MARCH IN THE GOLDEN AGE
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MAR 1 1923 The U. S. Commerce Department, with sole authority over broadcasting regulation, reports that 524 stations are authorized to operate on 830 k.c., forcing competing stations to share time on the frequency. 
MAR 1 1924 WEAF/New York City networks its Eveready Hour variety show to WJAR/Providence and WGR/Buffalo.
​MAR 1 1930   Archibald Crossley begins his radio audience polling service covering 33 major cities three times annually.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAR 1 1932   Bing Crosby begins a sustaining series of 15 minute shows on CBS three times weekly at 6:30 p.m. (See The 1932-33 Season.)
MAR 1 1932   WOR/Newark airs the first bulletin of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping at 11:35 p.m., triggering two days of non-stop coverage from Hopewell, New Jersey by the radio networks and New York City independent stations. 
MAR 1 1932  Goodman & Jane Ace debut as Easy Aces on CBS, beginning multi-network run spanning 16 years. (See Easy Aces.)
MAR 1 1932   CBS adds KGMB/Honolulu as an affiliate and claims that Chesterfield Cigarettes’ nightly Music That Satisfies is heard from Maine to Hawaii, 5,641 miles apart. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears.)
MAR 1 1933   NBC announces the appointment of a “song censor” to review all compos-itions and reject those with lyrics considered suggestive. 
MAR 1 1934  The Press Radio Bureau begins feeding two daily five minute news capsules to networks and stations.  (See The Press Radio Bureau.) 
MAR 1 1934 Broadcasters representing KNX and KFI/Los Angeles and KSTP/Minne-apolis-St. Paul form an independent press service, News Dispatches, Incorporated.
MAR 1 1934   The World Broadcasting System, first of many syndicated transcription services for radio stations, begins operations with 70 subscribing stations. (See “By Transcription…”)
MAR 1 1935   WOR/Newark increases its power to 50,000 watts.
MAR 1 1935   RCA’s annual report sent to stockholders states that nationwide television in the United States is currently impractical and TV will always be supplemental to radio.
MAR 1 1936   NBC Vice President of Sales Edgar Kobak, 41, resigns to join Lord & Thomas Advertising as Vice President.
MAR 1 1936   The Chicago city ordinance takes effect that moves its clocks ahead one hour and puts the city on Eastern Time.  WLS remains on Central Time following a poll of its listeners that voted 65,700 to 1,200 against the switch. 
MAR 1 1937   CBS purchases the 1,100 seat Studio Theater at Hollywood & Vine in Hollywood and renames it The CBS Radio Playhouse to originate Lux Radio Theater and other programs with audiences. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood! )
MAR 1 1937   WKBB/Dubuque, Iowa, becomes the 100th CBS affiliate.
MAR 1 1938   Congress orders the FCC to investigate, “…all phases of network broadcasting and into the broadcasting industry in general..,” for monopoly practices.
MAR 1 1938   American Tobacco launches a radio campaign for its Pall Mall cigarettes charging that competitive brands, “…are made of flavored and colored flavored straw with few traces of real tobacco present.”  (See Unfiltered Cigarette Claims.)
MAR 1 1938   Warner Brothers takes over North American Companies and its subsidiary, Muzak.
MAR 1 1939   NBC pays freelance writer Peggy Decker $1,500 to settle her priority claim on the format of Information Please which she created for WRNL/Richmond, Virginia, four months before the network’s version.  (See Information Please.)
MAR 1 1939   WLW/Cincinnati, reverts to 50,000 watts as the FCC orders an end to the station’s five-year experiment at 500,000 watts.
MAR 1 1939   FCC Chairman Frank McNinch publicly accuses Commissioner T.A.M. Craven of, “…attacking the intelligence, the integrity and motives of the other six commissioners to make a grandstand play for devotion to free speech and opposition to censorship.” 
MAR 1 1940   NBC promotes Rudy Vallee’s new show debuting March 7 with a special salute to him featuring stars he introduced to radio: Eddie Cantor, Edgar Bergen, Burns & Allen, Joe Penner, Alice Faye, Frances Langford, Bob Burns and Tommy Riggs.
MAR 1 1941   Duffy’s Tavern begins its eleven season multi-network run on CBS.  (See Duffy Ain’t Here.)
MAR 1 1941   NBC begins to shortwave broadcasts of Fibber McGee & Molly to U.S. troops in Europe and South America.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly.)
MAR 1 1941   WITH/Baltimore begins operation as a 250 watt station with an all-ASCAP inaugural program.  
MAR 1 1943   CBS boss Bill Paley refuses to allow his West Coast network to record sustaining government programs fed live from the East at 7:30 p.m. PT for later broadcast.
MAR 1 1944   NBC’s Truth Or Consequences runs a large ad in the trade press about the expected induction of host Ralph Edwards to the Army which begins: WANTED: One emcee who is A-1 on the air but 9-G in the draft for a job that will bring him fame, fortune and all the custard pies he can take!  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 1 1944   NBC raises rates an average 8% at its six owned stations, WEAF/New York City, WMAQ/Chicago, KPO/San Francisco, WTAM/Cleveland, WRC/Washington and KOA /Denver.
MAR 1 1944   Department store owner and Chicago Sun publisher Marshall Field buys WJJD/Chicago for $700,000.
MAR 1 1944   Frances Langford and Barbara Jo Allen, (aka Vera Vague), of Bob Hope’s troupe christen a troop ship at the Mobile, Alabama Naval Station..
MAR 1 1944   Actor Victor Jory demands that Blue Network Hollywood reporter Jimmie Fidler retract his story that Jory and his wife are divorcing.
MAR 1 1944   NBC announces plans for a nationwide television network.
MAR 1 1946   CBS reports 27,000 ticket requests have been received for The Kate Smith Hour with guest star Van Johnson originating at the network’s Playhouse Number  3 which seats 1,100.  (See Kate’s Great Song.)
MAR 1 1946   Seven of the country’s eight  existing television stations leave the air temporarily to covert their transmitters to comply with the FCC’s reallocation of frequencies.  Only General Electric’s WRGB(TV)/Schenectady is unaffected. 
MAR 1 1946   CBS successfully demonstrates its color television system to the U.S. Senate and House Interstate Commerce Committees in New York City.
MAR 1 1948   FCC opens hearings on its controversial Mayflower Decision banning broadcast editorializing. 
MAR 1 1948   Information Please creator Dan Golenpaul sues Mutual for $500,000, claiming the network allows its affiliates to broadcast the Friday night co-op program without paying for it.   (See Information Please.)
MAR 1 1948   The Radio Manufacturers Association reports a record 35,889 television sets were produced in February.
MAR 1 1948   RCA introduces its lowest priced console television set with a ten-inch screen for $369.50.
MAR 1 1949   Robert L. Ripley, a Network Radio performer for 19 years, begins his Believe It Or Not program on NBC-TV for a 13 week run.  He collapses and dies of a heart attack during its final episode.  (See Believe It Or Not.)
MAR 1 1949  The television adaptation of the CBS Top 20 radio mystery Suspense debuts on CBS-TV. (See Sus…pense!)
MAR 1 1950  Former CBS Sports Director Ted Husing returns to the network to announce CBS-TV’s Wednesday night boxing matches while keeping his day job as a disc jockey on WMGM/New York City.
MAR 1 1950   The Television Shares Management service projects a total of 5.37 Million television sets will be sold in 1950 led by Admiral’s 800,000 sets and RCA’s 700,000 units.
MAR 1 1951   Mutual reports a 30% increase in co-op sales in six months with 824 sponsored newscasts on its affiliates per day.  Fulton Lewis, Jr., leads the pack with sponsors on 340 stations.                                                                                                
MAR 1 1951 The Adventures of Superman completes its nine year, multi-network run. (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.) 
MAR 1 1953  ABC owned WJZ/AM-FM-TV/New York City change their call signs to WABC.
MAR 1 1953   Gene Autry concludes a 43 day nationwide tour with Pat Buttram, Gale Davis and his Melody Ranch cast that plays to a total audience of 329,000 and generates ticket sales of $585,500.

MAR 2 1922  AT&T establishes WEAF/New York City.
MAR 2 1922 Crosley Manufacturing opens WLW/Cincinnati to promote sales of its inexpensive radios.
MAR 2 1931  CBS grows to 77 affiliates, passing NBC’s 76, and forms its 19 affiliate Dixie Regional Network of CBS stations in the South.
MAR 2 1931  WLW/Cincinnati personality Ed McConnel - whose pay is based on his mail count to his sponsors at 15 cents a letter - collects a reported $39,000 for mail generated over 26 weeks of programs. 
MAR 2 1932   When winter storms disrupt newswire service transmission, WLS/Chicago broadcasts a special half hour of UP news for its newspaper clients in DeKalb and Freeport, Illinois and Oelwein, Iowa. 
MAR 2 1933   Indicative of newspaper resentment toward radio, AP refuses to confirm the death of Montana Senator Thomas Walsh, 73, aboard a train traveling to Washington, D.C., and the inauguration of President Roosevelt.
MAR 2 1934   Bob Hope appears in his first of eight two-reel comedies, Going Spanish.
MAR 2 1936   WSAI/Cincinnati bans all “hillbilly” acts and spot announcement advertising.
MAR 2 1936   WNOX/Knoxville puts a five cent admission charge to its daily broadcasts of The Crazy Tennesseeans novelty band from the city’s 1,500 seat Municipal Market Hall.
MAR 2 1937   Radio is called upon to calm the citizens of Columbus, Ohio, and vicinity when a minor earthquake shakes the area.
MAR 2 1938   The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee drops its proposed 5% excise tax on news gathering facilities.
MAR 2 1938   Southern California radio stations become emergency information centers credited with saving lives as intense storms and heavy flooding paralyze transportation and other forms of communications.
MAR 2 1938   The ten-inch rainfall flooding Los Angeles disables all network lines for 30 hours.
MAR 2 1939   Mutual scores a 30 second beat on the news from Rome of the election of Pope Pius XII because of a direct connection with Vatican station HVJ.   
MAR 2 1939   General Foods reports receiving 100,000 requests in two weeks for a free dessert cookbook offered on Kate Smith’s popular Thursday night CBS program.  (See Kate’s Great Song on this site.)
MAR 2 1940   Roma Wine’s World’s Fair Party hosted by Art Linkletter, 28, becomes the West Coast’s first sponsored radio-television simulcast, broadcast on the 35 station Don Lee Radio Network and televised by Lee’s W6XAO/Los Angeles.  (See People Are Funny on this site.)
MAR 2 1942   WOV/New York City and WHBI/Newark resolve their sharing 1280 kc. with only WOV broadcasting on the channel six days a week and WHBI using it exclusively on Sundays. 
MAR 2 1944   Former network announcer Major Andre Baruch, in charge of AFRS stations in the Mediterranean, reports seven stations operate in the area from Casablanca, Oran, Naples, Algiers, Tunis, Palermo plus a mobile station that travels with the Fifth Army in Italy.  
MAR 2 1945   NBC joins CBS in allowing the song Rum & Coca Cola to be broadcast, but only instrumentally.
MAR 2 1949   Network radio and television crews cover the Ft. Worth landing of an Air Force B-50 bomber at the completion of its 23,000 mile non-stop flight around the globe.
MAR 2 1949   Keystone Broadcasting System founding President Mike Sillerman resigns.
MAR 2 1949   The New York Daily News’ WPIX(TV) begins running three feature films on “triple-feature” Wednesday night.
MAR 2 1950   An Air Force Colonel is awarded $7,500 in a Federal court, charging that his role in a 1942 Alaska rescue mission dramatized by Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch on CBS was misinterpreted and diminished.
MAR2 1950   Four St. Louis stations with transmitter electricity from the Illinois Power Company,  KMOX, KSD, KXOK and WIL, are ordered to cut power to save fuel during the area’s coal strike. 
MAR 2 1951   Massachusetts Congressman Thomas Lane proposes a Federal Censor-ship Board within the FCC and, “…clean up the house of television so its occupants won’t track any more dirt into our homes.” 

MAR 3 1925 Warner Brothers becomes the first film studio involved in station ownership with its purchase of KWBC/Los Angeles, later known as KFWB.  (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
MAR 3 1929   Phillips H. Lord debuts as New England hymn-sing leader, Seth Parker, in the first of his character’s four sporadic multi-network runs until 1939.  (See The 1933-34 Season.)
MAR 3 1930  NBC’s  Blue Network broadcasts an hour of Mardi Gras festivities from New Orleans. 
MAR 3 1936   Kids’ serial Renfrew of The Mounted begins the first of two short runs on CBS and Blue until 1940.
MAR 3 1938   Firearms seller Stoeger Company proposes a spot radio trade to stations: advertising time in return for shotguns and rifles instead of cash.
MAR 3 1939   The North Dakota State Legislature passes an “Anti-ASCAP” bill despite its Attorney General’s written opinion deeming the law to be unconstitutional. 
MAR 3 1940   Listeners flood CBS with complaints about Orson Welles’ portrayal of Benedict Arnold as a hero in his Campbell Playhouse production of Rabble In Arms.
MAR 3 1940   The first complete Broadway play, When We Are Married, is televised on NBC’s experimental W2XBS/New York - its cast members each receiving a week’s pay for the performance.
MAR 3 1943   The U.S. War Manpower Board declares broadcasting to be an “essential industry” but the designation doesn’t affect the draft status of station personnel.
MAR 3 1943   Jack Benny’s violin is sold at a New York auction to a cigar magnate for a $1.0 Million War Bond pledge.
MAR 3 1943   Milton Berle opens a 13 week variety show on CBS for Campbell Soups opposite the powerful Mr. District Attorney on NBC.  (See Mr. District Attorney.)
MAR 3 1943   Variety discloses that Truth Or Consequences pays free lance contributors ten dollars for each “consequence” it uses.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 3 1946   Sponsor Quaker Oats moves Those Websters from CBS to Mutual, claiming that CBS attempted to take control of the sitcom’s creativity and direction.
MAR 3 1947   Broadcasters, advertisers and agencies form the Broadcasting Advisory Council to “Improve radio standards and practices.”
MAR 3 1947  Quaker Oats offers a new five room house and $1,000 prize on its kids’ serial Terry & The Pirates for the best completion of the statement, “My family likes wheat or rice shot from guns because….”  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
MAR 3 1948  Broadcasters and publishers meet with Defense Secretary James Forrestal to discuss his “voluntary censorship” proposal to protect national security.
MAR 3 1948   NBC rejects Call The Police as the summer replacement for Amos & Andy because the program would violate the network’s ban of crime shows before 9:30 p.m. 
MAR 3 1950   ABC Radio offers sitcoms Blondie and A Date With Judy to sponsors at below production costs in an effort to inflate the network’s time sales.  (See Blonn…dee!)
MAR 3 1950   Jack Benny leads the final monthly Network Top 15 published by C.E. Hooper after the company’s sale of its National Rating Services to A.C. Nielsen.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAR 3 1952   Robert Bartley is nominated to the FCC to complete the term of Wayne Coy who resigned to join Time, Inc.
MAR 3 1952   Self-contained weekday drama series Whispering Steets opens its eight year multi-network run on ABC.
MAR 3 1952   Longtime Your Hit Parade star Joan Edwards begins a weekday morning half-hour disc jockey show on WCBS/New York City. 
MAR 3 1953   CBS sitcom Life With Luigi ends its five year run.  (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)

