Mutual Broadcasting System

Origins

On September 29, 1934, four AM radio stations—WXYZ in Detroit, WGN in Chicago, WOR in New York, and WLW in Cincinnati—agreed to form a cooperative program sharing radio network. WGN and WOR controlled the operation (at first dubbed the Quality Group) and contracted with AT&T for telephone lines to link Chicago and New York, with all four stations agreeing to share the costs. The Mutual Broadcasting System was incorporated in Illinois a month later. When WXYZ (which had contributed the popular western adventure program The Lone Ranger to begin the network) withdrew to join the NBC network, Canadian station CKLW in Windsor, Ontario (serving the Detroit market), replaced it. The Lone Ranger remained on Mutual until 1942.

After a year on the air, the new network carried 40 hours of sustaining (nonadvertiser supported) programs and 20 hours of commercial programming per week. The first coast-to-coast Mutual broadcast came in September 1936, and by 1940 the network served 160 stations, about 20 percent of those then on the air, though some were also served by other networks. Most of Mutual's stations were in rural areas and had less power than the affiliates of the older national networks. Indeed, many held primary affiliations with CBS or NBC and only a secondary relationship with Mutual. Still, Mutual had more affiliates than any other network—a record it held into the 1980s, long after the demise of most network programming.

When Mutual won the rights to carry the 1938 and 1939 baseball World Series broadcasts, CBS and NBC would not allow their affiliate stations to contract with Mutual for the popular sportscasts. Mutual's competitive problems and complaints to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) contributed to the latter's investigation of “chain” [Page 924]or network radio from 1938 to 1941. The FCC's new network rules were upheld in a landmark 1943 Supreme Court decision, helping to even the playing field for Mutual.

Mutual was the first national network to include FM stations as affiliates after World War II, by which time the network reached nearly 85 percent of the nation's homes. Yet it still operated as a cooperative, without a keystone station or headquarters in New York as the other networks featured. Most programs were produced by WOR or WGN.

Mutual News

Mutual began to carry more news as the European political crisis worsened in the late 1930s. Listeners heard correspondents via shortwave during the Munich Crisis of 1938, including London representative John Steele and Berlin correspondent Sigrid Schultz (who may have been the first woman to serve as an overseas radio news correspondent). Mutual also picked up reports from various news agency stringers including Walter Kerr of United Press.

Mutual took advantage of a cost-saving technique when, beginning in early 1938, WOR recorded English-language news broadcasts transmitted by European shortwave stations (especially the BBC Empire Service), and Mutual rebroadcast them unedited, often juxtaposing opposing sides. This technique drew considerable praise from radio critics as a way of allowing listeners to hear all the points of view on the news of the day, and enabling them to judge the propaganda for themselves without the commentary offered on CBS and NBC.

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