Dear Mom

For the past four months, the major networks have scrambled desperately to be first on deck with a program for the 16,316,908 draft eligibles and their families. Last week CBS put on a show designed not only to corral this made-to-order audience but also to be spotted opposite (and stymie) Radio's Number One Boy Jack Benny, who attracts upwards of 11,000,000 families of listeners for NBC each week. Known as Dear Mom, the CBS show is patterned after Ed Streeter's Dere Mable letters of World War I, is sponsored by Wrigley's gum.

As full of corn as a silo. Dear Mom recounts the adventures of an addlepated rookie named Homer Stubbs, and his highborn pal Red Foster, son of a factory owner, who helps him badger a tough top-sergeant called Monihan. Devised by stocky, moon-faced Robert Newton Brown, CBS program director, and writer W. Ray Wilson, Dear Mom is supervised by Major Frank Collins, a morale officer on the executive staff of the 6th Corps Area. The program whips into a description of the joys of camp life, introduces Homer scratching away at a letter to his mother. Its first episode last week dealt with Homer's arrival at camp, next one will reveal him on garbage detail.

Aired on Sunday evening, at 6:55 p.m., Dear Mom will take five minutes from the preceding Gene Autry show in order to get the jump on Benny's Jell-O program which goes on at 7.

Typical Dear Mom chatter: "How do I feel about the Army? Boy, it's gonna be my meat and gravy. I'm sure anticipatin' it with relish. All I want is to find some body I can cuss--you know . . . like them two guys in the movies did . . . Sergeant Quirt and Captain Flagg."

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