MAR 4 1909 U.S. Congress updates the Copyright Act to protect authors and composers in developing technologies.
MAR 4 1925  President Calvin Coolidge’s inaugural address is broadcast by 24 stations linked by AT&T lines.
MAR 4 1931  Variety releases its a report that 43 radio stations in America are either owned or leased by newspapers, including seven in Chicago and five in Los Angeles but none in New York City.
MAR 4 1932   News services AP, UP and INS stop providing news bulletins to the radio networks claiming they are too busy with the Lindbergh kidnapping case so CBS and NBC dispatch reporters to the wire service offices to provide news. 
MAR 4 1935   CBS releases its brochure, Lost & Found, which cites Starch research estimating 21.46 Million radio homes in the United States, 2.45 Million more than U.S. Census estimates.
MAR 4 1935   WOR/Newark celebrates its increase in power to 50,000 watts with a six-hour broadcast from Carnegie Hall starring comedian Victor Moore, 50. 
MAR 4 1936   Parishioners at Macon, Georgia’s First Methodist Church threaten to boycott Chase & Sanborn products as long as Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour conflicts with the time of their Sunday night services.  (See Major Bowes Original Money Machine )
MAR 4 1938   FCC rejects The Boylan Bill proposing a tax on radio stations based on their transmitting power.
MAR 4 1938   KFI/Los Angeles owner Earl C. Anthony buys 50,000 watt KEHE/Los Angeles from Hearst Radio for $400,000 contingent upon his selling 1,000 watt KECA/Los Angeles.
MAR 4 1938   A heavy storm between San Francisco and Denver blocks the CBS network line for 50 minutes of Hollywood Hotel. 
MAR 4 1940   WJSV/Washington, D.C., celebrates its power increase from 10,000 to 50,000 watts.
MAR 4 1940   KTSA/San Antonio forms a first Listeners’ Council of 100 persons to respond to station opinion questionnaires regarding station programs and meet for monthly focus groups.
MAR 4 1942   Shirley Temple debuts as Junior Miss in the sitcom’s first run of 26 weeks on CBS.
MAR 4 1942  After six months on NBC, Quaker Oats moves its sitcom That Brewster Boy to CBS for the remainder of its three year network run.
MAR 4 1942  WBBM/Chicago begins construction of a new transmitter and 660 foot tower at Itasca, Illinois, when the U.S. Navy deems the station’s transmitter at Glenview, Illinois, to be a hazard to planes at the nearby Glenview airport.  
MAR 4 1944   NBC and BBC break precedent with a joint broadcast of two scenes from Arsenic & Old Lace performed by members of the New York and London casts interacting with each other over 3,000 miles.
MAR 4 1944   Bob Hope begins a month-long 20,000 mile tour of military bases in the southern United States and Caribbean with his radio cast.  (See Hope From Home &  “Professor” Jerry Colonna.)
MAR 4 1944   June Allison, 26, leaves the lead female role of Flashgun Casey, (aka Casey, Crime Photographer), on CBS to pursue film work.  (See Dick Powell.)
MAR 4 1945   In a rare move to a smaller market, WCLE/Cleveland, (formerly WJAY), becomes WWHK/Akron.
MAR 4 1946   The Broadcast Measurement Bureau, supported by the radio industry, begins its $1.0 Million audience survey with ballots mailed to thousands of homes, each accompanied by a premium of four coasters.
MAR 4 1946  Bandleader Tommy Dorsey signs a one-year contract to act as Director of Popular Music at WOR/New York City.
MAR 4 1946   NBC withdraws its application for an FM channel in Los Angeles.
MAR 4 1946   The Chicago Daily News buys 42% of WIND/Chicago for $819,000.
MAR 4 1947  First 18 month sales of the syndicated Easy Aces quarter hour shows are reported to be $433,000.  (See Easy Aces and Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.)
MAR 4 1948   Over 700 guests celebrate the 27th anniversary of Louella Parsons’ Hollywood column and her popularity as an ABC radio personality at the Ambassador Hotel‘s Cocoanut Grove.
MAR 4 1949   Dinah Shore decides against a weekday record show on Mutual that would put her in competition with local disc jockeys across the country.  (See Crooners & Chirps.)
MAR 4 1949  Screen Directors’ Playhouse production of Command Decision becomes the first tape recorded program broadcast by NBC.
MAR 4 1949   After ten years in the role of radio’s Blondie and 28 films as the character, both with co-star Arthur Lake, Colgate decides Penny Singleton, “… isn’t right for the role,”  and fires her from the radio series.  (See Bloonn…dee!)
MAR 4 1949   Mickey Rooney records a sitcom audition for ABC following his year as Shorty Bell on CBS.  (See Shorty Bell.)
MAR 4 1949   A. Atwater Kent, whose name became synonymous with early model radios, dies at his Los Angeles estate at age 75.
MAR 4 1950   WWJ-TV/Detroit preempts the final hour of NBC’s Saturday Night Revue to carry a series of professional wrestling matches from the nearby Grosse Ile Naval Air Station. 
MAR 4 1951   US Steel‘s Theater Guild On The Air presents Sir John Gielgud and Dorothy McGuire in a 90 minute production of Hamlet on NBC.

MAR 5 1932   The Sinclair Wiener Minstrels - named for sponsor Sinclair Oil and originating station WENR/Chicago- begins its five season run on Blue. 
MAR 5 1933   NBC correspondent Max Jordan covers the German Federal elections, the last elections to be held in the country until after World War II.
MAR 5 1935 The networks temporarily move late night band remotes from New York City locations to other cities after the New York AFM local demands a fee of three dollars per player per broadcast.  (See Big Band Remotes.)
MAR 5 1936   CBS allots 15 minutes at 10:45 p.m. to Communist Party Secretary Earl Browder to present, The Communist Position, then equal time the following night to New York Congressman Hamilton Fish for a rebuttal. 
MAR 5 1937  Transcription companies move music production from Chicago to New York and Hollywood when local union head James Petrillo creates unworkable demands for using Chicago musicians.  (See Petrillo!) 
MAR 5 1939   Basil Rathbone is appointed permanent “President” of The Circle on NBC, except on those occasions when Ronald Colman or Cary Grant decide to drop in.  (See The 1938-39 Season.)
MAR 5 1940   Fibber McGee & Molly introduce radio’s funniest sound effect: the tumbling of clutter falling from their  packed hall closet.  (See Tuesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 5 1941  Comedian Willie Howard wins a $6,000 arbitration from Kate Smith and producer  Ted Collins for breach of contract following his dismissal from her show after five weeks of a guaranteed 13 week contract.
MAR 5 1943   Magician Joseph Dunninger brings his mentalist act to radio with a 20 minute audition on KYW/Philadelphia in which he recites the next day’s Philadelphia Record  headline by “reading the mind” of an editor.  (See Dunninger.)
MAR 5 1944   An unusual set of circumstances results in two Chicago stations, WENR and WCFL, simultaneously  broadcasting Phico’s Radio Hall of Fame each week from the Blue Network.  (See The Radio Hall of Fame.)
MAR 5 1945   Police are called to the studios of municipally owned WCAM/Camden, New Jersey, when 150 followers of evangelist Charles Gilmore jam the studios and interrupt programs after the minister is cut off for ad-lib remarks.
MAR 5 1948   FCC concludes five day of hearings to review its 1941 Mayflower Decision banning broadcast editorializing with ABC, CBS and NBC all opposed to it.
MAR 5 1948   Singer Jane Froman, star of Coca-Cola’s Sunday evening Pause That Refreshes on CBS, marries the pilot who saved her from drowning in the 1943 crash of the Lisbon Clipper in Portugal’s Tagus River.

MAR 6 1931  American Tobacco signs the largest radio sponsorship contract to date, 52 weeks for six programs per week on the full CBS network of 77 stations at $2.0 Million.
MAR 6 1931  The March of Time begins its sporadic, 15 year multi-network run.  (See The March of Time.)
MAR 6 1938   NBC cancels comedians Elmore Vincent & Don Johnson’s sustaining Sunday variety show, Senator Fishface & Professor Figgsbottle, after its 122 week run without a sponsor.  
MAR 6 1938   Flivver King, Upton Sinclair’s unflattering biography of Henry Ford, is dramatized in 13 quarter-hour chapters by the UAW on WJBK/Detroit as part of the union’s effort to organize Ford plant workers. 
MAR 6 1940   RCA, NBC and United Airlines present the first television images from a plane flying over New York City.
MAR 6 1940   CBS bars bullfighter Sidney Franklin from Robert Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in response to objections from the SPCA.  (See Believe It Or Not.)
MAR 6 1943   Comedian Lou Costello is stricken with rheumatic fever and hospitalized on his 37th birthday.
MAR 6 1943  Jack Benny returns from a 5,000 mile tour entertaining Allied troops troops in Africa and the Mediterranean theater.  (See Sunday At Seven.)
MAR 6 1943  FCC allows 50,000 watt KDKA/Pittsburgh, a designated key defense system station, to leave the air from 1:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. to save equipment wear provided it can resume operation within 90 seconds in case of emergency. 
MAR 6 1944   Hollywood studios pose new barriers to radio adapting its films and employing its actors which includr a fee of $3,000 for each story, a blacklist of certain programs and the permission to use screen actors only available upon written request.  (See Radio Goes To The Movies.) 
MAR 6 1945   ABC’s Quiz Kids is given a one time exposure on DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City. (See The Quiz Kids.)
MAR 6 1946   Sammy Kaye announces a national contest on his ABC show So You Want To Lead A Band?, offering a $1,000 prize for the listener judged best “bandleader” by Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and Kate Smith.
MAR 6 1946   FCC denies the sale of WOV/New York from Arde Bulova and partners to Murray and Meyer Meeter because the buyers proposed to increase the station’s already heavy commercial load.
MAR 6 1948   A Chicago woman identifies Jack Benny as The Walking Man on NBC’s Truth Or Consequences and wins a $22,500 prize jackpot.  The contest also raises $1.5 Million for the American Heart Association and the contest‘s climax scores a season high 31.7 for all programs.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 6 1953   ABC signs George Jessel, 55, to a “long term” contract as a radio and television performer and producer.

MAR 7 1916 AT&T introduces improvements in vacuum tube technology paving the way to transcontinental telephone lines and high quality radio transmission.
MAR 7 1924 AT&T makes the first coast to coast broadcast from WEAF/New York City to KGO/Ssn Francisco via telephone lines and short wave links.
MAR 7 1925   New York City area stations WJZ and WJY begin allowing their announcers to identify themselves by name instead of just their initials.
MAR 7 1932   KTMR/Los Angeles cancels its advertising contracts with gambling ships at the “suggestion” of the FRC.
MAR 7 1933  Marie, The Little French Princess begins its two year run as the first soap opera on CBS.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 7 1933   Walter Winchell refuses the New York Paramount’s $6,000 offer to play its stage for a week with the Ben Bernie band, capitalizing on the developing “feud” between the two.   (See Walter Winchell.)
MAR 7 1935   FCC approves the power increase of WBBM/Chicago from 25,000 to 50,000 watts.
MAR 7 1938  General Mills introduces its soap opera Valiant Lady, due for a 14 year multi-network run.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 7 1939  Representatives from four national women’s clubs meet with advertising executives to campaign for a “Children’s Hour” of wholesome and/or educational programs.
MAR 7 1939   Hearst Radio executive Elliott Roosevelt testifies to the FCC’s chain-monopoly hearings, calling The Communications Act. “…antiquated, puzzling and unsatisfactory,” leading to, “…excessive government meddling in the radio business.”
MAR 7 1940   Rudy Vallee, whose Standard Brands variety show was cancelled six months earlier, debuts on NBC with a successful new Thursday night program for Sealtest Dairies.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 7 1940   Dick Powell takes over as host of NBC’s Good News for the rest of the season.  (See Good News and Dick Powell.)
MAR 7 1941  FCC issues a “primer” in which it denies the use of radio communication for private citizens or businesses.
MAR 7 1942   NBC begins shortwave broadcasting its top shows to Armed Forces personnel stationed overseas.
MAR 7 1942   The U.S. War Production Board orders a halt to all consumer radio and phonograph manufacture to begin on April 22nd, allowing factories to concentrate on war materials.
MAR 7 1943  Jack Benny is hospitalized with pneumonia - Burns & Allen are called in as last minute substitutes on his show.
MAR 7 1943  The Elgin Watch Company is critically hailed for sponsoring of the Sunday night CBS series, The Man Behind The Gun, profiling personal stories from the war fronts narrated by Jackson Beck.  
MAR 7 1944   The National War Labor Board rules the AFM seven month ban against performing on records to be a labor dispute interfering with the war effort.
MAR 7 1944   Writer-producer Norman Corwin signs a three year exclusive contract with CBS.
MAR 7 1945   Cincinnati stations WCKY, WCPO, WKRC, WLW and WSAI assume 24-hour emergency status for three days as the Ohio River floods the city and surrounding areas.
MAR 7 1945  Newsman Taylor Grant begins his nine year run with ABC’s nightly newscast, Headline Edition.
MAR 7 1945   Subscription Radio Co., a division of Muzak, files incorporation papers in Chicago and announces plans to apply for three FM stations available only to subscribers.
MAR 7 1946   FCC issues its controversial 139-page Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, (aka The Blue Book), calling for more sustaining, local live and discussion programming and, “The elimination of advertising excesses.”  
MAR 7 1946   FCC grants Washington, D.C., television channels to NBC, Bamberger Department Stores and The Washington Evening Star. 
MAR 7 1947  The London Daily Mail issues an apology to CBS Chairman Bill Paley for accusing him of using his World War II position with U.S. Army as an attempt to obtain control of Radio Luxembourg.
MAR 7 1951   The U.S. House UnAmerican Activities Committee launches its inquiry into alleged Communist influences in the entertainment field including radio and television. 

MAR 8 1932  CBS buys back 50% of its stock from Paramount Pictures and obtains total ownership of the network.
MAR 8 1934  Fred Allen and his cast audition an hour-long program at NBC to judge the advisability of advertising two Bristol Myers products - Ipana toothpaste and Sal Hepatica laxative - in a single program.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 8 1935  Judge Eugene Sykes is replaced as FCC Chairman by former Congressman Anning S. Prall.
MAR 8 1937  NBC institutes a limit on its late night sustaining band remotes of two vocals per 15-minute shows and four vocals in each half-hour broadcast to cut down on song-plugger involvement.  (See Big Band Remotes.)
MAR 8 1937  KFWB/Los Angeles begins production of the dramatic serial, Mr. & Mrs. Haddock by Donald Ogden Stewart, in conjunction with the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League.
MAR 8 1938   A District of Columbia Appeals Court Judge rebukes the FCC’s decision process in what it determined to be the public’s interest in granting a new daytime station in Greenville, Texas, over the objection of WOAI/San Antonio.
MAR 8 1938   Fire destroys the studios of WHBF/Rock Island, Illinois, and takes the station off the air for 25 hours until new equipment is rushed in from manufacturer Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 85 miles away.
MAR 8 1940 A vote of 300 RCA executives in New York City chooses the name Radiovision to replace Television. 
MAR 8 1941  WDAS/Philadelphia broadcasts the 10,000th five-minute News On Every Hour, all sponsored by Coppers Coke heating fuel.
MAR 8 1942  Armed Forces Radio Service begins its legendary Command Performance series for service personnel via U.S. shortwave facilities. (See Command Performance.)
MAR 8 1942 The National Barn Dance joins Fibber McGee & Molly and Al Pearce’s Gang, becoming the third NBC show to be broadcast by shortwave overseas by RCA’s WRCA and WNBI and Westinghouse’s WBOS.
MAR 8 1943  FCC Commissioner James Fly predicts an era of, “…Super radio, FM and television, possibly color television after the war".
MAR 8 1944  Despite threats of a picket line, 7,500 Twin Citizens show up to tour the new Radio City theater studios of KSTP in downtown Minneapolis.  
MAR 8 1948  Gillette becomes the first advertiser to buy broadcast rights to a sports event, paying $100,000 for radio and television rights to the June 23rd Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Heavyweight Championship.
MAR 8 1949  CBS and The Los Angeles Times officially launch KTTV(TV)/Los Angeles with a variety show starring Jack Benny, Bob Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Margaret Whiting and Isaac Stern.
MAR 8 1950  John Gambling celebrates his 25th anniversary at WOR/New York City with a guest and tribute filled simulcast of his Musical Clock morning show from the Longacre Theater.
MAR 8 1950   FCC approves the sale of KBTV(TV)/Dallas for $575,000 to The Dallas Morning News, owner of WFAA in the city.
MAR 8 1952  Mutual begins it Game of The Day baseball broadcasts on 175 stations but excluding those within 50 miles of a major league city.

