Radio: At the End of the Rainbow

• Share

(4 of 7)

His early years in Dayton were more often spent seeking jobs than being sought after. Of Yankee and German Swiss stock, the son of a high-school manual training teacher, Stanton started earning money as a newsboy. After school he worked at the Metropolitan men's clothing store where he progressed from stock boy to window trimmer and showcard artist. His former boss, Richard Meyer, recalls that Stanton was wise beyond his years: "We used to get into arguments about religion and sex —on a very serious plane. Most fellows his age didn't worry about those things in that day."

Meat for the Grinder. During his four years at Ohio Wesleyan University, Stanton continued to work at the Metropolitan, commuting 90 miles to Dayton every weekend. He also found time to be elected president of the senior honorary society and of his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta; to be put on probation for his part in the production of a college musical, some of whose lines offended the Methodist sensibilities of Ohio Wesleyan's faculty, and to split a $2,100 profit as editor of the college yearbook, which was illustrated by a boyhood chum who later became well-known Cartoonist Milton (Steve Canyon) Caniff.

At Ohio Wesleyan, Stanton vacillated between a pre-med course and a psychology major. When he graduated in 1930, he was offered an advertising job by Philadelphia's N. W. Ayer on the basis of his work on the college yearbook, but before he could report for work, the depression had changed N. W. Ayer's mind. Stanton hurriedly grabbed a job at Ohio State as graduate assistant (salary: $750 a year), married Ruth Stephenson, the girl he'd been going with since he was 14, and for three years worked as a part-time teacher while writing a Ph.D. thesis on industrial psychology.

One of his research projects was on the subject of advertising appeals, and Stanton concluded that advertising was more effective when heard than when seen. To bring this finding to the attention of radio broadcasters, he thoughtfully sent a copy of his paper to CBS. Paul Kesten, then CBS vice president in charge of advertising and sales promotion, pounced on Stanton's report as "good red meat for my meat grinder," wired him an offer of a research job at $50 a week.

Frank Stanton arrived in New York in 1935 with his wife, a wire-haired fox terrier, a second-hand Ford, a list of modestly priced Manhattan hotels—and an empty wallet. It was the most significant trip he had made outside his native Midwest since his teens, when he had attended a Y.M.C.A. conference in Finland as the official representative of the "Hi-Y" boys of Ohio. Many of his fellow executives think he has retained, to this day, an air of Y.M.C.A. earnestness and unblinking sincerity. One of them describes him as "just a country boy with a Madison Avenue gloss."

The country boy tackled his CBS job in a manner that made Kesten's eyes pop. Working 70 to 80 hours a week, Stanton rapidly became research director, then advertising director and found time to develop, with Vienna's Dr. Paul Lazarsfeld, an electrical gimmick called the Program Analyzer which automatically measured radio listenership.