DJ Laurence Cockaday

Laurence Cockaday, about 1931

Laurence Marsham Cockaday, what a name. (Sometimes it was written incorrectly as Lawrence.) That poor guy must have been picked on as a kid. He was born in 1894 in Greenville, NJ. So he would have been about 28 in 1922 and 37 in the image above where he looks oddly nervous. Cockaday was an engineer but also a writer, teacher and inventor. But there is one event in his history which raised his profile to the national level. He was a key person behind a 1922 live radio concert broadcast which was heard by likely more than a million people, helping to popularize the medium. More here.

We have mostly general biographical information on Cockaday. Around 1917 he was an electrical engineer for the New York Interborough Railroad (IRT). A 1923 issue of Popular Radio states that Cocakday instructed in radio theory on the U.S. Training ship Granite State in 1918. He filed his first patent in 1919.  In 1921 he was involved in the broadcast of a Jack Dempsey title fight [SOURCE]. That prefigures his later, more notable broadcast.

By 1922 he was one of the three founders of Popular Radio Magazine with E.E. Free and K. Banning. At the same time the L. M. Cockaday & Company sold radio components out of his Bronx apartment at 2674 Bailey Ave. It was renamed Superadio Corp. around 1921. [SOURCE] Then he went on to authorized Silver-Marshall and Precision Coil to make is radios like the LC-26 and LC-27.  Rich Post (kb8tad) wrote a feature on Lafayette Radio in 2012 which mentions Cockaday. [SOURCE] More here.

I also discovered that in adition to his magazine articles, Cockaday authored several books: Radio-Telephony For Everyone (1922) and 23 Lessons in Radio (1931) Radio Experimenters' Handbook (1932) and two others he co-authored Short-Wave Handbook with Walter Holze (1933) and How To Build Your Radio Receiver with Kendall Banning (1924).  The latter two there were reprinted in the 1990s by Lindsay Publications. He also wrote many pamphlets on the assembly, operation, and repair of his own and other makes of radios.

K. Banning, L.M. Cockaday with QSL cards

Cockaday even appears in the Library of Congress (LOC) photography catalog in four images [SOURCE] These images are poorly labeled. Three identify some of people and a rough date of between 1920 and 1925. He poses with Banning (above) and or Dr. Edward Elway Free. One however specifically states August 1922, and that it's of the first live radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from the stadium of the College of the City of New York. 

The image titled "Radio At Stadium" taken in contest with the one from 1922 it can only be from the same event at Lewisohn Stadium. It's clean doric-style columns are very identifiable. Built in 1913 it hosted thousands of free concerts. (It's a damn shame they let it rot) The New York Philharmonic left the venue for Lincoln Center in 1964 and the building  was demolished in 1973. The New York Philharmonic website repeats the 1922 claim but without a precise date. [SOURCE]

"In 1922 the Philharmonic was one of the first symphony orchestras to broadcast a concert over the radio, and in 1930 became the first American orchestra to broadcast regularly coast-to-coast. Many of these radio broadcasts still exist in the Archives today and are available to visitors."

These images in the Library of Congress (LOC)  all appear to be from the George Grantham Bain Collection. I've also found other Bain collection images of Cockaday which seem to be missing from the LOC. They may have been omitted deliberately, or just mislabeled. 

Radio At Stadium

The New York Times lists regular broadcasts from Lewisohn in 1926 [SOURCE] on WJZ and WRC. But it also notes that Willem Van Hoogstraten has been the main conductor  since 1922 which corroborates his presence on that first 1922 broadcast. The book The Mighty Music Box also states August but not a date. The book On The Spot Reporting does as well. Many websites cite the date of the broadcast as occurring on August 12, 1922 over WJZ in New York, with Hoogstraten conducting but cites no source. The book History of Radio to 1926 by Gleason Archer gives the date as August 24th. Presumably there are conflicting sources. However, they are all wrong and/or incomplete. 

