New Mark on the Doorjamb

The National Broadcasting Co. celebrated its isth birthday last week--15 years during which it has become the U.S.'s most continuously audible institution. In a new, copper-lined studio-theater in Manhattan's Radio City a select and sober audience heard two hours and 45 minutes of air festival, carried over all 243 stations of the Red and Blue networks.

NBC performers did their bits from Hollywood, the Secretary of the Navy and the Under Secretary of War spoke from Washington, NBC's newsmen in London, Manhattan and Buenos Aires helloed and jested by short wave. Board Chairman David Sarnoff's baronial voice came in from a liner in mid-Pacific. That moment reminded a few elders present of the night nearly 30 years ago when the same Sarnoff made his name--as the first operator to catch the primitive wireless signals and distress calls of another liner, the Titanic, as she went down far at sea.

The program last week commemorated the first transcontinental network show ever heard in the U.S. It ran four hours on the night of Nov. 15, 1926. Among the performers then were Weber & Fields, Mary Garden, Will Rogers. Hollywood contributed that year such prizes as Dorothy and Lillian Gish.

To listeners in 1941 the early days of radio seemed far away and long ago--and a little idyllic. Where now was the unforced exuberance of the bell-voiced announcers? radio's own Ipana Troubadours? But praisers of time past could not deny that in 15 years radio had progressed from whee-eeking charm to become an enormous influence in U.S. life. Some indices of NBC's share in this growth:

No. of Stations (Red plus Blue networks)

Date Stations % of total U.S. stations 1927 48 6.9 1940 214 25.8

Annual Time Sales and Profit

Date Time sales Net Income 1927 $3,384,519 $464,385 (deficit) 1940 41,683,341 5,834,772

To the Federal Communications Commission last spring it seemed proper to question the advisability of one company's controlling two out of four national networks and one quarter of U.S. radio outlets. FCC also pointed out that vast NBC was only a detail in Radio Corp. of America--whose activities included not only NBC but the manufacture of its equipment, the sale of radio sets, the management of artists, a share (through RKO) in the production of movies, the manufacture of movie sound equipment, phonograph records, etc. But FCC did not observe how nearly indispensable to RCA is NBC's earning power.

Any picture of NBC as a human phenomenon would be framed by its Radio City home--with a slablike, grand exterior and an interior like a rabbit warren. The characters would include hundreds of cool whee-eeking charm, technicians, not-so-cool directors, musicians, nervous clockwatchers and imperturbable stenographers, "vice presidents" of notorious number. It would include hopeful actors, agency men, press agents, uniformed guards and guides and endless parties of shuffling visitor's.

This autumn, amid all these, NBC has 1) elected to fight FCC's regulations (TIME, Oct. 20), 2) distinguished itself for its work in short-wave broadcasts to Europe (TIME, Nov. 3), 3) proved its responsible and impartial conduct in awarding time to both isolationists v. interventionists (TIME, Nov. 10).

It has also put Stokowski on the air for a series of symphony broadcasts, and it has given a weekly evening sustaining half-hour to what is probably the wackiest show on the air -- Studio X, which from 10:30 to 11 E.S.T. Friday nights kids the pants off radio. In its big-business way, NBC has put cooperative Mutual in a rage by hooking one of its first-class evening shows: Ballantine's Three-Ring Time, which goes on the Blue on Dec. 12.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.