King Benny

In the spirited contest for most popular U. S. radio performer, Comedian Jack Benny has since October 1937 run a close second to a perverse but inanimate object --the saucy ventriloquist's dummy known as Charlie McCarthy. At the 1939 finish, Charlie (Chase and Sanborn Hour) had an estimated 27,000,000 Sunday-night listeners: Jell-O's Jack Benny, an hour earlier on the same NBC-Red network, 24,000,000. Beginning Jan. 7, Standard Brands pared the Chase and Sanborn program to a half-hour, saving some $7,500 in airtime charges, plus salaries of Hollywood fixtures like Dorothy Lamour, Don Ameche.

Last week the first Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting (Crossley) reports for 1940 showed a new king of radio. Jack Benny, a three-time front runner before Charlie came along, was in first place again. In his first month as a half-hour program, Charlie had lost over 1,000,000 listeners. In the same month Jack Benny's chuckly half-hour had picked up an estimated 3.000,000 listeners.

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