One of the front-runners in the transition to sound, the Fox Film Corporation was second only to Warner Bros. in regularizing the production of all-talkie short subjects. Unlike Warner Bros., however, which initially used Western Electric’s sound-on-disc technology, Fox opted for inventor Theodore Case’s far more flexible sound-on-film process (dubbed Movietone), which it first introduced to the public in an April 1927 newsreel depicting West Point cadets. Fox further maintained distinctiveness by  prioritizing news subjects within its short-subject slate. By the time of the 1929-1930 season, the twice-weekly Fox Movietone News constituted the entirety of Fox’s short offerings, joined two years later by another fact-based series, the weekly Magic Carpet travelogues. It would not be until the 1933-1934 season that the company significantly expanded its offerings, when it took over distribution of Educational Pictures’ product. That expansion was nonetheless short-lived, and five years later the company (now Twentieth Century-Fox) cut ties with Educational, declaring “no market for two-reel shorts because of dual bills.”

For more information, see the data on Educational Pictures.