Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1963)

NEW SERIES VOL. 3. NO. 12 TELEVISION DIGEST— 5 'MINOW EFFECT' ON PRODUCERS; “Newton N. Minow and the current policies of the FCC of which he is chairman have succeeded in changing the face of American TV.” So starts press release describing survey of 43 TV producers, conducted by Trendex for Venet Ad Agency, Union, N.J. Survey covered producers of 11 of top 15 rated programs, including executives of Re\nie, Four Star, 20th Century, Screen Gems, Talent Assoc., MGM-TV, Plautus, Warner Bros., Filmways, Desilu, T & L. There were 4 questions: 1 (1) Has FCC Comr. Minow’s call for more balanced programming & more diverse fare influenced your thinking in the kinds of program ideas you might come up with — i.e., more ambitious productions, more cultural slant, etc.? Of respondents, 48.8% said “yes.” Of those who said “no,” ! most said they’d been trying to improve quality “before I FCC pressure.” [ (2) Has your approach to scenes of violence been softened? “Yes,” said 23.3%. “However,” release states, “at least 25 of the respondents who said ‘no’ indicated that violence of any kind” is completely outside their formats. (3) Do you think that Minow should be discussing programming at all ? Surveyors found “an astounding 81.4% . . . had no objection to the FCC’s intervention in the programming area.” (4) Do Minow’s program values in general have merit? “A one-sided majority of 79.1% voted affirmatively.” Conclusion: “As this sur\’ey indicates, not only is the outcry from one of the groups most intimately concerned with the problem — programming executives themselves — almost inaudible, but they present an attitude which might easily be interpreted as a mandate for ‘state intervention.’ ” Minow’s reaction? “No comment.” i ■ I NAB’s opinion of Omaha-type investigative hearings, by FCC, has been well-expressed repeatedly by Pres. Collins, and Gen. Counsel Douglas Anello last week backed it with strongly-worded memo filed with Commission. It ' concludes: “If the Commission has just cause to question ' the capability of any broadcaster, or to doubt his good ' faith in service to the public, then there are adequate powers available to it. It can place the license of that broadcaster squarely on the line in either a proper renewal or revocation proceeding, wdth all the rights of due process fully available to him. It should stop its efforts to govern by harassment, by needling, by nibbling in a proceeding directed indiscriminately against all broadcasters . . . Congress did not intend such a means of influencing programming. Neither did it intend a vain & useless thing.” Philco surprised a lot of people last week when its attorney Henry Weaver told FCC that firm would continue to prosecute its application for Philadelphia’s Ch. 3, contesting renewal of NBC’s WRCV-'TV (Vol. 3:11 p5). This followed Commission’s decision to reject Philco-NBC plan whereby former would withdraw, getting up to $550,000 I from NBC for expenses. After the parties’ final settlement ' of abrasive patent litigation (Vol. 3:1 p7), it had been as.sumed Ch. 3 problem would also be resolved. That’s still assumed — ^but legal strategy remains obscure. LEE: 'RAISE OWNERSHIP LIMIT'; Comr. Robert E. Lee threw another uhf-aid proposal into pot last week : Raise multiple TV station ownership limit to 10 — 5 vhf & 5 uhf. He advanced recommendation in EIA Consumer Products Div. meeting in Washington, at which he & Comr. Henry discussed allchannel law implementation (see also p. 7) . Lee said he felt raising ownership limits from present 5 vhf & 2 uhf would help “attract capital” to uhf station construction. He also told group that “in next week or so” FCC will adopt rules reducing uhf audio-to-visual power ratio and relaxing directional antenna requirements (Vol. 3:10 p3). He added that Commission’s final report on its N.Y. uhf experiment will be issued “in a matter of days.” He conceded that results could have been predicted by engineering computations, but said: “The purpose of the test was as much to demonstrate [that uhf would work] as to experiment.” On subject of land mobile radio services, request for elimination of TV’s Ch. 14 & 15, he advised bluntly: “Land mobile as a practical matter is not going to get any relief from the broadcast spectrum.” He said proposal was “poor politics” and its timing was inauspicious. “Perhaps some time, land mobile may be able to share unused vhf channels with TV on a non-interference basis,” he added. As if in direct reply, EIA’s land mobile communications section voted opposition to any sharing of vhf TV frequencies on basis that this might open way to requests by other radio services for use of channels now assigned to land mobile. Executive committee of Committee for Development of UHF Broadcasting, released by FCC at week’s end (see p. 7); Edwin M. Marshall, AAAA; Dr: Wayne Masters, Melpar; Seymour Siegel, WNYC-TV N.Y.; L. M. Sandwick, EIA; Adam Young, Adam Young Inc.; Lawrence Webb, Station Representatives Assn.; Harvey Struthers, CBS; Ben Adler, Adler Electronics; William L. Putnam, WWLP Springfield, Mass.; Thad H. Brovm, Assn, for Competitive TV; Vincent T. Wasilewski, NAB; Percy H. Russell, attorney, Washington; W. T. Hamilton, WNDU-TV South Bend; Lester Lindow, AMST; Edgar W. Holtz, attorney, Washington; Dr. Frank G. Kear, engineer, Washington; Peter B. Kenney, NBC; Frank Marx, ABC; Sarkes Tarzian, Sarkes Tarzian Inc.; Mort Farr, NARDA. New short-spaced vhf plan has been devised by Bureau of Standards’ Robert Kirby. It’s designed to meet some criticisms of his original plan (Vol. 2:49 p3). He has raised minimum adjacent-channel separation from 15-20 to 35 miles and reshuffled channels to keep 7 channels in N.Y. & L.A. instead of cutting them to 6. To effect latter, he had to juggle assignments in 54 cities. Copies of new plan are available from Kirby at Central Radio Propagation Lab, Boulder, Colo. “Obscenity case,” in which FCC ordered licensee denial for radio WDKD Kingstree, S.C. (Vol. 2:31 p3), has been chosen as subject of Harvard Law School’s Ames Competition “moot court” — a major wit-testing event. Proposal to lift TV-radio coverage ban on House committee hearings has been deferred by House Rules Committee for this session (Vol. 3:9 p2).