[78-L] Panic..or myth? (Hey, it was 73 years ago tonight, too)

[Elizabeth McLeod]

on 11/1/11 9:33 AM Rodger Holtin wrote:

>Today we have channel surfers and they are not a new phenomenon of the TV 
>era (cf "Twisting the Dials" by Hare & Jones - now we have some 78 
>content, too!)
> 
>What *ELSE* might have the dial twisters of October 31 1938 have heard at 
>that time?
>We've established NBC's superiority and CBS as the also-ran at that time 
>slot, but what about other networks (Mutual?) or local stations?  I know a 
>lot of the small power stations signed off at dark, and if you had a 
>decent radio there were a lot of clear channel stations available at that 
>time of night, particularly east of the Mississippi.
Here in New England you had some pretty weak choices -- there was the public-affairs program on WEEI that Donna mentioned that pre-empted Welles, NBC Blue afflilates were carrying a musical feature from San Francisco with Ernest Gill and his Orchestra, and the Colonial Network was preempting Mutual's Bach cantata concert series by Alfred Wallerstein to carry Father Coughlin. Clearly, Chase & Sanborn owned that time slot.

Elizabeth