Broadcasting (Jan - June 1940)

U/q J^aij Out ]Q.Q±pect!i 'To — MERRITT EDWARD TOMPKINS AS THE newly-appointed general manager of Broadcast Music Inc., Merritt Edward Tompkins, brings to that position as operating head of the broadcasting industry's own music enterprise a wealth of experience in the musical world that has given him an intimate personal knowledge of practically every phase of the production, merchandising and popularization of music. As a music student he learned the rules of musical composition and rendition. As a church soloist he gained experience in translating the words and notes of the printed page into vocal melodies. His years in the music publishing business, which he entered as an apprentice and left as a top executive, gave him first-hand knowledge of all the countless details of this great industry. As an advertising agency account executive he created and carried through an extensive campaign for player piano rolls so successfully that the company hired him as assistant sales manager in full charge of this department. As executive secretary of an association of music publishers and, later, as a member of the board of directors of ASCAP, he learned the ins and outs of administering musical copyrights. And as head of a recording and transcription producing organization, he gained not only a practical knowledge of the mechanics of creating, producing and selling transcriptions but also a keen insight into the likes and desires of both broadcaster and listener. Born March 6, 1887, in a suburb of Waterbury, Conn., where he received his elementary and secondary schooling, Merritt was musically inclined from childhood and when high school days were over, instead of heading for New Haven to acquire the turtle-neck sweater and bull-dog pipe then the mark of every Yale man, he went to New York to study at the Institute of Musical Art, famed predecessor of the present day Juilliard School of Music. Here he studied violin, piano and voice. After graduation, however, his New England practicality overrode his artistic ambitions and he forsook the concert hall for the business office, signing on as an apprentice with the music publishing house of G. Schirmer Inc. On Sunday mornings, however, young Tompkins could be seen and heard as soloist in one of New York's fashionable churches, thus keeping his voice in trim and at the same time augmenting his weekly earnings. Time passed, and having completed his apprenticeship in the publishing business he sought new fields to conquer. In those pre-war days advertising was the field, or so everyone said, where a clever chap could make a fortune over night, so Tommy, as he was and is generally known by his associates, joined the H. K. McCann Co. which has since become McCann-Erickson. During his four years in the agency field. Tommy's greatest triumph was in creating and managing a series of "comparative recitals" for the American Piano Co. Audiences flocked to concert halls throughout the land to hear Leopold Godowski and other artists perform and to marvel when, midway through a piano selection, the artist pushed back his bench while the music continued to fill the air, produced by an Ampico roll and the instrument's player machinery. Yes, they marveled and they bought the rolls and the instruments in such numbers that Tompkins soon found himself out of the agency and in the piano business, as assistant sales manager in charge of sales of music rolls and also of the Chickering piano division. In 1919 he returned to Schirmer as sales manager, becoming successively general manager and vice-president until he left again in 1929 to join the North American Co., which at that time had great expectations of winning the listening public away from commercial broadcasting and turning the radio NOTES BARRON HOWARD, business mcanager of WRVA, Richmond. Va., has been named treasurer of the Richmond Theatre Guild. Ira Avery, WRVA special events announcer and producer, has been selected for a lead in a coming Guild production. CARL I. WHEAT, former assistant general counsel o,f the FCC, who has frequently been mentioned for one of the Rei)ublican commissionerships, has opened law offices in the Shoreham Bldg.. Washington, specializing in public utility, radio communications and transportation practice. He will maintain his San Francisco offices. .TAMES R. FOUCH. president of Universal Microphone Co., Inglewood. Cal., has returned to the Hollywood Hospital and will be away from his desk until early in May. PHIL LASKY, general manager of KROW, Oakland, Cal.. is the father of a girl born March 1, and his brother, L. B. Lasky, sales representative of KSFO, San Francisco, is the father of a boy born March 2. THOMAS D. CONNOLLY of the CBS sales promotion department, on March 13 gave a talk on the "Influence of Radio on American Buying Habits" before the Atlanta Advertising Club. JIMMIE MOORE, formerly manager of the Harlingen studios of KGFI, Brownsville, Tex., has joined the sales staff of KFDA, Amarillo. WEBLEY EDWARDS, vice-president of Hawaiian Broadcasting System and manager of KGMB, Honolulu, is to leave Honolulu March 22 on the Lurline for a brief business trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles. He plans to return April 17. WAYNE VARNUM. salesman of KSO-KRNT, Des Moines, has resigned to join tlie sales promotion staff of Columbia Recording Corp. With Mrs. Varnum and their child, he left for Bridgeport. Conn., headquarters on March 11. Mrs. Varnum formerly was assistant radio editor of the Des Moines Register & Tribune. E. L. FINLEY, publisher of the Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press-Democrat and operator of KSRO in that city, has been reelected president of the newspaper publishers' unit of the Redwood Empire Assn. WILLIAM M. MALO on March 1 observed his 10th anniversary as commercial manager of WDRC, Hartford, Conn. He joined WDRC in 1930 when it became a basic CBS outlet. WDRC associates presented him with a tin microphone to mark the tin anniversary. ALBERT DREW has relinquished Iiis announcing duties to devote full time to his new position as assistant commercial manager of WBTM, Danville, Va. LOUIS RUPPBL, CBS director of publicity, on March 1 left for a sixweek trip to Mexico City and the West Coast via New Orleans and San Antonio. He will return to New York early in April. MARVIN De WITT RAB Jr., formerly sales promotion manager of WNEW, New York, and previously with NBC and the radio department of J. Walter Thompson Co., New York, on March 1 joined Empire Broadcasting Corp., New York transcription company, as a salesman. listeners into subscribers for its advertising-less Wired Radio Service. Tompkins' assignment was to develop for Wired Radio a supply of music that would make it independent of any single source of music (ASCAP). Forming Associated Music Publishers, a group of publishers of standard and classical music, and also securing the rights to a great amount of European music, Tompkins succeeded in achieving the desired result. Meanwhile, however, the idea of wired service to the public at home had been gradually discarded and AMP, under Tommy's direction, was concentrating on the production and recording of music for Muzak, an olfshoot of the wired radio idea which supplies music without announcements or commercials to restaurants and hotels. Handling the music and recording ends of Muzak might well have been considered a fuUtime job, but in 1935 Tommy was struck with a new idea and, collecting a pile of his recordings, he entrained for the NAB convention at Colorado Springs. When he returned to New York, Associated entered the transcription business, offering both a library service to stations and custom-built commercial transcriptions to advertisers. In adding the management of a transcription service to his other duties, Tommy did not neglect his original task of collecting music, and today the Associated pool contains a catalog of more than 600,000 titles. While at Schirmer's, Tompkins had acted as executive secretary for an organization of publishers of standard and classical music known as the Standard Publishers Assn. When the association disbanded and its members entered ASCAP as a body, he was placed on the ASCAP board, along with Walter Fischer, to represent the interests of this group, and for five years he served as a director of ASCAP. In taking over his new post, Tompkins sees an opportunity to do a job that no one else in music is doing today, a task of locating from among the thousands of composers and lyricists whose works are kept unheard under the existing system those who have something worthwhile and of developing them into the Irving Berlins and George Gershwins of the future. The writers and composers will be given a chance to produce new music and will be paid fairly for what they produce; the broadcasters will be given the credit, and the profit, of fostering and furthering these creations ; and the listening public will be given the pleasure of hearing the best music of all types. Married to Florence Aitkin, a former actress and singer, Tompkins is the father of two daughters who live up to their artistic heritage. Joan, 22, is a radio actress who is kept in almost constant circulation between the studios of the networks and transcription companies, except AMP; Beatrice, 20, is a ballet dancer. The family now lives at Mount Vernon, but is moving April 15 to Scarsdale, near a golf course where Tommy hopes to spend whatever time his new duties will leave for his private use. BROADCASTING • Broadcast Advertising March 15, 1940 • Page 47