Radio: Black & Blue

When NBC obeyed the handwriting on the wall and divorced its Blue Network last year (TIME, Jan. 19), anyone with a couple of million dollars to spare (asking price $12,000,000) could have become owner of the No. 3 U.S. radio chain. No one did (it is still, like NBC, a wholly owned subsidiary of RCA). But this week the Blue was one year old as a separate corporation. Loudly enough for all non-buyers to hear, it proudly announced that it had wound up the year in the black (profits undisclosed).

Seven Wall Street investment houses, three insurance companies, two commodity manufacturers, a...