As Free, Banning and Cockaday were all editors at Popular Radio you might expect good coverage of their own event.  [SOURCE] Well, let me tell you... The feature article was huge. It was in the October 1922 issue and stretched from page 130 to 137 and even includes diagrams of the telephone exchange system. (below)

Telephone exchange for WJZ broadcast

The feature specifically states that the concerts were broadcast for five evenings, starting Friday, August 11th, skipping Sunday then resuming on Monday the 13th, continuing Tuesday 14th, through Wednesday the 16th, of 1922. Using a single Westinghouse microphone set up by Harry Hiller and William Frazier they picked up the audio and piped it to WJZ across the river in New Jersey who broadcast it on 833 kHz. WJZ had only signed on in September of 1921, so this was only weeks before it's first anniversary. Supposedly more than a million people tuned in. 

Cockaday and Banning, 1924

On Nov. 14th, 1924 he gave a lecture at the Annual Detroit Radio Show. By 1927 Cockaday sat on the advisory board for WGL. [SOURCE] He was the Technical Editor of the New York Herald Tribune around 1930.  The Journal of the Acoustic Society of America lists him as a member in 1935 with the address 461 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY; this may not have been a real residential address. That same address is used by many publications, labs and businesses. Today it's a Brooklyn parking lot.

In 1935 the book Making a Living In Radio by Zeh Bouck, Cockaday was listed as the Editor of Radio News. A 1938 issue of Radio & Television gives his Ham calls as W2JCY.  Those calls appear to have been assigned in 1936. The Radio Amateur Callbook put it in bold print with the address 547 Second Ave. Pelham, NY. But it also lists his old calls as 2AAK, 2AE, 2OG, and 2XK. The last reference to his W2JCY call sign was in 1966, [SOURCE] though the Radio Amateur Callbook puts it in the hands of Murray Goldberg by 1953. Cockada may have give up ham radio as early as 1941. I don't see entries between those dates. His 2OG calls go back to at least 1913 at the address 227 Audubon Pl, Brooklyn, NY.

From 1930 to at least 1937 Cockaday taught at New York University. One source reports that he enlisted in the US Navy in 1940, but Radio magazine calls him a Lieutenant Commander in 1937 as does the 1925 Yearbook of American Military Engineers. A U.S. Naval Academy register lists him as a Captain in 1947 in the department of Electrical Engineering. He retired with that title in 1957. There the record stops: no DXing, no teaching, no lecturing, no new patents, no writings. Cockaday died in 1986 in Rockville, MD. In a 1924 article by Don Herold he was asked "What do you like best about radio, Mr. Çockaday?" He responded "The bedtime stories..." 

The History of LGBT Radio (Part 9)

Washington D.C. was home to 99.5 WGAY from 1960 to 1999. It was not an LGBT station but what a lost opportunity. The earliest LGBT radio program in Washington D.C. was probably Friends. There seem to have been several incarnations of a gay-friendly piano bar of the same name; it may have been connected. But it was not alone, though it's difficult to determine which collective came first. It appears that Friends brought Sophie's Parlor to it's first radio home 90.1 WGTB. Sophie's Parlor was a coffee house located at the Women's Center at 1736 R Street NW. It hosted many lesbian performers in the early 1970s.

Friends was run by the Stonewall Nation Media Collective. According to the David Aiken papers, (a member of Stonewall nation) [LINK] the group broadcast the Friends radio show on WGTB and 89.3 WPFW radio for nine years. So if that began in 1973 that would put the end of the program in 1982. This is corroborated by an obituary of Bruce Pennington, a host of Friends from 1973 to 1982. [LINK] According to the Rainbow History Project [LINK] "Sophies moved to radio on WGBT when Friends was on the air and moved with Friends to WPFW when the archdiocese closed down the radio station. [You can read about Jen Waits visit to the modern webcasting WGTB here]

Looking at issues of the Gay Blade from August, 1973 and May, 1974: the shows Friends, Sophie's Parlor, and Radio Free Women are all mentioned. the sceduel clearly indicates all three programs existing concurrently in early 1973. But in reviewing 1972 issues, there are only be references to the physical venue, Sophie's Parlor. But in the December 1972 issue there is also a short article about WGBT. The timing and tone intimates that this may be describing the first LGBT programming on the station, on a 30 minute program called Interface. It reads:

"The broadcasting station of Georgetown University has begun a series of four programs dealing with various aspects of gay life.  The first on gay activism featured Gay Activist Alliance president Bill Bricker, Mattachine Society president Franklin Kameny, the Rev. Paul Breton of Metropolitan Community Church, and ACLU lawyer Glen Graves, who frequently works on gay rights cases. A second program, on gays and employment, had as speakers activists Rachel Parker and Chuck Hall,  embattled gay teacher Joe Acanfora, and Nancy Tucker, editor of the Gay Blade. Interface host Bob Roehr, says a special series for gays may begin after the first of the year."

