The Fred Waring Show is an American old-time radio musical variety program. It was broadcast in a variety of time slots from February 8, 1933, until October 4, 1957, and was heard at different times on ABC, CBS, NBC, and the Blue Network.[1] The program was sometimes called Chesterfield Time or Pleasure Time.[2]
Musician Fred Waring starred in the shows, which featured his orchestra and chorus.[2] An article in the trade publication Broadcasting described Waring's programs on radio (and later on television) as featuring "friendly banter with his crew, plus renditions of old-time favorite songs and ballads by the chorus and vocalists."[3]
The program's producers through the years included Tom Bennett.[4] Announcers included Paul Douglas[5] and Bill Bivens.[6]
Waring's programs were usually broadcast from the Shawnee Inn in Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania, a facility that he acquired and renamed, transforming the venue into the center of his musical activities.[7]
Waring's broadcasts were heard on the schedule shown in the table below.
Florida Citrus Growers
Thursdays (1948-1949)
Source: On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio[1]
In 1935, Ford Motor Company used transcriptions from Waring's CBS broadcasts to promote the new 1935 Ford V8 automobile. The World Broadcasting System produced three 15-minute transcriptions for distribution to 300 radio stations vial local Ford dealers.[8]
Those transcriptions were key in establishing a musical artist's legal rights with regard to recordings of performances. In 1939, A United States District court in North Carolina granted Waring an injunction against using a transcription without his authorization. Waring had sued Richard Austin Dunlea, who owned radio station WMFD in Wilmington, North Carolina, after the station broadcast an excerpt from a transcription despite the station's not being designated for use of the transcription. Judge Isaac M. Meekins' ruling said, in part: "Complainant has a property right in his performance. Complainant by mental labor creates something which is the subject of sale ... It is his work, his property ..."[9]
The ruling in North Carolina followed a similar decision in Pennsylvania, in which a state court said that radio station WDAS had to have Waring's permission to broadcast recordings that he had made.[9]