1 BBDO and US Steel on Radio and Television, 1948‐53: The Problems of Sponsorship, New Media, and the Communist Threat Presented at On, Archives! Conference, 9 July 2010, Madison, WI Cynthia B. Meyers Associate Professor, Communication College of Mount Saint Vincent Riverdale, NY 10471 cynthia.meyers@mountsaintvincent.edu The period 1948 to 1953 was a disorienting time for the broadcasting industry and the advertising industry that supported it. Networks, advertisers, and advertising agencies were forced to experiment, improvise, and jockey for advantage as the national radio industry transformed into a national television industry. Today I look at this transitional period from the perspective of a major advertising agency, Batten Barton Durstine & Osborn, the agency whose name Jack Benny is said to have compared to the sound of a trunk falling down the stairs. Ad agencies such as BBDO produced or oversaw the majority of network radio programs in the 1930s and 1940s, but their role and influence in broadcasting has been underanalyzed, in part because most observers have assumed a congruence between advertisers, the clients of advertising agencies, and the advertising agencies themselves. However, these relationships were complex and conflicted, especially in this period when agency and sponsor roles were undergoing massive changes. To illustrate some of these dynamics, I focus on the relationship between BBDO and its client, U. S. Steel, as depicted in the Bruce Barton Papers here at the Wisconsin Historical Society. I argue that the advertising agency’s belief in and 2 adherence to certain advertising strategies underlay the agency’s actions and decision‐ making in this period, a period that includes BBDO’s active involvement in blacklisting. BBDO was formed in 1928 by the merger of the George Batten Company (1891) and Barton, Durstine & Osborn (1925). Batten was known for handling only “respectable” advertising and BDO for its famous copywriter, Bruce Barton, who wrote the 1927 best seller about Jesus, The Man Nobody Knows. Barton’s copywriting philosophy was not of the hard sell school—which is predicated on repetition and lists of “reasons why” to buy. Barton believed an advertising theme “should be based on two principles—a man’s interest in himself and his interest in other people.”1 This user‐ centered approach is evident in a 1930 campaign for a life insurance company. BBDO copy tested two different headlines. The first headline, “What would become of her if something happened to you?” lost to the second, which addressed itself more directly to the needs of the potential buyer: “To men who want to quit work someday.”2 BBDO was the foremost agency specialist in “institutional advertising” for large corporate clients seeking to burnish their public image. Institutional advertising was not designed to sell products but to create positive perceptions of a company. This was especially important for large publicly owned corporations concerned about anti‐trust actions, government regulation, labor unrest, and populist resentment of “big business.” BBDO’s business progressivism informed its efforts on behalf of institutional clients such as General Electric, Du Pont, General Motors, United Fruit, and U. S. Steel. Historian William Bird argues corporations like these used advertising and media to build a “new vocabulary of business leadership.” 3 3 BBDO was one of the first advertising agencies to produce programs for radio, beginning with Metropolitan Opera broadcasts sponsored by Atwater Kent. Although BBDO produced its share of entertainment programs, such as Burns & Allen, You Bet Your Life, and programs featuring stars such as Jack Benny and Groucho Marx, BBDO also produced programs designed to promote cultural uplift, education, and historical knowledge. For the General Motors’ program, The Parade of the States, Barton wrote a “testimonial” to each state with the purpose “to sell America to Americans by a weekly radio tour of each state.”4 For Du Pont, BBDO produced Cavalcade of America, (1935‐ 53).5 Du Pont had found itself on the defensive in 1934 when it was called before the Nye Hearings in the U.S. Senate and investigated for inciting wars to sell munitions. As Du Pont president Walter Carpenter later recalled, Du Pont “undertook to find ways and means of dissipating the evil effects of this slander operation and in that connection instituted the ‘Cavalcade of America’ program on the radio.”6 An anthology drama based on historical events, vetted by historians, written by well‐known authors, performed by stars, Du Pont claimed Cavalcade “offers a new and absorbing approach to history, the incidents being re‐enacted so as to emphasize the qualities of American character which have been responsible for the building of this country.”7 When U.S. Steel became BBDO’s client in 1936, it sought to counter public perceptions that it was a monopolist and unfair to labor. U.S. Steel had dominated the American market since 1901 when J.P. Morgan merged existing steel companies, and it had continued the anti‐union policies of Andrew Carnegie (although US Steel recognized a union in 1937). Barton devised what BBDO called a “sympathetic consumer campaign 4 to show how the corporation had contributed to the progress of the country.”8 In one advertisement, an image of U.S. Steel’s founder Andrew Carnegie was headlined: “He came to a land of wooden towns and left a nation of steel.”9 Wartime advertisements showed how USS was supporting the war effort and fighting Axis powers. