Robert West, So-o-o-o You’re Going on the Air! (1934), 138.50 Carlile, 147.51 West, Rape of Radio, 20.

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the station’s commercial aims—the announcer received a sample commercial announcement to

read into the microphone, with nothing but the prompt, “The product must be sold.”52

The remainder of the gauntlet consisted of a series of challenges meant to gauge the

applicant’s technical abilities. This process began with a list of words frequently mispronounced

by network broadcasters—American or Anglicized names such as “Iolanthe” and “Eccles,”

foreign words such as “völkische,” and frequently mispronounced English words such as

“obstretrics,” “comptroller” and “gubernatorial.” Also included were a set of relatively common

words, such as “laboratory,” “mischievous,” “exemplary” and, fittingly enough, “advertisement,”

that would reveal whether the applicant held any pronunciation tics that would lay bare his ties to

a particular region of the country.53

Finally, the applicant was presented with the arduous task of reciting what Carlile called

the “piece de resistance” or the “shock copy”—an announcement filled with so many difficult-

to-pronounce words and phrases that no applicant could conceivably memorize all of it:

In the last of the series of symphonic concerts we heard:“Passacaglia” by Girolamo Frescobaldi, “April Nocturne” from the “Canta Primavera” by Vittorio Giannini, and the “First Suite of Antique Airs and

Dances” by Ottorino Respighi. The suite is in four sections: “Ballatta,” “Gagliarda,” “Vilanella” and “Paso a Due e Mascherata.”

A rousing refrain of ancient times—a setting by Saint-Saens of Victor Hugo’sballad “Le Pas d’armes du Roi Jean” (“The March of King John’s Troops”). It is a

colorful air filled with flourish and bravado—such a tune as the chevaliers of old may

have sung as they marched off to fight against the enemies of France.Hector Berlioz has written a memorable setting of Goethe’s satiric poem, “Chanson de la Puce” (“The Song of the Flea”). It is a ballad sung by

Mephistopheles during the wine-cellar scene in “The Damnation of Faust”—a sarcastic refrain about a

flea who dresses in silks, becomes Minister to the King, and makes his relatives lords andladies of the Court.54

Even if applicants managed to learn the content of the “shock copy” beforehand—which they

52 Carlile, 150.53 Ibid, 153.54 Ibid, 154.

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sometimes did—what was important was not the announcer’s technical precision, but rather the

overall flow of the announcement as well as how they approached the unfamiliar material. In

fact, applicants who obtained the test material beforehand often produced clinical, parrot-like

recitations that failed to impress the test administrators at all.55

Possibly the most important aspect of this whole process of picking and choosing an

proper announcer is how much agency and sheer intelligence it placed in the consumer’s mind.

Within the scholarly work surrounding salesmanship and how to broadcast, not one writer claims

that the road to success is to take advantage of an intellectual high ground and assume that the

listener will accept as canon whatever the radio might churn out. Instead, the discourse of radio

was seen as an amplified form of any other kind of polite, formal discourse, not exactly fooling

the listener so much as respecting their rights to pick and choose whatever product they wish—

with the implicit hope that the product they choose will be the sponsor’s.

During a 1934 talk before the newly-established Federal Communications Commission,

Columbia Broadcasting Company president William S. Paley identified that listener interest

stems from programs that appeal to the emotions and self-interest of the listener, and went on to

claim that “the radio industry considers this listener interest its life’s blood.”56 An announcer that

fails to live up to standards of friendliness that any given listener would expect from any of his or

her fellow citizens would have undoubtedly brought an abrupt halt to the flow of this blood.

Do You Copy?—The Incredible Importance of a Wily Wordsmith

“It is amusing that announcers are considered of such importance that their names are

almost invariably given out on every program,” wrote Ivan Firth, “whereas the writer, all too

55 Ibid.56 William S. Paley, Radio as a Cultural Force (1934), 8.

21

often, remains anonymous.”57 As far as the announcer’s role in the broadcasting of a radio

program was concerned, radio experts considered his or her personality a crucial factor in the

success of an advertisement, but if the actual words being tossed out into the wireless ether were

not up to snuff, the entire advertisement would crumble into dust. “This writer’s name is never

mentioned on the air,” wrote Peter Dixon. “He gets very little publicity and as a rule he isn’t

highly paid. Yet he has become one of the most important persons in the broadcasting studios.”58

Advertising copy was not merely the glue that held a radio program together; it was the

body and soul of said program, with the announcer filling the role of being a talented agent of

amplification. The copy of an announcement was where all of the wit, the pizzazz, the wordplay

and the wisdom of an advertisement lay, and on top of that, it was where the name of the actual

product received its articulation. To underestimate the importance of high-quality copy in a radio

advertisement would have been like holding a cinematic awards show without categories for the

screenwriters—entirely a glamour show bearing little to none of the substance that makes the

medium work in the first place.

In addition, according to radio expert C.H. Sandage, taking on the role of writing

advertising copy was more than just a matter of being the person responsible for the wittiness of

a plug’s words, as filtered through a really talented mouthpiece. It was the copy writer who

ultimately is the singular individual in charge of the message being conveyed to listeners—in

other words, he or she would be the one who must make sure that the advertisement respects the

feelings and intelligence of the listener, all the while making sure to appeal to the self-interest of

the consumer. At the same time, the role extended beyond the task of being in charge of the

information expressed to the listener—the copy writer also had to take into account the image of

57 Firth, 24.58 Dixon, 3.

22

the sponsor in the minds of the public, including whether or not the retailer is able and willing to

live up to its claims. In that sense, the copy writer’s role was multi-faceted in that, unlike the

announcer, the writer had to juggle several forms of public perception at once while portraying a

sponsor’s service in a light that would make the public want to purchase it.59 “Strive to make all

your broadcasts interesting and entertaining,” wrote salesmanship scholars Katherine Seymour

and J.T.W. Martin, “and you will obtain far greater good-will for your product than if you devote

half your broadcast to telling the audience what a stupendous program you are presenting and

what a miraculous product your program represents.”60

In the process of writing directly for the consumer, copy writers had several different

types of advertisements to work with. The most common was the straight announcement—an

advertisement placed as a break in a radio program with no connection to its surroundings aside

from the announcer himself.61 A good example of this is a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer advertisement

from the early ’30s (CD track 6)62, where the content of the advertising copy is purely sales-

based, with no references to programming content. In 1932, the copy writers for Ed Wynn’s

popular variety program (CD track 7)63 introduced the concept of dialogue “mentions”—the

name of a product worked into the actual copy of a program. In this particular case, Wynn played

a character called the “Texaco Fire Chief” in a comedy sketch intended both to entertain the

listener and provide exposure for the sponsor. Finally, an option available to a copy writer was

the writing of a testimonial—people explaining how a product helped their particular situation. A

1942 ad for Swan’s Down Cake Mix (CD track 8)64 illustrates this type of advertising, featuring a

down-home grandmother figure explaining how the cake mix completely changed her farm-life

59 C.H. Sandage, Radio Advertising for Retailers (1945), 17.60 Katherine Seymour and J.T.W. Martin, How to Write for Radio (1931), 201.61 Katherine Seymour and J.T.W. Martin, Practical Radio Writing (1938), 253.ical62 “Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).63 “Texaco.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).64 “Swan’s Down Cake Mix.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).

23

perception that good cake could not possibly be made from an instant mix.

Aside from its role in direct communication with the public, copy writing in itself

followed an interesting set of rules and regulations, probably best elaborated in B.J. Palmer’s

tract Radio Broadcasting, a pamphlet sent out to every major radio station in America. A curt

and by-the-books radio theorist and president of Davenport, Iowa’s Basic Blue Network, Palmer

wrote in a style symbolic of his no-frills approach to radio broadcasting: “Difference between

rare successful station and common failure stations, is difference between a successful man and

failure men. THAT difference is pre-determined by RULES THEY FOLLOW, as and when they

think.”65 In the pamphlet, Palmer claims that too much advertising copy is weighed down by

useless drivel, and introduces the concept of “goat feathers”—unnecessary words and negative

phrasings that have the sole consequence of lengthening advertisements and boring the listener.

