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It didn't take a great deal of resources in those days to produce local radio dramas, comedy, adventure and variety, and since that's about all most of Mutual's smaller stations could compete with, they came up with some wonderfully innovative and enduring programming to make up for their lack of resources, especially in the juvenile adventure series genre. While its true enough that Mutual was 'owned by its stations' and not the other way around, a few of those stations were real powerhouses. WOR (New York), WGN (Chicago), and the West Coast collection of Don Lee stations held most of the controlling shares in the System.
WOR's Home Towers Installation c. 1922
WOR and WGN in particular more than paid their way for their controlling shares, providing a great deal of the better shows and material that was picked up and distributed throughout the Mutual System in the late 1930s and through the 1940s.
Don Lee, the California distributor for the Cadillac Motor Car Company, purchased his first station, KFRC, San Francisco, in 1926. Lee's extraordinary 20-year success in the automobile business had netted him a considerable fortune, and as was the fashion among other wealthy entrepreneurs of the era, felt that radio would be an exciting and challenging new 'diversion'. He'd found and purchased the license for the City of Paris's KFRC and promptly announced the beginning of a dramatic new era in West Coast broadcasting. He installed his first studios in his Cadillac Dealership building in San Francisco, a practice he repeated in 1927 a year later, in Los Angeles, with his acquisition of KHJ from The Los Angeles Times. KHJ's station and its studios were, as well relocated to his Cadillac dealership building at 7th and Bixel in Los Angeles, some 5 blocks away (literally within eyesight from where I write this, btw). |
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As sole owner of two of the West Coast's most prestigious early radio stations, he found himself poised to leverage his broadcasting power and its influence to rapidly expand his telecommunications holdings. Indeed, only two years later, in 1929, it was reported that both of his young radio stations had full complements of organic engineers, performers, two Don Lee Symphony Orchestras--one for each station, and "dance band and organ, plus all of the musical instruments that can be used successful in broadcasting." Thus, both KHJ and KFRC could "operate continuously without going outside their own staffs for talent," and still appeal to a highly competitive and growing West Coast market, head-to-head with any other broadcaster west of the Rockies. Meanwhile, back on the East Coast, William S. Paley of the fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System, was poised to expand his network to more robust stations on the West Coast. Since Don Lee already had two successful, powerful stations blanketing half of California, Paley viewed Don Lee as the most readily accessible resource to help CBS compete with rival National Broadcasting Corporation's voracious appetite for new affiliates. NBC was pushing hard to expand and consolidate it's '"Orange Network" of west coast affiliates and Don Lee knew Paley needed him more than he needed Paley and CBS. And so it was that the Don Lee-Columbia Network was established in 1930, adding San Diego's KGB and Santa Barbara's KDB in the process. Lee added the McClatchy Newspaper station, Fresno's KMJ, and three other McClatchy stations, KFBK in Sacramento, KWG in Stockton and KERN in Bakersfield to the chain. The rapidly expanding network then added Northwest stations KOIN Portland, KOL Seattle, KVI Tacoma and KFPY Spokane to the chain.
Thus, within two years, Don Lee had consolidated his West Coast network holdings, while creating a powerful new, nationwide market for his local origination programming . West Coast listeners now had the luxury of CBS feeds running throughout the day until 8 p.m., Pacific Coast time, and then enjoying top-notch local origination programming over the evening hours' schedules.
Mutual-Don Lee's Radio City, Hollywoodland HQ
The War Years saw the transition of The Mutual Broadcasting System away from the control of hundreds of smaller stations and into the control of a succession of corporations; General Tire and Rubber, in the early 1950's, then Armand Hammer, the Hal Roach Studios, and Albert G. McCarthy. Then in 1960, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) purchased the Network. In the end it transferred to the Amway Corporation, and then to Westwood One on the West Coast, where, alas, it finally resides as a network entity without even it's name to remind us of it's rich heritage. Ironically, Westwood One is ViaCom's (Infinity Broadcasting) Radio Content Marketing and Sales company now. Yes, that means the old MBS has become the 21st Century's CBS Radio. And the circle is complete. The Don Lee-Columbia Network comes home to die an ignominious death. The Lee's must be spinning in their graves.
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