MAR 9 1935   Warner Brothers celebrates the tenth anniversary of its KFWB/Los Angeles with a star packed two-hour show, during which Harry Warner credits the call sign to his father to represent, “Keep Fighting, Warner Brothers." (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
MAR 9 1937   WBNS/Columbus, Ohio, establishes a communications center immediately after a 5.4 magnatude earthquake, the second tremor within a week, shocks the area at 12:45 a.m.
MAR 9 1939   Procter & Gamble begins its annual check of station coverage with its weeklong garden seed promotion on NBC’s Ma Perkins.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 9 1939   Ernie Hare of the popular radio singing team Jones & Hare - The Happiness Boys - dies at 55.  His partner, Billy Jones, dies the following year at 51.
MAR 9 1941  Singer Dale Evans and Caesar Petrillo’s orchestra begin a series of Sunday afternoon shows from Chicago for Bowey’s Dairies on six CBS Pacific Coast stations. 
MAR 9 1942   The Treasury Department reports that 682 stations - 78% of the country’s total - air its weekly transcribed Treasury Star Parade promoting the sale of War Bonds.
MAR 9 1942   WLS/Chicago begins mailing a monthly mimeographed newsletter to its employees in the Armed Forces in an effort to keep them up to date with the station’s activities and its personnel. 
MAR 9 1944   Quaker Oats replaces its sitcom That Brewster Boy on CBS with another sitcom, Those Websters.
MAR 9 1945   CBS joins NBC in prohibiting its clients from cross-plugging their shows on competing networks.
MAR 9 1949   Mutual airs a 30-minute program outlining with President Truman’s Committee On Civil Rights Report and offers equal time to a group of “Dixiecrat” congressmen protesting its findings.
MAR 9 1949   The Arkansas State Legislature becomes the first state body to pass a bill permitting radio and television newsmen the right to refuse divulging their sources of information
MAR 9 1951   The Pulse, Inc., issues its first “national” ratings of Network Radio from interview surveys in 14 cities.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & NIelsen.) 

MAR 10 1933   KHJ/Los Angeles provides CBS with the first coverage of the 6.4 magni-tude Long Beach earthquake that killed 115 persons by relaying eye-witness reports from KFOX/Long Beach.
MAR 10 1933  Tremors from the Long Beach earthquake knock the KFI/Los Angeles transmitter in suburban Buena Park off the air for 90 mintutes and cause $15,000 in damage to its equipment. 
MAR 10 1933   Don Lee’s experimental W6XS(TV)/Los Angeles transmits Pathe Newsreel clips of the Long Beach earthquake several hours after it occurred. 
MAR 10 1933   Ed Wynn announces his Amalgamated Broadcasting System network will begin as the Atlantic Seaboard Broadcasting Company with five East Coast affiliates - the venture seeded with $250,000 of his personal funds.
MAR 10 1933   Ethel Barrymore makes her radio debut on Edwin C. Hill’s Inside Story on CBS. 
MAR 10 1935   The Heavyweight fight between Max Schmeling and American Steve Hamas is broadcast on Blue from Hamburg, Germany. 
MAR 10 1937   CBS takes trade press ads to boast the new highs in Los Angeles audience for KNX and San Francisco audience for KSFO since their January 1st affiliation with the network. 
MAR 10 1940   The Metropolitan Opera stages the first U.S. television presentation of Grand Opera on NBC as a fund raiser to help the group purchase its home building.
MAR 10 1941   Mutual informs the NAB that the Association no longer represents the network in negotiations with ASCAP - the first break in the networks’ united front against the licensing organization.
MAR 10 1941   WHN/New York City pioneers a radio news concept with its Ringfree (Oil) Newsreel Theater -  two hours daily, 7:00 to 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 to Midnight, each hour containing five identical, or updated, ten-minute news capsules separated by two minute commercials for the motor oil sponsor. 
MAR 10 1941   Scripps-Howard offers nine-hours daily on its WCPO/Cincinnati to the city’s school district for lessons to the area’s  children during a strike by the district’s engineers and firemen.
MAR 10 1942   R.J. Reynolds Tobacco boasts the first commercially sponsored entertainment unit dispatched to entertain U.S. troops stationed abroad with the arrival of its Grand Ole Opry troupe in Panama.
MAR 10 1942   Phil Spitalny’s Hour of Charm all-girl orchestra begins a tour of Southern Armed Forces bases that will include two of their Sunday night NBC broadcasts for General Electric.  (See The Hour of Charm.)
MAR 10 1944   A 19 year old Army deserter is arrested after convincing Cincinnati stations WLW and WKRC plus two of the city’s newspapers that he was a war hero in both the European and Pacific front lines.
MAR 10 1944   The Nebraska Supreme Court rules that WOW/Omaha must be freed from a lease and returned to its owner, the Woodman of The World Insurance Society, because of unfavorable lease terms that were arranged without the society’s knowledge. 
MAR 10 1944   The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates that 1.575 Million farm families are without radio service due to spent batteries and worn out tubes with replacements unavailable due to war shortages.
MAR 10 1945   American Tobacco and CBS eliminate the West Coast repeat broadcast of Your Hit Parade from New York to avoid problems arising from studio audiences staying after the midnight curfew. 
MAR 10 1946   Eddie Cantor’s daughter, Marilyn, begins a Sunday record show, For Children Only, on WHN/New York City. 
MAR 10 1947   Retailers sell a thousand television sets during Los Angeles T-Day - eight hours of promotional programming by Paramount’s KTLA(TV) and Don Lee’s experimental W6XAO(TV).. 
MAR 10 1947   FCC grants ten FM permits to Chicago, including one each to NBC and ABC, five to existing stations WAAF, WBKB(TV), WGES, WJJD and WSBC, and three to labor unions
MAR 10 1948   AFRA demands a 10.7% pay increase for performers from all radio networks and transcription companies. 
MAR 10 1948   ABC President Mark Woods warns affiliates that if they refuse network programming on their FM stations, he will seek availability on other FM stations in their markets.
MAR 10 1949   Al Jolson’s Kraft Music Hall becomes the first pre-recorded variety show allowed to be broadcast on NBC.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 10 1950   Sid Silverman, President of trade papers Variety and Daily Variety, dies at 51 after a long illness.  
MAR 10 1950   New York contractor Levitt & Sons advertises that all of its new tract homes for $7,990 come equipped with Admiral television sets.
MAR 10 1951 WNBC/New York City debuts its Saturday afternoon, three hour House of Music hosted by Wayne Howell, with his first (pre-recorded) guest disc jockeys Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Jose Ferrer, Lena Horne and various politicians. 
MAR 10 1953   Eva Gabor begins a nightly, 12:00 to 2:00 a.m. disc-jockey/celebrity interview show from the Belmont-Plaza Hotel on WJZ/New York City.

MAR 11 1935   The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review municipalities’ right to license radio stations with special taxes.
MAR 11 1935   NBC becomes the first network to allow on-air credits given to program writers.  
MAR 11 1937  Rudy Vallee introduces a song on his NBC show written by two salesmen
at KVOO/Tulsa, I‘m In Love With 234-0-567, referring to a girl‘s Social Security number.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 11 1940  A New York Supreme Court Justice issues an injunction barring Information Publications, Inc., from using the title of a magazine that ceased publication in 1936, Information Please.  (See Information Please.)  
MAR 11 1940   American Home Products’ Anacin places two-year old NBC transcriptions of Easy Aces on the 13-station Texas State Network in a Monday through Friday schedule.  (See Easy Aces.)
MAR 11 1943   Bud Abbott temporarily continues The Abbott & Costelllo Show with comedian Bert Lahr substituting for the hospitalized Lou Costello.
MAR 11 1944   Lionel Barrymore’s Mayor of The Town, cancelled by Lever Brothers to clear time for Frank Sinatra’s new show, is brought back by Noxema Skin Cream, easing the intense pressure brought to CBS by Barrymore fans.  
MAR 11 1945   Ralph Edwards moves his Truth Or Consequences from New York City to Hollywood.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 11 1946   The Allied Printing Trades union resumes its campaign to levy a confis-catory tax against radio stations.
MAR 11 1946   KTMR/Los Angeles changes its call sign to KLAC.
MAR 11 1946   Only eleven applicants appear at the FCC hearings to award the eleven FM channels in Washington, D.C.
MAR 11 1947   WCPO/Cincinnati leads the city’s five stations covering the collapse of a six-story building weakened by past floods, trapping four workmen in the wreckage for 35 hours, killling two of them.  The station installed a wire from the scene and broadcast 50 commercial free reports during the long rescue effort.
MAR 11 1947   Cecil B DeMille takes his case against AFRA for expelling him from the union to the California Supreme Court. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
MAR 11 1947   Milton Berle begins his sixth and highest rated Network Radio series on NBC but the show is cancelled in 13 months.
MAR 11 1948   FCC extends FM station licenses from one to three years, the same as AM stations.
MAR 11 1948   ABC President Mark Woods addresses affiliates comparing AM and FM to elevators - AM going down and FM going up - then urges stations to duplicate 100% of their AM programming on their FM outlets.
MAR 11 1948   CBS discloses that Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield cigarettes will pay between $30,000 and $35,000 a week for its new Bing Crosby Show with the singer netting $8,500 for himself.
MAR 11 1948   NBC establishes a television relay link between WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia and the new WBAL-TV/Baltimore thus adding Baltimore to its Schenectady/New York/ Philadelphia chain.
MAR 11 1949   George Burns & Gracie Allen announce their move from NBC to CBS for the 1949-50 season, their sixth switch between the two networks in 17 years.
MAR 11 1949   Frank Sinatra turns down a CBS offer to host a 15 minute weekday show for $100,000 a year.
MAR 11 1949   KRSC(TV)/Seattle and KLEE(TV)/Houston join ABC-TV bringing its affiliate list to 21 stations. 
MAR 11 1950   Gordon McLendon’s Liberty Broadcasting System begins its third season of recreated major league play-by-play baseball broadcasts to affiliates in 33 states.
MAR 11 1951   Phil Baker returns after a four year absence to host The $64 Question, (fka Take It Or Leave It).  Garry Moore, Eddie Cantor and Jack Paar emceed the program while he was gone. 
MAR 11 1951   WWDC replaces WEAM as the Mutual affiliate in Washington, D.C.
MAR 11 1952   Jim & Marian Jordan celebrate their 20th anniversary as Fibber McGee & Molly on NBC.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly.)

MAR 12 1931  CBS forbids any one song from being repeated within three hours during the daytime and  more than twice any night after 6:00. The network also institutes a rule requiring all programs to submit titles of the songs they plan on performing in advance of their broadcast.
MAR 12 1933   An estimated 60 Million listeners hear President Franklin Roosevelt deliver the first of his 30 Fireside Chat addresses to the nation - so named by Harry Butcher of CBS because microphones in the White House Lincoln Room were placed near a fireplace.
MAR 12 1935  Former vaudeville partners Ben Bernie and Phil Baker are reunited for one appearance on Bernie’s Pabst Beer program on NBC.
MAR 12 1937   WGST/Atlanta wins its case in the Georgia Supreme Court which forbids the City of Atlanta from assessing the station a $300 annual license tax.
MAR 12 1938   NBC reporter Max Jordan scores a scoop with his shortwave reports from Vienna of Germany’s move to annex Austria.  (See The 1937-38 Season.)
MAR 12 1939   NBC in New York City is flooded with over 14,000 requests for tickets to the two Sunday night broadcasts NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour starring Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy on tour from Los Angeles.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 12 1940   Anticipating the sale of 25,000 television receivers during the year, RCA reduces the price of it’s 12-inch $600 set to $395. 
MAR 12 1941   ASCAP is found guilty in Federal Court of violating The Sherman Anti-Trust Act and fined $32,250.
MAR 12 1941  Jack Benny signs a 35 week contract extension with General Foods with the provision that he will control his Sunday night time period on NBC at the contract’s end.  (See Lucky Gets Benny and Sunday At Seven.)
MAR 12 1942   FCC and the Civil Aeronautics Authority order all radio transmitter towers to remain illuminated during World War II blackout tests to avoid danger to friendly aircraft.
MAR 12 1943   Elmer Davis, Director of the Office of War Information, begins a weekly 15-minute series, This Week’s War News, carried simultaneously for 16 weeks at 10:45 p.m. by CBS, NBC, Blue and most independent stations, with next day rebroadcast on Mutual.
MAR 12 1943  Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson, wife of Texas Congressman Lyndon Johnson, acquires KTBC/Austin for $17,500.
MAR 12 1945   Coca-Cola cancels Vaughn Monroe’s date on Blue’s Spotlight Bands when the sponsor learns that the band recently recorded the song Pepsi-Cola For Two.  (See Spotlight Bands.)
MAR 12 1946   Popular CBS Pacific Coast thriller, The Whistler, opens a 26 week Wednesday night run on the East and Midwest legs of the network for Household Finance wphile separate casts continue the show for Signal Oil on the Coast.  (See The Whistler.)
MAR 12 1947  The Television Broadcasters Association vows to fight an IRS proposal to charge a 20% amusement tax on bars and restaurants with television sets.
MAR 12 1947   In an early pooled television effort, President Truman’s speech before Congress is carried by DuMont’s WTTG/Washington and WABD/New York City,  NBC’s WNBT and CBS’s WCBS-TV/New York City (TV)and Philco’s WPTZ/Philadelphia.
MAR 12 1949   Complaints pour into NBC-TV when Paul Robeson and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell are announced to be guests on Eleanor Roosevelt’s next program discussing, “The Negro’s Position In American Politics.” When black leaders protest the two on the following day the network cancels the program.
MAR 12 1951  The nation is captivated by the Senate’s Special Committee To Investigate Organized Crime, (aka The Kefauver Committee), hearings in New York City.  Gavel to gavel coverage is provided by all five New York City television stations and ABC-TV relays the dramatic proceedings to 19 additional cities.  
MAR 12 1952   After seven successful years, William Keighley announces he is leaving his role as host of Lux Radio Theater at the end of the season. (See Lux...Presents Hollywood!)

MAR 13 1938   The CBS World News Roundup becomes first newscast to use multi-point shortwave reports with anchor Robert Trout cuing reports from correspondents in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Vienna.
MAR 13 1938  Edward R. Murrow makes his first broadcast on CBS, reporting from Austria on the fall of Vienna to the Nazis.  
MAR 13 1938   WNOX/Knoxville fires its popular Crazy Tennesseans novelty band after its members start a fistfight with their rival Tennessee Ramblers band during a noon broadcast from a packed downtown hall. 
MAR 13 1941   False rumors spread that NBC’s WEAF/New York City is about to sign Arthur Godfrey, dominant morning personality on CBS-owned WJSV/Washington, D.C.  (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAR 13 1942   Announcer Paul Douglas, 34, leaves his $40,000 a year job as spokesman for Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield cigarettes on the Fred Waring and Glenn Miller shows to join the U.S. Office of Facts and Figures.
MAR 13 1942   A new group, The Association of Radio News Analysts, holds its organizational meeting in New York City and elects H. V. Kaltenborn its first President. (See H,V. Kaltenborn.)
MAR 13 1942   WLW/Cincinnati dispatches a crew to Valparaiso, Indiana, to report on the government’s first wartime seizure of a junkyard for its scrap metal.
MAR 13 1943  Ralph Edwards takes his Truth Or Consequences on a three-month, cross-country tour with War Bond required for admission to his shows.  The first two weeks result in $1.5 Million in sales.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 13 1944   Westinghouse brings John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade to 160 Blue Network stations in 15 minute installments three nights a week at 10:15 p.m. 
MAR 13 1944   Blue Network President Mark Woods wires the FCC denying the charge of Earle C. Anthony that Blue was  attempting to force Anthony to sell his KECA/Los Angeles to the network.
MAR 13 1944   A Chicago court awards The Lone Ranger, Inc., $10,000 in damages from the Sunbrock Circus for the latter’s unauthorized use of the name Lone Ranger in its advertising.  (See The Lone Ranger.)
MAR 13 1944   AT&T announces a postwar plan to install 7,000 miles of coaxial cable for television transmission at an estimated cost of $1.0 Billion. 
MAR 1945   Bill Paley, on leave of absence from CBS, is commissioned a Colonel in U.S. Army assigned to the Psychological Warfare Division of Allied headquarters. 
MAR 13 1947   Jack Benny hosts the Academy Awards on ABC, heard in the East from 11:45 p.m. until 2:30 a.m.
MAR 13 1947   Drastic budget cuts reduce the personnel at DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City and WTTG(TV)/Washington from 70 employees to 25.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
MAR 13 1948   CBS audience participation show County Fair satirizes giveaway programs with The Snoring Man - offering a house full of furniture - a doll’s house.
MAR 13 1948   Procter & Gamble assumes sponsorship of Gangbusters on 62 ABC stations - the program is offered to other ABC affiliates as a co-op show available for local sale.
MAR 13 1950   WCBS-TV/New York City agrees to move its transmitter from atop the Chrysler Building to the Empire State Building.
MAR 13 1951   The AFM signs a three year ontract with the radio and television networks calling for a 15% wage increase for network staff musicians in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.  (See Petrillo!)
MAR 13 1952   CBS owned KNXT(TV)/Los Angeles begins a weekly series of 90 minute boxing bouts from its studios.

