The March of Time (radio program)

The March of Time had its origins in a 1928 radio series developed at WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, by radio pioneer Fred Smith, who obtained permission to use material from Time magazine in his broadcasts. Later, Smith and Roy E. Larsen, the first circulation manager for Time, developed Time magazine's own radio program, which they called Newscasting. That program evolved into The March of Time, the first network presentation of a dramatized "news" format. At Smith's suggestion, the program included the "10 best radio actors", an "announcer extraordinary", a "splendid orchestra" and a "clever director."{{cite news |date=August 15, 1976 |title=Fred Smith, Radio Pioneer, Dies; Helped Create 'March of Time' |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A06EFD61E3AEF33A25756C1A96E9C946790D6CF |newspaper=The New York Times }}

"The March of Time was the first radio newsreel", wrote radio historian John Dunning, "dramatized news events, elaborately staged with sound effects and music, put together like a newspaper—often on deadline, with impact and accuracy its twin goals."{{Rp|435|date=April 2012}}

The March of Time began airing as a weekly series March 6, 1931, on CBS Radio on over 32 stations on Friday evenings.{{cite web |url=http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=march+of+time&p=1&item=R76:0063 |title=The March of Time—Series Premiere |publisher=Paley Center for Media |access-date=2016-03-01}} The half-hour program aired Fridays at 8:30 p.m. ET. In 1935 the program was trimmed to 15 minutes and aired five times a week,{{cite web |url=http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b11407243 |title=Catalog Record, The March of Time (Radio Program) |publisher=New York Public Library |access-date=2016-03-01}} but after a year returned to its 30-minute weekly format. Suspended in 1939, the series was revived in 1941 with a new format, and lasted until 1945.{{cite book |last=Fielding |first=Raymond |title=The March of Time, 1935–1951 |year=1978 |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-502212-2}}{{Rp|19}}

Time Inc. was the only sponsor of all of the shows; other sponsors included Remington Rand, the Wrigley Company, and Electrolux. The March of Time aired on CBS through October 7, 1937, and was subsequently broadcast on the Blue Network (October 14, 1937 – June 5, 1942), NBC (July 9, 1942 – October 26, 1944), and ABC (November 2, 1944 – July 26, 1945).

{{cite book |last=Hickerson |first=Jay |date=1992 |title=The Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming and Guide to All Circulating Shows |location=Hamden, Connecticut |publisher=Privately printed |pages=252–253 }}

The March of Time broadcasts began with the tramp-tramp-tramp of shuffling feet, to indicate "the relentless impersonal progress of events." The principal narrator was the Voice of Time; another was the Voice of Fate, narrating stories of catastrophe or the death of a notable person. The first Voice of Time was Ted Husing; Westbrook Van Voorhis was the Voice of Fate. In fall 1931 Harry von Zell began a brief tenure as Time, but in October 1933 he moved to the role of announcer and Van Voorhis assumed the leading role. His voice—concluding most broadcasts with a booming, "Time … marches on!"—became synonymous with the program, both on radio and in the newsreel series.{{Rp|436–437}}

Written to match the style of Time magazine, radio scripts incorporated transcripts of statements and comments by the figures impersonated on The March of Time whenever possible. When these could not be obtained, writers were allowed to "re-create" appropriate dialogue. Actors researched and rehearsed with great care to mimic the precise voice patterns and characteristics of the people they were impersonating. March of Time creator Roy E. Larsen recalled that only one person, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ever complained about their treatment on the program. The President was annoyed because he was getting calls from political advisors regarding statements spoken on The March of Time that he had not uttered, even though they matched his policies. White House complaints continued until 1937, when The March of Time stopped imitating FDR altogether.{{Rp|14–15}}

"From the beginning it was known that The March of Time would face the stiffest production challenges that radio had yet known", wrote John Dunning:

When a big story broke at the last minute, a polished ready-to-air show was reorganized: the entire menu was shifted as events demanded. Newspapers are accustomed to this … but in radio, a new breed of actor had come to the fore, players who could deliver superb performances from scripts they had never seen before going live on the air. Sight reading, they called it: reading always two lines ahead and acting the lines they had already read. Actors, sound artists, and musicians worked feverishly to accommodate the bulletins from Time's reporters in the field.{{Rp|436}}

Seven or eight sketches were featured in each show, varying in length from 90 seconds to four minutes. Newspapers were sometimes scooped by the radio docudrama. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg disaster took place two hours before air time, and The March of Time created a segment that focused on the history of airship travel and ended with the news of the disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey.{{Rp|436}} Herbert Morrison's recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field was not broadcast until the next day.{{cite web |url=http://chicagoradioandmedia.com/multimedia/audio/571-wls-broadcast-of-the-hindenburg-disaster-1937 |title=WLS Broadcast of the Hindenberg Disaster 1937 |publisher=Chicagoland Radio and Media |access-date=2016-03-02}}

File:MOT-Sound-Team.jpg|Sound effects specialists Ora D. Nichols, Henry Gauthiere, George O'Donnell, and Arthur Nichols on The March of Time{{cite book |last=Mott |first=Robert L. |date=1993 |title=Radio Sound Effects: Who Did It, and How, in the Era of Live Broadcasting |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=9780899507477}}{{Rp|16}}

File:MOT-Actors-Rehearsal.jpg|Rehearsal for The March of Time with cast including Ted de Corsia, William Pringle, William Adams, Marion Hopkinson and Ray Collins

File:MOT-Actors-Microphone.jpg|Actors presenting The March of Time

File:MOT-Radio-1938.jpg in a 1938 advertisement. Months later Welles employed the series's techniques in his radio version of The War of the Worlds (1938), and he parodied the newsreel series in his first feature film, Citizen Kane (1941).]]

