(See front cover)
For meteorological and commercial reasons, when summer ends, the radio season begins. Some broadcast sponsors think programs may be spoiled by summer static; others believe listeners are cool when the weather is warm. By last week, however, practically every solvent producer of consumer goods in the U. S., cheered by signs of recovery (see col. i), had laid his plans to tap the national pocketbook by tickling the national ear with the mightiest and most expensive free show since radio began.
This year advertisers will pay nearly $100,000,000 to the eight U. S. networks,* 561 stations, for time rental alone. Of this the stations will plow back less than $10,000,000 on sustaining (noncommercial) programs. It will take another $51,000,000 to pay the vaudeville, theatrical and cinema talent which this year will pump commercial entertainment through the 26,000,000 loudspeakers of the land. This opulent wedding of Big Business and Show Business will thus beget a lively brood of ck ,vns and crooners, ingenues and instrumentalists, mimes and maestros who serve as U. S. Industry's most spectacular sales crew. It had taken a summer of wangling and finegling between talent agents, time salesmen, admen and sponsors to line up the 1936-37 radio'season, which by last week manifested the following high spots:
Procter & Gamble was to continue to rent the largest amount of air time. With 13 hr. 15 min. a week on National Broadcasting networks, P. & G. will spend some $3,000.000 this year on seven different programs to plug Oxydol, Ivory Soap, Camay, Chipso, Crisco. Because it now uses day time exclusively, Radio's No. i customer is not likely to be inconvenienced this autumn, as will many another advertiser, by the many and unavoidable interruptions caused by the political oratory of a Presidential campaign. As in the past, most of P. & G.'s programs will be serial dramas designed, like the fiction in women's magazines, for housewifely appeal. For these programs, talent cost is relatively low.
American Tobacco, which makes the biggest single time purchase on N. B. C.'s books, also carries a relatively small talent budget. Though Lucky Strike's weekly Your Hit Parade is played by routine bandsmen, it offers this season a unique merchandising trick characteristic of American Tobacco's rampant, sensation-loving President George Washington Hill. The program purports to present the week's 15 most popular songs. Mr. Hill promises to give a carton of his cigarets to every listener who correctly predicts, in order of popularity, the first three songs. By last month, the "Lucky Strike Sweepstakes" had used 150 tons of application blanks. Biggest week drew 6.500,000 replies. Biggest weekly give-away was 43,000,000 cigarets which set American Tobacco back about $200.000. To facilitate his flood of free smokes, Mr. Hill is using every station of N. B. C.'s combined Red & Blue networks, at a weekly cost of $22,000 for a full hour on Wednesday nights, repeats the show three evenings later for another $18,395 over the entire Columbia chain.