The Joiners
The Ranger rode for Silvercup from November, 1933, to last February, when Bond Bread took over. However, Bond does not sponsor the program on all 140 stations. The breakdown is Bond Bread, 22; other sonsors, 88; sustaining, 30. The 10:30 show is the one used by other sponsors; it is also the sustaining show from which the transcriptions are made. Instaed of Bond's plug, there is a musical interlude, which may be left in on sustaining programs or faded out for a plug by some other sponsor.
One group of bakers on the Pacific Coast was selling Gingham Bread, and wanted Silver's name changed to Gingham on their special program. Trendle was as outraged as Jeff Davis, the fabled senator from Arkansas. Most of the sponsors are bakers, but not all. An oil refiner has the program over WROK, Rockford, Illinois. Trendle will not accept a liquor distiller or a cigarette manufacturer as a sponsor, nor he license the sale of Lone Ranger matches, knives, bows and arrows, or anything else with which a child might hurt itself.
The new sponsor also took over the Lone Ranger Safety Club. This was not only an ingenious piece of promotion but a handy index to the popularity of the program. One evening in October, 1935, the Ranger told children to go to their neighborhood grocer and get an application card for the club. The card reads:
I solemnly promise: (1)Not to cross any street except at regular crossings and to first look both ways. (2) Not to play in the streets. (3)To always tell the truth.
There were ten such promises in all. When the child and one of its parents had signed the card, the Ranger sent a notification of membership and a private code. Almost as an afterthought, he added this fishhook:
P.S.: Of course you will want a Lone Ranger Badge. To earn this beautiful badge, all you have to do is have three of your neighbors who do not now use (.....) regularly promise to buy (.....) on their next trip to the food store. I am enclosing a card which I want you to return to me when it is filled out.
By December seventh, six weeks after the campaign had started, 475,574 badges had been distributed; by early January, 535,495. The total is now more than 2,000,000. In addition, half a million masks have been given away and 2,000,000 "photographs" of the Ranger (these are photographs of an idealized oil painting).
Much of the Ranger's mail is from children angrily declaring that a certain member is not eating the sponsor's bread or has revealed the code (read A for B, B for C, and so on). One frantic father had to wire WFIL for the code. His son had sent him an important letter--so important that he did not dare trust it to the mails uncoded.
Meanwhile, in January 1935, Trendle incorporated the program independently, to protect the station from possible infringement suits. Thus [?] hobbled, the Ranger rode into a [?] new territory. He signed a contract with Republic Pictures to lend his name to two serials (estimated income last year, $60,000). He agreed to appear in a cartoon strip for King Features (income last year, $100,000). He licensed a number of manufacturers to sell his novelties (income last year, $100,000). Add to these the income from the radio, and throw in $50,000 miscellaneous income, and Lone Ranger Incorporated's net for 1938 probably tops $400,000. For 1939, it will probably top half a million. Hi-Yo, Silver! Hi-Yo, Gold!
As founding father and chief owner of the program, George Trendle still cocks a vigilant eye to make sure that it never strays from the noble--and profitable--road that he surveyed for it. But the prime custodian of the Ranger's virtue--and profit--is Fran Striker, the script writer of the program.
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This article originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on October 14, 1939.