A dynamic figure in the field of radio is Dorothy Lewis, of the National Association of Broadcasters' Coordinator of Listener Activity and organizer of the Association of Women Broadcasters. Her executive talents have been the means of bringing radio listeners and broadcasters into closer working relationship. She travels from coast to coast, meeting with radio officials and civic listener groups, correlating their activities and extending the areas of public service.

In 1942, realizing the tremendous influence exerted by women broadcasters who were all working independently of each other, she organized the Association of Women Broadcasters. From a group of 35 women it has expanded to a membership of more than 1,000 and is increasing monthly as new stations take to the air. This association of women broadcasters has endeavored to make itself a public service force in the life of the country by helping to sell Government savings bonds, to conserve food, to promote support for the United Nations, and in other vital ways. Assuming editorial leadership in fields it considers important, the association has adopted a theme for each ear. In 1944 the theme was The American Home; in 1945, Women in the United Nations; in 1946, Women's Responsibility in the Communicative Arts; and in 1947, The Woman Broadcaster Looks Ahead. Mrs. Lewis feels that having cooperated on a national basis, women broadcasters can next turn their attention to the international picture.

Mrs. Lewis has had more than 20 years' experience in radio, as manager of a broadcasting station in Westchester County; as producer of children's, women's, and musical radio shows; as an advertising executive; and as owner of her own importexport business. Her first assignment with the National Association of Broadcasters was to make a survey of children's programs, and she wrote several books on this subject.

Women in Network Staff Positions

NETWORK EXECUTIVE

From frontier life in the wilderness of Saskatchewan to the skyscrapers of Radio City and a job as a national network executive is the record of Margaret Cuthbert, supervisor of programs for women and children at NBC.

Miss Cuthbert supervises and coordinates three weekly programs: Story to Order (a children's program), Consumer Time, and the World's Great Novels. She charts a schedule of subject-matter, guest artists, or commentators; reads scripts; and acts as go-between for NBC and individuals or groups interested in radio programs. She has been given many awards for her outstanding radio work. To young women who aspire to a career in radio, she says: "Qualifications for a radio career include flexibility-the ability to look forward rather than backward. Radio is an art as well as a business. It therefore encompasses the stage, the screen, the lecture platform, the concert hall and the newsroom. Radio reflects the passing scene and those who work in it should learn to hold the mirror at an angle which reflects what is happening." Miss Cuthbert advises a girl in addition to learning all she can about the particular

phase of radio she is interested in-whether music, acting, writing, or production— to know typing and shorthand, filing, bookkeeping, or some other down-to-earth job that keeps an office running smoothly.

Margaret Cuthbert, a Canadian by birth, had additional education in the United States, taking a fine arts course at an eastern University. She worked at the British Embassy in Washington during World War I and started her radio career in 1925 at WEAF where she "read and wrote scripts, swept out studios, and ran like mad to find piano players who could fill in when a program died." When WEAF became the key station of the National Broadcasting Co. network, she became director of women's activities. The next promotion gave her her present job.

Frances Farmer Wilder is consultant on daytime programs for the Columbia Broadcasting System, interpreting research material on daytime programs and evaluating listener response. She works closely with advertising agencies, clients, and the CBS Program Department. She frequently speaks before civic, educational, social welfare, and business groups, and consults with them on daytime programs. Before coming to CBS in New York, Mrs. Wilder was for 6 years Director of Education for the Columbia Pacific Network. One of the outstanding programs which she originated while there was These Are Americans, a series dedicated to bettering relationships of Mexican-Americans with their neighbors on our west coast. Mrs. Wilder holds a degree from the University of California and has done graduate work in sociology at Columbia University. She spent 5 years in China and followed this with a transSiberian journey to Russia and Europe.

EMPLOYMENT MANAGER

A

top staff position is held by a woman at the National Broadcasting Co., Helen M. Korday, who is employment manager. Miss Korday stresses the fact that outside the program field, which is only 30 to 40 percent of the whole business of broadcasting, radio is just like any other business. It requires secretaries, bookkeepers, messengers, accountants, clerks, duplication operators, cashiers, and so forth. She admits, however, that there is a glamour attached to such jobs in Radio City, even though the work may be prosaic.

