ON MAY 28, 1937, Radio Daily reported:

The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle would broadcast Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, As You Like It, Henry IV, and Twelfth Night from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. Monday nights as the summer replacement for the popular Lux Radio Theatre, a weekly series of film adaptations. These sustaining broadcasts would lack the commercials for Lux soap. CBS called it “the first major radio production of William Shakespeare's plays.” Perhaps the history cycle on Radio Guild was not “major” in Columbia's estimation.

Every aspect of US radio evolved over time, and that includes sustaining programs. Paley had the idea in 1934 that CBS might be best served by broadcasting shows that explore new radio techniques and tell different types of stories than had been tried before. William Bennett Lewis was hired to develop and nurture such programs, the weekly showcase being The Columbia Workshop. The resulting experiments brought the network prestige and put it on the cutting edge of broadcasting. The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle was part of this initiative. The show was not expected to attract a huge audience, but CBS wanted bragging rights to Shakespeare. Lewis appointed Brewster Morgan of the Columbia Workshop to direct.

NBC's approach to sustaining programming was different. Vice President of Programming John F. Royal saw the networks “in terms of competing marquees,” and monitored CBS programming. The competition between NBC and CBS sustaining programming became fierce in 1937 when Royal decided to counterprogram against some CBS series that had been on the air for a while. Erik Barnouw writes that Royal's dismay over the success of New York Philharmonic broadcasts (which started on CBS in 1927) led him to create the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1937, hiring retired New York Philharmonic maestro Arturo Toscanini to conduct.