Mr. Magazine

From the Mr. Magazine™ Vault…

The following is the letter from the editors introducing the first issue of Listeners Digest published February 1939. The monthly noted “the endless demands and ceaseless activities of modern life prevent the listener from hearing all the really worthwhile presentations of radio.” As you read the complete introduction below, feel free to replace the word radio with the internet or social media or any other media that comes to mind… the end result will be the same.

No medium can replace the power of curation that magazines provide their readers and advertisers; no medium, plain and simple. Enjoy this journey back to 1939…

As Radio Comes of Age…

The people of the United States have been conscious of radio as a major source of entertainment for about ten years. During that period radio has been maturing as a sociological force. Each year radio has brought to the American fireside a greater and more immediate knowledge of politics, psychology, medicine fashions, economics, science, sports, along with entertainment of the highest order – music, drama, comedy.

The most dramatic evidence of radio’s contribution to modern life came during the world crisis of September and October. While nations teetered on the brink of disaster, radio’s immediate mobilization of world opinion was one of the principal factors in staving off a European war.

Surely we can attribute to radio a major share of credit for the fact that today millions of people are not only better informed, but more vitally interested in a wider variety of subjects than at any other period in history.

But the endless demands and ceaseless activities of modern life prevent the listener from hearing all the really worthwhile presentations of radio. In the United States alone the simultaneous programs of the four major networks and more than 500 stations far exceed the capacity of any one receiving set.

And so, with much that is airworthy being missed, and with much of that which is heard meriting a more leisured perusal than the fleeting airwaves permit, there seems to be a need for some medium that will sift, digest and reproduce radio in print.

This, then, is the conception of the need – and Listeners Digest is our answer.