December 26 Radio History

➦In 1921...comedian/author/composer & all around Renaissance man Steve Allen was born in New York City.


He began in radio, co-hosted a quarter hour daily comedy show on Mutual, & had a midnight audience-participation show on KNX Radio Hollywood, which morphed into the original NBC-TV Tonight Show from New York.

More TV shows, many books, a movie (The Benny Goodman Story), much pop music writing.

Steve died at age 78 on October 30th, 2000 after a minor traffic accident caused a blood vessel in his heart wall to rupture.


➦In 1926...WSM, the “WSM Barn Dance” began regular Saturday night broadcasts. Within two years it was renamed the “Grand Ole Opry.”


➦In 1950...The Gillette Safety Razor Company & Mutual radio signed agreements for the radio rights for the next six years to baseball’s World Series and All-Star games. The price tag: a comparatively paltry $6 million dollars.


➦In 1953...The radio program "Big Sister" signed off the air from the CBS Radio netowrk. The show aired for 17 years.




➦In 1954..."The Shadow" radio program signed off the air. 'The Shadow' began in 1930 as the Narrator for a radio show called 'Detective Story Hour' based on a magazine of the same name. The Narrator became more popular than the series and a 21 season run of 'The Shadow' series followed with actors in the leading role including Orson Welles (1937-1938), Bill Johnstone (1938-1943), John Archer (1944-1945) and Bret Morrison (1943-1944, 1945-1954).



➦In 1963...The Beatles released the single, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," which became their first U.S. smash hit, marking the beginning of Beatlemania and music's "British Invasion."  The release came two weeks earlier than originally scheduled (January 13, 1964) because demand for "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had been created through airplay of an imported copy of the song by disc jockey Carroll James on Washington, DC radio station WWDC.

➦In 1965...Beatle Paul McCartney was interviewed on pirate radio station "Radio Caroline". Radio Caroline was a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station which only became formally illegal in 1967.



➦In 1974...one of the true titans of both bigtime radio & TV, Jack Benny died of pancreatic cancer at age 80.

His weekly radio show was consistently top rated over a 23 year run ending in 1955.  He appeared regularly on CBS-TV from 1950-65.  He is credited with developing a broadcast format for comedy that is still being widely followed today.

Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.

Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N.W. Ayer agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny stated that Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."

With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, on the NBC Blue Network and continuing for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933.

Arriving at NBC on March 17, Benny did The Chevrolet Program until April 1, 1934. He continued with sponsor General Tire through the end of the season. In October, 1934, General Foods, the makers of Jell-O and Grape-Nuts, became the sponsor strongly identified with Benny for ten years. American Tobacco's Lucky Strike was his longest-lasting radio sponsor, from October, 1944, through to the end of his original radio series.

The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" of NBC talent in 1948–49. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.

➦In 1992...NYC's WPAT-FM changed from beautiful music to down tempo AC

➦In 2004...longtime Iowa radio personality, Dick Petrik, died at age 76. Petrik began as the first News Director at KOEL, Oelwein, and maintained that position for 41 years.

Petrik took the job as KOEL’s first news director in April of 1952, nearly two years after the station went on the air. Petrik helped build KOEL into one of the best small-market radio stations in the country. He held the record for longest tenure of any news director in the nation. In 1972, he was the first recipient of the Jack Shelley award, the highest honor given annually by the Iowa Broacast News Association for outstanding contributions to professional broadcast journalism in Iowa.