Radio: The Busy Air, Feb. 8, 1954

In Manhattan, two TV sponsors for one show got mad at each other's commercials. The problem arose on This Is Show Business, sponsored on alternate weeks by Carter Products and Schick Inc. Schick. advertising an electric razor ("No messy lather"), objected to Carter's plugging its Rise shaving cream ("New lather bomb"). The result: both sponsors dropped the show.

¶ In Stockholm, Sweden's popular Radioman Lennart Hyland used his show to promote a "free wives' day." The gimmick: Swedish wives should take a Sunday off and let their husbands do all the housework. After some masculine grumbling, most Swedes (from Prime Minister Tage Erlander down to Mechanic Anders Larsson) pitched in while their wives went off to the movies or on specially run railroad excursions. Grocers reported a tremendous rise in the sale of canned goods.

¶In Manhattan, radio station WNEW tapped a new and previously ignored audience: parents who have to get up in the wee hours to feed the baby. Called 2 a.m. Feeding, the show begins with brisk, snappy tunes to jar parents and infants awake, concludes with lullabies to put them back to sleep. In between are plugs from seven sponsors, ranging from baby foods to insurance, and baby-care tips supplied by Parents' Magazine.

¶ In Chicago, CBS announced it would spend $1,500,000 in converting the 75,000-ft. floor space of its newly bought Chicago Arena into studios suitable for TV soap operas.

In Manhattan, Funnyman Jackie Gleason made a flying exit from his TV show. Carrying an electric fan and a bag of flour, Gleason stepped on a slippery spot left by dry ice, catapulted offstage and into the wings. While the CBS switchboard was lit up by calls from anxious fans, he was rushed to Doctors Hospital where examination revealed Gleason had suffered fractures of his right leg and ankle, would be out of action for "several weeks."