Time Marches Back

Five months ago TIME discontinued its Friday evening radio re-enactments of news events ("The March of Time") because Time, Inc. deemed that continued expenditure of $6,000 a week on radio advertising was not then justified (TIME, Feb. 29). Immediately a flood of protests from radio listeners engulfed Time, Inc. The number of protests was not huge as radio "fan mail" goes (22,231 letters). But the letters were distinguished by their uniform literacy (chief sources: business & professional men & women, students) and their emphatic insistence that "The March of Time" be continued for its educational service.

TIME'S publishers entertained many an offer from business organizations for resumption of the broadcasts under joint sponsorship. All such negotiations failed because "The March of Time," to be effective, must be independent. A fearless presentation of news might well tread upon the toes of the cosponsor, cause him to feel that the advertising value (to him) of the program was impaired.

Sustained laments from listeners and newspaper radio critics over the absence of the program forced Time, Inc. to conclude that while radio advertising might not now be an absolute necessity, the promised goodwill value could not be ignored. Last week TIME signed with Columbia Broadcasting System for resumption of "The March of Time" Nov. 4.

CBS's youthful President William Samuel Paley, honeymooning at Honolulu with his bride, the former Mrs. John Hearst, was notified of the decision. Straightway flashed a cable from President Paley to his First Vice President Edward Klauber in Manhattan. Said President Paley in effect: "Big political news will be breaking before November. Election campaigns will approach fever heat in September and October. National issues will loom large in the public eye. Let CBS augment its facilities for reporting that news by presenting 'The March of Time' two months earlier as a sustaining feature entirely at its own expense."

Thus, starting Sept. 9, "The March of Time" returns to the air as a presentation of Columbia Broadcasting System, over CBS's entire network (Fridays at 8:30 p. m. E. D. S. T.). On Nov. 4 the program will return to the sponsorship of Time, Inc., to continue until mid-March over substantially the same coast to coast network as last year.

From their beginning in September the programs will be prepared, as before, by the editors of TIME, with the assistance of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, advertising agency whose able Donald Stauffer will resume his direction of the program.

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