Miss Korday prepared herself to be a science teacher and specialized in mathematics, chemistry, physics, and psychology. While in college she had a variety of summer and night jobs, including one as waitress and, later, one as chemistry tutor; when she finished, her first job was as a stenographer for a chain store. She became a junior personnel assistant and liked this field so much that she decided to make personnel work her career. After a job as secretary to the vice president and sales manager of a chemical plant, she went to NBC as secretary to the assistant personnel manager. Later she became women's placement supervisor and then was promoted to employment manager (her present position) for the entire company.

Her work consists of developing sources for recruiting new applicants; selection and follow-up of references of applicants; maintaining files of available applicants; maintaining job specifications; interviewing and testing applicants for employment; termination interviewing; training for interviewing staff; recommendations for training of employees; handling of all vocational inquiries and correspondence.

Miss Korday believes that one of the best ways for young women to get ahead in radio is to start as a secretary. A college education plus secretarial training gives a girl a decided advantage, and she is still further ahead if she knows what she wants to do in radio. Secretaries to men in specialized jobs, she says, must be well educated, have an extensive and sometimes technical vocabulary, and be well above the average in personal qualifications.

Roughly, the positions open at NBC for both men and women may be divided into four classifications, says Miss Korday. They are:

1. Business management, which includes the financial, legal, personnel, and general service operations. While the business may be broadcasting, she points out, the network still has to pay and collect bills, make budgets, paint and move furniture, hire and fire people, and handle the multitudinous details associated with any large company.

2. The technical field, which includes research and development, as well as all engineering operations involved in handling, installing, and repairing equipment used to put a broadcast on the air.

3. The sales field, which involves selling time on the air, as well as maintenance of contractual and good will relations among the hundred and more affiliated stations throughout the country.

4. The creative field, which covers all those aspects of the business which require announcers, producers, play readers; script, promotion, publicity, and press writers; and their assistants.

Very few women, says Miss Korday, are found in the technical and engineering field. Only two women are sales representatives at NBC, and they both started as secretaries in the company. Big opportunities exist for women in the creative field, but these are usually as free lance workers and not as members of the NBC staff. All singers and actresses are free lance, and they are not hired by the business office but by a special artists' bureau.

NETWORK LIBRARIAN

The major radio networks have extensive libraries which offer employment to a few women librarians. In addition, radio stations in the larger cities have musical libraries, but usually these are in charge of a man who doubles as announcer (or disc jockey) and librarian.

Agnes Law, chief librarian with Columbia Broadcasting System, has grown up with her job. She is one of the three original members of the CBS staff and has been with the network since 1927. Like so many women who entered radio in its early days, she was employed as a musician (she has a degree in music from Syracuse University), and her duties were to prepare the musical programs for a male quartet, two women soloists, a symphony orchestra, and a band. The network employed 18 persons and broadcast over 16 stations for 10 hours a week.

When CBS bought station WABC, Miss Law helped with the expansion and organization of the program department, supervised the typists and stenographers, prepared all continuity, and later trained girls in writing the continuity. She kept program files, developed the program information division, and handled copyrights.

on musical numbers. Now each one of these operations requires a complete department and a number of employees.

The present CBS library was established in 1941 to serve the network staff, its clients, advertisers, and the public. It is a general reference library and includes 8,000 volumes in addition to periodicals, Government bulletins, and material on radio and television. The reading room is used by newspaper, magazine, and free lance writers, by advertising agency representatives, and by teachers and students of radio.

The present library staff at CBS consists of 11 persons, including two graduate librarians, Miss Thelma Edic, formerly of the New York Public Library who has a degree in library science from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and Miss Martha Rupprecht, in charge of program research. Miss Law herself studied library science at Columbia University night school. She is a member of the National Association of Women Broadcasters.

