Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Tune in Tomorrow

They tried to save network radio. It was a lost cause.

Since the late 1920s, people wanted television in their homes. It took some time to perfect it. After the war, there was a steady stream of stations signing on. That brought advertising money. Advertising money that had been going to radio. The big-time network shows started disappearing because there wasn’t the money to pay for them.

NBC, CBS, ABC and Mutual had all kinds of capital tied up in their radio networks and they didn’t want to see that collapse. CBS’ reaction was a publicity campaign to tell everyone that radio still had lots of listeners and there would be even more—and all willing to buy products advertised on radio.

To get its point across, CBS commissioned UPA to make several animated promotional films. The first, More Than Meets The Eye, was made in 1952 to describe the impact of the human voice in advertising. The second, in 1953, was It's Time for Everybody, and dealt with the changing patterns of daily life in the U.S. CBS claimed it had been seen by nearly a quarter of a million business and professional people.

The third was Tune in Tomorrow, previewed for newsmen on Thursday September 30, 1954 before being shown to advertising, business and broadcast industry groups. It looked ahead to where radio would be in 1960. The release, according to Broadcasting magazine of Oct. 4, 1954, coincided with new nighttime programming offering Monday through Friday runs of newsman Allan Jackson, commentator Lowell Thomas, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Choraliers, Edward R. Murrow, Mr. and Mrs. North, Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall, and Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons.

Psychic, CBS was not. Mr. Keen needed tracing himself in 1955 when CBS told him to get lost. 1960 saw the last of the big-time evening shows on the network; the venerable Amos and Andy didn’t even have a sponsor when they were taken off the air on November 25th. The sainted Murrow was unwelcome and gone, too.

Since someone will mention this if I don’t, CBS had a later relationship with UPA when it put The Boing Boing Show on the air in 1956. That's even though the network owned a cartoon studio (Terrytoons) at the time.

Let’s look at Tune in Tomorrow. The cartoon (not this version) has been cleaned up and released on one of Steve Stanchfield’s fine Thunderbean discs, with commentary by Mike Kazaleh and Jerry Beck. I haven’t heard what they had to say about the cartoon, but I understand it was directed by Bobe Cannon. Broadcasting helpfully tells us “Narration of ‘Tune in Tomorrow’ was by John Cone and Harry Marble, sound direction by Gordon Auchincloss and music adaptation by Bernard Herrmann.” What it doesn’t say is the voice at the start and at the end is that of Tony Marvin, among the people fired by Arthur Godfrey. In the 1960s, he ended up on Mutual doing top-hour news, which is about all the networks were airing.