MAR 14 1925   RCA relays the BBC’s first Transatlantic broadcast from its Maine relay station to WJZ/Newark and WRC/Washington, D.C.
MAR 14 1932   NBC’s family serial (The Rise of)The Goldbergs goes from a limited chain of eight stations to a coast-to-coast network of 27 affiliates.  
MAR 14 1932   NBC takes over the management of Westinghouse-owned stations KDKA/Pittsburgh, WBZ/Boston and WBZA/Springfield, Massachusetts.
MAR 14 1936   NBC presents a 30 minute tribute to veteran performer Fred Stone’s 50 years in show business.
MAR 14 1937   Over 16,000 fans crowd the St. Louis Municipal Auditorium for a combined show by the WLS National Barn Dance troupe and the rural music group from KMOX/St. Louis.
MAR 14 1938   NBC salutes Graham McNamee on his 15th anniversary with the network, the last eight continuous years with at least one sponsored program per week.
MAR 14 1941   The transmitter supervisor at 50,000 watt WBBM/Chicago is electrocuted when he comes in contact with a 4,000 volt circuit. 
MAR 14 1942   NBC expands its shortwave broadcasts to Armed Forces overseas to include its most popular programs.
MAR 14 1943   Orson Welles substitutes for Jack Benny for the next three weeks as the comedian recovers from pneumonia. 
MAR 14 1944   Bamberger Department Stores, licensee of WOR/New York City files for new television stations in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in what’s believed to be the foundation for a new Mutual television network.  
MAR 14 1945   RCA demonstrates large screen projection television set with 16 x 21 inch image.
MAR 14 1946   DuMont’s WABD(TV)/New York City returns to the air on its new frequency, Channel 5.  (See Dr. DuMont's Predictions.)
MAR 14 1947   Comedian Abe Burrows quits as Chief Writer of Ford’s Dinah Shore Show on CBS in protest to the sponsor’s, “…interference and dictation.” 
MAR 14 1947   Ignoring protests, the IRS slaps a 20% “Cabaret Tax” on any bar or restaurant with a television set installed for the entertainment of customers.
MAR 14 1947   Booth announcers at Don Lee’s 16 year old W6XAO(TV)/Los Angeles begin tagging all station ID’s with, “…the nation’s first television station.”
MAR 14 1948   Producer Louis Cowan holds an “out of town tryout” for his new ABC giveaway show Stop The Music! with a one time feed from New York City for broadcast only on WAGE/Syracuse. (See Stop The Music!) 
MAR 14 1949   CBS is reported offering Fred Allen $100,000 to take the 1949-50 season off, then $22,000 a week for his program in the 1950-51 season.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 14 1949   Sterling Drug extends its weekday radio ad spending by $1.0 Million annually by increasing its sponsorship of ABC’s My True Story from two to all five half hours per week.  
MAR 14 1951  ABC tries to raid NBC’s five major advertisers who sponsor 13 weekday programs between  2:30 and 6:00 p.m. by offering 45% discounts in its rates.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 14 1952   NBC releases a study of 1,000 television viewers indicating that 27% had seen its morning television program Today within the past month with an average viewing time of 56 minutes.

MAR 15 1922  WJZ/Newark broadcasts the Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart’s The Impresario from the station’s 10x40 foot studio.
MAR 15 1927  The Federal Radio Commission convenes its first meeting.
MAR 15 1931  NBC bans broadcasts by mentalists, astrologers, fortune tellers or any “member of the psychic community” from its networks and owned & operated stations.
MAR 15 1931   NBC goes one up in its affiliate race with CBS, 78-77, with the addition of North Dakota stations WDAY/Fargo and KFYR/Bismarck.
MAR 15 1931   Warner Brothers actress Ruth Chatterton signs the first film contract withholding television rights to her work.  
MAR 15 1933   General John J. Pershing begins a weekly half hour for General Tire on 64 NBC stations relating stories from his military career.
MAR 15 1934   Another attempt to start the Quality Broadcasting Group network is made by WOR/New York City, WGN/Chicago and WLW/Cincinnati with Pebeco Toothpaste’s weekly Stars On Parade variety show.
MAR 15 1935   Barbasol rewards the fledgling Mutual Network with its first contract renewal - 13 weeks more of its quarter-hour Singin’ Sam shows.
MAR 15 1936  A&P Stores begins Kate Smith Week with a one-time hour on CBS starring Smith, Bob Burns, Dick Powell, The A&P Gypsies, James Melton, The Goldbergs and Ted Husing opposite Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour on NBC.
MAR 15 1938   Jim & Marian Jordan’s Fibber McGee & Molly moves from Monday to its 15 year Tuesday night home on NBC.  (See Fibber McGee Minus Molly.)
MAR 15 1938   NBC announcer Phil Stewart, the voice of Lady Esther cosmetics for over five years, defies the company’s sudden ban against identifying himself at the end of its programs and is fired.
MAR 15 1939   Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge troupe breaks the house record at the RKO Palace in Cleveland, grossing $37,000 for the week from which Kyser’s take was $17,100.  (See Kay Kyser.)
MAR 15 1939   Police arrest 13 members from a group of 500 picketing WDAS/Phila-delphia for its ban of broadcasts by Detroit priest Charles Coughlin for inciting a riot at a YMCA meeting of The Committee for Racial & Religious Tolerance with shouts denounc-ing Jews and praising Hitler.  (See Father Coughlin.)
MAR 15 1940   WWJ/Detroit joins WDAF/Kansas City and WFBR/Balltimore and cancels NBC’s Pot O Gold. 
MAR 15 1940   Early Frank & Anne Hummert soap opera Betty & Bob is cancelled after an eight year multi-network run.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 15 1940   Philadelphia followers of controversial radio priest Charles Coughlin picket the annual ball of the Kerrymen’s Patriotic Society when entertainers from WDAS appear - a station that banned Coughlin’s Sunday broadcasts.  (See Father Coughlin.)
MAR 15 1942   Blue’s Behind The Mike program features interviews with refugee-survivors of Nazi concentration camps.
​MAR 15 1943   Kellogg’s Pep cereal brings Superman to Mutual’s weekday afternoon kids’ lineup on 204 stations.  (See Serials, Cereals and Premiums.)
MAR 15 1943   Dick Tracy, based on Chester Gould’s popular comic strip, begins its five year run on Blue’s weekday afternoon schedule over 31 affiliates.   (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
MAR 15 1943   Forty-four prime time Network Radio shows volunteer for “special assignments,” (spot announcements), on behalf of the OWI’s monthly public service campaigns.
MAR 15 1943   B.F. Goodrich launches a five minute weeknight news commentary, Joseph C. Harsch’s Meaning of The News at 6:55 p.m. on 110 CBS stations.  
MAR 15 1943  The U.S. Air Defense Wing orders all Southern California radio stations off the air for four minutes at 6:31 p.m. when an unidentified plane - later identified as friendly aircraft - approaches Los Angeles..
MAR 15 1944   Pollster C.E. Hooper notifies all stations in its 52 network survey cities to report any giveaway contests involving the use of telephones for special identification in its forthcoming report.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAR 15 1945   NBC orders the elimination of all commercials in the middle of its newscasts.  
MAR 15 1945   Coca Cola claims the largest circulation network for a single program series - 348 stations for its  weekday Coke Club starring tenor Morton Downey.
MAR 15 1945   Bob Hope hosts  the first network broadcast of the Academy Awards - beginning on Blue at 12:30 a.m. on the East Coast.
MAR 15 1945   Danny Kaye moves his CBS variety show to the West Coast but without head writer Goodman Ace who leaves his $3,000 a week post to remain in New York City.  (See Easy Aces.)
MAR 15 1945   Not yet equipped with portable equipment for remote telecasts, CBS-owned WCBW(TV)/New York City stages Amateur Athletic Union boxing matches in its studios.
MAR 15 1946  The official dinner in New York City honoring Winston Churchill is broadcast by ABC, CBS, NBC and nine New York independent stations.
MAR 15 1946   Mutual provides figures showing that 70% of its 255 affiliates are located in single station markets.
MAR 15 1946   Swift Packing Company signs a five-year, $5.0 Million contract with ABC to sponsor two quarter-hour segments of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club every weekday morning.
MAR 15 1946   The NAB files a brief with the FCC to scrap its AVCO Rule complicating transfers of station ownership.
MAR 15 1947  A Pennsylvania housewife identifies silent screen star  Clara Bow as Truth Or Consequences’ mystery woman, Mrs. Hush, and wins a jackpot of prizes valued at $17,500, a record to that time for radio giveaways.  The contest drew over a million mailed entries with over $400,000 in donations for the March of Dimes.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 15 1948   ABC begins a trade press ad campaign for its new Stop The Music!, debuting March 21, offering the program in whole, half or quarter hour segments to advertisers and adds the network sales manager’s phone number.  (See Stop The Music!)
MAR 15 1948   The Liberty Broadcasting System network begins operations from KLIF/Dallas with daily broadcasts of major league baseball games recreated in the studio from wire reports.
MAR 15 1949   Michael Sillerman, President of the Keystone Broadcasting System transcription network since its founding in 1940, resigns over differences with his board of directors.
MAR 15 1949   CBS previews its $60,000, 35-minute promotional film, Television Today, for the press before releasing prints for showings to advertisers, ad agencies, schools and civic groups.
MAR 15 1950   A too-authentic recreation of a forest fire on WMOU/New Berlin, New Hampshire, causes a brief panic to residents and workers in New England timberland.
MAR 15 1950   Ronson Lighters drops sponsorship of the weeknight, 5-minute Johnny Desmond Show to save budget for sponsoring Twenty Questions on ABC-TV and WOR-TV/New York City.  (See Twenty Questions.) 
MAR 15 1950   Off-color remarks by Arthur Godfrey in a Street Cleaner skit with Morton Downey and Jack Carson on CBS-TV’s Arthur Godfrey & His Friends brings a storm of outrage from viewers and threats of non-clearances from affiliates.  (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAR 15 1951   WMCA-FM/New York City suspends operations as reports surface it will be sold to WHOM.   
MAR 15 1952   Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis conclude their 16½ hour fund raising telethon on WNBT(TV)/New York City, generating $1.25 Million in pledges for the New York Cardiac Hospital.

MAR 16 1936   Colgate-Palmolive-Peet announces three separate slogan contests on its CBS shows, Ziegfeld Follies, The Goldbergs and Gangbusters, with a total prize value of $140,000.  
MAR 16 1942   An afternoon tornado killing 125 strikes the Memphis area but WMC and WMPS obey government wartime orders banning weather reports and ask for special permission from Washington.  The government doesn’t respond to the urgent request for six hours. 
MAR 16 1942   Memphis stations WHBQ and WREC skirt government weather report censorship by issuing appeals for area doctors and nurses to report for duty at 6:57 p.m. without mentioning the killer tornado.
MAR 16 1942   Controversial priest Charles Couglin’s Radio League of The Little Flower protests a government ruling that  it is not a religious and charitable organization, which makes its $1.16 Million income from 1936 to 1940 fully taxable.  (See Father Coughlin.)
MAR 16 1942   A Pennsylvania Public Utilities commissioner files a charge with the FCC accusing WPEN/Philadelphia with, “…deliberately cooperating with gamblers,” with its daily race results from tracks in the region. 
MAR 16 1942   WJZ/New York City begins its nightly Say It With Music from 1:00 until 7:00 a.m. for overnight workers in defense plants.
MAR 16 1943   Veteran bandleader Paul Whiteman is appointed to the Blue Network's new post, Director of Music.  
MAR 16 1943   A blizzard disrupting network lines forces WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul to receive its CBS programs for much of the day via a long distance telephone call to WMT/Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
MAR 16 1944   The part owner of WBYN/Brooklyn is arrested for running a swindle called Send Em Smokes, a telephone quiz offering, (but never delivering), cigarettes as prizes for listeners and service personnel overseas paid for by participating sponsor fees of $1,000. 
MAR 16 1944   Brother Bob Crosby substitutes for Bing who leaves NBC’s Kraft Music Hall for a two week Red Cross hospital tour. 
MAR 16 1945   Scripps-Howard sells WMPS/Memphis to Plough Chemical for $35,000.
MAR 16 1947  Jack Benny hosts The Million Dollar Quartet -  Bing Crosby, Andy Russell, Dick Haymes and Dennis Day for a one time appearance on his show. (See Sunday At Seven.) 
MAR 16 1947  The singing performance by President Truman’s daughter Margaret on ABC’s Detroit Symphony broadcast scores a 21.1 Hooperating.  The program’s previous week’s rating was 2.7.  
MAR 16 1948   America’s Town Meeting celebrates its 500th broadcast on Blue/ABC.
MAR 16 1949   Jack Benny with vocalists Jack Smith and Margaret Whiting star in a 30-minute salute to the Camp Fire Girls on CBS celebrating the group’s 39th birthday.
MAR 16 1951   ABC-TV is criticized in the press for selling its coverage of the Kefauver Crime Committee hearings to Time magazine.
MAR 16 1952   The smart mystery Private Files of Matthew Bell starring Joseph Cotton opens its short Sunday afternoon run on Mutual.
MAR 16 1952   Walter Winchell is taken ill shortly before his Sunday night broadcast - his script is read by ABC announcer Dick Stark.  (See Walter Winchell.)
MAR 16 1953   FM inventor Edwin Armstrong unveils his new FM Multiplexing System developed with Dr. John Bose of Columbia University. The Armstrong-Bose System paves the way for stereophonic broadcasting.