“The path of least resistance,” wrote Palmer, “is what makes rivers and men crooked! The path

of hardest resistance—is what makes rivers and men straight!”66

To combat this incessant trend, Palmer introduced a counter-concept called “briefing,” in

which unnecessary words and phrases are either deleted from advertising copy or replaced by

more curt phrasings. As an example, Palmer introduced a contemporary radio advertisement by

the Crown Life Insurance company, with edits made displaying how much of it could be outright

deleted for the sake of flow and clarity. Reproduced below is the first paragraph of the plug,

entitled “The Crown.” All purged words are in bold parentheses, with added text in brackets.

Howdy (there) neighbors, howdy! Reckon you’ve been feeling right chipper (here) the last two days (what) with the sun shinin’ so bright and all! (Guess a lot) [Many] of you fellows have been able to get (out) in the corn fields after a delay of some two weeks or more. (You know, s)[S]peaking of (that) delay due to bad weather, makes me think of (some of) the storms we run up against in our (own) lives! We go along singin’ a song thinking (nothin’ will ever happen to our family) [we are immune] when BINGO … the props are knocked (clean out) from under our feet. (Take for instance, w) [W]hen a

65 B.J. Palmer, Radio Salesmanship (1944), 22.66 Ibid.

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loved one passes away, and you haven’t (any) spare cash on hand. It’s tough (then), all right, and it’s a hardship (that can be plum) [to] avoid(ed). (If you have a) CROWN LIFE INSURANCE POLICY [will] protect(ing) all (the) members of your family.67

Perhaps even more important than the resulting advertisement being shorter and smoother is the

fact that the edit takes care not to take the humanity out of the advertisement. Though some

worthless words are purged, phrases like “you’ve been feeling right chipper” remain in place,

true to the original spirit of the plug, meant to come off as delivered by a friendly cowboy. These

dueling aspects are emblematic of the role of the copy writer to experts in the field of radio

salesmanship: they had to maintain the flow of the program while still making sure that it carried

a message to consumers that was not only accurate, but appealing.

A Dash of Tonal Flavor—The Role of Music in the Punch of Plugs

The final component of a successful radio advertisement was an element that was in

theory tangential to a listener’s appreciation of a plug, but in many ways one of the most

important of all: its use of music. Whether in the form of symphony orchestras, commercial

jingles or other accompanying pieces, the reason for its importance was psychological—on an

emotional level, human beings tend to react quite viscerally to the presence of music. “Because

of its ability to induce feelings,” wrote Herman S. Gettinger, “music produces an emotional

reaction which the listener, referring to past experience in an endeavor to classify the impression

which the music makes upon him, terms as ‘sad,’ ‘happy,’ ‘fierce’ or ‘restful,’ as the case may

be.”68 To experts in the field of radio salesmanship, the proper application of music received

treatment on the level of an element that could easily make or break an advertisement.

As was the case with announcers, however, the mere presence of music in a plug was not

enough in its own right to satiate the listening public. Warren B. Dygert, assistant professor of

67 Ibid, 36.68 Gettinger, 11.

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marketing at New York University, separated the public with regard to musical knowledge into

two classes—those who know music, and those who do not—but at the same time added that

“everyone, the artist, the craftsman, the factory worker, is as conscious of the rhythmic pattern as

they are of symmetry or sheer beauty.”69 Although the public as a whole did not necessarily

consist of individuals endowed with profound musical expertise, it also for the most part did not

consist of the tone-deaf, and the musical components of advertisements were to be constructed

with reverence for the standard rules of tone and taste no matter the intended audience.

With regard to the content of the actual plugs themselves, music had the ability to play

the role of augmenting and strengthening specific promotional points while, at the same time,

establishing the tone and atmosphere of a plug in general. “Successful radio music,” wrote radio

scholar Kenneth M. Goode, “may demand an almost instantaneous attention catching-and-

holding quality in the way of simple, easily and quickly grasped quality of rhythm and melody

which provokes immediately and holds throughout an increasing desire to hear an easily and

definitely anticipated repetition.”70 In particular, the application of high-quality music could

significantly strengthen the impact of a particularly good announcer. “When an announcer has a

voice of molten gold,” wrote Ivan Firth, “to hear the opening poem to ‘Arabesque’ is a joy to

nearly everyone. The combination of a glorious voice and the exquisite music behind it has made

radio history.”71 Working in tandem with the announcer, another heralded element of radio

advertising, if employed properly music could give an ad’s overall point extra emotional impact.

At the same time, in the eyes of radio analysts, music possessed a selling power of its

own independent of the presence of the announcer. In particular, the use of music provided a

sense of flow which rendered an ad easier on the listener’s ears as a piece of advertising, thus

69 Warren B. Dygert, Radio as an Advertising Medium (1939), 87.70 Kenneth M. Goode, What About Radio? (1937), 154.71 Firth, 59.

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increasing audience receptiveness to the sponsor’s product.72 But the successful establishment of

flow was a careful and meticulous process: “In order to have the best music for the needs of a

show,” wrote Dygert, “a good musical program must be carefully planned, the selections must be

appropriately arranged, the talent must be tastefully selected, and the instrumentation … must

balance and reinforce the program, and meet the budget of the advertiser.”73 A prime example of

music being arranged to maximum advertising effect is a 1946 plug by Cott Beverages (CD track

9)74, where the famous opening notes from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are used as the tonal

foundation for a musical extravaganza proclaiming the chain’s “message of flavor.” The music

arrives in such cluttered bursts as to be nearly overpowering to the listener, but the company’s

advertising message still receives the plug’s central position.

The most important musical aspect of all in radio advertising, however, was an agency’s

use of commercial jingles. Beginning in 1922 with a musical signature for the Happiness Candy

Company (CD track 10)75 and still ever-present today, these musical signatures served the

purpose of solidifying the name and message of a sponsor’s product in a listener’s mind, entirely

through the tricks and tools of songwriting. However, to salesmanship experts, the use of a jingle

in an advertisement was the most potentially dangerous form of musical advertising by some

distance. Whereas background music, employed improperly, could only have the ultimate

consequence of rendering an advertisement awkward and stilted, a poorly-composed jingle could

actively inspire the wrath of listeners. This advice came from the pens of Allan Bradley Kent and

Austen Croom-Johnson, two of the most lucrative songwriters in the 1930’s jingle business:

We are serious about musical commercials in view of the fact that we have built abusiness with them. We believe that they should be a pleasing and intriguing form of sugar-coating the advertising pill. But apparently it isn’t that easy. Agencies, clients and

72 Ibid, 55.73 Dygert, 92.74 “Cott Beverages.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).75 “Happiness Candy Company.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).

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writers must increasingly realize that irritant jingles, badly written or produced, will end up by killing the goose that laid the golden egg.76

From the late 1930’s onward, Kent and Johnson wrote more than forty of radio’s most

frequently-rotated jingles.77 Kent, in particular, stood as a strong example of the power of a radio

jingle to take over the airwaves. After spot advertisements came into the forefront of advertising

in the mid-1930’s, he was involved in the composition of “Nickel Nickel”(CD track 11)78, a

Pepsi-Cola jingle advertising the soda brand’s new five-cent, twelve-ounce bargain. The plug

aired more than a million times on 350 separate stations between 1935 and 1941 and, as a result,

became a nigh inescapable part of popular culture during the 1930’s.79

Of the components of a successful radio advertisement, jingles were perhaps the most

tricky of all, since, as Charles Hull Wolfe, director of the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne

Radio Bureau, put it, “More than any other style of radio commercial, jingles are apt to be either

brilliantly successful or unhappily mediocre.”80 Since jingles stood as the aspect of a commercial

plug that the public was supposed to remember more than anything else, the songwriting process

involved in the composition of a jingle could be excessively complex. To achieve commercial

success, a jingle had to be fit for the particular product it was trying to push, composed through

close collaboration with the musician or musicians in question, heavily reliant on emphasizing

the title of the product and based on the musical rules of popular songwriting. In general, the

jingle had to have one outstanding idea to provide a reason for its existence. The jingle “Chiquita

Banana”(CD track 12)81 originated with the simple idea of personifying a banana as a Latin-

American calypso dancer, and went on to become not only one of the most popular jingles of its

76 Charles Hull Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising (1949), 557.77 Ibid.78 “Pepsi-Cola.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).79 Al Graham, “Jingle—Or Jangle.” The New York Times Magazine, October 29, 1944.80 Wolfe, 559.81 “Chiquita Banana.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).

