Cheerio

Day after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby (1932), U. S. radio listeners first heard Harold Thomas Henry (Boake) Carter's news comments on a national hookup. Long before the baby's body had been found, Commentator Carter had become the British baritone Cassandra of news broadcasting, cloaking his accounts of daily events in a tone of dark menace. Last year a menace vague as his own rose over the Boake Carter broadcasts, has hovered there ever since.

Commentator Carter talked himself into trouble with C. I. O. unions. Pickets marched in front of Station WCAU (Philadelphia) where he did his broadcasting, and it was persistently rumored that his five-year-long association with his sponsor, the Philco Radio & Television Corp., would not outlast the contract then in effect. At the beginning of 1938 Newscaster Carter and Philco parted company. Promptly he was signed by General Foods to broadcast for Huskies and Post Toasties. Thereupon Philadelphia's C. I. O. Council passed a boycott resolution against General Foods products.

At a January meeting between Commentator Carter and union leaders, he announced that he would refrain from any direct comment on labor. Said he: "It takes two to make an argument, and I won't argue."

Because Marjorie Post Davies, wife of New Deal Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, was a director of General Foods, there were dark hints that the New Deal had gagged Boake Carter, whose crusty comments have had a decidedly agin-the-government tang. But General Foods President Colby M. Chester is stanchly anti-New Deal. Last week, when it was announced that Boake Carter would say his last General Foods cheerio August 26, the rumors grew louder. Official reason for failure to renew the contract: The change from Daylight Saving Time would bring the broadcasts to western radios at 4:30 p. m., too early an hour for most listeners, and better time is not available on any nationwide network.

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