"We're not trying to bring back anything," Ed Byron told Variety for its 1964-04-22 edition. "We want new scripts in contemporaneous terms." ABC hired Jack Wilson as story editor. He had a long pedigree as a radio writer for NBC starting in 1943 and continued there through 1958, and knew a good script when he saw one, and how to fix one when it needed fixing. And then there's the money: ABC was paying $400 a script, 40% higher than the writers union minimum. That translates into $3,600 in US$2021 terms.
Jack Wilson's experience in radio was very diverse, starting in 1935 in Ohio as a newspaper reporter before moving to WJBK in Detroit as a writer and then in 1938 to Cincinnati's WLW, a station that launched Ed Byron's career and also that of actor Frank Lovejoy. He wrote for Mr. District Attorney, likely where he first met Byron, but also for Cavalcade of America, Archie Andrews, Biography in Sound, Words at War, bandleader Fred Waring, and even for Bob & Ray!
In the same article in Variety, Wilson explained that the market for writers had expanded considerably with the growth of television. Many new writers were looking to build competitive credibility in their resumes that would display their abilities to television producers and directors. Getting on T5 would be a stepping stone for them.
Experienced scripters also plied their craft on T5. These included writers had success in 1950s television, some of them on prestigious programs like Studio One and Playhouse 90 and other anthology programs. Radio writers displaced by TV's growth, wanted to get another chance in the radio game again. Many of them were radio soap opera writers, even some who were still writing for the soaps of television. Among T5's verteran radio and TV writers were Robert Cenedella, Robert Newman, Phyllis Coe, Virginia Radcliffe, Ian Martin, Joseph Cochran, Robert Arthur, George Lowther, Max Berton, Albert G. Miller, and many others.
One of the more curious recruits for T5 was George Bamber, who wrote for Suspense in its last Hollywood years, and also after the move back to New York. The legendary William N. Robson, who rejected some of Bamber's submissions for Suspense, also wrote a T5 script (#20, Incident at Apogee). Bamber got into radio writing in the very late 1950s, when radio opportunity was ebbing. He submitted the Robson rejections to the New York producer and they were accepted. And then a few years later Bamber reworked some of his Suspense scripts for T5! (Don't tell anyone at ABC).
T5 had the talents of Romeo Muller, who had 12 scripts accepted for T5. While he had some success writing for television drama, he had yet to see his greatest achievement with the television special Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer for Raskin-Bass. His T5 writing was during the time that special was in development. The program led to decades of beloved holiday television specials written by Muller. T5 had Muller just before his career blossomed.
Regarding the payment amount for a script, Wilson believed that "the writer who can't produce [a radio script for $400] within a week isn't with it." That is, if you were productive and had good work habits, the pay could actually be somewhat lucrative. In the heyday of the radio series Casey, Crime Photographer, writer Alonzo Deen Cole was pulling down the equivalent of $200,000 in today's US dollars. This productivity was always part of the discipline of radio writing for a continuing series with continuing characters. Not all writers could do it.
One famous writer, John Dickson Carr, had such difficulty writing weekly scripts for 1948's Cabin B-13, that his problems with the weekly demands became the primary reason the highly-regarded program was not renewed. It was so difficult for him that the last episodes of Cabin B-13 were reworked Suspense scripts that Carr used in 1942 and 1943. But other radio writers had the discipline needed. Ernest Kinoy, a full time NBC writer in the 1950s, told me back in a 1977 interview that he and NBC writing partner George Lefferts could plan out and create a script under time pressure that others could not. One would write the first half and the other would simultaneously write the second half. The completed script would be done at the end of the second day. Thankfully they did not have to do that often. Kinoy had a notable career, winning an Emmy for adapting author Alex Haley's work for the ABC miniseries Roots. His radio work for NBC series developed story-telling skills that were concise and could convey stories with richer context.
Wilson may have been expecting a level of discipline and ability among new writers that they had not developed. For some, it would be the only time they had a script broadcast in any format, and the thrill was more interesting than the pay. After broadcast they returned to their prior life. Among those who had T5 scripts accepted and performed was a lawyer, a prominent criminal attorney, a book store owner, a real estate develeoper, a theater production director, novelists, and many others from various walks of life. (More on these curious people in future posts).
In a syndicated column in Spring 1964, media critic Harvey Pack said that ABC believed that
"Theater Five" may now become the fountainhead for talented, imaginative newcomers who cannot break into network TV because they are inexperienced."
Byron told Pack that "there is no place on our show for scripts by established writers which were rejected 20 years ago and they now think they can sell to me." Byron also noted a key difference in writing for radio: "Radio writing is easier than TV because once your script is accepted you can go home and start writing another. In television, the writer is on call for rewrites the same as a Broadway playwright."
At an interview a few weeks before the T5 launch, Byron told the press that the series had many themes that will "run the gamut of dramatic suspense with only one factor remaining constant: we will demand modern, up-to-date radio fare from our authors." A constant message from ABC Radio and its president Robert Pauley was "We are innovating with radio, not reviving a ghost."
T5 did get its scripts, and Wilson, along with directors Warren Somerville and Ted Bell, had the experience and ability to guide writers and make editing changes needed to fit the constraints of the program. Like Byron said, a key aspect of the process was to appeal to a different listener base. He told interviewers that he did not want "the 'old pro' who's never taken the trouble to learn how to write for today's radio market of intelligent, young adults."
Remember: T5 was on the air at the beginning of the "baby boom," the post-WW2 demographic expansion and economic growth that occurred during the nervous peace of the Cold War era. The sophistication of the audience was built on the optimism of the time but also against the hard backdrop of the Great Depression, World War 2, the Berlin Wall, the Korean Conflict, Sputnik, the Cuban Missle Crisis and other tensions. These events were swirled in cultural memory, affected their media choices, and made the listeners a little more difficult to attract and to please.
Despite the five day weekly schedule, Wilson believed that there were a core of best radio writers in the golden age of radio and that a similar number of best radio writers were available in T5's time. These writers needed to be cultivated by the opportunity T5 offered. "We seek a level of high quality -- not quantity -- in our scripts," he would explain, and that they hoped to develop a "stable of writers." The series had many of the radio era's skilled practitioners writing for it, probably more often than Wilson envisioned, but the series met much of its goal of bringing new writers to radio drama. For 52 weeks, five days a week, T5 had a new production every day and never repeated a program for a missed deadline or lack of available material.
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