Copyright by Cynthia Barbara Meyers 2005
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Copyright by Cynthia Barbara Meyers 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Cynthia Barbara Meyers certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ADMEN AND THE SHAPING OF AMERICAN COMMERCIAL BROADCASTING, 1926‑50 Committee: ______________________________ Thomas Schatz, Supervisor ______________________________ Michael Kackman ______________________________ Jeffrey Meikle ______________________________ Horace Newcomb ______________________________ Laura Stein ADMEN AND THE SHAPING OF AMERICAN COMMERCIAL BROADCASTING, 1926‑50 by Cynthia Barbara Meyers, B.G.S.; B.F.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2005 To Lina ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Tom Schatz, my advisor, provided unflagging enthusiasm, support, and extraordinary editorial insight for this project from its inception, despite detours, for which I will always be grateful. I benefited greatly from the guidance of my committee, including Horace Newcomb, who kindly stayed with the project despite joining the Peabody Awards, Jeff Meikle, whose work was inspirational, Laura Stein, whose encouragement was there from the beginning, Michael Kackman, and former committee members, John D. Downing and Mary Desjardins, who moved on but contributed to the early stages, as well as other faculty, especially Sharon Strover, Nikhil Sinha, Michele Hilmes, and Anna McCarthy, all of whom provided encouragement over the course of the project. During the research process, I benefited from the assistance of many librarians and archivists but especially from Michael Mashon, who freely shared his work and his insights and led me to all sorts of interesting material during his tenure at the Broadcast Pioneers Library; Elizabeth Draper and Howard Davis at N. W. Ayer; Mark Stroock at Young & Rubicam; Thom LaPorte and Marion Hirsch at the Duke Special Collections Library; Harry Miller and the staff at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Mary Muenkel at BBDO; Roger Horowitz and Carol Ressler Lockman at the Hagley Museum and Library; the staff at the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University; and Ron Simon at the Museum of Television and Radio. I enjoyed help from fellow researchers, including Walter Friedman, Steven Bach, and especially Philip Napoli, who supplied me with many leads and an important source, his interview with Anne Hummert. Some of the research was supported by a grant from the Hagley Museum and Library and a Shell Graduate Grant, as well as indirectly by the NEH, which funded Omar Dahbour’s attendance at a summer NEH seminar in v Madison, Wisconsin, to which I accompanied him to spend a full six weeks in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and accomplish a large amount of the primary research in 1994. I am grateful to my fellow graduate students at the University of Texas for their collegiality and stimulating company during my time in Austin. As this work moved from the back burner and then to the front burner again, I am especially grateful for the long‑term support and unvarying encouragement of my family and friends, especially Tom McCourt, Laura Stein, Megan Mullen, Jen Holt, Jo Andres, and Rebecca Davis. Many other friends also provided fellowship, understanding, and the occasional exhortation to help me through the writing process. This dissertation gestated in 1994, but circumstances prevented its completion for many years. Although only one person writes a dissertation, the process requires the support of others. My deepest gratitude is to David Bywaters, who provided the best possible logistical, technical, editorial, and conceptual support, without which this project would not have been completed. More than that, David’s love has made all good things possible again, a gift I hope to repay with enduring gratitude, esteem, and love. I dedicate this dissertation to my daughter Lina, born in 1996, whose loving heart gives me the deepest joy and greatest delight. vi ADMEN AND THE SHAPING OF AMERICAN COMMERCIAL BROADCASTING, 1926‑50 Publication No. ____________ Cynthia Barbara Meyers, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: Thomas Schatz The advertising industry made significant contributions to the development of American commercial broadcasting during the “Golden Age” of radio, roughly the late 1920s through the 1940s. “Admen” not only helped develop broadcasting as an advertising medium, they also produced the majority of prime‑time network programs, such as Show Boat, Town Hall Tonight, and The Jack Benny Program, and daytime serials, such as Stella Dallas, Ma Perkins, and Just Plain Bill. This dissertation, based on an extensive review of surviving network and agency materials, describes