User:Kaitlin1989/Frank Hummert

Frank Hummert is recognized as one of the leaders in profit making in daytime radio in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He worked closely with Procter & Gamble and joined Blackett & Sample to sell products to dominate the female daytime radio listeners. In 1937 Hummert was the highest paid executive in America.

Hummert and his later wife, Anne Ashenhurst, was said to have created, wrote and produced over a dozen 15-minute daily radio soap operas or serials. These included "Just Plain Bill" (Kolynos), "Betty & Bob" (Gold Medal Flour), "Ma Perkins" (Oxydol), "Jack Armstrong, All American Boy" (Wheaties), plus "Our Gal Sunday" and "Stella Dallas." Frank Hummert dominated the construction of radio daytime serials or “soap operas”. Hummert previous knowledge of advertising strategies helped take advantage of radio listeners. Hummert was not the creator of the first soap opera, Irna Phillips is usually recognized for that. However Hummert helped the evolving stages for this type of programming. This evolution happened over a few years, however Hummert was in charge of forming advertisement ideas, taking evening oap operas to daytime, and persuading male advertisers that women could listen to radio while doing chores and housework. Hummert “provided programming that included advertising and propaganda (the latter including messages supporting government policies during World War II) plus entertainment for as much as half of daytime network; they also originated sponsored children’s programming and many other programs.”

After making profit on daytime radio, Hummert turned his gears to serial programming for radio. Hummert and his later wife, Anne Ashenhurst, was said to have created, wrote and produced over a dozen 15-minute daily radio soap operas or serials. These included "Just Plain Bill" (Kolynos), "Betty & Bob" (Gold Medal Flour), "Ma Perkins" (Oxydol), "Jack Armstrong, All American Boy" (Wheaties), plus "Our Gal Sunday" and "Stella Dallas." In reality Hummert only created mass produced shows to make a large profit for himself. The shows written were taken through an assembly line of “ghost writers”.

First, Hummert would purchase existing serial shows or create a very basic serial for writers to continue with. For each show Hummert owned, two “ghost writers” would be assigned to continue writing the serial programs. These writers were not given credit because hired under Hummert, they were told to keep quite. From the new scripts created came six or seven “script readers” per serial. These script readers were employed to direct and produce the scripts given to them. This was a constant job or what is known today as the “Hummert assembly line” of work.

The mass production of script made Hummert extremely wealthy and powerful in the radio industry. Hummerts’ actual output was very little compared to the work his employees produced for NBC and CBS. Even Hummerts’ actual ideas for serials could be questioned because of the close similarity of books and other programs already created. His employees’ labor intensive work led to the Radio Writers Guild in 1937. The Guild protected writers that were used under individuals like Hummert.