Sponsor (Jan-June 1954)

THE SUCCESS-FULL STATION Chinnel 17 DECATBR, ILLINOIS *Conlan Mport, January, 1954 nationaI representatives GEO. W. .CLARK CO. New York Los Angeles San Francisco Chicago SINCLAIR OIL [t ontinued from page 70) three weekl) evening newscasts. In L951, with the opening of eight new Sinclair stations in Kansas City, Sinclair boughl 30 minute announcements weekl) foi L3 weeks. Sinclair i no newcomer to radio. The firm's earliest radio effort was sponsorship of The Greater Sinclair Minstrels, a half-hour musical show over the Blue Network (now NBC) between 193] and 1936. This program represented 25' j of the firm's advertising budget dm ing those years. As radio's coverage increased, Sinclair decided to move into spot radio in order to avoid waste circulation and -lick (loser to its distribution pattern. I hej have been in radio consistentlv over the past 15 years, usualK with 25% of the over-all budget. This year is the first year that the firm has increased its spot radio budget to 35r« of the over-all national spending— spot tv will get 15%. Generally the firm's strategy has been to aim for a broad male audience. Therefore, timebuyer Kay Shanahan ". . . Tin* problems of advertising management have now clearly beeome so significant and so varied that they need to 1m subjected increasingly to the same kind of scientific analysis which has been found so effective in factory management ; yet with the need to devise, special techniques appropriate to this particular managerial work, fully recognizing both its special characteristics and its differences from factory or other functional management tasks." HAROLD F. SMIDDY lice President General Electric Co. avoids placing saturation schedules on one station onl\ in multi-station markets. Some 90% of Sinclair's radio programs and announcements are in the breakfast hours. Exceptions are mai i il \ special sport events. Of course local listening patterns dictate the time buying approach. For example, in Detroit, where factor) shifts quit at 3. 4 and 5 p.m., Sinclair announcements carrj over into the mid and late-afternoon adjacencies. Better than ().V , of Sinclair's radio and t\ announcements are minutes, because the firm feels thai it needs thai amount of time in order to put across its stress on qualit] and performance of its product. In placing nighttime t\ minutes, Ka\ aims for 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. adjacencies. Sinclair curfew rings at 10:15 p.m., because the firm feels that the smalltown areas which are Sin* lair's biggest sources of revenue are early-to-bed-and-early-risers. \liout one-fourth of Sinclair's radio -lation schedules are in five-. 10-. and L5-minute news, sports and weather programs. In t\. on the other hand, close to 50', of the schedules are weather and local news programing. \lo-t schedules arc bought on a 52week basis, with commercials rotated in these Sinclair time slots. General!) speaking Sinclair's competitors are also hea\ \ spot radio and tv advertisers. Among the oil giants, however, network sponsorship is not unusual. Texas Co.. for example, sponsored The Milton Berle Show, NBC l\. Tuesdav 8:00-9:00 p.m. until the weekl) production cost was hiked from $110,000 to $150,000 in June 1953. This firm still sponsors The Metropolitan Opera over MBS. Gulf Oil sponsored Bill Bendix in Life With Riley, a half-hour situation comedy, over \BC TV. Sun Oil Co. I Sunoco I sponsors 15 minutes of news. Three Star Extra, NBC Radio, Monday through Friday. 6:45-7:00 p.m. Sinclair Refining Co., a relative latecomer in the oil industry, was founded in 1916 by H. F. Sinclair, who'd been a successful independent .oil producer in his native Kansas. Toda) more than 100.000 people are Sinclair stockholders. The company's interests expand into Canada and Latin America. I The firm uses radio and tv advertising in Cuba, incidentally, i It lias more than 13.000 miles of pipe lines, operates seven refineries, employs over 23,000 people. In 1953. for the first time, the company became one of the two dozen or fewer billion-dollar enterprises in the U.S. ••• see pages 56,57 80 SPONSOR