28

era, but also a stereotype in its own right—it was even once used as a public-service plea to send

food abroad.82 Jingles based on well-known folk melodies were also particularly prevalent; a

1929 plug for Interwoven Socks (CD track 13)83 and a 1931 plug for Tasty Yeast (CD track 14)84

both took their melodies from the popular musical nursery rhyme “If You’re Happy and You

Know It,” thus rendering them likely to stick in listeners’ memories.

Most importantly of all, the jingle had to stay on the air long enough to remain lodged in

the radio listener’s memory—without attaining this ultimate goal, the purpose of its composition

would be completely bunk. To accomplish this task, like any other aspect of successful radio

broadcasting, the jingle had to establish a happy medium between shoving itself in the listener’s

ears and doing so without coming off as labored or irritating. The role of music in broadcast

advertising in general bore the arduous task of walking this awkward line—as Irwin Edman

wrote in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, “The radio, for all its blare and tawdry music, has put

millions within the reach of formerly impossible musical beauty.”85 More than any other

characteristic of radio broadcasting, music possessed the ability to stand on its own as an entity

of pure beauty, but if carried out in a careless fashion it could render a plug annoying like no

other.

Radio Salesmanship—A Discipline United

Perhaps the most unusual characteristic of the science of salesmanship was that in spite of

being compiled over the course of a decade by multiple scholars in disciplines as divergent as

academia, marketing and psychology, the vision that surrounded it was bizarrely unified. On top

of that, this unified vision was one that bore a tremendous amount of respect toward radio’s

82 “Specialist.” The New Yorker, October 4, 1947, 27.83 “Interwoven Socks.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).84 “Tasty Yeast.” A Tribute to the Friends of Radio (audio recording).85 Irwin Edman, “On American Leisure.” Harper’s Magazine (January 1928), 224.

29

audience; underneath all of the marketing jargon and buzzwords, the central message of almost

any given salesmanship work is that the members of the public were very smart and incredibly

discerning. It was the collective population of America who ultimately decided the fate of a radio

station via the power of opinion, and in that sense they were the real group in charge.

Nonetheless, it is particularly interesting to note that a majority of the maxims set forth in

the plethora of radio salesmanship pamphlets from the 1930’s still apply to listeners today after

the turn of the century. In a nation that has been pervaded by the media ever since radio thrust

itself upon the national scene, the psychology surrounding the base-level human instincts that

cause listeners to react to advertising have remained surprisingly static. With that assertion in

mind, it is honestly no real surprise that such a broad consensus was achieved over what listeners

wanted out of their listening experience during the 1930’s.

The importance of this science of salesmanship might be called into doubt by skeptics

who assume that the development of such a marketing strategy was just a horn-rimmed means to

categorize the listening audience as a populace that adhered to a series of strict psychological

rules and regulations. However, salesmanship did not exist as an island, and an examination of

the public’s reaction to radio advertising throughout the 1930’s and onward may suggest that

pundits in the field of salesmanship had a very solid point in the building of their meticulously-

planned psychological charts and calculations.

30

A Public Estranged, Embittered I note a letter from J.W. Long in which he denounces airplane advertising through a loud-speaker over his home. A similar airplane came over my home a short time ago. The message attracted tremendous attention, but it lasted only a few moments. The method was so striking that my wife became interested and purchased the product advertised. I would rather listen for a moment to such a message and have it over with instead of tuning in on my radio and being compelled to listen to many minutes of blah \ about Ajax Dog Blubber in order to hear a good dance orchestra.

—George A. Cline, “Radio Advertising”

The New York Times, July 23, 1933 (letter to the editor)

By the early 1930’s, both Variety and The New York Times bore full-fledged sections

devoted entirely to developments in the world of radio broadcasting, and a number of scholarly

journals such as Collier’s and Harper’s Monthly Magazine had also cast their collective eye

upon the medium. The institution of radio had existed for more than a decade, but this particular

development ensured that literati, members of the general public and journeymen in the field

alike could remain well-informed about the contemporary state of radio in the United States.

This bleeding of radio into the print domain, however, had the secondary impact of

giving the American public a means through which they could not only track every step of the

development of radio in the United States, but also vent any frustrations they might have had

concerning the content of United States radio programming. Throughout the 1930’s and onward,

the field of print media slowly but solidly developed into a conduit for the venting of a public

obsessed with the fulfillment of radio’s obligation toward the serving of the public good.

By and large, these printed musings, almost unilaterally directed against advertising,

served as proof that scholars in radio salesmanship were not wasting their efforts on pet theories

bearing no connection to the psyche of the listening public. Starting as a localized phenomenon

31

in the pages of scholarly journals and eventually growing into a legitimate national issue over the

course of the decade, dissent against the content of radio advertising solidified itself in the 1930s

in a way that would be almost unheard of today. Faced with a new technology and the printed

means to voice dissent against it, the members of the American public had no qualms whatsoever

with voicing their opinions consistently, earnestly and—most importantly of all—negatively.

Radio: A Distillation of Entertainment’s Lowest Common Denominator?

For most of the 1930’s, public discourse concerning the flaws of radio advertising was

largely trapped within the pages of weekly and monthly journals intended for intellectuals and

literati, in the form of opinion pieces and tautly-researched news features. During a decade when

the medium was still in the process of gaining its legs, the chief complaint against radio set forth

in these journals was that programming directors and advertising agencies consistently geared

their plugs toward appealing to the lowest possible common denominator of taste.

“Advertising has delivered yet another body blow to the radio,” wrote “The Drifter,” an

anonymous contributor to the left-wing United States periodical The Nation, in 1932. “From now

on millions of loud speakers will pour into the American home not only the fatuous and puerile

words of sales talks, but even the prices of dust-proof gelatin, life-preserving tooth paste, and

varnished breakfast food.”86 The Drifter’s sweeping, singular condemnation of radio advertising

was by no means unique; damnation of the paid advertisements interspersed throughout radio

often concentrated on the presentation of the products rather than the advertisements themselves.

Nonetheless, the proliferation of radio plugs as a concept in itself also received its share

of pointed criticism. “The dissatisfied listeners present two counts in their indictment,” wrote

Harper’s Monthly Magazine contributor Deems Taylor in 1935. “First, that there is too much

vulgar material, particularly vulgar music, in to-day’s programs; and second, that there is far too

86 ‘The Drifter,’ “In the Driftway.” The Nation, October 5, 1932, 309.

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much blatant advertising and selling-talk connected with radio.”87 Taylor’s summation is apt and

fitting to the lay of the land as far as public perception of radio was concerned; scholars often

despised the vulgar content of the medium’s programming, but this ire almost always came

packaged with a broad dismissal of radio’s commercial nature.