Sophie's Parlor was run by Sophie's Parlor Media Collective. The group also operated Radio Free Women at radio station WGTB. The show was on Tuesday nights 6:30 - 9:00. The station was founded as an AM station in 1946 and reborn as an FM station on 90.1 in 1960. The University went to war against the liberal-minded student-run station in the 1970s finally selling it to the University of the District of Columbia in 1979 for one dollar. In 1997 UDC sold it to CSPAN for 25 million. But that's another story.

Anyway, back to Radio Free Women (RFW). That group was founded in 1972. They trained other women the engineering skills needed to work in radio, and in the process built a collective. It's membership was fluid like most collectives. But it included Moira Rankin who continued on with Sophie's Parlor at WPFW, even producing a retrospective on radical feminism [LINK] with Deborah George for Pacifica in 1980. The collective also included Lynn Chadwick, who later became Pacifica's executive director in the 1990s.  

Sophie's Parlor collective moved to WPFW in 1977. So whether you start counting in 1972 or 1977, it remains the oldest continuously running women’s radio collective in the United States. It remains on air to this day. Radio Free Women also spawned the Feminist Radio Network but different sources but that in 1974 or 1976. Radio Free Women were booted off WGTB because of an episode about contraception. The Jesuit Institution didn't care for that. They moved to WPFW wherre it seems to have merges with Sophie's Parlor.

Also on WPFW these days is Inside Out, sporting a bevy of hosts: Maria Leonard Olsen, Michael Sharp, Kathryn Boxill, Matt Thorn, Denisha Davenport, Samuel Parks, Jade Salazar, Bianca Humady Rey, and Mike Knaapen. The program airs every Tuesday from 2:00-3:00 pm. While not as long-running as Sophie's Parlor, they remain a cornerstone of the LGBT community. 

But I want to dig into one more recent but relevant LGBT program in the DC market. In the book Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life by Michael C. Keith is a single curious reference to an important, but very short-lived gay radio program:

In Washington D.C., WWRC-AM cancelled a short-lived program called “Ten Percent Radio” that same year. The three-hour show aired Sunday nights, beginning at 7 p.m., and included a mix of straight and gay-oriented businesses (Bloomquist, 1994).

The source for the first LBGT program on 980 WWRC-AM starts with a single article in Radio and Records, titled "Format Feverishly Springs Forward" by a R. Bloomquist. Much like the similarly named "One In Ten" on WFNX, I think the program name comes from the infamous Kinsey Report in which Alfred Kinsey's claims that 10% of males in the U.S. are gay. (Note that some articles incorrectly use the call sign WRC which had been on 980 from 1924 - 1983)

Ten Percent Radio debuted on Sunday June 13th at 7:00 PM. The program actually replaced "Tom George's Power SportsTalk," which had just left to begin syndicating nationally and was changing DC affiliates. The first print mention for Ten Percent Radio was in the Washington Post. Even the Post felt the need to mention that the show was being renewed on a week-to-week basis. The host Scott Peck was a fresh graduate of University of Maryland. He was witty and quotable. After the first show, he quipped that his father is "really pleased that I found work."

Fred Peck's father is Col. Fred Peck. Only a month before the show debut, the elder Peck surprised a packed Senate hearing room when he testified against lifting the ban on homosexuals in the military. His opinion wasn't surprising as he had been asked to testify for that very reason, the surprise was when he outed his son as gay during a congressional hearing. Over the next 30 days both Pecks became minor celebrities.  Even in that first month, different articles at the Post describe the program as 2 hours long, others as 3 hours. The father and son found ways to reconcile the issue even while congress ensconced the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy into law. More here.

Scott says he and his father have agreed to disagree on the gays in the military issue -- son is pro, dad is con -- but he thinks the whole subject is overblown. "I have quite a few gay and lesbian friends in the military," he explains. "They have no plans to organize a gay and lesbian social in the officers club the next day" after the ban is lifted.

Scott would later write a book about his relationship with his father All American Boy: A Gay Son's Search for His Father. It was published in March of 1995. Most likely the show ran from June of 1993 through possibly August of that year, more-or-less following the rise and fall of the news cycle.

