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Podcast: Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting
Episode: BW - EP137—008: St. Patricks Day On The Air—The Death Of Fred Allen
Description: By January of 1949 Fred Allen was worn out. He’d spent years battling with sponsors and with NBC. In December of 1948 his Sunday at 8:30 rating was a healthy 20 points, but after Edgar Bergen left NBC’s airwaves the network moved Allen’s show up a half hour to 8PM.
Meanwhile on ABC, Stop the Music’s popularity was soaring. Allen lost nearly half his audience in a single month. By March Stop The Music’s rating would reach 17.6, while Allen’s fell to 9.4 and Sam Spade’s fell to 11.3 on CBS.
Allen was a voracious reader, sometimes scouring ten newspapers a day for topi...