Radio: Early Bird

Millions of listeners rely on Arthur Godfrey no less than hot coffee to start their day right. For twelve years he has run radio’s top top-o’-the-morning program, sleepily announcing the time, playing drowsy records, yawning through newscasts and here & there decorating the day’s first commercials with slyly adverse comments on their sponsors. All this is unrehearsed blarney. His secretary Margaret (“Mug”) Richardson, hands him a slew of advertising copy and news oddments (item: “The United States Government has bought 1,000 dead horses”), and “Red” Godfrey starts spieling.

Burly Arthur works hard. Six days a week, 52 weeks a year, he “yaps at a mike” from 6 to 7:45 a.m. over Manhattan’s WABC. Five days a week in winter he follows up with “an hour and a half of the same goo” piped to Washington’s WTOP. And six days a week, he does an 11 to 11:30 coast-to-coast show over CBS. His weekly total on the air: 21 hours. His weekly income: more than $3,000.

Godfrey took many a detour on the road to radio fame & fortune. He made a “nice dollar” selling cemetery lots as “investments,” played M.C. in a Chicago saloon, “supported by the first nude chorus in vaudeville,” and did a hitch as a Coast Guard radioman before he ever stood up to a microphone.

Starting Seed. In 1930 he went into commercial radio as “Red Godfrey, the Warbling Banjoist,” advertising bird seed. Next year, while “one of NBC’s dullest announcers, and that’s saying plenty,” he was hit by a truck, spent four months in a hospital, listening hour after hour to the radio.

“I got sicker,” says Godfrey. “The racket was all upside down, and I figured out why. Everybody thought there was a Radio Audience. There isn’t. There’s only one guy in a room—if there’s two, they’re probably not listening to the radio—and you got to reach that guy.”

Back on the air, Godfrey began just “to reach that guy.” He was the first man to ridicule his commercials—and sponsors. They threw fits until sales boomed. From there out, Godfrey never wanted for a sponsor. For his morning programs he now has a round 88, plus a good-sized waiting list.

Says he: “This gettin’ up at 5 o’clock is something for the birds. So now I’m working up to a real deal. Half-hour a week, three months vacation. That’s for Godfrey.”

Last week Godfrey made a bold bid to conclude his “real deal.” His first evening show, Talent Scout, had proved just about top in the summer replacements; so Godfrey persuaded CBS to give it this fall one of the most uneasy seats in radio: Tuesday, 10 p.m., E.D.S.T., opposite Bob Hope.

Godfrey’s reason: if he can hold his own with Gagman Hope, he will be made in night-time radio, can quit getting up with the birds.