American radio goes to war
Network radio news truly came of age during World War II. Edward R. Murrow had been hired by CBS in 1935 for a public relations job, and he was asked in 1937 to go to London to produce educational programs. Murrow hired reporter William L. Shirer to help him cover European news—and soon there was plenty of it. On March 12, 1938, Murrow (in Vienna) and Shirer (in London) covered Hitler’s annexation of Austria. Murrow went back to London and built a first-class team of reporters, including Howard K. Smith, Charles Collingwood, Larry Lesueur, and Eric Sevareid. They sent frequent broadcasts by shortwave from Berlin, Paris, and other European cities to New York. Murrow covered the effects of the Nazi bombing raids on the British capital; his opening line “This…is London,” became a well-known signature. By the coming of war to the United States on December 7, 1941, all the networks had increased the amount of air time devoted to news and had built impressive teams of correspondents worldwide.
American radio also expanded internationally during this period. There was no U.S. government international radio voice prior to the war. Lacking shortwave receivers, most Americans were unaware of the developing radio war. After American entry into the war, however, the government’s Office of War Information took control of the private shortwave operations and initiated the Voice of America (VOA) network, which began operating in early 1942 from a handful of transmitters, including some borrowed from the BBC. VOA sought from the start to provide a radio window into American news, public affairs, and culture.
The most star-studded programs in the history of radio also occurred during the war years, although they were never heard by most of the listening audience. These were programs produced by the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS), a wartime unit that broadcast on shortwave and sent recorded transcriptions of the shows to low-powered radio stations at outposts around the world. The AFRS also sent specially edited versions of popular network shows that had already been broadcast. Its homegrown product was written by top radio scribes and featured the greatest entertainers in the medium, all of them donating their services to the war effort. The main AFRS series were Command Performance and Mail Call, variety shows with a heavy emphasis on music and comedy that were virtually interchangeable. Among the most celebrated Command Performance shows was Dick Tracy in B-flat, a special hour-long musical spoof of the comic strip performed on February 5, 1945, and featuring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Jimmy Durante, the Andrews Sisters, Judy Garland, Jerry Colonna, Harry von Zell, Frank Morgan, and Cass Daley—a cast that would have broken the budget of any network variety series. Also important was Jubilee, which ran from 1942 to 1953 and was directed at African American soldiers. The show was hosted by comedian Ernest (“Bubbles”) Whitman and featured such entertainers as Lena Horne, Nat “King” Cole, and Count Basie.
The end of American radio’s Golden Age
Although experimental mechanical television broadcasts had begun in 1925, the economic effects of the Great Depression and the demands of World War II put the development of electronic television on hold, thus extending the era of radio’s dominance. When American network television finally made its first inroads in 1948, radio was in a vulnerable position. Many shows had been on the air for a decade or more. Much of what was on radio in 1948 seemed, if not stale, then very familiar. Television was soon offering exciting new stars such as comedians Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. Furthermore, after Bing Crosby began prerecording his Philco Radio Time show in October 1946, other programs followed suit; instead of being aired live, more and more programs were transcribed. As a result, prime-time radio soon lost much of its immediacy. When programs went out live, the listener knew that an announcer could make a “blooper” (say an unintended or forbidden word), an actor might miss a cue, a sound effect might not work—anything could happen. With the onset of transcribed shows, the listener knew that little unseemly would happen, because all the mistakes had been edited out. Thus, radio became less spontaneous and less exciting.
During the early 1950s many radio stars attempted the transition to television; some met with success, while others were resounding failures. Jack Benny and the team of Burns and Allen learned how to adapt to the visual medium, but Fred Allen found that television eliminated his ability to stimulate his audience’s imagination. After departing radio in 1953, Red Skelton showed his new television audiences that he was even more talented as a physical comedian than as a verbal one.
Some situation comedies, such as Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, became even bigger successes on television than they had been on radio, but others disappeared quickly. Some series were revamped for television: Gunsmoke became a long-running success on TV, but it had an entirely different cast from the radio version, and it lost much of its grit and tension in the transition. Dragnet fared better creatively; Jack Webb looked the part of detective Joe Friday, and he created a hard-bitten visual style as unique as the radio show’s aural one.
As audiences dwindled and sponsors disappeared, network radio shows had to operate on ever-decreasing budgets. Live orchestras were scrapped in favour of recorded music; fewer actors were used on a given program; and some shows went from a once-a-week, 30-minute format to a smaller-scale show, running each weekday for 15 minutes. Many of the big-time comedy shows, including the programs of Eddie Cantor, Rudy Vallee, and Amos ’n’ Andy, became little more than standard disc-jockey fare.
Although many long-established programs left the air in the early 1950s, radio still offered occasional excellent programs in the Golden Age tradition. Paul Harvey began his 15-minute reports in November 1950, and his distinctive delivery was still being heard regularly over ABC until his death in 2009, serving as one of the few 21st-century links to radio’s Golden Age. Other outstanding programs included the science-fiction anthology X Minus One (1955–58), the Stan Freberg comedy series of 1957, old dependables such as Gunsmoke and Suspense, and experimental fare such as CBS Radio Workshop, which ran from January 1956 through September 1957.
Daytime soap operas had been as tenacious as their heroines, but even they were jettisoned from radio when CBS canceled the last seven remaining shows in November 1960. The final remnants of radio’s Golden Age were the horror show Suspense and the crime drama Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, which aired their last broadcasts over CBS on September 30, 1962.
Randy Skretvedt