The antenna wire on your Arvin radio is
much too short to do any good, Sandy. An inch and a half won't do on the broadcast band unless you're within spitting distance (or at least a few miles, not more than about five) of one or more stations; unless Rogersville has a local station you won't hear much of anything.
Splice about a foot or two more onto that stub and your set will work much better, even if it only has three tubes. Be careful with that hot chassis if you use an outside wire antenna, though. Your radio may have an external antenna connection on the back cover (many radios of '40s-'50s vintage did, since in those days not every town had local radio stations), but the blocking capacitor that's supposed to isolate the terminal from the chassis, if there is one (there should be), probably failed years ago and should be replaced, in the interest of safety.
I once had a green metal-cabinet Arvin radio, model 540T, that had a wire antenna. I don't remember anymore how many tubes it had, but it worked well enough in the town where I lived at the time (late '60s-'70s) to get Cleveland stations. I never liked the idea of the radio having an all-metal cabinet, though, as it could pose a shock hazard, blow a fuse or throw sparks if it came in contact with any grounded metal object--depending entirely on how the AC plug was inserted in the wall socket. The chassis of these radios probably were not well insulated from the cabinet, either, although they did have plastic knobs on the control shafts.
BTW: Arvin radios, and later televisions, were made, IIRC, by a division of the old Sparks-Withington Company of Columbus, Indiana. Where the company came up with the name "Arvin", however, is beyond me. Hmmm.
