Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City

3 A Pleasing Spectacle

41 three A Pleasing Spectacle Theskywave,bouncingbetweentheatmosphereandtheearth,carriedWSM’s 5,000-watt, clear channel signal remarkable distances. In the early 1930s, the station received letters from Honolulu, New Zealand, and Northern Ontario. Margaret Joyce, the ten-year-old daughter of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman stationed near the Arctic Circle, wrote a letter that traveled seven hundred miles by Eskimo-driven dogsled to a railway,and ultimately to WSM. All to say, “We have a dandy radio set, and have been listening to your music . We enjoy it very much.” Gustavo Barros of Havana, Cuba, wrote to alert WSM that he’d been translating its program schedules and promoting it over his own local radio station. “I hear your station WSM every day, and believe me, it’s perfect clear and strong,” he wrote. “Your station is well known in Havana because I tell them that your programs are some of the best in the United States.” But even before WSM’s first power boost, Edwin Craig hoped for more. There had been inklings during the radio conferences of the early 1920s that 50,000-watt stations might come to pass. And even by the time WSM went on the air,some prestige stations like WJZ and WEAF,both out of New York, had been granted selective permission to venture above the legal limit of5,000 watts,with excellent results for reception.By 1929,four stations in the country were reaching the nation with 50,000 watts. In June 1930 the Federal Radio i-xx_1-286_Havi.indd 41 7/17/07 10:27:41 AM 42—air castle of the south Commission (FRC) announced hearings that fall, where each clear channel station could vie to be one of twenty granted 50,000-watt or “superpower” status.Theywouldbecompetingagainstoneanotherbasedontheirproposals to maintain gold-standard programming,cutting-edge technology,and—most important—service to rural America. Craig needed insider firepower in Washington,so he retained the services of an attorney there named Louis Caldwell, who, as former chief counsel for the FRC, was in a potent position to lobby the agency. Caldwell, along with Runcie Clements,Harry Stone,and National Life lawyer Thomas Tyne,took WSM’s case to the FRC on a Monday morning in late September in the National Press Building between the White House and Capitol Hill. And they were met there by a younger man from the North. Craig had called on Jack DeWitt, twenty-four years old, his mind charged with all he’d seen at Bell Labs, to vouch for WSM’s technical leadership. After Caldwell fended off a last-minute bid by Memphis station WMC to join in the competition for full power with the five other applicants,Clements offered an overview of National Life, now with $26 million in total assets, $310 million of life insurance in force,and three thousand agents.He said the company had so far invested $330,000 in WSM and that it was prepared to spend another $250,000 to achieve 50,000 watts. Sponsored shows brought in $250 per hour in the evening,but he said that revenues didn’t come close to covering costs and that WSM “is not and never has been,in the strictest sense of the word, a commercial station.” It refused to air ads that included prices or claims of superiority. It routinely turned away quack doctors and patent medicines.ItdidnotadvertiseNationalLifeitself,saveforstationidentification. “We are content,” he said, “with the good will which we believe the station has established and is maintaining for us among listeners.” He did concede under questioning that National Life was funding WSM in part with money that would otherwise have been directed toward advertising and marketing. Stone’s testimony focused on the station’s content. WSM now ran most days from about 6:30 a.m.to 11:30 p.m.,totaling about one hundred hours of programming per week, evenly divided between local features and network shows,he said.It employed eighty-one musicians,full or part time,including seven in a concert orchestra, ten in a dance orchestra, five pianists, ten vocal soloists,and thirty-three other regular entertainers.Stone spoke of “the most complete music library in the South” and a full-time musical director. The station broadcast football games from Birmingham, Atlanta, and Knoxville, and had, he claimed, arranged to bring the Kentucky Derby to the NBC neti -xx_1-286_Havi.indd 42 7/17/07 10:27:41 AM [3.141.244.201] Project MUSE (2024-04...