Occasionally, intellectuals even went so far as to place the blame for radio’s dumbed-

down qualities in the hands of listeners, chastising them for appreciating the medium for the

wrong reasons. In an article published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1931, prominent British radio

announcer H.V. Kaltenborn denounced his listening public for ignoring the overall quality and

societal significance of his program, centering around the important problems of current history,

in favor of sending in fan mail fawning over the expressive qualities of his voice.88

In the drive to identify a singular aggressor in the stilted gentrification of radio, however,

advertisers inevitably received blame either for being a cohort in the pollution of programming,

or stood as the very reason why radio programming was so terrible in the first place. An article

published in December 1935 in the literary journal Commonweal supports the second claim—

contributor A.M. Sullivan posed the notion that radio broadcasting inherently had its roots in

cruder forms of entertainment such as vaudeville, a problem that could be mitigated if advertisers

did not play such a decisive role in the determination of radio content.89

According to Sullivan, radio advertisers served an inherently counterproductive role in

the implementation of high-quality program content, always wanting radio to appeal to the basest

forms of intelligence. “While Ford, General Motors and Packard have given us good musical

programs,” wrote Sullivan, “national advertisers are not usually encouraged by their agency

advertisers to feature arty programs … Their article or service must have a mass sales appeal,

87 Deems Taylor, “Radio—A Brief for the Defense.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1935, 554.88 H.V. Kaltenborn, “Radio: Dollars and Nonsense.” Scribner’s Magazine, May 1931, 492.89 A.M. Sullivan, “Radio and Vaudeville Culture.” Commonweal, December 13, 1935, 178.

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and they are afraid to trim down their potential audience with anything classified as highbrow.”90

Indeed, the dominant view of the problem surrounding advertising’s stranglehold over the

institution of radio was that, in playing such a large role in defining radio programming, the same

advertiser often ended up defining the tastes of the public. In a society where radio stood as a

technological novelty supported financially by advertising dollars, a sense of worry pervaded

among the educated public that sponsors were luring listeners into a sort of sustained servitude.

In a certain sense, radio served as a form of psychological reinforcement and reassurance, which

some literati construed as commercial brainwashing. “The grotesque truth is that a bewildering

percentage of listeners like the advertising,” wrote a contributor to The New Republic in 1937.

“Commercial advertisements of the most appalling blatancy, blurbs that analyze body odor until

your very navel curls in pain, will draw a sustained flurry of responses as blizzards in January.”91

At the same time, writers in the field of print satire were expressing an attitude toward

radio advertising that implied that advertisers not only controlled public taste, but also had close

to no concept as to what constituted successful entertainment. In a piece written in 1937 for the

Saturday Evening Post, staff writer William Hazlett Upson recounted a particularly ridiculous

experience he had being hired to write copy for an advertising agency.

According to Upson, the agency hired him because of a Post article he wrote about

tractors, but the advertisement was a plug for a brand of chewing gum. Eventually, after the first

draft was written, the advertiser showed up and asks that all of the aspects of the advertisement

that put a “negative spin” on chewing gum be removed, such as gum getting caught in peoples’

hair, or the notion of gum that has already been chewed. Eventually, after an uproar over the use

of the word “stomach” in the advertisement, the advertising agency put itself in charge of all of

90 Ibid.91 T.R. Carskadon, “Radio: The Happy Slattern.” The New Republic, September 22, 1937, 183.

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the dialogue. In the end, the writer’s contributions to the finished product were nearly slim to

nonexistent, steamrollered into oblivion by the advertising machine.92

Upson’s article was essentially a fluff piece and clearly intended as a light jab at the

industry, but the fact that an article of such an anti-industry focus could appear in a popular

publication with such a wide readership is a testament to how casual the act of debasing radio

advertising had already become in scholarly circles by the tail end of the 1930’s. His piece was

not an isolated incident; this laid-back attitude toward spoofing radio via the use of glib yet

biting satire was a consistent force reflected elsewhere throughout the decade, as well as onward.

In 1933 a play by Albert G. Miller opened on Broadway for a short period, lampooning the trade

of radio advertising and, fittingly enough, entitled “The Sellout.”93 Even more bluntly, in 1941

the literary journal The Atlantic Monthly published a piece entitled “Clichés on the Air” where

the patter of radio plugs was reduced to lame-brained conversational chatter:

Q. Hello, Mr. Arbuthnot.A. Hello, young man. Does exercise tie your muscles into knots?Q. Why, yes, it does.A. Are you a slave to floors? Are your gums sore and tender to the touch?Q. Now wait a second, Mr. Arbuthnot.A. Do you inhale? Does the wrong soap rob you of a complexion like peaches and cream? Are you a washday wife—does washing leave you so ‘done in’ you can’t even drag yourself to a movie?Q. Oh, I see, Arby. You’re the fellow who writes the commercials for the radio

programs.94

Cultural satire is a factor that has played a role in societies extending back to Greek comedy, but

the particular lampooning born toward advertising on the airwaves during this particular era still

bore a reasonable level of significance. Radio advertisers did not merely receive the treatment

expected of large corporations in a capitalist society; by this point in American history educated

92 William Hazlett Upson, “Writing for the Radio Is Easy.” The Saturday Evening Post, June 26, 1937.93 Brooks Atkinson, “Spoofing the Trade of Radio Advertising in a Comedy Entitled ‘The Sellout.’” The New York Times, September 7, 1933.94 Frank Sullivan, “Clichés on the Air.” Atlantic Monthly, August 1941, 220.

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members of the public basically perceived them as ridiculous, alien entities completely out of

touch with the values and beliefs that constitute sane, functional human beings. In the eyes of the

skeptical, the tastes of the listening public were being defined by corporate lackeys who had no

concept whatsoever of what constituted tasteful programming.

What is ultimately notable is that throughout the 1930’s, the American scholarly public

perceived radio as being targeted at as brainless of an audience as could be conceived—a state

that could be ameliorated if advertisers lost their prime mover role within the radio industry.

Geared toward profit and completely out of touch with the tastes and needs of the public, in the

minds of many, advertisers spoke a language completely alien to the general public yet exercised

control over an industry that served it. Heywood Brown of The Nation summarized this problem

curtly: “Radio will begin to come into its own when the stooges are kept out of the studio.”95

Building the Perfect Beast: Evaluating the Ethics of Advertising

“The first commercial broadcasting stations were opened, in 1920, for the purpose of

selling radios,” wrote Harper’s Monthly Magazine contributor Travis Hoke in 1932. “and no

time was lost thereafter in discovering that broadcasting could sell other goods also, as well as

services, beliefs, half-truths and lies.”96 Hoke’s sweeping dismissal of the trends undertaken by

radio plugs underscore another 1930’s public worry over the nature of American advertising:

whether or not the public should put their trust in radio in the first place.

Radio did not operate within an inherently untrustworthy infrastructure; although the

federal government exercised no direct control over radio, it still tried its hardest to watch out for

the best interests of consumers. In 1934, the Federal Trade Commission incepted a policy

intended to eliminate false and misleading advertising, in line with similar policies that they had

95 Heywood Broun, “Radio.” The Nation, May 27, 1936, 686.96 Travis Hoke, “Radio Goes Educational.” Harper’s Magazine, September 1932, 467.

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already set into motion in relation to advertising in various forms of print media.97 The FTC’s

decision was made in “response to a great demand” that such action be taken; to avoid being

construed as advocating censorship, they employed a system of requesting copies of advertising

announcements from networks and broadcasting stations on a weekly basis.98

Nonetheless, radio was a means of conveying information to the public, and a significant

portion of the advertising world used it as a means of duping the listening audience for profit.

Skeptic and radio scholar Peter Morell perceived the situation as a series of airwaves dominated

by the greedy and profit-hungry, likening radio advertising to the selling of patent medicines and

accusing broadcasters of exploiting radio solely for profits at the expense of the consumer.

“Compared with the well-edited Sunday newspaper,” wrote Morell, “the radio has the cultural

value of a tabloid, without the authentic sparkle that gives the tabloid character of a sort.”99

Morell’s book Poisons, Potions and Profits: The Antidote to Radio Advertising is exactly

what the title suggests, intended to provide consumers with a laundry list of untrustworthy radio

ad campaigns, all the while denouncing the medium for being so easily exploitable. One example

presented is that of Bromo-Seltzer, an effervescent salt intended for the treatment of headaches.

