Senator Tyler, M. H.

Before he had well warmed Lever Brothers' presidential chair (TIME, June 10), Charles ("Chuck") Luckman sat down hard on the firm's $7,274,503 radio budget. Off the air went Lifebuoy's "Bazooka Bob" Burns and Rinso's soft-soap opera, Big Sister. Last week Luckman made an economy-size substitution: Fighting Senator, a sort of Lone Ranger with social significance.

The show, designed to frame "an observation window on contemporary politics," did without love interest, filled the gap with action. Hero of the piece: Jeff Tyler, an ex-sergeant of 31--"young enough," explains a Senator scripter, "to be romantic, old enough to have judgment."

Full of modesty and the morale vitamin, Jeff comes home from the wars with a Congressional Medal of Honor, is boomed for the State Senate by his G.I. buddies, gives the "Oak Falls" machine its first lambasting in 20 years. After one slapdown in the Senate he finds his political legs, starts chasing political rats. First rat: the grafting director of a state insane asylum. Next on the fighting Senator's agenda: underpayment of teachers, black-market babies, maladministration of prisons.

The man who put Oak Falls on the map is 36-year-old Lou Cowan, a 6-ft.-3 in., 214-lb. Ph.D. (in history) from the University of Chicago. He hit radio's big time in 1940 by producing Quiz Kids, which still writes him an annual check in six figures. After a wartime stint as boss of OWI's hub office in New York, Cowan went back to show-packaging--producing and selling programs complete from stars to sound cues. Senator was his second postwar production, second sale. (The first: a transcribed series, Murder at Midnight.) To shape it, Cowan laid out $5,000. Chief budget items: 1) a guidebook on local and state government written for the show by Historian M. R. Werner (Bryan, Tammany Hall), 2) three top scripters, topped by Frank Telford (Molle Mystery Theater).

Luckman heard the "presentation record," was sold for a nine-week tryout. CBS gave the show the Monday night (8:309 p.m., E.D.S.T.) hot spot held in season by Joan Davis. Variety tabbed Senator "a show with tremendous promise." It looked as if Luckman had bought himself one of the summer replacements most likely to succeed.

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