Radio King Kong

I really don't care for Leonard Maltin. He's a movie guy, when he moonlights in radio he's out of his element. We can discuss his syndicated radio program, "Leonard Maltin on Video" some other night. But 4 days' ago he wrote up an update on a cold case in Radioland that was actually broken by Martin Grams Jr. [SOURCE] It was news to me. It's about the 15-part radio serialization of King Kong from 1933:

"The adaptation was handled by William S. Rainey, who was hired to adapt the screenplay and/or novelization into 16 chapters, each running 15 minutes in length. For the most part, Rainey remained faithful to the material...  Alois Havrilla, the director of the serial, was an accomplished radio announcer in his own right and it appears he also doubled for roles of natives, sailors and spectators."

The King Kong character was conceived and created by filmmaker Merian C. Cooper and script writer R.H. Edgar Wallace. Wallace wrote the initial 110-page draft for King Kong in about five weeks, from late December 1931 to January 1932 under the working title "The Beast." (Coopers input was mostly to steer Wallace so he could re-use existing RKO footage.) But then Wallace died of pneumonia in February of 1932.  Ruth Rose then developed the script from Wallace's rough draft with input from Cooper and co-director Ernest Schoedsack. Script-writer James Ashmore Creelman was brought into "tidy up." But that's not the whole story.

In December of 1932, the story was "novelized" by Delos W. Lovelace and published by Grosset and Dunlap. In October 1933, Cinema Weekly published the short story "King Kong", credited to Edgar Wallace and Draycott Montagu Dell. Walter Ripperger wrote a two-part serialization of the tale for Mystery magazine in March of the same year. All of this was before or concurrent with the screenings of the feature film. So it comes as no surprise that RKO might use radio as further promotion for that movie.

No surviving recordings are known to exist. (That one you found on Archive.org is from a 1963 kids record.) However a collector has unearthed originals of all 15 radio scripts. Originally planned for 16 broadcasts, a major earthquake pre-empted one episode leading to a major rewrite combining parts of episodes 5 and 6. In early screenings the audio was broadcast over WEAF,  WJZ, and the KECA. The only original audio that is known to exist is a 7 minute promo for the RKO film.

The Real Proximate Causation

Not every DJ is remembered, and even fewer in the cannon of legal precedent. The Real Don Steele played a role in a tragic case which led to a notable decision on the issue of proximate causation in tort law.He was also a pretty popular California DJ for about 4 decades. He started DJing at 930 KHJ-AM in 1965 which is all you need to know before reading on...

The California Supreme Court's decision in Weirum v. RKO General, Inc. in 1970 regarded Don Steele's radio show on KHJ-AM. They ran this promotion called "The Super Summer Spectacular." The schtick was that Don himself would drive "a conspicuous red automobile" to a particular area and an announcer would state over the air that Steele was headed to that area. The first person who found Steele (with some conditions) won receive a cash prize. Conditions were pretty simple wearing certain articles of clothing or answering simple questions. Yeah... no way that might go awry...


Subsequently on July 16th  1970, two different teenagers, in two separate cars were tailing Don Steele waiting for the announcement on the air. In their irrational exuberance one imbecile forced another motorist's car off the road, killing him. The victim's family sued everyone, the car manufacturer, the teens and RKO Genera, the owners of KHJ, because this whole stunt was dangerous and amazingly stupid. One teenager settled, but the other teen and RKO were found liable for the accident. The award was 300k, that's over 1.7 million in 2012 dollars. RKO General appealed.

That appeal forced the California Supreme Court to get very specific about liability. They affirmed the jury's verdict that RKO General was legally liable by the reasoning that the contest generated foreseeable risk of harm to the public. they did not say that it was very stupid, but it certainly was. The imbroglio, the court case the the verdict lived on in the cannon of law and Don Steele remained unharmed. Mr. Steele stayed at KHJ until 1973, then moved on to KIQQ, KTNQ, KRLA, KODJ, KCBS and then KRTH in July 1992. He died in 1997 after a truly epic career. 

Louella Parsons Vs. Everyone

It's not fair to say that Louella Parsons hated everyone. She feuded with Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Louis B. Mayer, Hedda Hopper, Frank Sinatra and even Ronald Reagan. But, like other Hollywood gossip shows she eventually wore out her welcome. Born in 1881 as Louella Rose Oettinger, she grew up in Dixon, Illinois. She attended Dixon College and then wrote for the Dixon Star Newspaper. In her articles she gossiped about Dixon social circles, a harbinger of things to come. She married John Parsons in 1906, she kept the name but dropped the husband.

