Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

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cli3racter licensing so since networks see merchandising as extra program promotion, books especially are favored because they can lie around the house for months, reminding the occupants of the tv program. In a library, their promotional value survives for years. Books run the gamut. They start with story, coloring and comic books for children, usually at modest prices. In the enormous middle ground of soft-cover publications he many volumes that merely borrow tv titles or characters in order to narrate otherwise original stories. In "General Hospital," described as "an original novel based on the popular ABC-TV show" (Lancer Press, 40 cents), a famous dancer can no longer walk . . must her will to live also die? The Comhat-based series have such subtitles as "Men, not Heroes;" "The Story of Fighting Men and Their Women." Also in this middle ground are Hootenanny songbooks ($2.50 hardcover, 50 cents soft) and the Bevverly Hillbillies' "Book of Country Humor." At the top of publishing lists are the few fine volumes that are beginning to make sales sense. "Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren" (Dutton, $5.95) goes beyond their tv program of a couple of years ago to include virtually their entire, unedited conversation. Advance reviews hailed it as "profound, imaginative, illuminating . . " ABC is responsible for "How Presidents Are Elected," while CBS keyed its Tour of the White House i n book form. NBC's story of Christmas as told in great paintings is published as "The Coming of Christ" ($17.95). To appear this fall: Simon & Schuster's "The Day That Life Begins" (written by an ABC-TV producer) and a semi-historical "Saga of Western Man," based on ABC public affairs programing. CBS, which usually supplies the 34 editors for the books it licenses, has a careful researcher in Murray Benson, who reads every one of the books his department puts out, serious or comic. "I have to," he reports, "to make sure there aren't legal or promotional problems involved." Benson, a former NBC staff announcer on How BIG MONEY GAME NBC TV's "Concentration," which premiered Aug. 25, 1958, has had an average weekly cost of about $25,000. That brings its total six-year production bill to $7.8 million. A licensed by-product of the show, the game called "Concentration," has sold 5 million sets for a retail gross of $20 million. In other words, to play the tv game, the public has paid almost triple the cost of the program, itself. dy Doody, got into character-licensing when he started to handle requests for Howdy Doody items, has been in it ever since. (4) Another path that network merchandisers are pursuing: phonograph records. Few merchandised titles have hit the big time in the difficult and parochial recording fields, but, says Benson, "They provide a lot of steady sellers." Similarly, NBC has realized continuous royalties from recorded spectaculars, special holiday programs and the like. Virtually everything at ABC except the sound of the drinking fountain in the hall has been put on record, from martial and theme music for a "Combat" pressing to "The Basic Issues" of the JohnsonGoldwater positions, interpreted with fairness and equanimity by the ABC News Department for Purchase Records. Educational recordings on folk music or outer space and side-products of the networks' Discovery scries have built children's records into an especially saleable line. (5) Another notable trend is the merchandising of films. This gives networks a splendid chance to recoup some of the many dollars that high-cost, carefully produced public service and documentary programs have consumed. "And on library shelves," says CBS's Benson, "films keep forever." Probable leader in distributing tv documentaries is Encyclopedia Britannica Films, Inc., which sells or rents to schools, colleges, universities, libraries and adult-education centers. Shorter films in 15or 30-minute versions are favored, but longer programs (like NBC's li hour-long The River Nile) find ■ willing buyers when the quality is high. The first three NBC programs adapted by EBF were Cu, ba: Bay of Pigs (an Emmy-winner); Birth Control — How? and, the Civil Rights documentary. The American Revolution of '63. Likely future candidates after their tele ^ casts this fall are the forthcoming color films on the Louvre and the French Revolution. Much of ABC's film backlog is available through Carousel Films and, again, includes an impres-, sive list of programs produced by the network's public affairs division. While most programs are of. general interest, a few are of particular value to special groups — among them, the ABC study of, the Vatican and Pope John XXllI. But it is CBS that claims leadership in film merchandising. The network has 200 titles available, in educational format and more than 30,000 prints in circulation, each perpetuating the life of a tv program well beyond the datC| of its first broadcast. They cover topics ranging from the fall of Hit-, ler to the sharp rise in popula-, tion. Benson says that the CBS vol-, ume of film merchandising "fai exceeds" that of the other networks. The 16 mm CBS films are avail-^ able from McGraw-Hill, Carousel ;'arouse]t gtT SPONSOf B^