Variety (November 1954)

Wednesday, November 10, 1954 RADIO-TELEVISION’ 23 NBC IN MURROW’S TOMORROW? Here’s the lineup On NBC-vs.-CBS personalities with the former far outnumbering the latter; in getting the “Person to Person’’ profile treatment: NBC David Sarnoff Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis Groucho Marx. Eddie Fisher Iiripgerie Coca Wally Cox Sid Caesar Martha Raye Bob Smith Ezio Pinza (While on the , “Boninp’’ show) Guy Lombardo (WRCA) PENCILLED IN Red Buttons Dinah Shore Vaughn Monroe Maurice Evans (Star of the Hallmark Shakespearean pro? ductions) CBS Arthur Godfrey Ed Sullivan : Bil & Cora Baird PENCILLED IN Robert Q. Lewis. LoWell Thomas Garry Moore Automakers Pluggin’ Away on Color as Sparkplug For Sales in Race to Showcase *55 Models . ■ 4 , . . . ■■ ■ — Vincent Price Quizzer By GEORGE ROSEN The scheduled appearance of two more NBC personalities—Red Buttons and Dinah Shore—on the Ed Murrow “Person to Person” show on CBS-TV cues speculation anew as to whether Murrow. might not sever . relations With William S: Paley’s Columbia Operation, de- spite the fact that he enjoys the dual status Of performer and mem- ber Of the board of directors, to pledge allegiance , to David Sarnoff and NBC. Once before Sarnoff had made overtures to woo Murrow over, but nothing happened. Whatever Mur- row’s wishes in the matter at the moment, he’s bound to CBS by a contract, reportedly a longteriper. Murrow and Sarnoff are friends, but the close bond that has existed through the years, between Mur- row aiid Paley is ; well known to those familiar with the CBS pic- ture., Nonetheless, it’s no secret that Sarnoff envisions the day when the transfer can be success- fully maneuvered. When arid if it does, the stakes will be high, not only clinching him an NBC-RCA directorate status, from all ac- counts, but permitting Mprrow to Write his own ticket coin-wise. Whether by accident or design, the intramural kickaround of top broadcasting personalities on “Per- son to Person” has gone way over- board on the showcasing of NBC stars on the Friday night show (more than, a dozen, including the upcoming Buttons, Shore stints), whereas thus far only Arthur, God- frey and Ed Sullivan among the top CBS personalities (with Rob- ert Q. Lewis coming up) have been exposed to the “Person” treatment. ■Question of Prestige That Paley and CBS would re- gard any such Murrow defection as a vital blow goes without saying. Not so much for. the sponsorship coin, entailed in his “See It Now”- ■‘Person to. person” brace of tv shows, plus, his radio bankrollers, but because of the enormous pres- tige redounding to the network. So much so that today Murrow is re- garded as somewhat of a symbol and a pattern setter, With practi- cally the whole school of Colum- bia commentators cut of the same Murrow cloth. Of all the CBS personalities on the , Murrow alone enjoys unique privileges for which he’s answerable to no one. The fact that he did a “Person” profile oil NBC board chairman Sarnoff last March may have created some un- easiness among the (CBS hierarchy, but Murrow’s decisions on these matters are unchallengeable. It’s known, too, that the CBS manage- ment and Murrow’s sponsors have long sought to bring the non-inter- connected affiliated stations into the “See It N6w”-“PersOh to Per- son” picture via the delayed use of kinescopes, but Murrow has nixed any such overtures, insisting on “all live” pickups of the shows. . It’s reported that a new “situa- tion” has developed at the network. This purportedly involves Mur- row ■$ desire to move his two late night shows, with their limited sta- Liye & Learn Dept. Very.much in .evidence these days in walking through the wardrobe dept. at. the NBC* TV Brooklyn, studios (major home of the color specs) are the gowns ordered for Ginger Rogers for her recent “Tonight at 8; 30" apearance. Nobody knows just what to do with them, and it’s been the cause of a lot of wincing as NBC execs, have occasion to visit the studios.. * Miss Rogers’ gowns ate up ap appropriation of $7,5.00. The' whole thing, some say, could have been wrapped up for a few hundred dollars. Chicago, Nov. 9. Sunbeam has handed NBC-TV its resignation from the Saturday night “Ethel & Albert” show, ef- fective at year’s, end. With some- thing like $1,500,000 going into the Sunday'night monthly Max Lieb- ma.n specials which it shares with Hazel Bishop, Sunbeam decided to do some retrenching at the end of the holiday buying season. The cancellation of “Ethel & Al- bert” may well represent sort of a reverse English victory for NBC prexy Sylvester (Pat) Weaver who came out for a hand holding visit With Sunbeam execs a couple weeks back. While the Sunbeam people, unlike HB’s Raymond Spector, have kept their disappointment oVer the 90-minute hooperdoopers to themselves, they're known to have expressed concern. However, the appliance firm decided to stay with the big ship, casting off the half-hour comedy instead. Meanwhile the network expects no trouble finding a new client for the Saturday night period. One hot prospect is Swift which, through the J. Walter Thompson agenfcy, has been shopping around for a. time slot in which to berth a Horace Heidt package it has op- tioned. The Heidt project, would be a roadshow affair built around the homecoming of big name stars. 