My contributions came in the form of writing and voicing features that ran on a little-heard public affairs show called “Listen Closely.” The checks were good, helping supplement the meager income I was being paid to perform news duties on a local AM/FM combo.
But back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, many St. Louisans were regularly heard over the CBS Radio Network. When the KMOX studios were constructed in the Mart Building at the height of the Depression, they were built to be a major production facility for CBS. By any standard, they were the finest money could buy.
Back then, local stations might have contributed a show or two to the network, and that was the case with KSD and KWK here, but KMOX was different. Some years, the station fed several hundred shows to CBS. It was often literally the case that local listeners would be hearing to a program produced in one of the station’s studios while the rest of the country would be listening to a second program being produced just down the hall.
It’s hard now to imagine that kind of activity. KMOX had over 150 employees, and that wasn’t counting many of the free-lance actors and musicians they used. Many of those actors could be heard in different shows on several local stations as well.
The heyday of radio in St. Louis was good for the city too. Civic leaders felt that the town benefited every time St. Louis was mentioned in the network shows. The money paid to all those staffers and free-lancers flowed through the economy at a time when it was really needed.
A hillbilly group might play on the local station for a sponsor like Uncle Dick Slack’s furniture store in East St. Louis and then go on the network with a similar program sponsored by Peruna, the popular patent medicine of the day. Listeners would identify the performers with the advertiser and the money continued to flow. While the locals heard a cooking show from Jane Porter’s Kitchen, the nation heard the Mary Lee Taylor cooking show sponsored by Pet Milk.
My network experience was a thrill to a young guy, but it’s hard to imagine that kind of excitement in radio today. It was fun to challenge myself to be better and find even more challenges. Many times it was necessary to be a self-starter, not knowing what the outcome would be, and operating on faith. Maybe a serious dose of self-motivation, along with well-educated employees, could jump-start a business that has become stagnant and dull.
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