Benny Show Avoids Strike

[Yhtapmys]

Here's part of a story from the L.A. Times, dated Dec. 2, 1944. It's under the headline "Radio Union Moves to Take De Mille Off Air" and the lead of the story deals with the famous AFRA dispute that eventually ended Cecil B. DeMille's career on Lux Radio Theatre.

The next story deals with Jack's show. I think I've managed to dig up the whole item off a web search, starting with a sub-head:

Benny’s Air Show Will Have Music
By the grace of Jimmy Petrillo, there will be music on the Jack Benny radio show tomorrow, after all, and it won’t necessarily just be the Waukegan Heifetz lacerating “Love In Bloom” on his ersatz Stradivarius.
In a dispute over employment of non-union engineers on the program by the National Broadcasting Co., Czar Petrillo of the American Federation of Musicians yesterday notified the network that the Phil Harris band would he ordered off the show. But after a couple of long distance calls were placed to Petrillo’s Chicago headquarters, Vice-President Sidney N. Stroz [sic] of NBC announced that the show would be permitted to go over the ether as scheduled with non-union engineers at the controls.
A spokesman for NBC said the said the arrangement probably is only temporary, but that no deadline had been set for settlement of the dispute.
In Chicago yesterday Beverly Fredendall, vice-president of the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians, suggested if the AF of M. attempted to silence Jack Benny’s show that talent from his organization be recruited to appear on the program.

You've got to love inter-union disputes.

Anyway, just a note about Sidney Nicholas Strotz (rhymes with "boats'), not that anyone cares but I have the information here. He organised the Chicago Stadium Corporation [Soldier Field] and became its president in 1930. In Feb. 1933, he was appointed manager of the Chicago Artists Service of NBC. He became division manager in 1938 and was VP in charge of programmes by 1941 (not too many days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his wife took him to court in Waukegan and got half of his money in a divorce settlement). By 1944 he was West Coast Division VP. He was given the added responsibility of VP in charge of TV in 1948. He quit NBC in 1950 and died in Oct. 1963.

Yhtapmys

[Maxwell]

One correction: Chicago Stadium Corporation owned the old Chicago Stadium, an indoor venue that housed the Chicago Blackhawks and eventually the Bulls. The Stadium also used to house the Ice Capades and Ringling Brothers Circus along with various and sundry other events (such as six-day bicycle races in the '30s). The Stadium was torn down when Bill Wirtz (who by that time owned Chicago Stadium) and Jerry Reinsdorf built the United Center.

Soldier Field is and always has been owned by the Chicago Park District.