Cooperation with the Red Network The Red and Blue Networks shared a common pool of engineers and facilities, on its NBC Blue program, December 1, 1929. Note that the text implies that the NBC Blue, NBC Orange (West Coast) and NBC Red networks were all participating in the broadcast. A slightly later example of cooperation came on the evening of Sunday, December 1, 1929, when the famed "Laird of the Music Halls",
Sir Harry Lauder, appeared on a coast-to-coast hookup that originated from
KFI in
Los Angeles (later an NBC Red station, but at this time part of NBC's West Coast "
Orange Network"), but was distributed by
WJZ, which, as noted, was the key station of the Blue Network; advertisements suggest that certain NBC Red stations, as well as stations in the Orange Network, supplemented the network. A description of this broadcast is contained in a 1930 pamphlet put out by the Enna Jettick Shoe Company; Enna Jettick sponsored the first of Lauder's performances that night on its "Enna Jettick Melodies" show, which was followed later by another performance during the time ordinarily used by
The Collier Hour. At least as late as January 1939, in spite of the fact that by this time NBC was seeking to differentiate the images of its NBC Red and NBC Blue networks (see below), it would still arrange for special, joint broadcasts, such as a special two-hour presentation of "
The Magic Key of RCA" musical program (normally an NBC Blue program, sponsored by RCA's Victor records division) entitled "Salute to 1939."
Blue Network function through the mid-1930s Ironically, even though the Blue Network generally was not given the more popular programs, it was the network that broadcast ''
Amos 'n Andy'' at the height of its popularity in the early 1930s, when on average over half of the nation's radio audience would tune in to the show. During the 1932–1933 season, Standard Oil of New Jersey (
Esso) sponsored an unusual program, the
Five-Star Theater, which each weeknight presented a show in a different format. The marquee show in this cycle was
Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, which starred
Groucho Marx and
Chico Marx. Considering the show's relatively early (7:30 p.m. ET) time slot, it did rather well in the ratings, but it could not compete with the much stronger ratings produced by Esso's arch-rival
Texaco, which sponsored
Ed Wynn on NBC Red, and the show ended after one year. More commonly, the Blue Network would operate as a quasi-"farm team" for the Red Network, in terms of entertainment programs.
Bob Hope (in 1935 and again in 1937),
Jack Benny (in 1932),
Fibber McGee and Molly (in 1935), and
Information, Please! (in 1938) are all examples of shows that debuted on the Blue Network before eventually transitioning over to larger audiences on the Red Network. On occasion, shows would make brief stops at NBC Blue before moving elsewhere, such as the
Lux Radio Theatre (1934–35) and Will Rogers' program (1933), both of which would move to CBS. '', which had a brief run on NBC Blue in 1934–35 before moving for a long run on CBS. At some level, the Blue Network was known in the late 1920s and early 1930s for its children's programming. There are at least two volumes extant, from an Akron-based publishing house, which are collections of stories which purport to have been part of Blue Network programs. A copy of one, in the collection of E.O. Costello, shows a cover with two children listening to a late 1920s-style radio, from which shimmering images of fairy-tale characters are emerging. Other than the title (and the radio on the cover), the precise nature of the ties to the Blue Network is not known; the book does not even make direct reference to the National Broadcasting Company. It can also be said that this is an indication that the Blue Network had a well-established identity of its own by 1929.
