Tuesday Night

Night of nights on the radio* (and a nightmare to cinema box offices) is traditionally Sunday. This season another big radio night has popped up to plague cinemen: Tuesday. Of the 45 U. S. weekly radio shows credited with better than average audiences by Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting for January,/- ten were Tuesday-nighters, and three of these--Fibber McGee & Molly, Bob Hope, Pot o' Gold--were among radio'seight leading programs. Other Tuesday-night mainstays: Big Town, Information Please, We, the People, Aldrich Family, Battle of the Sexes, Court of Missing Heirs, Cavalcade of America, Second Husband, Uncle Walter's Doghouse.

The newsiest whizzer on Tuesday nights is Pot o' Gold, sponsored by Turns, which offers $1,000 each week over the telephone to someone selected by a studio Wheel of Fortune out of a collection of U. S. telephone books. In its brief span on the air (since Sept. 26), Pot o' Gold has handed out $20,000 to stay-at-homes from Massachusetts to California, has almost tripled its audience to a hopeful 15,000,000 or so. Despite the enormous odds against winning, some ardent rainbow-chasers do no telephoning while Pot o' Gold is on the air (to avoid busy signals). Many who venture out during the program prudently leave someone at home by the phone, just in case. And many telephone subscribers who previously had unlisted phones now have their names listed.

Pot o' Gold was permitted on the strict NBC air in belief that it was no lottery. Generally a lottery involves chance, prize and consideration. Pot o' Gold had chance and prize money, but it peddled no tickets. For a chance at the prize, no one had to pay or to do anything. But from the start, the Federal Communications Commission has been pestered with hundreds of complaints about Pot o' Gold. Some came from straight moralists, a few from folks who thought they should have won. But most were from radio stations which had refused similar programs in the belief they were lotteries--and from cinema exhibitors who were losing customers on Tuesday nights. Last week FCC did something drastic-sounding about Pot o' Gold: handed the whole file of complaints over to the Department of Justice, got the G-Men started on the radio rainbow's trail.

*Exception: Joe Louis fight nights, several of which have had the biggest audiences in radio history. Against Chilean Arturo Godoy last week (see p. 52), Joe had a 95-station U. S. hookup, an NBC short-wave pipe line to 54 Latin and South American stations.

/- C. A. B. figures for the 1939-40 season have indicated big increases in radio listening, generally traced to: 1) a war-inspired zest for news; 2) better shows. In January, tuners stuck closer to their radios than ever before, probably because of the U. S. cold snap.

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