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The Suspense Project: The second Sorry Wrong Number broadcast day... August 21, 1943...
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Joe Webb
Today's Suspense is the second broadcast date for Sorry, Wrong Number. The first broadcast had low ratings but created a buzz beyond those who heard it because it was so very different than the typical mysteries of that time. The story had no happy resolution; listeners heard a vicious murder on the air. Instead of hearing the cops and a happily rescued victim, the killer got the last word, confusing and shocking the audience! CBS postponed a new performance of the story to August 1943 when they tried shifting Suspense to Saturday to compete with the highly rated Ellery Queen show. In a surprising move that was part of this experiment that seems designed with a potential sponsor monitoring (likely Colgate), separate east and west broadcasts were made for the very first time! Despite the publicity behind the broadcast, the Saturday experiment failed and lasted only two weeks. But Moorehead performed twice that night, one of the rare times a show had east-west separated performances without having a sponsor to pick up the tab. The reviews of the broadcast were positive, but the ratings were obviously not, or they would have kept that Saturday time slot. There's lots more background at https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/03/1943-08-21-sorry-wrong-number.html Both the east and west recordings have survived! There's also a link in the blogpost to the details and myth-busting about the first broadcast of SWN. (If you haven't read that, be sure to do so). The highest rated SWN performance would not be for another six months... its legend was starting to grow...
-- ---------- Suspense resource page https://sites.google.com/view/suspense-collectors-companion Suspense enhanced log https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11XflGB-S18jQ8JPr4EV1C9aZsRM_3Dw4xlLpGqgpBiU/edit?usp=sharing The Whistler complete log, presentations, and more https://sites.google.com/view/the-whistler-files The Big Story Revealed! https://sites.google.com/view/thestoriesbehindthebigstory/ Casey, Crime Photographer episode analysis https://bluenotebulletin.blogspot.com/ |
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