Editing Fibber McGee and Molly (section)

==Changes==
NBC, taking stock of its most valuable broadcast properties and anticipating the lucrative new field of television, regarded '' Fibber McGee and Molly'' as being essential to its future plans. In 1948 the network offered to buy the franchise outright from its owners: Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, and Don Quinn. The owners agreed to the buyout, and ''Fibber McGee and Molly'' officially became the property of NBC.

The network had high hopes of converting the radio show to television. These hopes were not shared by the Jordans, who preferred to remain in radio. "They were trying to push us into TV, and we were reluctant," Jim Jordan told an interviewer many years later. "Our friends advised us, 'Don't do it until you need to. You have this value in radio--milk it dry.'" The Jordans grudgingly agreed to film a TV pilot when their longtime sponsor S. C. Johnson requested it, but the video adaptation was abandoned. The sponsor, anxious to devote more advertising dollars to television, parted company with ''Fibber McGee and Molly'' amicably. Pet Milk took over the sponsorship of the radio show in 1950 (for two years), followed by Reynolds Aluminum, which subsidized the show until the end of the primetime run on June 30, 1953.

NBC wanted to keep its property going, so the show was retooled as a daily 15-minute show,<ref name=BritFibs>{{citation
   |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]]
   |quote=which aired from 1935 to 1957.
   |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Jordan-and-Marian-Jordan#ref947724
   |title=Jim Jordan and Marian Jordan
   |access-date=July 20, 2022
   |archive-date=July 21, 2022
   |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220721013805/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Jordan-and-Marian-Jordan#ref947724
   |url-status=live
   }}</ref> aired Monday through Friday twice a day (afternoons and evenings). The retooling had new economies taking their toll on the original format. The studio audience was dispensed with, leaving the Jordans to record their dialogue in a quiet studio. All five of each week's episodes were recorded in a single session. (This proved a special boon to Marian Jordan, who found the new surroundings more comfortable and convenient.) The musical sections of the half-hour format were removed, leaving a quarter-hour of continuous comedy. Although announcer Harlow Wilcox and character comedian Gale Gordon did not participate in the daily shows, Bill Thompson and Arthur Q. Bryan continued making appearances alongside the Jordans, along with familiar radio performers [[Virginia Gregg]], [[Herb Vigran]], [[Robert Easton (actor)|Robert Easton]], and [[Mary Jane Croft]], among others. The new format began airing on October 5, 1953, and was successful; NBC Radio kept ''Fibber McGee and Molly'' in its weekday lineup through March 23, 1956.

NBC had launched an ambitious new format for its weekend programming in 1955: ''[[Monitor (NBC Radio)|Monitor]]''. This was designed especially to demonstrate the immediacy and importance of radio, with a mixture of news, sports, music, comedy, human interest, and special events running continuously throughout the weekend hours. In 1957 NBC, still valuing its ''Fibber McGee and Molly'' property, invited Jim and Marian Jordan to record new comedy routines for ''Monitor''. These interludes, aired as ''Just Molly and Me'', featured the Jordans (alone, with no supporting cast) in five-minute sketches written by ''Monitor'' staffer (and [[Bob and Ray]] writer) [[Tom Koch]]. Koch caught the spirit of the series beautifully, bringing back many of the familiar hallmarks of the half-hour series and cleverly fashioning new stories in five-part serial form. A 1959 strip, "Autumn Drive," has Fibber and Molly planning to look at the fall foliage: episode one has the couple enthusing about the trip; episode two has McGee explaining foliage to Teeny; episode three has the McGees loading their car for any contingency; episode four has them on the road; and episode five has them reviewing the photographs they took on the tour. Radio historian [[Gerald Nachman (journalist)|Gerald S. Nachman]] has written that the Jordans anticipated renewing their contract with NBC for another three years when Marian's battle against ovarian cancer ended with her death in 1961.