80G ‘Hunchback’ Load Two-parter of “Hunchback of Notre Dame” (Nov. 8 and 15) is be- ing brought in for $80,000 in talent and production, 'good 10G above the usual budget of the IlRobert To go by an RCA estimate, there are about 10,000 television sets in the U, S. that are geared to re- ceive color; exaggerated, maybe, but even so, a mere drop in the bucket against some 32,000,000 of the monochrome machines. Vet the biggest current enthusiasts when it coriies to “tinting up” their shows are the auto manufacturers. With. November as the key month when The Star & the Gar Next week’s (18). “Shower of Stars” will be 1 a direct plug in part for Chrysler Corp. models in an “Entertainment on. Wheels” hoopla. Such corporation talent as William Bishop. James Dunn, and Michael O’Shea (Chrysler’ ‘TVs a Great Life’’), Eddie Mayehoff, Rochelle . Hudson and Gil Stratton jr. (Ply- mouth’s “That’s My Boy”) and Danny Thomas (Dodge’s “Make Room for Daddy”) will be i the sketches; along with Betty Grable, Harry James and Ed Wynn. Second part of show will he built around the various makes, also including De Soto and Imperial. all the major auto outfits are kick- ing off displays of their 1955 mod- els, there’s a great big “cry” for the hue as the four-wheeled spon- sors present their regular video fare. Ford Motor Co., for instance, has been on a “tinting tonight” push since mid-October on its Thursday “Ford Theatre” vidpix dramatics and comes through tomorrow with “The Road Ahead,” Robert Bas- ing’s adaptation of a story by (Continued on page 44) Those NBC-TV daytime problems apparently are far from solved. The •‘what do you have to do to get a rating” poser, for one thing, finds the late afternoon. Pinky Lee show virtually rebuffed on the . agency- sponsor marts, despite the fact that it boasts one of the network’s high- est daytime ratings, second only, to “Howdy Doody.” NBC is frankly puzzled by the client brushoffs, which has necessitated making it a Co-op venture. On the other hand there’s a lot of Colgate coin riding on the post* noon “Feather Your Nest” cross- the-board half-hour show (an Esty agency-built package, but appar- ently it’s been going nowhere either oh the rating front or in (Continued on page 44) Vincent Price has a new roll— that of quizmaster on a tv series by Bernard Schubert. A kine was cut last week called “Key Witness” during which emcee Price queries, audience re filmed dramatic vign- ettes. Show also has actor Don Morrow. DuMont, which cut the kine for Schubert, is reported seeking a" bankroller for same. And,, inch 'dentally, also on the DuMont scene, Paul Dixon returns to his casing, coming regularly from. N.Y. on Monday (15) after a month’s illness. Murrow’s Champ Status as Femme Not known whether it’s Ed Mur- row’s furrowed brow, Ralph Ed- wards’ dapper dan deportment or the ‘.‘human interest” subjects ex- amined by. the respective shows, but “Person to Person” (CBS-TV) now has a larger femme audience than “This Is Your Life” (NBC- TV). And that, according to the latest American Research Bureau figures, gives “P to P” the “lady looker” title nationally, . with a distaffer score of 56% to Edwards’ 52%. Latter figure drops “Life” to third in the Weaker sex sweep- stakes, edged out by CBS’ “Studio One” with 53%. ABC’s newly ac- quired ‘‘Masquerade Party” sneaks into fourth place via its 51%, in a Mexican standoff with NBC’s “Rob- ert Montgomery Presents.” Incidentally, this Friday’s (120 “Person” will include Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland (others, from the Coast, will be Tony Cur- tis & Janet Leigh). It’s figured femme-viewership will be specially hypoed because In Chicago the con- gregation of Temple Beth Torah will: rrimain after Friday night’s services to watch the show! Rabbi Silver’s Son, Daniel Jeremy Silver, is the leader of the Chi congrega- tion who “arranged” the mass viewing. Mike Dann Upped Mike Dann has been upped in the NBC-TV echelon, from manager of network programs to director of web program sales, a berth cre- ated under program v.p. Tom