Listeners' Shows

From Columbus until the World War the American people got most of their amusement informally from each other. It was only upon the advent of the Great Boom that the spelling bee and the guitar on the front porch were routed by the billion-dollar entertainment industry of radio and the movies. When, four years ago. "Major" Edward Bowes put on his amateur shows, they were a radio novelty. But this season audience participation in radio has become radio's most pronounced program trend. The high cost of stars, dearth of headline talent and Depression II have all united to give radio entertaining back to people just like the people who listen in. This was proved again last week by two notable new listeners' shows added to the networks:

Marriage License Bureau Romances, one of the early private-lives-at-public-mikes shows, started broadcasting locally over Chicago's WGN two-and-a-half years ago. Over MBS it will continue to be aired from the Cook County Marriage License Bureau. Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons it presents license applicants and their travelogue accounts of the road to matrimony.

Chubby Presiding Genius Quin Ryan, whose radio activities include reading funnies to the kiddies and broadcasting football games, takes any angle suggested by the answers he gets to his inquiries about newlyweds' problems and personalities. He broadcasts in constant terror of a scandalous answer, recalls with horror the girl who told the listening world that she had for months been trying to cure her fiance of the habit of smoking in bed.

NBC's new Information Please is an inversion of the current question game and spelling bee vogue. It lets the audience ask the questions. Master of ceremonies is Book Critic Clifton Fadiman, who assembles a board of masterminds for the answering. Masterminds include Franklin Pierce Adams ("F.P.A."), Paul de Kruif, Stuart Chase. Listeners supply questions at $2 per question used, $5 per question not correctly answered. Twenty-four hours after the first broadcast last week the audience had submitted 800 questions.

Each week, Funnyman Fred Allen presents on his Ipana, Sal Hepatica hour a Person You Didn't Expect to Meet. Last week the person was 15-year-old Joseph Becker, who described how he ran his Bronx Baby Minding Service. One of the people who thus unexpectedly met Joseph Becker was New York's License Commissioner Paul Moss, who three days later summoned the young impresario, told him it is against the law to run an employment agency without a license. "I'll start another career," said Joseph Becker.

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