According to Morell, at that point in consumer culture Bromo-Seltzer was known to cause both

sexual impotence and bromide intoxication… yet it was advertised as a miracle remedy to

hundreds of thousands via the institution of radio.100 Capping off his argument by citing the

Federal Radio Act, Morell accused advertisers such as Broma-Seltzer of operating contrary to the

very public interest which the radio industry considered its source of support.101

This issue was not merely a localized one obsessed over by pundits and skeptics; in Ruth

97 Special to the New York Times, “Board Will Check Radio Advertising—Federal Trade Commission Asks Stations for Copies of All Commercial Broadcasts.” The New York Times, May 17, 1934.98 Ibid.99 Peter Morell, Poisons, Potions and Profits: The Antidote to Radio Advertising (1937), 3.100 Ibid, 5.101 Ibid, 229.

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Brindze’s work Not to Be Broadcast: The Truth About the Radio, the scholar spotlighted a 1935

appearance by Dr. Arthur J. Cramp of the American Medical Association before the Federal

Communications Commission, where the physician shed light upon examples of objectionable

patent medicine advertising on the radio. According to Cramp, ads for Alka-Seltzer instructed

that users take 16 tablets a day, even though such a dosage contains over 70 grains of aspirin as

well as over 6 grains of salicylic acid. Similarly, he cited Peruna, a digestive stimulator and tonic

that allegedly contained somewhere in the area of 18 percent alcohol. Clearly, on a national

level, plugs had the ability to be not only artistically offensive but also openly dangerous.102

Considering that radio advertising was still a relatively new form of communication, it is

understandable that, with regulations surrounding the operation of radio still taking form, certain

opportunistic individuals would take advantage of the fact that radio was a relatively simple

means of communicating with thousands of potential consumers instantaneously. As a cultural

and economic institution, radio might have provided the public with a suitable cause for aesthetic

complaint throughout the 1930s, but ethically, it was not yet quite on the level.

The Grass Is Always Greener—Radio Across the Atlantic

During the 1930’s, the institution of radio advertising received a consistently critical

reception from the American public; however, the public was not unified in its stance that

advertising was a flawed but necessary presence in the radio world. Contrary to those who

merely displayed annoyance at the cruder and less ethical aspects of advertising, a reasonably

large school of thought existed who believed that advertising was an entity that never belonged

on the radio in the first place. Followers of this area of belief held a practically unified stance

over the ideal state of affairs in American broadcasting—namely, that the networks should

loosen their stranglehold over the medium and submit to a structure of governmental regulation

102 Ruth Brindze, Not to Be Broadcast: The Truth About the Radio (1937), 93.

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identical to Great Britain’s system of broadcasting.

The primary problem with American broadcasting, according to this school of thought,

was that, as a medium funded by advertising dollars, its motivations were centered almost

entirely on thriving in a capitalist society. “The chief reproach against American broadcasting …

is that its dominant purpose is commercial,” wrote H.B. Kaltenborn in Scribner’s Magazine.

“Just as most newspapers are published to make money for those who buy and sell advertising,

most radio stations are operated to bring financial returns to those who buy and sell time.”103

The problem with the capitalist system of broadcasting, according to this school of

thought, did not merely lie in the fact that deregulation allowed the existence of advertising. The

problem was that, combined with the United States’ traditional laissez-faire mode of economic

regulation, in which the government takes a reduced role in the operation of economic affairs,

individual advertising agencies were virtually allowed to have free range in the exploitation of

radio content, without repercussions from any federal agency.104

According to many scholars from the early days of radio, Great Britain’s system of

broadcasting, free of any form of advertising, was essentially the equivalent of an entertainment

utopia. The general argument toward the implementation of a system of radio broadcasting based

on the British model was that their system of government regulation left the airwaves not only

free of advertising, but also free of the middling programs that existed in America solely for the

sake of offering sponsors a place to advertise their wares. In the opinion of American Scholar

contributor John T. Flynn, America’s approach resulted in a fair amount of decent programming,

but at the same time spawned a lot of glitzy programs whose sole characteristic was that they

were loud, shiny, funded by advertising dollars and chiefly concerned with the task of getting the

103 Kaltenborn, 492.104 James Rorty, “The Impending Radio War.” Harper’s Magazine, November 1931, 714.

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sponsor’s name out to the ears of millions of listeners.105

In his work America Handcuffed by Radio C-H-A-I-N-S, lecturer and author Anthony B.

Meany even went so far as to argue that the existence of radio was the chief contributor to the

economic distress of the 1930’s. According to Meany, characteristics inherent within the way

American radio was operated by advertising firms inherently led to the promotion of idleness and

unemployment, factors viewed as antithetical to the American dream. “Most sponsored programs

have two opposite and conflicting aims—one sells the product, the other provides entertainment

and diversion,” he wrote.

One describes the commodity, the other reduces the potential need of it. One suggestsgoing outdoors to use or obtain the product advertised—the other decreases the potentialtime for doing so by providing attractive programs stimulating the desire to stay indoors. It is plainly seen these are two separate, distinct and hostile schools of thought, opposedto each other, but emanating from the same source.106

In that sense, according to Meany, the capitalist slant of American advertising was by its very

nature contradictory; advertising fostered a mode of thought which undermined the American

work ethic, and thus deserved to be either purged or retooled.

The reasoning beyond this argument against the economic characteristics of American

radio was not quite logically sound, and the Anglophile sect of radio broadcasting attracted more

than its share of detractors. This attitude mostly sprung from the notion that treating America’s

laissez-faire economic policy as a flaw, no matter the situation, was inherently counterproductive

to the spirit upon which the country was built. In the meantime, some felt that the British radio

system determined the public interest much in the same way American advertising did—“Across

the Atlantic the public is given what somebody thinks it ought to be given,” wrote Harper’s

Monthly Magazine contributor Jascha Heifetz. “Here [in America], nominally at any rate, the

105 John T. Flynn, “Radio: Medicine Show.” The American Scholar, Autumn 1938, 433.106 Anthony B. Meany, America Handcuffed by Radio C-H-A-I-N-S (1942), 51.

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public is given what the public wants.”107

In addition, in the minds of some, the structure of the American political system would

not have allowed for the successful operation of a radio system bearing characteristics similar to

those of Great Britain’s. Unlike Britain’s governmental structure, federal agencies in America

would be largely subordinated to the government’s executive branch, thus resulting in a potential

situation where the current administration would be directly in charge of the nation’s radio,

leaving the possibility open for totalitarian control of a public institution.108

In the end, considering the assertion that the idea of adopting the British system of radio

broadcasting was essentially an unfeasible pipe dream, the blame surrounding the problems with

U.S. radio advertising fell, fittingly enough, right back upon the advertisers themselves. Within a

political and economic system priding itself on being egalitarian, the only possible “totalitarian”

presence surrounding radio in American culture were the forces exerting financial control over a

medium centered around catering to the public good. “The villain of the piece is the advertiser,”

wrote Deems Taylor. “Not the broadcasting companies who, so long as their customer does not

present obscene or libelous matter, have little control over what he does offer; and not the

advertising agencies, who, although they do prepare the programs and engage the performers, do

so within limitations prescribed by their clients.”109

Placed in a comparative position against a system of broadcasting not feasible within

American capitalism, the future of radio advertising in America remained hazy throughout the

1930’s. Ultimately, according to radio pundits like Harper’s contributor Jascha Heifetz, it was

the opinion of the American public that would determine the shape of things to come: “Outside

of the United States of course advertising on the air is virtually unknown … The problem of

107 Jascha Heifetz, “Radio, American Style.” Harper’s Magazine, October 1937, 497.108 Taylor, 557.109 Ibid, 561.

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what our advertisers shall say and how interminably and emphatically they shall say it is our

particular riddle, therefore, and one which we shall need to solve ourselves.”

