Old Radio

  January 28, 1940: Beat the Band was first presented on NBC , featuring The Ted Weems Band. Listeners' questions were selected in the hopes of stumping the band. The questions were posed as riddles: What song title tells you what Cinderella might have said if she awoke one morning and found that her foot had grown too large for her glass slipper? If a listener's question was chosen, he or she received $10. If the band played the correct musical answer, Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?, the listener lost. When Raleigh cigarettes sponsored  Beat the Band , the listener who beat the band won $50 and two cartons of cigarettes ... Raleighs, of course. The sponsor then changed to General Mill's Kix cereal, and whenever the listener beat the band, he/she won twenty bucks and a case of Kix cereal. The first series of the show was broadcast every Sunday at 6:30 PM. It was later relocated to New York in 1943, to serve as replacement for the  Raleigh Cigarettes Program...