She ditched the small town life. She moved to Chicago, then new York. In 1914 she wrote another gossip column for the Chicago Record Herald, then one for the New York Morning Telegraph. William Hearst took note of her readership and by 1923 her name was under his masthead on the New York American newspaper.  She gained increasing popularity and became a syndicated columnist for Hearst.

Her first step into radio came in 1928.  SunKist sponsored weekly program with Parsons interviewing Movie Stars. She had a second show with Sunkist in the spring of 1931 on the Sunkist Musical Cocktails show. They even made a pink 6-inch 78rpm "Flexo" pressing of one program as a show premium. You can hear it here. Then in 1934 Parsons finally won out,  armed with better sponsorship from Campbells Soup, she hosted "Hollywood Hotel" syndicated on CBS. That program had a bit more staying power and ran until 1938. But that was probably per peak. In 1937 a competing gossip columnist Hedda Hopper starting taking her down a notch. In 1938 the Radio Guild pitched a fit about film stars appearing on Hollywood Hotel for free.

While it was Hearst that raised her to prominence, it was Hearst's corrupting power that also dragged her back down. In 1941 the long standing rumors of Hearst's influence came to the forefront. She initially praised the movie "Citizen Kane," directed by and starring Orson Welles. Later as she learned that it mocked Hearst personally, things changed. She demanded a preview of the film them walked out on it. Hearst's allies tried to suppress the film, even trying to buy the negatives in order to burn them. Sensing that the dispute only gave the film more attention, Hearst changed tactics, instead trying to smear mud on RKO's hiring practices. But Parsons kept on the attack repeatedly telephoning contacts at RKO and MGM with threats of further bad press. She even kept the film out of Radio City Music hall in New York. Despite her efforts, the film was a huge success.

Parsons failed in her mission and her career had been tarnished. It was clear that she was used as blackmail tool in the service of Hearst's political and personal agendas. (There's a lot more about this in the book The First Lady of Hollywood by Samantha Barbas.) Parsons didn't have another radio show until 1951.  The Louella Parsons Show was carried on ABC in the Fall of 1951 sponsored by Woodbury Soap. It didn't last. She continued writing her column until 1965 when her assistant, Dorothy Manners officially took over. It was rumored that Manners had already been writing it for over a year.  She died in 1972. Manners retired in 1977 and died in 1998 ending the legacy.

The Drake-Chenault formula

Drake in Drake-Chenault is Bill Drake, the Chenault is Gene Chenault. The irony of my hatred for their version of radio is that it's alive and well today. they brought the gift of repetition and automation to Top-40. There was probably as much automation in FM radio in the 1970s as there are today. Sure the hardware was rudimentary, but it worked.

At the time the FCC had passed a new regulation prohibiting owners of AM and FM stations from simulcasting programming. This was intended to force media owners into running original content on their shiny new FM stations. The result was somewhat the opposite. With FM still fresh out of the shrink wrap it's ad revenues were still quite low. So station owners turned to automation and syndication to keep costs down. This played right into Drake-Chenault.

Drake was the VP of programming at RKO. Gene Chenault owned KYNO in Fresno. In the beginning they started to market production music on tape under the company name barton Industries. In 1967 they began pitching a Top-40 countdown style program called Hitparade which launched on KHJ. They began consulting shortly thereafter. But RKO was watching their own ratings slide. They put the heat on Drake-Chenault with the general impression that their new hobby automating FMs was hurting their business arrangement for RKOs network of AMs. Drake could no longer multitask.

Drake and Chenault left and formed American Independent Radio to market pre-recorded programs.For them consulting was to apply the Drake-Chenault formula. Their Top-40 formula was made of most of the things we take for granted in radio. It was the original more-rock-less-talk arrangement. Programs were broken into hours, hours in to quarter hours, bumpers, liners, jingles, branding, short repetitive playlists... and it worked. It produced ratings. As much as I despise it, it's still the standard for CHR Formats today. More here.
But taking the autonomy away from the DJ was received poorly, at least by DJs. Sometimes their arrival at a station went badly: Staff walkouts, vandalism, and theft. KMPX for example experienced all three. Drake-Chenault was the polar opposite of the free-format mania some stations had been running with. Their GM Bert Kleinman bragged in 1975:

"Current estimates indicate that over 20 percent of all stations in the United States are automated. In 1974 alone, it is estimated that 500 AM and FM stations have switched from manual to automated operation. At thiis rate over half the radio stations in the country could be automated by 1980."