Readers’ Indigestion: The Public Steps In

Through the 1930’s, the ire of the public against the content of radio advertisements

mostly persisted in the sphere of published intellectuals, with little to no feedback involved from

the general public. This changed in August of 1942, when the popular literary journal Readers’

Digest, a literary journal with a circulation of six million readers, published a centerpiece article

by Robert Littell entitled “Radio’s Plug-Uglies.” Driven by a sense of pure rage against the

contemporary state of advertising, Littell pulled no punches in his condemnation: “To millions of

people radio has given solace, laughter, immortal music, news from the whole wide world. But

does that give it the right to shove the halitosis, varicose veins and suffering stomachs of

mankind into the listener’s ear? Do so many of the commercial plugs in radio programs have to

be so insistent and so offensive?”110

Quoting the content of radio advertising verbatim, Littell gave a random sampling of

some of the programming common on radio in the early 1940’s, in an effort to display exactly

why the turning of the radio dial caused his stomach to churn so vigorously. Among the viler

advertisements quoted was one for “Carter’s Little Liver Pills,” an ad where the advertising copy

claimed that the product will “wake up the flow of our most vital digestive juices.”111 Even more

direct was his evocation of Freezone, “a clear liquid that can be applied directly to the corn.”112

Littell also proclaimed that radio advertising had become all the more irritating and

offensive since the nation’s declaration of war on Japan on December 7, 1941, largely on the part

of the advertising world’s shameless opportunism. Citing ads portraying manicure girls hitch-

110 Robert Littell, “Radio’s Plug-Uglies.” The Reader’s Digest, August 1942, 1.111 Ibid, 2.112 Ibid.

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hiking on howitzers and quartets touting the virtues of Pall Mall cigarettes with the war cry “On

the sea to victory!”, the author came to the assertion that, “to a family listening anxiously for the

war news, the assumption that they are first of all interested in their colons is nauseating.”113

Written with the directness, precision and humility of a scholar for the layman, the most

astonishing aspect of the piece is that it was clearly not written from the perspective of somebody

who hated radio advertising as a concept. Throughout the article, he critiqued radio advertising

solely as an average American citizen who understood why the institution of advertising had to

exist, but at the same time failed to see why the content of said advertising has to be so crude and

insulting to the intelligence and taste of its audience. He even professed to a reasonable love for a

few select plugs such as ads for Jello gelatin, where comedian Jack Benny’s advertising “has

thrown off sparks of humor sadly lacking in other commercials.”114

Littell brought his article to a close by announcing the formation of “Plug-Shrinkers,” an

organization touted as “a central clearinghouse for complaints.” Claiming that the sponsor of a

“plug-ugly” cannot possibly hear when a listener shuts off his or her radio in disgust, the author

urged active public involvement in the war against callous radio advertising, particularly during

times of grave societal need. To solidify his organization’s legitimacy, Littell ended his article

with a tear-out form where enraged citizens could register their status as an “Outraged Member”

of the organization. “Radio is young,” concluded Littell. “We listeners can make its advertising

grow up—if we protest long and loud enough.”115

The article’s claims initially found an echo in the world of show business; almost

immediately after its publication, Variety ran an opinion piece entitled “Revolt in the Parlor?”

analyzing the potential repercussions of Littell’s piece. Ire against radio advertising had shown

113 Ibid, 4.114 Ibid.115 Ibid.

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its face in short bursts throughout the previous decade, but this ire had never before been phrased

as a rallying cry to America’s silent majority, and the impact of such a piece could potentially be

enormous. “There are several possible attitudes the radio industry may adopt toward the Digest’s

blasts,” wrote Variety, “but none of these can include indifference. There is no laughing off that

6,000,000 circulation, the bulk of it among the opinion-creating middle class.”116

Any doubts that this wide, dedicated readership existed plunged into oblivion two months

after the printing of Littell’s article, when the publication printed a follow-up article entitled

“Report on Plug Shrinkers.” The article reported that within the first four weeks after the article’s

publication, Plug Shrinkers received 15,000 enrollments, with more still arriving in droves at

press time.117 The entry forms poured into the Digest’s offices from a wide cross section of the

American public in general, with protests often expressed “in the language of machine shop and

army camp.”118 Out of the scores of written comments included with forms, Reader’s Digest

gleaned four dominant themes: first, that the war should not be used to sell goods; second, that

radio should not underestimate the intelligence of its listeners; third, that ugly plugs drive

customers away, often before they can hear the name of the product; fourth, that sales appeals

can be made in far less time than advertisers purchase for them.119

Probably the most important of these categories of criticism is the influence of the war on

the public’s distaste with radio advertising. Before 1941, complaints about advertising in print

media were primarily aesthetic and based on simple issues of irritation and annoyance. Once the

United States entered into a state of warfare, however, the same complaints took on an air of

social significance and began receiving exposure in publications with wider circulation. At the

same time, the aesthetic complaints that people had been registering against radio advertising for 116 “Revolt in the Parlor?” Variety, July 29, 1942, 24.117 “Report on Plug Shrinkers.” The Reader’s Digest, October 1942, 58.118 Ibid, 59.119 Ibid, 59-61.

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years suddenly preached to an audience of millions. The public was no longer a silent middle-

class mass—the commercial world’s callous approach to war had officially opened up a brand

new conduit for criticism against radio advertising. As the future would soon demonstrate,

Reader’s Digest was by no means where the unrest would cease.

Apocalypse ’45: The Post-Dispatch Strikes Back

The popularity of Plug Shrinkers revealed a listening public dissatisfied with the state of

radio in the context of a war-torn America; as the Second World War approached an end, a major

metropolitan paper continued the legacy of Reader’s Digest by dropping a bombshell of its own.

In January 1945, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a modest editorial entitled “A Suggestion

to Radio,” in which the publication’s editorial board called for the cease of objectionable radio

plugs, as well as the use of any advertisements whatsoever during news broadcasts.120

Making note of the newfound importance of newscasts during times of war, the editorial

denounced the actions of advertisers as particularly immature and counterproductive to the spirit

of radio communication.

News broadcasts nowadays often reach sublime heights as they tell of the liberation of aWarsaw, of a battle of Bastogne, or they may bring sadness into American homes ascasualty figures are released. The public should not be compelled to listen tocommercial plugs in the midst of news like this, or be nauseated by the appeals of patentmedicine or cosmetic advertising, while hearing dispatches of heroic proportions.121

The editorial board went on to tout the actions of the Post-Dispatch’s own radio station KSD,

involving the employment of no advertisements during news broadcasts whatsoever, as an

example to be followed, and called for NBC, Columbia, Mutual and Blue Network to respond to

their suggestion.122 A cartoon printed alongside the editorial (Figure 1, page 56), portraying the

radio as spewing out commercial babble simultaneously with reports of death and dismay.

120 “A Suggestion to Radio.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1945.121 Ibid.122 Ibid.

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The Post-Dispatch’s editorial served the simple purpose of delivering a terse, frustrated

message to a public ravaged by the needs of global warfare. Nonetheless, over the course of the

following two weeks, multiple sectors of the print media raged with activity in response to the

editorial. Articles covering the paper’s message printed in publications as respected and widely

read as Time and Newsweek, and both Radio Daily and Variety took it upon themselves to

convey their suggestion to the radio industry at large. “The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, owner of the

local NBC outlet, KSD, last week turned its heavy editorial guns on commercials, especially

those of the patent medicine variety that are intermingled with newcasts,” reported Variety, thus

solidifying the publication’s recognition in the world of show business.123

At the same time, scores of letters in support of the publication’s suggestion poured in to

the newspaper’s mailbox from the pens of the public. “Thank you for your editorial on the abuse

of the broadcasting service, insulting the intelligence of listeners by trying to teach them how to

spell five-letter words and to count from four to seven,” wrote H.C. Armstrong of Webster

Groves. “The greedy sponsors who interrupt a 15-minute talk with disgusting symptoms already

known to everybody, defeat their purpose. The average listener decides that that product will not

get HIS business.”124

In addition, in line with the trends of the time, readers continued to weigh in against the

notion of advertisers setting broadcasting commercial plugs alongside grisly war reports:

We had just received word a very dear friend in the Tank Corps was in the hospital forburns when the next morning’s newscast came in as follows: “I stood on an adjacent hilland watched the horror of a tank burning. Bodies came from it with clothes ablaze, andthe smell of burning flesh was everywhere.” Now, in the same breath and the samevoice, “Blank soap in the oval shape …” etc..125

Finally, nearly two weeks after the editorial, Paul W. White, news director of the

123 “Pulitzer’s Post-Dispatch Cleans Up Newscast Plugs, Challenges Webs.” Variety, January 24, 1948, 28.124 H.C. Armstrong, Letter to the editor. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 21, 1945.125 E. Splan, Letter to the editor, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 21, 1945.

