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Show Breakfast Club Appeals To Millions of Air Fans A iifliencesand Events MakcProgramof Ever Increasing Interest By W. J. DRYDEN Released by Western Newspaper Union. Radio stations and networks throughout the country revised their programs, cancelled outright or drastically revised all commercial broadcasts, when word was received re-ceived of the death of President Roosevelt. Typical of programs undergoing complete revision was the Breakfast Club's broadcast on which Don McNeill, master of ceremony, cere-mony, paid tribute to the president: "One of the qualities about Mr. Roosevelt that I always admired," said McNeill, "was his sense of humor. hu-mor. In the tremendous job in which he gave his life he needed a sense of humor for balance. In fact. If he could speak to us now, he might say something like this: "Never mind the flowery language lan-guage about me when my time had come the Lord knew I was not an indispensable man, so get back in there and finish off the job In a hurry, and make a peace so binding, so secure that this may never happen again. Get back to the days when you can quit worrying about your loved ones and when you can laugh and smile. Your face looks so much better that way." " Radio's favorite daytime variety show, the Breakfast Club, owes its Network stations of the American Broadcasting company, would say that the audience's contributions are what makes for the remarkable success of the program. Many fans find other reasons. Some 875,000 of them applied for charter membership in the club in one week. Each program from Monday through Saturday at 8 a.m. will find 600 fans watching the program. Hundreds are turned away daily from the Chicago studios where the broadcast originates. Tickets are now required two weeks in advance. These people come from all the states In the union. They come to see Don McNeill, who has served as master of ceremonies on more network broadcasts than any other man, woman or child in radio. He has spent more than 4,000 hours before the microphone, and still gains in popularity. They come to see Nancy Martin, the singing schoolma'm, or songster song-ster Marion Mann. They come to see Sam Cowling, the heckler, or Ed Ballatine, the orchestra director, or Ray Grant's Vagabonds. They come to see Fran Allison's characterizations of genial, gossipy, gauche "Aunt Fanny," which are so realistic that Fran's mother, back in Iowa, is in a perpetual dither for fear that kinfolk might be offended. They come to make the program, their program. Memory and inspiration time on the broadcast has reached the heartstrings of the Breakfast Club's . , tC "i 'sirs rv rll rt iH i popularity to its ardent fans in every ev-ery city, hamlet and nearly every farm in America. It has been adopted and considered as a part of rural America. By making an appeal to those in rural districts as well as in metropolitan areas, it proved that a morning hour variety vari-ety show could achieve immense popularity. Scripts have been entirely entire-ly dispensed with and the cac. depends de-pends on native wit rather than on gag writers. Like the program following President Presi-dent Roosevelt's death, each program pro-gram is created by circumstances and the audience itself. There is no monotony, for the program is life Itself, the life as played by its many fans. They create the program, pro-gram, play the parts, give the questions ques-tions and answers. Audience's Contributions. There are other reasons for this radio program clicking. Don McNeill, Mc-Neill, the genial m.c. of the program, pro-gram, which is carried over Blue I When the entire cast takes the stage, things begin to hum over the air. |
