This is the story of a film about a radio show, produced by a sponsor hoping that people who saw the film would be encouraged to listen to the radio show, and then after hearing the commercials on the radio show be encouraged to patronize the gas stations owned by the sponsor.
One only has to peruse the list of the most popular radio programs of the 1930s to see a pattern: Lux Radio Theatre, Kraft Music Hall, Fleischman’s Yeast Hour, and so on, all shows named for their sponsor. These shows were typically produced by advertising agencies–J. Walter Thompson was responsible for Kraft Music Hall, for example–and the network’s role was to sell studio and broadcast time (“four walls and air,” in the parlance of the time) to the agency. It’s important to note that companies took it as an article of faith that name association with a radio program was crucial to improving brand recognition and sales; musical variety was the most popular genre since that format allowed for numerous opportunities to mention the sponsor’s name.
Sponsored news shows, however, were rare; the networks typically produced their own news programs on a “sustaining” basis, that is, with no advertising at all, although there were exceptions such as Lucky Strike News Parade and Camel News Caravan. Another was Your Esso Reporter, which was notable for not being a network program, but rather a five minute show packaged for broadcast on individual radio stations four times a day in markets when Standard Oil gas stations were located (“Esso” derives from the company’s initials; we know it today as ExxonMobil).
Your Esso Reporter was structured such that the ad breaks could be tailored to the region in which it was being broadcast, while its news content came from United Press International with the occasional insertion of a local story. A 1938 promotional film produced by Esso called News in the Air