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, BBDO advertisements for USS carried tag lines such as “Helping to Build a Better America” and “Only steel can do so many jobs so well.” A key component of BBDO’s institutional advertising campaign for US Steel was radio. Beginning in 1945, US Steel sponsored Theatre Guild on the Air in order “to create a better general understanding of the affairs of United States Steel” and “to provide the nation’s vast listening audience with the finest in dramatic entertainment by bringing into millions of homes every Sunday evening the greatest plays in the legitimate theater,” as J. Carlisle MacDonald, US Steel’s public relations director, explained.10 The decision to use the “finest” entertainment was designed to stimulate audience gratitude toward US Steel and to provoke a positive association of US Steel with high culture. This strategy, more common in the early days of radio, was known as “good will” advertising—the sponsor was not selling anything but proof of its good will and hoping to reap the audience’s good will in return. The Theatre Guild, known for producing the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O’Neill, was contracted to produce one‐hour radio adaptations of Broadway plays. Theatre Guild on the Air featured stars of stage and screen such as Bette Davis, Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, Rex Harrison, and John Gielgud in productions including The House of Mirth, The Heiress, A Doll’s House, Julius Caesar, The Glass Menagerie. During two short intermissions, 5 announcer George Hicks read short talks prepared by BBDO on the activities of USS. [AUDIO?] In 1948, when US Steel was under political pressure for raising steel prices, its CEO Benjamin Fairless told BBDO that TGA was “not only the finest and most important channel we have to the public, but it is difficult to imagine a finer one. To keep this program on the air is of vital importance to the Corporation, and we should not question it for a moment.”11 However, executives at BBDO had issues with TGA: first, unlike other radio shows overseen by BBDO, the decisions about scripts, casting, and production spending were made by the Theatre Guild, not by BBDO. Second, transitioning TGA to television promised to be difficult and expensive and BBDO did not trust the Theatre Guild to put the sponsor’s needs first. One BBDO executive argued that the Guild was most interested in using the program to promote itself and sell its own theater subscriptions and suggested that BBDO pitch other television program ideas to US Steel.12 Third, the Theatre Guild resisted BBDO’s efforts to vet politically suspect performers and writers, thus threatening to destabilize BBDO’s relationship with US Steel. BBDO account executive Carroll Newton oversaw TGA and his reports to the BBDO managing committee described some of the tensions. In 1948 and 1949, Newton complained that the Guild did not employ enough major stars and insisted on using old plays rather than new plays (for budgetary reasons), and that the Guild refused to look outside the legitimate stage for new material.13 The actual material chosen by the Guild rarely led to problems since most were well‐known plays; however, a 1949 broadcast of Tennessee Williams’ “Summer and Smoke” prompted listener complaints aimed at US 6 Steel. Newton defended the program in a letter to a US Steel executive. Arguing that the play treated “a serious subject with honesty and from the point of view of modern psychology,” Newton acknowledged it would “not be well received by a certain group of people.” Despite Newton’s point that films like Cross Fire and The Lost Weekend indicated increasing public acceptance of material with a “realistic approach to serious problems,” Newton concluded, “However, the extent of feeling shown in some of the letters indicates to us that we must all exercise the greatest possible caution to avoid giving offense to anybody in the future.”14 The offense taken in this case concerned the sexual behavior of a female character, but shortly after this, BBDO’s policy of exercising caution to avoid giving offense would apply to performers with suspect political beliefs. In 1949 and 1950, Newton reported on US Steel’s complaints that the program had never achieved high ratings despite it being perceived by US Steel’s MacDonald as being “unmatched in appeal for the more intelligent people, and those of good taste.”15 More popular programs, by implication, appealed to the less intelligent people. MacDonald echoed some of Du Pont’s frustrations with Cavalcade: why weren’t audiences more grateful for high quality programming? Some corporation board members questioned both the expense and effect of the program, but MacDonald and his superiors held firm to their commitment to TGA. Another irritant was financial. The Guild did not disclose its production budgets to BBDO or US Steel but was paid based on a contracted sum. In contract negotiations in 1949, the Guild waived receiving its annual increase and in return was not required to provide its cost figures to BBDO.16 The tension within US Steel and BBDO over how 7 much money US Steel was investing in the Guild’s work, without any artistic control over the Guild’s choices, increased considerably in 1950. US Steel’s MacDonald pointed out to Newton that “other producers and agencies had told him he was a sucker to pay those amounts of money to the Theatre Guild and let them make the profit they do make….”17 MacDonald went so far as to suggest that BBDO pay the Guild out of its compensation from US