For the first 18 years of its existence, Mutual was owned and operated as a cooperative (a system similar to that of today's National Public Radio), setting the network apart from its corporate-owned competitors.

Once General Tire sold the network in 1957 to a syndicate led by Dr. Armand Hammer, Mutual's ownership was largely disconnected from the stations it served, leading to a more conventional, top-down model of program production and distribution.

[4] Concurrently filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and selling twice in the span of four months for purposes of raising enough money to remain operational, the network's reputation was severely damaged but soon rebounded under its succeeding owner, 3M Company.

[26] The big prize came in December, when the Don Lee Network, the leading regional web on the West Coast, left CBS to become a central participant in Mutual.

Because of the corporate strength behind NBC and CBS, however, and the fact that the lion's share of the most powerful stations in the country had already signed with them before Mutual's emergence (the exceptional, and soon departed, WLW aside), the cooperative network would be at a permanent disadvantage.

On the programming front, 1936 saw Mutual launch the first network advice show, The Good Will Hour, hosted by John J. Anthony and sponsored by physical culture guru Bernarr Macfadden.

CBS and NBC immediately invoked the 'exclusive affiliation' clauses of their agreements with these stations, and as a result, thousands of people in many sections of the country were unable to hear the broadcasts of the games."

[45] In November 1937, conservative commentator Fulton Lewis Jr., heard five nights weekly from Mutual affiliate WOL, became the first national news personality to broadcast out of Washington, D.C.; he would remain with the network until his death almost three decades later.

The network also began employing its own reporters in Europe as the continent headed toward crisis, including John Steele, Waverley Root, Arthur Mann, and Victor Lusinchi.

Rose, at the beginning of 1940, Mutual's corporate structure expanded its inclusivity: Until January, 1940, six groups bore the expense of the network operation in varying degree: stations WGN and WOR owned all the stock of the corporation and guaranteed to make up any deficit; the Colonial Network in New England, the Don Lee System on the Pacific Coast, and the group of stations owned by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, participated in responsibility for running expenses.

In January 1943, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the sale of the Yankee Network—with WNAC, its three other owned-and-operated stations, its contracts with 17 additional affiliates, and its Mutual shares—to the Ohio-based General Tire and Rubber Company.

[55][h] In 1941, the FCC, calling for NBC to divest one of its two networks, observed that the company "has utilized the Blue to forestall competition with the Red .... Mutual is excluded from, or only lamely admitted to, many important markets.

[73] Over the following half-decade, Mutual's war coverage held its own with that of the wealthier networks, featuring field correspondents such as Henry Shapiro and Piet Van T Veer and commentators such as Cecil Brown, formerly of CBS.

[74] At 2:26 p.m. Eastern time, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Mutual flagship station WOR interrupted a football game broadcast with a news flash reporting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In February 1947, the religiously oriented Family Theater premiered; with frequent appearances by major Hollywood stars, the series aired on Mutual for ten and a half years.

[82] The network gave an outlet to radio dramatist Wyllis Cooper and his highly regarded suspense anthology Quiet, Please, which ran on Mutual from June 1947 to September 1948.

[90] Most importantly, WOR's founding shares in Mutual, when added to the Yankee and Don Lee holdings, gave General Tire majority control of the network.

[105] Limited sponsorship packages were also introduced, in which an advertiser could back a show for an abbreviated period rather than an entire season, but there was no reversing the trend of television usurping radio.

[109] Scranton was under the control of the F. L. Jacobs Company, whose chairman, Alexander Guterma, envisioned a media empire uniting Mutual with another purchase that year, Hal Roach Studios.

[110] Guterma's tenure as Mutual president was brief: he resigned on February 13, 1959, amid increasing financial shortfalls, overdue payments to affiliates, unpaid phone bills with AT&T, and an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

[125] A three-part reorganization plan resolving all debts was approved in bankruptcy court on December 23, 1959, allowing Mutual to emerge from Chapter 11; a network spokesperson commented, "this means we start out with a clean slate; we are now divorced from any previous managements.

[82] In June 1958, just a few months before the Scranton takeover, the network had launched a nightly 25-minute newscast, The World Today, hosted by Westbrook Van Voorhis, famous as the voice of The March of Time.

[o] While baseball's World Series and All-Star Game would go to rival NBC in 1957, Mutual secured national radio rights to Notre Dame Fighting Irish football in 1954.

By this time, as historian Jim Cox describes, both Mutual and ABC "had largely wiped their slates clean of most of their network programming—save news and sporting events and a few long-running features".

[158] Targeting Black audiences, MBN supplied 100 five-minute-long news and sports reports weekly along with other programming,[159] with MCH featuring similar fare aimed at Spanish-language listeners.

[176][161] Jepko's show, which originated from KSL in Salt Lake City in 1964 as Nitecap, was fed by Mutual for eight hours beginning at midnight ET, allowing for stations on the West Coast to carry it live.

[187] Mutual began nationally distributing Jamboree USA from WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 23, 1979, marking the first time in years that the network featured a regularly scheduled live music program.

[212] NBC Radio's news and engineering staff was combined with Mutual personnel at the Arlington facility in 1989, and by 1992, programming between the two networks began to undergo consolidation, particularly in overnights and weekends.

[219] The direct descendants of the three original U.S. radio network companies had merged,[214] with Mutual little more than one of several brand names for programming under the aegis of Westwood One, itself under the control of a major conglomerate.

[233][234] Country Countdown USA, founded in 1992 as a Mutual-branded program after the Westwood One purchase, continues to air in its original format but moved to Compass Media Networks in August 2022.