the complicated, often conflicted, activities of admen as they sought to develop radio as an entertainment and advertising medium while balancing the competing demands of advertisers, networks, performers, and audiences. The Depression forced broadcasters to seek program financing from advertisers, who turned to advertising agencies to oversee the complexities of integrating their advertising into entertainment. Relationships between networks and agencies evolved to manage the ongoing conflicts over vii program control and advertising standards. Meanwhile, admen struggled to develop new techniques for radio, focusing on “showmanship” as a set of strategies to be applied to both entertainment and advertising. Some advertising agencies, such as Blackett‑Sample‑Hummert, employed the “hard sell,” emphasizing product claims and “reasons why” to buy, while other agencies, such as Young & Rubicam, relied on humorous and indirect appeals, or the “soft sell.” These advertising strategies carried over into the agencies’ programming. At the height of the radio era, advertising agencies expanded into Hollywood to oversee star‑studded radio entertainment programs, including Lux Radio Theatre, Kraft Music Hall, and Hollywood Playhouse. Radio revenues and audiences peaked in 1948, the same year of the first network television broadcasts. By the end of the 1950s, because of increased production costs, the networks had taken over most of the programming functions handled by advertising agencies during the radio era. However, this dissertation argues that the influence of admen and the advertising industry in shaping broadcasting institutions such as networks and cultural forms such as program genres has left a deep and significant legacy. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: SELLING THE AIR……….……….……………..1 CHAPTER 2: THE “FOURTH DIMENSION” OF ADVERTISING: ADMEN AND RADIO IN THE 1920s………………………………………………………………….37 CHAPTER 3: WHO OWNS THE TIME? NETWORKS AND ADVERTISING AGENCIES IN THE 1930s…………………………………………………………...100 CHAPTER 4: BALLET AND BALLYHOO: ADMEN AND SHOWMANSHIP ON RADIO IN THE 1930s………………………………………………………...……....137 CHAPTER 5: DRAMATIZING A BAR OF SOAP: PROGRAMMING AND ADVERTISING STRATEGIES AT BLACKETT‑SAMPLE‑HUMMERT, YOUNG & RUBICAM, AND BENTON & BOWLES…………………………………..…….....186 CHAPTER 6: TREADMILL TO OBLIVION: THE PEAK AND DECLINE OF THE RADIO ERA………………………………………………………….…………..……243 CONCLUSION………….………………………………..…………………………...293 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………..……………………….....304 VITA….……………………………………………………..………………………….317 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: SELLING THE AIR In 1926, the newly formed radio network, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), hired Frank Arnold as its ʺAmbassador at Large to the American business world.ʺ Arnold traveled the country speaking to businessmen so as to overcome their ʺsales resistanceʺ to the new medium for advertising: radio.1 Likewise, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), founded in 1927 and struggling to compete with NBC, relied on the expert promotional efforts of Paul Kesten to demonstrate the reach and power of radio. Arnold and Kesten helped bring advertisers to broadcasting at a time when few were sure it could succeed commercially. Later, during the 1930s, as radio became a national medium entertaining millions, Frank Hummert oversaw the production of forty different daytime serial radio dramas, such as Ma Perkins and Stella Dallas. To produce many programs quickly, he developed an assembly‑line script production process in which hierarchies of writers were responsible for different stages, from concept to plot to dialogue.2 Also during the 1930s, William Benton and Chester Bowles produced some of the top prime time radio programs of the 1930s, including The Maxwell House Showboat Hour and Town Hall Tonight. During the 1940s, Carroll Carroll scripted one of the most popular radio programs, Kraft Music Hall, writing improvised‑sounding patter for Bing Crosby, perhaps radio’s biggest star of the time. And in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when television began to overtake radio as the dominant broadcasting medium, 1 the president of NBC Television from 1949 to 1955 was Sylvester ʺPatʺ Weaver. Weaver is best known for having helped develop television ʺmagazineʺ programs such as the Today and Tonight shows, which relied on “participation sponsorship,” a revenue model that would ultimately replace single sponsorship. Each of these men helped shape American broadcasting. Each of them also worked in the advertising industry. Each had been, or continued to be, an “advertising man,” or “adman.”3 Arnold directed the Frank Seaman Agency from 1917 to 1926. Kesten worked at the Lennen & Mitchell agency. Hummert was a well‑known