--- description: Franklin Roosevelt's Labor Day (anti-inflation) speech rolled up a Hooper rating* of 50.3 (or 37,362,400 adults), outstripping commercial radio's alltime high —Charlie McCarthy's... title: Radio: Roosevelt's Rating image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Radio: Roosevelt's Rating by [TIME](/author/time/) Sep 21, 1942 4:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Sep 21, 1942 4:00 AM CUT Franklin Roosevelt’s Labor Day (anti-inflation) speech rolled up a Hooper rating\* of 50.3 (or 37,362,400 adults), outstripping commercial radio’s alltime high —Charlie McCarthy’s 41.2\. Response to the President’s speeches has followed a saw-toothed graph. Two days after Pearl Harbor the President’s Hooper rating skyrocketed to an alltime high of 79.0\. Last fortnight, when he spoke over as great a hookup to the International Student Assembly, his Hooper fell to 19.0\. \* Like the Crossley rating, Hooper’s is based on a check of listeners by telephone: Hooper phones during a program, Crossley later. Crossley distributes calls by income groups; Hooper phones at random. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6771177/radio-roosevelts-rating/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6771177/radio-roosevelts-rating/"},"headline":"Radio: Roosevelt's Rating","datePublished":"1942-09-21T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T13:10:56.480Z","description":"Franklin Roosevelt's Labor Day (anti-inflation) speech rolled up a Hooper rating* of 50.3 (or 37,362,400 adults), outstripping commercial radio's alltime high —Charlie McCarthy's...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6771177/radio-roosevelts-rating/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6771177/radio-roosevelts-rating/","name":"Radio: Roosevelt's Rating"}}]}] ```