Steel—an arrangement more common when the agency directly controlled the program. In making this suggestion, MacDonald, according to Newton, “assumed BBDO, the Theatre Guild and the network were all interested in keeping the program on the air. (I pointed out that our interest was not in this program, but in doing the best possible thing for U. S. Steel, but this was passed right by.”)18 Newton was making a key point: BBDO was not a defender of the program but the interests of U.S. Steel. US Steel made motions to replace BBDO with another agency when its board was contemplating completely changing its approach to radio and television.19 Although MacDonald repeatedly assured Newton that “he is satisfied with the relationship with the agency,”20 BBDO was on notice that it could lose US Steel as a client because of dissatisfaction with TGA. This probably galled Newton because BBDO did not control the program due to US Steel’s decision to give the Guild program control. The transition from radio to television provided new opportunities, but also new problems. Television programming cost roughly ten times that of radio. US Steel wondered if it should stay in radio, although audiences were moving to television, or if it were worth investing vast new sums in the new medium at great risk of failure. BBDO 8 was overseeing this transition for its other clients, such as General Electric, but the Theatre Guild’s autonomy presented a serious obstacle for BBDO. In 1951, US Steel wanted to try television, but television’s lack of national coverage and its expense mitigated against producing a one‐hour program; the Guild, on the other hand, “has refused to consider any TV program except hour versions of plays.”21 The Guild was upholding the artistic integrity that US Steel paid it for (though it is unclear how presenting drastically cut one‐hour versions of two‐ or three‐hour plays is a form of artistic integrity). Barton, now the old man of the agency, suggested US Steel return to an old style of program, such as the one BBDO produced for General Electric called The World’s Greatest Songs Sung by the World’s Greatest Singers. Barton explained: “The trouble with even the best dramatic show is that you have a hit success one week and something not so good the next week. On The World’s Greatest Songs program you couldn’t have failure.”22 Barton was pointing out the main drawback of the anthology drama format, that showing a different story with new characters every week made it impossible to regularize audience attention. However, institutional advertisers like US Steel, not concerned with direct sales to consumers, preferred the prestige of presenting high cultural forms like legitimate theater than the regularization of audience attention that series programs, with their returning characters, provided packaged goods advertisers. By 1953, U.S. Steel finally decided to continue with the Guild on television but, at Newton’s suggestion, changed the name of the program to The United States Steel Hour.23 By branding the program with the sponsor’s name, rather than the producer’s, BBDO made it possible for US Steel to change producers in the future 9 without losing the title recognition of the program. (The television program lasted until 1963, outlasting nearly all other anthology dramas.) By far the most contentious issue between BBDO, the Guild, and US Steel in this period was the blacklist. Beginning in 1947, Counterattack and Red Channels and other publications accused the broadcast industry of allowing the infiltration of communists.24 Communist activists, believing secrecy a far more effective strategy for winning political power than openness, routinely lied about their affiliations. Assuming the hypodermic needle theory of communication‐‐that recipients accept received messages like medicine from a hypodermic needle‐‐anti‐communists pressured radio sponsors to halt the putative continuation of communist access to vulnerable audiences. While institutional advertisers were perhaps less concerned about ratings popularity than packaged goods advertisers, they were more concerned about losing the “good will” of their audiences, the only good they thought they were producing through sponsored programs. Furthermore, sponsors and their agencies practiced the advertising strategy of association. Clicquot Club ginger ale associated its product with bubbly music; Jell‐O associated its product with comedian Jack Benny; Lux Radio Theatre associated Lux soap with guest movie stars. As believers in the power of positive association as a selling tool and in the intellectual dimness of most of the audience, advertisers and their agents worried that a negative association once made would be irrevocable and therefore had to be avoided at all costs. Audiences could not be trusted to dismiss a negative association: the brand could be permanently harmed. As the fear of negative association with “red” talent spread from the film industry to broadcasting, ad agencies 10 tried to demonstrate their worth to their clients by demanding, for example, that CBS and NBC desist from hiring communists.25 The ad industry trade magazine Tide, in announcing that most admen agreed that “agencies have the right and duty to consider the political ideologies of the people who write and act in the sponsor’s show,” was showing clients how advertising agencies could be useful in protecting them from negative associations.26 Of the four top advertising agencies in broadcasting, John Cogley, in his Report on Blacklisting, singled out BBDO as the most