Amalgamated Broadcasting System

The Amalgamated Broadcasting System (ABS) was a radio network established on September 25, 1933 by the American comedian Ed Wynn and Hungarian-born violinist Ota Gygi.

Wynn, the "Fire Chief" of the original Fire Chief Program program on NBC and CBS, had been concerned with his own perilous-seeming future as an entertainer and the power the already-established networks had over the programming policies of their local affiliate stations. He hoped that ABS would serve as an alternative as well as helping him establish a more secure future for himself and his family, according to radio historian Elizabeth McLeod.

In fact, Wynn poured his entire personal savings as well as his reputation into the project, then put together an investment group and bought New York station WBNX as its planned flagship, hoping to establish a 100-station network in due course. The investment team also looked to WOL Washington, WPEN Philadelphia, WHDH Boston and WCFL Chicago among planned key affiliates. The new network went on the air with a four-hour gala from WBNX's newly built New York studios on September 25, 1933---even as Wynn was preparing a new season of The Fire Chief Program.

Wynn, however, was also due to Hollywood to make a new film and put Gygi in charge of the network in his absence. That, McLeod wrote, proved the biggest mistake of his career, if not his life. At a press conference launching the new ABS, Gygi "managed to alienate almost the entire New York City press corps," McLeod wrote, "by announcing . . . that he was only interested in what the New York Times thought of the project and had no use for any of the other papers." That irked then-powerful New York Daily News radio critic Ben Gross, whose lead in attacking the apparent ABS attitude was picked up by his peers---and by advertisers whom Gygi reportedly alienated by positioning ABS toward treating advertising as "a necessary but distasteful evil," McLeod continued. ABS would allow no advertiser mention other than at the beginning and end of programs and no advertising spots during any programs. That was commercial radio's original policy until NBC and CBS abandoned it as the 1930s progressed, McLeod noted, leaving ABS stranded for attracting top quality programming without big money advertisers to sponsor it.

That attitude plus its weak organisation in Wynn's absence killed the project. Amalgamated went out of business on October 28, 1933, only five weeks after its first broadcast. Wynn had ended his association with ABS by that time but he had also vowed to repay his investors---their loss was over $300,000, according to McLeod---and that pressure, plus the end of The Fire Chief Program and his marital trouble two years later, helped drive the comedian toward a nervous breakdown by the end of the 1930s.

A much more successful alternative network, the Mutual Broadcasting System, was established on September 29, 1934. Mutual was inspired in large part from the ideas behind Amalgamated, and in fact had one of Amalgamated's planned key affiliates, WXYZ Detroit, as one of its charter stations. A recording of ABS's launch gala is believed to survive and circulate among history-minded old-time radio fans.

The film The Great Man (1956), which has a broadcasting background and features Wynn in a supporting role, is centered on a fictional network known as the "Amalgamated Broadcasting System".

References

• Elizabeth McLeod, Tonight The Program's Gonna Be Different: The Life and Times of Ed Wynn, the Fire Chief
• The Museum of Broadcast Communications, The Encyclopedia of Radio