''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 the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and ...

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 The Blue Network (previously known as the NBC Blue Network) was the on-air name of a now defunct American Commercial broadcasting, radio network, which broadcast from 1927 through 1945. Beginning as one of the two radio networks owned by the ...

in 1935 as a summer replacement for Joe Penner. On October 13, 1935, they became part of the regular

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

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. 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

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(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 The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library system in the Washington D.C.–Baltimore area. The system includes eight libraries: six are located on the University of Maryland, College Park, College Park campus, while ...

Radio Goldindex''Vox Pop'' guest host Ed Sullivan interviews a member of Merrill's Marauders (August 21, 1944)
at the

1930s American radio programs NBC radio programs NBC Blue Network radio programs CBS Radio programs 1940s American radio programs Radio phone-in programs