significant practitioner of the blacklist.27 While other institutions, such as networks, advertisers, and agencies like Young & Rubicam, repeatedly denied they were blacklisting even as they were blacklisting obviously and clumsily, BBDO was most open about its efforts to vet broadcast talent. Jack Wren was the executive in charge. On the BBDO organizational chart listing personnel dealing with the US Steel account and TGA, Wren is listed under the apparently accurate title: “Personnel Research.”28 At other institutions, accused talent usually experienced closed doors and unreturned calls, caught in a Kafka‐esque maze without recourse to a defense. At BBDO, Wren met with performers seeking to be “cleared” and investigated their cases.29 BBDO’s willingness to consider cases individually indicated, as Cogley put it, that BBDO “has taken the blacklisting problem for what it is, i.e., a problem in public relations, and has treated it accordingly.”30 The Guild’s casting control made BBDO’s job protecting its client more difficult. In 1950, US Steel asked the Guild for control over casting, not expecting it to agree.31 By 1952, the blacklist situation had worsened. US Steel had initially dismissed accusations 11 that TGA employed subversives.32 BBDO had a different view of the situation. BBDO executive Ben Duffy wrote US Steel’s MacDonald in 1952 that US Steel should insist on casting control or cancel TGA. Duffy pointed out that by letting the Guild control casting, US Steel was allowing the Guild control US Steel’s public relations: “It is our firm belief that decisions which can do such great harm to the public relations of U.S. Steel should be wholly in your hands, with full responsibility for advice and recommendation placed upon your agency, rather than entrusted to any third party.”33 BBDO, apparently, was pressuring the sponsor to respond to the problem or give BBDO more control over the program. In a late 1952 letter Newton wrote MacDonald that BBDO recommended screening out “any people whose use might create bad public relations” but that “The Guild has refused to submit names in the past. They reiterated that refusal today.” Newton argued that the Guild’s “primary concern is this stand is for their own relations in the theatre, and United States Steel is secondary in their thinking”—unlike BBDO, which put US Steel’s interests first. However, Newton went on to report, the Guild did agree to provide BBDO a list of performers it plans to cast from rather than specific cast lists for specific performances.34 This compromise preserved the artistic integrity the Guild was anxious to uphold (and for which US Steel was paying), while allowing BBDO to believe it was managing US Steel’s public relations problems more effectively. BBDO president Ben Duffy wrote MacDonald in December 1952 explaining the agency’s policy on the issue. Pointing out that occasionally “advertising designed to create good will for a client has the opposite effect when exposed to the public,” Duffy continued that “we are anxious to have our advertising do good rather than harm.” 12 Explaining that “our personal thoughts or beliefs have nothing to do with what follows” and that some accused performers may be innocent, Duffy argued that “If there is a finger of guilt pointed to them by the average American … which could react unfavorably to the overall success of our advertising, we should be careful.” If US Steel loses business or its share price drops because of bad publicity, “The loss is not an individual loss, but a corporate loss spread over all the stockholders.” The Guild has cast performers that may have an “opposite effect” on its public relations, so “we want to go on record that your agency did and does recommend against the use of such talent.” Duffy concluded by pointing out that the question is not their guilt or innocence, “It is simply a question of the public reaction to the corporation which sponsors them” and that “we believe in protecting the advertiser’s interest.”35 BBDO’s institutional advertising strategy was based on its ability to build “good will” through positive associations for a client. US Steel, hoping to counter negative public perceptions of its monopolistic reputation, used the Theatre Guild’s high culture offerings as a positive association, and allowed the Guild program control to signal its artistic integrity. But the Guild’s control of the program and its casting was a constant irritant to BBDO, whose executives believed that they ought to have more control over this public relations effort, not just because of their institutional advertising expertise but also because BBDO put the client’s public relations interests before the program or its producers. Erik Barnouw, discussing reasons that the blacklist predominated in this period, notes that no one institution was in charge: networks had relinquished program control 13 to ad agencies, who took orders from sponsors, who claimed responsibility to stockholders.36 In this case, the pressure could be arguably seen as coming from the other direction: the agency urged the sponsor to allow the agency to vet talent to protect US Steel’s stockholders from the impact of negative publicity. BBDO was not just any ad agency but a well‐respected expert in institutional advertising. In this case, BBDO could be understood not as bowing to the will of its client to blacklist but actively leading the client toward what the agency believed was the client’s best interests. Barnouw also notes that BBDO had overseen institutional advertising programs for Du Pont