Hi-Yo, Silver, Plated

Ever since 1934, a few lively bars of the William Tell Overture and the wild, hyper-Western cry "Hi-Yo, Silver, away!" has announced that the Lone Ranger was riding again on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Last month the Ranger was riding a new range. The Blue Network had successfully outbid MBS, has been awarded the program (7:30 p.m. E.W.T.) by Sponsor General Mills.

But Mutual, with a million young listeners who have the cowboys-&-Indians habit, had to have a substitute for the Lone Ranger. Just in time, the forsaken network remembered Red Ryder, "six feet of redheaded trigger lightning," famed in boys' books, N.E.A.-syndicated comic strips, cinema serials, and, oddly enough, first serialized for radio by the Blue, 16 weeks ago on the Pacific Coast.

Dreamed up by ex-Cowboy Fred Harman in 1938, the Ryder had appeared in 640 newspapers in every State in the union, had accumulated a daily following of more than 13,000,000 readers. Mutual decided to tilt high-minded Ryder against masked Ranger. They put Red on a Mutual hookup at the same hour. To the tune of The Dying Cowboy the Ryder thundered in on his horse, Thunder, finished in a dead heat against Silver, the Ranger's hi-yo pal.

Seldom had a loyal radio audience floundered in such a quandary. To add to the confusion: on the West Coast, Blue continued to carry Red Ryder, Mutual continued to carry the Lone Ranger. Said one horse-opera fancier: "All we need now is a gun fight between those two."

Last week a first statistical check, by C. E. Hooper, Inc., on the network rivalry divulged: Mutual's Ryder had raced in with a listener rating of 4.8 against the Ranger's tally of 3.3. With this small triumph on record, Mutual announced that, beginning next September, it would pit Superman, "The All-American American," against Jack Armstrong, "The All-American Boy," which it loses to the Blue in August.

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