Sports radio in the 1930s

[Garrett Wollman]

I found the following advertisement in /Broadcasting/ magazine, April
15, 1939:

	New England's Largest Sports Audience

	For vivid descriptive accounts of baseball, racing, football,
	hockey and other sports, direct from the scene of action, New
	England sports fans listen to The Colonial Network.  These
	broadcasts command the largest sports audiences in New
	England.

	Baseball is first in popularity.  Coincidental telephone
	surveys show that The Colonial Network's play-by-play
	broadcasts of American and National League games have by far
	the largest afternoon audience of any New England radio
	feature.  This year, with Frankie Frisch, former major league
	manager, announcing, the Colonial stations are sure to
	increase this tremendous following.

	The broadcast of the first race direct from Suffolk Downs,
	Rockingham Park or Narragansett is second only to the baseball
	broadcast in the size of its daily audience.

	The Colonial Network covers every important professional,
	collegiate and amateur sports event, from a wrestling bout
	at the Arena to the swimming meet at Harvard---gives the New
	England audience its ports news /as it happens/, completely,
	expertly, entertainingly.

	Here is a ready-made audience, from all income groups, whose
	size and loyalty offer rich sales possibilities.  Only through
	The Colonial Network can you reach this audience.  It makes
	seventeen important markets immediately accessible, a larger
	productive sales territory than can be reached through any
	other medium at equally low cost.

At this time, Colonial was heard on WAAB (Boston), WEAN (Providence),
WICC (Bridgeport and New Haven), WTHT (Hartford), WNLC (New London),
WSAR (Fall River), WSPR (Springfield), WHAI (Greenfield), WBRK
(Pittsfield), WLBZ (Bangor), WFEA (Manchester), WLLH (Lowell and
Lawrence), WNBH (New Bedford), WATR (Waterbury), WLNH (Laconia), WRDO
(Augusta), and WCOU (Lewiston and Auburn).

-GAWollman