Childrens Radio Shows

Radio Shows for kids were a natural fit for producers, just like Saturday Morning cartoons during the Television age. Producers and advertisers knew that, even though kids may not make the major purchasing decisions in the home (which is why the housewife is the target audience of the daytime Soap Operas), children and their desires did have a lot of influence on how a family's money got spent.

With remarkably few exceptions, Children's programming from the Golden Radio Era (and into the early Television Age) made little pretense of "educating" kids. Wholesome characters and an uplifting or moral message were always part of the story, but the show's main purpose was to sell the sponsor's product.

Soap for Mom, Cereal for Kids

Like the Soap Opera, which targeted mothers, the popular Cereal Serials targeted their product at the consumer most likely to want it. Advertisers made sure that young cereal eaters would want to be a Straight Shooting Cowboy just like Tom Mix, and if they ate Quaker Oats or Tootsie Rolls, they would always get their man like Dick Tracy. Of course, the serial format also ensured that the kids would come back, day after day, to see what would happen to their favorite characters.

The Cereal Serials were usually products of the networks and advertisers of national products. The Syndicated Serials were packaged and sold to local broadcasters in a form that would allow them to inject local advertising. This occurred with superb effect in the 1937 Christmas shopping season with The Cinnamon Bear. Producer Bruce Eells gathered an incredible radio cast including Howard McNear, Gale Gordon, Barbara Jean Wong and Joseph Kearns, and created a lovely story, designed to play every afternoon between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some stations would jump the gun; in Portland, Oregon, the tale finishes on Christmas Eve because it starts on Thanksgiving Day. The show remains well loved to this day, and many department stores advertise Paddy O'Cinnamon as Santa's right hand man.

The following year Jonathan Thomas and His Christmas on the Moon came out in the same 26 day format. Although not as well received as Cinnamon Bear, the series is exceptionally well done and presents some familiar Lewis Carroll-like characters, slightly refurbished.

Also in 1937 Bruce Eells brought us Jerry of the Circus, the story of a young man who joins the circus after his parents die. In the series, Circus People do not meet the images we have of carneys today; they are honest and hard working, and Jerry has a great upbringing. One day the circus owner, who has become Jerry's guardian, convinces Jerry that the best thing for his future would be to attend a Military School. Jerry at Fair Oaksfollows those adventures.

The Magic Island (1935) is a closed serial; that is the story arc has a definite ending point. Listeners can expect to be carried all over the place on the way to that ending point! In the very first episode, we learn that Mrs. Gregory is setting out to find her long lost daughter in the South Seas. Jerry and Tex join her quest. They find her daughter on a man-made island, ruled by beings of enormous intellect. Somehow, they must escape the island and find their way back to Los Angeles. At 15 minutes apiece, the episodes are a lot of fun. Soon there is so much exposition at the beginning of the program there is little time for the story, but this keeps us from getting lost.

The Network Serials are some of the best loved and remembered. A list of favorites will almost sound like nostalgia cliché's: Little Orphan Annie, The Lone Ranger, Howdy Doody Time,  The Green Hornet, Terry and the Pirates, Tom Mix and more.

From Funny Pages to Radio

Little Orphan Annie began as a comic page hit, and came to the radio in 1930. Annie was not the spunky kid belting out "The sun will come out, Tomorrow…" whom modern kids know. She was a tough girl who wasn't afraid to scrap when it was needed.

Another Funny Page success that came to the radio for kids is Terry and the Pirates. Young Terry Lee is a "wide awake American Boy" in the Orient having adventures with his mentor Pat Ryan and a captivating cast of characters. As Terry matures, he joins the Army Air Corps and fights in the Pacific. However, ratings began to slip after the war when there were fewer enemies to chase.

Perhaps the greatest of the comic book heroes was Superman. The Adventures of Superman began on WOR New York in 1940, less than two years after his premier in Action Comics #1. Many elements that would become part of the Superman universe began on the radio, not in the comic pages. The editor of The Daily Planet, Perry White, and copy-boy Jimmy Olsen came from the radio program before the comic pages. The Man of Steel's first encounter with Kryptonite happened on the radio. The writers created this device so that the star, Bud Collyer, could take some vacation time in the era before summer re-runs.

One comic book hero to ride the cape-tails of Superman was The Blue Beetle (1940). The Beetle got his start as a rookie beat cop frustrated by the delays and red tape of police work. He decides to take matters into his own hands by taking on a mask and acting as a vigilante, similar to The Green Hornet.

Red Ryder was more than a nifty BB gun. The cowboy was another successful comic strip that made the transition to radio. The strip by Fred Harmon began in 1938, featured tall, no nonsense Red and his Indian ward, Little Beaver, and ran until 1964. The characters appeared in a movie serial beginning with Republic's The Adventures of Red Ryder in 1940. The Blue Network carried the radio adaptation in the West, and Mutual in the East. The program even managed to top The Lone Ranger in the ratings for a time, but sponsors dropped it after four months. The original sponsor, Langendorf Bread, kept the show alive regionally until 1951 over the West Coast Don Lee network.

Two Masked Men and a Dog

The production/writing team of WXYZ station owner George Trendle and free-lancer Fran Striker gave us some of radio's greatest masterpieces. In 1932, Trendle started discussing the potential of a Robin Hood-like character on the radio. Since children would be the target audience, the character had to be wholesome, and violence kept to a minimum. A cowboy would fill the need for wholesomeness. Writer Striker came on board to flesh out the details of The Lone Ranger. The Masked Man was an immediate success; when a free pop-gun was offered to the first 300 listeners to write in, the station received more than 25,000 replies.

In 1935, Trendle began work on a show that would show how one man could fight a corrupt political system. Striker used a descendant of the Lone Ranger, Britt Reid, to don the mask as The Green Hornet. By 1938, Trendle was ready to see if he could find success with another adventure program, and insisted that this time the hero should be a dog. Not fancy dog like Lassie, but because it was to be an action adventure it had to be a working dog. Writer Tom Dougall (Striker would contribute scripts) was a fan of Robert Service poetry and cast an Alaskan sled dog in Challenge of the Yukon, featuring Sergeant Preston of the North-West Mounted Police and his sled dog, King of the Yukon.

Trendle was a notorious penny pincher. There is a rumor he kept an extra set of books showing that the station was constantly losing money, which he would show employees if they asked for a raise. The selection of the familiar "William Tell Overture" and the Rimsky-Korsakov "Flight of the Bumblebee" as themes for The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet came about because they were in the public domain. No extra fees would be attached to their use.

We cannot promise that your kids will hurry home from school and finish their homework early so they can listen to these shows, but then we all may be surprised! We do think that any of these programs will make fine accompaniment to your next long family drive.

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