Word: kobak
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Edgar Kobalc, president of Mutual Broadcasting system, made a fateful decision: Three for the Money, an MBS giveaway show (grand prize: up to $7,000 cash and a trip-for two-anywhere in the world), will be dropped from the network this week. Folksy Ed Kobak claimed that he had had misgivings when the show first went on the air 13 weeks ago. "We never did like the idea of a giveaway show," he explained, "but we're like sheep." He added: "Down in our hearts our conscience bothered us." He was further influenced by the new code...
...Kobak's decision was greeted with moderate applause in the trade. There was also some likelihood that his troubled heart and conscience may have been reinforced by the fact that Three for the Money-unlike giveaway shows on rival networks (e.g., Stop the Music, Truth or Consequences)-never attracted a sponsor...
When Edgar Kobak became boss of the Mutual Broadcasting System, it was a nationwide junkpile of 247 "light bulbs" and "coffee pots" (low-power radio stations). That year (1944), advertisers spent $19,600,000 for Mutual's thin air; in 1946, $25,800,000. And this week Mutual signed up its 400th station: Atlantic City's 250-watt WMID. It was the 15th station to join Mutual in 15 days, the 153rd since Kobak took over...
...Kobak is an unpressed little man with a face that might have been clipped from any old banquet photograph -shy, inexact grin, blurred eyes, tired grey hair. Actually, he is a sensationally successful huckster, known far & wide among radiomen as The Great Salesman. He loves Donald Duck, practical jokes and the Notre Dame team. He signs his letters with a great big friendly "Ed." In his office is an eight-foot bull whip; Ed likes to snap it around and make like a slave-driver. But all his employees know that Ed is just kidding; he's really...
Then the broadcasters hit back. Blared NBC President Niles Trammell: "Advertising [is] the vital spark in our way of life." Mutual President Ed Kobak snorted that Bill Paley should have expressed his views in private because such statements were bad public relations for the industry...