Background
Niles Trammell was born on July 6, 1894 in Marietta, Ga.
He was the son of William Jasper Trammell and Bessie Niles.
Niles Trammell was born on July 6, 1894 in Marietta, Ga.
He was the son of William Jasper Trammell and Bessie Niles.
From September 1912 through December 1914, Trammell attended Sewanee Military Academy in Sewanee, Tenn. , then the University of the South (also in Sewanee) from December 1914 to 1917. He did not graduate because World War I intervened.
Trammell entered the regular army and was commissioned a second lieutenant in May 1918, at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. He later served at Fort Snelling, Minn. , Camp Devins, Massachussets, and the infantry school at Fort Benning, Ga. At the end of the war, he was a first lieutenant in the Thirty-sixth Infantry of the Twelfth Division of the United States Army. He was then posted to the Presidio in San Francisco, where he was attached to the staff of Major General Charles G. Morton until 1922. In 1923, Trammell met RCA executive and reserve officer David Sarnoff, who was inspecting army bases in San Francisco. Sarnoff spoke with such vision and enthusiasm about the possibilities of radio that Trammell asked him about a job.
In March 1923, Trammell resigned from the army to become a West Coast commercial representative in the traffic department of RCA in San Francisco.
After one year, Trammell was made district manager of the Pacific Coast Division/Pacific Northwest for the marine division of RCA. His job required him to be "out prowling through smelly importers' places trying to persuade some Japanese (companies) to use our facilities instead of the cables. " In 1925, Trammell became assistant sales manager of the Pacific Division of RCA. In March 1928, just two years after NBC was formed as a service of RCA, he joined NBC as a salesman, and within two months was made manager of the Central Division of NBC, headquartered in Chicago.
In March 1929, Trammell was named vice-president of the Central Division. When he assumed leadership of this division, the Chicago headquarters reportedly had only one studio and two offices. It was reported that when he was first sent to Chicago, his superiors hoped he would increase the income of the Central Division's headquarters to $1 million a year. After one year, the office did that much business in one month. More than eighteen hundred programs per month were being broadcast, including one thousand network programs that originated in the Chicago office. In Chicago, Trammell was responsible for originating daytime programs, some of which became more popular than the very popular evening shows. Long-running radio series like "Clara, Lu and Em, " "Fibber McGee and Molly, " and "Betty and Bob, " and soap operas like "Today's Children, " and "Ma Perkins" all got their start while Trammell ran NBC's Chicago headquarters. Another first was the commercial radio network series of entertainment stars like Eddie Cantor, Ben Bernie, Al Jolson, Phil Baker, Wayne King, Red Skelton, Don Ameche, Jane Froman, Ed Wynn, and Paul Whiteman, who became established as radio favorites.
Trammell has been called the father of the soap opera (continuing series often sponsored by manufacturers of soap products). Soap was important in the American economy and culture, and thus was a worthy sponsor for network programming. Trammell brought "Amos 'n' Andy" into the homes of Americans across the country by broadcasting the show on radio six nights a week. "Amos 'n' Andy" went on the air over Chicago's WMAQ in 1928. This fifteen-minute comedy broadcast grew into one of radio's great successes. In the summer of 1929, NBC executives offered the creative team behind "Amos 'n' Andy" a contract for national broadcast over NBC's Blue network. The show made its national debut on August 19, 1929, sponsored by Pepsodent toothpaste. Pepsodent sales increased substantially, other companies were signed as sponsors, and advertising rates increased. According to Time, this "million dollar contract" with Pepsodent "was a big feather in Trammell's Chicago cap which transformed 'Amos 'n' Andy' from a sustaining show into a national institution. "
Trammell was also credited with finding sponsorship for orchestral music broadcast on radio. The first time the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played for NBC, however, it was a difficult if memorable experience--the orchestra gathered in a "sweltering" tin-roofed Masonic Hall, had to play in shirtsleeves and undershirts, and a sudden noisy rainstorm beat on the tin roof during the concert. Other programs created under Trammell's stewardship in Chicago were: the University of Chicago "Round Table, " the "Farm and Home Hour, " the Chicago Opera Company programs, and the Grant Park concerts.
In January 1939, Trammell transferred to NBC's headquarters in New York City and was promoted to executive vice-president of the network, in charge of all network operations. He created separate sales staffs for the two radio networks of NBC, known as the Red and the Blue networks, each with its own vice-president.