MAR 17 1931   Kate Smith, 24, begins a 15 minute weekday show on NBC for a month before moving to CBS for the next 16 years.  (See Kate’s Great Song on this site.)
MAR 17 1932   Westinghouse agrees to accept more programming from NBC’s Blue network for its KYW/Chicago, KDKA/Pittsburgh, WBZA/Boston and WBZ/Springfield.
MAR 17 1933   Comedian Phil Baker, 37, becomes The Armour Jester for three highly rated seasons on Blue.
MAR 17 1936  Radio is hailed for its emergency work during massive flooding of  the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania; the Potomac River flooding near Washington, and floods resulting from snow melting in New  England.
MAR 17 1936   WEBR/Buffalo begins breaking into programming every 15 minutes with weather, traffic and cancellation bulletins as a 20-inch snowfall ties up the city for the next five days. 
MAR 17 1937  A bill of questionable constitutionality is accepted for consideration by the New York State Senate which  could make all radio advertising copy subject to pre-approval by the state’s motion picture censorship board. 
MAR 17 1938   The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reverses the FCC’s recent license grants in Saginaw, Michigan and El Paso, Texas and orders new hearings for those cases. 
MAR 17 1939 NBC, CBS and Mutual carry British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s speech condemning Nazi  Germany’s “annexation” of Czechoslovakia.  
MAR 17 1939   WRVA/Richmond, Virginia, celebrates it power increase to 50,000 watts with a seven hour special broadcast.
MAR 17 1941  CBS establishes WBT/Charlotte as the origination hub for the network’s service and original programming for its south central leg of nine stations. 
MAR 17 1941   Edwin Armstrong grants free use of his FM patents to the U.S. Army for its communications purposes.
MAR 17 1942   Irna Phillips’ daytime serial The Guiding Light, its four-year run on NBC cancelled in December, begins its second four year run on the network as part of General Mills’ afternoon hour block of continuing dramas including Valiant Lady, Light of The World and Arnold Grimm’s Daughter.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 17 1942 Charles O”Connor, once the youngest announcer employed by NBC at 20 and later the commercial voice of Philip Morris, dies at his Long Island home at age 30.
MAR 17 1942  The night’s Fibber McGee & Molly broadcast is cancelled due to death of Jim Jordan’s father. The sitcom is replaced by a patriotic program, Production Now, which is carried by all four major networks.
MAR 17 1944   American Tobacco’s George Washington Hill forbids CBS anchor station WCBS from giving Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade any free promotional announcements if he can’t control the wording.
MAR 17 1944   The AFM signs a three year contract with all the networks paying the “platter turners” at all network owned and operated stations $50 a week,  with annual raises of ten dollars a week.  (See Petrillo!)
MAR 17 1945   A Truth Or Consequences broadcast is filmed for the RKO movie, Radio Stars On Parade.  (See Truth Or Consequences.) 
MAR 17 1946   Irish tenor/comedian Dennis Day, 29, returns to Jack Benny’s cast on St. Patrick's Day after his World War II service in the Navy.  (See Sunday At Seven.)
MAR 17 1947   Frequency Modulation inventor Edwin Armstrong and major market FM station owners petition the FCC to operate two stations per license within the same city and recapture the 44 to 50 megacycle band for its use. 
MAR 17 1948   NBC signs television’s first network affiliate contract with KSTP-TV/ Minneapolis-St Paul. 
MAR 17 1948   President Truman’s speech before Congress asking for the resumption of Selective Service registers a 33.4 Hooperating.
MAR17 1948   Cecil B. DeMille carries his fight against AFRA union suspension (over refusal to pay a one dollar assessment) to the U.S. Supreme Court. (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
MAR 17 1948   ABC denies reports that its popular Breakfast In Hollywood host Tom Breneman is seriously ill with heart disease - but he suffers a fatal heart attack six weeks later. 
MAR 17 1948   FCC authorizes the first church owned FM station, 1,000 watt KBTR/Minneapolis-St. Paul, operated by the Bethesda Free Church of Minneapolis.
MAR 17 1950  Gene Autry, Columbia Records’ top selling artist since 1930 with 25.1 Million records sold, signs a new five year contract with the label. 
MAR 17 1950   CBS bans the Columbia record Go To Sleep by Arthur Godfrey and Mary Martin for its suggestive lyrics.  (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAR 17 1950   A Philadelphia court finds stations KYW, WCAU,WFIL and WPEN not liable in a $200,000 libel suit brought against them by a politician after they broadcast a campaign speech in which he was branded a socialist. 
MAR 17 1950   Citing budget cuts, KFWB/Los Angeles fires personality Stuart Hamblin after 17 years, but Hamblin says the six sponsors of his daily half-hour show will follow him to a new station. 
MAR 17 1951   WFDR-FM/New York, owned by the ILGU, wins the New York Newspaper Guild’s Page One award for, “…consistently championing the cause of liberalism.”
MAR 17 1952   NBC breaks ground for its $25 Million television center in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.
MAR 17 1953   ABC, CBS and NBC pool the telecast of the atomic bomb test from Yucca Flat, Nevada. 

MAR 18 1936   Flood-caused power outages force Pittsburgh stations KDKA, WCAE and WJAS to operate on batteries.
MAR 18 1937  Texas stations KRLD/Dallas, KOCA/Kilgore and KGKB/Tyler are first on the scene after a 3:20 p.m. natural gas explosion destroys the school in New London, Texas, killing an estimated 300 children and adults.
MAR 18 1938   After 72 hours of heated discussion behind closed doors, the FCC votes 6-1 to authorize a sweeping investigation of the broadcasting industry.
MAR 18 1940   Inspirational weekday serial The Light of The World begins its ten season multi-network run on NBC.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 18 1940   FM developer Edwin Armstrong predicts to the FCC that FM will eventually overtake AM in popularity..
MAR 18 1940  A million dollar copyright infringement suit against Edgar Bergen, Mae West, Don Ameche, writer Arch Obeler, NBC and Standard Brands involving 1938’s infamous Adam & Eve sketch is dismissed in a Los Angeles court. (See Bergen, McCar-thy And Adam & Eve on this site.)
MAR 18 1941   The International Printers Union asks the federal government to tax radio stations and networks between 10% to 20% of their income to, “…halt radio’s advance as an advertising medium.” 
MAR 18 1942   WHN/New York City celebrates its 20th anniversary.
MAR 18 1943   With Lou Costello hospitalized with rheumatic fever, his partner Bud Abbott agrees to do their program one more time without him, hosting Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s).)
MAR 18 1943   North Dakota bolts from Central War Time, (aka Daylight Saving Time), by switching to Mountain War Time - the same as Central Standard Time.  Other agricultural states consider a similar move.
MAR 18 1945   McKesson & Robbins cancels Joe E. Brown’s quiz, Stop Or Go, on Blue because of the wartime shortages of tin for packaging and peppermint oil for flavoring its Calox Tooth Powder.
MAR 18 1946   Edgar Bergen and Arch Oboler win the year’s Peabody Awards for radio.
MAR 18 1947   FCC gives Stanley E. Hubbard, 25% owner of KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul, three days to prove he can obtain $825,000, “…with no strings attached,” to purchase the 50,000 watt NBC affiliate in its entirety.
MAR 18 1947   FCC refuses to authorize commercial production of the CBS color television system resulting in immediate production and sales surges for black and white television sets.  
MAR 18 1948   Major networks and the AFM sign a three year agreement with no raise in pay for union members.  The pact also allows AFM members to perform on television and permits members to play on AM-FM simulcasts for no extra fee.  (See Petrillo!)
MAR 18 1948   A Detroit police inspector slams ABC’s This Is Your FBI for giving a 15 year old the inspiration to extort $30,000 from a local funeral director.  (See FBI vs. FBI.)
MAR 18 1949   NBC matches a reported CBS offer of $250,000 per year and signs Fred Allen to an exclusive contract as Allen announces his intention of taking a sabbatical during the 1949-50 season.  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 18 1949   Duffy’s Tavern creator Ed Gardner sues MCA in Federal Court to break his contract with the talent agency.  (See Duffy Ain’t Here.) 
MAR 18 1949   Tallulah Bankhead sues NBC, CBS, Procter & Gamble and ad agency Benton & Bowles for a million dollars in damages over the shampoo jingle, Tallulah, The Tube of Prell.  (See  Tallulah’s Big Show.)
MAR 18 1949   Mutual announces a total of 308 local sponsors for its weekday co-op program Kate Smith Speaks, exceeded only by the network’s nightly Fulton Lewis, Jr., commentaries with 375 local sponsors.
MAR 18 1949   Actress Ann Rutherford is announced the winner in the competition to replace Penny Singleton in the title role of Blondie.  (See Bloonn…dee!) 
MAR 18 1949   Arch Oboler and Ziv Teleproductions disagree on the presentation of Oboler’s footage shot in Africa on a $100,000 trip financed by Ziv.  Ziv cancels their agreement and gives the film to Oboler.  (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.)
MAR 18 1953   Whitehall Pharmacal offers selected stations a summer long spot announcement contract for Anacin in return for a 10% discount in rates.
MAR 18 1953 ABC announces signing WNEW/New York City disc jockey Martin Block for a 90 minute weekday afternoon show beginning in January, 1954.

MAR 19 1928   Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, (aka Sam & Henry), leave WGN/Chicago in a syndication dispute and debut on crosstown rival WMAQ as Amos & Andy.  (See Amos & Andy - Twice Is Nicer on this site.)
MAR 19 1932   Saturday night's WLS Barn Dance moves to its longtime home, Chicago’s Eighth Street Theater.
MAR 19 1934   NBC Program Manager John Royal clarifies network policy that staff announcers are allowed to act or assume other roles in addition to announcing its programs.
MAR 19 1934   It’s overnight tests completed, WLW/Cincinnati begins daytime tests of its 500,000 watt transmitter.
MAR 19 1935   New York City stations WMCA and WNEW work under police guard covering the night’s Harlem race riots that kill three, injure 100 and result in $2.0 Million in property damage.  
MAR 19 1936   CBS buys KNX/Los Angeles for a record breaking price of $1.3 Million.
MAR 19 1937   Three hundred pressmen go on a 24 hour strike against three Indianapolis daily newspapers leaving WIRE to pick up the slack with 135 extra minutes of newscasts and bulletins broadcast during the day. 
MAR 19 1937   Art Linkletter, Director of Broadcast Activities for San Francisco’s Golden Gate Exposition of 1939, convenes his first organizational meeting of network executives, telling them the fair will budget up to $200,000 for broadcast facilities. 
MAR 19 1937   Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll perform their 5,000th consecutive Amos & Andy broadcast for Pepsodent.  (See Amos & Andy - Twice Is Nicer.) 
MAR 19 1939  Sunday night New England hymn-singing Seth Parker is cancelled by Blue after a sporadic nine season multi-network run.
MAR 19 1941  Mutual reports that 146 of its 177 affiliates will change frequencies in accordance with the NARBA on March 29th.  (See The March of Change.)
MAR 19 1941   False reports spread that WJSV/Washington, D.C. morning personality Arthur Godfrey has signed with NBC’s WEAF/New York City for a reported $60,000 plus $15 for every commercial he delivers in his daily two-hour show. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAR 19 1942 Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll celebrate 14 years and 3,800 consecutive broadcasts of Amos & Andy.  They discontinue their weeknight strip eleven months later.  (See Amos & Andy - Twice Is Nicer and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 19 1943  Network clearance departments force a change in the lyrics of the official Merchant Marine song, Heave Ho! from “...damn the submarines!” to “...down the submarines!” before allowing it to be performed.
MAR 19 1943   CBS North Africa correspondent Charles Collingwood and the network’s acclaimed series, The Man Behind The Gun, win George Foster Peabody Awards from the University of Georgia School of Journalism and the NAB.
MAR 19 1945   CBS makes three daily newscasts, including The Morning News Roundup, available to affiliates for local sale.
MAR 19 1945   Mutual, which earlier refused John J. Anthony’s Goodwill Hour as “bad radio” for nighttime listening, has a change of heart for daytime audiences and schedules the advice program weekdays from 1:45 to 2:00 p.m.
MAR 19 1945   Fred Allen wins the prestigious Peabody Award for, “…comedy unexcelled over a period of twelve years.”  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 19 1945   Responding to its affiliates’ requests, Mutual adds two nightly five minute news summaries at 11:55 p.m. and 12:55 a.m.
MAR 19 1946   Approximately 600 ticket holders to Bob Hope’s NBC broadcast from Cleveland’s Hotel Carter are shut out when the doors to the room holding 1,400 are arbitrarily opened for only 20 minutes before the broadcast.
MAR 19 1948   Future Academy Award winning actress Shirley Booth records an audition for the new CBS sitcom Our Miss Brooks.  (See Our Miss Arden.)
MAR 19 1948   NBC informs affiliates that it will duplicate the ABC and CBS plans to transcribe and repeat programs to eliminate confusion caused by Daylight Saving time.
MAR 19 1948  ABC and Mutual both agree to allow affiliates to simulcast network programs on their FM stations.
MAR 19 1948   The Mansfield (Ohio) News-Journal, barred by the FCC from owning any stations because of past activities by its owners, runs a front page editorial accusing the winner of an FM license in the city of being a communist dupe.
MAR 19 1948   WJBW/New Orleans is seized by the local sheriff and turned over to a temporary management until its ownership, contested by the owners’ divorce, can be settled.   
MAR 19 1949  A half hour of WLS/Chicago’s Saturday night National Barn Dance returns to 69 ABC stations in the West and Midwest for a final encore season.
MAR 19 1950  A contestant called at random by ABC’s Stop The Music! identifies himself as the manager of WERC/Erie, Pennsylvania, an NBC affiliate.  (See Stop The Music!)
MAR 19 1950   Roy Acuff and Hank Williams head a troup of 14 from WSM/Nashville’s Grand Ol’ Opry on a two week entertainment tour of U.S. Armed Forces bases in Alaska. 
MAR 19 1950   Edgar Rice Burroughs, 74, the creator of Tarzan, dies in Encino, California of heart disease.  Aside from the books, films and comics based on his character, Tarzan in various transcribed productions was in continual radio syndication since 1932.
MAR 19 1951   Syndicator Frederic Ziv reports sales in 400 markets for the company’s Bold Venture series of weekly transcribed dramas starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  (See Bogart & Bacall’s Bold Venture and Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.) 
MAR 19 1951  The American Arbitration Association awards AFRA members who participated in Mayfair Transcriptions production of Alan Ladd’s Box 13 an additional $11,700 in unpaid talent fees.
MAR 19 1951   NBC-TV’s Kukla, Fran & Ollie gets a weekly raise from $3,500 to $10,000 to cover puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, singing co-star Fran Allison and the other six persons involved in the fully sponsored nightly show’s production.
MAR 19 1953   The 25th annual Academy Awards are simulcast on NBC, the first time the event is seen on television.

