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Established as a cooperative string of broadcasting outlets, it soon added WLW (Cincinnati) to its list. Less than a year later the new network began picking up many stations in New England, the Midwest. When California's Don Lee Broadcasting System joined, it completed the MBS coast-to-coast stretch. Other stations joined singly and in groups to give MBS a 1938 collection of 107 outlets, all linked together on the cooperative profit-sharing basis. Since several of these are also affiliated with NBC or CBS, who have prior claims on their time for sponsored programs, it is often impossible to sell a sponsor all the MBS stations he might want at one time.
The Chicago Tribune's WGN gave the network its president, Wilbert E. Macfarlane. Thirty years a newspaperman, President Macfarlane is a rugged individualist of broadcasting. As advertising manager of the Tribune in 1927, he became WGN's executive head, refused to let networks dominate his station's policies. The other original partner station, WOR, gave MBS its board chairman, Alfred Justin McCosker. Breezy, back-slapping Chairman McCosker is a radio veteran among network heads. He joined WOR in 1923, became the station's director and general manager in 1926, president in 1933. A onetime newspaperman, Chairman McCosker held his first job as office boy to the late Hearstling Arthur Brisbane.
Their network does not draw the big glamor shows aglitter with expensive stars, but it does a solid business with sponsors who spot their advertising in chosen areas by using small clumps of stations, who economize on talent costs by using recorded programs, who add to NBC and CBS advertising intensive MBS regional coverage, has as well a collection of sponsored shows which uses its full network. Their business has grown from a gross of $1,364,876 for 1935 to $2,269,078 for 1937. The first eight months of 1938 brought them $1,673,913 and contracts already signed for the last four months add up to some $909,200 more. With sales for the year still going strong, MBS already has a 1938 gross under contract which betters its 1937 peak by some 13.6%, is 22.7% ahead of last year on its first eight months, ran up August revenues to top the same month last year by a staggering 70.4%. Despite a depression summer, MBS is still growing fast into the niche it has carved for itself in network broadcasting.