In 1979 Billboard called them "the fastest growing syndicator around." Stations using the Drake-Chenault formula were calling it Top 40 or Hot 100 might have been spinning as few as 30 singles. There's no slow fade out on this story. Their partnership dissolved and they sold the company. It dissolved in the mid 1980s. But aside from that anti-climactic exit they succeeded in every way possible. Their formula has had total industry dominance since the late 1970s.

Radio Theatre

A noun is a person, place or thing. Radio theater is normally thought of as a thing. A number of actors, foley men, musicians hosts announcer etc. gather and perform a play. But there were such places as radio theaters. The terminology is long departed, but there were once many.Many radio programs and play groups used the nomenclature: Lux Radio theatre, Mutual Radio theatre, Sears Radio theatre, The California Artists Radio Theatre, the American Radio Theatre, Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop, Riders Radio Theater, NBC Radio theater... the list goes on

But movie houses called themselves "theaters" as they most often were formerly hosting vaudeville. They were theaters in the true original sense. But how did radio figure into it? It all goes back to RKO. It stands for Radio Keith-Orpheum. Even Radio City Music hall was a RKO theatre.

They were one of the original Big-5 studios in the 1930s. David Sarnoff through RCA bought and merged The Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theater chain merged with Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America. The new company name was RKO. Their films became "RCA Radio Pictures." Their physical movie houses re-branded as we'd say these days. The original RKO closed up shop in 1957. Some movie houses still hang onto their name from that era. I present here a short list. I've not confirmed in person.. it could be an AMC by now. I wrote abotu their demise once before in connection to another topic.

Harrisburg, AR Radio Theatre 210 N Main St
Chicago, IL Radio Theatre
Baltimore, MD Radio Theatre 629 N Eden St
Ferndale, MI Radio City Theater 22875 Woodward Ave
Minneapolis, MN Radio City Theatre 36 S Ninth St
Saint Paul, MN Radio Theatre 1195 E Seventh St
Saint Louis, MO Radio Theatre
Saint Louis, MO Radio-Orpheum Theatre
New York, NY Radio City Music Hall 1260 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY Radio Theatre 4113 13th Ave.
New York, NY Radio Theatre 1348 Southern Blvd

The RKO Radio Picture

The peak RKO radio station lineup consisted of WOR-AM in New York, KHJ-AM in Los Angeles, KFRC-AM in San Francisco, WHBQ-AM in Memphis, CKLW-AM in Windsor Canada, and the Yankee Network and its flagships WNAC-AM in Boston... (The Canadian government later tightened rules on foreign ownership of radio and television stations, forcing RKO to sell its CKLW-AM to a Canadian-based company in 1970.)

A radio picture? Radio doesn't have pictures, that's the point of radio...
RKO was formed in 1928 as a massive merging of four parties:

1. Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain
2. Film Booking Office of America (FBO) studio
3. American Pathé film studios
4. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Photophone division.

The prominence of the word "radio" in the corporate name reflected RCA's 66% holding. It is claimed that the broadcasting-tower logo of the production arm, "Radio Pictures," was suggested by David Sarnoff himself, but the reference is arcane and unproven.

In 1933 the U.S. Justice Department forced a re-org of RCA, requiring that RCA sell off a portion of it's RKO holdings. This change shifted power to investor Floyd Odlum and the Rockefeller brothers. In 1932 during the height of the great depression it went into debt. A corporate re-organization in 1936 made for a leaner more profitable company.

ten years later Howard Hughes gained control by buying 25% of the outstanding stock. Within weeks of taking control, he dismissed 66% of the staff and as a result production was shut down for six months! Hughs spent the time investigating possibly communists in the filing cabinets and under the carpets. As a reward, In the fifties Hughes got whacked with an anti-trust lawsuit and had to sell off RKO theaters.

With the loss of his theater division, Hughs focused on TWA and his aviation division. It was the Korean war after all. Hughes found the steady stream of lawsuits from RKO's small shareholders pesky. So since he was the worlds richest man, and a nutjob, he bought them all out in 1954. it cost $24 million. then, seemingly on impulse six months later he resold RKO to General Tire for $25 million. We all know what happened to him after that....