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Columbia Broadcasting System, sent in a letter defending the company’s advertising policies.

“The editorial, mentioning the Columbia network as well as other networks by name, betrays a

genuine lack of knowledge concerning Columbia’s network policies. For almost 10 years we

have not permitted news broadcasts—or any broadcasts, for that matter—‘to be sponsored by

objectionable advertisers.’” White then went on to accuse the Post-Dispatch’s sister network

KSD of not possibly remaining consistent with the policies outlined in the editorial, under an

apparent assumption that broadcasting without the use of commercials in the middle of radio

programming was an impossibility in the contemporary day and age.126

Empowered by public response and imbued with a sense of purpose, the Post-Dispatch

published a more ambitious editorial. This time around, the language was more confrontational,

employing the same rhetoric as Reader’s Digest in their title “The Revolt Against Radio Plug-

Uglies.” Extensively quoting the letters of its readership, the editorial essentially repeated the

points it had already brought up eighteen days before, but this time around harnessing the power

of public response to give its words extra impact against the influence of the advertising industry.

“‘A Suggestion to Radio’ is a minimum suggestion. It is a proposal to correct commercial

offenses in reporting the momentous news of the day, where bad taste is most objectionable. It

has become a suggestion based on popular acceptance and not very susceptible to debate.

Perhaps the major networks know that; perhaps that is why they are silent.”127

To drive home the editorial board’s point, the newspaper included a related article

detailing the cleanup of commercial content within its own station’s newscasts, possibly in an

attempt to diffuse any criticism levied at them by the major networks.128 In addition, next to the

editorial stood another cartoon by Daniel R. Fitzpatrick (Figure 2, page 57), similar to the first

126 Paul W. White, Letter to the editor, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 28, 1945.127 “The Revolt Against Radio Plug-Uglies.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 1945.128 “Newscast Cleanup Moves Forward.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feburary 5, 1945.

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cartoon on the subject in that it portrayed radio as a medium broadcasting mindless commercials

in tandem with carnage. However, this time, Fitzpatrick portrayed the source of the annoyance as

the radio networks themselves instead of a simple receiver, shifting the blame from the

institution of radio itself to the companies in charge. The Post-Dispatch’s ire had solidified; their

target had been acquired and they had attained the ambition to make real, significant changes in

the broadcasting world, with the support of the public on their side.

More supportive of the publication’s cause than ever, letters from the public continued to

print in on an almost daily basis.129 Finally, the publication’s fight against network radio received

even further justification when the New York Times, long the bastion of respectable news in the

public eye, printed an opinion piece on the actions of the Post-Dispatch.

With the characteristic vigor and forthrightness which has made it one of the country’soutstanding journals, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been conducting an editorialcampaign against two of the most prevalent evils in connection with the presentation ofnews on the radio … Clearly, the Post-Dispatch has touched on an issue of vital publicimportance … But such conditions will remain so long as the networks are the servants ofa master of their own creation. A change will come only when the networks reassert theirown independence and decide to call the tune rather than dance to another’s.130

Having the support of the New York Times was significant in itself, but even more astonishing

was the fact that not only had one of the nation’s foremost papers called advertising an “evil,” it

had directly declared that the only possible solution in this situation was broad, sweeping change

in the infrastructure of the medium.

Throughout early 1945, the Post-Dispatch continued to print letters from supporters as

well as coverage of their ongoing struggle; in a relatively brief editorial, the publication reported

the actions of smaller radio broadcasters toward the elimination of offensive advertising plugs.

Citing the progressive actions of radio station managers in cities such as Milwaukee and Detroit,

129 “Plug-Ugly Time.” Business Week, February 24, 1945, 82.130 Jack Gould, “‘Plug-Uglies’: Campaign for Improved News Broadcasts Reflects a Broader Problem.” The New York Times, February 18, 1945.

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the publication’s editors declared that a new national situation was slowly coming about in which

local broadcasters would take on the role once held by the national networks. “Just because of

their power and influence, networks largely dictate the standards of American radio. But they are

evading responsibility for good taste. The national networks are letting local broadcasters assume

leadership in exterminating the plug-uglies.”131

Finally, a month after “A Suggestion to Radio”s publication, Paul Porter, the recently-

appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, vindicated the Post-Dispatch’s

cause on a national level. Citing the Commission’s lack of authority and statutory power to put a

check on the content of radio programming, Porter delivered a stern warning that, with the public

outrage now openly voiced in the national arena, the next logical step would be for Congress to

take action against the major networks. “He suggests that it would be better for broadcasters to

do their own cleaning up,” reported the Post-Dispatch, “lest Congress step in to insure radio’s

operation in the public interest, in fact as well as in theory.”132 The Post-Dispatch’s crusade had

achieved success—authorities on a national level had taken note at last.

This Time It’s Federal—The Battle Over the “Blue Book”

Porter’s threat was converted into reality no more than a month later, when on March 12,

1945, he appeared before the National Association of Broadcasters to address the ongoing issues

surrounding network radio. “The Commission in the past has, for a variety of reasons, including

limitations of staff, automatically renewed these licenses even in cases where there is a vast

disparity between promises and performance,” said Porter. “We have under consideration at the

present time, however, a procedure whereby promises will be compared with performance.” A

131 “Default by the Radio Networks.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 9, 1945.132 “New FCC Head Says Radio Chains Should Enforce Good Taste: If They Don’t, He Warns, Congress May Act.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 14, 1945, 1B.

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month later, the Commission announced that it was to adopt “a policy of a more detailed review

of broadcast station performance when passing upon applications for license renewals.”133

After months of planning and deliberation, the results arrived a year later, in March 1946,

in the form of a pamphlet entitled Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees. Referred

to commonly as the “Blue Book,” this pamphlet served as a summation of the contemporary state

of commercial radio, choosing the dominance of advertising over the medium as its main target.

Before the national flurry incited by the Post-Dispatch, the FCC had experienced a period of

protracted laissez-faire, during which the Commission had concerned itself with battles against

newspaper domination of radio, network monopoly, multiple ownership of stations, and the

struggle for adequate appropriations to support essential wartime activities.134

As an example of the results of this laissez-faire, the Commission cited examples such as

Station KIEV, who applied for a renewal for their broadcasting license on May 22, 1939. “On

the first of [a several-day period, their] programs consisted of 143 popular records and 9 semi-

classical records,” cited the Commission. “There were 264 commercial announcements and 3

minutes of announcements concerning lost and found pets.”135 In spite of these qualifications, the

Commission renewed their license under the conditions that the station would make an active

effort to improve their programming content. Five years later, however, KIEV’s programming

still consisted of 88 percent advertisements and recorded music.136

The solution to this problem, according to the Blue Book, was for the Commission to

take a more active role in the checking and balancing of program content. “While much of the

responsibility for improved program service lies with the broadcasting industry and with the

public,” spoke the Commission, “the Commission has a statutory responsibility for the public 133 Federal Communications Commission, Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees (1946), 3.134 Edward M. Brecher, “Whose Radio?” The Atlantic Monthly, August 1946, 48.135 Federal Communications Commission, 4.136 Ibid.

