George Washington Trendle (July 4, 1884 – May 10, 1972) was an American lawyer and businessman, best known as the producer of the Lone Ranger radio and television programs along with The Green Hornet and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.
[2] During the 1920s, George W. Trendle was a Detroit lawyer who had established a reputation as a tough negotiator specializing in movie contracts and leases.
In 1948, Paramount's monopoly became the focus of an antitrust suit initiated by the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP).
Trendle is credited as having built the historic Alger Theater, which opened August 22, 1935, on Detroit's east side.
Trendle and Kunsky formed the Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting Company in 1929 after purchasing Detroit radio station WGHP.
Trendle entered into a new partnership with long-term business associates H. Allen Campbell and Raymond Meurer.
The fourth tower was removed in 2004 after new transmitting facilities were completed in Gaines Township, southwest of Flint.
The Kunsky-Trendle business venture began at the start of the Great Depression, and Trendle took many cost-cutting moves that earned him a reputation as a penny-pincher.
According to Dick Osgood in his book Wyxie Wonderland: An Unauthorized 50-Year Diary of WXYZ Detroit, he was assisted in this by H. Allen Campbell.
Campbell was an advertising salesman for the Hearst organization whom Trendle hired to find sponsors for his radio programs.
Campbell is credited with signing Silvercup Bread (of the Gordon Baking Company) as the first sponsor for the Lone Ranger series.
Campbell reportedly kept a set of books to show employees that the company was losing money and could not afford to pay higher salaries.
Trendle and Campbell often responded to employee requests for salary increases by downplaying their value to the company and threatening to fire them.
The earliest dramatic radio series included Thrills of the Secret Service, Dr. Fang, and Warner Lester, Manhunter.
The target audience included children, so Trendle insisted on a wholesome hero with high moral standards.
Trendle worked out the basic concept of a masked vigilante, a lone Texas ranger with a big white horse, in staff meetings with Jim Jewell and studio manager Harold True.
The result was The Lone Ranger, which began broadcasting January 30, 1933, on WXYZ and the seven other stations of the Michigan Regional Network.
In May, a free popgun was offered to the first 300 listeners to send a written request; the station received nearly 25,000 replies.
Trendle and his partners kept most of the profits from radio syndication, movie rights, and merchandising while Striker and Jewell were given little more than their salaries.
Beginning in February 1938, the third performance was also recorded on a transcription disk for later broadcast on stations that did not have a live connection to the network.
He was assisted by his Japanese (later changed to Filipino when American involvement in World War II grew more likely) valet Kato, who used martial arts.
Trendle was not happy with changes that were made in the movie adaptations and hired attorney Raymond Meurer to oversee licensing of the franchise.