General Electric and Broadcast Radio
General Electric Theater (1953) was one of the finest, albeit short-lived, dramatic anthologies to air during the waning years of The Golden Age of Radio. General Electric was no newcomer to Radio sponsorship by any means. Beginning as early as 1927, G.E. sponsored one of the very first hour-long drama-variety programs ever to air over broadcast Radio. That first anthology aired over San Francisco's legendary KGO and was directed by Leon Strashun. The program aired weekly on Monday nights from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. (6:30 p.m. in 1928), and could be heard over most of northern, central, and southern California and as far away as Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon. A combination of 'jamborees', dramatic sketches and orchestral music numbers, the programs were followed closely by local newspapers.
It's no coincidence that General Electric chose KGO as the outlet for its program. General Electric had launched KGO in 1924. KGO, along with KFRC (1925) were the two of the oldest commercial broadcast stations operating in the Bay Area. They were preceded only by KPO (1921) and KQW (1909). KQW was arguably the first Radio station on the west coast to actually broadcast the human voice. While begun as an experimental station, KQW eventually evolved to KCBS. We point out the early Radio efforts of General Electric over what would eventually become an NBC affiliate to underscore the irony of the subject of this article--General Electric Theater--airing over CBS in 1953.
General Electric's long affiliation with RCA and NBC spans the entire history of broadcast radio. Indeed it was a combine of General Electric, Westinghouse Corporation, and RCA that formed the National Broadcasting Company in 1926. It's often forgotten that it was General Electric that founded the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1919 simply as a means to further encourage international radio broadcasts. Though G.E. divested itself of RCA in 1932 as the result of a Justice Department ordered divestiture, General Electric reacquired NBC and RCA in 1986.
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