Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1962)

I ■ Sales Management Survey of Buying Power — 1961 WRVA-RADIQ 50,000 Watts AM, 1140 KC 200,000 Watts FM, 94.5 MC Richmond, Virginia 1 ■ r.i m 1 IradioI 1 CODE 1 National Representative: PETERS, GRIFFIN. WOODWARD, INC. 'COMMERCIAL COMMENTARY by John E. McMillin The Case of the Saleable Flop "Don't you ever dare to say another word against Newton Minow," snorted my wife, kicking the coffee table in a spasm of feminine fury. "Don't you ever defend the networks to me," she went on relentlessly. "After looking at cheap, disgusting trash like that, I think Mr. Minow is entirely right. And don't you be mean to him." Are you listening, Newton? The immediate cause of this domestic explosion was the opening episode of The Virginian which Joe Csida reviewed here last week. But we had been building up to it by watching the season premieres of a couple of other tv turkeys, Sam Benedict and Saints and Sinners, and my wife, whose boiling point is amiably low, and who thinks I've been much too tough on the FCC Chairman ("He's really a very nice man") had reached the end of her patience. "Who do they think they are," she demanded, "insulting the public like that?" The "they" in this case was NBC which carried all three shows, but it could have been any of the networks, and what I tried to say in behalf of Mssrs. Sarnoff, Kintner, Adams, Werner et al, would have to be said, on other occasions, about CBS or ABC. No, I told her patiently, they are not dumb, they are not stupid, they are not vicious, they are not unprincipled, they are not deliberately trying to insult you, and they don't purposely set out to put on poor shows. "Well then, what's the matter with them?" she sneered. No cultural Carrie Nation Perhaps at this point, I ought to explain that my wife is no cultural Carrie Nation, determined to impose high brow tastes on a reluctant public with a flaming intellectual hatchet. Her own list of tv favorites reads like a Nielsen honor roll — Casey, Kildare, The Defenders, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Have Gun, Garry Moore, and she dotes on such diverse stars as Carol Burnett, Hunt and Brink, Mickey Mantle, Arnold Palmer (she loathes Jack Nicklaus) , Leonard Bernstein, and Paul Niven. In fact, it is the very orthodoxy of her tv tastes which makes her so hard to answer. How do you explain to such a critic? Why is it that year after year so many mediocre new shows are scheduled in prime evening time, and face inevitable doom? My own best explanation is what I call the "Theory of the Saleable Flop," and it is known to most of us inside, but few outside the business. Briefly, it's this: before any show gets on the air it must be sold — to producers, networks, stations, agencies, and advertisers. And the qualities which make a show saleable are seldom the qualities which make it good, solid, or popular. In fact, the more promotable a new show is, the more suspicious of it you should be. Two and a half years ago I sat in Chicago and listened as Henry (Please turn to page 30) 22 SPONSOR/8 October 1962