Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

editorials It Isn't True Love UNTIL quite recently, the movie industry and television spent a lot of their time snarling at each other. To be more precise, the movie industry spent a lot of its time snarling at television and complaining that tv was killing movies. Sometimes television snarled back. More often, however, it made cooing noises in the direction of Hollywood and yearned aloud to embrace some of the better products and personalities that were being held in seclusion by film interests. The cooing, supported by such tangible tokens of affection as million-dollar contracts, has taken effect. Romance is blooming. Hollywood and tv are, as the columnists say, an item. Like many of the romances which are reported in the gossip columns, this one is bound to go pffft. Because so far it is a one-way romance. Television is doing all the courting. Television keeps rushing in with bundles of money which Hollywood takes with the calculated charm of a chorus girl fleecing a rich stage-door-Johnny from the sticks. Hollywood has discovered that television is harmless and not particularly demanding. The most television wants in return for a mink is a moment of footsyfootsy beneath a ringside table at EI Morocco. What has Hollywood given television in return for the millions of dollars in cash and free promotion that television has thrown at Hollywood's feet? A few very good television programs including such series as Disneyland. A reasonable number of desirable feature films (but the biggest block was freed for tv by Tom O'Neil, a broadcaster who bought into Hollywood). A great many formularized television shows which are either slick but meaningless adaptations of movies or mere trailers which advertise movies that you must go to a theatre to see. To summarize — let alone enumerate — the gifts which television has bestowed in order to get so meager a return would take pages and pages. It is enough to say that Hollywood would have gone broke if it had been obliged to buy the pro-movie propaganda which television has been providing for nothing or indeed providing in addition to the tremendous talent and production fees it has paid to Hollywood. On Sunday, Jan. 29, for example, in the prime time of 7:30 to 9 p.m., television produced an hour and a half of solid promotion for Hollywood. Inside Beverly Hills was presumably designed as a sort of dressed-up documentary which would show the living habits of residents of that posh community. As an effort in journalism, the program was on a level no higher than that of the average article in a movie fan magazine. The production costs of Inside Beverly Hills ran $150,000. A fan magazine might pay 500 bucks top for a piece of that kind. Toward the end of Inside Beverly Hills James Stewart and his family were shown leaving their home en route to attend the cinema. In an obviously rehearsed plug, Mr. Stewart said: "Movies are your best entertainment." It was hard to disagree with him at that moment. A Plan for New Orleans (and the U.S.A.) IN ITS reappraisal of television allocations, the FCC should give particular attention to the possibility of releasing some, if not all, of the channels now reserved for non-commercial, educational use. In a number of communities the release of these reservations would be of significant help in expanding television service. We shall use New Orleans as an example, but first we would like to explore other facets of the educational problem dispassionately and, we hope, realistically. It should now be crystal clear that education never will fully utilize the channels allotted under the unique "reservation" plan made part of the Sixth and Final allocations report. There isn't enough money or program product to do the job. And there just isn't the public interest. So why not let these channels go for commercial use, rather than allow them to lie fallow? When the educational people in a given communty find themselves ready, let them re-acquire part of Page 102 • February 6, 1956 Drawn for BROADCASTING . TELECASTING by Sid Hix "In an election year never start your sales pitch by asking him to give you a little time!" the station's time (and use the station's facilities) under agreements that could be devised in advance. Actually, the FCC is flouting the Communications Act of 1934 by allowing educational channels to go unused after nearly four years. The New Orleans example has its counterpart in dozens of communities where educational assignments have not been activated or are being used only part-time. Three vhf channels (4, 6 and *8) are allocated to that city. Only one — ch. 6 — is being used. Ch. 4 was sought by three applicants, and a final choice of the winner is yet to be made. Ch. *8, as noted above, has an asterisk, the Commission's mark for an educational reservation. Four uhf channels are allocated to New Orleans. One is occupied by an operating station. Another has been granted, but there is no indication as to when or if it will go on the air. The others are unclaimed. It is now nearly four years since the FCC lifted the tv freeze, and New Orleans is still without really competitive tv service. What about ch. *8? For more than three years it went begging. Finally, last July, the Greater New Orleans Educational Television Foundation Assn. applied for it. The association claims support and pledges of support from numerous sources, including the Ford Foundation, and proposes to spend $328,000 to build a station. Sounds good, so far. Now how does the foundation propose to put its $328,000 station to use? Well, it promises to provide five hours of programming a day Monday through Friday. Weekends it will stay dark. Is that a fair shake for the people of New Orleans? Is that enough programming to justify a franchise on a facility which, in business hands, would add a full program service to a community that is in desperate need of one? [Multiply that by 86, the number of vhfs reserved for education, and you get a notion of the kind of additional service the public really wants that could be supplied throughout the country, and without battling for new spectrum space and without converting sets.] As a start, we suggest that the FCC, on its own motion, propose the erasure of the asterisk before ch. 8. This will benefit the New. Orleans public, the city's television business and the advertisers. It will also benefit the educational foundation, which can arrange to use that $328,000 to build educational programs, rather than a wholly inadequate station with promised operation of 25 hours a week. And those programs could be placed on the ch. 8 station (and on other commercial stations throughout the state where extension education is really needed) by agreement. We feel confident that most, if not all, of the 13 vhf non-commercial education stations now on the air, and struggling for money, programs and public acceptance, would quickly realize that this method would be the answer to their vexing problems. It can work, if only someone would take the initiative. And that someone should be the FCC. Broadcasting • Telecasting