Me- Avity. Dann will rep the web in house-produced shows and serve as officer liaison for clients and agen- cies sponsoring NBC properties. Within the web itself Dann will supervise arid coordinate the spec- taculars in various areas, embrac- ing talent, press promotion and l client-agency contacting. tion lineups, into so-called prime (Continued on page 44) Packard Motors is dropping its quarter-hour Sunday night musical starring Martha Wright on ABC-TV after Dec. 5. Move, occasioned by its purchase with Studebaker of the Chester Erskine “Reader’s Di- gest” series on the web Monday nights; once again op^ns the 9:15 post-Walter Winchell period for sponsorship. Web is currently pitching sale of the time, but it’s not going to re- gain the show, which features the Bobby Hackett orch in addition to Miss Wright. There’s an ‘option I out on the period which expires to- -morrow (Thuts.), Montgomery Presents” show on NBC-TV. Also at peak for the Neptune Productions package is the cast of 80, plus the biggest sets ever/handled by the web, , with vet legit-tv designer Syrjala haying worked on his drawing board: fbr eight weeks arid supervised the execution over a three-Week per riod. Under the two-part setup, the cost will * be divided' since show has a pair of alternating spon- sors in Johnson’s Wax and Amer- ican Tobacco. (“Hunchback” will be reviewed in full in the Nov. 17 issue.) JACK CARSON’S REVAMP Hollywood, Nov. 9. Jack Carsbn has reshuffled the writing staff of his once-a-monther for Pontiac on NBC-TV, dropping one writer and adding four. Leo Solomon remains as one of the two original scripters, while Cy Rose out, and Hal Goldman, A1 Gordon, James AUardice and Harry Winkler have been, added; By the first of the year NBC hopes to achieve a break-even status on ty production in licking the “runaway cost” problem. It hasn’t exactly been a secret that the network has been laying plenty “out; of; pocket” coin on the line to give the sponsor a financial as- sist in combating the “high cost of tv living.” The month of Septem- ber, it’s reported, has been the best yet for the network toward closing the gap on outgoing-incoming; coin on top-budgeted, entries arid the keynote for the balance of the year is “ . wherever you can.”-. Not that, this takes. NBC off the spec expenditure hook, with such items as, “Satins and Spurs,” “Lady in the Dark,” “Tonight at 8:30” going way above the sponsor-com- mitted coin for the 90-minute ex- travaganzas. But it appears that NBC is salvaging good, chunk of ..this coin from savings in Other program directions. The web, it’s understood, now ready to - embark on art unprece- dented “incentive plan” to expe- dite additional savings, which is expected to be put into effect shortly, after months of study. The network’s 40 or so tv unit mana- gers have already been tipped to trie "incentive” scheme whereby they’ll share ‘ new production savings, v . ■ ’ One of the m a jor, raps, of course,: stems from union contracts, nota- bly NABET and IATSE, both of which drain off a considerable amount of the coin. The web realizes its hands are pretty well, tied on these fronts. .Nonetheless, NABET’S contract With the net- work is up in a couple of months arid some close to the scene say the' fur will fly in anticipation of forth- coming NABET demands. Eddie Mayehoff has become the first major tv casualty of the sea- son with Plymouth checking out on “That’s My Boy” in January coin- cident with the 39-week playout spilling over from the previous semester;. CBS-TV is in the midst of attempting to sell Plymouth house show but nothing finalized as y.et. “Boy” had a rough road from the start, aijd with NBC installing “meteoric” comic George Gobel op- posite the Mayehoff Saturday night stanza, that marked a coup d’grace. It’s Mayehoff’s second bumping since he had only a few weeks of exposure on his ”Doc Gorkle.” SINATRA BLOWS DP A HURRICANE HAZEL Chicago,. Nov. 9. Toni brass arid their agencies are simmering over Frank Sinatra’s ap- pearance on the Hazel Bishop por- tion of Sunday , ight’s NBC-TV spectacular. Toni, which' recently introduced its own ViV lipstick, sponsors the singer twice weekly on NBC radio for its home perma- nents. What is especially rankling is that Sinatra's name was used dur- ing the Hazel Bishop blurb, as a tacit endorsement of its own lip- stick. Heflin’s 15G Nif Hollywood, Nov, 9. Van Heflin turned down a $15,- 000 offer for a lead role in “The Philadelphia Story,” on “Best of Broadway” Dec. 8 on CBS-TV. I Heflin was paged to recreate the role he had opposite Katharine. Hepburn in the Broadway pres- entation of “Story.” Heflin said he nixed it because he doesn’t want to do live tv now,