Beginning in the 1930s, Charles H. Crutchfield initiated numerous radio programming improvements and became a pioneer in the U.S. system of commercial broadcasting.

     Crutchfield was born in 1912 in Hope, Arkansas. In 1920 the family moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where Crutchfield graduated from Spartanburg High School and enrolled in Wofford College. As he was walking home from classes one night in 1930, he decided to visit the studios of WSPA. When he got inside, the telephone rang. Since the announcer and the engineer were the only people in the studio, Crutchfield answered the phone and took a request from a woman who wanted a certain song played on the air. He wrote down the request and passed it onto the announcer. Immediately the station began getting more calls from listeners who wanted their requests and names on the air. Although Crutch­ field did not realize it at the time, this was the first radio request program in the country.

     It was not long before the owner of the station called, wanting to know what was going on at the station and if the young man with the deep, rich voice who answered the phone would like a part-time announcing job at the station. Crutchfield accepted immediately and thus began his broadcasting career.

     After working at five more stations in North and South Carolina, in 1933 Crutchfield was hired as a staff announcer at one of the oldest commercially licensed radio stations in the country, WBT in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the time, WBT was owned by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and was a non-directional, 50,000-watt, clear channel station that reached all of the United States except the West Coast.

     Crutchfield is probably best known for his role in a program called The Briarhoppers. In 1934 a Chicago entrepreneur wanted to sell patent medicines, such as Peruna iron tonic, Kolor-Back hair dye, and Radio Girl perfume, on the radio. He called WBT's station manager to see if the products could be showcased on a hillbilly music program. The station manager asked Crutchfield if the station had such a band, and Crutch­ field replied that they did, knowing full well that no such band existed at WBT. Seizing the opportunity, Crutchfield got some hillbilly musicians together, named the band "The Briarhop­ pers," and went on the air with Crutchfield himself-as "Charlie Briarhopper"-acting as the emcee.

     The Briarhoppers was immediately popular, garnering a huge and loyal audience. One reason for its success lay in its down-to-earth quality at a ti.me when radio programs were decidedly highbrow and radio announcers spoke in a haltingly stilted and affected manner. But Crutchfield and the Briarhop­ pers would play upbeat music, tell corny jokes, and talk with the listeners rather than at them. Crutchfield's ad-libbed commercials often poked fun at the products, and he used a just­ plain-folks delivery. Former New York Times critic John Crosby recalls that Crutchfield was the first man he knew of "to sit a listener down with a microphone across from him in a studio and tell the man about the product." The audience believed and bought, and thus was personal salesmanship born on radio. According to Crosby, it was Crutchfield and Arthur Godfrey who first did away with the stilted delivery of that era and popularized the one-to-one pitch so characteristic of the medium today.

     The popularity of The Briarhoppers is difficult to imagine today. One of Crutchfield's promotions promised listeners a black-and-white photograph of the Briarhoppers in return for a box top from Peruna, and the station consequently received more than 18,000 box tops each week. When requests slowed down, a color photo of the Briarhoppers was offered, and later a color picture of the Last Supper kept bringing in floods of responses. The Briarhoppers did as much as any program to convince newspaper advertisers and American businesses of the power of radio as a medium for advertising.

     Crutchfield was named WBT's program director in 1935, and he continued to introduce innovative programming. In 1936 he persuaded the Southern Conference to allow the first play-by-play radio coverage of its football games, and Crutch­ field became the conference's first play-by-play announcer. Other notable programs included reenactments of baseball games (including improvisation when the wire service went out), the broadcast of an egg frying on the sidewalk during the summer, Rebel yells by old Confederate soldiers, the broadcast of the wedding of two nonagenarian former slaves, and a program targeted specifically to a black audience. Crutchfield's decision to air a local evangelist's revival meeting led to the launching of Billy Graham's broadcast career. Crutchfield was also responsible for the airing of station editorials long before it became a general practice among broadcasters.

     Under Crutchfield's direction from 1937 to 1945, WBT won seven coveted Variety awards. In 1942 the station became the first ever to garner two Variety awards in one year-one for its contributions to the war effort and another for fostering racial goodwill and understanding through a program series that broke precedent with Southern tradition. In 1945 Crutch­ field was named general manager of WBT and became the youngest chief executive officer of a 50,000-watt radic, station in the nation. He became a director of the broadcasting subsidiary the following year, vice president in 1947, executive vice president in 1952, and president in 1963.

     Crutchfield's influence in radio has been felt in other regions of the world. In 1951 the U.S. State Department sent him to Greece with the mission of setting up a nationwide radio network that would counter the barrage of communist propaganda flooding the country. Crutchfield represented the broadcasting industry when he and other American businessmen went to Russia in 1956 on a special mission. Upon his return he launched Radio Moscow. The program, designed to refute Soviet propaganda, won several awards and was syndicated nationally in 1960.

     In 1949 Crutchfield signed North Carolina's first television station on the air, WBTV. Eventually he was elected president of WBT's and WBTV's parent company, Jefferson-Pilot Broadcasting Company, which owned five other radio stations; two television stations; a company that provided compute.- services for broadcasters; and two companies engaged in audio, film, and video commercial work. Although Crutchfield retired from Jefferson-Pilot in 1977, he was active in the media and public service until his death in 1998.