Radio Innovation

Since Nov. 2, 1920 when radio broadcasting flounced into the world to announce the landslide of Warren Gamaliel Harding, many honest U. S. industrialists have become what few honest industrialists have ever been in any other time or country: impresarios of the entertainment business. For radio advertising they have become showmen, have hired fiddlers, singers, comedians; have paid heavily for the privilege of diverting the public. But no advertiser bought time on the radio to put on another advertiser's program. That happened for the first time last week. James Henry Rand Jr. signed a contract whereby, beginning in October, "The March of TIME" will once more take the air--sponsored by Remington Rand, makers of typewriters, accounting machines, filing systems, safe cabinets. Notable was this as a business arrangement. Advertisers have sometimes paid for radio hours and secured "talent" who gave their services free for the sake of personal publicity, but the advertisers naturally reserved the right to decide on the type of program to be given. TIME would not allow any one to tinker its program. Able Mr. Rand still saw the chance of getting valuable advertising for his products by merely paying for the opportunity of letting TIME march on over the radio. In future radio announcers will say: "Remington Rand, featuring 'The March of TIME' "--and TIME'S program prepared by its editors will go on as in past years. Origin of this arrangement dates back two years, to 1931-32 when "The March of TIME" was first put on. After three months, when it left the air, a buzz of protests arose. Then TIME'S editors announced: "The March of TIME is, of course, an advertising campaign. Its specific purpose having been accomplished, TIME'S business department sees no need to continue spending some $6,000 a week on this particular form of advertising. . . . TIME will gladly cooperate in producing 'The March of TIME.' But TIME will pay for such radio advertising only when it desires such advertising." In 1932-33 TIME again put on "The March of TIME" and Columbia Broadcasting System gave the first six weeks broadcasting free in order to have the program on the air. The program, long a favorite, described by some as a public service, then became so beyond question: numbers of high schools prescribed it as compulsory listening for their students, parents applauded, radio experts paid the compliment of attempting imitations. James Henry Rand Jr., Harvard halfback in 1907 and 1908, has always done things in his own way. In 1915, aged 28, he quit his father's Rand Co., maker of card index systems, because his father would not launch a $1,000,000 advertising campaign. With $10,000 borrowed from his uncle George Franklin Rand (father of the present head of the Marine Midland group with 22 banks in New York State), he set up his own American Kardex Co. Ten years later James Jr., grown big and successful, bought his father's company. He bought others too: Index Visible (from Professor Irving Fisher). Library Bureau. Add Index (from American Can Co.). Climax came in 1927 when he merged with Remington Typewriter. Dalton Adding Machine Co. and Powers Accounting Machine Co. to form Remington Rand, a corporation that covered virtually the entire field of business equipment. Now 46, president of Remington Rand, he still looks for worlds to conquer, has been prominent with Lessing Julius Rosenwald (Sears, Roebuck scion) in promoting the "Committee for the Nation" which last spring was busy advising the U. S. to devalue the dollar.

Still doing things in his own way forthright James Rand Jr. concluded that two short minutes of dignified publicity in the half-hour "March of TIME" program would do more to sell his products than many minutes of high-pressure "blurbing" in a program less straightforward, businesslike and serviceable. He was content to pay for the full half-hour and let TIME'S editors carry on free-handed as of old. The program will come every Friday night at 8:30 p. m. (Eastern Standard Time), the same half-hour and the same Columbia coast-to-coast network over which TIME has marched since March 1931. Direction will be as hereto fore, under Arthur Pryor Jr.. son of the bandmaster, program conductor for Bat ten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. With it will come music by the same band, under able young Howard Barlow.

Foremost among the TIME actors are William Adams who speaks as two Presidents. Roosevelt and von Hindenburg, Jack Smart who speaks as Huey Long; Ted de Corsia who does Mussolini and Herbert Hoover. Alfred Shirley is three British subjects, Ramsay MacDonald, the Prince of Wales and Mahatma Gandhi. Marian Hopkinson is Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt; Westbrook Van Voorhis, Hitler; Porter Hall, Stalin. Barbara Bruce is Frances Perkins and Mrs. James Roosevelt (the President's mother). Remains to be seen whether Pedro de Cordoba (ex-King Alfonso of Spain), John Battle (Vice President Garner) and Charles Slattery (Al Smith) will have much to say in 1933-34. Some strong-voiced actor, yet unchosen, will get the big role of General Hugh S. Johnson, sulphuric chief of NRA.

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