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interest, of which it cannot divest itself.”137 This serving of the public interest would come in the

form of four “yardsticks” against which the FCC would gauge a station’s progress: the carrying

of sustaining programs, the carrying of local live programs, the carrying of programs related to

discussion of public issues, and, most important of all, the elimination of advertising excesses.138

The national response was immediate, though more on the part of literati and members of

the radio industry than the actual public itself. Media mogul William Randolph Hearst, owner of

Station WBAL in Baltimore, a station targeted by the FCC, was infuriated, and before long the

Hearst press had alleged that the FCC had “brushed off the Bill of Rights and the memory of the

Minute Men of Concord.”139 The trade journal Broadcasting took the historical route, printing an

article comparing the FCC’s claim over the airwaves to Goebbels and Goering.140 Judge Justin

Miller, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, was the most vocal dissenter of all,

accusing the FCC over the course of the year following the Blue Book’s publication of defying

the Constitution, in the process describing members of the FCC as “obfuscators,” “stooges for

the Communists,” “guileful men,” “professional appeasers,” and “astigmatic perverts.”141

The blows levied against the Commission ultimately did not have too large of an impact,

however, since, for one, the Blue Book itself had established a multitude of legal precedents for

the steps that they were taking. The FCC’s pamphlet cited an action taken in 1928 on the part of

its predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission, where the FRC refused to grant the renewal of

Station WRCW in Chicago, under the reasoning that “it is clear that a large part of the program

is distinctly commercial in character, consisting of advertisers’ announcements and of direct

advertising, including the quoting of prices.”142 In addition, the 1932 Supreme Court case Trinity

137 Ibid, 55.138 Ibid.139 Brecher, 47.140 “Storm in the Radio World.” American Mercury, August 1946, 204.141 Charles A. Siepmann, “Radio’s Operation Crossroads.” The Nation, December 7, 1946, 644.142 Federal Communications Commission, 41.

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Methodist Church v. Federal Radio Commission had established that in cases of radio stations

coming to blows with the Commission over programming content, it was the “duty” of the

Commission “to take notice of the appellant’s conduct in his previous use of the permit.”143

Most importantly of all, outside of the embittered realm of the radio industry, the print

media consistently displayed glowing approval of the Commission’s actions, mixed with tacit

disapproval of the radio industry’s bitter response. “To read the trade press and listen to radio-

industry spokesmen one would think that the FCC was a cross radio must carry if it would stay in

business, a crown of thorns set upon its brow years ago by a nitwit Congress,” wrote Lou Frankel

of The Nation. “If things go on as they are, it is merely a question of time until the industry wins

the battle. So right now, while there are still some fighters on the commission, while Congress

still thinks a federal agency is necessary to protect the public’s interests, right now is the time to

get something done about radio.”144 In addition, Albert N. Williams of The Saturday Review

painted the FCC’s wielding of dictatorial power over radio as that of an unlikely future: “Once

issued, licenses are practically never revoked. By precedent … the FCC, itself, has indicated that

its proprietorship over broadcasting is that of an uneasy well-wisher rather than a tribunal aware

of the crime and capable of the punishment.”145

Finally, the radio industry itself effectively registered its approval when Columbia

Broadcasting System president William S. Paley made a public appearance and delivered an

official address to the radio industry. “I have been reading and hearing… a growing volume of

criticism of American broadcasting,” said Paley. “We cannot ignore its scope and its destructive

effect…. I believe this rising tide of criticism… constitute[s] the most urgent single problem of

our industry…. I believe a part of the criticism is justified.” Citing CBS’s need for a stronger and

143 Ibid, 11.144 Lou Frankel, “In One Ear.” The Nation, October 5, 1946, 380.145 Albert N. Williams, “Slings and Arrows.” The Saturday Review, November 30, 1946, 44.

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more strictly-enforced Code of Standards, Paley concluded: “As I see it now, there is only one

acceptable way to enforce it—and that is, the spotlight of publicity.”146 In spite of the vocal

dissent expressed by broadcasting figures as prominent as Hearst and Miller, with Paley’s input

firmly registered, the radio industry had essentially admitted recognition of its wrongdoings.

Meet Your Enemy. Industry: Radio’s Satisfactory Salvation

In March 1947, almost exactly a year after the printing of the Blue Book, the Federal

Communications Commission announced the impending appointment of a “czar” to be placed in

charge of the clean-up of radio broadcasting. “A plan for self-regulation of the radio industry,”

reported Jack Gould in a front-page article for the New York Times, “involving the appointment

of a virtual ‘czar’ to administer improved standards in programming and advertising on the air, is

being drafted by broadcasters, advertisers and major industrial concerns sponsoring network

shows.”147 A “Broadcasters Advisory Council” was to deal with the “crisis” facing radio; Charles

Mortimer, vice president of the General Foods Corporation and one of the initial drafters of the

resolution, stated that “the criterion in radio should be to determine what the public wants and

then provide it, rather than picking the program first and then trying to sell the public on it.”148

The very nature of the wartime and post-war “crisis” over radio plugs was particularly

interesting in light of the criticisms levied against broadcasting over the course of the 1930’s.

One of the reasons the American broadcasting system favored the employment of advertising in

the first place was that the only alternative would have been a system of government regulation,

a solution frowned upon in an economic system favoring free enterprise.

However, the situation that began with Reader’s Digest and ended with the Blue Book

prominently displayed a public so disgusted with the level to which radio advertising had sunk

146 “The Noes Have It.” Time, November 4, 1946, 80.147 Jack Gould, “Radio to Appoint ‘Czar’ in Clean-Up of Advertising.” The New York Times, March 12, 1947, 1.148 Ibid, 50.

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that it was willing to accept the level of government regulation necessary to make the airwaves

acceptable entertainment again. By the time the debate over the Blue Book had reached its peak,

the true villains in the battle were not only the advertisers, but industry moguls such as Hearst

and Miller who employed Constitutional rhetoric in order to back up their own dominance over

the medium. Direct government regulation of radio was still out of the question, but through the

stable mechanism of an independent body as generally respected as the Federal Communications

Commission, the people of the United States managed to come up with a way to render a beloved

public service acceptable, in spite of the peculiar roadblock of their own egalitarian ideals.

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Conclusion

In a sense, the advertising agents and radio scholars whose work constituted the bulk of

radio’s science of salesmanship throughout the 1930’s were almost prophetic. In spite of the lack

of any notable public reaction against the medium of radio until the publication of Littell’s piece,

their collective work envisioned a listening audience not only easily offended when a piece of

advertising overstepped the boundaries of good taste, but incredibly intelligent and not tolerant

whatsoever of smug industry condescension. With Plug-Shrinkers and the Revolt Against Radio

Plug-Uglies as fuel, the mobilization of public opinion in the 1940’s literally forced radio to

adopt a revised schema in which radio’s vast audience would be treated as more than a simple

means to collect capital through the mechanism of wireless technology.

The publication of the FCC’s Blue Book marked the end of an era, not merely in that it served as

a harnessing of public opinion against the institution of radio, but also in that the flurry of

industry reaction against its release signaled the entrance of big business into the battle over the

control of radio. In today’s radio landscape, advertisements have taken on a world of their own,

and are frequently lampooned, but infrequently derided as an earmark of any sort of wider

American evil. Instead, ever since the passing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act established

deregulation of the radio industry, the focus of national derision has been corporations such as

Clear Channel who have taken advantage of the situation and exerted control over scores of radio

stations.149 Whether or not the current state of the American media will allow for another St.

Louis Post-Dispatch to step in is a question left to the future, but the course of American history

has reached a point where “plug-uglies” have transferred their ugliness to other deserving parties.

149 Federal Communications Commission, “The Telecommunications Act of 1996.” January 3, 1996. <http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.pdf>. December 11, 2005.

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Figure 1: Daniel R. Fitzpatrick, “Time for Radio Networks to Come of Age.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1945.

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Figure 2: Daniel R. Fitzpatrick, “The Sublime and the Ridiculous.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 1945.

57

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