In the late 1930's and 1940's, Trammell and his fellow executives had to deal with Walter Winchell's often uninhibited Sunday night radio commentaries. Memos circulated furiously among NBC's executives and executives of the program's sponsor, Jergens Lotion, over an April 30, 1939, comment by Winchell describing Hitler as a "madman. " There had been other references to Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, as "von Ribbentripe. " Concerns were expressed over the possibility of offending Germany, for American foreign policy was still officially neutral. Winchell's high ratings kept his program on the air.
On July 12, 1940, Trammell was named president of NBC, succeeding Lenox Riley Lohr, who resigned to become head of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Trammell was president and director of NBC until October 7, 1949. In 1940, statistics from the Cooperative Analysis Bureau indicated that when Trammell was made head of NBC, eight of the top ten most popular network programs were on NBC. Trammell believed in investing heavily in programs like the NBC Symphony Orchestra, directed by Arturo Toscanini, and the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, initiated by NBC in 1931 (later carried by ABC). "The NBC University of the Air" (1948 - 1951) offered information and instruction, often tied to school and university curricula.
In 1938 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an investigation of chain broadcasting and increased regulation of the networks. In 1941, before the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, NBC challenged the FCC's regulations. NBC lost this case in the Supreme Court, and in 1943 was forced to sell the Blue network, which became ABC. In March 1946, the FCC released a report called Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees. Because the cover of the report was blue, the report came to be known as "the blue book. " The report discussed local broadcasting and programming, and praised programming it judged to be particularly valuable. Few NBC affiliates chose to carry a number of these worthy shows. The "blue book" quoted Trammell, CBS president William Paley, and other industry leaders on how important it was to maintain and nurture programs of value. They defined these programs as those that provided balance, or approached subjects that might have difficulty securing sponsorship or advertisers. They addressed and served minority interests and the needs and interests of nonprofit groups, and experimented with both form and content.
On April 4, 1949, Trammell was named chairman of the board of NBC, a position he held until December 8, 1952. This period marked the change to a new order in broadcasting. Trammell represented the old school--courtly, and bewildered at the rapid changes in the industry.
Sponsorship of entire time periods by one company, with advertising agencies providing the programs, began to disappear as costs of television time rose with increasing television viewership. The unit of sale became the sixty-second (or shorter) commercial, and programs were supplied by the networks, at the networks' risk. Despite Trammell's business. and programming acumen, there was a major lapse in NBC talent relations. As their contracts expired, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, and others left NBC and went to CBS. CBS at the time had as talent coordinator Emanuel Sacks, who had relationships with such powerful talent agencies as William Morris and MCA. Eventually, David Sarnoff hired Sacks away from CBS, and major stars began to return to NBC. Trammell also was said to have a weak grasp of figures. Some thought that NBC should have been more aggressive in seeking rate increases, but Trammell preferred to keep rates lower, to discourage the competition and avoid trouble with the government. He had built his reputation as a salesman, and salesmen do not want high rates.
Trammell resigned from NBC in 1952 to become president of Biscayne Television Corporation in Miami. Biscayne Television built and operated television station WCKT-TV (Channel 7) which made its first broadcast July 29, 1956; its radio affiliate was WCKR. In 1962, the station was sold for $3. 5 million. After the sale Biscayne Television donated more than $2 million to the University of Miami.
In 1963, Trammell worked as a business consultant to television and radio concerns. Trammell had been a charter member and vice-chairman of the school's five-person advisory committee.
Trammell moved to Sewanee, Tenn. He died of a heart attack in a private nursing home in North Miami, Fla.
Quotations:
Of the soap opera, which was often regarded as a lesser entertainment art form, he said, "There's a European proverb that says the culture of a nation is determined by its use of soap the United States with six percent of the world's population, uses a third of the world's soap supply. "
On November 28, 1951, at the meeting of NBC affiliates, Trammell talked about television: "This new medium of communication is so powerful and fascinating that it has grown to manhood in only a few years. Television is a significant influence on a majority of our people. . In the next five years television will become a national medium (and) will exercise the greatest impact on the human mind yet known to mankind. "
An assistant to Trammell, Clay Morgan, described him as, "the most indefatigable executive I have ever known. He works late, on Saturdays--and holidays, too. "
He also was "pernickety about his clothes, neat as a pin around his office. " He was characterized as easily accessible and softhearted, shrewd, soft-spoken, enormously popular with his staff, and a disciplined person with courtly southern manners.
On November 14, 1923, he married Elizabeth Huff, General Morton's stepdaughter. They had no children.
In 1945, Trammell divorced his wife. On April 7 of that year, he married Cleo Murphy Black; they had no children. In 1971, Trammell's wife died.