At a loss of $50,000, the Columbia Broadcasting System last week shoved Information Please off the air to broadcast an unsponsored program. It was a "documentary" on U.S. juvenile crime called The Eagle's Brood—the fruit of one of U.S. radio's most promising seedlings: the CBS Documentary Unit.
Edward R. Murrow, Columbia's new chief of news and public-service programs, had set up a five-man task force last fall "to do nothing but documentary programs, ten or twelve a year, which will all be broadcast at peak listening hours."* In only six months CBS had spent more than $100,000 on the unit.
The Eagle's Brood was worth every nickel it cost. It was written by CBS Writer-Director Robert Lewis Shayon, 32, after a 9,000-mile, $2,000 coast-to-coast tour of U.S. slums and prisons. "What I saw," says Shayon, "hit me between the eyes." His script, as radio rarely does, hit listeners between the ears.
It was a piece of tough, clear journalism, put together after long conferences with Murrow and his co-workers in the new documentary unit. It got some of the best-rehearsed radio acting in years (by Joseph Gotten, Luther Adler, Karl Swenson, Dan Whittaker). Sample scene:
In a Deep South execution chamber, after talking with four boys (one 16, two 17, one 19) who are soon to die there, the sheriff speaks with the tickled-pink fascination of a kid with a new erector set: "This is where we're going to execute them. . . . Over here is where the chair will be. We used to hang them. The noose came down here and the ropes were tied to the bars on this window here. Then we cut this trap in the floor here, and we dropped them below and they carried the bodies away. That made it neater. But now we've got the most modern improvements. Now we're going to have a portable electric chair. . . . We're improving all the time."
The program laid specific blame for young lawbreakers on parents, schools, courts and jails, made a specific recommendation: neighborhood councils, to whip the community into action. By week's end, thousands of enthusiastic letters had flooded in. CBS had demonstrated that when radio has something to say about an important problem—and says it intelligently—people will listen.
* Coming up: reports on U.S. health, education, labor, on the occupation of Japan, on atomic energy.