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Control of Mutual is parceled out via 100 shares of stock, currently held by seven of its members. Of the seven, three have a firm grasp on 75%. They are New York's WOR, a profitable sideline for Jack Straus & Bros, of Macy's; Chicago's WGN, which Publisher McCormick, who always thinks cosmically, is determined to make the world's greatest radio station; and the Don Lee network, now in the hands of Tommy Lee, son of Don, a highly successful automobile distributor. From WGN, Mutual gets its president, ex-Chicago Tribune-man William E. Macfarlane; from' WOR, its Board Chairman Alfred Justin McCosker. Like all Mutual officers, with the sole exception of General Manager Weber, they are paid by the stations for which they work.
Although it is unlikely that Mutual's backers see eye-to-eye on matters political, the network goes along quite harmoniously. Stations are free to pick and choose among the Mutual shows, and while WOR may cancel Isolationist Fulton Lewis Jr., Colonel McCormick has equal right to cut out interventionist talks. Odd fact about the entente cordiale between FCC and Mutual: it is New Deal-hating Bertie's lawyer, Louis Caldwell, who serves as Mutual's counsel in Washington.
Mutual has never aimed at dazzling programs. But it has managed to get a good grip on sports broadcasts. This year it anticipates that over 300 stations will pipe in on its World Series broadcasts, including many an NBC and CBS affiliate. If this incommodes the two chains, Mutual will be only too delighted. It is dead set against collaboration with its competition, gladly accepted Jimmie Fidler when CBS rejected him (TIME, Sept. 1). One night last week it also took on another CBS show called The Bombing of London. CBS decided bombing effects on the program were too "realistic."
This week from Hollywood MBS will splatter over its network a variety program called Three Ring Time, sponsored by Ballantine Ale & Beer, that will include such cinema lights as Charles Laughton, Milton Berle, Shirley Ross. Only a network that sees nothing strange in getting Colonel McCormick to back a New Deal agency could view with as much equanimity as Mutual the teaming up of Laughton and Berle.