MAR 20  1923  Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover convenes the Second National Radio Conference of industry and government leaders to solve the problems of too many stations operating on a single frequency.  In his opening address, Hoover says, “I believe the quickest way to kill broadcasting would be to use it for direct advertising…if a speech by the President is used as the meat in a sandwich between two patent medicine advertisements, there will be no radio left.”
MAR 20 1936   Heavy flooding in downtown Hartford forces WTIC to move to its transmitter outside the flood area and WDRC to shift operations to WNBC/New Britain. Both stations returned the following week. 
MAR 20 1940   Billed as, “The first sponsored newscast designed specifically for television,” The Esso Television Reporter,  begins its Wednesday night run on NBC’s W2XBS/New York City.
MAR 20 1941  CBS matches NBC’s offer and signs Arthur Godfrey to remain with its WJSV/Washington with an hour of his morning program broadcast by WABC/New York City.  Godfrey also continues his 15 minute transcribed program for Carnation Milk heard in 33 markets three times weekly.  (See Arthur Godfrey on this site.)
MAR 20 1942   Publishers of The Washington Times-Herald sue Walter Winchell, Blue and Andrew Jergens Company for $200,000 charging defamation in Winchell’s broadcast of March 15th.  (See Walter Winchell.)
MAR 20 1942  General Mills draws 1.5 Million responses to its Lone Ranger premium offer on Mutual of a “secret compartment ring“ for a ten cents and a Kix cereal box top.  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums and The Lone Ranger.) 
MAR 20 1943   Truth Or Consequences sells out its two NBC broadcasts from Buffalo’s 2,900 seat Kleinhaus Music Hall for War Bonds scaled from $25 to $1,000.  (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 20 1944  Frank & Anne Hummert's soap operas Backstage Wife, Stella Dallas, Lorenzo Jones and Young Widder Brown are upped from 70 NBC stations to the full network of 135 affiliates.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell and Karl Swenson.)
MAR 20 1944  Arthur Godfrey begins a transcribed series of 15 minute musical variety programs for Barbasol Shaving Cream broadcast three times weekly in 20 major markets. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
MAR 20 1946   The suspended Associated Broadcasting System network reorganizes as the United States Network with a million dollar capitalization and announces plans to begin operations by July 1st.  
MAR 20 1946  ABC gives 15 minutes of time to segregationist Mississippi congressman John Rankin to answer criticism leveled by commentator Walter Winchell on the network. (See Walter Winchell.)
MAR 20 1947  Eddie Foy, Jr., reunites his six siblings for the first radio performance of The Seven Little Foys on NBC’s Kraft Music Hall.  (See Thursday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 20 1947  An AFRA strike of on-air talent shuts down San Francisco stations KSFO and KYA for three days.
MAR 20 1948   The AFM rescinds its ban on union musicians playing for television programs.  CBS promptly networks the Philadelphia Orchestra from WCAU-TV/ Phila-delphia to WCBS-TV/New York City.  NBC follows 30 minutes later, networking the NBC symphony from WNBT(TV)/New York City to four other cities.  (See Petrillo!)
MAR 20 1948  Network personality Johnny Olson flies to Madison, Wisconsin to host the inaugural program of WKOW, of which he is part owner.
MAR 20 1948   ABC staffers Buddy Twiss and Frances Sculler host the broadcast of the  20th Academy Awards beginning in the East at 10:30 p.m. and running for three hours.
MAR 20 1949  Comic actor Victor Moore is first in a unique NBC concept of guest stars beginning their routines on Fred Allen’s Sunday night show, then finishing them on Henry Morgan’s program which immediately follows.  
MAR 20 1950  CBS backs out of a proposed deal to buy all of Philips H. Lord’s broadcast properties, including Gangbusters, Mr. District Attorney, We The People and Counterspy for $900,000.
MAR 20 1950   WFIL/Philadelphia announces lower nighttime radio rates in recognition of television’s popularity.
MAR 20 1950   Actress Laraine Day, wife of New York Giants manager Leo Durocher, signs to do baseball pre-game interviews on WPIX(TV)/New York City.
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MAR 21 1934   Fred Allen’s Sal Hepatica Revue on NBC is expanded to 60 minutes, retitled The Hour of Smiles and  becomes the first major program with dual sponsorship - Bristol Myers’ Ipana toothpaste, (“For the smile of beauty”), and Sal Hepatica laxative, (“For the smile of health“).  (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 21 1938   President Roosevelt signs The Wheeler-Lea Bill giving the FTC greater powers to curb false and misleading advertising.
MAR 21 1938   The Press Radio Bureau further limits details in its daily five-minute news summaries, adding to the growing resentment of its client stations.  (See The Press Radio Bureau.)
MAR 21 1939   Dick Powell replaces Al Jolson as host of NBC’s Lifebuoy Soap Show.  (See Dick Powell.)
MAR 21 1940   FCC recesses its early hearings discussing Edwin Armstrong’s Frequency Modulation agreeing that FM between 41 and 44 megacycles will deliver superior sound than that available from AM radio.
MAR 21 1940   ASCAP demands a 70% increase for use of its licensed music - involving 7½% of all network revenues. 
MAR 21 1941   Mutual and Gillette sign a contract with boxing promoter Mike Jacobs for all bouts from Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and other New York City venues.  The contract had been held by the Blue Network and Adam Hats.  Blue parent NBC promptly files suit to prevent the move..
MAR 21 1942  General Foods begins limited tests of broadcasting transcribed repeats of its Thursday night NBC sitcom, The Aldrich Family, on Saturday and Sunday mornings in five markets. (See The Aldrich Family and  Thursday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 21 1942   Its routine pickup of the Saturday morning shortwave newscast from Australia gives Mutual the scoop of General Douglas MacArthur’s remarks when arriving in Melbourne after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. 
MAR 21 1943  Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy portions of The Chase & Sanborn Hour are fed to Hollywood from Mexico City while Bergen tours Mexico in fundraising efforts for the Mexican Red Cross. (See Sunday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 21 1944  Milton Berle’s short-lived stunt show Let Yourself Go debuts on Blue at the early hour of 7:00 p.m. to poor critical reviews and terrible ratings.  (See The 1943-44 Season.)  
MAR 21 1944  Westinghouse files for television stations in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Boston where it operates maximum power radio stations.
MAR 21 1945  Mutual cancels its late night dance band remotes originating in New York City, a result of the city’s wartime ban on entertainment past midnight.   (See Big Band Remotes.)
MAR 21 1946  Marlin Hurt, 40, creator and star of the CBS sitcom Beulah, dies of a heart attack.
MAR 21 1946   RCA and the U.S. Navy demonstrate airborne television transmission to the press while Westinghouse announces its Stratovision system to transmit television signals from planes flying at 30,000 feet. 
MAR 21 1947   FCC approves AVCO, owner of WLW/Cincinnati and WINS/New York City, to purchase 49% of KSTP/Minneapolis-St. Paul for $850,000 with controlling interest going to its General Manager, Stanley Hubbard.
MAR 21 1947   NBC and Mutual make the first live pickup of a Congressional hearing - the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on President Truman’s request for loans to Turkey and Greece.
MAR 21 1948  ABC debuts its big prize giveaway show, Stop The Music! with host Bert Parks, 34, offering prize packages worth up to an average of $20,000. (See Stop The Music!)
MAR 21 1949  CBS expresses frustration that it can’t find a sponsor for its Saturday night giveaway show, Sing It Again, the highest rated sustaining program on Network Radio with an 11.8 rating. 
MAR 21 1949   Wometco Theaters puts the first television station south of Atlanta, WTVJ(TV), on the air over Channel 4 in Miami
MAR 21 1952   NBC signs a ten year contract for the radio and television rights to the sitcom The Life of Riley.
MAR 21 1952   Fire officials shut down the Moondog Coronation Ball rock & roll concert at the Cleveland Arena staged by WJW disc jockey Alan Freed when the overflow crowd of 20,000 creates hazardous conditions.

MAR 22 1937  Hearst’s International News Service begins a two-week free sample of its Pony Report voiced news capsules via shortwave transmission to small market stations.
MAR 22 1939  Kay Kyser breaks his own box office record set a week earlier in Cleveland by grossing $50,000 for a week at the RKO Palace in Detroit, netting $19,000 for his troupe.  (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 22 1940  The Chief Probation Officer of St. Louis Juvenile Court directly blames the CBS Top 20 drama Gangbusters for causing 48 specific crimes in the city. 
MAR 22 1940   Paramount Pictures releases The Road To Singapore, the first of its eight successful “road” comedies teaming Bing Crosby & Bob Hope.  (See Radio Goes To The Movies.)
MAR 22 1942   The five Cincinnati stations simultaneously broadcast the first in a series of Sunday afternoon half-hour Civil Defense programs, Bombs Over Cincinnati. 
MAR 22 1942  Mel Blanc, an alumnus of KGW/Portland, Oregon, appears from Hollywood on the station’s 20th anniversary broadcast.  (See Mel Blanc.)
MAR 22 1943   Procter & Gamble returns I Love A Mystery to 15 minute weeknight form on CBS as a 7:00 p.m.strip show in the time period formerly occupied by Amos & Andy. 
(See I Love A Mystery and I Love A Sequel.)
MAR 22 1944   AFRS establishes a station on Guadalcanal, less than a month after Japanese forces are driven out. 
MAR 22 1944   Art Van Harvey & Bernadine Flynn, Vic & Sade to NBC’s weekday listeners, appear on the network’s 11:30 p.m. Authors’ Playhouse production of Stephen Vincent Benet’s O’Halloran’s Luck.  (See Vic & Sade.)
MAR 22 1945   CBS provides Jimmy Durante and Danny Kaye as entertainers for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and reporters say they’d never seen President Roosevelt laugh so hard.  FDR died three weeks later. 
MAR 22 1945   WBKB(TV)/Chicago pioneers an early form of the infomercial - a three and a half minute spot for Red Heart Dog Food titled Herkimer Wins The Red Heart.
MAR 22 1946   General Mills announces it will move production its four Irna Phillips/Carl Wester soap operas on NBC, The Guiding Light, Today’s Children, Women In White and Masquerade, from Chicago to Los Angeles.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 22 1947  Their $3.0 Million gamble on the CBS color television system lost, network executives go into a weekend conference to determine a strategy to build a television network and catch up with NBC, ABC and DuMont. 
MAR 22 1948   ABC announces the signing of WFIL-TV/Philadelphia as its first indepen-dently owned television network affiliate.
MAR 22 1948   Ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding resigns American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike account valued at $12.0 Million annually, after disagreements with management following the 1946 death of George Washington Hill. (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears and The Lucky Strike Sweepstakes.)
MAR 22 1948   Sponsor Rayve Shampoo fires announcer Charles Irving from ABC’s Henry Morgan Show because a consultant decides that Irving sounds too much like Morgan.
MAR 22 1948   WHOM/Jersey City asks for exclusion from a proposed FCC rule requiring stations to originate programs from their cities of license because the station provides foreign language programs for New York City from its Manhattan studios. 
MAR 22 1950   Trade paper Variety reports that the Mutual network is for sale for between $1.2 Million and $1.6 Million.
MAR 22 1950  Dr. Allen DuMont opens his company’s new factory and predicts that rectangular picture tubes larger than 19 inches would soon be common.  (See Dr. DuMont’s Predictions.)
MAR 22 1951  Procter & Gamble launches ABC’s Pyramid Plan sales campaign with a 13-week, $375,000 spot purchase.
MAR 22 1951  Firestone backs off its threat to cancel its long running Voice of Firestone when the AFM allows concessions in its new contract for the weekly simulcast of the program on NBC and NBC-TV.
MAR 22 1951  FCC issues its television station allocation plan intended to end the freeze on new stations put into effect in September 1948.  The plan also proposes channel changes for 31 existing stations. 
MAR 22 1952   Longtime Grand Ole Opry star “Uncle Dave” Macon, 81, dies eleven days after his final appearance on the NBC program from WSM/Nashville.
MAR 22 1953  NBC-TV’s Colgate Comedy Hour celebrates its 100th show with an all-star revue featuring Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Donald O’Connor and Martin & Lewis.

MAR 23 1934   Ginger Rogers sues Hollywood masseuse and radio personality Sylvia Ulbeck, (aka Madame Sylvia), her sponsor, KFI and NBC for $100,000 after the defendant staged a phony interview with the actress on her show.
MAR 23 1934   Galveston physicians protest the Galveston Booster Club inviting “goat gland doctor” John Brinkley to anchor his transmitter-equipped, “floating radio station,” in Galveston Bay.
MAR 23 1937   WLW/Cincinnati, an original partner in Mutual, announces the founding  of a new Quality Group cooperative network with WHN/New York, WFIL/Philadelphia and KQV/Pittsburgh. 
MAR 23 1938   American Tobacco cancels Lucky Strike’s Your Hollywood Parade on NBC following arguments between American’s George Washington Hill, Warner Brothers, and its star, Dick Powell.  (See Dick Powell on this site.)
MAR 23 1939   Edwin Armstrong demonstrates the static-free quality of Frequency Modulation broadcasts from his transmitters at Alpine, New Jersey and Yonkers, New York.
MAR 23 1940   Ralph Edwards begins Truth Or Consequences’ 16 year multi-network run with an audition broadcast over CBS stations WABC/New York City, WDRC/Hartford, WPRO/Providence and WORC/Worcester. (See Truth Or Consequences and Saturday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 23 1942   Mutual and Gillette announce a year’s renewal of their radio contract with Madison Square Garden boxing promoter Mike Jacobs.
MAR 23 1942   Brown & Williamson’s Raleigh cigarettes renews Red Skelton’s Top Ten show for a second season on 119 NBC stations.  (See Tuesday's All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 23 1942   Procter & Gamble begins placing transcriptions of its Saturday night Truth Or Consequences West Coast feed on specified East Cost and Midwest stations.
MAR 23 1943  Joe E. Brown, already with 24,000 miles of touring service camps to his credit, arrives in Australia for a month of shows for Armed Forces in that country and New Guinea.  
MAR 23 1944  Joe E. Brown hosts the new game show Stop & Go on 164 Blue Network stations.
MAR 23 1945   CBS newsman Richard C. Hottelet is forced to parachute to safety from a burning Flying Fortress when reporting the Allied armies crossing of the Rhine.
MAR 23 1946  Truth Or Consequences celebrates its sixth anniversary with a “Celebrity Masquerade” show starring Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Rudy Vallee, Dinah Shore and Phil Harris. (See Truth Or Consequences.)
MAR 23 1948   A.C. Nielsen unveils its new Audimeter device capable of simultaneously measuring a home’s AM, FM and TV activity.  (See Radio's Ruler's: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAR 23 1949   The latest Hooperatings drop Fred Allen on NBC to third place behind ABC’s Stop The Music! and Sam Spade on CBS.  (See Stop The Music! and The 1948-49 Season.)
MAR 23 1949   ASCAP’s Television Negotiating Committee says that higher fees will be sought for television use of its music than is charged for radio.
MAR 23 1950   With announcer turned actor Paul Douglas as host and commentary by Ronald Reagan and Eve Arden, ABC’s coverage of the 23rd annual Academy Awards begins at 11:00 p.m. in the East and concludes by 12:40 a.m. 
MAR 23 1950   After a year on radio, Goodson & Todman’s stunt show Beat The Clock begins its eleven year run on CBS-TV with host Bud Collyer.
MAR 23 1951   Wary of another CBS talent raid, NBC signs Milton Berle, 42, to a 30 year exclusive contract at a reported minimum of $50,000 per year.
MAR 23 1951 In a giveaway battle between Washington, D. C. area stations, a judge rules that WEAM can’t announce the WWDC “Lucky Numbers” without a statement crediting WWDC as the source of the game and its prizes.
MAR 23 1951   Pacific Borax cancels its 21 year, multi-network sponsorship of Death Valley Days, (aka Death Valley Sheriff and The Sheriff), but the program remains on ABC for another six months.
MAR 23 1952   Citing ill health, Walter Winchell, 55,  leaves his highly rated ABC Sunday night program for the season.  (See Walter Winchell and The 1952-53 Season.)
MAR 23 1953  CBS debuts a new promotion campaign with the theme, “America listens to 105 million radios and listens most to the CBS Radio Network.”  (See CBS Packages Unwrapped.)
MAR 23 1953   Miles Laboratories begins its 30 day offer of a One Man’s Family souvenir booklet picturing the cast of the NBC serial for 25 cents and a Bactine antiseptic box top - resulting in over 255,000 responses.

MAR 24 1913     The Keith-Albee chain opens the Palace Theater in New York City, considered America’s premiere vaudeville house.
MAR 24 1933   Sixty CBS stations carry the first broadcast of a Congressional hearing.
MAR 24 1934   Nila Mack’s Saturday morning children’s anthology Let’s Pretend begins its 20 year run on CBS.  (See Let's Pretend.)
MAR 24 1934   General Petroleum spends $50,000 in one day, buying 13 consecutive hours on the twelve Don Lee/CBS West Coast Stations to advertise new Mobilgas gasoline with music shows from 16 different orchestras.
MAR 24 1935  Major Edward Bowes, 61, moves his Original Amateur Hour from WHN/New York City to NBC, beginning an eleven year, two network run. (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine and Network Jumpers on this site.)
MAR 24 1936   NBC refuses N.W. Ayer’s idea of ex-convicts appearing on its Eno Crime Clues program, reasoning that it would have a detrimental effect on listeners.  
MAR 24 1938   CBS censors the lyrics of The Definition Song, (“…Love is just an itch that you can’t scratch”), as too vulgar for the network. 
MAR 24 1939  A spokeswoman from the Washington, D.C., PTA appears before the FCC and condemns programs Including Gangbusters, Tom Mix, The Lone Ranger and Jack Armstrong, All American Boy.
MAR 24 1939   Gordon Baking Co., sponsor of The Lone Ranger since 1934 cancels the program and is replaced by competitor Bond Bread in 19 markets.  (See The Lone Ranger and Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 24 1941   The new owner of WMCA/New York City, Life Savers candy manufacturer Edward Noble, orders a massive switch away from recorded music and back to live music, effecting nine afternoon and evening programs.
MAR 24 1943   Due to wartime travel restrictions, Metropolitan Life Insurance cancels its 75th Anniversary Convention replacing it with a one-time gala celebration broadcast on the Blue Network.
MAR 24 1944  Sterling Drug increases its coverage of NBC’s Waltz Time from 70 affiliates to the full network of 135 and duplicates the move with Manhattan Merry Go Round and American Album of Familiar Music two days later.  (See Gus Haenschen and Frank Munn’s Golden Voice.)
MAR 24 1944   The four major networks enter a reciprocal agreement with Great Britain’s BBC to share reports of the Allied invasion of the European continent. (See D-Day On Radio on this site.)
MAR 24 1947  Sun Oil Company begins on-air auditioning of newscasters Alex Drier, George Putnam, Kenneth Banghart and Elmer Peterson as possible replacements for Lowell Thomas who signed with Procter & Gamble.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 24 1947 WIP/Philadelphia begins a week-long celebration of its 25th anniversary. 
MAR 24 1947   Philco’s WPTZ(TV)/Philadelphia begins a week of carrying 13 programs fed to it by coaxial cable from NBC’s WNBT(TV)/New York City. 
MAR 24 1947  The IRS decides that television is not live entertainment and not subject to a 20% cabaret tax in bars, taverns and restaurants.
MAR 24 1948   FCC announces an investigation into alleged slanting of news by G.A. (Dick) Richards’ stations, KMPC/Los Angeles, WJR/Detroit and WGAR/Cleveland.
MAR 24 1950   CBS aims to sign comedians Ed Wynn, Abe Burrows, Jack Paar, Garry Moore, Ben Blue and Bert Lahr to exclusive contracts. 
MAR 24 1950   After eight months of debate in Duluth, Minnesota - a market with no television stations - the city council bans television sets from bars on the grounds that it contributes to juvenile delinquency.  
MAR 24 1952   NBC-TV’s Kukla, Fran & Ollie starring puppeteer Burr Tillstrom and singer- actress Fran Allison, completes its 1,000th telecast. 

