Editing Golden Age of Radio (section)

=== Musical features ===
The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the [[naming rights]] to the program, as evidenced by such programs as ''[[The A&P Gypsies]]'', ''[[Champion Spark Plug Hour]]'', ''[[The Clicquot Club Eskimos]]'', and ''[[King Biscuit Time]]''; commercials, as they are known in the modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. During the 1930s and 1940s, the leading orchestras were heard often through [[big band remotes]], and NBC's ''[[Monitor (NBC Radio)|Monitor]]'' continued such remotes well into the 1950s by broadcasting live music from New York City jazz clubs to rural America. Singers such as [[Harriet Lee (singer)|Harriet Lee]] and [[Wendell Hall]] became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as [[Jesse Crawford]] playing popular tunes.

[[Classical music]] programs on the air included ''[[The Voice of Firestone]]'' and ''[[The Bell Telephone Hour]]''. [[Texaco]] sponsored the [[Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts]]; the broadcasts, now sponsored by the [[Toll Brothers]], continue to this day around the world, and are one of the few examples of live classical music still broadcast on radio. One of the most notable of all classical music radio programs of the Golden Age of Radio featured the celebrated Italian conductor [[Arturo Toscanini]] conducting the [[NBC Symphony Orchestra]], which had been created especially for him. At that time, nearly all classical musicians and critics considered Toscanini the greatest living maestro. Popular songwriters such as [[George Gershwin]] were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as a guest, had his own program in 1934.) The [[New York Philharmonic]] also had weekly concerts on radio. There was no dedicated classical music radio station like [[NPR]] at that time, so classical music programs had to share the network they were broadcast on with more popular ones, much as in the days of television before the creation of [[National Educational Television|NET]] and [[PBS]].

[[Country music]] also enjoyed popularity. ''[[National Barn Dance]]'', begun on Chicago's [[WLS (AM)|WLS]] in 1924, was picked up by [[NBC Red Network|NBC Radio]] in 1933. In 1925, ''[[WSM (AM)|WSM]] Barn Dance'' went on the air from [[Nashville]]. It was renamed the ''[[Grand Ole Opry]]'' in 1927 and NBC carried portions from 1944 to 1956. NBC also aired ''The [[Red Foley]] Show'' from 1951 to 1961, and [[Citadel Media|ABC Radio]] carried ''[[Ozark Jubilee]]'' from 1953 to 1961.