Problems The descriptions of the material contained in the NBC History Files at the
Library of Congress appear to indicate that at some level, there was discontent with the way NBC was managing the Blue Network vis-à-vis the Red Network. For example, one folder in the NBC History Files contains a three-page letter dated June 28, 1934, from station
WSYR in
Syracuse, New York, which complains of the neglect of the Blue Network in favor of the Red Network. This point can said to be reinforced firstly by a memorandum dated September 18, 1935, in which the Blue complained about its lack of access to broadcasts of the
World Series, and secondly by a letter dated shortly after that, on October 5, 1935, which is a communication from
Hearst Radio complaining that ''
Amos 'n Andy'' and the
Al Pearce programs had been moved from the Blue Network to the Red Network, and complaining in general about the weakness of the Blue's programming. Indeed, the NBC History Files contain a February 1937 in-house memorandum so caustic of the performance of the Blue Network that the author's name was redacted from the document. A significant issue with the NBC Blue Network may have been its size. It started, in January 1927, with 7 stations, had grown to 17 by the end of 1929, but still had only 33 stations by 1937. This would have made it significantly smaller than its rivals. In 1938,
Mutual had 107 affiliates, and CBS had 114; the Blue Network, by contrast, was not able to blanket the United States when NBC Red sold out its time, with the result that during 1937–1938, the Blue Network's revenues were generally falling, while NBC Red's increased. McLeod has noted that as of 1938, NBC had 23 stations in its core "Basic Red" group, and 24 in its "Basic Blue" group, with 107 stations that could be Red or Blue depending on the needs of a sponsor; the relative ratings (and thus revenues) for NBC Red programs versus NBC Blue counterparts suggests that sponsors chose to use Red more often than Blue.
Image Perhaps more in line with the common perception of the Blue Network as a smaller, but more high-brow and public affairs-centered network was that it was the original home of the
NBC Symphony Orchestra broadcasts, led by Maestro
Arturo Toscanini. In a similar vein, one of the Blue Network's longest running programs was ''
America's Town Meeting of the Air'', a current-affairs discussion program. Both
Lowell Thomas and
Walter Winchell's news programs were also broadcast over the Blue Network. Both of these shows were the Blue's highest rated programs in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In an interesting variation on the talent shows hosted by
Major Bowes, the
Sherwin-Williams paint company sponsored the
Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air for a number of years on Sunday afternoons in the 1930s and 1940s, in which singers competed for a chance to win contracts with the famed opera troupe.
The National Farm and Home Hour, a show backed for many years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was one of the Blue Network's standout daytime programs, and would be a part of its lineup from 1929 until March 1945, when the program shifted to NBC. Along with the
NBC Symphony Orchestra broadcasts, the
Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts were part of the "crown jewels" of NBC Blue. A sober, dignified pamphlet issued by the network in 1937 stated that the broadcasts were under
RCA sponsorship, and "[t]hrough the medium of nationwide NBC Network broadcasting, Grand Opera has been given to the entire nation. No longer is it reserved for the privileged few – now even the most isolated listeners throughout the United States are able to enjoy the world's finest music at their own firesides. The National Broadcasting Company (...) is proud to be the means of bringing the Metropolitan Opera to American radio listeners." The pamphlet notes that 78 stations broadcast these opera performances in 1937, and that reception for the program was "nationwide", something moderately unusual for an NBC Blue broadcast. Radio historian Elizabeth McLeod has suggested, aside from a brief period where NBC Red and NBC Blue had different chime-sequences in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the two networks were *not* differentiated for many years, which would certainly be consistent with the roster of shows described above. She points out, with some justice, that NBC Red also broadcast a number of high-brow programs such as
The Voice of Firestone,
The Atwater Kent Hour, and the
Cities Service Concerts. Furthermore, she points out that until the 1936–1937 period, the "back office" support for the networks was the same, and often stations would shift from one network to another, depending on sponsor needs. It was only when the
Federal Communications Commission began investigating network practices, McLeod believes, that efforts were made by
RCA to differentiate the two networks, and to fully position NBC Blue as a high-brow/public affairs network. (In the same light, it has been suggested that the congressional pressure was the real reason the NBC Symphony Orchestra was created.) The NBC History Files at the
Library of Congress lend support to the notion that NBC was gradually groping for a way to differentiate the Red Network from the Blue Network. For example, they contain a confidential memorandum, dated May 13, 1936, which sets forth a network policy against mixing the Red and Blue network stations. (Compare and contrast this with the way the Harry Lauder broadcast of 1929 was handled, above.) There also exists an October 1938 sales force memorandum, which contains talking points on how to differentiate the Blue Network from the Red Network and
