Walter A. Maier - The Lutheran Hour

From the time that The Lutheran Hour went off the national air in 1931, Maier never stopped working for its return. To avoid the prohibitive costs associated with the first network season, Maier and the radio committee of The Detroit Lutheran Pastoral Conference decided to recommence operations on the newly formed Mutual Broadcasting System. Although the reinstituted Lutheran Hour would broadcast on only eight stations, it included heavyweight WLW of Cincinnati. Broadcasting at 500,000 watts, or ten times the maximum output allowed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today, WLW could be heard anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. Commencing on Sunday, February 10, 1935, the Lutheran Hour proclaimed its second season from Epiphany Church in Detroit. Brace Beemer, the voice of WLW’s original Lone Ranger, was the announcer and the noted Maier returned as Speaker. Over a thousand letters from sixteen states and Canada were received after the first broadcast, providing some gauge of the program’s reach. During the season, KFUO; WTJS, Jackson, Tenn.; and KLCN, Blytheville, Ark. joined the stations covering the Lutheran Hour. By the end of the fourteen broadcasts, over 16,000 letters had arrived from thirty-five states and several provinces of Canada.

From its third season onward, the Lutheran Hour originated from KFUO on the Concordia Campus, a welcome relief from the 450 mile weekly commute to Detroit endured by Maier during the second season. By the fourth season, the Lutheran Hour was reaching west of the Rockies again with the addition of nine stations of California’s Don Lee Network and KFEL in Denver. The total number of outlets was now thirty-one, almost as many as the original network contract provided for in 1930. This series received over 90,000 pieces of correspondence from every state of the Union as well as provinces of Canada and Mexico. The fifth season (1937/38) broadcast over sixty-two stations; the sixth (1938/39) sixty-six; and with the advent of electronic transcription, the seventh Lutheran Hour (1939/40) was aired on 171 radio stations. The Spanish Lutheran Hour was also added in 1939, originating with short-wave radio station HCJB (“The Voice of the Andes”) in Quito, Ecuador. Soon stations were added in Puerto Rico, Panama, Columbia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Philippines.