Hollywood Walk of Fame: C - G

This is part 2 of the Hollywood Radio Walk of Fame. Like I said this is going to take all week.There are already a surprising number of entrants that come from the Rudy Vallee Fleishman's Yeast Hour, and the Kraft Music Hall. There are more here, and more from the Sealtest Village Store as well. I sense patterns emerging. So on with the big list, we're not even halfway done yet.

Cass Daley - Her career began on stage and went straight into film. She moved into radio by  guesting somewhat regularly in 1944 on The Bob Burns Show on NBC. In 1945, she joined the "The Fitch Bandwagon" program also on NBC. In 1950, she got her own show: The Cass Daley Show. She also did some recordings for AFRS.

Joan Davis - She started in pictures, but became a regular on The Rudy Vallee Show after a successful 1941 appearance.She appeared in sitcoms and The Sealtest Village Store. Starting in 1945 she got to do her own show, Joanie's Tea Room on CBS. She got a second shot at the title in 1949-1950 with Leave It to Joan, filling in for the summer for Lux Radio Theatre. In 1952 she moved to TV with the I love Lucy rip-off, Leave it to Joan.

Dennis Day - His big break was an appearance on the Jack Benny's show in 1939. He was a great mimic and a good tenor vocalist.the two skills parlayed and his own program "A Day in the Life of Dennis Day" ran from 1946 to 1951 on NBC.

Vaughn De Leath - More famous as a vocalist, she also has a claim to the earliest radio music broadcast when she sang on 2XG in the World Tower Building for Lee DeForest. She later operated WDT-AM in New York City. More here.

Rick Dees - He presently has two radio shows "Rick Dees in the Morning" at KHHT-FM, and a Westwood One radio show "The Daily Dees" that appropriately airs daily. Prior to this syndicate hubbub he worked at WXYC-FM, WSGN-FM and WKIX-FM.

Cecil B. DeMille - Famous mostly as a film director, he was also in radio albeit briefly. From 1936 to 1944, he hosted Lux Radio Theater on CBS. He also served on The National Committee for a Free Europe which oversaw the Radio Free Europe service. His inclusion is dubious.

Andy Devine - Andy was an all-purpose side-kick. He played "Jingles", Guy Madison's sidekick in The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok. He also played the role on TV later.  He guested more than 75 times on Jack Benny's radio show between 1936 and 1942. He moved on from there to TV drama roles.

Morton Downey - This Downey is the senior one not the junior one. He was famed as a singer in his own right. Then in 1930 he opened The Delmonico, a New York Night club where Bill Paley heard him. That's how he ended up singing on WJZ.  He moved from there to the Camel Quarter Hour program in 1932.

Carmen Dragon - He was a conductor and composer. Aside from his recording career he also conducted the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra on the Standard School Broadcast, a music appreciation program for students. It started in 1928 and ran into the 1970s.

Jessica Dragonette - See previous post here.

Jimmy Durante - See previous post here.

Nelson Eddy- They claim that this singer has appeared on radio over 600 times. The first of these was probably in 1924 at WOO-AM.  In 1936 he hosted The Voice of Firestone and then in 1937 the Vicks Open House. He hosted the Chase and Sanborn Hour from 1937 to 1939 and then the Kraft Music Hall program from 1947 to 1948. Overlapping he also hosted The Electric Hour from 1942 – 1943.

Ralph Edwards - He was a DJ at  KROW-AM while he was in high school then KTAB-AM and KFRC-AM before 1938. then he got a lucky break and became an announcer on CBS for several shows: Major Bowes Amateur Hour  and Fred Allen on Town Hall Tonight. He went into children's shows from there.

Dale Evans - She was the third wife of Roy Rogers who'd started as a Secretary at a small radio station. She sang and worker her way up to winging on the Charlie McCarthy show and the Chase and Sanborn Hour. She started doing cowboy movies after that.

Clifton Fadiman - He was best known for hosting the quiz show, "Information, Please!"  from 1938 to into1948. He did some TV as well but on radio he also hosted 'Keep 'em Rolling, 1941 - 1942" "Words at War" 1944-1945" 'This is Broadway" in 1949, "Monitor" in 1955,  and "Conversation" which fared better lasting 1954 - 1956. 

