was a challenge in writing for radio, but the reality that they were writing for more than simply the audience. It was an era when radio and television shows often had only a single sponsor and since the sponsor paid the show's bills the writer had to please them as well. Block expressed this double-edged sword with his definition of a sponsor as: "A golden goose for whom we lay the eggs." It didn't end with the sponsor. "We have to make the sponsor laugh," Block wrote in Collier's magazine "And besides pleasing the sponsor, we have to please the sponsor's wife, the producer, the men from the advertising agency, the radio and television critics and the Federal Communications Commission." Then there was the issue of radio censorship. Block once quipped that if he tried to produce a radio version of It Happened One Night, a film famous for a scene of an unmarried couple sharing a bedroom, it would end up being called It Didn't Happen One Night. Even during his time with the BBC, Block later recalled the occasion when a cannibal sketch he'd written was rejected by the British Home Office. The note justifying the rejection explained they objected to his depicting cannibals because they were "loyal subjects of the king and many of them are now aiding in the fight against the enemy." However, in this case the rejection was reversed, apparently by an executive with a sense of humor, since the explanation for the reversal noted that the cannibals had also eaten many loyal subjects. Block was also a critic of his profession. By the late 1940s, he'd become concerned about the state of comedy writing on the radio. In 1948, he wrote an article in Variety, which complained about the trend of game shows replacing comedy shows and specifically Fred Allen. In an article titled "You Can't Top a Refrigerator", he was disturbed that the high quality of the writing of Fred Allen's show could lose out to the chance to win prizes. He was also to argue for a comedy writer's rights. "Jokes are as hard to write as anything else, and anyone who wants to use them should be made to pay for them. The gag-writer should receive royalties in the same manner as the song writer", he said in 1951. Performer and the advent of television By the 1950s, television had