The Army Hour was a radio news program in the United States, broadcast on NBC April 5, 1942-Nov. 11, 1945. Planning for The Army Hour, with Colonel Edward M. Kirby in charge, began soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Sponsored by the War Department and the U.S. Army, the program brought "on-the-spot stories and demonstrations from Army bases and fields of battle" to listeners back home in America. The program was "an attempt to bring the reality of the war home to the American people through the power and immediacy of radio." One reviewer wrote in a newspaper that the secretary of war had compared The Army Hour broadcasts to "full-scale military operations ... as far as communications are concerned," and the writer agreed. NBC's investment was significant, also. In 1957, CBS executive Lou Cowan (who helped to develop The Army Hour while working with the Office of War Information) said that the program was "presented at an annual cost of a half-million dollars to the network [NBC] with no financial return." Radio historian John Dunning wrote that the program "gave Americans their first in-depth look at the war and how it was being fought," and a 1942 article in the trade publication Billboard described it as "a weekly official message and a source of authoritative information from the Army to the civilian population of the country..." In 1943, another article in Billboard commented about Army Hour: "excellent substitute for first-hand knowledge of war; genuine picture of what loved ones are living thru; calm and objective presentation of facts of war." Background Another program named Army Hour existed before the one heard on NBC. That 30-minute variety show was broadcast on WRBL in Columbus, Ga., by personnel from Fort Benning. Its first broadcast was March 16, 1940. The first broadcast of the network program, on April 5, 1942, came on the 25th anniversary of the United States' entrance into World War I. Within its first year on the air, it had added "the only official 'communique' regularly announced by an officer of the General Staff Corps," as "Col. R. Ernest Dupuy, Chief of the News Division of the Bureau of Public Relations, War Department, now reports each week from Washington." Personnel Much of the work on The Army Hour involved military personnel. Frequent changes in assignments makes listing of those involved in programs difficult. The following are some