MAR 25 1936  Seattle stations KJR and KOMO score a major victory for all broadcasters as the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the State of Washington’s proposed 1% tax on radio station income, stating that radio goes beyond municipal and state lines and is subject to the commerce clause.
MAR 25 1937  The Chicago  AFM local approves members to play on phonograph records to be played in homes only.
MAR 25 1937  The Georgia General Assembly sets up a Radio Commission to take over operation of WGST/Atlanta. 
MAR 25 1938   Game show  What’s My Name? hosted by Arlene Francis begins its sporadic schedule of eight different timeslots over eleven seasons on three networks.
MAR 25 1943  Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore are hastily teamed to substitute for comics Bud Abbott & Lou Costello on NBC when Costello is hospitalized.  Durante & Moore remain a successful radio team for five years. (See Goodnight, Mr. Durante on this site.)
MAR 25 1944  Three Norfolk, Virginia performances of The Grand Ole Opry are oversold leaving thousands of ticket holders standing outside the 4,500 seat arena in a driving rainstorm.
MAR 25 1946   Full Network Radio coverage is given to the opening session of the United Nations Security Council at New York City’s Hunter College.
MAR 25 1946   CBS-owned WCBW(TV)/New York City returns to the air on its new Channel 2, to broadcast live coverage of the United Nations meeting.  NBC’s WNBT(TV), still off the air in its channel switching, televises the proceedings via closed circuit for the press. 
MAR 25 1947  St. Louis stations carry spot descriptions of the aftermath of the late afternoon mine explosion at nearby Centralia, Illinois that killed 111 workmen.
MAR 25 1947  Cleveland stations WGAR, WHK, WJW and WTAM drop regular programs and assume emergency status when a blizzard driven by 65 mph winds paralyzes the city. 
MAR 25 1947  The Internal Revenue Service drops its heavily criticized plan to levy a 20% amusement tax on bars and restaurants equipped with television sets. 
MAR 25 1948  CBS announces the signing of WCAU-TV/Philadelphia as its first television network affiliate.
MAR 25 1949   Decca Records founder and former owner of the World Broadcasting System transcription service, Jack Kapp, 47, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.
MAR 25 1951   Most of the country’s 107 television stations commemorate Easter by showing The Family Theater’s production,  Hill Number One.

MAR 26 1934  The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters leaves NBC until fall with a record of over a million box tops received in response to its premium offers on 78 broadcasts.  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
MAR 26 1935   George Storer’s American Broadcasting Company network - formerly the American Broadcasting System - ceases operations after five months. (See The Original ABC Network.)
MAR 26 1937  Music publisher Chappel Company reports that the Jack Benny - Fred Allen “feud” has resulted in the sales of 8,900 copies of the sheet music to Franz Shubert’s The Bee.  (See The Feud - Round One and The Feud - Round Two.)
MAR 26 1937  Telephone company statistics indicate over 2.56 Million calls voting for acts were placed to Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour  in its first two years of broadcasts.  (See Major Bowes’ Original Money Machine.)
MAR 26 1938   The singing Andrews Sisters begin a 13-week series of weeknight quarter hours on CBS for Wrigley Gum at 7:15.
MAR 26 1939   NBC and CBS carry the live shortwave broadcast of Italian dictator Mussolini’s speech to the Fascist Grand Council in Rome beginning at 5:00 a.m.
MAR 26 1943  The OWI estimates the radio industry’s contribution in time and talent in bringing war information to the American public to date totals $86.9 Million. 
MAR 26 1943   FCC approves a plan by Philadelphia stations WCAU, WFIL, WIP and WPEN to rotate the days their FM stations operate - one day on & three days off -  in an effort to conserve manpower and broadcast material. 
MAR 26 1943  The AFM rejects an settlement offer from the recording industry that would add an annual income of $1.5 Million to the union’s unemployment fund.  (See Petrillo!)
MAR 26 1944   Rep. Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee is given 15 minutes of time on Blue following the Walter Winchell broadcast for rebuttal of Winchell’s criticism of his committee.   (See Walter Winchell.)
MAR 26 1945   NBC’s John MacVane, accompanying Allied troops, scores a scoop with the first broadcast from the eastern bank of the Rhine. 
MAR 26 1945  Blue’s popular weekday show Breakfast At Sardi’s becomes Breakfast In Hollywood originating from host Tom Breneman’s recently acquired Los Angeles restaurant, (fka The Tropics). 
MAR 26 1945   The day’s installment of Lever Brothers’ Bright Horizons on CBS dealing with racial discrimination is censored by the network for breaking its rule against controversial subjects on commercial programs.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 26 1947   The Continental FM Network, anchored by WASH(FM)/Washington, D.C., debuts with a concert by the U.S. Army Air Force band.
MAR 26 1948   AFRA signs a new two-year contract with the major networks and tran-scription companies giving the union’s performers a 7½ % raise. 
MAR 26 1948   Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle host a half-hour fund raiser for the New York Heart Association broadcast by independent stations WBNX, WEVD, WHN, WMCA and WNEW. 
MAR 26 1949 NBC simulcasts the first 90-minute part of Verdi’s Aida with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony with guest soloists.  The second half is scheduled for the following Saturday night at a total cost to the network of $70,000. 
MAR 26 1949   Chicago television stations WBKB, WGN-TV and WNBQ all provide live coverage of the three day International Kennel Club dog show.
MAR 26 1950   Dick Haymes and Jo Stafford succeed the late Buddy Clark as permanent hosts of the Carnation Contented Hour on CBS.  (See Crooners & Chirps.)
MAR 26 1951  Approximately 1,000 broadcasters attend the FCC’s conference in Washington on operations of radio and television stations in the event of enemy attack.
MAR 26 1951   Ziv’s syndicated radio series Bold Venture starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall debuts on 423 stations. (See Bogart & Bacall’s Bold Venture.)
MAR 26 1951   Network stations, particularly those outside of television markets, complain bitterly about the lack of radio coverage to the sensational Kefauver organized crime hearings.  
MAR 26 1951  Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell come out of retirement to make their first radio appearance in 20 years for Lux Radio Theater’s adaptation of their 1927 acclaimed film, Seventh Heaven.  (See Lux…Presents Hollywood!)
MAR 26 1951  WHOM-FM/New York City, (fka WMCA-FM), begins operations as a foreign language station catering to undeserved nationalities on AM radio.
MAR 26 1951  AFRA’s national board endorses the Screen Actors Guild policy of refusing to support members who “offend” the public with their political beliefs or activities.
MAR 26 1952   The Senate Interstate Commerce Committee votes down The Johnson-Case Bill that would prohibit the advertising of alcoholic beverages on radio and television.
MAR 26 1953  Estimated at over $1.0 Million and called the “...largest single buy in radio history,” American Airlines purchases 30,000 overnight hours over three years on the CBS stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Washington.
MAR 26 1953   Ziv announces it will begin filming its 13 syndicated television series in both color and black and white.   (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication.) 
MAR 26 1953  Admiral Corp. assembles a network of 92 television stations for its inter-city amateur boxing championships.

MAR 27 1899  Guglielmo Marconi, 24, transmits the first wireless signal 32 miles across the English Channel from Boulogne, France to South Foreland, England.
MAR 27 1932  The Eveready Radio Gaieties with Belle Baker and Jack Denny’s orchestra is successfully broadcast on CBS via a shortwave link from a moving Baltimore & Ohio railroad train between Washington and New York City at an additional cost of $10,000 split between the network and sponsor.
MAR 27 1933   WLS/Chicago reports, “…sales in the thousands,” for jigsaw puzzles made from pictures of its staff personalities and sold over the air for 25 cents each.
MAR 27 1933  Detroit News Publisher E.D. Stair threatens to sue Detroit radio priest Charles Coughlin, WJR/Detroit and 26 NBC stations carrying Coughlin’s Sunday broad-casts for comments considered libelous to Stair.  (See Father Coughlin on this site.)
MAR 27 1934   WLS/Chicago repeats a service it performed for United Press in 1932, relaying a half-hour of the day’s news to a newspaper isolated without wire service by a winter storm, this time to The Muncie, (Indiana), Press.
MAR 27 1935  Robert Ripley, creator of newspaper and radio feature Believe It Or Not, sues Fred Ripley of Syracuse, N.Y., for attempting to sell radio stations his program, You Can Believe Ripley.  (See Believe It Or Not.)
MAR 27 1935  WCBM/Baltimore receives permission from the city’s Park Board to build a transmitter plant and a 200-foot tower in the middle of its Druid Hill Park, considered a showplace in the center of the city.
MAR 27 1936   CBS and NBC swap affiliates in Boston as CBS takes a five year lease on WEEI from its owner, Edison Electric for $225,000 a year and NBC moves to John Shephard 3rd’s Yankee Network anchor station, WNAC.
MAR 27 1936   Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge pays $200 for a half-hour on WSB/ Atlanta then proceeds to blast the station and its owner, The Atlanta Journal, for charging him for the time.  The station immediately responds by listing the free broadcasts it had given him in the past.
MAR 27 1939   Procter & Gamble launches its fifth weekday serial on CBS, Manhattan Mother, for a 56 week run.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 27 1941   Republic Pictures releases Mr. District Attorney, loosely based on the popular radio series, panned by the New York Times as, “…the worst bad picture of the year.” (See Radio Goes To The Movies, Mr. District Attorney and Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 27 1942   Procter & Gamble cancels its daytime drama The O’Neills after an eight-year, multi-network run.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 27 1942   Early soap opera Myrt & Marge leaves CBS after an eleven year run.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 27 1943   Groucho Marx debuts as host of Pabst Beer’s Saturday night variety show on CBS, Blue Ribbon Town.  (See The One, The Only...Groucho!)
MAR 27 1945  Mutual correspondent Don Bell is reported safe in Philippines after missing in action for five days.
MAR 27 1945   West Coast Blue Network newsman Gil Martyn misinterprets a White House dispatch and broadcasts the false report that Washington, “…is preparing for word of victory in Europe.” 
MAR 27 1945  Philip Morris’ Ginny Simms Show on NBC takes a new format with Simms hosting a talent showcase for returning service personnel and USO entertainers who had stateside show business careers before the war.  (See Crooners & Chirps.)
MAR 27 1946  The Associated Broadcasting System fails in attempt to re-start its network and shuts down completely.
MAR 27 1946   Michigan Representative Clare Hoffman urges Congress to, “…revoke the license of the American Broadcasting Company,” for disparaging remarks made by Walter Winchell - adding that he’ll, “…deal with Mutual’s Quentin Reynolds in due time.”  (See Walter Winchell.)
MAR 27 1947  CBS drops its prohibition of transcribed programs on its Pacific Coast network to facilitate a smooth transition to Daylight Saving time.
MAR 27 1947   Lewis-Howe’s Tums cancels its notorious game show Pot O Gold on ABC after a two year multi-network run.  (See First Season Phenoms.) 
MAR 27 1947   The NAB calls the AFM’s demand for double musicians’ pay for AM-FM simulcast programs to be the “greatest hindrance” to FM’s growth.  (See Petrillo!)
MAR 27 1950   Garry Moore signs a seven year exclusive radio and television contract with CBS.
MAR 27 1950   Bob Crosby returns as singing host of Club 15 on CBS five nights a week in addition to his ABC show on Saturday and his Sunday half hour on NBC.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten and Crooners & Chirps.)

MAR 28 1933  NBC cancels its ban against beer advertising.  CBS drops its ban the next day.
MAR 28 1934   The Chicago Federation of Labor turns down Hearst’s $150,000 offer for WCFL/Chicago.
MAR 28 1935   Eddie Cantor is sued for $250,000 by his former writer, Dave Freedman, who claims the comedian broke their 1931 contract giving him 10% of Cantor’s gross earnings, “…as long as his performances go out over the air.” 
MAR 28 1937   Veteran vaudevillian and film actor Eddie Anderson, 32, makes his first appearance on the Jack Benny Program as a train porter.  (See Sunday At Seven on this site.)
MAR 28 1938   Northern New Jersey residents complain to government officials about their lives being interrupted by operators employed by radio surveys using the new telephone coincidental method.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)
MAR 28 1938   R.J.. Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes replaces Jack Oakie’s College with Eddie Cantor’s new show for a package price of $15,000 per week.
MAR 28 1938   Campana cancels Grand Hotel after five seasons on Blue.
MAR 28 1938   The Joint Committee on Radio Research determines by a 7 to 1 vote that the United States contained 26.7 Million radio homes on January 1, 1938.  The lone dissenter is Dr. George Gallup who claims the count is too high.
MAR 28 1941   Louella Parsons’ Hollywood Premiere debuts on CBS but  leaves the air eight months later when talent unions demand pay for actors appearing on the program.  (See Dick Powell.)
MAR 28 1942  Despite a rainstorm, a crowd of 15,000 donates $18,000 to Navy Relief when Walter Winchell, Ben Bernie and Major Bowes present Miami night club talent at an outdoor benefit revue in the city’s Bayfront Park.  
MAR 28 1943   The Shadow is cancelled on Mutual but continues as a transcribed program in 60 markets.  (See The Shadow Nos.)
MAR 28 1943   All Chicago stations conclude their 40 day drive to sell $40.0 Million in War Bonds to replace the U.S. Navy cruiser Chicago, sunk in late January.  The campaign finishes with $42.0 Million.
MAR 28 1944   Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve hosts a replacement show for Fibber McGee & Molly when Jim Jordan is hospitalized with pneumonia. (See The Great Gildersleeve(s).)
MAR 28 1944  Liggett & Myers’ Chesterfield cigarettes drops Harry James’ orchestra on CBS Tuesday and Thursday nights at 7:15 p.m., replacing it with John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade. 
MAR 28 1945  Phil Spitalny’s all girl orchestra is guaranteed $45,000 plus a percentage of the gate for a tour of ten smaller cities - one of them, Dayton, Ohio, sells out the day tickets go on sale.  (See The Hour of Charm.)
MAR 28 1945   Blue reports co-op sales of Raymond Gram Swing’s nightly commentary to 120 stations rewarding the veteran newsman with $125,000 annually.
MAR 28 1947   FCC staff member Llewelyn White publishes his book American Radio which demands that, “Broadcasters must cut themselves from the stranglehold of advertisers and advertising agencies.” 
MAR 28 1947  Kids’ adventure series Buck Rogers In The 25th Century is cancelled after a sporadic multi-network run in 15 and 30 minute forms over 15 years.  (See Serials, Cereals & Premiums.)
MAR 28 1947   FCC grants a construction permit to Texas theater owner Barton McLendon and his son, Gordon, for a new AM station on 1190 kc. in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff which will become KLIF.   (See Top 40 Radio's Roots.)
MAR 28 1948  Mickey Rooney debuts as Shorty Bell - a 13-week newspaper-mystery series on CBS.  (See Shorty Bell.)
MAR 28 1949   AFRA rejects a CBS proposal to broadcast recordings of its leading shows during summer months.
MAR 28 1949   NBC renews Dr. I.Q. for a tenth season.  (See Dr. I.Q.)
MAR 28 1949  Procter & Gamble cancels Prell Shampoo’s highly rated NBC sitcom The Life of Riley in a budget move to save $13,000 a week and $100,000 in total charges annually.
MAR 28 1949  Announcer Ernest Chappell resigns as the “voice” of Campbell Soups after a 13 year association.
MAR 28 1949  The 30 station Midwest Baseball Network headed by WIND/Chicago files a complaint with the FCC charging Western Union with discrimination against broadcasters by charging additional rates for its sports services.
MAR 28 1949  The U.S. Commerce Department predicts a maximum of 10 Million radio sets will be manufactured in the country during the year, a 50% drop from 1948, due to the increased demand for television receivers. 
MAR 28 1950   Bob Hope signs an exclusive radio and television contract with NBC worth $1.0 Million annually.
MAR 28 1952  The Liberty Broadcasting System closes its New York offices and fires ten employees but President Gordon McClendon claims the network is, “…in the healthiest shape we’ve ever been in.” 
MAR 28 1952   Doris Day begins her Friday night variety series on CBS for an abbreviated ten week run.  (See Crooners & Chirps.)

