This episode was originally released 07/2020.
As radio entered the 1948-49 season fresh off a year of record earnings, the four major networks - ABC, CBS, Mutual, and NBC, added seventy-six new AM affiliates.
FM radio stations had leaped. There were now almost five hundred, but of greater concern to radio was the rapid growth of TV.
By December of 1948, fifty-two TV stations were on the air with another fifty under construction. There were now 940,000 United States TV homes. It’s no coincidence overall radio listenership fell by a million.
Meanwhile on Sunday evenings, NBC and CBS’s battle for ratings supremacy had competition.
With Fred Allen’s NBC radio comedy peaking in ratings on Sunday nights at 8:30, they dropped their sponsor, Tenderleaf Tea for the Ford Motor Company. Ford had been sponsoring an hour-long concert broadcast on Sunday nights at 8PM on ABC.
As a result, ABC had an hour of primetime to fill and needed something that had both listener and sponsor appeal. Quiz Kids creator Louis G. Cowan and composer Harry Salter proposed a music giveaway show.
It was to be called Stop The Music. It debuted on March 21st, 1948.
It was inexpensive, even with the prize money. The whole crew consisted of Salter’s studio orchestra, two vocalists and host Bert Parks. ABC offered quarter-hour sponsorships to non-competing advertisers.
One of the oft-featured uncredited supporting character actresses on Spade was Bill Spier’s wife June Havoc. The couple married on January 25th, 1948. Although June Havoc was a Hollywood A-lister, she was initially resented by the rest of the supporting cast.
By the fall of 1948, Stop The Music! had been on the air for six months and had awarded three jackpot prizes averaging nearly $20,000 in retail value. In December, Bergen’s rating was 21.7, Spade’s was 18.4, and Stop The Music was 15.5. Then in late 1948, CBS Chairman William Paley hired Bergen away from NBC. He left the air for the rest of the season. It created a ripple effect through Sunday’s ratings.
In January of 1949 NBC moved Fred Allen up to 8PM opposite Spade, but it was Stop The Music that saw a rating rise, to 18.9. Spade’s audience cratered. In one month they lost nearly half their listeners.
Then Dashiell Hammet’s name came before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Wildroot was becoming uneasy.
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Негізгі бет Ойын-сауық BW - EP105-005: Sam Spade Comes To Radio-How Stop The Music Killed Spade's Ratings
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