On April 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed legislation officially banning
cigarette ads on television and radio. By the early 1970s, a  fight between the
tobacco lobby and public health interests began. Though the cigarette company’s continued to bombard unregulated print media with ads for cigarettes, tobacco companies lost the regulatory battle over television and radio.  

The last televised cigarette ad ran at 11:50 p.m. during The Johnny Carson Show
on Friday, January 1, 1971. Tobacco ads representing $20 million dollars in
advertising were then officially banned from TV and radio broadcast.  

Guy Madison and Andy Devine

The CBS radio western “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok” featured movie star
Guy Madison as the lead, and film veteran Andy Devine as his sidekick Jingles. Both remained with the series for its entire run with the final episode airing on Friday, December 31,1954 . Kellogg’s was the sponsor of the show from start to finish. “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok” was also on television (CBS/ABC) from 1951 to 1958
with the same cast as the radio show.

Joseph Curtin and Alice Frost

Mr. and Mrs. North was a radio mystery series that aired on CBS from Wednesday, December 30, 1942 to 1954. Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin (above) had the title
roles when the series debuted. The characters originated in 1930s vignettes written
by Richard Lockridge. The radio program eventually reached nearly 20 million faithful listeners.

Writer Richard Lockridge

“Someday We’ll Be Together" is the last of twelve number-one singles for Diana
Ross & the Supremes on the Motown label. It is the final Supremes song featuring
Diana Ross, who left the group in January 1970 to pursue a solo career and was
also the last American number-one hit for the 1960s.

Note: “Someday We’ll Be Together” was also the last record played by Dave
“Record” Stone (shown below) when radio 910 KISN in Portland, Oregon was
silenced on Thursday, September 2, 1976.

Don McNeill (left) conducts an interview with Dean Mullaney of the Library
of American Comics in 1947.

The Breakfast Club was a long-run morning radio variety show heard on the NBC
Blue Network and ABC radio and also briefly aired on television (1950-51 prime-time
edition on ABC). It ran from June 23, 1933 through Friday, December 27, 1968 with 
host Don McNeill. The show originated in Chicago, Illinois.