MAR 29 1932  Jack Benny makes his radio debut on Ed Sullivan’s CBS interview show Little Old New York.  (See Sunday At Seven and Sunday’s All Time Top Ten on this site.)
MAR 29 1934   WGN/Chicago celebrates its tenth anniversary and increase in power from 25,000 to 50,000 watts with a 150 minute dedication broadcast followed by two hours of dance band remotes from around the city featuring Wayne King, Hal Kemp and Jan Garber among others.  (See The Aragon's Last Stand.)
MAR 29 1935   William S. Paley is given a new five year contract as President of CBS by its Board of Directors paying him $50,000 a year plus a percentage of the gross amounting to total of approximately $300,000 annually. 
MR 29 1935   An engineer at WLW/Cincinnati is reported beaten in the midst of a violent strike and riots at the Crosley Radio factory.
MAR 29 1935  WMCA/New York City and WIP/Philadelphia begin an exchange of four weekday programs via a broadcast quality line, three originating in New York and one in Philadelphia. 
MAR 29 1936   Heavy demand for tickets to the Detroit Symphony’s CBS broadcast with guest star Nelson Eddy, prompts sponsor Ford Motors to move the show’s location to the 4,500 seat Masonic Temple auditorium.
MAR 29 1937  Frank & Anne Hummert’s weekday serial Our Gal Sunday begins its 22 season run on CBS.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell and Karl Swenson.)
MAR 29 1937 General Electric moves Phil Spitalny’s Hour of Charm from Monday afternoon on NBC to Monday night and Spitalny increases the size of his orchestra from 34 to 40 female musicians. (See The Hour of Charm.)
MAR 29 1938  Philco President Larry Gubb demands that the 5% excise tax on radios be dropped because radio is no longer the luxury it was once considered but has become a necessity. 
MAR 29 1940   Mexico ratifies the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement and the FCC orders its provisions to take effect within one year requiring most AM stations in U.S. to change frequencies. (See The March of Change.)
MAR 29 1941  The U.S. complies with North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement - AM band expands to 1600 kc, and 802 existing stations in the United States change frequencies to reduce interference.  Another 500 stations in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are also affected. (See The March of Change.)
MAR 29 1941   XERA, the 500,000 watt station operated by “goat gland” doctor John R. Brinkley in Villa Acuna,  Mexico, leaves the air.
MAR 29 1942  Vick Knight directs his final Fred Allen Texaco Show and leaves his $700 a week job to take the fulltime job directing Command Performance for AFRS and no paycheck.   (See Command Performance.)
MAR 29 1948  American Tobacco names Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, (BBDO), to succeed Foote, Cone & Belding as the advertising agency for Lucky Strike - $9.5 Million of American’s $12.0 Million annual ad budget. In another move the company replaces Ruthroff & Ryan with Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles for its $2.0 Million Pall Mall account.  (See Smoke Gets In Your Ears.)
MAR 29 1948  NBC approves Brown & Williamson Tobacco’s effort to save $1.25 Million in the 1949-50 season by leasing its Red Skelton Show to another sponsor, similar to American Tobacco’s lease of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge to Colgate Palmolive Peet.  (See Kay Kyser.)
MAR 29 1948   Lowell Thomas, Jr, steps in to replace his father when Lowell, Sr., loses his voice midway during his nightly newscast.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 29 1948   WMAL(TV)/Baltimore joins WCBS-TV/New York City and WCAU-TV/ Philadelphia and affiliates with the fledgling CBS-TV Network.
MAR 29 1949   California’s Attorney General sues ABC news commentator Drew Pearson tor $300,000 after Pearson alleges he took a bribe from a Long Beach gambler.
MAR 29 1949   A Minnesota State Senate committee votes to ban radio stations in the state from broadcasting any crime story, “…real or fictional.”
MAR 29 1949  RCA unveils its long awaited Tri-Color television picture tube and calls for its adoption by government and industry.
MAR 29 1949   Liggett & Myers reports that Barbara Stanwyck, Pat O'Brien and William Bendix are among over 150 screen stars have filmed 30-second television commercials endorsing Chesterfield cigarettes.
MAR 29 1950   Lever Brothers cancels The Clock on NBC, considered the first move in reappraising the company’s $10.0 Million in broadcast advertising.
MAR 29 1950  RCA successfully demonstrates its compatible color television system in its Washington D.C. studios using one black and white and two color sets for comparison and a signal transmitted from four miles away.
MAR 29 1951   FCC orders WBAB AM & FM/Atlantic City off the air for its failure to notify the Commission of its newspaper ownership’s sale, (The Atlantic City Press Union to The Bethlehem Pennsylvania Globe). 
​MAR 29 1953   News commentator Drew Pearson, 55, is cancelled after twelve years on Blue/ABC and announces plans to syndicate his programs on tape to local stations. (See The 1952-53 Season on this site.)

MAR 30 1932   FRC approves a power increase for WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul from 5,000 to 50,000 watts.
MAR 30 1935   Acting on an antiquated Pennsylvania blue law barring entertainment from second floor venues, police shut down a variety show at WIP/Philadelphia that charges 25 cents admission. 
MAR 30 1936 NBC keeps its lines open late on March 29th to begin a one hour 46th Birthday Party broadcast for Paul  Whiteman from Los Angeles and New York City beginning at 1:30 a.m. starring Bing Crosby, George Gershwin, Morton Downey, Jane Froman and Mary Margaret McBride.
MAR 30 1930   CBS and NBC institute a ban on commercial-like plugs for dance band remote locations limiting them to identification and location, but WGN/Chicago refuses to join them.  (See Big Band Remotes.) 
MAR 30 1936   David Rubinoff agrees to a series of 39 transcribed quarter-hour shows for Chevrolet with vocalists Virginia Rae, Ted Pearson, Jan Peerce and announcer Graham McNamee which will be placed on 383 local stations.
MAR 30 1938   Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge moves from Mutual’s WGN and WOR to NBC’s 77 station network and begins for a successful ten season run. (See Kay Kyser and Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 30 1938   NBC orders a rewrite of an Easy Aces script depicting a beauty salon as the front to a betting parlor.  (See Easy Aces.)
MAR 30 1938   WMBD/Peoria lends its shortwave facilities to police and Red Cross officials, providing the only means of communicating with tornado stricken Pekin, Illinois, 18 miles away.
MAR 30 1939   FCC produces startling evidence that 340 of the country’s 689 radio stations have. “…a community of interest with other licensees through group control, interlocking directorates or multiple ownership.”
MAR 30 1940  Popular news reporter/analyst H.V. Kaltenborn leaves CBS after ten years for NBC.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 30 1942  U.S. Office of Facts & Figures enlists 13 top rated Network Radio programs for announcements to combat the wartime rumor of a national coal shortage.
MAR 30 1942   Mars Candy cancels its NBC quiz, Dr. I.Q., after three seasons.  (See Dr. I.Q.)
MAR 30 1943  FCC relaxes its rules for minimum FM station operation due to the man-power shortage and the difficulty in obtaining testing materials.
MAR 30 1944  Columbia Pictures releases The Whistler, the first of its eight low budget mysteries based on the CBS series. (See The Whistler and Radio Goes To The Movies.)
MAR 30 1945  The Goldbergs, a multi-network weekday/weeknight strip since 1931, is broadcast for the final time in 15 minute serial form by CBS.
MAR 30 1946   The Academy Award Theater opens its 39 week run on CBS with a $12,000 weekly budget provided by sponsor Squibb.
MAR 30 1947  The U.S. Treasury Department introduces its long running, 15 minute transcribed series Guest Star to promote the sale of Savings Bonds.
MAR 30 1947 William L. Shirer delivers his final 15 minute weekly news commentary on CBS, charging that his cancellation is due to his liberal views. 
MAR 30 1948   Burridge Butler, 80, owner of WLS/Chicago, KOY/Phoenix, KTUC/Tucson and The Prairie Farmer magazine, dies in Phoenix following a fall in his orange grove.
MAR 30 1949   ABC and General Mills agree to a two year contract for the television adaptation of The Lone Ranger.  (See The Lone Ranger.)
MAR 30 1951   Reports surface of negotiations to sell ABC to International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. for an asking price of $30.0 Million.
MAR 30 1951   FCC approves the sale of WSAI/Cincinnati from Marshall Field to Fort Industries for $225,000.
MAR 30 1952   Ziv debuts its syndicated transcribed drama I Was A Communist For The FBI starring Dana Andrews.  The 78 episode series is eventually broadcast on over 600 stations.  (See Fred Ziv - King of Syndication)
MAR 30 1953   Mutual begins its fourth year of broadcasting baseball’s Game of The Day with Falstaff Beer begins its second year of sponsoring half of the games in its marketing areas and all other innings available for local sale. 
MAR 30 1953   Binaural, (stereo), radio is demonstrated by Rensselear Polytechnic Institute by broadcasting the left side of an orchestral concert over three Albany, New York, radio stations and the right side on four others.

MAR 31 1933   NBC dissolves its Gold Network of Pacific Coast stations linking KPO/San Francisco, KECA/Los Angeles, KJR/Seattle, KEX/Portland and KGA/Spokane to save $300,000 annually in line charges.
MAR 31 1933   CBS and NBC drop their rule that advertisers must commit to a minimum of 13 weeks when sponsoring programs.
MAR 31 1934   The sudden vocal volume of a champion hog caller shocks WJAG/Norfolk, Nebraska off the air and causes $500 in damage to its equipment.
MAR 31 1935   CBS drops its lease of WPG/Atlantic City and turns its operation back to its municipal owners.  (See Three Letter Calls.)
MAR 31 1937  Chevrolet completes recording 26 quarter-hour programs in its transcribed David Rubinoff series over a two week period for shipping to 401 stations on which time was bought for the program.
MAR 31 1938   Kay Kyser flatly refuses the demand from American Tobacco’s George Washington Hill that Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge orchestra be expanded from 14 to 50 musicians.  (See Kay Kyser.)
MAR 31 1939   Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll leave NBC after eleven years and take their weeknight Amos & Andy show to CBS.  (See Multiple Runs All Time Top Ten.)
MAR 31 1941   CBS correspondent Cecil Brown is denied use of Italian broadcasting facilities for his, “Continued hostile attitude toward the Italian Fascist government.”
MAR 31 1943   The NLRB orders WOV/New York City to reinstate 26 employees and pay approximately $45,000 in back wages from December, 1940.
MAR 31 1944   Management of WLS/Chicago denies reports that the 50,000 watt station will be sold to the Blue Network.
MAR 31 1945   Those We Love leaves the air after a nomadic seven season run over three networks in nine different timeslots.
MAR 31 1946   Mystery/comedy Calamity Jane starring Agnes Moorhead is hastily assembled to fill the vacant 8:00 p.m. Sunday time period on CBS left by the sudden death of Beulah’s Marlin Hurt. 
MAR 31 1946  After a four year hiatus, The Court of Missing Heirs returns to ABC’s Sunday afternoon schedule for two brief runs. 
MAR 31 1947  C.E. Hooper introduces new supplementary diary system to augment telephone coincidental polling in in 74 cities covering 7,500 homes. (See Radio's Rulers: Crossey, Hooper & Nielsen and Hooper Was No Easy Target.)
MAR 31 1947  Mutual moves its weekday game show Queen For A Day back half an hour from 2:00 to 2:30 p.m. to reach what the network calls, “…a greatly expanded audience.” 
MAR 31 1947  Frank & Anne Hummbert’s 14th daytime serial, Katie’s Daughter, debuts on NBC sponsored by Sweetheart Soap.  (See Soft Soap & Hard Sell.)
MAR 31 1947  Abe Burrows, who left his writing role on the CBS Dinah Shore Show protesting sponsor interference, is named Chief Writer of the Joan Davis Show on CBS.
MAR 31 1949  Maurice Chevalier returns to Network Radio with the weekly This Is Paris on Mutual, offered to affiliates on a co-op basis.  The program, transcribed in Paris, remains on the air for 26 weeks.
MAR 31 1949  Winston Churchill’s speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is broadcast by ABC, Mutual and NBC and televised by all New York network stations.
MAR 31 1950  Ronson Lighters sponsors 13 weeks of simulcasts of Mutual’s Twenty Questions on both ABC-TV and WOR-TV/New York City.  (See Twenty Questions.)
MAR 31 1951  Lucille Ball’s sitcom My Favorite Husband, considered the genesis to I Love Lucy, is cancelled by CBS after a three year run.
MAR 31 1950   Mutual signs newscasters Fulton Lewis, Jr., Cedric Foster and Bill Cunningham to long term contracts.
MAR 31 1951  The three-month test of Zenith’s Phonevision ends in 300 Chicago homes with 22% of the test families report having seen all of the movies offered during the final six weeks. 
MAR 31 1953  Dupont’s historical anthology Cavalcade of America concludes its 18 season multi-network run.
​                                                                              GLOSSARY

AAAA = American Association of Advertising Agencies - ABC = American Broadcasting Company - ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union - AFL = American Federation of Labor - AFM = American Federation of Musicians  - AFRA = American Federation of Radio Artists - AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Service - AFTRA = American Federation of Radio & Television Artists - AGVA = American Guild of Variety Artists - ANA = Association of National Advertisers - ANPA = American Newspaper Publishers Association - AP = Associated Press  - ARB = American Research Bureau - ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers - BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - BMB = Broadcast Measurement Bureau - BMI = Broadcast Music, Inc. - CAB = Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting - CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBS = Columbia Broadcasting System - CIO = Congress of Industrial Organizations - CST = Central Standard Time - CWA = Communications Workers of America - EST = Eastern Standard Time - FCC = Federal Communications Commission  - FRC = Federal Radio Commission - FTC = Federal Trade Commission -  IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees - IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - ILGW = International Ladies Garment Workers - INS = International News Service - IRS = Internal Revenue Service - LBS = Liberty Broadcasting System - MBS = Mutual Broadcasting System -  MCA = Music Corporation of America - MST = Mountain Standard Time - NAB = National Association of Broadcasters - NABET = National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians - NARBA = North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement - NBC = National Broadcasting Company - NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association - NLRB = National Labor Relations Board - PST = Pacific Standard Time - PTA = Parent Teachers Association - RCA = Radio Corporation of America - RMA = Radio Manufacturers Association - SAG = Screen Actors Guild - SESAC = Society of European Stage Authors & Composers - SPCA = Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - TVA = The Television Authority (union) - UAW = United Auto Workers - UP = United Press