CBS. Even as far back as December 1932, NBC had set forth a policy banning specific references not only to CBS, but even to the Red Network. Of note is the fact that NBC began to step up efforts to expand the network; while it had 33 stations in 1937, this total had nearly tripled by January 1941, when the network had 92 stations coast to coast. Among the improvements cited and proposed were increasing the broadcast power of WJZ and KDKA to 50,000 watts each, adding new stations to the group such as WEAN, WICC and WEBR, adding a Pacific Coast network (with KGO, KECA, KFSD, KEX, KJR and KGA) and expanding the daytime power of such stations as KOIL, KWK and KSO. This ad campaign, in a booklet tipped into the book, also showed a lengthy list of sponsors that had purchased Blue Network time. As the book states: "All of these additions and improvements are daily increasing the effectiveness of the NBC Blue Network. All contribute considerably to the listener's pleasure and to the advertiser's sales results." In the months leading up to the January 1942 spinoff of the Blue Network, NBC undertook vigorous steps to create separate brand images for the Red and Blue Networks. To a certain extent, this had been going on since at least the summer of 1939, when
Time magazine indicated that NBC was undertaking an extensive build-up of NBC Blue. In both the fall of 1937, and the fall of 1941, NBC would specifically identify a program as being broadcast on the "Red Network of the National Broadcasting Company", and at least in the fall of 1941, would have a similar tag for the Blue Network. An example of this buildup comes in "Alice in Sponsor-Land", a publication put out by
RCA some time in mid-1941 to market that network's shows. This book focuses squarely on the Red Network, describing its entertainment programming, without any reference to the Blue Network. Above the lineup of stations in the back of the volume is the tag-line: "This is the Red Network of the National Broadcasting Company." In addition, throughout the book are slogans such as "Any time is Good Time on NBC Red!" This book, in part, demonstrates exactly how NBC differentiated the Red Network from the Blue Network in the fall of 1941, when, as noted, the Blue Network was still a part of NBC.
Programming, 1935–1941 What follows are some examples of the programming on NBC Blue that illustrate a gradual shift in tone. The official website for
Helen Hayes shows a number of programs that she did for NBC Blue during this time, including a
Eugene O'Neill play cycle in August 1937, two different dramatic series of her own in 1935–1936 (one sponsored by
General Foods), and an appearance on a Blue series in 1940, one which brought famous people who would explain why a particular book has been their favorite. The "preview" section of the November 28, 1938, edition of
Time gives some idea of the kind of programming that the Blue Network carried. On Friday, November 25 at 4 p.m., it carried a speech by then-
Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Later that night, it carried the welterweight championship fight from
Madison Square Garden, followed by Wagnerian opera from Chicago's Lyric Opera. Saturday, November 26 shows that the Blue carried both the
Army–Navy football game and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The
Town Meeting of the Air on Thursday night carried a debate among economists as to whether an economic plan for world peace was possible. For one season in the early 1940s, a high-profile sponsored program on the Blue was
The Cavalcade of America, a show dramatizing historical events which was sponsored by
DuPont. The show, which debuted in 1935 on CBS and moved to the Blue in January 1940, was created at a time when the firm was under attack for being, in effect, a "merchant of death", and this show, which focused on American historical figures, was one way DuPont tried to burnish its image. Certainly, the show had high production values, as can be witnessed by its use of
Raymond Massey for a show in February 1940 on
Abraham Lincoln, as described in the February 26, 1940, issue of
Time. It was also known for the use of university professors to vet the historical accuracy of the stories, as well as scripts by future Pulitzer Prize-winner
Arthur Miller. (This show would eventually stay with NBC Red and NBC, starting in 1941, and the network would continue to broadcast the show even into the age of television).
Proposed sale During the late 1930s, NBC seriously considered disposing of the Blue Network on its own initiative. There are substantial materials contained in the NBC History Files at the
Library of Congress illustrating this point. The fact that
David Sarnoff, the head of
RCA, was involved in these discussions indicates the high level at which this proposal was given consideration. A plain reading of the finding guide at the Library of Congress on the NBC History Files does not disclose the precise nature of these discussions, though the fact that these discussions existed is of record. In 1943, after the Blue Network had been spun off (but before its eventual sale), a promotional publication noted that: "As far back as 1932, a group of executives of the National Broadcasting Company conceived the idea that The Blue Network could progress faster and serve its stations, its advertisers and the listening public much better if, instead of being a part of NBC it were to become an independent network." == Divestiture, 1940–1943 ==