page_title: Mutual Broadcasting System
section_title: Programming: Korean War and original drama's decline
hierarchical_section_title: Mutual Broadcasting System / History / 1950s: New ownership / Programming: Korean War and original drama's decline
caption_attribution_description: English: Newspaper advertisement for Eddie Fisher's radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting System
context_page_description: The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, Mutual was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow. For many years, it was a national broadcaster for Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and Notre Dame football. From the mid-1930s and until the retirement of the network in 1999, Mutual ran a highly respected news service accompanied by a variety of popular commentary shows. During the late 1970s, Mutual pioneered the nationwide late night call-in radio show and introduced the country to Larry King.
  In the early 1970s, acting in much the same style as rival ABC had two years earlier, Mutual launched four subsidiary radio networks: Mutual Black Network, which evolved to today's American Urban Radio Networks; Mutual Cadena Hispánica; Mutual Southwest Network, and Mutual Progressive Network.
  Of the four national networks of American radio's classic era, Mutual had for decades the largest number of affiliates, but the least certain financial position.
context_section_description: Before the Guterma fiasco, the network had maintained its reputation for running a strong and respected news organization. As the conflict on the Korean peninsula began to escalate in mid-1950, Mutual began airing two special nightly reports on the situation, featuring the commentary of Major George Fielding Eliot, military analyst for CBS during World War II. By August 1950, Mutual was represented by six correspondents in Korea, more than NBC or ABC. In June 1958, just a few months before the Scranton takeover, the network had launched a nightly 25-minute newscast, The World Today, hosted by Westbrook Van Voorhis, famous as the voice of The March of Time. On occasion, Mutual's commentary programs made the news: On March 11, 1954, Fulton Lewis Jr. featured Senator Joseph McCarthy as his guest, two days after the senator's ethics had been called into question on the CBS TV show See It Now, hosted by Edward R. Murrow. In his radio interview, McCarthy dismissed Murrow as "the extreme left-wing, bleeding-heart element of television."
  By the end of the 1950s, Mutual had forsworn original dramatic programming. Early in the decade, however, it picked up the adventure series Challenge of the Yukon, which had originated at Mutual cofounder WXYZ in 1938 after the station's departure from the network. The show, subsequently renamed Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, ran on Mutual from January 1950 until its finale in June 1955. In 1950 as well, Mutual introduced radio listeners to adult science fiction with 2000 Plus, which first aired on March 15, almost a month before the premiere of NBC's similarly themed Dimension X. The Shadow's long run finally ended in December 1954. In November 1957, Mutual aired the final episodes of its last two remaining half-hour original dramatic shows, Counterspy and Gang Busters, both picked up from other networks earlier in the decade. It would be 1973 before Mutual would broadcast a new dramatic series. In 1955, the famous comedy team Bob and Ray came over from NBC for a five-day-a-week afternoon show. Kate Smith returned in January 1958 for her final radio series, which ran until August. Sports began to occupy an increasing portion of Mutual's schedule: the network began regularly airing a Major League Baseball Game of the Day, every day except Sunday. This expansion into daily sports programming would run well into the 1960s. While baseball's World Series and All-Star Game would go to rival NBC in 1957, Mutual secured exclusive national radio rights the following year to Notre Dame football, which would remain a cornerstone for the rest of the network's existence.
caption: ... Eddie Fisher for Coca-Cola, Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's how Mutual made music in 1954.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "90"}