Farmers' Hour

When NBC was ordered by the Federal Communications Commission to give up one of its networks (TIME, May 12), it appealed to U.S. parsons and farmers. To the service of God it had rendered plenty of time via its Blue Network. To farmers it had given radio's biggest single program: the National Farm & Home Hour. This week, with the shadow of dissolution hovering over it, the Blue Network celebrated the 4,000th performance of its farm show.

The celebration provided good bucolic fare. Secretary of Agriculture Claude Raymond Wickard spoke from Washington, then an announcer in Indiana described the Secretary's Carroll County farm while Wickard livestock supplied a grunting, snuffling obbligato. From Indiana the program wandered to a Georgia vegetable garden, a poultry house in California, a wheat field in North Dakota. As usual the show was neither cute nor corny. It aimed to tell the farmer about his business, got down to earth as speedily as a gopher.

The 4,000 broadcasts of the Farm & Home Hour have held the national air for 13 years. Six days a week, the program goes out over 100 stations, is heard by some 6,000,000 listeners. The Hour finds a front seat for the U.S. farmer at all big agricultural events, keeps him posted about weather and current markets, provides him with tips from the Department of Agriculture and half a hundred other farm organizations.

During the Hour he may hear the gossip of fellow agrarians, enjoy snatches of semi-classical music and follow the adventures of "Uncle Sam's Forest Rangers" as they plow through a script prepared by the U.S. Forest Service. He chuckles at the antics of Aunt Fanny, postmistress of mythical Cheery Valley, smiles knowingly when Announcer Everett Mitchell gets off his famed daily greeting (often in the midst of a nor'easter): "It's a beautiful day in Chicago."

The National Farm & Home Hour had its small beginnings over Pittsburgh's KDKA in 1923. It was the brainchild of a big, burly studio pianist named Frank Mullen, who was at the time all choked up with nostalgia for the fields of South Dakota where he spent his boyhood. Mullen's system was to read all the farm bulletins he could lay hands on, then whack out a few tunes to fill in. Immediately popular in the Pittsburgh area, the Hour was adapted to NBC specifications in 1926. Since 1928, when the Hour went on a national hookup, it has helped increase the number of rural homes with radio sets from 20% to 70%, while Mullen has moved up, is now vice president and general manager of NBC.

Shrewd Frank Mullen early secured for the Hour the cooperation of the Department of Agriculture, the National Grange, the Farmers' Union, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National 4-H Club, the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities. As Secretary, Henry Wallace used its facilities over 100 times to speak to his farm constituency.

Listeners are pretty crotchety about any fiddling with the Hour. When NBC, in response to a few quibbles, ordered Announcer Mitchell to abandon his sally about Chicago weather, the kickback was prompt and potent. Mitchell continues doggedly to begin the Farm Hour with: "It's a beautiful day in Chicago!"

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