Unless noted, broadcast information for The March of Time is drawn from John Dunning's On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (1998).{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Fi5wPDBiGfMC&dq=%22The+March+of+Time,news%22&pg=PA434 |last=Dunning |first=John |authorlink=John Dunning (detective fiction author) |title=On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio |date=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York, NY |isbn=978-0-19-507678-3 |pages=434–437 |edition=Revised |accessdate=2019-08-31}}{{Rp|434|date=April 2012}}

• 1931–35: CBS, March 6, 1931 – April 26, 1935, 30 minutes. Fridays at 10:30 p.m. ET March 6, 1931 – June 1931; Fridays at 8{{nbsp}}p.m. July 1931–33; Fridays at 8:30 p.m. 1933–34; Fridays at 9{{nbsp}}p.m. 1934–35.
• 1935–36: CBS, August 26, 1935 – September 25, 1936, 15 minutes. Weeknights at 10:30 p.m. ET.
• 1936–37: CBS, October 15, 1936 – October 7, 1937, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 10:30{{nbsp}}p.m. ET.
• 1937–39: Blue Network, October 14, 1937 – April 28, 1939, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET October 14, 1938 – January 1938; Thursdays at 8{{nbsp}}p.m. January–July 1938; Fridays at 9:30 p.m. July 8, 1938{{cite magazine |date=July 11, 1938 |title=Life … On the Air! |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f08EAAAAMBAJ |magazine=Life | page=65 |access-date=2016-03-01 }}– April 28, 1939.
• 1941–42: Blue Network, October 9, 1941 – June 5, 1942, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 8{{nbsp}}p.m. ET October 9, 1941 – February 1942; subsequently Fridays at 9:30 p.m. or 9{{nbsp}}p.m.
• 1942–44: NBC, July 9, 1942 – October 26, 1944, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. ET.
• 1944–45: ABC, November 2, 1944 – July 26, 1945, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. ET.

• Orson Welles, This is Orson Welles — It was a marvelous show to do. Great fun, because, half an hour after something happened, we'd be acting it out with music and sound effects and actors. It was a super show — terribly entertaining. ... I began as an occasional performer, because they had a regular stock company, and then I was finally let in—one of the inner circle. And then I had the greatest thrill of my life—I don't know why it thrilled me (it does still, to think of it now), I guess because I thought March of Time was such a great thing to be on. One day, they did as a news item on March of Time the opening of my production of the black Macbeth, and I played myself on it. And that to me was the apotheosis of my career—that I was on March of Time acting and as a news item. I've never felt since that I've had it made as much as I did that one afternoon.{{cite book |last1=Welles |first1=Orson |author-link1=Orson Welles |last2=Bogdanovich |first2=Peter |author-link2=Peter Bogdanovich |last3=Rosenbaum |first3=Jonathan |author-link3=Jonathan Rosenbaum |title=This is Orson Welles |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |location=New York |date=1992 |isbn=0-06-016616-9}}{{Rp|74}}
• John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio — And like any good newspaper, it was damned left and right. Real newsmen condemned it for hamming up the news. Communists called it fascistic. William Randolph Hearst labeled it Communistic propaganda and forbade mention of it in the pages of his newspapers. It was banned in Germany, It even ran afoul of Roosevelt, who asked and later demanded that it stop impersonating him, because the actors were so good they were diminishing the impact of his Fireside Chats. It was accused of being pompous, pretentious, melodramatic, and bombastic. But it was never dull. In the mid-1930s, Time had Hooper numbers in the 25 point range.{{Rp|436}}

The March of Time was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1990.[http://www.radiohof.org/news/marchoftime.html The March of Time] at the National Radio Hall of Fame; retrieved April 8, 2012

{{reflist|30em}}

{{Commons category|The March of Time (radio program)}}

• [http://www.radiohof.org/news/marchoftime.html The March of Time] at the National Radio Hall of Fame
• [http://www.radiogoldindex.com/cgi-local/p2.cgi?ProgramName=The+March+Of+Time The March of Time] at RadioGOLDINdex
• [http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/rhamarch.pdf Finding Aid] (PDF), The March of Time (Radio Program), New York Public Library

Radio broadcasts at the Internet Archive

• [https://archive.org/details/1930-1937RadioNews 1930–1937 Radio News] — includes The March of Time from January 18, 1937
• [https://archive.org/details/1938RadioNews 1938 Radio News] — includes The March of Time from February 3 and February 10, 1938
• [https://archive.org/details/1940RadioNews 1940 Radio News] — includes The March of Time from August 24, 1940
• [https://archive.org/details/1941RadioNews 1941 Radio News] — includes The March of Time from November 20 and December 11, 1941
• [https://archive.org/details/1945RadioNews 1945 Radio News] — includes The March of Time from February 22, March 15, March 22, March 29 and April 5, 1945

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Category:American news radio programs

Category:1930s American radio programs

Category:1940s American radio programs

Category:CBS Radio programs

Category:NBC radio programs

Category:NBC Blue Network radio programs