Broadcasting (Jan - Mar 1950)

ADMIRAL shows, running the gamut from comedy to drama: Left Photo — BERT PARKS in Stop the Music Thursday nights. Firm's half-hour television segment features the Admiral theme song, "Top of the Evening," with a quintet of singers dressed as admirals or other naval officers. After the first telecast last May, Mr. Parks received 40,000 cards in one week from persons interested in being called during the program. Center — ELABORATE props characterized a recent presentation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" on Lights Out. A stage director cues Movie Actor Helmut Dantine (center), during a suspenseful scene. "Name" stars are seldom used on the NBC package, scripts for which are adaptations of former AM Lights Out stories or those in the public domain. Right — LIFE GUARD'S rescue by a modest damsel was enacted in pantomime by Comics Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca when they starred on the Admiral Broadway Revue. The show was first telecast last January, and cost the firm an estimated $900,000 before it went off the air late last spring. I Berle). The time slot was kept ! open during the hiatus last summer I with sponsorship of Hopalong CasI sidy. Before the fall season, howI ever, Broadway Revue was dropped because of "astronomical" costs — j about $1 million. This total more j than doubled original budget esti: mates, according to Advertising Manager Seymour Mintz. Soaring Broadway Revue costs established procedure and thinking which have since been followed by j the firm in its television advertisI ing. Because costs on any nonI package show on TV can skyrocket out of all relationship to money budgeted in advance. Admiral has found the best answer to be purchase of an entire show, including talent, production and scripts, in ; one unit. i This is the operating theory of Mr. Mintz, who believes the fixed cost, plus specific time charges, add up to an inflexible total. A package show relieves the company and Kudner of production headaches I also. Both of Admiral's current telecasts — Lights Out on NBC-TV and Stop the Music on ABC-TV— are successful results of this theory. EDWIN J. Sherwood, Admiral's television promotion manager, agrees "the only way to avoid trouble in television programming is to insist on a high-quality package show. Then all we have to do is ride herd on it." Mr. Sherwood has been coordinator between Admiral and Kudner for a year. Before then, while working on the Admiral account at Cruttenden & Eger, he directed the firm's TV interests for one year. He is a former Army public relations officer on Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters .staff in Europe. Mr. Sherwood works with 80 Admiral distributors in planning and producing local shows, develops all local commercials and coordinates all nationaf commercials. Between 60 and 70% of commercials on Lights Out and Stop the Music are solid sells for television sets. Although "good entertainment will sell anything, including TV sets in TV homes," the ratio of return is going down, Mr. Sherwood realizes. Number of viewers per set is down considerably since last year, and is reaching the average number of persons in a family. Lights Out, an NBC package, originates in NBC's 106th St. Studio in New York, but without an audience. Shows used, supernatural and psychological fantasies, are adaptations of Arch Oboler's radio scripts for the original AM Lights Out series on NBC or of stories in the public domain. GIMMICKS, trick shots and suspenseful action are typical of each show, with four cameras making such a variety possible. Unusual format is strengthened by use of only front and end commercials, and the uninterrupted dramatic story has brought bushels of fan mail from grateful viewers. Jack LaRue, movie and stage star, is host each week, setting the story pace. Some of the gimmicks used the first couple of weeks included a telephone drifting upward and out of sight (by means of an invisible piano wire), people walking through a wall (complex dissolves), candle flame fading slowly on "Lights Out" call (prop man beneath a table pulling the wick down as a film clip of a dwindling flame is superimposed) and a vibrating dagger (wire again). Telecast Monday, 8-8:30 p.m. CST, the show is produced and directed by NBC's Kingman Moore, who has had Broadway and Hollywood experience. He works with Mr. Sherwood and Peter Finney, Kudner account executive. The same products are advertised weekly, with Announcer Sid Smith acting as the "Admiral dealer." Products are a 16-inch TV set, radio-phono-TV combination, table model radios, Dual-Temp refrigerator and "Flexo Heat" electric range. Mr. Smith, who was also seen as the "Admiral deal er" on Broadway Revue, gets many product inquiries in fan mail. Unusual sound and musical effects include a haunting combination of violin and organ playing the Admiral theme song, "Top of the Evening." This was sung and played on each Broadway Revue, and is owned by the firm. Special effects are created also by a theramin, a musical instrument akin to a plaintive human voice which has been used in several Alfred Hitchcock psychological horror films. "Top of the Evening" also is the opening theme on Stop the Music, telecast on Thursday, 7-8 p.m. CST. Admiral sponsors the 7:30 to 8 p.m. portion. The song is sung by a quintet of three men and two women dressed as admirals or other naval officers. Another trademark is a yachting cap, worn by Bert * * * FROM 52d to first place in the electronics industry in 15 years is the claim of Admiral Corp., whose growth has been directed by Founder-President Ross D. Siragusa. Only 43 years old, Mr. Siragusa started with an investment of $3,400 in 1934. In 1949 the firm grossed $112 million. Parks at each show opening. This was used also by Sid Caesar in Broadway Revue. Stop the Music is ,a package of Louis B. Cowan. Its action is recorded by three cameras, five for special production numbers. Sid Smith, again as the Admiral dealer, appears in semi-dramatic commercials promoting all products. Mr. Parks broadcasts from the Ritz Theatre in New York. Ralph Warren is TV director, and the entire production is supervised by Alfred L. Hollander. The Cowan organization produces the package in association with Mark Goodson. The cost of the two shows is shared by 80 distributors and 20,000 dealers. Admiral, however, pays the bulk of the expense. It also chips in on local TV programs planned by distributors. THE 1950 budget is following the TV pattern of '48 and '49. "We'll think about changing sponsorship only when the public starts complaining. So far they, and we, are happy," Mr. Mintz said. This year the new 22-receiver TV line is being advertised. Admiral, again beaming its long line to all possible classes of consumers, introduced its 1950 models at a distributors convention in Chicago's Drake Hotel Jan. 5-7. The current line ranges in price from $179 to about $800, enough variety to adapt to any purse or taste. More than 95% of Admiral's TV production is centered in its Chicago plant on the city's West side. A few models are made in nearby Harvard. Three thousand of the firm's 5,000 employes in Chicago work fulltime on the TV production line, a single unit about a block and a half long. Thirteen other plants are scattered throughout the country for manufacture of other appliances. Admiral also foresaw the '50 future when promoting its last year's models to distributors with the motto "It's a gold mine, the Admiral line for '49." Admiral's gold mine, self-discovered and continuing, is beginning to hit pay dirt for the firm which pioneered heavy investments in both TV programming and equipment. Page 65 • BROADCASTING January 23, 1950 TELECASTING • Page 7