Each weekday at one o’clock, American radio personality Mary Margaret McBride (1899–1976) chatted on the air with guests for 45 minutes. Her programme combined advertising, editorial content and interviews in a unique manner, and her relationship with listeners was experienced as close and personal. Building on radio scholars’ interest in the ‘intimacy’ of the medium, this article investigates the form and structure of McBride’s programme, how her listeners engaged with it, and the specific techniques and stylistic choices which contributed to these feelings of familiarity. Based on listener letters, newspaper clippings and the programme itself, this work explores the ways in which McBride and her listeners together developed an atmosphere of intimacy on her programme, notes how these relationships were deeply enmeshed in consumer culture, and suggests that McBride’s programme was a part of an emergent cultural formation, articulating novel structures of feeling which have since become dominant across media forms and have persisted over time.

Forging a format: Advertising, attention and intimacy on the Mary Margaret McBride Program, 1941–54

Mary Margaret McBride, under the pseudonym Martha Deane, sparked controversy when she began her broadcasting career on WOR (New Jersey) in 1934. Yet her interviews kept listeners coming back for more, and only two years later, her compelling on‐air presence earned her a medal from the Women's National Exposition of the Arts and Industries for the year's “greatest contribution to radio.” The author explores McBride's interviewing technique—developed through her years of experience as a newspaper reporter—and her ability to win over listeners.

Mary Margaret McBride, talk show host: The perfect proxy for radio listeners

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Mary Margaret McBride, talk show host: The perfect proxy for radio listeners