and US Steel that had employed many writers whose ability to “cope with ideas and complex issues” had raised the “suspicions” of anti‐communists.37 While Barnouw found it ironic that the agency “most involved in the promulgation of work that “stressed peace and social values” was also the most “zealous in institutionalizing blacklisting,” in effect turning on the talent it had hitherto supported, I suggest that BBDO’s stance had not reversed but was consistent. BBDO, its institutional advertising clients, and the talent they hired all believed one thing in common: that radio exercised strong media effects and had the power to create powerful associations in listeners’ minds. In the blacklist era, once it was suggested that radio’s unquestioned power was being subverted by secretive agents, BBDO had to prove that its power to influence was intact by taking vigorous action to control the client’s image—hence, its relative openness about Jack Wren’s function as vetter of talent and its repeated efforts to gain more control over TGA. 14 Although the issues I touch upon here are complex—the roles of sponsors and advertising agencies in broadcasting, the transition from radio to television, the blacklists —I hope this case study illuminates that an advertising agency’s viewpoint on these issues yields fresh perspectives on the history of radio and television. 15 ENDNOTES 1 . BBDO Newsletter, 42. . BBDO Newsletter, 14. 3 . For a thoroughgoing account of how big business waged their public relations campaigns with the help of BBDO and others, see William L. Bird, “Better Living”: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 19351955 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999). 4 . Roberts, “Radio & Celebrities,” 14. For an in-depth analysis of The Parade of the States, see Bird, “Better Living,” ch. 2. 5 . A television version aired from 1952-57. 6 . Memo from W. S. Carpenter, Jr., to Crawford H. Greenewalt, 10 November 1960, Box 4, Accession 1814, Greenewalt Papers, Du Pont Records. 7 . Du Pont press release, 27 September 1935, Box 36, Cavalcade folder, Public Affairs Department, Accession 1410, Du Pont Records, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware. 8 . BBDO Newsletter, 31. 9 . BBDO Newsletter, 34. Emphasis in original. 10 Quoted in Bird, “Better Living,” p. 190. 11 Memo from Ben Duffy to Carroll Newton, 28 April 1948, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Bruce Barton Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society. 12 Memo from Newton to Duffy, 8 February 1950, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 13 Memo from Carroll Newton to Bruce Barton, 21 July 1948, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers; Memo from Newton to Ben Duffy, 15 July 1949, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 14 Letter from Newton to John Rust, 26 April 1949, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 15 Memo from Newton to Duffy, 15 July 1949; memo from Newton to Duffy, 8 February 1950, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 16 Memo from Newton to Ben Duffy, 28 March 1949, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 17 Memo from Newton to Duffy et al., 14 December 1950, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 18 Memo from Newton to Duffy et al., 3 April 1950, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 19 Memo from Newton to Duffy et al., 17 May 1951, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 20 Memor from Newton to Duffy et al., 14 December 1950, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 21 Memo from Newton to Duffy, et al., 13 September 1951, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 22 Memo from Barton to Duffy, et al., 14 November 1952, Box 81, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 23 Memo from Newton to Duffy, 15 July 1949, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 24 Merle Miller, The Judges and the Judged (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952), 30. 2 16 25 Letters from ad agencies to NBC include: letter from Winslow Case, CampbellEwald agency, to Sylvester Weaver, NBC, 19 May 1950, Box 118, Folder 46, NBC Records, WHS; letter from Fred H. Walsh, Cunningham & Walsh, to Niles Trammell, NBC, 20 September 1951, Box 115, Folder 64, NBC Records, WHS. 26 Quoted in Miller, The Judges and the Judged, 198. 27 John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting II: Radio-Television (N.p.: The Fund for the Republic, Inc., 1956), 115. 28 BBDO Organization Chart for United States Steel, 27 September 1951, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 29 However, Newton complained to MacDonald that the agency found that they “cannot get proof of the validity of the charges” against certain accused and “how nearly impossible it would be to prove intent on the part of performers who have lent their names to causes now in disrepute.” CITE 30 Cogley, Report on Blacklisting, 118. 31 Memo from Newton to Duffy et al., 3 April 1950, Box 80, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 32 Miller, Judges and the Judged, 72. 33 Letter from Bernard Duffy to J. Carlisle MacDonald, 3 July 1952, Box 81, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 34 Letter from Newton to MacDonald, 3 November 1952, Box 81, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 35 Letter from Ben Duffy to MacDonald, 11 December 1952, Box 81, US Steel Folder, Barton Papers. 36 Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web (New York: Oxford, 1968), 282. 37 Barnouw, The Golden Web, 280.