Bertha Brainard

Bertha Brainard (June 16, 1890 - June 11, 1946), known to her friends as Betty, was a pioneering NBC executive responsible for setting trends in network broadcasting.

Life and career

She was born and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of Henry Brainard (a former journalist and publisher) and his wife Ada. After graduating high school, she attended a teacher's college in nearby Montclair, but subsequently decided she did not want to teach. During the war, she drove an ambulance for the Red Cross, and with some encouragement from her brother, she decided to try to find work in the new medium of radio. She became a theater critic, and began hosting a program called Broadcasting Broadway for WJZ in Newark beginning in March 1922. By 1923, she became the station's assistant program director, helping to select the live performers and later doing critiques of the station's announcers. By October 1926, she had moved up to program manager.

After she became head of programming for NBC in 1928, the network's first woman executive, she began pushing for singer-bandleader Rudy Vallée to host a variety series by explaining that only a woman could understand the appeal of Vallée's voice.