The Standard Hour

The Standard Hour was a weekly radio broadcast by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Opera carried on NBC radio stations on Sundays at 8:30 p.m. Pacific time. Like The Standard School Broadcast, the program was sponsored by Standard Oil of California (later known as Chevron Corporation). A 1943 brochure shows that the programs were carried on KPO in San Francisco, KFI in Los Angeles, KMJ in Fresno, KGW in Portland, Oregon, KOMO in Seattle, Washington, and KHQ in Spokane, Washington.

The theme music for The Standard Hour, as well as The Standard School Broadcast, was This Hour Is Yours composed by Julius Haug, a violinist in the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. From 1935 to 1952, the broadcasts often featured the San Francisco Symphony's music director, Pierre Monteux. Other conductors on the broadcasts included Alfred Hertz, Sir Thomas Beecham and Werner Janssen. Arthur Fiedler, who led the San Francisco Symphony's "pops" concerts from 1949 to 1979, conducted several of the broadcast concerts in 1950 and 1951.

A number of these broadcasts were preserved on transcription discs or magnetic tape. Some have been released on CD, including many of Monteux's concerts in the War Memorial Opera House.

For more than two decades from the 1930s through the 1950s, NBC Radio broadcast programs of live classical concerts from California. The autumn months were dedicated to the San Francisco Opera, with its stars singing under the baton of its founder and general director, Gaetano Merola. Many of his singers were from the Metropolitan Opera, but a number came directly from Europe.