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. - He was a regular on Lux Radio Theater, and Screen Director's Playhouse. He also made appearances on Sealtest Variety Theater, the Jack Benny Show, the Gulf Screen Guild show, and others. Honestly he doesn't really measure up to Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

Frank Fay - His radio resume is very lean. He spent one year on the Jack Haley Show (1937 - 1938) on NBC and maybe one possible appearance on the Rudy Valee show. His inclusion seems bogus.

Fibber & Molly McGee - See Previous posts here.

Jimmy Fidler - He was a gossip columnist with a radio show. His 15-minute NBC radio show, "Hollywood on the Air" ran 1933 to 1950. It's started on NBC and moved to CBS in 1938, then Mutual in 1941. Around through that list again returning to Mutual again in 1947.

Gracie Fields - She is an unusual inclusion as she was not even US-based for most of her career. In 1940 she fled to the USA to avoid being interned as an enemy alien. Her husband was Italian. The BBC gave her her own radio show in 1947 called "Our Gracie's Working Party." It was her only radio gig. 

W. C. Fields - Famous for portraying a misanthropic drunk on film and stage he also portrayed a misanthropic drunk on radio. After an "illness" kept him out of the movies he started guesting on radio programs including The Chase and Sanborn show where he made many appearances. He also guested on Dick Powell's Tuesday Night Party, and was in the Big Broadcast of 1938.

George Fisher - A real radio man with over 30 years at the mic. His resume includes a dozen stations including KFI-AM, KFWB-AM, KNX-AM and KCMJ-FM.

Tennessee Ernie Ford - He began his career as a singer on and announcer at WOPI-AM in Bristol, TN. He hosted "Bar Nothin' Ranch Time" on KXFM-AM and took off, he moved to KXLA in Pasadena shortly thereafter. a guest appearance on Dinner Bell Round Up boosted his singing career so much that he didn't need to go back to radio.

Arlene Francis - Her first big gig was in 1943, hosting the network radio game show Blind Date. It took off and went to TV in 1945. She later had a successful a talk program, "The Arlene Francis Show," on WOR-AM that ran from 1960 to 1984.

Alan Freed - See previous post here.

Jane Froman - She joined Henry Thies' orchestra as a vocalist at WLW-AM in about 1930. She landed her own show afterward Jane Froman and Her Dance Orchestra which ran into the fall of 1932.  In 1933 she relocated to New York City and began appearing on Chesterfield's "Music that Satisfies" program with Bing Crosby. In 1935 she began appearing on the Intimate Revue hosted by Bob Hope. She spent 1937 on the California's Hour and the "The Magic Key of RCA" and The Texaco Star Theatre for another 10 years.

Ed Gardner - See previous post here.

Dave Garroway - He began DJ-ing in the military in 1941 on Honolulu. After WWII ended he became a DJ at WMAQ-AM in Chicago. He was a jazz man all the way hosting several programs: The 11:60 Club, The Dave Garroway Show, and Reserved for Garroway. Billboard polls rated him best DJ in 1948 and 1949. In the 1970s he still had a shift at KFI-AM.

Floyd Gibbons - He was a war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in WWI and was injured several times and even lost an eye. His fame came as radio commentator and narrator of newsreels. He had his own half-hour new program heard Wednesday nights on the NBC Red Network.

Arthur Godfrey - In 1930 he became a radio announcer for the Baltimore station WFBR-AM, which later changed calls to WJZ. Late that year he relocated to D.C. and became an announcer on WRC-AM. In 1934 he started a morning music show complete with ukulele. He went on to run on his own CBS morning show "Arthur Godfrey Time."

Earl Godwin -  He covered Washington D.C. for NBC's Blue Network popular with politicos and listeners alike. Henry Ford liked him and made him the "Voice of Ford" on the NBC Blue Network into the mid 1940s.

Edwin F. Goldman - A popular bandleader as early as 1937 starting with the Cities Service Program. the program continued to air on the NBC Red Network, then NBC until 1956. He left sometime in the mid 1930s.

Bill Goodwin -  He was the announcer for the Burns and Allen radio program, and then TV program. He announced for the Charlie McCarthy program in 1943, hosted "What's New?" on WJZ-AM. In 19847 he got his own radio show, the Bill Goodwin show on CBS. It lasted 6 months. NBC tried again on television in 1951 with the "New Bill Goodwin show", with more music less comedy.

