''Vox Pop'' was a popular radio program of interviews, quizzes and human interest features, sometimes titled ''Sidewalk Interviews'' (1936) and ''Voice of the People'' (the name is from the Latin "Vox Populi", meaning "Voice of the People"). It was heard from the early 1930s to the late 1940s.
The program was launched in 1932 on KTRH in Houston when advertising salesmen Parks Johnson and Jerry Belcher went into the street with portable microphones to talk to people about the 1932 presidential race between
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
and
FDR.
They continued after the election, and as they developed the premise into a series, it expanded on the Southwest Broadcasting System. Three years later, Johnson and Belcher moved the show to New York and were heard on the
Blue Network in 1935 as a summer replacement for
Joe Penner
Joe Penner (born József Pintér; November 11, 1904 – January 10, 1941) was an American vaudeville, radio, and film comedian.
Early life
Penner was an ethnic Hungarian born József Pintér in Nagybecskerek, Austria-Hungary, (present-day Zre ...
. On October 13, 1935, they became part of the regular
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
schedule with Belcher replaced by
Wally Butterworth in 1936.
They remained on NBC until 1939 when they jumped to CBS. Butterworth was replaced by Neil O'Malley in 1942, and O'Malley was later replaced by
Warren Hull
John Warren Hull (January 17, 1903 – September 14, 1974), known professionally as Warren Hull, was an American actor, singer and television personality active from the 1930s through the 1960s. He was one of the most popular serial actors in t ...
.
The series came to an end on ABC in 1947–48. Between November 7, 1932, and May 19, 1948, Parks Johnson and his co-hosts visited 41 states and six foreign countries.
Today, ''Vox Pop'' is the name of an unrelated live
call-in
In broadcasting, a phone-in or call-in is a programme format in which viewers or listeners are invited to air their live comments by telephone, usually in respect of a specific topic selected for discussion on the day of the broadcast. On radio ( ...
radio show on
WAMC
WAMC is a public radio network headquartered in Albany, New York. The network has 12 broadcast radio stations (transmitters) and 16 broadcast relay stations (translators, repeaters). The two flagship stations in the WAMC network are WAMC-FM 90. ...
(Northeast Public Radio).
Merchandising
In the 1938 Milton Bradley game, ''Vox Pop'', players pulled chips from a bag to answer questions on a host's card. The game box cover displayed a yellow lightning bolt on a blue field. The box cover of a later edition (titled ''The New Vox Pop'' on the question cards) showed Johnson and Butterworth set against a New York skyline.
References
Sources
Dunning, John. ''On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.Hoerschelmann, Olaf. ''Rules of the Game'', Suny Press, 2006.
External links
*{{cite web, title=''Vox Pop'' Introduction, url=http://www.lib.umd.edu/LAB/COLLECTIONS/voxpophome.html, work=Vox Pop: The Show That Traveled America, 1932-1948, publisher=Library of American Broadcasting, access-date=5 September 2013, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120623153712/http://www.lib.umd.edu/LAB/COLLECTIONS/voxpophome.html, archive-date=23 June 2012
Parks Johnson collection on ''Vox Pop'' records
Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland Libraries
Radio Goldindex''Vox Pop'' guest host Ed Sullivan interviews a member of Merrill's Marauders (August 21, 1944)
at the University of Maryland Libraries
1930s American radio programs
NBC radio programs
NBC Blue Network radio programs
CBS Radio programs
1940s American radio programs