DIRECTOR MAGAZINE DIVISION, PRESS INFORMATION

As director of the magazine division of press information at CBS, Dorothy Leffler is in charge of placing feature stories about CBS radio talent, shows, and CBS personnel with magazines. Her job is to keep the network and its stars before the public. In addition, she arranges interviews with leading radio personalities and assists free lance writers and magazine staff writers with information. Miss Leffler has been with CBS four years and previously was director and assistant to the editor of the New York office of Bobbs-Merrill publishing house. She is a graduate of Cornell University.

CONTINUITY ACCEPTANCE EDITOR

Least known to the general public of radio's techniques, and certainly least. publicized, is "editing for radio." No other technique in radio is so vociferously denounced, yet these radio "censors," or continuity acceptance editors, as they prefer to be called, are employed by the networks to guard "the public interest, convenience, and necessity," as required by the Federal Communications Act.

Dorothy Ann Kemble is the director of continuity acceptance for the Mutual Broadcasting System. The following material is adapted from a talk she made in October 1946 at Ohio University:

Few persons outside radio realize that every program, every commercial, every chain break or time signal, every recording, and every spot announcement broadcast over the air must first go through a screening process in the network's continuity acceptance department. During an average month at one of the larger networks, the continuity department may clear as many as 2,000 scripts and announcements and more than 300 recordings for network or local station broadcast. In addition, Literary Rights must clear titles on scripts and all ideas submitted, in order to protect the network and their clients from plagiarism suits; the music libraries and music editors must clear every musical selection played on the network, including theme songs.

The first continuity acceptance departments were established by NBC and CBS in 1934 and 1935, but in 1927 a group of eminent Americans had formulated the network broadcast policies that are still followed today. This group included Elihu Root; Charles Evans Hughes; Walter Damrosch; William Green; Francis D. Farrell, president of Kansas State College; A. E. Alderman, president of the University of Virginia; Dwight Morrow; Charles MacFarland, executive secretary of the Federal Council of Churches; Owen D. Young; and

one woman, Mrs. John Sherman, then president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs.

Miss Kemble has had special courses, at several universities, in psychology, advertising, and creative writing. She joined NBC in 1938 to do research and to review commercials. Later she reviewed all radio programs, and in 1942, when the Blue Network (now American) was separated from NBC, she was asked to supervise the Continuity Acceptance and Literary Rights Clearances Department for the Blue. In July 1945 she resigned from ABC and went to Mutual to organize a similar department.

PUBLIC RELATIONS REPRESENTATIVE

According to NBC, Irene Kuhn holds one of the few key positions that has been apportioned to women in the networks. She is Assistant Director of Information for the National Broadcasting Co.

The Information Department handles NBC's personal relations with the public. It maintains a correspondence division to answer incoming mail (around 3,000 letters a month at present). It also drafts all policy statements for the company as a whole; prepares and revises the NBC Program Policies and Working Manual which is distributed to advertising agencies, sponsors, and NBC employees; prepares NBC's Annual Review; and publishes the monthly NBC Digest of important material broadcast over the network.

Mrs. Kuhn is a veteran newspaper woman and commentator. In 1924 she went to the Far East where she did both newspaper and radio work. In World War II she was in this work again in the Far East. Besides her newspaper work on various papers in this country, she has held assignments in Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific. She has written for the movies. In 1938 she published an autobiography. After a visit to South America, where she did a series of broadcasts from Rio de Janeiro, Mrs. Kuhn wrote, produced, and broadcast her own program, Irene Kuhn's Feature Page, over a New York radio station. She joined NBC in 1940 as special writer and assistant to the vice president in charge of press. In this position she introduced the idea of the Good Neighbor series of broadcasts and created a Nationwide promotion plan for Down Mexico Way and Pan American Holiday which NBC sponsored for a year with official support of the United States Government. She assumed her present duties as assistant director of information with NBC in 1943.

Women in Advertising Agencies

"The real glamour jobs in radio," said one network executive, "are with the advertising agencies." Certainly some of the most lucrative are. Since very few sponsors deal directly with the networks or radio stations, the advertising agency is the liaison between the advertiser and the local station or network. The agency may buy a complete "package show," or it may buy an idea from a writer; in any case, the agency advises its clients as to the best type of radio show for its product, contacts the various station representatives as to availabilities, and buys the time for the program.