Gale Gordon - Best known for a reoccurring TV role on The Lucy Show, he also had a bit of radio tenure. He had a reoccurring role on  Fibber McGee and Molly and it's spin-off The Great Gildersleeve. But more notably he was the first actor to play the role of Flash Gordon, way back in 1935.

Freeman Gosden- A wireless operator in the US Navy in WWI, he teamed up with Charles Correll to form the duo that became Amos & Andy. See the Charles Correll post in the first segment here.

Billy Graham - The infamous evangelist operated a weekly radio program broadcast, The Hour of Decision. He hosted the incongruously named 30-minute program for 50 years. ABC carried it to 150 stations in the US. He taped the first episode at 830 WFGM-AM back in in 1950.

Jim Gray - He is a sports caster, I use the present tense because he's still alive. He's been on  ESPN, NBC Sports and CBS Sports and is syndicated by Westwood One. His fame is strongly stilted toward TV sports leaving it a mystery why he's in the category.

Charlotte Greenwood  - She was an actress who had surprise success on radio. The Charlotte Greenwood Show was just supposed to be a a summer fill-in replacement for the Bob Hope Show. It was popular enough to last five years more years.

WARC becomes WRC

International Radio Regulations are a big bureaucratic mess. Its often a case of too many lawyers and politicians and too few engineers. I cant decide if the World Administrative Radio Conference was the solution or an extension of the problem. WARC is a technical conference for the International Telecommunications Union. It gathers delegates from all member nations, and the ARRL to name a few.Their first meetings was in 1979, as a preparatory conference in Panama. The real 4-week conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland later that year. The meeting was long overdue. Surprisingly, the petty in-fighting was over-come and a few good things came of even this first gathering.

Three segments of the short wave band were set aside internationally for amateur shortwave use. These are 30 meters (10.100–10.150 MHz), 17 meters (18.068–18.168 MHz) and 12 meters (24.890–24.990 MHz). Today we call these the WARC bands. They also determined the radio identifications of medical transports, decided on a set of rules governing the geostationary orbits of broadcasting satellites and a slew of other rulings on unrelated topics

In 1995 they decided to change the name to The World Radio Communications Conference abbreviated WRC. You can look up their regulations by conference name.

• ITU World Administrative Radio Conference 1979 (WARC-79)
• ITU World Administrative Radio Conference 1984 (WARC-84)
• ITU World Administrative Radio Conference 1992 (WARC-92)
• ITU World Radiocommunications Conference 1995 (WRC-95)
• ITU World Radiocommunications Conference 1997 (WRC-97)
• ITU World Radiocommunications Conference 2000(WRC-2000)
• ITU World Radiocommunications Conference 2003 (WRC-2003)
• ITU World Radiocommunications Conference 2007 (WRC-2007)

Teentimers Club

NBC carried this little known show from 1946 through 1949. The program was aimed at teenage listeners hence the name "Teentimers." It debuted in 1946 running on Saturday mornings on WGN. The program sported appearances by Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, Louis Jordan, Lionel Hampton, Les Brown, Woody Herman, Jimmy Dorsey, and Cab Calloway. This was dance music. There are actually some 16-inch transcription discs known to exist of at least the Ellington performances. It was also carried on AFRS.

By the time WWII ended, Johnny Desmond was a sergeant and had sung for Gene Krupa and Glenn Miller. He came back and did some variety shows for NBC. But he also started recorded for RCA Victor and became a teen idol. In 1946 NBC pounced on him, they paid him $500 a week to sing on Teentimers.

But it was one of a number of these 1940s radio programs trying to reach teenagers which at the time were coming into their own as a market. 1450 WWDC-AM had a program called "Teentime revue" and "Teentime requests." 980 WRC-AM had Teentimer's Show. 

Another program ABC's Teen Town was created by Harold Stokes and hosted by Dick York (yes that guy from Bewitched.) That program actually changed it's name to Junior Junction to avoid brand confusion. It was carried on ABC affiliate WCFL in Chicago. That show ran from about 1947 until at least 1952. There's more about that show in the book The Golden Age of Chicago children's Television by Ted Okuda.

Spending for juvenile-focuses radio shows increased between 1941 and 1951 from $600k to $7 million. That's an increase of more than one thousand percent.  More here.