HAPPY BIRTHDAY MBS

Mutual Broadcasting System is seven years old this month, and a happy birthday it will be. Mutual will add two more NBC stations to its chain. The Federal Communications Commission's antimonopoly hearings which begin in Washington this week will not mar the youngest network's celebration, will probably be a sick headache for rivals CBS and NBC. Mutual's position is dandy. As a cooperative, it has little to fear from FCC's projected chain-busting.

Baltimore's WFBR and Pittsburgh's WCAE, MBS's two new outlets, were among the many stations being jogged around by NBC preparatory to selling its Blue network out of fear of FCC's frown. WFBR and WCAE had been Red network stations and chose to go Mutual rather than be put in the Blue package. Besides its acquisitions in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, Mutual will also take over next fortnight Buffalo's WGR, a CBS outlet, which decided to shift allegiance when its sister station WKBW moved to CBS. Next year Mutual will absorb three more NBC stations.

Mutual's method of operation is elementary, profitable and practical. Its member stations exchange programs and underwrite the network's wire costs. MBS needs only 72 employes (against 4,600 for NBC, 1,900 for CBS) to keep going. Its total operating expenses foot up to some $700,000. Its headquarters, on the edge of Manhattan's garment district, consist of a bleakly furnished floor in a dreary building which also houses its major Eastern outlet, WOR.

Under swart, smart General Manager Fred Weber, onetime assistant to NBC's Niles Trammell in Chicago, Mutual has moved steadily ahead. From a two-station chain in 1934, it has grown until today it includes 173 affiliates. In the first eight months of 1940, its cumulative billings were $2,494,370; for the same period this year $4,024,680 (as compared with NBC's $30,960,519, CBS's $25,776,094).

Unlike its competitors MBS started through necessity. Back in 1934 Gordon Baking Co., which was sponsoring the Lone Ranger out of Detroit, wanted to hit the New York and Chicago markets, with no stops at aerial way stations. Neither NBC nor CBS could render the spot coverage. But WOR, then of Newark, and WGN of Chicago agreed to provide a dual hookup. The Gordon method of radio advertising appealed to many another sponsor.

Shortly after it was organized, MBS attracted WLW in Cincinnati, went on to add John Shepard Ill's Colonial network and the Don Lee network on the West Coast to its chain. Big recommendation for Mutual with advertisers was the fact that it insisted only on the purchase of its three big units, WOR, WGN, WLW, with other units to be added at pleasure. Not until June 1936 did it reach a coast-to-coast status. That occurred when CBS offered to buy the Don Lee network, which turned to cooperative Mutual instead.

Control of Mutual is parceled out via 100 shares of stock, currently held by seven of its members. Of the seven, three have a firm grasp on 75%. They are New York's WOR, a profitable sideline for Jack Straus & Bros, of Macy's; Chicago's WGN, which Publisher McCormick, who always thinks cosmically, is determined to make the world's greatest radio station; and the Don Lee network, now in the hands of Tommy Lee, son of Don, a highly successful automobile distributor. From WGN, Mutual gets its president, ex-Chicago Tribune-man William E. Macfarlane; from' WOR, its Board Chairman Alfred Justin McCosker. Like all Mutual officers, with the sole exception of General Manager Weber, they are paid by the stations for which they work.

Although it is unlikely that Mutual's backers see eye-to-eye on matters political, the network goes along quite harmoniously. Stations are free to pick and choose among the Mutual shows, and while WOR may cancel Isolationist Fulton Lewis Jr., Colonel McCormick has equal right to cut out interventionist talks. Odd fact about the entente cordiale between FCC and Mutual: it is New Deal-hating Bertie's lawyer, Louis Caldwell, who serves as Mutual's counsel in Washington.

Mutual has never aimed at dazzling programs. But it has managed to get a good grip on sports broadcasts. This year it anticipates that over 300 stations will pipe in on its World Series broadcasts, including many an NBC and CBS affiliate. If this incommodes the two chains, Mutual will be only too delighted. It is dead set against collaboration with its competition, gladly accepted Jimmie Fidler when CBS rejected him (TIME, Sept. 1). One night last week it also took on another CBS show called The Bombing of London. CBS decided bombing effects on the program were too "realistic."

This week from Hollywood MBS will splatter over its network a variety program called Three Ring Time, sponsored by Ballantine Ale & Beer, that will include such cinema lights as Charles Laughton, Milton Berle, Shirley Ross. Only a network that sees nothing strange in getting Colonel McCormick to back a New Deal agency could view with as much equanimity as Mutual the teaming up of Laughton and Berle.

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