General Tire restored RKO's links to broadcasting. They already owned the Yankee network and in 1951 bought General Teleradio. But licensing problems with WNAK and KHJ hampered growth for the next 20 years! 1965-1987. Tt began with a simple license renewal. Fidelity Television claimed RKO General forced it's vendors purchase advertising time on RKO stations. Then the dirt came out from under the carpet: General Tire had bribed foreign officials, they had misappropriated foreign corporate funds, they bribed elected officials, RKO misled advertisers about its ratings, engaged in fraudulent billing, lied to the FCC about a destroyed audit reports and filed false financial statements etc. The FCC considered this gross misconduct. In 1980 the FCC stripped RKO of the two licenses.

In 1987, judge Kuhlmann found RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee and recommended that the FCC strip RKO of its licenses. Kuhlmann based his ruling on numerous instances of dishonesty by RKO. RKO sold off it's remaining licenses shortly thereafter. Remember back when large corporations used to get punished by the government? Because the governments job was to serve it's citizens? Today I am reminded regularly by headlines that those days are long gone.

Radio Networks Week, part 4

You have probably never heard of the Mutual Broadcasting system. There is a good reason for that.

The Mutual Broadcasting System
It begins in 1929 as the Quality Network, with four radio stations: WLS in Chicago, WOR in New York City, WLW in Cincinnati, and WXYZ in Detroit. The Quality Network operated for about 6 months only in 1929, and failed due to technical and funding problems. Some of those same problems would haunt Mutual for the next twenty years. [Do not confuse QN with WTAW's Texas Quality Network, these are totally unrelated. ] The network was really run by WGN in Chicago and WOR. It was a first attempt, and the second attempt would not come for another 5 years.

In September of 1934, the Mutual Broadcasting System was founded. They aspired to be the largest radio network in history, it was clearly a reaction to the rapid expansion of CBS, NBC and ABC. The other three networks of the day were funded, connected, and had already carved out a huge slice of the radio advertising market for themselves. There wasn't much left of the pie for Mutual. MBS usually trailed 3rd or 4th in number of listeners and in advertising revenue.
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/prog/mbs.htm

As great as it was to have the most stations, it's quality and not quantity that counts. Most of those 300 radio stations were small, low-power, local market radio stations. This economic fact limited their access to large advertisers. It kept them out of the big money.

For it's members the big plus was that Mutual was owned by its stations and not the other way around. But only a few of those stations were real powerhouses and thus called the shots WOR (New York), WGN (Chicago), and the West Coast collection of Don Lee stations held most of the controlling shares in the System. Mr. Lee was another kook of a buisnessman. Mr. Don Lee, He had exclusive distribution rights in California for Cadillac automobiles and seemingly on a lark entered the broadcasting business by purchasing station KFRC in San Francisco and KHJ in Los Angeles. Don Lee had originally affiliated his stations with CBS but he died in 1934 and the new management went with MBS. Don Lee quietly rolled over in his grave.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist5/donlee.html
In the 1940s control of MBS moved away from the hundreds of smaller affiliates and into the control of a succession of large corporations: General Tire and Rubber, Armand Hammer, the Hal Roach Studios, and Albert G. McCarthy, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M)... even Amway even owned it at one point. More here.

The executors of Mr. Lee's estate tried to keep the company together, but finally decided to liquidate the broadcasting company and sold most of the stations, the west coast radio network, the 50% share of Mutual to General Tire and Rubber Company in 1952. It became General Teleradio, Inc. became a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Tire. More here.

General Teleradio was renamed RKO General in 1958 after the acquisition of RKO Radio Pictures from Howard Hughes in 1955 for $25 million. General Tire sold the film studio production facilities to Desilu Productions for $6 million in 1956. Mutual was then sold to Hal Roach Studios.

It was at this time that Alex Guterma, the president of Mutual struck a deal with the Dominican Republic. He got paid to ensure that the network would broadcast favorable propaganda for that the Dominican republic. Guterma was indicted and eventually did 3 years in prison for an unrelated SEC violation.

The network was floundering, and the bad publicity wasnt helping. It was quickly sold to John Mc Carthy, a Florida businessman who ran it thru bankruptcy proceedings. 3M bauiled them out. Then the devil hmiself opened his wallet... Amway bought the network on September 30, 1977. Then finally at long last a real media company got their hands on it, Westwood One. In 1985 Westwood one was bought by infinity which was in turn owned by Viacom, a subsidary of CBS Radio. they survived as a brand name until 1999 when even that was folded under CNN radio. Mutual raised the bar in many ways for the other networks . They were the first commercial radio network to convert completely to satellite transmission starting in 1979. Then they became the first network to transmit regular stereo high-fidelity broadcasts in 1982. But in the merge frenzy of the late 80s they have ceased to exist even on paper.